A beautiful woman with dark hair and pale skin lay within the grave, as naked as the day she was born and not the slightest bit dead or decayed. She was young, certainly younger than Damon and Austine, in her late teenage years at most. The two men exchanged a look before glancing back down at her in disbelief.
“How can she be here?” asked Damon.
“I haven’t the slightest clue,” said Austine. “She’s breathing. Her chest is moving. Quite the nice chest, I’ll add.”
“Cool it,” said Damon. “This doesn’t feel right.”
“This is as far from right as a situation can be!” snapped Austine. “She needs to be warmed up immediately. I’ll take charge and see to her care!”
“Austine…” he sighed, already disliking where things were going.
“Don’t let him touch her!” Myr’s voice was a sharp, frightened screech in Damon’s ear. “Get back! She’s like I was, in the time before!”
“What?”
“Fear not, beautiful, naked maiden,” whispered Austine. “You’ll be safe in my strong arms.”
“No!” cried Myr.
Austine brushed his fingers across the cheek of the naked woman and immediately let out a hiss of pain. He drew back instantly, clutching an ugly looking frost burn. The girl sucked in a breath and blinked ice-blue eyes open, each imbued with a menacing, subtle glow.
“Uh…” Austine cleared his throat and shot Damon an urgent look. “Perhaps we should close the lid on this one? Right now?”
The girl moved before they had the chance. She leapt to her feet, eyes blazing with cold fire, naked body taut and distracting. Damon drew his myrblade and set his own minor reservations aside as he slashed the weapon outward at her neck.
It did little more than nick her skin, impacting and bouncing off as though his weapon was as dull as a serving spoon. The girl let out a shrill screech and dove toward Damon. He fell backward as her fingers clutched his neck, expecting pain or at least cold. No such sensation came.
He was immune to the cold through Myr, after breaking her last chain. He surmised that the girl, body possessed by an ice elemental, had a similar defense against his myrblade, which was why his slash had done so little. He stared at the girl as her fingers tightened to choke him, only then realizing that she still had the strength to wring the life from his neck.
Austine roared and slammed a kick into the side of her head. She fell sideways, momentarily stunned.
“Come on!” Austine pulled Damon to his feet, and the two of them bolted for the stairs.
Damon appreciated his friend’s newfound sense of caution. He wasn’t entirely sure that a fight against an ice elemental was one that they could take, even with Austine’s crest and Damon’s sword magic.
They made it up to the shrine’s main level and slammed the door shut behind them. For a few seconds, it seemed as though they could simply sneak into a hasty retreat out the front while their alluring opponent struggled to break through the crypt’s door.
Glass shattered with a shrill death screech as a new enemy burst through the stained-glass window set into the shrine’s east wall. The monster that came through in the clatter landed on all fours and slowly rose to a standing position. It was humanoid and feminine, with faintly blue skin and wispy gray hair.
It reminded Damon of Myr, though he recognized the comparison for how unflattering it was. Austine drew back from it, glancing toward the door. A loud bang came from outside, and another ice elemental smashed through one of the windows across the chamber.
“Do we fight?” muttered Austine.
“Do we have a choice?” said Damon.
CHAPTER 29
Damon and Austine retreated outside the shrine, only to find that the snow was coming down even harder than it had been when they arrived. It slowed their footsteps, forcing them to displace powder up to the knees with each step.
The ice elementals gave pursuit, directed by their beautiful, naked, apparent leader. Damon had his myrblade out but was doubtful of how much use it would be. He shot a glance toward Austine, who was beset as much by the cold as by their enemies, shivering uncontrollably in the punishing mountain air.
One of the ice elementals launched itself forward, arms outstretched, diving for Damon. His sword couldn’t cut them effectively, but he still managed to swat the monster aside with a careful swing. Austine sent a throwing dagger flying at the elemental’s center of mass as it landed, and it let out a wounded hiss as the projectile sank into pale flesh.
“There are more coming!” shouted Austine. “We can’t stand and fight!”
It wasn’t as though they could easily run away, either, but Damon watched his friend make an attempt. The normal road leading down the mountain was just ahead of them, and Austine took off, hopping as much as running through the snow.
Damon only managed to follow for a few paces before one of the ice elementals cut off his escape. He swore under his breath and spun in a circle.
“Austine!” he shouted.
He saw Austine look back and slow to a stop, but another ice elemental was upon him before he could come to Damon’s aid. He traded a few blows with it before succumbing to a tackle and falling sideways down one of the snowy mountain slopes. Damon could only hope for the best and turn his attention back to his own situation.
The naked girl padded toward him on bare feet while the ice elementals closed in on him. He gripped his myrblade tightly enough to turn his knuckles white. The sword was his only chance, though he’d already proven to himself that he couldn’t attack them with it directly.
“Myr,” he muttered. “You must have some trick or secret that applies here. Right?”
“Damon…” she said, warningly. “You’ve already broken too many of the chains. You tread into dangerous ground by—"
“There is something, then?” he interrupted. “Myr! There’s no time!”
