Aster Fall 55: Blood Winter (Patreon)

The shaman hadn’t delayed after attacking Elsanar. He had already turned around to grasp at the flaw again and was slowly drawing out another mass of spatial energy. This time, as Sam kept a careful watch on the Grand Flaw, he saw the sphere decrease in size, contracting inward by a couple of feet.

It had been 40 feet across originally, but now it was down to 35. The flames swirling throughout it looked dimmer as well. All around the sphere, there was a building pressure from the world, forcing it inward.

Whatever the shaman was doing to create his spells, it was pulling energy from the flaw. The other flaws must have been created from this method as well. It made sense now how there had been so many of them.

It looked like the energy wasn’t unlimited, but for the Grand Flaw to still be so large, it was clear that the shaman was building up its energy for something. From the little he knew of Grand Flaws, they were an enormous danger to the world. Even beyond the ability to create other flaws, there had to be something else behind them.

That didn’t matter now, however. Whatever was behind the flaw, one thing was clear. This Outsider needed to die.

All across the battlefield, the church forces continued to advance, but they were slowed by the Outsiders and monsters that had still been alive on the war beasts. Dealing with the war beasts themselves, even when they were already half dead, was also a slow process that took up the full attention of the three captains.

The beasts were just too large. The ice blades had shredded their torsos and faces, but they hadn’t penetrated deeply enough to destroy their major blood vessels or to puncture their organs. Even with their heads half-mangled, they were still thrashing, their massive claws and bodies crushing everything nearby.

The Ice Sylphs had just finished off the fourth war beast and now they turned their attention to the Outsiders around the flaw. Elsanar’s attack had eliminated a swathe of the monsters, but many others were still alive.

A whirlwind of sparkling Ice flowed around them as they ran forward, heading toward the remains of the invading army. At the center of that field, the red-lined shaman stood, warping the mass of energy in his hands to some new purpose.

If Sam did nothing, they might be successful, but there was no guarantee. Over the past day, the sylphs had already started to feel like cousins to him.

The shaman’s eyes were on the church forces as he molded the spatial energy. Waves of distortion rose up from it as the flames and rainbow darkness became something more sinister. It was some type of curse.

Given how easily that spear had cut through Elsanar, if the spell hit the church forces, it would be disastrous.

Sam glanced down at the three remaining pillars as he finished combusting the auras, returning his essence to full. He still had an Aura of Whispering Hoarfrost, an Aura of Ebon Corrosion, and an Aura of Blood Winter, which was the only other Expert aura. He needed something that would take out that shaman.

As he touched each of the pillars and felt the quality of the auras inside, his mind raced. He looked up, gazing into the heavens as calculations passed behind his eyes, and he finally nodded. When he looked down again, his aura had gone still. To anyone looking, it felt like his presence had suddenly blended into the world.

Even with the relic’s energy lines transferring the auras for him, he needed to be closer if he wanted his plan to work. He had intended to stay off the battlefield, but he was going to have to change that. All he could do was to try and hide his appearance, so that no matter what people saw, they didn’t put it together with Sam Hastern.

For that, he would have to rely on the Moonlight Relic. Without hesitating, he sent his intention to the Guardian Star and then pulled on the relic’s energy that was all around him, layering it over himself like a curtain.

A swirl of silvery light rose up from the stones by his feet, flowing into the enchantment around the water crystal. Instantly, a spray of a thousand water droplets rose up from the crystal. Under the influence of Elemental Manipulation, they flowed across his body, concealing his features until they were only a blur.

At the same time, the aura of moonlight from the relic’s imprint poured out of his skin, flowing outward as it refracted through the droplets. Like a rainbow born from a storm, the green, blue and purple light shone outward, splintering into ten thousand rays.

The spray covered him like a cloak, hanging all around his body. At the very top, his horns extended like two curving crescent moons.

He caught sight of his reflection from the ice below his feet, where the spray from the water crystal had frozen on top of the snow. The ice glistened like a mirror. When he saw the effect, he nodded. It was a horned man surrounded by layers of moonlight and a storm.

For this battle, he would be the Horned Hunter of the Moons.

He would have to hope that the energy of the ruins and the water elemental crystal would block Analyze. With the ruin activated and the water covering him...it might work. But now he needed to move.

He pulled half a dozen auras from his storage as he touched one of the aura pillars that was floating around the water crystal and then another, infusing half of his essence into each. Then as quickly as he could, he combusted the auras he’d just grabbed, restoring his essence.

As he combusted three auras and started on the fourth, it felt like his meridians were on fire. Boiling energy raced along his veins, searing him as smoke began to rise from his skin.

The Second Layer of his Essence Constellation flared in his blood as a web of energy stretched outward from it, spreading along his meridians to buffer them, but there was still too much energy.

It seemed fifteen auras was his limit now, and he was already at sixteen. He pushed the thought out of his mind as he combusted the last two auras anyway and focused on the last pillar around the crystal, pouring his essence into it.

