Esther and Thursa raced up their mountain slope. The rogue had no problem skipping lightly over the rocky path and was tempted to use her shadow step ability. That would far outpace her companion, so she held it in check. Thursa had turned more fully into a black bear, dropping to all fours and loping casually beside her. They reached the cave opening after only a few minutes. The druid angled toward the entrance while Esther continued up. He looked at her, appreciating the view from below, and then froze as his eye took in the scenery above and ahead of her.
Esther noticed his halted progression, turned to look at him, and followed his gaze up to the side of the mountain. A vent higher up melted the snow, sending it rushing down the stone, but once it was free of the persistent heat, much of it refroze, covering the cliff side in a sheet of ice. Water ran freely below the glacier into the open air like a waterfall, crashing onto the distant rocks below them.
“How will you access the flow?” Thursa had transformed his face enough to speak.
Esther didn’t see an easy path either and left the trail to venture closer to the icy deluge. Further up, the water was still snow and hung precariously on the side of the warm mountain, melting from underneath and ready to slide off from the slightest disturbance. Below the ice shelf, the stone wall curved back inward, and the water fell several dozen feet away from any handhold. The only way to have the crystal touch the falling water was to climb over the ice, punch a hole through it, and stick the wand in.
“I can do it!” Esther cried over the sound of rushing water. “Go do your thing. I’m fine.”
Thursa didn’t want to leave her but couldn’t offer assistance and disappeared into the mountain. Esther pulled a pair of knives from a sheath on her thigh and held them in her fists, the blades pointing in the opposite direction of her thumbs. A stone ledge allowed her to ease out pretty far in front of the ice wall, and she tried desperately not to look down, the sound of the distant water crashing already telling her how high up she was. Reaching out with her right hand, she stabbed the knife into the ice, and it sunk deep into the frozen water. She tested her weight briefly before leaving the ledge and hanging from the blade. It held, and she didn’t fall. She quickly secured the other weapon next to it and started the slow process of moving out over the ice one arm's length at a time. Her boots offered her no purchase on the slick wall. She had a strength of 20 and weighed almost nothing by comparison, so she didn’t fear her arms would give out. She just hoped the ice wouldn’t break.
Jace and Wallace split ways halfway up their mountain. The shaman’s slope rose higher, and he let his illusion spell go to take advantage of the giant strides his orc frame offered him. Within no time, he reached the top and was instantly struck by lightning. Being a stone shaman offered him 50% protection against lightning, and his boots of grounding gave him another 50%. Still, he could take damage if he critically failed a saving throw. He didn’t.
The top clearing was devoid of snow, with huge rocks jutting out of the terrain at odd angles like a two-year-old’s interpretation of Stonehenge. The large stones offered a maze for Jace to navigate as lighting burst around him, sometimes striking him, sometimes taking chunks out of the pale gray rocks nearby. In the clearing’s center, he found a much shorter, more orderly-arranged collection of stones with a flat top five feet off the ground. A small hole had been bored in the center, and Jace wasn’t surprised to find the end of the wand fit perfectly. He inserted the rod with the crystal pointing up and stepped back.
Lightning flashed down on the pedestal, striking the gemstone and coalescing inside it. This would be easy, Jace thought. He backed away blindly until he hit another more significant collection of stones. The next strike didn’t hit the crystal and instead exploded his backrest, throwing Jace from his feet as shrapnel rained down around him. He only took half of the damage from the flying stones, but it was still damage.
He struggled to his hands and knees, moving large rocks off his back as another strike hit the wand. However, the following lightning bolt took out another large formation beside him and tossed him to his left. This time, a single large slab fell on him, and he lacked the strength to remove it.
The shaman lost track of the strikes after that. It seemed like only every other flash of electricity hit the crystal while the rest played Angry Birds with the stone formations around him, burying him like a pig in an ever-increasing pile of rubble. Jace took little damage but soon found he couldn’t move and had no idea how he would escape.
Wallace fought the biting cold wind as she slowly reached the top of her ascent. She wondered if it weren’t for her heavy plate male if she wouldn’t be blown off the peak. The gale didn’t get better once she reached the top, as the mountain had actually worked as a wind block during her climb. Now, the gusts had nothing to impede them and did nearly lift the heavy character off her feet and out over a terrifying drop-off.
Wallace fell to all fours, offering a smaller profile against the persistent wind. The small nub at the top of the mountain was barely twenty feet across, with nothing but a central mound of stones able to resist the force that tried to throw everything else off its edge. Thunder sounded around her, and she looked to her left to see the distant peak where Jace battled the lightning, wondering if that wouldn’t have been the easier task.
