Chapter 431: Shattered Sword
The Ice Tomb shook with powerful impacts as the fierce battle between Ashlynn and the ancestral spirits became even more intense. Ashlynn’s hands felt numb from repeated impacts on her sword, and her body screamed in agony with every move, yet she dared not slow down. She’d abandoned thoughts of fighting back, and for the moment, she focused only on exhausting her opponents, hoping to wear them down and find an opportunity to counterattack.
Outside the walls of ice, Heila’s presence felt dimmer and weaker than it had just a few minutes ago, and as much as Ashlynn wanted to believe that help was coming for her, she was increasingly worried that her rescuers were running into their own difficulties.
More than anything, she wanted to break through the walls of this prison, to check on Heila and everyone else with the army, but the ancestral spirits had no intention of letting her escape. The best she could do was to keep one of the icy walls close at all times in the hopes that stray blows would fall on the increasingly brittle ice.
Trapped in his own mind, Hauke allowed himself to hang limply from the frozen chains that bound him as he helplessly watched Ashlynn’s struggle. Already, a tingling pain had begun to spread through his body as the ancestors pushed his body to its limits, overtaxing his muscles and drawing more deeply on his reserves of magical energy than he’d ever dared to himself.
"Please," Hauke said in a defeated, plaintive tone. "If you keep this up, I’ll die. I can’t keep using energy like this."
"You can, you’ve just forgotten how," Eraric’s gravely voice said. Ever since handing over the sword he’d crafted, he’d taken a seat on his pedestal, content to watch Ansgar and Ines making use of his work to subdue the young Mother of Trees. "There’s a reason that even the Fangs of Death once feared those born with an iridescent horn, young Hauke. You’re seeing it now."
"Seeing what?" Hauke asked as he carefully worked to free one of his wrists from the chains. The more of his energy that Ansgar and Ines spent fighting Ashlynn, the weaker the chains grew. The links themselves seemed to be melting away, and already they had grown thin enough for him to make small movements that would have been impossible when this madness began. "Why would the Fangs of Death ever fear us?"
"Ines has been teaching you, hasn’t she?" Kimsel asked without taking her eyes off of the view of the battle raging in the outside world. Ines blizzard obscured much of what they were able to see through Hauke’s eyes, but it was clear that the Mother of Trees was badly wounded, and her blood stained the snow in several places within the icy prison.
"Witches use the power of the world," the old woman continued slowly. "Vampires use the power of death. But to think that we are ordinary sorcerers," she said with a dismissive -tsk- noise. "We build up our power in layer after layer of ice, waiting to be unleashed in a powerful avalanche. Perhaps we are weak and vulnerable out there in the wider world," she said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of distant lands. "But on our mountains, standing atop centuries of accumulated power, we will never be defeated."
"Maybe that was true once," Hauke argued. "But not anymore. You said it yourself," he said, turning to face Eraric. "We’ve forgotten. No one knows how to use the power you use. But if you use that power to kill Lady Ashlynn, then Lady Nyrielle’s army will destroy us. Instead of saving us by killing Heila, you’ll doom us by killing Ashlynn!" Hauke shouted, straining against his chains and lunging at the architect who’d used them to bind him in his own mind.
"The fortress is stronger than you know," Eraric countered, sighing at his descendant’s lack of confidence in his own people. "We’ll retreat within its walls and wait for winter. The vampire might be able to survive the cold, but her army is another matter. We will never be driven from our homes."
"You’re wrong," Hauke said, slumping against his chains again and looking even more defeated. Around his wrists, the chains slipped even further, but it still wasn’t enough. Before he could make another attempt at disguising a mighty tug on the chains, however, he heard a resounding, cruel laugh from the wall that displayed the outside world.