Absolute Mana Dominion: All My Talents Are SSS

Chapter 26: 26 - Winter’s Reach

- Ariane POV -

Ariane had decided sometime during the night that the cage was colder than it had been when they put her in it. At first she blamed the mountain, then the wind, and by the time she could see her own breath clearly in front of her face both excuses were starting to look stupid.

"Is it getting colder?" the blue-haired elf asked from the cage beside hers.

Ariane shifted against the bars and rubbed her hands together. "I was about to ask you the same thing."

The blond one was sitting with his back against the opposite side of that cage, head tilted toward the camp beyond the bars. His bow lay ten paces away beside a pile of weapons, which seemed to bother him considerably more than being locked up.

"It’s the mountain," he said.

"You said that half an hour ago."

"And I remain committed to it."

Ariane almost laughed. The smaller elven girl had fallen asleep against the healer’s side again, wrapped in part of her travelling cloak, and the elf adjusted it around her shoulders before looking over at Ariane.

"How’s your arm?"

"Fine."

"You say that every time I ask."

"Because it keeps being fine."

"It’s swollen."

Ariane glanced at the bruise running beneath her sleeve. "Then it’s fine and swollen."

The blond elf made a quiet sound that might have been a laugh.

In the next cage along, the older human had not joined in and had not moved either. He was sitting where he always sat, facing out, staring at that same pile of weapons the way he had been staring at it since Ariane arrived. She had asked him once what he was looking at, and he had said something long and dark near the bottom of it, and had not spoken since.

Ariane leaned her head back against the iron. They should never have been here, and that thought had been growing considerably louder since she woke inside the cage.

She had slipped out of Greymoor because waiting had felt unbearable. Adrien was missing because of the capital, Garrick was half-dead, creatures from deep in the mountains had flooded through their land, and two elves who actually knew the forest were heading toward the source. At the time, following them had seemed reasonable.

Now she was sitting behind bars designed to suppress mana with a bruise across half her arm and her weapons piled outside where she could look at them.

’Mother told me not to come.’ Ariane closed her eyes. ’She actually ordered me not to come, and I still climbed out through the west side like I was twelve.’

The worst part was that Evelyne had been right, and Ariane hated that nearly as much as the cage itself.

’And Adrien would’ve waited. Or planned. Or done something irritatingly sensible before walking straight into forty armed men.’

She looked toward the guards around the fires.

’Yeah. I fucked this up.’

Something white moved at the bottom of her vision, and when Ariane looked down there was a thin line of frost across the lowest bar of the cage. She stared at it while it crawled upward, slowly, and her back came away from the bars.

"Hey."

The elf followed her eyes. "What?"

Ariane did not answer, because she knew that frost. She knew the way it spread, the way the cold travelled through the ground before the air properly followed, the little crystals forming along metal as the domain took hold. She had spent years looking at exactly that.

[Winter’s Reach]

Her pulse jumped.

’No.’

Ariane moved closer to the bars. The frost was already working along the wooden post beside the cage.

Thirty-four seconds. That was how long she could hold it, thirty-four on a good attempt before the structure slipped somewhere inside her head and the whole domain started coming apart.

She began counting without meaning to. Twenty. Twenty-five. Thirty, and the frost kept climbing. Thirty-four, and nothing happened. Thirty-five. Forty.

Ariane gripped the bars.

The blond elf noticed her expression. "What is it?"

"Quiet."

Forty-five seconds. A full minute. The cold continued spreading, and the men around the camp had started noticing now. One pulled his coat tighter. Another swore and moved closer to a fire.

Ariane’s mouth had gone dry.

’No way.’

One minute and twenty seconds, and the domain grew stronger. Ice formed along the edges of tents. The dirt beneath the nearest fire hardened white despite the heat above it.

The elf looked between Ariane and the frost. "Why is someone using a spell? Do you know this spell?"

"I know it and I use this spell."

"Then who’s casting it?"

Ariane did not answer, because the number inside her head had reached two minutes. Two full minutes, against a personal best of thirty-four seconds.

There was only one person she knew who could look at something she had spent years learning and turn it into an insult before lunch.

’Adrien.’

She started searching the camp and found him near the cages, or thought she did. A man sat beside one of the smaller fires less than thirty paces away, wrapped in the same ugly dark coat and hood as everyone else, with three slavers around the flames beside him.

Nothing about him should have stood out, except that Ariane knew her brother. She knew the way he sat when he was watching something, too motionless through the shoulders, attention somewhere other than where his eyes appeared to be.

Then she looked higher, and her breath stopped. Above the camp, hidden in the dark between the branches, ice was forming. One lance. Another. And another. Ariane counted twelve before she understood that counting was pointless.

More than thirty [Frost Lances] hung between the branches overhead, almost invisible against the sky. They were narrower than the ones Adrien had used at Greymoor, longer through the point, each one held perfectly in place. Ten were angled toward the first man beside him, another ten toward the second, and the rest were pointed at the third.

’What the hell are you doing?’

Adrien lifted his head, and even beneath the hood Ariane knew he was looking directly at the cages. Mana gathered around his hand. Umbral Root appeared in a rush of dark specks, polished wood locking into shape beneath his fingers before the pale crystal came to rest between its silver arms.

