Erin wasn’t surprised to find the dead qek along the trail. The creatures had a nasty habit of tearing into other over the slightest provocations. What she should’ve expected was the wealth of other monsters that would be drawn to the free meals left behind. A whirlwind of snow whipped through the clearing, the icy wind like sandpaper dragging slowly over her skin. Erin growled and launched another Fireball at the center of the creature. A brief flash of orange illuminated the interior of the funnel, like a bolt of lightning, and Erin saw the outline of a fist sized object suspended inside. From her right, a blade of light arced through the air, slicing the monster in two. The damage proved inconsequential as the two halves moved independently for a moment before rejoining.

“We need to hit it’s Gem” Erin yelled over the wind, pointing her finger.

“Can you keep it still?” Liam yelled back, and Erin raised her hand and pulled the runes of her binding point spell to the surface. She exhaled slowly, even as the frigid winds tore at her face. She fed magic into the Binding Point until the construct could take no more, and with a flick of her wrist, the spell snapped into existence directly beneath the monster.

As if they’d stepped inside and shut the door, the wind died. All at once the snow and ice that comprised the thing’s body were sucked out of the air, yanked towards the center of her spell. For a moment, Erin thought the creature to be trapped entirely by the magic, but as the snow compressed, she was horrified to see a face take shape in the pile of snow. A wide misshapen mouth opened in a silent scream, while two different sized eyes watched her, their brows turned down in anger. With the crunch of snow being compressed, the creature seemed to rip an arm into existence, as if it were reaching up from underground. Then a second arm appeared and together they braced themselves, and the monster gave a heave. A long, thin body appeared from within the pile of snow and even with most of the creature still yet to manifest, its torso was already longer than Erin was tall.

A spear of stone ripped from the ground, passing through the air with a whistle as it struck the monster’s face. The horrifying visage was blasted apart, the creature’s head mostly removed. Almost immediately, it began to reform. A leg swung up as if the thing were climbing out of a great hole in the ground and braced itself. Then the monster surged upward, fully on its feet.

“Kiran, what is that thing?” Liam yelled as he fired another length of sharp stone at it. This time, in a contemptuous gesture, the gangly snow demon’s arm snapped out and batted the spell aside before it could strike home.

“Hell if I know. I ain’t never seen nothing like it.” Kiran said as he circled around, spear and shield looking ridiculously inadequate against the now towering creature.

Erin triggered the Bronze State and felt her body flood with energy. Her thoughts gained clarity, and her reflexes sharpened. She took off at a run as wings sprouted from her back and with a hop and a quick snap of the extra limbs; she reached the height of its chest. A fireball snapped off the end of her right hand, smashing into the monster’s body, and then a second and a third followed in rapid succession. Mouth open wide in a silent scream, it swung a long thin arm in retaliation, and Erin narrowly avoided the strike by performing a very undignified roll in the air that left her flapping like a pigeon in a hurricane, trying to stay aloft.

Another blade of light cut through the air, this one claiming the arm that had been preparing to swat Erin like a bug. The length of frozen arm hit the ground with the sound of breaking glass, and as Erin got herself under control once more, she glanced down to see that the compressed snow of the creature’s limb was wrapped around a core of solid ice.

She maneuvered once more in the air, lashing out again with a fireball, this time the spell impacting its back. Though it’s attempted back hand missed her, the force of the blow tore her off course as she was dragged along in its wake. Unable to arrest her momentum, she curled up into a ball, magic wings wrapped around her body as she hit the ground. Erin rolled with the impact, and despite being temporarily winded, felt otherwise unhurt. The cumulative damage of her flames being unleashed repeatedly against a single target was taking effect. The upper-part of the monster’s body looked like some sort of abstract modern art ice sculpture, with so much of its main body melted away.

Erin popped back onto her feet, eyes still blazing with amber light, but it was Liam who finished the thing off. Still in the process of regrowing the arm that Arthur had taken, the monster raised the other one as it stalked toward Erin, preparing to smash her into the ground. In a blur, the earth spear tore a perfectly circular hole through its chest, and the pale blue gem at its core tumbled free. Spinning through the air until it impacted the ground with a dull thud, like a cannonball dropped from a skyscraper.

Dead instantly, the corpse was frozen mid-swing, its body held upright by the thing’s icy-skeleton.

“What the hell.” Liam said, bending over to put his hands on his knees, panting. Erin released her grab on the magic she held, letting the runes fade from her skin as her eyes returned to their usual bright green. Fatigue took a hold as the sensation of power trickled away.

“What was that thing?” Kiran called out, and everyone turned to look at Liam, who was the one who had gotten the kill.

