Chapter 49: Chapter 49: The Third Trial: Icescythe

Nay had no choice but to stop for a moment and pack the wound on her thigh with snow. She had to stanch the bleeding.

She exhaled and closed her eyes and fell into the Spirit Song, cycling vigor for a moment. She became a little less dizzy from the moment of cycling and replenishing her veins a tiny bit. Hopefully it would be enough to hold off the Vigor Sickness.

Next, she conjured a ring of cold around her snow-packed wound, freezing over the top of the snow, converting it to ice. She gritted her teeth as she felt the skin around her wound freeze. She needed it to hold long enough so she wouldn’t leak blood.

She just hoped the lasting damage wouldn’t be too bad. But she would have to survive first before being allowed to worry about that.

She continued on, fleeing downwind so Caraxus couldn’t follow her scent. The snow-packed wound seemed to be working. She was no longer leaving a blood trail on the ice.

But the Vigor Sickness was returning.

Even though she cycled, that last ability cast of Chef’s Thermometer was enough to make her dizzy again.

She had to find a hiding place, somewhere she could avoid Caraxus and regroup.

Nay tried to stick to the ice and avoid fresh snow. Leaving footprints was just as bad if not worse than leaving a blood trail. Both were like putting up a sign saying, “That bitch that tried to slash your throat is right here.”

She accessed her mini-map to see if she could find somewhere to hide.

Nowhere looked appealing.

There seemed to be another cave but she thought that would be too obvious. Caraxus most definitely knew every inch of this island. This was his territory. He would know all the prime hiding spots.

She would have to create her own.

She slid down into a chasm that was full of those ice pillars reaching for the sky. They reminded her of a frozen version of the rock formations she had seen in New Mexico when she was driving through when she was moving to Los Angeles.

She got up and chose a pillar. Once she got there, she sat down and settled into her breathing technique to cycle more vigor, trying to keep the hum of her Spirit Song at a low volume.

As she filled her veins that sensation of Vigor Sickness grew faint. It wasn’t completely gone, but it would have to do for now.

She opened her eyes and steadied herself, boosted by the new vigor in her passageways. She conjured a ring of heat and gestured with both of her hands, pushing it into the pillar.

The ice began to melt. A circle about the size of a doorway formed. She pushed the ring of heat further into the pillar, hollowing out a chamber large enough to house her. She felt her vigor reserves depleting again.

She slipped into the chamber. It was still moist from the melting ice. Water was dripping everywhere.

Using the last of her reserves, she conjured a ring of cold to cover the hole with ice, covering up her tracks. Ice crystallized and refilled any trace of the hole on the outside.

She collapsed in the darkness, succumbing to the Vigor Sickness.

---

[Error Message]

[Error: Marrow Ability Detected at Base Rank]

[All Marrow Abilities Require Minimum of Iron Rank]

[Not Enough Vigor To Sustain Abilities]

[Please report to a DMA Agent]

[Error Message]

[Worldtripper Anomaly Detected]

[Please report to a DMA Agent]

---

As the error messages blinked red on her HUD, Nay, face-down on the ice floor of the chamber, trembled into her Spirit Song.

It was slow-going and she felt nauseous, like she was going to throw-up, but she couldn’t risk passing out with Vigor Sickness. Who knew if she would wake up again.

Eventually she began to cycle vigor and the error messages went away. She continued until she stabilized.

She pulled a biscuit with a Recovery Buff out of her inventory and half-heartedly chewed on it, exhausted. She lied on the floor inside the pillar and rested.

/////////

The wound across her thigh was a nasty one. The ice-packed snow had warmed and grown dark with her blood. It had become a red slush inside the gash in her thigh and was dripping off her leg, forming a puddle on the floor.

She was going to have to do something lest it get infected. Then she would really be in trouble.

Reinvigorated, she spent some of her vigor reserves on conjuring a ring of heat.

She held Thorn’s blade in the ring. The steel absorbed the heat, its temperature rising. After a couple minutes the blade turned red.

