Interlude - Francisca Ojou the Nightshade Part Two

  She executed a textbook-perfect lunge, the tip of her glowing sword skewering into and through the ice elemental, then in a move that was very much not in the book, she twisted around, starting at the hip before using her entire upper body to move her sword in a sharp arc.

  The blade made a beautiful sound, like hot metal quenched in water, as if carved its way out of the elemental's side.

  "Good," was all Deadline said before she flicked a Shadow Bolt past Francisca's shoulder to punch into the elemental's front. The attack was enough to shove the top half of the monster off of its base, and it crashed down, very much dead.

  The praise wasn't much, but it still warmed her heart a little. If she had thought herself somewhat of a useless hanger-on in the previous portal they had tackled, then in this one she was the VIP.

  There were some people that gained the mistaken belief that various elements countered each other in a neat, almost game-like way. Water countered fire, earth neatly countered electricity, and so on.

  To some extent it was even correct, but only if one generalized things far too much. Reality was significantly too complex for such simple breakdowns to matter. Only... as complex as reality may be, that didn't mean that simplistic systems weren't sometimes spot-on.

  Her innate magic allowed her to produce a blade of light. She could vary the shape, from a dagger to a sword. The 'hilt' of it felt solid to her, but what mattered most was the blade. It wasn't quite sharp. There was no real edge geometry unless she focused and forced it into shape. Instead, the blade was condensed light. Particles or photons or something tangled in magic and forced to move through a semi-coherent shape.

  It produced heat and light as waste energy. Enough of both to blind anyone staring for too long, and she may have used it to toast some bread by holding the blade close.

  Contact with the blade itself was significantly hotter. It was, essentially, a coil of tightly-knit plasma hot enough to melt steel with prolonged contact.

  Basically, the ice elementals had a significant disadvantage against her at the moment. Not that her blade wouldn't do something similar to someone made of flesh and blood.

  "Second one up and to the right," Becky said. There was a loud retort as she shot it a few times, then some muttering from Becky's part. "Stupid guns, it's not hitting anything."

  "Try aiming down the sights?" Deadline asked.

  "I'm doing that, aren't I?" Becky shot back.

  "You're holding the gun sideways."

  Fran only spared them a glance before refocusing on the elemental above. They'd been in this portal for a few minutes already. She was very thankful that Deadline had brought some amount of winter clothes, her hands were just about the only part of her that weren't frozen, though that was either the gloves or the close proximity to her hot magical blade. Her thights had stopped feeling cold a while ago and were not feeling warm.

  She'd been skiing a few times with her family, they had a nice chalet up north, and so she was at least somewhat familiar with the idea of extreme cold. This was... endurable. For now, at least, but damned if it wasn't chilly in this portal.

  "Let's keep moving?" she asked as Becky grumbled at sparks at the elemental above. It eventually fell apart to some poorly-concentrated fire.

  Once this was all done, she was going to redouble her efforts to learn new spells. She needed a proper ranged option and perhaps some sort of shield? Her innate magic being something so physical might be a hint that she would be gifted with more physical expressions of her magic.

  She shook her head and refocused. This wasn't the time to daydream about future power.

  "The next room should be the boss'," Deadline said, proving once again that she knew more than she, by all right, should have.

  She had her suspicions, a few ideas that were percolating in the back of her mind that she didn't have proof for, but which might add up to something. If she was right, then Deadline was far more dangerous than she had given the woman credit for.

  And that only made her want to keep Deadline closer.

  "Boss, eh? So what are we gonna be fighting, an even bigger, uglier ice elemental?" Becky asked.

  "Probably exactly that," Deadline replied. "If we do fight something even bigger... and uglier, than focus on whatever looks like a weak spot."

  "Are they going to be glowing?" Becky asked.

  "This isn't a video game, unfortunately," Deadline replied.

  The tunnel they walked through was relatively short, and it ended at an iced-over wall. Deadline cupped her hands before her mouth and breathed out, an attempt to get some warmth back to her fingers.

  Fran herself hadn't let go of her sword. It provided nice ambient lighting and keeping it close banished a little bit of the cold.

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  "If this was a D-rank portal, I don't think we'd be able to make it," she said.

