We appeared on a frozen plane, crouched atop a small ledge. Each of us had woven invisibility spells around us, and I'd cast hidden conversation. Salem had also linked us with psionic communication, so my spell would mainly be there to muffle footsteps and the sound of words of power of any potential spells. That wasn't the spell's intended purpose, but something was better than nothing.

After several long moments, purple marks with thin lines of light extending back to me appeared in my vision as Salem's modified divination spells finished. I lifted slowly onto my broom and began floating away, moving to the nearest ones. We had something that we needed to test, and I was the only one who would be able to actually test it out.

Once I was close to one of the stalactites that had a gelid crystal embedded within it, I raised my wand and flicked it three times, muttering a short word of power under my breath. I actually had to repeat it a second time, as the first time I'd been too soft – there was some flexibility with intonation, and even more with volume, but that still had limits. I aimed my wand at the gelid crystal, and in a surge of ether, cast teleport small object.

Nothing happened. It had been a long shot – teleportation spells had a very limited ability to actually exert force, as professor Toadweather had mentioned last year. It couldn't teleport someone into stone and fuse them together, so it made sense that it couldn't teleport things out of ice, but it had been worth a shot.

"Didn't work. Plan B, then," I said over the mental link as I flew back to the group. Something Jackson had noticed in Henry's display was that the armored bear creatures were given a large berth by everything else, even the monsters that should supposedly be larger and stronger than they were. I put my broom away and took Jackson's hand in my left, and Salem's in my right. A moment later, we were covered in the shimmering illusion of a large polar bear wearing frozen armor.

It was easy to think of Yushin as an assassin and poison mage, as in many ways, that was what she was. She hit extremely hard, but her style of magic wasn't always the most reliable in a straight up fight, and often took a good bit of wind-up time to manage. That said, just because that was how she preferred to do things, it didn't mean that it was the only way she could do things. She was a second year illusionist, and within moments, the air was filled with the scent of bear, strong and musky enough that I was actually briefly forced to disjoint my bloodline just to reduce the potency of the smell.

Bear was a distinctive scent, and much like horses, it wasn't the sort of thing that sort of needed to be smelled to be described. I'd encountered plenty of black bears during my wanderings through White Sands, especially when I moved away from the ocean and into grassier and woodsier areas, and had gotten to the point where I could smell a bear well before I saw one coming, especially if the wind was blowing the right way. That wasn't even a unique quirk of my draconic biology remapping onto human form. Several hunters who lived in those areas had possessed a similar ability, though theirs tended to take longer to develop than mine had.

The scent that Yushin had projected out via her illusion magic was similar, but also rather different. It was less earthy and grassy, and somewhat fishier. Yushin had also measured in smells of frost and metal and ocean ice, possibly inspired by the distant scents of the Dreki homeland. She wasn't able to replicate the scent of a bloodline, not with her current magic, but she was able to hide us more effectively, and hopefully we would come across as nothing more than an ordinary armored polar bear suppressing its bloodline for whatever reason.

As we moved down the ledge and in the direction of the nearby pillar with a handful of the gelid crystals in it, most nearby animals moved out of our way, giving us a wide berth. All save for one, a large muskox like creature with horns made of ice. Its bloodline was shockingly potent, though a lot of it felt very passive. It couldn't draw on a lot of power to amplify its baseline, but that baseline was set significantly higher than it would be for most beings. It was still weaker than Gerhard, but it was about as strong as I was, and it had much more to draw on than I did.

The muskox lowered its head and snorted, stamping its foot and snuffling out a challenge. Yushin shot me commands through the mental link, and I allowed my own invisibility to fall away as she cast her own illusions rapidly. The muskox charged, and I moved in sync with the illusionary bear, letting my bloodline burn bright within me, and trusting that Yushin would be able to stop any scent from leaking. I was good enough not to leak smoke, at least, which should cut down on issues, but it was still dangerous.

The instant the illusionary paw connected with the muskox's head, my foot lashed out with a full-powered kick, throwing just about everything I could into it. My fire instantly dropped from full strength down to half. In the same instant, three knockout rays, one of which was supercharged by the power of Salem's affinity modifications, slammed into the front of the muskox, covered by an illusion. The result was instant, as the massive creature was thrown off its feet and sent skidding until it struck one of the cavern walls, where it crashed to the floor, asleep.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

After that, nothing went out of its way to bother us. We arrived at a stalagmite that had a gelid crystal in it, and Yushin had the bearlike form of the illusion scratch at the wall of ice to hide my combined casting of erode matter and a corrosive curse. The moment the curse died, I cut the magic and Salem removed the gelid crystal, tossing it into his locker.

