I pushed through the ice that had made up the wall that the winter priests had raised to stop me and landed on iced ground. The priests were all falling back away from me, raising their arms. I spent the few moments it required to adjust the wooden soles of my shoes to have sharp spikes on them to grip the ice. I would need to reinforce them constantly to stop them being blunted on the enchanted ice.

On the good side the priests having ice running along their wall meant that there wasn't meters of snow for me to clear. I ran past the priests and along their wall to the north, pulling out my light stone as I left the lit area around the Forest Keeper city. As long as it was going in the direction I wanted I didn't mind following it.

They'd even cleared out the trees to make a straight run north, and my top speed rose to forty kilometers an hour. Chantelle was one hundred and thirty kilometers to the north, exactly along the direction the wall was running, and she seemed to be... Asleep. I didn't even know how many days I'd been in this world at this point.

An hour of constant pain from refreshing my muscles later the ice path I was running on cracked as my foot hit it. I was running fast enough that my next several steps also landed on the surface of the ice and cracked through it, but then I was falling through into freezing cold water. I was knee deep down before I reacted and slowed my perception of time.

Winter priests were leaping forward from behind the trees at the side of the iced path, each of them with a gold embroidered blue robe. Higher level priests, and this was their attempt at a trap. The first of them were sliding to a stop with their hands pressed to the ice.

If I fell fully into the water I assume they would try to freeze me in it. I pulled hard on the heat of the water below my feet, freezing it before they could and giving me something to push off of. My next step left me only calf deep in the water and I shifted my power forward to freeze another step of ice for myself. Two more steps and I was on top of the water.

I still couldn't sink my power into the ice of the path, as it was enchanted, but I could freeze the water underneath it as soon as the path broke. Another twenty meters and I was past their trap, leaving the priests on their knees chanting uselessly.

I continued running along the ice road. Even if it was occasionally trapped I was making great time along it. Unfortunately twenty kilometers after the pit trap the wall, and the road that followed it, started to curve towards the east. I followed it until it started going more east than north and then slowed to a stop.

I enjoyed the absence of pain for a few minutes, my eyelids sinking closed almost on their own. I shook myself awake, my digital side prompting me to continue, drew my sword and heated it up to cut a hole through the wall. The wall ended up being wider than my sword was long so I cut chunks out of it and pulled them out into the road. It ended up being three meters thick, and tall enough to disappear into the canopy of the forest above the road.

I set off through the forest again, putting my light stone away. I sank my power into the snow and ground in front of me, cleared out a tunnel in the snow to run through, and started running, dodging tree trunks as I went.

Chantelle was only sixty kilometers away, less than two hours at my current pace.

About an hour later my senses cut out for a few moments and they came back to me having fallen face first into the snow. My organic side, that was in control of my senses and muscle control, had briefly fallen asleep while I was running.

I obviously needed sleep, I don't even know how long I'd been awake at this point. Days at the very least. I should make a doorway back to my Pocket Dimension... But, no, I'd fallen asleep again right after unbuckling the sword sheath I'd rolled onto.

I isolated myself from the phantom inputs I was getting when I started to dream. I was completely cut off from my body, my biological side had activated its sleep paralysis. Though with a bit of experimentation I found that I still had access to my new ears through the mind link, and I could control my Matter Manipulation power. Which was important because the orb on my staff had heated up while it was unattended and had melted a puddle in the snow that I was half laying in. And the rest of my body was getting colder and colder from the snow covering it, slowly freezing to death.

The orb I fixed by dispersing all of its heat by changing the snow around me into air and sculpted a more comfortable bed from the soil below me. And I went back to regulating my body's temperature.

I was simultaneously practising the beast people's language and dreaming of Chantelle, which was quite distracting. I was still a single consciousness, and I was having some trouble experiencing two sets of experiences at the same time.

When new sounds came to me from outside through my ears I was updating the model I had of my surroundings, refining my predictions based on how the snow was affecting sound.

It was six hours after I'd fallen asleep when I began to hear a rhythmic crunching sound. It started off extremely faintly and was getting louder. A group of somethings was coming from the south, marching on top of the snow. It was most likely winter priests, and they'd had snow worms with them before who would be moving more stealthily.

I pushed my power out through the soil and snow in the direction I could hear them, narrowing it into a beam to extend its range. Forty meters away I felt the first void in my power, much closer than I was expecting from what I could hear. Scanning left and right showed that there were at least a dozen snow worms packed together side by side, and they were blocking my power from getting around them to detect any of the priests behind them.

I was still paralysed, locked out of controlling my body, and I was preparing to try to wake my biological side when a heartbeat appeared from nowhere in my sound sense. My model placed the person standing over my body. I sent a jolt of energy over all of the Mind Link connections which did successfully wake me up, but the sleep paralysis was only fading slowly.

"Goodbye Champion." The man said.

I immediately slowed my perception of time and could see the faint edge of a dagger cutting through the air towards my chest in my model. My Matter Manipulation power would be too slow to do anything. I would have to dodge it physically, through the fading sleep paralysis.

Too many different signals to my muscles would just leave me twitching, but maybe the same simple signal repeated would work. I focused on slamming my left hand down into the ground, to roll me away from the dagger. Twitch all of the muscles at once. My body's response was agonisingly slow from my sped up perspective, but it was moving.

My eyes finally cracked open and I saw my attacker holding a light in his off-hand, it was the same man who spoke to the etin general on the first winter army's attack of my fortress. Right before the general called for a retreat.

I was going to avoid being stabbed in the heart, but slapping the ground with my full strength was going to throw me into a nearby tree after putting my left arm right through where the dagger would be. I had enough time to reinforce my skin before hitting the dagger, but it wasn't enough. The dagger was enchanted ice and went straight through my skin and the muscle beneath it. The cut was deep, just short of reaching bone, and completely disabled my left arm. But it did serve to clear the last of the sleep paralysis.

I started roughly patching the cut to stop the bleeding as I flew towards the tree, turning in the air to land on the trunk feet first. It would take more time and concentration than I could spare to fix the damage properly.

I landed on the tree, crouching to absorb the force, and looked back the way I'd come. The man, and his light, were gone. So he was the teleporter.

Still in my sped up perception of time I brought up my saved model of my body, specifically my arm, and made a quick scan of my arm as it was now. It was a pretty simple cut. My program returned an estimated time to restore, fifteen seconds at full speed.

The snow worms and winter priests were less than that away, probably only ten seconds away at most. I couldn't afford to black out for the full time, but would a partial fix be of any benefit...

I ran up a simulation of ten seconds of work and it would make it so that I wouldn't further damage my arm if I didn't stress it. More importantly it would give me partial movement of my arm. I triggered the repair program to run for ten seconds and was fully preoccupied with the pain.

Changing my perception of time didn't make any difference, it still felt like an eternity of pain while I was experiencing it. I came to in the snow at the base of the tree and quickly soaked my power into the snow around me. The first of the snow worms was several meters away, preparing to strike. Two other snow worms are circling around to attack from other directions. And the winter priests were marching in formation, three wide by four deep. They had their hands on each other's shoulders and were already chanting. And my sword and staff were five meters away, past the two circling snow worms.