CH62 Frosto the Demon
“Those dance shoes look really cute.” Fufi bobbed her long neck at different angles to look at Alex’s new footwear.
Alex wabbled her shoe-covered feet. “It is nice to finally upgrade to something other than wooden sandals.”
“You don’t consider your bird talons and upgrade in footwear? We matched for a few days.” Fufi pouted.
“How did we match? You have webbed feet for swimming. I had raptor claws for abducting people.” Alex crossed her arms. It was nice to be able to do that again.
“Meru!” Merumeru offered tea to the pair.
Alex and Fufi both took their stone tea glasses in turn and became quiet. The tea was good and made the petty arguing seem silly.
“I suppose we have to start heading back now. I don’t really want to linger around this temple any longer. It is like visiting a haunted house,” Alex said.
“Yeah, but we can’t fly back. We’ll have to descend the mountains the hard way. It will take many times longer than it did to get here.” Fufi lowered her beak. The flamingo didn’t like slow travel much.
“We can just head southeast and with the sled bits we made on the carriage it should be quick at least when we are going down hill. It won’t be as quick as flying but hopefully if we can find a decent route it’ll be better than walking.” Alex sipped some tea and looked outside to see the sun still low in the sky. “We’ve got all day ahead of us for travel so let's get going.”
The three girls left, winding the carriage key and starting the back wheels. The drive was difficult due to the lack of prior ice testing. While it moved adequately on flat ground, braking on ice proved impossible, leading to several near crashes as they slid down the glacier.
Fufi flew ahead to find a safe route, calling out directions. Following her lead, Alex and the others progressed slowly but steadily, putting a considerable distance between themselves and the temple by the end of their first day. By weaving back and forth to avoid overly steep terrain, they had two mountains behind them. Fufi estimated they had traveled approximately 30 miles before sunset.
The next day started similarly but when Fufi flew her scouting route she came back in a hurry. “Alex, Merumeru, there is an ice demon out there. It was shooting ice spears at me!”
“Oh no, I thought we were far away from their camp. Hurry back, I'll get the dolls.” Alex pulled out Lily, Rose and Edelweiss and took up a guarding position on top of the carriage.
—Ice Demon Frosto’s POV—
In the frozen waste, Frosto, a direct disciple of his sect's master, hunted intruders. Despite his esteemed position, the frost demon sect was generally scorned within demon society. Frost cultivation was considered antithetical to demonic nature. However, this disdain offered a degree of isolation.
Frosto's origins were not as a frost demon. He had evolved from a first-tier imp to a regular demon during the war nearly a century prior. The war was a period of dramatic shifts. Initially, the demons, aided by the demon queen's agents, easily infiltrated weakened human kingdoms, encountering minimal resistance. This changed with the emergence of a hero who united the free world against them, leading to significant demon losses. However, the hero's subsequent retirement allowed the demon queen's forces to ultimately conquer or subdue the remaining human civilization.
That is when the trouble started. Her vengeance sated, the demon queen took less and less of an active role in her demonic minions. Without an active leader or a shared enemy the demons’ conflict turned inward. Betray, intrigue and dominance became the rules of demonic society. Recent history has been plagued by demon on demon violence. Places to cultivate easily became less and less common.
Like all of the second tier demons who went to train on the peaks with the master, Frosto became an ice demon to escape a knife in the back even if it meant seeming shameful to the more traditional cultivators.
The ice sect found ample ice in the mountain range for their cultivation. However, the purity temple remained a persistent obstacle, resisting numerous assaults. No one was seen leaving the temple, its only visitors being harpies drawn by an unseen allure. The ice sect, led by Frosto, had anticipated the humans' demise long ago, considering their fragility compared to the demonic cultivators. Yet, the temple's guardians proved formidable, their increasing similarity over time a peculiar observation. Although harpies never defended the temple, the ice sect was at a standstill without stronger demons. The master's pride, Frosto believed, prevented him from seeking help from other sects. Their orders were to attack only from afar, avoiding significant losses. Frosto considered the master overly cautious, questioning the importance of lower-ranking disciples.
An ice acolyte reported strange tracks leading away from the temple, which he followed to a furry beast. Frosto, a second-tier demon disciple, was dispatched to eliminate it. Upon arriving, Frosto observed the creature with a pink bird circling above, possibly scouting. He vaguely recalled something significant about pink birds but couldn't place it. Assuming the beast was either a threat or perhaps an envoy from the clergy seeking nonexistent aid in human lands, Frosto planned to stake its head as a warning or lure.
The ice demon shot ice spikes at the bird flying about,trying to impale it.
None of them hit.
The pink bird didn’t fly low enough for him to have an easy shot and didn’t fly in a straight line enough for him to lead a shot and have it hit.