While he focused on that, the other two pillars spread outward to different parts of the field. It was nearly impossible for him to delay their activation and a twisting pain wracked his spirit as he held them in place, but they were waiting for his command to begin.

As soon as the final aura was charged, he sent it after them. As he felt it reach the correct position, he forced himself to his feet. With three auras active at once, it was far harder to hold them together than just one.

He cradled the water crystal in his hands as he leapt off the roof and sprinted toward the battlefield. It was the focus point of his illusion, but even if it hadn’t been, it was too important to leave behind. The energy from the relic pulsed beneath his feet, hurling him onward. It felt like he was gliding across the stones.

It took him only a handful of seconds to reach the center of the battlefield, and by the time he was there, the shaman had already finished shaping its spell. A dark cloud stretched upward from its hands, flowing to either side like an undulating ribbon.

The dark flames of the flaw still burned inside the ribbon, which twisted in the air like a loose serpent, its edges coiling back and forth.

Behind him, the three captains were finishing off the war beasts as the church forces continued to advance across the field, but their defenses were nowhere near as strong as Elsanar’s scales. If the energy from the Grand Flaw struck them, it would probably rip straight through.

To one side, the Ice Sylphs were cutting their way through the Outsiders as they worked their way to the shaman, but a series of talismans and curses hung in the air, delaying them.

He stuffed the water crystal into his belt as he stared across the field toward the Iceblood Shaman as his hands rose into the air.

“Your opponent is me!” His voice roared out across the field, the tone made deep and resonant as it echoed through the water around him. A trace of the Moonlight Relic’s aura was there as well, infusing the words.

“You asked who was helping from the shadows! Do you dare to ask that question again?! For harming the people of Aster Fall, the Horned Hunter of the Moons will be your death.” His voice roared through the area. “The moons guard the world and I guard these ruins! Did you believe you were the strongest thing here?!”

The Outsider was pompous, so to get its attention, he did his best to be just as arrogant, but he didn’t reveal the name of the Moonlight Relic or its secrets. He wanted the Outsider to be cautious, not curious. It wouldn’t do to stir up its greed, and that went for the church as well.

As he finished speaking, his hands shone with rays of moonlight as he looked at the dark cloud in front of the shaman. It hadn’t moved since he appeared and grabbed the shaman’s attention. Without hesitating, he reached out to the first aura of the three auras.

“You want to understand Ice?” he shouted. “Behold the meaning of Hoarfrost!”

From the ground all around him, an enormous, curving curtain of water shot up toward the cloud. As it reached it, it exploded outward, turning to bright, white ice that froze into long crystals.

The crystals expanded in starburst chains like angular flowers blooming one after the other in the air. They pierced through the cloud in every direction, tearing it apart at the same time as they froze it, crushing it inside the crystals.

The bitter taste of winter’s frozen ash spread through the area, carried along with the crystals. In nature, hoarfrost formed and destroyed itself between one moment and the next. It never lasted for long.

The Grand Flaw had spatial properties, but compared to the Moonlight Relic’s energy, which had been designed in an ancient era to prevent spatial distortions, its strength was a strand of grass compared to a towering mountain.

Everywhere the ice spread, the spatial energy disappeared, sealed again as it returned to the dimensional barrier around Aster Fall.

“Who are you to dare to interfere?!” The Outsider Shaman roared in anger as it reached again toward the flaw, pulling out another, even larger mass of energy. The flaw shrank half a dozen feet in an instant. “Without the power of Aster Fall, I will never Evolve! For that goal, ten million deaths is nothing!”

Without hesitating, the shaman reached back and grabbed a second handful of energy, causing the flaw to shrink further as he added it to what he was already holding. He didn’t bother to shape the spell for more than an instant. He slapped his hands together, crushing the energy into a ball that he hurled at Sam.

Sam’s hand rose up again as another curtain of water roared upward from the stones at his feet. This water was as dark as ebony, so black that it looked like a hole in the night. With a gesture, he sent the wall of water roaring toward the shaman and the spell that it had just released.

The water echoed with a deep desolation and a feeling like it would corrode the world and everything it touched. When it struck the mass of energy, it swept it up in its momentum. For a moment, the sphere hung there, unchanging, and then the spatial ripples around it slowly began to separate, dissolving into the Aura of Ebon Corrosion.

The wall of water was much bigger than the shaman’s spell this time. Even as it swept the energy up, it continued onward, crashing onto the Outsiders and monsters that were near the shaman.

Under the force of that wave, the forces closest to the shaman washed away like a sandcastle on the shore. Only the shaman himself survived, since he was standing directly next to the flaw.

The wave washed over him, but the spatial distortion around the flaw resisted its force, even as the burning sphere shrank beneath the onslaught. A moment later, the wave disintegrated into shadows, disappearing from the ruins.

Sam staggered as he felt his essence hit nearly nothing again, but he did his best to conceal it behind the curtain of water around him. Even though he’d charged the auras before, just directing the blows had taken nearly all of his energy.

