Chapter 40: Blizzard

  The statues didn’t make it easy.

  The third and fourth statues were marked by blood and ice, as each one was shadowed by another chimera waiting to pounce and attack the team. Their previous battle tactic held, Holly ripped the storm wide open with her air aether and then the squad bombarded the beast with fire, and stone, and light until nothing remained but frozen meat and blackened fur. It worked, at least for now.

  But every time Alex wiped his knuckles clean of blood, he couldn’t stop his brain from chewing on the thought: What if these things had picked up tricks from the forest chimeras? Or the Lake chimeras? If they had both the cloaking and aether mimicry? These hidden objectives might be way more important than I first thought.

  He pictured invisible snow-leopards darting through the storm, reflecting and absorbing all of their attempts to disable its cloaking by mimicking their aether signature, or an icy kinetic redirection layer over its fur, absorbing all of their attacks. His stomach turned at the thought.

  Nope. He shoved the thought down and locked it in a box. The idea of a single chimera species having all of those abilities… well, thinking about it didn’t help.

  By the time they reached the fifth statue, the storm had picked up in intensity. It was louder, hungrier, and much colder. Alex had learned to trust his strange sixth sense, and how it felt about those changes. Right now, they were telling him the storm’s change meant trouble, serious trouble. Sure enough, the next time they made it to a statue objective it wasn’t one chimera waiting for them. It was two.

  The icy-bastards worked in tandem to attack the team, staggering their assaults. One lunged from the whiteout, its claws flashing just long enough to draw attention, then vanished back into the storm while the other flickered in from the opposite side. When Holly blew the blizzard open, the pair split up, one stayed in the open while the other slipped just outside the cleared zone, circling like a shark waiting for blood to hit the water.

  When they tried to send spells at the chimera that was exposed, the one still lurking in the blizzard used its ice manipulation ability to provide protective barriers for its partner. Each was covering for the other, never giving the squad a clean opening to strike.

  The rhythm of the fight, a losing rhythm at the current rate, set Alex’s teeth on edge. Smart little shits. What the fuck do we do?

  It took longer than he liked to admit for him see the answer. He didn’t love the idea that he came up with. But he didn’t see another option at the moment.

  It took a few leaps in the snow for him to arrive next to Holly. “Cover me,” he yelled to her.

  Before she could argue, he broke formation and pushed a wide swath through the snow until he dropped to his belly and dragged himself under the powder. The cold bit into his skin, seeping through armor and cloth robes until his body screamed at him. He forced his breathing shallow, masking his aether flow and letting the tundra swallow him whole.

  When Holly’s voice pierced over the wind, surely boosted by her air aether—“Now”—Alex burst upward.

  Snow exploded around him as he cast [Wind Lance] in rapid fire. Small rounds of compressed aether chewed through the closest chimera’s flank before it could blink away. The beast shrieked, faltering just long enough for Garret and Lance to pile on, their blades cutting it down into a bloody carcass while the rest of the squad turned on the second beast.

  It had worked perfectly. Alex's plan had been to mimic the ice chimeras tactics. This time, it was he who hid in the snow and waited to pounce at the right time to catch them off guard. And he had done it well.

  Alex stood shaking snow from his armor, the frost clinging to his eyebrows and nose. Obby hissed in the back of his head, smug as ever: “Congratulations, Meatboy. You’ve evolved. A snow-burrower. Trapdoor-Spiderman. Proud of you.”

  Alex ground his teeth. Shut up.

  The victories came slower after that. Each statue was harder and harder to find, harder to fight their way towards. Each clearing formed by the activated statues pushed against the storm as if the tundra itself resented them stealing its power, and wanted to fight back, to earn some revenge. This also meant that the chimeras pressed closer and fought with them more often, learning the squad’s rhythm and testing its edges.

  And still, they marched. One statue after another, the difficulty ratcheting higher with every step.

  The storm parted just long enough for Alex to spot it, a stone half-buried in the white, the carved face faint under a sheen of ice. The last statue.

  “Go!” he shouted. His teeth chattered madly against the cold. “Move before—”

  They didn’t even make it twenty steps.

  Shapes emerged in the gale, each of them circling wide around their squad. There was six of them. A chimera pack, eyes glowing like lanterns scattered in the storm. Each crouched low, tails flicking back and forth, ice blades twitching with the promise of blood. He should have seen this coming. Of course they’d guard the last statue, guard against the hidden objective.

  For a second or two the two sides just stared at each other across the maelstrom, predator and prey, each side unsure which was which. Then the wind howled, picking up the powdered snow, a white curtain drawn tight over everyone’s vision, and the chimeras were gone.

  Complete bedlam erupted.

  A blur slashed across Alex’s vision, with claws sparking against his shoulder plate before vanishing again. He swung his arm in reflex, firing a [Flare] into the snow, but the icy powder swallowed the shockwave of aether whole.

