Knives & Levels - Chapter 102

The first thing Julia noticed when looking over at the massive ice wall was the thick Edicts in the air.

It was hard to pay attention to the screams and pain from her allies or the flare of light that slammed into the ice wall.

No, it was those Edicts. They were a thick pool of freezing water that washed out the air; she felt like she was drowning beneath it. Her limbs were heavy and shivering as it pulled everything beneath its tidal waves and dominated the domain as if it were an actual ocean of cold. This was the power of Edicts and environmental resonance; an Edict in its natural environment was an almost transcendent thing.

“Run!” Colt yelled, and then that was the last thing she heard from her friend as the wind and snow raged into a blizzard. Robbing them of the ease of communication.

Nate, hauling Nick over his shoulder, ran off to comply. Running away as fast as the man could manage while carrying another… Given their superior bodies compared to what they had been, it was still fairly damn fast. Limited mostly by the treacherous environment.

As she turned her eyes back to the wall of ice, it shattered; bits of it spinning and breaking from a punch. It gave a prime view of the Yeti. Its form was a little clearer now, the crimson casting off the shaggy, overgrown, and matted white hair. Not a clean monster at all. The hair was matted, gnarled, filled with viscera and gunk and blood from many kills over many moons. It stumbled forward one foot, shaking the earth, and just the sight of it felt like she’d take a stream of ice and injected it straight into her heart.

This monster…

It was on an entirely different scale than what they'd faced before. To call the other things they'd killed—Csaba, Cerberus—the same as this beast was like comparing a light to the sun. Julia felt a cold shiver of fear in her heart as its laws and grasp over the world dominated hers, fighting for control.

After hearing Colt and seeing such a deadly threat, Julia did what came naturally and followed Nate’s lead. She very nobly turned tail and retreated, surging forward and scrambling through the crimson mist with the rest of her allies.

She stopped after her first few steps, seeing Colt vanish in a puff of snow and ice… And Sarah, nearby, staring after him, looking very much like she’d run the wrong way and join that crazy man in battling the Yeti.

"We have to go!" Nate screamed at her, noticing the same thing, and also like Julia, stopping.

"I'm not leaving him!" Sarah yelled, also having to fight to make her voice heard above the rush of snow and ice.

"You'll only get in his way and—and I—" Nate shouted back, trying to talk sense into her.

If there was one thing Sarah could be, it was stubborn. Julia saw that Nate wasn't making much progress and it was stalling out his own fleeing, and decided to intervene because he was trying to haul Nick along with him, too.

Stalling him out was bad overall.

"We have to go," Julia said, moving beside Sarah and taking her arm. "Colt's relying on us to get Nick away. Unless you want him to die and become Yeti food, which maybe you do, we should clear the area and follow the plan.”

"It's a suicide mission," Sarah protested.

"It isn't if you can run really fast like he can," Julia reiterated, having confidence. If anyone in her group could face down a monster of this scale and strength and then somehow managed to get away with their life, it would be Colt. That much was absolutely certain.

She trusted in him and his abilities, having seen him do miraculous things the entire way through the apocalypse. The best she could do here was enable it. “Trust me,” Julia begged, and she saw Sarah teeter on the brink of her resolve.

Seeing her friend suffer, and knowing they needed to get to work, Julia multitasked. Collecting the blood on the ground in a floating orb of water, flexing her superior control over the magic. It collected, hanging above them. What she would do with it, she didn't know, but as Nate scrambled away, taking Nick with him and trusting Sarah to her, Julia did what she could.

Cover their tracks, collect the blood.

When she had had enough, she’d scatter it somewhere, whatever it took to clear their trail. The winds tore at them as they ran, and soon as the mist collected again, throwing some distance between them and the yeti, they could hear vicious scrawls of anger and pain.

“Fine!” Sarah yelled and turned her back on the fight, thankfully conceding that some things were out of their hands.

That was the last thing Julia heard. No screaming from Colt—no more roaring from the Yeti. The blizzard around them overtook it. There was nothing to indicate that anyone was dying… Maybe that was a bad or good sign. Hard to say. Julia just honed in and focused on putting her two feet in front of her and her job in this mess: obscure their trail so the Yeti couldn't track them.

Simple. Yet she wondered if she was even doing that correctly. How good of a hunter was this thing? The fact that it had been able to tackle wolves when they had any issue finding it made her worry.

Then a horrid thing happened. The mist condensed in front of the four of them, swirling into shape, forming a large black outline of a shadowy figure—the exact same figure that they had just fled from. The Yeti.