An ice elemental lunged for him, swinging clawed hands at his neck. He blocked to the best of his ability with his myrblade, feeling the strength of the attack vibrate through the weapon.
Another one tackled his legs. He went down hard in the snow, and despite being immune to the cold of the snow and ice, the jagged edge of the crust still cut at his face in places. One of the ice elementals was upon him before he could rise or counter, followed by another, followed by pain.
Damon let out an agonized roar as the claws of one of the monsters pierced his shoulder like razor-sharp icicles. He twisted reflexively, punching at the claws with his sword hand, and was somewhat nauseated to watch them snap off from the monster, still stuck in his shoulder.
The naked ice elemental woman slowly walked forward to stand in front of him. Damon was terrified, scared to the point of wondering if he truly was to die in such a pointless way.
And then, in less time than it took to finish a blink, he was with Myr, in her mystical ice realm. It struck him that she, in many ways, understood the danger he was in better than he did.
She was frowning, her blue lips full and lightly speckled with frost against her pale skin. He’d already broken two of her seven chains, and now, she offered a third up to him, though she seemed deeply unhappy about it.
“Here,” she said. “But this must be the last, Damon. Please…”
He gripped it and pulled, pushing his arm muscles to their limit and just beyond it. One of the links of the chain snapped with a sharp, resonant chime, and nearly as quickly as Damon had arrived, he was back in his body.
The pale girl from within the shrine screamed as though she’d just been lit on fire. Damon almost felt a pang of sympathy as he watched her fall back onto the snow, clawing at the front of her chest, but it faded as a white-blue light exuded from her flesh, leaving withered, ancient bones in its wake.
He expected the other ice elementals to suffer a similar fate, but they remained standing and alert. If anything, they seemed more vital than they had before, which was rather disconcerting. Damon inched backward across the snow,
wincing as he again felt the pain of the icicles in his shoulder.
“Myr,” he muttered. “What did you do?”
“I told you,” she replied. “I am, or used to be, an ice elemental.”
“Your point?”
“They’re yours now.”
“What?”
Damon stared at the ice elementals, only then realizing that they weren’t hesitating in the face of their next attack but waiting for him to give a command. He slowly stood up, looking over the six monsters apparently now in his service.
“They’re ethereal and weather based, so it’s more of a limited ability than it may seem,” whispered Myr. “You’ll only be able to summon them in freezing temperatures, and not indefinitely.”
“So… when it’s snowing, I can have an army at my back?”
“Probably no more than half a dozen or so.”
“Good enough.” He shifted his fingers on his myrblade, considering his first command. “Ice elementals. Clean up the shrine. One of you broke a window when you attacked, and if we can’t replace it, we should at least clean up the glass.”
It wasn’t the type of thing he’d normally care so much about, but it seemed like a good test of both the monsters’ ability to understand his orders as well as their finer capabilities. Could they pick things up? Was their vision capable of spotting smaller shards of glass? The questions were not as minor as they seemed.
He joined them in the shrine, watching as they worked. Instead of picking up the glass shards by hand, one of them used an ability that Damon could only describe as frost breath to blow them out the shrine’s door. The others removed the larger pieces still dangling from the window’s empty frame. All in all, it was an impressive effort.
He opened his tunic, wincing as he pulled at one of the icicles still poking free from his shoulder. They weren’t in deep, but it felt like trying to pull an arrow out of himself. The pain each time he touched one of them was enough to ward him off from taking the necessary action.
“Ice elemental,” he called and then pointed. “You. Pull these out of me.”
The ice elemental didn’t nod or reply verbally, or give any indication that it had heard him and assented. Instead, it simply raised one of its hands and twitched its long fingers. The icicles came out all at once, hurtling toward the monster as though pulled by an invisible force.
“Dammit!” he hissed, planting a hand against the open wound, though there wasn’t as much blood as he would have expected. He sat down on one of the benches and stretched out. The elementals, free of a specific task, wandered over to stand around him in a semi-circle.
“Uh,” he said, trying to think of something else reasonable for them to do. “Let’s see. I suppose checking the rest of my body for other injuries makes sense. Ice elementals! Look me over.”
They immediately set themselves to the task, touching him with fingers that would have been painfully cold to anyone else. Damon could still feel the cold of their touch, but it was benign and familiar to him, like snow in the spring that melts as soon as it lands.
They stripped his clothes off with surprisingly gentle movements and began touching him all over. Without meaning to, Damon let himself look at them, taking in their alluring feminine features and vague, mask-like faces. They were beautiful in their own, inhuman way, and while some might have found it terrifying or discomforting, Damon appreciated their stark elegance.
One of the ice elementals had its hand on his inner thigh and was gently massaging higher and higher. Damon let out a soft grunt that might have been taken for encouragement as the edge of its hand brushed his package. He felt, not for the first time in his life, dubious of his own arousal as his cock began to stir and harden and steal the show.
He didn’t even need to give them a command, as it happened. A simple look into the frozen blue eyes of the one working his thigh was enough to coax it into taking hold of his tool. The other ice elementals began sliding across his chest and neck with soothing, intimate motions. He all but forgot about his injury and original request as the reality presented by his new power became clear.
