Chapter 430: Running Out of Time
"I don’t need forever," Ashlynn said with as much confidence as she could muster. "Just long enough."
The words were more bravado than truth. She’d already been fighting for what felt like hours inside this crystalline prison, and her enhanced strength was beginning to falter. Already, she was denied any source of living growth to fuel her witchcraft, and at night, she couldn’t even draw on the sun’s faint warmth as a source of flame. The Ice Tomb only added to her troubles, isolating her from the mountain wind and the vast reserves of ice and snow.
In the end, only the solid stone ground under her feet offered any source of strength, but Ashlynn had long ago found that there was a vast difference between lush, living soil and cold, barren earth. What the mountain offered her, it offered only grudgingly, as if it knew that the right to command it belonged to a different lineage of witches.
"Long enough for what?" Ines’s cold, feminine voice echoed through Hauke’s mouth. "For your vampire mistress? She’s abandoned you to chase shadows." Hauke might not have noticed, but Ines still maintained the faintest of connections to the blizzard she’d summoned outside the Ice Tomb. Not enough to know what was occurring outside, but more than enough to have noticed Nyrielle’s hasty departure, as though she were hunting something far away in the direction of the ancestral cave that once held Ines and her fellow spirits hostage.
Perhaps the vampire had seen through them and was even now searching their former tomb for a method of unraveling their bond to the young Hauke, but those efforts would only prove futile. The only records that remained in that ancient cave told of their creation. None of them were foolish enough to leave behind a method to destroy them.
Ashlynn said nothing, conserving her breath as she drew steadily on the power of earth beneath her feet, hardening her flesh until she felt like she’d wrapped herself in a thin layer of armor. It wasn’t much protection, especially not against Ansgar’s runic blade, but it was all she could manage.
She could feel Nyrielle through their bond, and her lover’s heartbeat echoed in her chest. It had grown distant, but it felt strong and determined, focused on something that troubled Nyrielle so greatly she dared not confront it close to Ashlynn.
Heila’s presence was fainter. The bond between a witch and her coven was lighter and less... imposing than the bond between a True Vampire and her Seneschal, but Ashlynn felt her friend close at hand, perhaps only a few feet from the other side of the icy walls. Her presence was faint, flickering like a candle flame in winter, but still there. Still trying to reach her.
All she needed was time.
Ansgar charged again, but this time, Ashlynn was ready. Instead of dodging or parrying, she crouched low, dropping underneath Ansgar’s swing in a move that was completely bereft of dignity but made every possible use of the power she’d gained when she rooted herself to the ground. As Ansgar’s blade passed overhead, she sprung upward, lashing out with her falchion and scoring a long cut across Hauke’s thigh.