“Mature Ice Golem, apparently.”

“Did you get anything good?” Erin asked as she moved to stand next to him. “Excellent timing, by the way. Well saved.”

“Yeah, no problem.” Then he turned his attention to the monster, and the large gem that had landed in the snow, along with the icy sculpture of the monster’s final moment, began to glow. Erin shielded her eyes until the white light faded. In the indent where the gem had landed, there was a small bag of coins, what looked to be a long knife made entirely of ice, and a small spherical spell rune.

“Another spell, that’s great.” Erin said as she clapped Liam on the back. He pushed himself to stand upright as he walked toward the lot and kneeled down. The coins were dispersed amongst the group, and with enough for everyone to take away a couple of silver, it was one of the more lucrative monsters they’d fought.

“This knife is freezing. How is anyone supposed to use it?” Erin came to stand next to him, looking down at the blade in his hand.

“So it really is made of ice?” She asked. “I kind of thought that was just a look.” Liam spun the knife around in his hand and held it out to her handle first. When Erin took it, she immediately felt the chill sink into her fingers.

[Ice Golem Seed - Use this weapon to strike a killing blow to create an infant ice golem.]

“Ice Golem Seed, huh?” She asked, inspecting it more closely. The ice from which it was made was perfectly smooth, like it had been polished. The handle was the blue of thick ice, while the blade was nearly invisible except as a distortion of the world glimpsed on the far side. She handed it back to Liam, where it vanished into his inventory, along with the spell rune.

“I’ll worry about the magic stuff when we get back.” He said as he pushed himself back up onto his feet.

“We should keep moving.” Kiran said, stepping up on Erin’s other side. “Carefully this time. You never know what kind of stuff is going to come wandering out of the Wilds. We’re barely a few hundred miles from the border here.” As the group set off, this time with more caution, Erin asked the obvious question.

“What is this Wild you guys talk about?” The Monster Hunter glanced at her, then turned his attention back to the trail before answering.

“It’s the edge of the world, at least for us. Some call it the Untamed Wilds, or the True Wild. It’s the edge of the boundary between our territory and the monsters. Folks with souls and creatures with those colored gems.”

“But you have monsters crawling all over your side.” Liam pointed out, listening in from behind.

“Yeah, of course. Weaker ones usually, especially the further you get from the edge. Monsters that spawn in the central regions can often be defeated by a farmer’s boy with a pitchfork, but the Wilds is something else. Even the real powerful Mages don’t try their luck very often.” As Kiran spoke, Erin felt the air grow more chill, goosebumps popping up across her skin. “It’s just stories mostly, though I’ve seen enough of the things that can wander onto our side to know that there is some truth. My gran used to say, though, that there’re monsters that lived beyond the border. They battled their kind until there was none left who could challenge them, and so now they sleep. If one of those ever came across the border, even Academy City might not be able to turn ‘em back.”

Kiran fell silent, and the group marched for some time. Occasionally forced to slay some smaller, weaker monsters as they came across the corpses of qek. When the sun set, they cleared an area as well as they could and set up camp, complete with a small fire. The number of tracks they’d been following had decreased dramatically as they’d tracked them. Outside of Dangole there had been thousands of individual qek, but now the trail was hundreds, and still dropping.

“It almost looks as if the army devoured itself as it fled.” Arthur said, from where he sat opposite Erin. Staring down into the flames. Liam sat on the prince’s right side, eating a bit of meat he’d cooked on a skewer over the fire.

“They certainly aren’t the most likely to cooperate that I’ve seen. The fact that there was thousands of them all working together is nothing short of a miracle in my book.”

The absence of the pale qek from the battle continued to nag at her, and even as they’d tracked the monsters. They’d seen no sign of the qeks, larger, smarter cousins. It was like they’d all just vanished into the air, which made no sense. Why would the smaller breed even bother with an attack if they weren’t being led? It was just so… wrong. Erin couldn’t shake the feeling that she was missing something, but no matter how many times she went over it, she couldn’t figure out what.

“I’m going to get some sleep,” she said, pushing herself to her feet and moving to her tent. “Goodnight.”

After she’d settled into her blankets, her thoughts chased themselves in circles, her sense of unease never dissipating. The quiet murmur of the others’ voices slowly faded away as they went to bed, one by one. Arthur and Kiran had worked out a night watch between themselves and the people they’d brought, so they would have people awake throughout the night in case something happened. Erin inhaled until her lungs were full, and then exhaled slowly, visualizing her frustration and unease as a cloud of black smoke in her body being carried out by the gentle exhalation. She repeated the process several times until eventually her mind had calmed enough that she could fall into a restless sleep.