We slowly moved our way through the cavern, keeping our distance from any of the real ice-armored bears, since we didn't know exactly how they'd react to our presence. Whenever we drew close to another gelid crystal, we repeated our scratching stunt, and then swiftly moved on.

Twice more, we were forced to bat something out of the way when it got too close and curious, and I found myself grateful for my ability to transfer ether shaping techniques into fire shaping and vice versa. Between my modified version of Xander's massage and Maugrim's surge, I was just barely able to pull off a third bloodline-shaking explosive attack.

When we collected the tenth gelid crystal, Jackson reached out through our mental link.

"Do we want to go for another crystal? There are hundreds in the cavern, but this is a big place. I worry we might have to get into another fight. Still, they're valuable components."

"Valuable components that none of us can use," I pointed out. "None of us have an ice affinity, or use a lot of ice magic. We'd be doing it for the cash. Split four ways, we could probably each make out with roughly two thousand silver, if they're really as potent as the Erudite claims."

"Lotta money," Salem observed.

"It is, but I do not think it is needed," Yushin said. "We have stretched our luck to collect the ten we need. Better to retreat with success than end with potential failure."

"It's not needed for you," Jackson's mental voice said. "I don't have a cultivator family backing my growth. What funds Effervesce's church gets are re-invested in the community or the church. I could use it."

In the end, I refused to vote, and Salem wound up voting for us to try, against Yushin's better judgement. I could see Yushin's point, but I could also see how two thousand silver would be quite appealing. I thought it would be nice – I had ritual magic to do, after all – but I didn't think it would be strictly needed. Seeing she was outvoted, Yushin began to move the illusion once again, and we started making our way through the cavern.

We were almost at the ice pillar when one of the giant flying snakes made of ice shot down toward us. Its mouth was glowing with a glacial light, and as it opened its mouth, a frozen breath weapon slammed down into the ground where we were standing. Yushin cursed as we scattered, and the illusion was broken. Seeing that we were all visible once again, Jackson thrust his hand forward, his mental voice ringing through our link.

"Emrys, go get the gelid crystal! I will hold off the serpent!"

I bit my lip, debating if it was worth sending the message or not, before eventually deciding that there was no reason not to.

"If you can get its skin, get it! If it puts you at risk, don't!"

Yushin was gone already, while Salem's right hand was flicking as he muttered wildly and launched wind blade spells at the snake with his wand. I didn't even know how he was managing to cast two spells at once, but now wasn't the time to question it. As Jackson exploded into what looked a living avatar of flame, I conjured Seren and Orla and began to rush towards the pillar of ice.

All around us, creatures began to bray and shout at the sudden appearance of humans, and of so much heat and flame in a place that obviously rarely saw it. Jackson thrust his hand out and was releasing thin spears of fire while his voice boomed out a prayer, but that was the last I was able to pay attention, as a new creature was charging right at me. I spun my wand, unleashing a fast-acting but powerful combat curse, and it sprawled into a tangle of limbs, knocking right into a large cat-like creature. Something leapt from behind me, and I moved my buckler to intercept, then unleashed a focused arcane missile, shaped into a sharp, thin spike.

The ice I was sprinting on suddenly exploded up around me, trapping my feet, and I snarled a curse as one of the large, armored bears began lumbering toward me. I slashed my wand and chanted a few words, conjuring an arctic fox. It eyed me curiously, and I gestured to my feet, then spoke in the bloodline tongue of air – ice would have been better, but I didn't know ice.

"Free my legs!"

The fox focused, even as Seren and Orla shot into battle against the bear. It swiped a paw, and Orla's blue magic shimmered around the monster's hand for an instant. She wasn't able to stop the bear, but she was able to hold it back for an instant, just long enough for her wings to launch them into the air and out of the way. Seren hissed and shouted something that sounded vaguely like 'there are no managerial positions open at this time!' in flametongue before unleashing a sharp, focused stream of fire from his small mouth, burning a hole in the armor of the bear. It roared in pain, but it was really only pain, not true injury. While they fought, I whipped my wand, casting shields, flinging defensive curses, and shifting my buckler around to stop me from being pasted by the tide of monsters.

Then the fox finished her work, and I leapt onto my broom, blasting toward the stalagmite and firing off my erosive combination spell. I punched in, grabbed the crystal, and shouted, "recall!", before vanishing in a wave of blue light.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.