The shaman looked around him, taking in the destruction of his closest forces with a building fury as he directed his attention at Sam. Behind him, the Grand Flaw fluctuated, its size a quarter of what it had originally been.

“It doesn’t matter who you are!”

The shaman’s voice was a bitter snarl as he grabbed for another mass of energy from the flaw. This time, the flaw shrank to barely five feet across, almost as small as a regular flaw. The flames surrounded it flickered with a pale light and nearly disappeared.

“I don’t know how you summoned the energy for those strikes, but I can tell you are exhausted! Before, I would have allowed you to kneel and serve me, like others of this world have before, but now...die!”

The energy in his hands was more intense than anything that had come before. A sense of crackling disruption poured out from it, as if the edges of the world were breaking away. It was even stronger than the spear he'd used against Elsanar.

If Sam allowed it to land, there was no doubt that he would be torn apart by the force. His talons spasmed as he tried to control his temper, forcing himself to remain still.

He had one last aura to release, but controlling it would be nearly impossible. With the scorched status of his meridians, combusting any more auras would be futile. If it worked at all, it would only send him into convulsions. Despite that, his voice didn’t hold a trace of fear as he spoke.

“There’s something you’ve forgotten.” His words were as cold as winter as he slowly raised one hand and pointed at the sky. All around him, he could feel the flow of energy striking the ruins as the moons started to align. A distant chime echoed on the wind.

Above, with a slow movement, Caelus crossed the final, infinitesimal distance as midnight arrived. At that moment, as if a celestial chorus had been waiting for the command of its lead singer, three colors of moonlight surged through the heavens and fell onto the ruins below.

Like a cascading waterfall, the beams of light played across the ruins, sinking into the stones.

Another chime resonated across the stones, and then a third. The tune was a desolate accompaniment to the battle, a solitary bell in the night sounding above a frozen plain.

A sudden surge of energy rushed through the lines at Sam’s feet, pouring upward into his body as it infused the moonlight aura. All around him, the projection of moonlight exploded outward, tripling in size.

It didn’t refill his essence, but for that instant, there was a torrent of free energy to command and he turned it to his purpose.

“Let me show you the meaning of a Blood Winter.” His words echoed across the ruins, rebounding from the stones as he activated the last aura.

This time, it wasn’t one curtain of water, but a dozen. They rose up from every silver line of the ruins near his location, a torrent of them pouring crystalline water into the air. He reached out all around him, guiding the energy with Elemental Manipulation and the Moonlight Relic’s imprint.

CraaAAAAcckkK!

A shattering sound echoed outward as the water all around the ruins froze, turning translucent white. Along each crack, a line of red like blood spread outwards, staining the edge of the ice.

At that moment, there were a dozen walls of towering white ice at the center of the battlefield, all of them surrounding the Iceblood shaman and the Grand Flaw.

"What is this...?" The shaman stared at the ice around him, his eyes widening as a flicker of fear appeared on his face. "It feels like the ancients...."

The walls of ice were dangerous enough, but something about the red streaks on them spoke to him on a primal level, resonating with the bloodline he had been trying to advance. It woke ancestral memories that he barely understood, ones that told him to be afraid.

At that moment, a voice whispered on the wind, shuffling between the walls of ice. On top of one wall of ice, the bent and aged figure of an ancient woman with long, white hair appeared. She was half transparent, but every line of her body cut the viewer to the bone, as if she were more real than anything else.

Her head turned slowly toward the Iceblood Shaman and Sam, her blank, white eyes passing over them until they settled on the flaw. A frown passed across her face, the expression barely a curve of her lips, but her disapproval was clear.

“Beware of the winter, traveler. One side brings swift relief, and the other death.”

At that moment, a legend that his mother used to tell him surfaced in Sam’s mind, of the Boreal Dryad and Grandmother Winter. He didn’t know what the apparition was or why it had appeared now, but something about it locked him in place. The look she’d given him was calm, but the world was shaking.

A flicker of red appeared in the white of the apparition’s eyes. Slowly, it expanded, like a drop of blood in water. The color flowed out of the corners of her eyes as blood red tears ran down her face.

Her mouth framed the words “Blood Winter” and then she was gone, as if she’d never been. Instantly, a force shattered the ice walls as the red cracks expanded outward. Shards the size of buildings mixed with spears and icicles, all of them tinged red as they flew toward the Iceblood Shaman.

KRAAAAAAATTOOOOOM!

The explosion was so vast that it wiped away everything near where the shaman had been standing. Before it even reached him, his body froze to a pale white and then shattered from the force, turning to dust as the remains blasted outward on the wind, leaving only scoured earth behind.

It didn’t stop there. The massive force slammed into the Grand Flaw, burying it in ice as it froze the flames and sealed the entire area. At the very center, there was a black gash that spun with rainbow colors, but it was a speck compared to the ice around it.

In the wake of that explosion, silence fell across the battlefield.

Frozen ash drifted through the snow beneath the light of the three moons, slowly crumbly away to nothing.