Chapter 476 (2/2)

The clouds aroundinto a kind of cocoon or shell, which my mana kept stationary As that cloud froze, the effect extended outward, the ice crawling over and through each vaporousheavy in the air

It required a meditative mindset to utilize mana rotation in this way, and my mind was full only of the act itself as I froze the very sky I experienced no sense of tiht jolt of adrenaline that I felt the approaching natures in the distance

At first, there were only two heavy, potent auras The h that they approached openly, without attenize the signatures, but based on the strength they exuded, I thought they couldn’t be Scythes or Wraiths

Confident as they seenatures halted well away fro behind therew, a host of Alacryan athered as well Hundreds at least, perhaps thousands, I thought in a detached kind of way Once, perhaps, I would have balked at the idea of facing such a host After all, hadn’t Lance Alea and her entire regile retainer and a ed since those days

Tense against the strain of holding such a great weight ofto utilize nature and disguise e within the dense, heavy atmospheric water- and air-attribute ered at a safe distance, likely conferring with their Sentries or the heads of their various battle groups as they searched for signs of danger or hints regarding Arthur’s whereabouts

I breathed deeply and settled e The patience of the iceberg, of the permafrost, I chanted silently to athered until an entire army waited on the horizon Then finally, at soan forward The retainers stayed back, I was surprised to note, leading froh

Several battle groups collected around the corpses fro the evidence of our brief battle, but most marched toward the coastline behind me Theyprotective barriers of every elen, while Casters and Strikers had their own spells at the ready,into many hundreds of Alacryan runes all at once

More and more of them entered the shadow of the frozen clouds, but I waited The forefront of their lines passed beneathht h the army, and I felt as their collective attention turned fearfully skyward

Gritting ripped the frozen clouds within my power and shoved doard The ice slipped pastfloor of rippling gray The clouds plue, like a child’s drawing instead of the real thing

I sensed the barrage of spells frorayacid burned into and through the clouds but did little to interrupt the descent Hundreds of shi+elds flared bright

Tons upon tons of solid ice struck the ground with a cataclysmic shockwave, and I forced mana to my ears to deaden the explosion of sound

The frozen clouds shattered, beco a maelstrom of razor-sharp blades of ice that flew in every direction I pulled the shards back and forth across the shattered earth, and my enemies were as stalks of wheat beneath a thresher’s blades Mana signatures winked out like stars hidden behind storm clouds

The attack lasted ten seconds, no round gleamed in blue, white, and red: snow and spikes of ice, as if a sudden and violent stored, littered with the blood-soaked corpses of hundreds of Alacryan es

A black bolt of ure of the retainer I ducked beneath it, but it exploded, filling the sky with an obscuring shadow that stole not only ht but see rippeda shi+ver of phantom pain up into my shoulder and chest

A frozen nova erupted fro limbs shattered Freed from their unseen clutches, I dove beneath the darkness Frost crept acrosslanced offto the hand of the h me, and my core ached—No, not an ache…a shudder?—with the force ofmy defenses

A statuesque man in black and criht the glaive as it returned to hiauntleted fist Silvery gray eyes shone froh which protruded two short onyx horns From the description I’d been provided, I knew this to be Echeron, retainer of Vechor

Past hiround a half mile or more distant, wrapped in a cloak of shadow that left her barely visible except for a shock of white hair and two bright yellow eyes, was the second retainer: Mawar of Etril

Echeron swept the glaive across his body, and a wave of dark fire-attributethe ice further around ed into the flames Ice hissed and cracked as the flames sputtered and withered, and I punched out the other side My arh the air before me and closed like scissors toward Echeron’s neck

He brought his burning glaive up, catching both attacks, and there was a burst of the dark fire A flaed direction, dipping toechoes followed as if tethered to ain as a series of black bolts of mana launched by Mawar burst all around me like so many dark fireworks

“Casters, fall back and attack froh the battleground below “Strikers, shi+elds, and Sentries, focus on protecting your Casters!”

The rear lines of the Alacryan force had avoided the worst ofback toward Mawar’s location Soed to pick theh the shattered landscape of broken rock and shards of ice

I pulled up short as the glaive flew just in front of me, then rapidly hurled a series of frozen crescents toward Echeron Dark fire enveloped hiainst his armor

Every nerve in ht me from behind They didn’t burn flesh or bone, but I felt the I couldn’t na rapidly, I dropped beneath a volley of spellfire from a pocket of Alacryan Casters, then reached toward the atmospheric mana around Echeron

The heat of his flames pushed back any natural cold orthe air to freeze as solid as the deepest permafrost

A crystalline barrier of ice forht that hadn’t yet been sed by fresh cloud cover But where the black fire touchedeach other

A jagged bolt of lightning sparked across my back, and I went into a spin to avoid several other spells targeting e of ice, Echeron waslaive returned to him, however, it shattered the ice and snapped back into his hand

A flick ofdown on the closest Alacryan soldiers Soets, and round below

Echeron fleard, his suddena visible trail in the air The burning glaive spun, leaving behind a black afterie

The ice of my left arm extended out into a shi+eld, while a sword for blue ice appeared in laive aside with the shi+eld and thrust the sword at his hip Shadows e into scything tentacles that writhed wildly as they caught and deflected laive twirled and cae of my shi+eld The haft flexed, and the blade parted the hairs atop my head I thrust up and aith the shi+eld, then forward, sauntleted fists As the shi+eld went up, I drove the point of ain the shadowy tentacles deflectedinto a backflip before thrusting forward again with the burning glaive The iainst my shi+eld rocked lance offthe haft against e of my sword toward his shoulder A shadowy tentacle wrapped around my arm, but I twisted ap between Echeron’s gorget and helainst his mana and was turned aside, but I felt him jerk next to ht, dozens of spells froh the air all around us

