The Way Ahead

Yathal was in love with the white blanket as it coated the landscape, clinging to the side of the stone tower and burying the massive boulder that was its first several floors. He and Kyni were busy running around, diving into drifts heedless of the cold. Lefi stood nearby in essentially his normal clothing, scooping snow together for what looked like a massive snowball.

Looking at the pair with Skillful Assessment, it looked like the Stalwart Protector- Kynigos had completed a few paths over the intervening months, changing his class away from Stalwart Defender- had a dark gray Skill wrapped around his boy. It looked quite structurally similar to the Skill he would flare whenever Yathal was about to be injured, and with context it was easy enough to figure out what it did.

“No winter clothing?” he asked Rillah, “I mean, yes I know why you don’t have any, but what’s up with Lefi?”

“Similar situation,” she cheerfully shrugged, “Makes sense to have environmental-protection Skills when you’re an Adventurer. It was his suggestion I even take Unweathered Form to begin with, as having a dedicated Skill makes things so much easier.”

Edwin nodded in agreement. His clothing was thicker than it had been in the summer, of course, but not by that much. He could already feel Adaptive Defense at play, cutting winter’s bite away from disrupting him. Before long, the chill he felt should mostly fade, and he glanced over at Rillah, fighting back a small double-take.

“Oh hey, your eyes finally changed,” he noted. “Like I know you said it would happen as the season shifted, but I wasn’t expecting it.”

Edwin’s eyes momentarily went wide as he realized his mistake, “Not that I doubted you or anything!” he backpedaled, “It’s just different seeing it with... my own eyes.”

Rillah raised an eyebrow, blue eye piercing straight through Edwin’s own gaze, amber firmly skeptical.

“Look, I’m really tired and exhausted. That’s why I’m taking your advice and not doing anything today instead of… I don’t know, figuring out if I can use snow in my magical training.”

Hmm. That would actually be interesting. He could fairly readily mix mana at this point, so long as he was using his equipment and water, and while he hadn’t really tried making anything actually useful, he could probably get some interesting practice by attempting to mix yet hold separate snow and water, maybe making a more wet snow?

He’d need to… use his mana to somehow hold the snow in-state and prevent it from melting, while also mingling them? It probably would be good practice for him doing anything but homogeneously mixing his types of mana, he really should…

“Ow!” Edwin rubbed his head where Rillah had smacked him. It wasn’t a very hard smack, but it was more the surprise he was protesting.

“Knock it off!”

“What?”

“No working today. You need to have fun.”

“But it is fun…” he halfheartedly complained, but couldn’t really disagree, “So, oh wise mage, what should I avoid?”

“Skills only!”

“Hm?”

“No freecasting practice until tomorrow.” she waved her finger in his face, “Yesterday was good, but you still need more time to recover. You can use your mage Skills, but no alchemy or anything until tomorrow, got it?” she waved a finger in Edwin’s face.

He rolled his eyes but acquiesced. How was he supposed to refuse?

“So…” he glanced over to where Lefi was preoccupied, a conspiratorial grin creeping onto his face “You mentioned a snowball assault?”

The assault was swift and brutal. Edwin had assembled a full array of weapons to use, compacted and throwing weapons to the last. To his left, Rillah had her own armory of significantly larger munitions, each at minimum the size of Edwin’s head.

With a faint woosh, snowy wings twice her arm span sprang from the Dancer’s back, and she jetted into the air in almost perfect silence. Behind her trailed an arsenal, a veritable avalanche of ammunition falling in reverse.

There were no words spoken, none were needed. Between his hands, Edwin held the largest of his weapons, charging it as fast as he could manage. It hummed silently with power, the sensation of motion trying to rip it from his hands before it was properly ready.

They’d need this first attack to go off perfectly if they were to stand a chance. If their target wasn’t neutralized, he’d retaliate in full force and neither of them would withstand that. Fortunately, he seemed somehow oblivious to the impending doom hanging over his head, and Edwin let a small smile play across his face.

Then it was time, and he unleashed hail.

Well, technically snow. But then the pun didn’t work.

Lefi vanished into a cloud, then a mound of white, as a frankly inordinate amount of snow crashed into the man all at once.

Edwin knew better than to celebrate though. He was proven correct when the temporary hill simply vanished, exploding out in every direction.

“Oho! So, it is treachery then! Such vile, honorless foes I face, attacking me while my guard was down!”

Edwin was barely able to dodge the barrage of loose snow flying at him, but some two years of training had done wonders for his agility and reflexes.

He dropped to the ground, using Unbound Tether to pull him first down and then up, hovering just above the snow cover, but behind a tiny protrusion from the ground. The wall of snow passed over him harmlessly, and Edwin got a clear look at the situation once more.

Lefi stood next to a giant mound of snow, atop which were a dog and his boy coated in a thin layer of fresh snow. Above him, Rillah hovered, untouched by the adventurer’s retaliation just as much as Edwin. Instead, a ring of snow orbited lazily around her.

“You fiend!” she called back, laughing, “You would be so reckless as to attack a bystander in your assault? For shame!”

“The little Snowbird seeks to challenge me? It would not matter if all the armies of the Empire were to stand with you, for here I am mighty, you are mere pretenders to this throne of ice!”

“Not so long as we stand firm together!” Edwin hopped in on the fun, “We have you surrounded and outnumbered. If you surrender now, we may show leniency!”

The day seemed to darken as Lefi responded, gesticulating dramatically, hands sweeping for effect, “I see not the armies, I see not the soldiers standing shield to shield, flying claw to head, stretching from here unto the horizon. Where is your army, for I can still see the sun above me, the ground before me, hear the breeze blow. Return when the winds fall silent before your might, when the sky flees in terror, when the stones upon which you stand retreat at your command, then you might stand a chance against my strength!”