Nay snapped an icicle from the chamber ceiling right above her head. She put it in her mouth like it was a stick.

Her nostrils flared as she pushed air out, steeling herself for what she was about to do.

Nay bit on the icicle and pressed Thorn, glowing red with heat, against her wound. There was a sizzle, like lying a strip of bacon in a hot pan, and a burst of searing pain.

Her teeth crushed the icicle in her mouth and she released a cry of agony, tears pouring down her cheeks, as everything went black and she passed out.

/////////

Nightfall had descended on the island. With it came ribbons of green light rippling in the sky, an aurora borealis. It cast everything on the glacier in an eerie chartreuse glow.

Nay’s thigh was tender and sore from the self-cauterization, but at least she wasn’t bleeding anymore. She had poured salt water on the cauterized wound, hoping the salt would kill any bacteria or potential infection.

Damn Ilyawraith, she thought. Why’d she have to take the trinket Lain gave her?

Nay crouched against an ice formation and watched the creature who possessed the Delicacy.

---

[Delicacy Detected!]

[Bladegland of the Icescythe]

---

Then a quest prompt appeared.

---

[Quest Detected]

[Quest: Separate the Delicacy from Icescythe]

[Reward: Bladegland of the Icescythe]

[Accept Quest Y/N?]

---

Nay accepted the quest, knowing that separating the Delicacy from the Icescythe was going to involve slaying it.

Based off the looks of it, there would be no negotiations.

The Icescythe was about Nay’s height, but that’s where the similarities stopped. It had scythes for arms. They were mantis-like, hinged on one joint. They seemed to be the thing’s bones, except the spines on the back sides were translucent and seemed more like crystallized matter. The curved bone blades tapered off into sharp tips.

It was on all fours and was ripping at the carcass of a sea lion. Its short hind legs ended in three-clawed talons. Ice quills vibrated atop its skull and it had a mouth that looked like the inside of a turbine.

It didn’t eat but so as much blend the seal flesh inside its maw.

Nay could see the Delicacy glowing gold inside its lower torso, probably best accessible through an incision via its back.

Her plan hinged on the hope that Caraxus would not be on this side of the island. Best case scenario is that he was in his cave, sleeping and recuperating since it was nightfall.

If he found her while she was engaged with this Icescythe it was game over.

She had tracked the creature for the past couple of hours. She observed it hunting the sea lion and now it was feeding.

She began pulling Debuff Biscuits out of her inventory and placing them on the ice. She walked backwards towards the small cave she had found, leaving a trail of biscuits.

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The 'cave' was really just a medium-sized grotto in the ice where one could sit with some shelter while watching the sea. She formed a pile of the biscuits under the biggest ice stalactite here and hid behind an ice formation and waited.

If the first part of her planned revolved around Caraxus not interrupting this trap, the second part of her plan depended on the Icescythe actually being interested in the biscuits.

She had stacked her stats with the Buffs as much as she was allowed, and she had Thorn in her hand, ready to engage. Her hands were trembling from nervousness and she felt sick to her stomach.

Time moved slow. Seconds felt like minutes. It was torture.

Just when she thought that her plan wasn’t working, she heard the tapping of ice and the sound of teeth grinding as they pulverized baked goods.

The Icescythe appeared in front of the grotto, scrambling across the ground and stabbing biscuits with its scythes and lifting them to its round mouth, where it hoovered the flaky bread.

Nay saw the Debuff icons appearing over its long skull.

It stopped in front of the cave, hesitating. It didn’t grab the next biscuit that was sitting just past the threshold of the grotto entrance.

Nay whispered, “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon…”

But then she saw the icon of a figure with a hand on its belly appear over its head.

The Hunger Debuff.

Its artificial hunger drove it forward into the grotto and it continued devouring the biscuits.

It reached the pile of biscuits underneath the ice stalactite.

As it started stabbing and lifting the biscuits to its mouth with both scythe-limbs, Nay conjured a ring of heat around the stalactite.

The creature didn’t notice the water dripping from the ceiling onto it and the biscuits because it was too busy eating.

