As it turned out, Cold Paw had more going for him than just telepathy. In hindsight, it was obvious, but watching him plow through hardpacked snow faster than Nym could crawl after him would have been enough of a tip off even if he couldn’t see arcana gathering around Cold Paw. Nym just wished his magic extended to the snow he was pushing out of the way. That all flew backwards, and Nym quickly learned to give the animal a spacious twenty feet lead if he wanted to avoid being constantly pelted with loose snow.
He had no clue what Cold Paw was, and so he added researching local magical creatures to his list of things to learn about. The wolf seemed friendly though, so Nym followed, slowly at first, but then faster when they connected to a snow tunnel that was twice as wide as the ones Cold Paw made.
He wasn’t sure how far they traveled, not being used to crawling or walking hunched over, and not even really sure Cold Paw’s tunnels went in a straight line. He was getting tired though and decided it was time for a rest. “Hold on,” he said to the wolf. “I want a break from holding this thermal barrier. I’m going to melt down to the ground and make a little camp.”
Cold Paw yipped and scampered off up the tunnel a bit while Nym used his elemental water manipulation to push down the snow and compact it tighter. When that stopped working, he shifted to pushing it sideways instead. Eventually, he dug his way through about ten feet of snow to the frozen ground and laid out his heating spell.
Nym let himself relax for a few minutes, enjoying the rising heat and not having the mental strain of holding up the barrier. He used hydrokinesis to melt some of the snow and let it warm up for a bit before having a drink of cool, clean water. By the time he was done, the ground was getting soft from the spell, but Nym would be gone long before it turned muddy.
He stood up to leave, but got distracted by a whining sound overhead. Cold Paw stood at the edge of the tunnel, looking down at Nym’s impromptu camp, and scratching at the snow. He looked nervous, and when he saw Nym looking back at him, he started growling.
“In that much of a hurry?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
[Danger,] the wolf projected.
Before he could say anything else, ice and snow exploded out of one wall and a long, sinuous form crashed down onto the ground. It looked something like a snake formed from living ice, only twice as thick as Nym’s shoulders, and with a long series of scrabbling legs that ended in pointed, chitinous tips. They sunk into the soft ground, but the monster easily pulled itself out and shot forward.
A head that had no eyes, just a round hole full of teeth and extended mandibles that presumably pulled in prey, lunged at Nym, who shot up straight into the air and smacked against the icy roof of his camp site. The monster below, some unholy mixture of a centipede, worm, and snake, undulated across the ground, tearing it up into a muddy pit as the loose dirt mixed with the melting snow.
It didn’t pay Nym much heed once it was on the ground, which he found strange considering it lunged straight at him. Before he could consider it, he felt a rumbling in the ice behind him. Nym flew to the side just in time to avoid a second monster bursting through the ceiling and falling to join its brethren on the ground.
Everything was getting colder quickly, so Nym reactivated his thermal barrier. The combination of flight, insulation, and night vision was enough to tie his arcana up completely. Even forging a second conduit merely equalized the arcana going into his soul well with how much was coming out.
The monsters weren’t paying any attention to him now, so he flew over to where Cold Paw was growling down at them. “Come on,” he hissed. “Let’s get out of here before another one shows up.”
The wolf stopped growling and looked hesitantly at Nym. His head kept shifting back and forth, like he was expecting Nym to do something. “What?” he asked. “I’m not fighting those if we don’t have to. I run away from my problems.”
[No kill heat hunters?]
“Heat hunters?” Nym shuddered. “No thanks. They look dangerous.”
Reluctantly, Cold Paw turned away and started down the tunnel. No longer willing to crawl at a slow speed, Nym stretched out horizontally on a cushion of air and flew after him. The sound of the monsters thrashing around behind him echoed down the tunnel, motivating him to fly closer than he otherwise would have. Fortunately, the tunnels were already dug, so he wasn’t getting blasted with all the loose snow Cold Paw had been sending his way earlier.
They didn’t get very far before the monsters finished up whatever they were doing. The sudden lack of noise was more nerve-wracking than listening to them thrash around, if only because now Nym had no clue where they were. They could be heading straight for him, about to burst out of a wall and tear a limb off. Maybe Cold Paw was right and he should have attacked the worms.
Nym wished he’d taken the time to see if he could scry through snow. As it stood, he didn’t dare dismiss his night vision spell to check. That would be the instant the monster popped up, and he’d be blind and unable to react in time. He could dismiss the flight or thermal barrier spells, but he’d already determined that things didn’t quite work right when he was trying to run night vision and scrying at the same time. They interfered with each other and Nym mostly just got sick from the feedback.
He kept one hand on the wall as they flew, trying to feel for any rumbling that might indicate the monsters digging. He didn’t feel anything, but Nym wouldn’t be surprised to have one pop out in front of him anyway. He’d only felt the one that had come through the ceiling because his whole back was to ice, which was considerably more solid than packed snow. Even with that advantage, he’d only had a fraction of a second’s warning to get out of the way before the monster had pierced the roof and dropped onto his camp.