“Nice speech! How long did it take you to come up with that one?” Edwin shot back

“Less time than your life yet possesses,” Lefi gave a smile colder than the ice he stood upon.

Then the war truly began.

One by one, Edwin summoned his pre-made snowballs to his hands, Adaptive Defense working at full tilt as he grasped the freezing projectile with his bare fingers. Throwing Weapons guided his hand as he drew back and threw, sending the ball flying off at Lefi. He didn’t even need to look, twisting in such a way and grazing the side of Edwin’s snowball in such a way it collided with a hastily constructed pair thrown by Yathal.

Naturally, Edwin’s snowball utterly demolished the sloppy work of the kid, and it carried on until it collided with the snowbank Yathal, now astride Kyni, was at the top of. By then, Edwin had his next two balls in hand, and both arced through the air towards Lefi, timed to hit the man at the same time as Rillah’s next assault.

The small ring of snow around Rillah had shaped itself into dozens of snowballs still orbiting the girl, and with a small melody on her flute, she spun them faster and faster until they were nothing but a blur. The impromptu show came to a sudden close, and with her final note they began to pelt Lefi where he stood. New snowballs were apparently being created in abundance, given how long the attack was going on, but the man was preoccupied with defense there, swatting snowball after snowball out of the air or punching straight through them, filling the air with drifting snowflakes.

Edwin took the chance to empty out his remaining stock of snowballs, Lefi being so preoccupied with the rapid-fire aerial assault he didn’t have much of a chance to dodge many of the snowballs Edwin was throwing. It was very satisfying watching every single ball he threw fly right on-target, though.

It was also nice seeing that Lefi had some limits, even if they were ‘unable to withstand a four-on-one snowball assault while clearly not taking it seriously,’ as the adventurer kept staying on the defensive as long as Rillah continued her assault. Unfortunately, for whatever reason she wasn’t able to maintain the attack indefinitely. Lefi in turn grabbed the last snowball launched at him out of the air and returned it to Rillah hard, colliding with one of her wings hard enough- and with a medley of Skills to back it up- to completely collapse the Skill’s manifestation.

As Rillah spiraled down to the ground, Lefi blurred into action, assembling an absolutely gigantic snowball, at least twice as big as Edwin, from the ground around him. Strangely, it didn’t seem to deplete the blanket of snow from around the man, but Edwin knew full well that there were snow-creation shenanigans going on. In any case, before Rillah could properly recover from the attack, she was practically buried under a pile of wet snow, her cry of protest muffled underneath the new drift.

At that, Lefi no longer needed to stay on the defense. There was a low thrum in the air, and a sweeping Skill that blanketed the ground around him. Then, the deluge began, and made Rillah’s efforts look inferior to even Yathal’s output. Hundreds if not thousands of snowballs were made and thrown every second, Lefi literally blurring as he moved so quickly. Even then, Edwin noticed some sort of Splitting Arrows skill at play, turning each of the dozens of snowballs into dozens of dozens.

Edwin fell to his knees, covering his face to avoid the assault. There was no way to dodge a veritable blizzard of snowballs, no way to block or deflect the hundreds of projectiles striking him every second, not out in the open with so little cover.

So, he just needed to make himself some.

While most of his basic Skills went largely unused these days, seventy-six levels in Harvesting paid off in a big way, as a swipe of Edwin’s hand across the ground produced a mound of snow in front of him. A second of work later established the beginnings of a snow fort, but even with seventy-seven levels in Construction, he didn’t think for an instant that Lefi couldn’t demolish all he’d made in an instant of effort.

So, he just needed to make more and stronger fortifications.

Every sweep of his arm scooped up more snow from his surroundings, and a second pass piled and compacted it into his fortifications, thickening and expanding his protections into a solid wall of ice. Yes, Apparatite might make for better defense, but even if it wouldn’t be cheating the implied rules of engagement to use something other than snow, the Skill was far too slow to really be useful.

He sheltered behind his wall, until the rhythmic pitter-patter of snowballs fell away and Edwin could safely look out to assess the situation.

Yathal and Kyni had not been idle. The boy was atop his copper-tan steed, and they charged bravely into the fray. Snowballs burst against Kyni’s hide, not even slowing the dog down even while his rider pelted Lefi with (wildly inaccurate) snowballs.

Edwin wasn’t sure where the snowballs were kept, and he thought that Kyni might have been making them as needed until the pair stopped, Yathal slid off ‘his’ dog’s back and started packing more while his loyal partner blocked the barrage with his body. It looked for a moment that Lefi might be blocked by that, at least until he began to angle his throws to arc over the dog’s body. Kynigos activated some Skill to block more of his boy’s body, but while effective at stopping Lefi from hitting Yathal, also precluded the reverse.

“Foolish adventurers!” Lefi gloated as he paused, hands outstretched and feet planted a shoulder length apart, “Did you truly believe you stood any chance against me?”

“Oh, I knew I never had any hope! But she did!” Edwin yelled back, pointing behind Lefi.

To the man’s credit, he neither dropped everything he was doing nor wholly dismissed the claim, only looking away for a brief moment. As he turned back after seeing nothing, Lefi opened his mouth for some response just in time for Edwin’s snowball to slam into the side of the man’s head. The hard-packed snow simply disintegrated on the contact, leaving only a tiny trace behind like throwing against a stone wall.

Edwin raised an eyebrow. “So how much are you holding back?” he cordially asked. There was no way they’d managed to land a hit on him if he was going full tilt, Edwin knew that much.

“I need use but a fraction of my potential to crush all of you beneath my snow-covered heel!” Lefi replied and scooped up a new snowball from the ground around him, the projectile scarcely spending a moment in-hand before it was sent flying directly towards Edwin.