Instead of playing the what-if game, she crawled toward the altar as slowly and carefully as possible, every inch gained with extreme effort. Once she reached it, she hugged the slender stone pillar with both hands and pulled herself up. She found a narrow hole in the top and carefully inserted the wand, fearing the magical device might blow out of her hand and never be seen again. Once inserted, the rod didn’t even waver in the wind, and she watched as the crystal slowly brightened from the energy blustering around it.
The alter afforded a little protection from the constant gale, and Wallace flipped around to lean against it and wait out the process. Once she had found relative calm, she nearly jumped out of her armor when a glowing woman appeared on the cliff's edge where she should have been blown away. She was beautiful, her skin and sheer gown glowing in the late evening. The storm clouds above offered little light, and Wallace only got a good look at her when the lightning flashed on the neighboring peak.
Her many-layered chiffon gown danced about in the wind, giving tantalizing glimpses of the shapely figure beneath. As the layers flowed over each other, the dress's transparency shifted, offering tantalizing views to the paladin. Wallace imagined that if she actually were the 40-year-old man her character represented, she might be enticed by the figure before her, but the 14-year-old girl wasn’t as impressed. She also knew the game could gauge infatuation through eye movement and brain activity, often assessing players penalties on saving throws. The stalwart paladin hoped to avoid such banes.
“You look tired, my brave knight,” she said in a sultry tone, her voice having no issue fighting against the wind. In fact, only her gown succumbed to the gale. Her thin body and thick blond hair remained relatively motionless. “Come to me for comfort. I can not only shelter you from the storm but also give you the power to control it.”
Wallace cocked her head. Power to control it? Jace didn’t say anything about that. Knowing the game as she did, Wallace expected straight-up sexual seduction. This was different. Could she learn a spell to control the weather? What would it cost?
“Come to me and understand true power.”
Wallace eased away from the altar.
{Wally?} Brodie, her operator, said in her head. {Sis, what are you doing?}
“Don’t worry, bro,” she replied, taking a tentative step toward the woman. “I’ve got this.”
Thursa had a long trek into the mountain, and once the glow of lava illuminated the cavern, he changed back into his human form. The bear was powerful but had limited access to magic, and he feared he would need protection spells to make it through this. He pulled Hammerhead, the axe Wallace had given him, and gripped the wand in his other hand. He was barefoot and could usually feel anyone approaching over the stone. So far, he felt nothing other than the rhythmic bubbling of the lava before him.
The druid approached the edge carefully. The cavern dead-ended at the pool, the ceiling opening wide above him. The initial cave entrance had been narrow, only a dozen feet in diameter, but now it felt like a cathedral, the high arching ceiling above him stretching up into the darkness. Thursa knelt next to the lava and dipped the end of the wand into the molten rock. He felt a pulse of energy as the crystal submerged, and his magical connection to the stone let him sense how full it was. He didn’t see a hole or support bracket for the rod, so he held it, crouching at the pool's edge like filling a canteen at a bubbling brook. His demonic-inspired heat resistance prevented his knuckles from burning.
With his right hand holding the axe, he kept his head on a swivel, looking for danger as his feet reached through the rock to alert him of enemies approaching. He still felt nothing.
Thursa held that pose for several rounds as he felt the crystal fill with energy. Soon, it was done, and he pulled the wand up to examine the ruby-red crystal at the end of the stick. It throbbed with power, and he carefully stored it in his inventory. Rising to his feet, he kept an eye open for an attack from any direction. Nothing came. Was it going to be this easy? He didn’t want to tempt fate and quickly started back up the long trek to the outside.
As soon as he was fifty feet from the lava, Thursa froze. Now, he sensed the tremor of an approaching creature. It was huge, and each footfall shook the cavern so much that even Wallace would have felt it. His eyes peered into the darkness, unable to see if any side tunnels branched into this main cavern. The space was so expansive that its true dimensions vanished in every direction but the one leading out. He saw nothing.
Still, the approach continued, and the druid estimated the beast must be only a few dozen feet away, yet nothing appeared in the cavern. Suddenly, a tremendous splash sounded behind him, and he turned to see a lava hound leap from the pool of fire and land only twenty feet away. It wriggled its body like a dog shedding water, and molten rock flew in every direction, revealing its horrific body beneath. Paths of lava crisscrossed its form, breaking its skin into patches of obsidian scales that pulsed with shadow. The cracks in its skin flexed and shifted as it stretched its legs and stalked toward the druid, its massive canine maw almost twelve feet off the ground and drooling sulfuric acid as its flame-filled eyes marked its prey.
The hound pounced, and Thursa flung himself to the side, rolling into a ball and rising far from the beast. The lava creature recovered quickly, skidding to a stop after the miss and turning to track down its meal. Thursa gripped the axe tightly in one hand and made a closed fist with the other, his knuckles popping under his strength. The beast stalked him carefully, now wary of the man’s athletic prowess.