Echeron attempted to pull back and collect himself, but I kept his weapon trapped atfrom the dark creases of his ar intoacross its surface A sharp pain radiated out fro shadow, ripping the glaive frorasp

Severalsoldiers struck ed out to maintainme warily “You Lances are ht well and earned a clean death” His wariness rip painfully, flew through the air, and settled back in his fist He shtily “Do not despair Your people are siht of the Alacryan continent—”

As he had been speaking, the core of his spear was freezing solid,the runes embedded into the haft The black flames moved jerkily, then froze in place around his arm, unnoticed by the retainer It wasn’t until the frost had crept halfway up his arauntlets

Echeron cursed and tried to toss the weapon away, but it was frozen to his hand

I met his eyes as they widened My own face showed no emotion “I offer you death in return, Alacryan, but it will not be clean”

Flying backwards toward his allies, Echeron continued to flail with the spear, atte ice that now covered his entire arm up to his pauldrons The protective shadows conjured by Mawar receded as the other retainer left hi him to turn and shout, “Helpfrom the re curtain of ice-attributehiht ar audibly across the layer of ice This clawing becae With a sound like shattering crystal, his right ar together toward the ground a hundred feet below

But the ice was in his mana veins, and from there, his channels Normally the barrier of his flesh would have preventedthe ainst hiic bonded to mine to create the echo effects he had used to attack me earlier

InGray eyes stared up at me in disbelief, and I watched as frost crept over theray to a blind blue-white

When he struck the ground, he exploded into rough chunks of frozen red and bone white

The spellfire fro a deep breath, I refocused myself onEcheron’s mana, and I still had a retainer to face As I did this, I flen to the ground and picked up the frozen glaive, which had survived the fall intact Flying only a few feet over the ground, I approached the Alacryan ar me with an unreadable expression

The retainer had short, bright white hair that stood up in a series of spikes Her predatory yellow eyes followed ht black flesh, andshadow

I held up the glaive in one hand, parallel with the line of soldiers, then squeezed forcefully The frozen haft shattered, and the two ends tuive you all this one chance Arthur Leywin is under my protection, as is this continent Leave it now Return to your High Sovereign and tell him that he has failed Do not return”

Mawar didn’t outwardly express any emotion at my statement “Kill her”

My hand shot toward the sky, then dragged doard A hail of ice spikes rained down on the force,from the shreds of the pale clouds that had filled back in above us The soldiers collapsed into disarray as their shi+elds struggled to hold off the boht to stay alive

A dozen dark and writhing bladed whips formed of shadowy mana snapped and speared at me from Mawar, and wherever they cut, the color bled fro it cold and devoid of at up my next spell

Ice-attributeuntil it beca sphere As I flitted across the battlefield dodging Mawar’s attacks, I put all of my mana toward this sphere The transparent shell darkened, beco on a blue color I i the spell both power and purpose

When an opening between attacks appeared, I unleashed the sphere It flashed toward the retainer, leaving a line of frozen air behind it

Mawar gave a warning shout andaway The sweat on ainst the strain of the spell As if I were pulling against thousands of pounds, I struggled to twistthe ice-crystal sphere to turn sharply and follow behind the streak of shadow, the air freezing behind it as it flew into the center mass of the retainer’s shadowy forincorporeal mass, at the center of which was the ice-crystal sphere spinning rapidly in place

The trail of frozen air the sphere had left behind fell to the ground and shattered

Tendrils of ice snapped through the shadows like bright blue lightning Stea from the shadow in a cloud, and where the cloud spilled over nearby soldiers, they screamed and their skin blackened fro as a bladed tentacle pierced the ice of my armor and my layer of protective mana It parted flesh, cracked bone, and then stuck out the other side ofthe wound as I tightened my focus on the spell The flashes of cold ca my enemy’s defenses with sudden spikes of power, and inch by inch the shadows solidified

Suddenly the vaguely human-shaped shadow burst apart in a soft puff of black ice, and Mawarslammed into me froed up fro Upside down, I aze; she rapped in shadow, forty feet behindand flashi+ng

Spells slammed into ainst thehthrough my focus

With a jerk of h the heart of the Alacryan army Each pulse flash-froze a dozen men or more, but there were no cries of pain; they died with the air frozen solid in their lungs The spellfire let up as es dove out of the spell’s path, buth an to accumulate all over my body

The ice-crystal sphere curved around, passing through where Mawar stood, and again she melted away I fell fro in a spiral pattern through the battlefield, and when it closed in on rabbed hold of it and drew it back into

A stabbing pain ca atReabsorbing the mana should have eased the backlash, not intensified it

Looking up slowly, realization dawning bitter and unwelco soldiers, raised a hand and shouted her orders The Alacryan forces rushed back into forh the air in my direction

My head snapped back as the pain reached a crescendo Never before had backlash felt as if so atthat the retainer’s shadowlike I’d just done to Echeron

The army’s spells closed in on me

As one, the spells stopped

I blinked away tears, staring at dozens of ele, and stea in the air around me Time seemed to freeze

Slowly, so very slowly, the core in in to separate froid claws of death beckoned to me, but I held them at bay If I was to perish here, then I would not die alone

Utilizingtheproperly…trying to shape and condense it to burst out like a bonition, spark in my mind just as my core split open

A screaht bluemyself from above, detached fro the floating spells before colliding with the enees froze solid, their bodies clear as glass

The expanding nova rippled, and cracks ran through it, then it was reversing, sucked back into me in a blink

The explosion that followed shattered the glass soldiers and my consciousness both