The man beside him jerked upright. "What the..."

Adrien touched two fingers to his side.

[Zap]

The crack was tiny. The effect was not. The first man’s entire body locked in place, and before the other two had properly turned, Adrien shifted his hand and sent [Zap] into each of them in turn.

Three men stood frozen around the fire, muscles seized and mouths half-open. Adrien looked up, and the sky fell.

Thirty [Frost Lances] dropped through the branches. Ariane had seen Frost Lance used thousands of times and had cast it thousands more, and she had never seen anyone use it like that. The spell was supposed to be thrown. Adrien had turned it into an execution hanging over somebody’s head.

The first ten hit almost together. The man nearest Adrien disappeared under ice, shoulders and chest and legs all struck before his body managed to fall. The second went down across the fire. The third made it two steps once [Zap] released him, and he did not make a third.

The camp exploded into shouting.

"What the fuck was that?"

"Attack!"

"Where is he?"

Adrien was already moving. He kicked a burning branch free from the fire, caught the clean end in one hand and hurled it into the nearest tent, and dry canvas caught almost immediately.

Somebody inside screamed. Another man tore through the entrance with half his shirt on fire, hit frozen ground, lost his feet and went down hard enough that Ariane heard the impact from inside the cage.

’Oh.’

A second tent caught when the first collapsed against it. Men came rushing out half dressed, grabbing weapons, yelling over one another while [Winter’s Reach] continued thickening beneath them.

Then they discovered the ground. The first slipped. The man behind him crashed into his back. A third tried to jump them both and received a [Frost Lance] through the thigh before his feet touched down.

Adrien never stopped moving. Umbral Root turned in his hand and another [Frost Lance] formed at its crystal, except this one barely resembled a lance at all. It was short, thick, more like a wedge.

He fired it toward Ariane, and she flinched before she understood. The spell hit the lock and metal cracked. A second wedge struck exactly the same place and the lock blew apart, frozen pieces scattering across the dirt.

Ariane grabbed the door, and for the first time since being thrown inside, mana answered her. The bars had killed it every time she reached inward, swallowing the connection before anything could form, and the moment the cage opened her core came back like somebody had taken a hand off her throat.

"Oh, thank fuck."

Mana gathered around her immediately, and the other cages followed. Adrien shattered the blue-haired elf’s lock, then the blond one’s, then the cage holding the older Clairmont man and the other prisoners.

The blond elf came out first, and his eyes went to his bow, and a man was standing between him and it. He crossed the distance before the slaver understood he had become relevant, drove his shoulder into the man’s chest and ripped the bow off the ground as he passed.

Mana flashed along the string, and the first arrow went through somebody’s throat.

Adrien glanced over. "Huh."

The elf loosed again and a second man dropped.

Adrien looked back toward the fight. "Okay. I like him."

Ariane heard it and nearly laughed despite herself, and then remembered she was angry with him. She would deal with that after they survived.

The older man came out of his cage behind her and went straight down onto one knee with both hands on the frozen ground. Months on slaver rations had left him a body that did not stand up and run anywhere.

Ariane got a hand under his arm on the way past. He shook his head at her and pointed at the weapons.

[Ice Wall]

[Absolute Comprehension active]

[Comprehension: +2 = 7%]

A slab of ice erupted behind two slavers trying to retreat, cutting off the path toward the trees. Adrien looked at it, and then at her, and even under the hood Ariane could feel the smugness.

"Don’t."

"I didn’t say anything."

"You were about to."

"I really wasn’t."

"You had the face."

A [Frost Lance] went past her shoulder and buried itself in a man charging from behind.

Adrien lowered Umbral Root. "What face?"

Ariane stared at him. "Later."

"Fair."

The camp was burning now. Three tents had caught, smoke rolling through [Winter’s Reach] while men tried to organize themselves on ground that belonged entirely to Adrien. Every Frost spell inside the domain struck harder, every patch of ice spread further, and he was still holding it.

Ariane had stopped counting minutes, and that bothered her more than she wanted to admit.

The blue-haired elf was already beside the injured prisoners, checking wounds while keeping the small girl behind her. The blond one had found a raised position near one of the wagons and was firing steadily into anyone who tried to reach them.

Over by the weapons, the older man was on his knees with both arms buried in the pile, throwing swords aside one after another. Ariane watched him find whatever he had been staring at for two days, drag it out, and stop.

He sat back on his heels with it across his lap and did not move, and it took her a moment to work out why.

He was waiting for his core to come back.

Adrien stood in the middle of it all. A One Star mage, or at least that was what he had been when he left.

Ariane opened her mouth to ask him what the hell had happened, and the large tent at the back of the camp opened.

Everyone nearby moved away from it. The man who stepped outside was fully dressed despite the chaos, a long coat buttoned to the throat and a manifested blade already resting in his hand. Ariane felt his mana from across the camp and her expression changed, and Adrien felt it too.

The man looked at the burning tents, the opened cages, the bodies scattered around the fires, and finally at the hooded figure holding Umbral Root. Then he lifted his sword.

Adrien tilted his head slightly, and Ariane knew her brother well enough now to recognize the reaction.

He had just found the real problem.

...

AN: Add the novel to collections and send (power stones and golden tickets) support if like it ;)