As I walked down the stairs to the platform on which my visitors had been fighting for my entertainment, the air started to stir and shift. It wasn’t just the air of intimidation I tried to project with my calm, unhurried approach, it was also a huge amount of Ice Astral Power I had drawn from the Nexus, some of it manifesting as fog, the rest just there, ready for me to use. The few spellcasters that had survived the previous encounters started to look pale and one of them decided to strike first, lobbing a ball of fire at my face.

Without even blinking, I channelled some Darkness Magic, the Astral Power nearly invisible in the already highly saturated atmosphere on top of my tower, and snuffed the fire out. My steps never changed their rhythm in those few moments, the attack completely beneath my notice.

“Come, and know despair. For you will fall, and so will this world,” I challenged, stopping in the middle of the platform, allowing them to make the first move, not even acknowledging the previous fireball as an attack.

For a few moments, none of them dared to move, until finally, Howardlight, the leader of their so-called Crusade, let out a powerful bellow, his Morningstar glowing with radiant light, trying, and failing, to pierce the gloom that shrouded my tower as he charged at me.

A small part of me was quite amused, looking purely at the physical side of things, I was horribly outmatched. All of the attacking Travellers were taller than me, most of them by more than a full head or more and the vast majority had twice my mass, none of them as petite as I. Adding to that the contrast between the light, flowing clothes of dwarven fabric I was wearing compared to the heavy armour, thick clothes and fur they had donned, it couldn’t be a greater difference. And yet, as I lightly twirled out of the way of Howardlight’s attack, one of the Blades of the Northern Wind meeting the attack, the difference didn’t seem to matter at all. There was more than enough magic here to make the difference and I was perfectly willing to use that magic, it was why I had built my tower here.

Encouraged by Howardlight’s charge, the rest of his exhausted troops started attacking as well, trying to pin me down and spill my blood but I kept moving, deliberately keeping my movement flowing, not even trying to kill them, merely playing with them.

The play I had been directing had yet to be finished and while Mrs Wu would either kick my ass for playing around in a fight, it had to be done. Or maybe she would agree, that this was not a fight but a performance, a deliberate show to guide the attitude and opinion of others, in which case the script I had planned would most likely be seen as something good.

As I twisted out of the way of a swift, and quite deadly, combination attack, I had to marvel at the difference my magic made. While I was confident in fighting each of them individually, simply by virtue of my higher level, they were skilled combatants and before the boost given by Sigmir’s sacrifice, some would have been a challenge, depending on the environment of our battle. And yet, here, on my tower, I could casually play with them all at the same time, the magic in the environment sustaining me and replenishing the vast amount of Astral Power I was using to keep myself functioning at this level.

Deciding that the play was quickly reaching its climax, I stopped teasing them and occasionally mixed in a few serious attacks. Or made it look like the attacks were serious, there was nothing special about those Palm Strikes, other than a showy, silvery-blue aurora around the hand that performed the attack, the special part came from the area around us all, as Ice started to rapidly form after my strike, capturing them up to the neck. While it wasn’t the same Eternal Ice the tower was made from, it was Hard Ice, bound to the tower and easily able to withstand their attempts to free their allies.

I made sure to keep these strikes to one every thirty seconds, slowly whittling down their numbers, as I fought a defensive battle, steadily avoiding their attacks and dispelling their magic, forcing them deeper and deeper into a dire situation.

The Travellers quickly noticed the glowing strikes and desperately tried to avoid these attacks, turning the battle into an almost amusing game of keep-away, with twenty-five seconds of them, chasing after me, before I made my hand glow for five seconds and chased after them.

Only, I began to play dirty after they began running away, throwing out volleys of Icicles when nobody fought me in melee and actively using the Blades of the Northern Wind to go after their backline. One of their archers and one of their spellcasters took deadly injuries from those attacks, forcing their fighters back into melee with me and the dance continued.

Once the first Traveller had been bound in Ice for four Minutes, an arbitrary time I had set in advance, I used another burst of Ice-Magic, a spike shooting out from beneath him, shattering the Ice but impaling him, the already weakened Traveller dying with a pained scream.

That death gave my foes additional motivation and with loud shouts, powerful abilities were used, Astral Power, Divine Magic and purely physical strength fueling that last resistance, only to break against the unyielding Ice I was wielding. Their attacks pushed me and I had to fight to keep my movements unhurried and my face unbothered, even as my mind went into Bullet Time, drawing vast amounts of Astral Power out of the Nexus to withstand their onslaught, Blood Magic healing the attacks I couldn’t block or avoid.

But I managed, both to overcome their onslaught and to stay in the character I had decided on, the battle continued as if nothing had happened. Right on time, my hands started to glow again and another of their melees was bound in Ice and a little later, another scream filled the air, when the four minutes of my second victim were over.

As we fought, I deliberately kept Howardlight unbound for the end. His fall would make for a wonderful climax and once all the melees but him were bound in Ice, I began branching out, stepping through the shadows and taking their backline by surprise, putting them into a frozen time-out as well.

Finally, it was only Howardlight who remained unbound and by now, he was frantic. Exhaustion was warring with desperation as he tried to stop my inevitable movement, his attacks either parried by my Blades, blocked by a thin sheen of Ice on my skin or avoided entirely.

Curious how my special variety of Mind Magic would affect him, I blasted him, the attack sending him to his knees as sobs started to shake his body. A small part of me, the part that remembered my mother’s lessons, felt bad for him but in the script I had written, I played the villain. And I would play my part.

“Now, Howard, where is your light now?” I asked, my tone as calm as it had been earlier, nothing betraying that I had just fought a major battle. He couldn’t answer, only shaking his head as tears dropped from his face, turning into Ice as they fell due to a careful application of Ice Magic on my part.

“There is no light here, Howard. The Light has forsaken you. Your Gods have forsaken you,” I continued, Ice starting to creep up his legs, binding him in place.

“This world will fall. It is inevitable and your efforts amount to nothing. There will be no new dawn, no spring that thaws away the Ice. Winter is coming,” I managed to keep a straight face and my voice steady, even as I stole the iconic line, “And it will never end!”

With no more targets to go after, the time they spent in the Ice was shortened, their screams filling the air as they died, one by one, even as some of them started to log out. Their minds could escape, but their bodies died, only without the screams.

Finally, it was Howardlight’s turn, he had been shouting for his god, trying to Invoke Tyr’s name, only for his attempts to call upon a higher power to fail, smothered by the overwhelming influence of the Nidhögg.

“There comes the shadowy Dragon, flying from the Dark of the Moon Hills. The Dark Sun rises, as he carries the bodies of the fallen in his claws. And here, the World falls,” I quietly whispered into his ears, before the Ice parted above his chest and my hand, clad in a gauntlet of Ice, punched through his chest, ripping out his heart. It was pure show, and from the looks of it he had logged out before, but I was playing to the audience.

And for that audience, I turned around, walking towards the Black Sun and my Throne and casually tossing his heart aside, the frozen flesh vanishing off my tower. The moment it was out of sight, I pushed my Astral Power once more and the bodies I had bound here, all of them completely frozen by now, were shattered into Diamond Dust and carried away by the wind.

“Now, let us sing,” I told the Nidhögg, “Let us sing about a time of wind, a time of wolves. And about the end of the world.”