There was a roar from the mist as it solidified, condensing into not exactly a duplicate version, but an approximation of it. This thing, though, unlike the actual Yeti they'd fled from, was made of ice.

At first glance, it was almost impossible to tell, given the environment. But for her, the way that the Edicts felt in the form, she could see it. It made everything about it stand out more, from the light glint in the fur to the way the snow didn’t quite form right as the sculpture of the Yeti plodded toward them. This may not be the same Yeti that Colt was fighting, but more likely than not, it would do its best to kill them.

What was it? Some kind of extension of its ability?

Julia did the first thing that came naturally. The blood she'd collected in an orb condensed suddenly into a spear made of ice. Before the thing had got any of its wits together, she slammed a spear of ice into it.

It spiraled in the air, shooting a hole through the blizzard, and crashed directly into the Yeti, spearing right through its ice form. It hung there, the Yeti shaking as it took the blow, but not dead; she’d landed and it had survived the thing, despite it being a point-blank hit that would be in a vital area for anything else.

Well, she couldn’t expect much else. It was made out of ice.

Not great.

"What the hell is that thing?" Sarah asked. "Is it the Yeti? What happened to Colt?"

"No," Julia said, realizing that without her grasp over water and Edicts, it would be hard to tell. For her, it was a glance. Looking at it just basically, and with the mist all around them, it was easy to mistake the fact that this wasn't the real deal. "It has some kind of copy that it sent after us."

It was an estimated guess, but based on the fact that her attack had at least landed, which she didn't think would happen with the real Yeti, it was a safe assumption. This version was weaker, yes, but that didn't mean it wasn't dangerous.

"Keep running with Nick," Julia said, swirling more water into the air, condensing two more spears of ice as she siphoned off the snow and forced it into shape. Working with snow was harder than working with natural water, but the longer she was here, the more familiar she became with it. They were just different forms from one another…

Nate grunted an acknowledgement and kept going. He’d be a good soldier and follow orders. Since he was hauling their weakest one, which was now a new threat that needed to be dealt with, he would let others do what they thought themselves capable of. Julia felt a rush of pride from it. He trusted her to take care of this and do what she said.

The truth was, she didn't know if she could handle this. Though she had a grasp of water and her edicts, and this was a thing made of ice, she didn't know how she stacked up against that behemoth of a monster out there. If this was its creation, it was very possible that it could overpower her, and she'd stand no shot at all.

She slammed another spear of ice through the air at it, watching it hit the thing's shoulder as this time it moved to dodge.

More like that. And maybe…

Regardless of whether she felt confident or not, she'd be taking this thing on.

Nate made quick distance, but when she turned to check, readying her other spear made of ice, she saw that Sarah had not left. The girl was tense, standing next to Julia, fists raised.

"You're supposed to be gone," Julia said, flabbergasted. "Don't you want to live? Get away! This is twice now.”

"You're not dying, Julia," Sarah said, "and I'm not leaving you either. We're taking this thing down, and then we'll catch up with Nate and Nick."

"You're crazy," Julia muttered, shaking her head with a slight laugh.

"Yeah, I'm crazy. Just like you’re crazy. Miss, ‘you’re all NPC’s’ Come on, throw that spear and let's get this started."

Julia cackled, feeling better now about her choice. She didn't know if this was even possible, but with her friend at her back, the odds seemed just all that much better.

With a wild smile at her friend, she spiraled another spear into the Yeti; this time, it managed to dodge before the blow hit. It appeared to have adapted to her spamming out the attack too frequently.

In response to her attack, it finally made one of its own.

It let out a viscous growl, and a field of spikes began to rise from the ground where it sat towards them; spears shooting up one by one like dominoes rising out of the snow in a cone in front of it, heading rapidly at them.

Julia felt them, and the Edicts coursed through each as it manifested its will on the world and imposed a deadly field of death onto it…

She pressed back as it got close, making a barrier of snow and ice underneath her feet, struggling and going to her knees to press her hand against the layer of ice below. It wrestled her and then gave up… This imitation of the Yeti was an extension of the boss…

Julia let out a harsh breath, sweat running from her brow.

I won.

And the reward was stopping her and Sarah from being skewered alive. Next to her, Sarah cracked a fist into the other and frowned. “Well done,” she said, acknowledging Julia’s efforts.

This was going to be tough. Julia got back to her feet and dusted the snow off her pants. If this was their last fight, she’d be going down with her ally. “Fight’s not done yet. It’s just getting started.”