A few minutes passed with nothing happening, and Nym decided it was worth the risk to look around with scrying. He dismissed his night vision spell and poured arcana into scrying instead, then swept it around him in expanding circles. The good news was that he could in fact see various things embedded in the snow around him, mostly loose rocks. The bad news was that since the monsters could appear from any direction, it wasn’t great odds that he’d see them since he still only saw a few feet before everything faded to white.
Even if he perched the anchor for his scrying spell on his forehead, he was only going to get a split-second’s warning, and for that he was trading his ability to see down the tunnel. Cold Paw was far enough away that Nym couldn’t keep track of him without moving the scry anchor.
He swept the area one more time, following the curve of the tunnel, before he dismissed the scrying spell and recast night vision instead. “Should have stayed back at my original camp,” he muttered. Cold Paw gave a quiet woof that Nym took as agreement.
Snow exploded into the tunnel and a white, sinuous body filled his vision. It slammed into him as it flashed by, heading straight for Cold Paw. Nym was stunned for a second, but the wolf wasn’t defenseless. He leaped at the worm monster, nimbly skipping over its mouth-face and landing on its body. Sharp claws dug into icy flesh, scoring the scales deeply and staining its hide with some sort of greyish-blue ichor.
The second monster burst into the tunnel, also ignoring Nym. He wasn’t sure why, but he immediately focused on it as it went by and dismissed his flight and thermal barrier. With only his night vision to assist him in aiming, Nym built a lightning bolt spell. The worm monster must have sensed something, because it curled up on itself and shot backwards, crystalline flesh scraping against its own body as it lunged, mouth open, at Nym.
Lightning boomed down the tunnel in an instant of brilliant light and loose snow. The worm monster practically swallowed the attack, and it crashed to the packed-snow ground to thrash about in obvious agony. Smoke billowed out of its open mouth, and it started to sink into the snow, its body super-heated from the lightning strike. Cracks appeared all over it, weeping ichor.
Then the other worm crashed into it and started tearing it apart. It savaged the dead body, pointed legs dissecting it and mouth tearing chunks of flesh out. Nym didn’t really know why, but he was more than happy to fry the second worm if it was just going to stand there and let him. He built the spell back up, checked to make sure Cold Paw was clear, and let loose again.
With both worms dead and slowly sinking as they melted through the snow, Nym reactivated his flight and thermal barrier. He flew over the corpses to meet Cold Paw on the other side. The wolf stared at him with big, wide eyes, then hopped about in excitement. [Boom!]
“Yeah. What was that all about? I thought we’d left them behind.”
Cold Paw tugged on his sleeve and started dragging him down the tunnel again.
“Hey! Stop. Stop that!”
But eventually Nym just let himself be dragged off as Cold Paw excitedly led the way. They didn’t encounter more of the worm monsters, but Nym kept a sharp eye out anyway. After another hour of significantly more stressful traveling, Nym decided to punch through to the surface and check on the blizzard. The tunnel kept trying to collapse on him, prompting him to just unleash a huge blast of air that spat snow dozens of feet into the open air.
Nym flew up and looked around. The blizzard was still going, but it appeared to have calmed down somewhat. Snow was coming down in sheets, but with the thermal barrier up, it wasn’t so bad top-side. It was definitely harder to hold it though. Nym thought that, in an emergency, he could probably manage an hour or so of flight before he’d need to find shelter to rest.
Cold Paw popped up next to him from his own hole and started exploring eagerly, his nose to the snow. Somehow, despite it all being fresh, the wolf slid across it smoothly. When Nym bent down to examine his trail, he found a thin layer of ice coating the pawprints the wolf left behind. Once he thought about it, it made sense. His own efforts at tunneling had involved a lot of loose snow trying to fall on him when he dug, but Cold Paw’s tunnel was solid, despite the weight on top of it that should have buried them both.
“Well, come on,” he said. “Might as well get back under the snow. This stupid blizzard isn’t going to blow itself out any time soon and the thermal barrier is draining me too quickly to maintain up here.”
Nym scooped up the wolf with an air cushion and flew the both of them down the tunnel, Cold Paw yipping excitedly and wiggling around the whole time. When they were back in the tunnels, he ran around Nym several times in a circle, drawing a smile from the tired boy.
[Fun! Do again?]
“Alright, alright. Calm down. Maybe later. For now, where are we going?”
Cold Paw started running down the tunnel, then stopped and barked at Nym until he followed. Together, with Nym having no idea what was going on but amused by the wolf’s antics anyway, the two of them continued their journey under the snow. Past twenty feet of snow over their heads, the sky mercilessly punished the land with more and more snow.