Once the creature got within ten feet, Thursa lowered his fist to his hip and punched up in the air with all his might. A stone pillar shot up from the cavern floor just under the hound’s head. It mimicked the path of the man’s arm and punched the monster in the jaw, flipping it in the air and landing it on its side. It whimpered in pain from the blow and was slow to right itself, allowing Thursa to race forward, strike the beast twice with his axe, and proceed to the cavern’s exit.
Though Dazed momentarily, the lava hound was a creature of stone and fire, and the rock attack didn’t do much damage. Likewise, the bladed weapon worked better against flesh and blood creatures. Even the blunt side of the axe didn’t do much, as the monster’s skin was already cracked and molten. All the attack really did was anger the beast.
Thursa saw this, decided against further combat, and raced back up the slope toward the exit. The hound perused, shaking the mountain as it ran.
Esther reached the ice-covered peak a few minutes after leaving the ice wall. Once she had established a rhythm, moving along the glacier had been easy. She found a thin section where water rushed just behind it, punched a hole in the ice with one of her rapiers, and stuck the wand inside. Instantly, she felt power surge through it as the water transferred energy. The rogue followed Jace’s advice and left the wand there, planning to pick it back up on her way down. To get off the wall, she was careful not to make any new holes that might jeopardize the ice sheet’s integrity and retraced her movement to find the stone ledge.
Now, she walked through knee-deep drifts, looking for a place to secure the second wand. She had added her hooded cloak to her attire as the wind whipped snow about her face and exposed skin, chilling her core. How could she get that chill inside the crystal? Eventually, she found an ice pedestal near the center of the snowy plateau amidst a maze of rocks and dead trees. The structure was too symmetrical to be naturally made, and after a few moments of inspection, she found a hole in the top and secured the wand pointing up. She stepped back to see a whirlwind of snowflakes swarm around the crystal and suck deep inside it.
The crunching of ice and snow drew her attention from the wand, and she turned to see a creature approaching. She didn’t know what it was. It was the height of a goblin, with short, stubby legs and arms way too long for its body. Its elbows bent back on themselves like a praying mantis with ice-covered blades for hands. The arms made a chopping and slashing motion as it approached the woman, and Esther drew her rapiers. She easily dodged the awkward attacks and struck back. Chill did little damage, but Char, her firebrand weapon, nearly cleaved the animal in two and dropped it to the snow.
Her attack brought her between two rock outcroppings, and she saw a pair of the creatures coming for her, one from either side. She was too confined to Dodge effectively and lashed out at one as she accepted the attack from the other. Her target suffered the same fate as the first foe while the one behind her slashed ineffectively at her powerful armor. Gromphy had enchanted the shadow scale to give her immunity against all slashing attacks from creatures level 20 and below, and these ice fiends weren’t close.
She spun around to deal with the second minion and saw half a dozen more monsters waiting for her. She killed the first one and then ran for a more defensible position. Unfortunately, the random rocks, dead trees, and piles of snow left avenues of attack in every direction, and the tiny creatures flooded into her location, filling every gap available.
Esther gave up on the defensive posturing and decided she would just have to kill them. She proceeded to drop two attackers every three rounds for almost a minute, with no end in sight of the persistent creatures. While they got enormous Swarm bonuses to their attacks, their slashing weapons couldn’t do any damage against her.
The deadly rogue was actually having fun for a moment, watching the ice-covered beasts explode into shards from her powerful attacks. That was until one of the beasts decided to change the angle of its strike and stabbed its sharp arm at the woman. The piercing blow struck home, and with all the benefits it got from its swarming brethren, it did considerable damage.
Esther felt the ice pierce her soul, quickly followed by half a dozen more as the rest of the swarm learned the valuable lesson. Within a round, Esther was below half health, easily able to see she wouldn’t survive another six seconds. She sheathed Chill, summoned her dragon shield, and dropped one of Draya’s enchanted rubies at her feet.
Dragon fire exploded around her, vanquishing every foe within thirty feet. With her shield raised, she was immune to the damage and lowered it as soon as the blast cleared. She saw no more enemies and wasted a round to drink one of Gromphy’s healing potions. Afterward, she noticed a handful of the creatures carefully closing in from all sides again, more wary of this volatile woman. Esther didn’t have an infinite amount of fire and had to change strategies. She threw another ruby toward one group she thought was toward the wand and raced after it.
She ran headlong into the fiery blast, needing to raise her shield again, and continued over the charred remains to find herself out in the open, the ice pedestal nowhere in sight. Where was that wand? The identical-looking snow-covered rocks confused her, and as more creatures closed in from every direction, she grew frantic and had to fight to survive.