  "No, I don't think so either," Deadline agreed. "Not without much better gear and maybe more help. A fire-mage could do it, though. "

  "Yes. Maybe that'll be the next person we add to our little retinue?"

  "Hm?" Deadline asked, but she didn't have a clue. All the best, then.

  Becky did the honours of 'opening' the door. She charged up a powerful blasting spell, then let it loose. The impact shattered the wall, sending chucks of ice flying inwards through a relatively small chamber lit from above.

  In the centre was a monstrously large ice elemental, with three trunks for legs and a strange central body made to accommodate its three-legged form.

  The boss slowly turned, bits of the door bouncing off of it to no effect, then it began glowing from within.

  There were six heavy thumps as Deadline opened fire with her revolver, then she dove into the room and started running. "Becky! Go left, keep it distracted. Once it fires, Fran, go in and chop it up!"

  "Yah, got it!" Becky shouted back before she too started running. She almost immediately slipped on the ground and crashed down, ass-first into the ice. Somehow, she still managed to fire off a little zap of a spell that struck the boss and did... not much.

  Fran had to hold back a very inappropriate laugh. This wasn't the time for it.

  Instead, she set herself up in a runner's stance. The boss turned, then with a low rumble like a boathorn going off, it sprayed an icy-cold wind across the entire half of the room Deadline was in. The last she saw of the woman was her throwing her poncho out ahead of her to serve as a sort of umbrella against the incoming blast.

  The boss was distracted, however. Half of its attention was on the attack it had launched on Deadline, the rest on Becky who was starting to flick more and more magical bolts of electricity at its back.

  She took off. The ground was a little slippery, but she just widened her stance, not caring that her feet slipped a little as long as she kept up her forward momentum. Her stance changed. She was used to fencing more than two-handed sword-fighting, but she knew the basics well enough, and when she came in close to the boss, she flooded her blade with magic.

  The sword glowed brighter for a moment as she swung it around and put as much of her weight into the swing as possible.

  It cleaved into the boss' limb, burning through the ice with a hiss, then it was trough and she slid around, shifting to face back the way she came even as she passed under the boss.

  As it started to tumble, thrown off-balance by its missing limb, she swung her sword upwards, catching the monster in the three-sided joint in its middle.

  And just like that, the boss was dead.

  She dismissed her sword, then regretted it as it cast the room into darkness, so she summoned a smaller, more efficient light spell to illuminate the space. "Deadline? Are you well?"

  Deadline flicker her poncho down. It was covered in ice and rhime, and so was Deadline to some degree. There was a thin layer of ice clinging to her hair, turning it white. It looked good on her. So did the red flush on her cheeks.

  Fran shook her head to refocus. "That was... easy enough."

  "You say that, but there were three of us," Deadline said.

  "Teamwork, woo!" Becky said. She was still on the floor.

  "Let's move out of here? I don't want to deal with any frostbite if I can avoid it," Deadline said. "There's a chest over there..."

  There was a chest, a small one, right next to the floating, oblong form of a portal. Fran, being the closest, walked over. There was a bit of ice holding the chest closed, but a heavy smack to the top dislodged it, and she was able to throw the box open to reveal its contents.

  "It's... ice?" There was a large, round ball of ice. It was pretty, she supposed, like an oversized diamond. It was also very cold, turning the air around it to frost even if it was definitely already below zero celsius in the room.

  "Take it, I guess. Then we should head out."

  Fran nodded. She'd have someone appraise it then split the value between herself and the other two. It was only fair.

  She plucked the ball up and tucked it into a small bag. She suspected that it was some sort of permanently cold icecube of sorts. That could have some value to the right person.

  Becky left first, complaining about the temperature, then Fran and Deadline jumped through.

  She expected them to be back in that same large courtyard, with none the wiser, only when they arrived, they weren't quite alone.

  There was a team here, some dozen people, and three of them were in large, mechanized suits carrying rather impressive guns.

  "Huh, just a bit too slow," Deadline muttered.

  "Aw, shit, we gonna have to chat with this bunch?" Becky asked.

  Fran rather hoped not, she was enjoying the trickle of magic flooding into her and politicking would ruin that.

  ***