But it did notice the two ice imps that appeared at the entrance of the grotto, who saw the Icescythe and responded by releasing their frost breath attacks into the grotto.

There was an earsplitting crack and the stalactite fell from the ceiling in an outpouring of ice and water.

The Icescythe leapt at the ice imps, its scythes delivering stabbing punches like it was an industrial knitting needle.

The ice stalactite crashed into the ground where it just was, missing Icescythe by only a fraction of a second.

The grotto shook and spidercracks spread across the floor of the chamber.

“No!” Nay said.

She had to attack now, while the creature was distracted.

The ice imps were flying around Icescythe, dive-bombing it with their claws.

Icescythe impaled one with the end of one of its scythe arms and the creature exploded.

Its final act in dying was its death burst attack.

Shards of ice shrapnel hit Icescythe in its face and neck, cutting it and drawing blood.

The monster shrieked and blood the color of glowing blue phosphor spattered the entrance walls of the grotto.

That’s when Nay drove Thorn down into the back of its ridged neck. The blade penetrated the blueish-white reptilian skin there and she felt it scrape against the thing’s spine.

She pulled her hand up and ripped Thorn out, pulling up sinew and spurting phosphor blood.

Icescythe screamed and twisted. The spines on the back of the nearest scythe arm scraped across her forearm, ripping skin.

Nay cried out then found herself ducking the scythe-arm that passed over her, almost taking her head off. She backpedaled into the grotto as Icescythe stabbed at her.

She fell into a crevice in the ice and as the sharp end of a scythe was on the path to skewer her face she conjured a ring of extreme cold and the thing’s spraying phosphor blood froze in a sheet across the lip of the crevice, shielding her face.

The tip of the arm-scythe embedded into its own frozen blood.

Ice chips sprayed into the air.

Its movement was erratic and one half its body didn’t seem to be operating right. One of the scythe-arms fell limp at its side and it slipped on one of its hind legs that seemed to lock straight out.

She must have injured it worse than she thought when she stabbed it in the neck.

It wailed in frustration, and instead of trying to break through to her, it spun around. A half dozen more ice imps appeared and they were swarming it, blasting it with their frost breath and slashing at its exposed side.

Nay had an idea.

She melted the frozen blood and she pulled herself out of the crevice, her torn arm had gone numb. She wasn’t bothered by the wound on her thigh.

She had a stray thought that it must be the adrenaline.

She took a wide circle around Icescythe and the ice imps attacking it.

Soon she was outside of the grotto, the back of the ice imps to her.

This was a play that was going to disable her with Vigor Sickness. But she considered the odds and knew it was the correct play.

She conjured a ring of heat in front of her as if it was a shield.

Heat vapor rippled in front of her.

She jabbed the first ice imp in the back of the head with Thorn’s tip. The blow dealt enough damage to kill it, triggering its death burst.

Ice shards flew in all directions. They penetrated Icescythe, the shrapnel piercing one of its eyes.

The pieces of the ice imp flew at Nay, and would have shredded her face, but they melted as they passed through the heat ring, showering her in ice imp slush.

She let out a battle cry and felt adrenaline clashing with the onset of Vigor Sickness.

She only would have a few more seconds.

She attacked the ice imps, slashing horizontally and mixing in jabs. Sometimes she missed but mostly she hit them, triggering their death bursts.

The last slash took out two at once and the explosion of ice shredded Icescythe’s face, ripping the flesh off his skull and penetrating an artery in his throat.

Nay was showered in ice imp slush and the blue phosphor blood of the scythed monster as it staggered and collapsed, sighing with a gurgling death rattle as the life left its body.

---

[Error Message]

[Error: Marrow Ability Detected at Base Rank]

[All Marrow Abilities Require Minimum of Iron Rank]

[Not Enough Vigor To Sustain Abilities]

[Please report to a DMA Agent]

[Error Message]

[Worldtripper Anomaly Detected]

[Please report to a DMA Agent]

---

Nay collapsed next to the body of Icescythe, succumbing to the Vigor Sickness.

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