Chapter 184: Biting Cold

The cold hits me first. My breath mists in the air. The cloying ice sticks to my skin, digging into the raw parts where I had kuro eat bits of me. With a small sigh, I cast a healing spell, making my skin knit over again. It takes barely a fraction of the mana I now have in my vessel. I even overfeed it mana, just to make sure it doesn’t have to draw from my body as much.

Bit by bit, my efficiency is getting better. It costs more mana, sure, but I don’t feel as hungry. It becomes less invasive. Which is good, since I put about half my mana into regrowing my arm, trying yet again to make it work. My skin shifts slightly, and I feel my bone stretch out a bit further, but it’s not yet enough. Not yet.

To deal with the hunger, I snack on another one of Richard’s cereal bars as the others come through, one by one. Richard is hit the hardest by the cold, instantly shivering and curling up. I can see her consume mana to fuel some kind of internal reaction, though, and soon, a faint shimmer of heat bubbles form her, faintly melting the snow around her feet. Hm.

Opal, for their part, quickly squints their eyes, drawing their cloak tighter. Inu dismisses the metal armor she so often wears; it’d get too cold to be comfortable. Only when Thatch comes through do his eyes widen.

I tilt my head, watching as he moves. A ghostly form envelops his own, his form kind of similar to a wulven. With a single step he sends a cascade of snow into the air, stepping right to me, and stabbing his claws downwards.

Hm.

Watching, I see the snow slowly turn a faint shade of red. Thatch grunts, drawing his hand back up, and skewered on his ethereal claws, there is a faintly twitching, white… thing. It’s somewhere between a shark and a lynx, and, frankly, quite cute. Sadly, it also was about to bite my leg off, its mouth full of multiple rows of sharp teeth.

[Deconstruction] comes alive, and I fling it into the corpse. Instantly, it bursts apart as my skill half disintegrates the thing, looking for its vessel. Two heartbeats pass until I find it, and in that time, Thatch spears yet another one of them out of the ground.

Warily, I focus. Time seems to slow down, just a little as I take its body apart. Its vessel cracks, already being consumed by the environmental mana, thicker here than before. The mana leaks from it - and then I pull it apart. Slowly, I lick my lips, tasting the remnant of its abilities on that shadow I absorbed.

And then, I scan for them.

[Observation 22 > 23]

“Sylves,” I say. “Air spears. Here, there and there,” I say, pointing at the snow. 

The faerie smiles happily, instantly manifesting lances of compressed air, and firing them off with soft sounds of wind. This time, the shark-lynxes scream. Thin holes in the snow slowly turn red, and Thatch pounces on another one, as Trey begins to hover into the air, his eyes wide.

One of the sharks dodges. 

A set of jaws closes around Jean’s ankle, and the boy screams. Instantly, I deploy [Suppression] - on the thing’s jaw, letting him shake it loose, and on the boy’s pain. Then, I stitch him back up. Investing more mana, I spread my field wide, slowing down all the snowsharks, as I decide to call them for now.

They’re adorable, and I truly do feel bad for them. Well, “feel bad” is somewhat generous. I think that by all reasonable standards, it’s a shame that they have to die when I could pet their heads. But while I heal Jean, Opal begins to zip around, striking them down. There’s two more bites, one on Isabelle, and one on Richard.

Our little hiy’ht very quickly takes revenge, though. Bite for bite, I suppose. Once we dispatch a dozen of the biters, Thatch takes another look around, then gives us the all clear. I take another deep breath, feeling the icy air. It smells fresh, faintly of pine and nothing else. Very pleasant, altogether. 

There is the fact that I can already feel ice crystals in my hair. But I don’t truly mind it. I do see Trey, especially, shiver, though. Very softly, I tilt my head, then walk over. “Are you cold?” I ask.

He nods shakily, already shivering. With a small gesture, I shrug off my own cloak, Kuro. Usually, it’d be easier to give him one of the ones I enchanted, with warming features, but this one should work, too. He stares at me with big eyes, as I drape it around him, even as the shadow-critter tries to cling to me.

“Kuro,” I ask politely, and their wriggling stops for a moment. “Trey here is cold. I cannot protect him from that. It would help me a lot if you did, okay?”

[The Creeping Darkness cheers on its avatar in this pivotal role!]

For a moment more, Kuro pauses, then quietly purrs for a second, as if pleased to be important. I smile just a little, patting the hood to show Kuro some affection. Trey ends up leaning into it, seemingly happy. What a strange little guy. 

Then, I get up again, now a lot colder. The frigid air bites at my skin. “Let’s go,” I say out loud, and begin walking, snow crunching underneath my boots. 

“Y’know, this isn’t how I thought I’d step on Snow,” Opal says with a grin.

“What were you expecting?” I ask them, innocently.

At that, they choke on the words, blushing. “I- uh. I mean… I-” they pause, then scratch the back of their head with a loud laugh. “I’m gonna go scout ahead, Snow.”

With a soft noise, they [Blink] away, leaving Sylves to snicker at their misery. Thatch joins me at the front of the group, and Inu rounds out the back - to see if she notices our pursuers enter the floor. Sylves floats above us, jumping and floating between branches on the enormous pines. 

And as we walk, Richard joins me. “You seem cold,” she says.

“I am,” I reply. Then I look at my skin and wonder. If Biochanter is one of my job offerings, then that means I know they exist. I’ve even been toying with them, doing mini-engravings of healing things. Drawing them on Sylves, all the way back on the first floor. In my own blood even. A small smile spreads on my lips. “But I’m working on it.”

Richard smiles. “Oh? I was going to ask if you required some of my fire, but if you don’t…”

Softly, I shake my head. “See if Isabelle, Anna or Bofoy do. I’ll be okay.”

“Your heart stat is probably lower than theirs,” she notes.

I laugh a little at that, and nod. “It probably is. All the more important that I look out for myself.” She seems satisfied at that, giving me a small nod and hanging back a bit again.

Then, as we walk, I begin to solidify some mana, crystallizing it in my body. Last time, I gave my brain a laceration when I tried this. I have also learned that mana can somewhat explode. And I have so much of it that it’s really hard to control.

But I’m only using it on my hand! So, really, what’s the worst that can happen? Surely nothing will go wrong.

Surely.