“Whoa,” he said. “You have… surprisingly soft palms.”
The ice elemental currently stroking his cock had no response for him. Obviously. It sped up a little, and Damon felt his shaft throb, hard and hot against the cold, careful hands.
They were different from Myr or the pale girl, more like minor elementals that were formed entirely from ice. As such, none of them had mouths, which was a shame. He briefly considered asking Myr if there was a way to remedy before realizing how lurid and gross the question would sound, even for him.
Instead, he drew one of the ice elementals rubbing his chest in closer to him. He ran a hand between its legs, feeling for where its womanhood should have been… and found it. He hadn’t been expecting them to be anatomically correct in that regard, and it forced him to confront a question which he hated himself for wanting an answer to.
Would it even be safe? He was immune to the cold as a bonus from his myrblade, but did that apply to all of him, even during intimate moments? Was he willing to bet his prick on it?
Not quite yet, though part of that was due to the fact that the ice elemental currently pleasuring him was really, really good at it. He reached out a hand and began touching her… its… body. Surprisingly, the ice had some give to it, more like hard-packed snow than something truly frozen all the way through.
Another ice elemental joined in, seeming to sense how close he was getting. They both used their hands, touching all of his manhood, rubbing their cold breasts against his legs as they rocked forward and back with lurid motions. Damon felt his abdominal muscles tense, and then let them have it.
He felt the pleasure as his seed burst out onto bodies made of ice and sank into it, satisfied and incredibly fascinated by his newfound power.
“Ice elementals,” he said. “Clean up this new mess. And then put my clothes back on me.”
CHAPTER 30
Damon stopped short of having his newfound monster servants carry him down the mountain. Myr explained, as soon as he was decent again and non-awkward conversation could be had, that the ice elementals would melt within minutes if he brought them into warmer temperatures.
He released them himself as he started down the Glittering Spire’s main trail, watching as they melted in a manner similar to how all of the magical ice formed from his myrblade faded from existence. He wasn’t entirely sure how to resummon them when next needed, but he could always ask Myr.
“I feel entirely satisfied with our mission, despite not being any closer to discovering which of the Forsaken the Athlatak is,” he said.
“I suppose I’m glad for you,” said Myr. “Even if you did disgusting, hedonistic things with a bunch of monsters that are basically my distant sisters.”
“I just lay back,” he said. “They did everything.”
“Watch yourself,” said Myr. “I can get mad at you, just like anyone else.”
“Are you jealous?”
“What?” Myr made a puttering noise. “No, how could you even… I’m… I swear I’m not.”
He spent most of the walk down the path gently stroking Myr’s hilt and telling her, with full sincerity, how much he cared for her. The standard route down the Glittering Spire was a series of easily traversable switchbacks. Damon didn’t see any of the lookouts he’d feared might spy on him, and he felt as though his and Austine’s decision to climb the rock had been extremely overcautious.
There was still the question of where, exactly, Austine had ended up. It was one he felt he didn’t need an immediate answer to. He had no doubt that Austine had survived the encounter, and beyond that, it wasn’t his business to worry about a man who was as much an enemy as a friend.
It was late evening when he arrived back in Yvvestrosai, and it was still snowing. As beautiful as the city had been from the outset, seeing the trees and flowers and footpaths all covered in a thin layer of snow was ut
terly enchanting. Footprints told stories of where both people and animals had passed, and where they hadn’t. Snow fell in thick flakes, like tiny, white leaves dropping slowly through the air.
He wore his cloak, not wishing for more attention than he was already owed. It took him a while to find his way back to his and Ria’s flaqayai, time enough for night to truly arrive and settle. He opened the door, kicking snow off his boots on the step before coming in.
“Ria?” he called. “Are you home?”
There was no answer. Damon felt his heart stutter for an instant as his mind ran wild with possibilities and fears. He was almost considering rushing back outside and off to the Water Palace to confront Ayisa and the Athlatak when a lantern light passed over the ladder leading to the second floor.
“Up here,” she said. “I have something to show you.”
“Is that so?” He grinned, eager for whatever the surprise entailed.
He made the climb quickly and found Ria standing in their shared bedroom, wearing a long dress of green and white with thin shoulder straps and ruffled, flowing skirts. She gave him a shy smile and did a slow spin.
“It is a lossani,” she said. “I knew of such things before today but never really paid mind to them. This is the type of a dress a young Remenai woman would wear during her matridai ceremony.”
“Were you wearing it while waiting for me, wife?” he asked.
“What? No! I was simply trying it on, and it seems you have remarkably good timing.”
She sat down on the bed, and Damon joined her. He set a hand on her leg, aware of how vulnerable she’d made herself for him. She was brave like that, willing to expose her heart, to him, at least.
“While you were out finding this stunning dress, did you happen to get the other things we spoke of this morning?” he asked. “For placing the matridai?”
She looked at him, her eyes meeting his with gentle solemnity. “I did.”
“Ria…” He took a breath, gathering his words, distilling his meaning. “I love you. I want you in my life, now and forever. As a friend. As a lover. As my wife.”
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