The blue-skinned demon harried the bird until he chased it back to the white furry beast.
Frosto saw a pair of people by the large beast. One of them was obviously a priestess from the temple. On his scouting missions he’d caught sight of the pair that regularly stood guard over the gate and she was the female of the pair that he always saw there. Oddly, she held three dolls in her arms. The other creature appeared to be a small human-shaped slime wearing a red shirt, blue overalls and a red hat.
Arrogantly the blue-skinned demon shouted, “I am frost disciple of the frost sect. Surrender now or face the might of a second tier demon practitioner.”
The priestly woman looked at the pink bird and said, “Are all demons this arrogant?”
The bird nodded, “Pretty much. But be careful Alex, third tier demons are no joke.”
Incensed at being ignored, Frosto summoned a gale of ice shards and flung them at the group.
The pink bird flew above it.
The slime hopped behind the large animal.
The priestess simply said, “Let's dance” and started spinning and flipping around. She avoided every shard of ice, moving at incredible speed.
Frosto gaped at the inhuman speed. “I see that you are a worthy foe. Feel honored for now I will not hold back!”
The priestess held up a hand. “Can you give me one second? I like to play music while I dance.”
Frosto just blinked in disbelief and looked around, seeing no band.
The priestess took a rectangle block out of her skirt and pressed it. “Do nothing till you hear from me, that’s a nice one.” Then the block started emitting a sound that had some piano, bass and a rather jazzy tune.
“I certainly will not do anything just because you demand it.” Frosto summoned ice lances from the glacier they were standing on.
The priestess simply danced around them like this was some kind of game.
“You certainly are a lively dance partner.” The priestess grabbed a pillar of ice and spun around it like it was a pole.
Incensed, Frosto summoned a whirlwind of ice shards that blotted out the area scouring everything. The ice was so thick that he couldn’t even see. There was no way anyone could dodge that.
“Ugh, you tore up the firs on my carriage. No more playing nice.” The priestess stepped out of the whirlwind unscathed. Not even her clothing was damaged.
“Impossible!” Frosto’s eyes went wide.
The three dolls spun into action. One shot arrows at him with alarming speed. Another one charged at him with a rotating rock on a pole. A third one, pitched on top of the carriage sprayed water at him.
Frosto raised a hand and channeled his ice cultivation. The water froze before it could blast him back and became a barrier that blocked the attacks of the two other dolls. “Fool, you would use water on an ice cultivator?!”
They went back and forth, Frosto could not land a single hit on the priestess but he could blast the dolls. They took some damage from area attacks.
The thick sheet of ice he summoned could be destroyed but they took time. The doll with the stone on a stick drilled through them but he just made more.
It looked like this would go on forever but the dolls were eventually damaged beyond repair. The song playing on the phone ended and there was a few seconds of odd silence.
The two stared at each other awkwardly.
From how her abilities had shown themselves, Frosto figured that she had incredibly dodging skills but if her water attack was her main attack then she’d picked a bad foe to match up with. Feeling his victory assured, that is when the blue-skilled cultivator let a smirk show on his face.
And that is when the doom music started.
Alex’s phone thundered a horrible tune of some distorted metal.
Frosto had never heard anything like it. It was kinda cool to his demon sense of music.
The priestess just altered her dance into something more primal, going with the flow. A panel shot off the carriage and clanked onto the ice.
A small plush stood there with one clothy foot extended from kicking down the panel.
“Hero?!” The pink bird cried.
The hero pointed a mitt-like hand at the demon. Then the stuffed doll extended a thumb and pointed it at the ground.
Frosto might have found it intimidating except for the fact that it was a child’s toy.
The doll's button eyes glowed red and the next thing Frosto knew it was grasping his face. The two-foot cotton-stuffed figure gave him a suplex by holding his head and bending over backward.
Frosto crashed to the ground and felt ribs crack. As a third tier demon though he could regenerate them quickly. They snapped back into place while he glared at that little cotton terror.
Frosto formed long talons of ice and launched a flurry of blows at the tiny creature of fabric and stuffing.
None of the blows landed.
The doll suddenly started glowing with a purple aura. He shot into the ice demon’s gut with a poof of a pillow hitting someone. The doll launched into the air, carrying the demon with him. He put Frosto’s head between his cloth legs. As they gained altitude the doll and demon pair spun like a top with the demon’s head facing the ground.
The last thing Frosto saw was one of his own ice spikes fastly approaching his head.
The hero doll finished the pile driver, absolutely obliterating the demon’s head into one of the ice spikes.
The song ended with, “Rip and tear until it is done.”
Seeing the fight was over, Alex stopped the music. “Well, that just happened.”
Everyone regarded the hero doll with renewed respect.
Frosto’s mangled body twitched once then stilled, and a blue mist began trickling from the corpse.