As it turned out, Cold Paw had more going for him than just telepathy. In hindsight, it was obvious, but watching him plow through hardpacked snow faster than Nym could crawl after him would have been enough of a tip off even if he couldn’t see arcana gathering around Cold Paw. Nym just wished his magic extended to the snow he was pushing out of the way. That all flew backwards, and Nym quickly learned to give the animal a spacious twenty feet lead if he wanted to avoid being constantly pelted with loose snow.
He had no clue what Cold Paw was, and so he added researching local magical creatures to his list of things to learn about. The wolf seemed friendly though, so Nym followed, slowly at first, but then faster when they connected to a snow tunnel that was twice as wide as the ones Cold Paw made.
He wasn’t sure how far they traveled, not being used to crawling or walking hunched over, and not even really sure Cold Paw’s tunnels went in a straight line. He was getting tired though and decided it was time for a rest. “Hold on,” he said to the wolf. “I want a break from holding this thermal barrier. I’m going to melt down to the ground and make a little camp.”
Cold Paw yipped and scampered off up the tunnel a bit while Nym used his elemental water manipulation to push down the snow and compact it tighter. When that stopped working, he shifted to pushing it sideways instead. Eventually, he dug his way through about ten feet of snow to the frozen ground and laid out his heating spell.
Nym let himself relax for a few minutes, enjoying the rising heat and not having the mental strain of holding up the barrier. He used hydrokinesis to melt some of the snow and let it warm up for a bit before having a drink of cool, clean water. By the time he was done, the ground was getting soft from the spell, but Nym would be gone long before it turned muddy.
He stood up to leave, but got distracted by a whining sound overhead. Cold Paw stood at the edge of the tunnel, looking down at Nym’s impromptu camp, and scratching at the snow. He looked nervous, and when he saw Nym looking back at him, he started growling.
“In that much of a hurry?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
[Danger,] the wolf projected.
Before he could say anything else, ice and snow exploded out of one wall and a long, sinuous form crashed down onto the ground. It looked something like a snake formed from living ice, only twice as thick as Nym’s shoulders, and with a long series of scrabbling legs that ended in pointed, chitinous tips. They sunk into the soft ground, but the monster easily pulled itself out and shot forward.
A head that had no eyes, just a round hole full of teeth and extended mandibles that presumably pulled in prey, lunged at Nym, who shot up straight into the air and smacked against the icy roof of his camp site. The monster below, some unholy mixture of a centipede, worm, and snake, undulated across the ground, tearing it up into a muddy pit as the loose dirt mixed with the melting snow.
It didn’t pay Nym much heed once it was on the ground, which he found strange considering it lunged straight at him. Before he could consider it, he felt a rumbling in the ice behind him. Nym flew to the side just in time to avoid a second monster bursting through the ceiling and falling to join its brethren on the ground.
Everything was getting colder quickly, so Nym reactivated his thermal barrier. The combination of flight, insulation, and night vision was enough to tie his arcana up completely. Even forging a second conduit merely equalized the arcana going into his soul well with how much was coming out.
The monsters weren’t paying any attention to him now, so he flew over to where Cold Paw was growling down at them. “Come on,” he hissed. “Let’s get out of here before another one shows up.”
The wolf stopped growling and looked hesitantly at Nym. His head kept shifting back and forth, like he was expecting Nym to do something. “What?” he asked. “I’m not fighting those if we don’t have to. I run away from my problems.”
[No kill heat hunters?]
“Heat hunters?” Nym shuddered. “No thanks. They look dangerous.”
Reluctantly, Cold Paw turned away and started down the tunnel. No longer willing to crawl at a slow speed, Nym stretched out horizontally on a cushion of air and flew after him. The sound of the monsters thrashing around behind him echoed down the tunnel, motivating him to fly closer than he otherwise would have. Fortunately, the tunnels were already dug, so he wasn’t getting blasted with all the loose snow Cold Paw had been sending his way earlier.
They didn’t get very far before the monsters finished up whatever they were doing. The sudden lack of noise was more nerve-wracking than listening to them thrash around, if only because now Nym had no clue where they were. They could be heading straight for him, about to burst out of a wall and tear a limb off. Maybe Cold Paw was right and he should have attacked the worms.
Nym wished he’d taken the time to see if he could scry through snow. As it stood, he didn’t dare dismiss his night vision spell to check. That would be the instant the monster popped up, and he’d be blind and unable to react in time. He could dismiss the flight or thermal barrier spells, but he’d already determined that things didn’t quite work right when he was trying to run night vision and scrying at the same time. They interfered with each other and Nym mostly just got sick from the feedback.
He kept one hand on the wall as they flew, trying to feel for any rumbling that might indicate the monsters digging. He didn’t feel anything, but Nym wouldn’t be surprised to have one pop out in front of him anyway. He’d only felt the one that had come through the ceiling because his whole back was to ice, which was considerably more solid than packed snow. Even with that advantage, he’d only had a fraction of a second’s warning to get out of the way before the monster had pierced the roof and dropped onto his camp.
