Klein did not try to descend. He used the Repulsion Aura again, but this ti under both of his feet, and he walked on the air. He leaped from invisible platform to invisible platform, spiraling upward toward the cloud. His agility defied gravity: with each impulse, he changed direction, avoiding the harpies’ claws by only a few centiters.
With each pass of his blades, harpy heads flew, wings were cleanly severed, bodies emptied of their blood in the air. A rain of corrupted blood began to saturate Tenebris’s atmosphere. Thick black drops stained his jacket, but he did not slow down.
Below, Amaera Castillon observed the carnage. She had still not moved an inch. Her long cyan-blue hair rippled slightly under the effect of her own magical pressure, but that was the only sign of activity.
Her silver eyes shone with a glacial gleam, and her expression indicated profound boredom. With her mouth slightly pursed, she watched Klein carving up the harpies as if attending a diocre school demonstration.
After thirty seconds, she sighed.
"Enough gesticulations, Konstantine," she said.
Her voice was indifferent.
"You are exasperatingly slow."
She raised her right hand and simply snapped her fingers.
The sound of the snap was faint, almost inaudible. But the effect was instantaneous and terrifying. A discharge of ice mana of colossal density exploded from her position. Klein, still in the air, felt the temperature drop brutally.
In less than three seconds, the burning desert was transford. A wave of frost spread over a two-kiloter radius. The sand beca covered with a thick layer of ice. The rocks blackened by heat beca covered with frost. The corpses of the ogres and harpies froze on the spot, their limbs locked in the positions of death.
Tenebris’s stifling heat was swept away by a polar cold so intense that the air itself crystallized. Tiny ice particles sparkled in the atmosphere, and they tinkled as they fell onto the frozen ground. The plateau had beco a mirror of glittering ice under the gray sky.
The feet of the remaining ogres were now sealed in the permafrost, trapped in a layer of ice that rose to their ankles. They pulled on their legs, but the ice held. They roared with rage, and their hoarse cries echoed across the frozen plain. One of them raised its club to strike the ice, but Amaera was not finished.
She perford a graceful movent of the hip. It was a simple sway, fluid and elegant, but it seed to command the very structure of the world. Her mana obeyed this gesture, and the ice responded.
Imdiately, hundreds of ice projectiles burst from the frozen ground. They were long and sharp like crystal spears, and they erged from the permafrost with phenonal propulsion force. One pierced an ogre’s belly, exited through its back, and continued its course for fifty ters before embedding itself in a rock.
Another ogre received three spears straight to the chest, and its body exploded under the hydraulic pressure of the ice expanding inside. The last three were nailed to the ground, their limbs pierced by dozens of projectiles.
In the air, the surviving harpies were caught in this ascending storm. Ice spears pierced them in mid-flight, and their frozen bodies shattered on impact. Feathers, blood, and pieces of frozen flesh fell like macabre hail onto the plateau. The projectiles continued to burst from the ground for several seconds, then the phenonon ceased as abruptly as it had begun.
Several of these projectiles headed straight for Klein. He was still in the air, about thirty ters above the ground, and three ice spears were rushing toward him at lightning speed. He activated his Eye of Perception to the maximum. The world slowed. He saw the trajectories form in his mind: the first spear aid at his torso, the second at his head, the third at his legs.
He used a lateral Repulsion Aura, applied to the right side of his body, and deviated his trajectory by only a few centiters. The first spear brushed his left cheek, so close that he felt the cold of the crystal on his skin. It continued its course and shattered against a rock fifty ters away. The second spear passed above his right shoulder, and the third grazed the sole of his left boot.
He landed nimbly on the frozen ground. His boots crunched against the ice as they sought purchase, and his sabers traced two light notches in the transparent surface. He rose slowly, then turned toward Amaera.
He first wiped a trace of frost from his left shoulder. Then he looked at the vice-director with a raised eyebrow.
"Thanks for saying when you’re going to do an area attack," he noted in an annoyed tone.
Amaera turned toward him. Her silhouette was perfectly outlined by her azure dress, which seed to shine even more in this arctic environnt. The faint light of Tenebris reflected on the ice crystals embedded in the fabric, producing a constant shimring effect. She crossed her arms under her generous chest, adopting a posture of absolute superiority. Her chin was slightly raised, and her silver eyes fixed Klein with undisguised contempt.
"Aren’t you the leader of the expedition?" she said.
"If you cannot dodge these low-level attacks, you won’t last long."
She took a step forward. Her elegant boots, though thin, did not slip on the ice. A thin layer of mana stabilized each of her steps. The ice cracked under her weight, but lightly, as if submitting to her presence.
"Your technique is effective against vermin, Konstantine, but it lacks grandeur. Do not think that your little sword demonstration puts you on my level."
Klein laughed softly.
"Grandeur is a luxury I leave to ninth-circle mages," he replied.
He adjusted the collar of his jacket, then crossed his arms in turn, adopting a relaxed posture.
He glanced around. The battlefield stretched two kiloters in all directions. The hundred harpies and the dozen ogres were now nothing but frozen debris. Grimacing heads protruded from the ice, severed limbs ford strange reliefs under the transparent surface, and puddles of black blood had frozen into dark circles.
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