Chapter 140: Icarus
Chapter 140: Icarus
The surface met me with a bright light of sun, icy mountain wind and snow, snow, snow all around. In other words, I could’ve surfaced at any other place of the mountain, and the only thing that made this one different from the others were the holes in the snow from one of which I emerged.
I was sick of the both curses, and what was worse, I wasn’t entirely sure how to kill them. It was the weakest point of my plan. I could just leave the place entirely. What would they do? They won’t find me. I’d leave no trace.
But to leave without getting my revenge? The thought alone made me want to scream in rage. Both of them played, or tried to play me, seemingly for nothing but their own amusement. They had everything they might want. They had no reason to confront me in any way, but they still did for shits and giggles, it appeared. Oh, and to harm each other, because they hated each other too, the same way I hated them now.
I looked around the spot where I emerged from Marianna’s lair. It was a hole in a snow-covered slope, surrounded by more snow-covered slopes, all lying on top of some frozen rocks. There was nothing for me to use.
With pain reverberating through my entire body—or what was left of it—I morphed from a winged snake into something more humanoid. The lack of body mass made me abandon half of my hands, and even then I had to lose a dozen centimetres of height or stretch myself thin. From the hole below I heard angry echoing voices of Marianna and Naread, but couldn’t understand words.
‘Master, I will have to restart the poison delay spell in about ten minutes,’ Pest suddenly spoke.
“Damn it!” Now I didn’t have time at all. I kicked at the snow in frustration, clenching my fists until my claws broke my palms. Even if I started digging through the rock in an attempt to drop the cave’s ceiling on them, it would take too long. Fuelled by rage, I shouted on top of my lungs, “I HATE THE BOTH YOU, DAMNED BASTARDS, AND I HOPE YOU WILL DIE IN HORRIBLE TORMENT AND WISH YOU HAD SOULS SO YOU COULD CONTINUE BEING TORTURED IN HELL!”
Besides letting out some of my steam, that scream had another purpose. I hoped, as foolish as it felt, that this scream might trigger an avalanche that will make my work for me. I waited for it with a bated breath.
A second passed, and a wind brought me an echo of my own words and a sound of some bird’s alarmed cry. But no avalanches began. It didn’t work! The anger was back there with vengeance, vengeance that I didn’t seem to be able to achieve towards these two this time.
It stole my rationality, but gave me a new idea and strength to pursue it. I flapped my wings and brandished my claws with another angry and, wordless this time, scream. The first set of wind blades was aimed at the top of the nearest cliff, but after that I flew up, and aimed above it, and above.
I shot the wind blades left and right, absolutely haphazardly. If just blind luck wasn’t enough to win, then blind luck forced into being by a lot of blind hitting was my next choice.
All the while, I kept screaming. Screaming and shouting, shooting and screaming, not even bothering to look around for anyone who, after hearing that screaming, decided to move towards it and not away. For me, at that moment, screaming was good. Screaming was right. Screaming let out some of that rage boiling in me, and it also increased the chances of my success and a start of an avalanche.
I was almost at the top of the mountain peak when the snow moved. It was slow at first, but with each second, the wave of it gained momentum and mass. From where I hovered, safely away from it, it appeared deceptively harmless, until it began to catch rocks and stray trees on its way down.
This was when I felt a wave of numbness flow through my body.
‘Master, I can’t hold the spell any longer!’ Pest exclaimed in genuine alarm. This differed from his usual cold or biting notifications. ‘Get away from here!’
I didn’t need him to tell me that. My wings already refused to listen to me, or even hold their form well enough for me to beat them. Without them keeping me in the air, I would fall into the avalanche, where I would be at my most helpless… So I forced myself from the last of my power to beat them hard and to fly myself away.
There was only so much of the lasts of my power. The force of the poison coursing through my body didn’t wait to steal all of it. With a sudden clarity, I realised that while I might bury the two annoying curses under that avalanche, I will become a victim of it, too.
So be it. There were ways to survive, even in that case. My body won’t be crushed to death under the snow. All I had to care for is to not suffocate before I eat or dig my way through it. My eyes refused to work at this point, but I could muster enough blind sense to spot a tree trunk with a hollow in it coursing through the avalanche below.
My wings wouldn’t beat anymore, and I was falling uncontrollably into the snow, but with all there was left in me, I reached for that trunk. When my slimy body fell on top of that hollow, I tried to stuff as much of it in as I could. Then, I could move no more. The only thing left for me was counting the seconds until Pest restarted the spell and I could move again.
‘If you can do something to help me now, Pest, do it!’
I counted up to fifteen before the trunk turned, and I was submerged under a wave of snow.