A few minutes passed with nothing happening, and Nym decided it was worth the risk to look around with scrying. He dismissed his night vision spell and poured arcana into scrying instead, then swept it around him in expanding circles. The good news was that he could in fact see various things embedded in the snow around him, mostly loose rocks. The bad news was that since the monsters could appear from any direction, it wasn’t great odds that he’d see them since he still only saw a few feet before everything faded to white.
Even if he perched the anchor for his scrying spell on his forehead, he was only going to get a split-second’s warning, and for that he was trading his ability to see down the tunnel. Cold Paw was far enough away that Nym couldn’t keep track of him without moving the scry anchor.
He swept the area one more time, following the curve of the tunnel, before he dismissed the scrying spell and recast night vision instead. “Should have stayed back at my original camp,” he muttered. Cold Paw gave a quiet woof that Nym took as agreement.
Snow exploded into the tunnel and a white, sinuous body filled his vision. It slammed into him as it flashed by, heading straight for Cold Paw. Nym was stunned for a second, but the wolf wasn’t defenseless. He leaped at the worm monster, nimbly skipping over its mouth-face and landing on its body. Sharp claws dug into icy flesh, scoring the scales deeply and staining its hide with some sort of greyish-blue ichor.
The second monster burst into the tunnel, also ignoring Nym. He wasn’t sure why, but he immediately focused on it as it went by and dismissed his flight and thermal barrier. With only his night vision to assist him in aiming, Nym built a lightning bolt spell. The worm monster must have sensed something, because it curled up on itself and shot backwards, crystalline flesh scraping against its own body as it lunged, mouth open, at Nym.
Lightning boomed down the tunnel in an instant of brilliant light and loose snow. The worm monster practically swallowed the attack, and it crashed to the packed-snow ground to thrash about in obvious agony. Smoke billowed out of its open mouth, and it started to sink into the snow, its body super-heated from the lightning strike. Cracks appeared all over it, weeping ichor.
Then the other worm crashed into it and started tearing it apart. It savaged the dead body, pointed legs dissecting it and mouth tearing chunks of flesh out. Nym didn’t really know why, but he was more than happy to fry the second worm if it was just going to stand there and let him. He built the spell back up, checked to make sure Cold Paw was clear, and let loose again.
With both worms dead and slowly sinking as they melted through the snow, Nym reactivated his flight and thermal barrier. He flew over the corpses to meet Cold Paw on the other side. The wolf stared at him with big, wide eyes, then hopped about in excitement. [Boom!]
“Yeah. What was that all about? I thought we’d left them behind.”
Cold Paw tugged on his sleeve and started dragging him down the tunnel again.
“Hey! Stop. Stop that!”
But eventually Nym just let himself be dragged off as Cold Paw excitedly led the way. They didn’t encounter more of the worm monsters, but Nym kept a sharp eye out anyway. After another hour of significantly more stressful traveling, Nym decided to punch through to the surface and check on the blizzard. The tunnel kept trying to collapse on him, prompting him to just unleash a huge blast of air that spat snow dozens of feet into the open air.
Nym flew up and looked around. The blizzard was still going, but it appeared to have calmed down somewhat. Snow was coming down in sheets, but with the thermal barrier up, it wasn’t so bad top-side. It was definitely harder to hold it though. Nym thought that, in an emergency, he could probably manage an hour or so of flight before he’d need to find shelter to rest.
Cold Paw popped up next to him from his own hole and started exploring eagerly, his nose to the snow. Somehow, despite it all being fresh, the wolf slid across it smoothly. When Nym bent down to examine his trail, he found a thin layer of ice coating the pawprints the wolf left behind. Once he thought about it, it made sense. His own efforts at tunneling had involved a lot of loose snow trying to fall on him when he dug, but Cold Paw’s tunnel was solid, despite the weight on top of it that should have buried them both.
“Well, come on,” he said. “Might as well get back under the snow. This stupid blizzard isn’t going to blow itself out any time soon and the thermal barrier is draining me too quickly to maintain up here.”
Nym scooped up the wolf with an air cushion and flew the both of them down the tunnel, Cold Paw yipping excitedly and wiggling around the whole time. When they were back in the tunnels, he ran around Nym several times in a circle, drawing a smile from the tired boy.
[Fun! Do again?]
“Alright, alright. Calm down. Maybe later. For now, where are we going?”
Cold Paw started running down the tunnel, then stopped and barked at Nym until he followed. Together, with Nym having no idea what was going on but amused by the wolf’s antics anyway, the two of them continued their journey under the snow. Past twenty feet of snow over their heads, the sky mercilessly punished the land with more and more snow.