  Holly braced herself, arms wide, aether flashing bright as she tried to once more blow the storm open, only for a chimera to flicker into being at her side. Its tail-blade whipped down, forcing her to duck and roll, her aether for the spell scattering into a useless burst of wind.

  Eric bellowed as his fist slammed forward. Lightning cracked from his knuckles and speared across the clearing. But the chimera he aimed at suddenly wasn’t there anymore. His strike hit nothing but open air, leaving just the smell of sizzling ozone burning Alex’s nostrils.

  Tom-Tom leapt wildly through snow, its depth nearly to his torso. He had his stone-ladles spinning in his hands like drumsticks. He swung in frantic attacks, smashing powder and emptiness, his laughter manic on the wind.

  On the flank, Garret set his shield while Lance slashed low and Henry brought his halberd down from high up in bone-rattling slams. The three of them worked like gears in a single machine, covering each other’s blind spots. But the beasts were faster, slipping away just before metal could bite true. The men's blows scored only shallow scratches, if they landed at all.

  A glow burned brighter at Alex’s back. He turned to see Allie and Peter had locked hands, threads of light aether weaving between the two of them into a single searing hot beam. They swept it in wide panning angles, scything through the snow in desperate sweeps. The beam seared shadows into the blizzard, hunting for the flicker of invisible enemies.

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  Suddenly, claws raked across Alex’s ribs and he spun, [Aether Sight] struggling to hold the shifting shapes in front of him into focus. Every breath felt like fire in his lungs, and every blink of a beast was just another chance for the pack to close in around them.

  The storm was alive with them. Six predators, ghosting in and out, their tails and claws striking from every seeming direction. Between the team and the statue—freedom from the storm’s chokehold—stood nothing but death.

  Through the chaos, Alex’s gaze kept darting back to that statue. Its form half-buried, mustached grin iced over, its blind eye fixed outward into the storm. It was the key to gaining an upperhand in the fight. If they could just get to it and clear the blizzard, strip the pack of their cloak—the fight would flip in their favor.

  A claw glanced off his arm, sparks bursting across his bracer, and he grimaced. We can’t keep swinging at ghosts.

  “Listen up!” he yelled out. “We’re not winning like this. We need to break through, get to the statue so we can clear the storm, and then we can burn these bastards down.”

  “Easier said—” Holly said, then yelped as a chimera’s tail whipped past her head, “—than done!”

  Alex fired a burst aether into the blurred image of the beast that attacked her, chasing it off, then planted himself in the snow, pointing his finger toward the statue. “Form on me! Garret, Lance, Henry—defensive wall! Tom-Tom, cover their flanks. Allie, Peter, keep that light beam sweeping wide. Holly, when we hit the statue, you give me everything you’ve got.”

  The air filled with ragged breaths, grunts, and the sound of steel scraping against claws. But one by one, they answered.

  “On it!” Garret said.

  “Got your back,” Lance added.

  Henry just grunted low, the sound somehow not stolen away by the wind.

  The three of them surged forward, shield, blades and vines flashing as they forced a path ahead through the storm. Chimeras blinked in and out of existence around them, tails and claws carving lines and creating sparks from armor. But the three of them formed a meat wall and held it. Tom-Tom danced from one side of the three men, then the other, moving under and between legs and boots in deft agility. His weapons cracked outward against each beast as the appeared, buying them precious time.

  Allie and Peter’s combined lightbeam blazed, the beam sweeping outward, forcing the flickering predators on the periphery back a pace.

  “Push!” Alex shouted, his legs churning through high snow. He tossed [Wind Lance]s at every ripple he saw, not caring if they landed, just forcing the chimeras to keep their distance.

  The statue loomed closer, still thirty feet, then twenty. Its blind eye stared at him through the blizzard like a challenge.

  One chimera materialized directly in their path, its ice-blade tail whipping out in immense speed. It lunged at him, but Alex didn’t stop. He dropped to one knee and fired a controlled [Flare] straight into its chest. The beast shrieked and staggered, and Lance cleaved it aside with a roar, the three-man wall still smashing forward.

  They all crashed into the area around the statue, the team collapsing around its base. The storm raged at their backs, claws scraping, and tails lashing. Alex slammed his palm onto the blind eye, aether flooding from his channels. The stone pulsed—once, twice—then burst with light.

  The storm ripped outward, shoved away in a howling wave, and the blizzard shattered like glass, with snow and wind peeling back for a hundred feet in every direction. A notification flashed in his vision, and Alex could see a new glowing image appear on the statue’s head, but he didn’t have time to study it.

  The chimera pack blinked materiality, their cloaks torn away from them and leaving six sleek predators suddenly exposed, caught in the open. Alex’s eyes narrowed. “Now we kill them.”

  The squad answered with violence.

  Allie and Peter’s combined beam carved across the open space, searing one chimera’s face and sending it sideways with a yowl. Lance charged in with his sword raised high, his shield locked with Garret’s in a wedge that drove another beast back. Henry’s blade came down like a tree limb, smashing ribs and spraying frost into the air.

  Holly whipped her sword overhead, hurling blades of compressed wind into the closest predator, peeling its fur back in bloody streaks. Eric’s fists crackled as he let loose bolts of lightning that chained between two chimeras, their bodies spasming under the surge. Tom-Tom was everywhere at once, bouncing waist-deep in snow, ladles wrapped in stone swinging like twin meteors. He caught one beast across the jaw with a crunch so loud that it made Alex’s teeth ache.

  Meanwhile, Alex fired disciplined bursts of [Wind Lance], each shot driving into exposed flesh, piercing down to the bone. One chimera tried to flank them in the middle of the chaos, but Holly’s wind slashes stitched into its side and sent it stumbling, putting it right into the path of Henry’s halberd

  The beasts fought like demons, claws and tail blades slashing in a flurry, mouths snarling as they darted and weaved. But without the storm’s cover, they weren’t phantoms anymore. They were just predators, and the squad had hunted far worse.

  Garret took a glancing hit across his chest, but Lance stepped in and buried his blade into the chimera’s neck. Holly launch a gale of wind to knock another off balance just in time for Allie and Peter’s beam to lance through its shoulder and into his torso. Tom-Tom's ladle smacked one away just as Eric released another torrent of lightning into its face.

  They worked like one organism, each filling the gap of the other, each strike flowing into the next.

  Another chimera lunged for Holly, tail-blade poised, only for Alex to intercept, slamming a fully powered, [Flare]-enhanced fist into its back. It crumpled into the snow in a steaming heap.

  Five down.

  The last one tried to retreat, flickering weakly at the edge of the statue's circle of calm. Eric snarled and sprinted forward after it. Wind aether exploded from his feet and he closed the distance in puff of snow before he slammed his fist straight into its face. Lightning exploded outward, lancing through its skull, and the creature collapsed in a twitching heap.

  Their breath fogged in the cold, the only sound their ragged exhalations and the slow hiss of the storm trying to claw back into their clearing.

  Then the notifications hit, lines of confirmation across their vision, kill after kill marked.

  Alex rolled his shoulder, snow and blood caked on his armor. “That’s it,” he rasped. “They’re done.”

  Garret leaned on his shield, panting, but still grinning his goofy ass smile. “What’d I tell you? Easy.”

  Allie rolled her eyes. “You’ve got a tail blade scratch across your ass.”

  He craned his next behind himself to see his pants ripped open and a line of blood clear across one cheek. “Badge of honor,” Garret wheezed.

  Alex ignored them as the banter continued, his eyes drifting back to the statue’s calm glow. The pack was broken, and with the storm cleared, they finally had breathing room to push on.

  “Fast hands. Grab what we can, then move.” Thompson ordered, still scanning the storm’s edge.

  They got to work, like veterans of too many fights. Henry cracked open ribcages with his vines, prying loose still-glimmering beast cores. Garret stomped down on a carcass and yanked his sword free before digging into the corpse and tossing another core into the satchel slung at his hip.

  “Got something different here,” Lance called out. He pulled his gauntlet back, slick with blood, holding up a shard that glowed faintly blue. The light pulsed in his hand both delicate and fiercely powerful at the same time.

  “An essence fragment. Not even from a boss drop? That’s gotta be rare, right?” Peter asked.

  “Bag it. We don’t have time for gawking.” Alex said.

  Tom-Tom stuffed a cracked claw into his pouch. When Alex gave a questioning look but the little kobold only ended up grinning like a kid at a fair. “Souvenir!”

  Allie gave him a look sharp enough to cut diamond, but she was already slipping another core into her pouch and wisely decided to ignore the kobold’s antics.

  In under a minute, the chimera pack was stripped and looted. The storm pressed closer, eager to reclaim the bodies, but the squad was already moving, circling back to the final statue.

  Alex stepped forward, brushing frost from the stone’s blind eye. His palm settled against the cold surface. He could see the marking that had appeared on the statue’s head now, it was a glyph. One that Alex didn’t know, but was rather easy to decipher. It took only a few moments with the help of his Echo Lens, and Obby’s insights, for him to figure out it was an aether-line map overlayed with an activation sequence.

  He quickly looked it over, noting the map and its lines were a depiction of the tundra and the statues, connected by aether. He tapped the statues in the order they had activated them earlier, each turning a pale green as he went, then he activated the rest of the glyphs, starting the enchantment sequence.

  Light lanced outward from the final statue, rippling across the storm in concentric waves far, far further than any of the others had before. The blizzard shuddered and peeled back, miles of white shredded apart until the entire biome lay revealed in ghostly, sunlit clarity. The howling wind finally fell silent.

  For the first time, they could see it all—the frozen expanse stretching to the far walls of the mountain, the statues now visible as glowing beacons scattered across the tundra. And at their feet, the final carving’s mustached grin seemed almost smug.

  A message burned across their vision: