Night Frost stood shoulder to shoulder with the Old Woman like twin winter sentinels, while Zhao Qingsnow braced her back to them like a shield. She swatted drones like hornets and kept a hawk’s eye on the jeep, afraid the storm would spill into the nest where Sun Xiao and Kaneko sat.
The ice wall rose like a pale cliff and caught part of the swarm, but no wall is windproof; the drones flowed like water to any open seam.
Frustration tightened in Zhao Qingsnow’s chest like frost around a reed; blocking wouldn’t stop a stream that kept finding cracks.
If she ringed herself with ice, the tide would turn toward Night Frost and the Old Woman, which felt wrong in her gut like a cold omen. She dropped the walls and chose to pull the snake from the grass—find whoever sat behind the drones.
The operator had to be a Magic Maiden; the thought sharpened like steel. She’d have a hawk’s eye, or a Magic Spell woven into a Magic Stone to see farther like mountain wind beyond the ridge.
If it was just an eagle’s reach, one kilometer would do; Zhao Qingsnow’s legs could eat that frost-bitten road like a deer in stride.
If the Magic Stone Spell stretched farther, the horizon went soft; she remembered the Seeker Headquarters had a Clairvoyant whose autumn-water gaze pierced a continent, a look like clear lake to distant shore.
That was long ago like leaves gone to loam; that clairvoyant was half in the grave or already dust.
Resolve steadied her like a lantern in snow. Zhao Qingsnow started with a one-kilometer radius; if nothing showed, she'd widen the circle like ripples. If that still failed, she’d swing back to aid Night Frost.
Night Frost and the Old Woman swapped places like dancers changing partners, and the hammer-swinging girl stepped in with storm in her arms. The Magic Stone set in the hammer glowed, and Array Patterns crawled over the alloy face like veins waking, smashing through the Old Woman’s hurried, heavy stone walls.
The Old Woman felt worry gnaw her like roots under earth; that hammer was too fierce. With Array Patterns blessing it, her piled walls were toys in a giant’s hands, pebbles in a river’s rush.
Her bones were old like knotted wood, and brawling with a body-strong Magic Maiden weighed heavy like a mountain. Night Frost’s side suffered too; the girl in a suit still kept her secrets, but her casting had a curl of prelude—
She drew darkness into herself like ink, then became a shadow, plunging into speed’s edge like a falling star.
Night Frost guessed her art, feeling a chill like moonlight; she was shadow-linked like Lu Jin, only that explained her pull on gloom and shade.
In that blackness, even with night sight, Night Frost saw little but river-dark; the suited girl flitted like a wraith, threading the night around Night Frost, so fast the world felt paused.
Suddenly Night Frost moved, anger flaring like a struck coal; Crimson Gold Flame pooled in her palm and shaped a Spear, which thrust out like a sunrise lance. It clipped only a flutter of cloth.
The suited girl flickered like a sparrow and vanished, then bloomed behind Night Frost like a shadow’s bloom. Her right hand flattened to sword-fingers, her left raised a dagger, both lines shooting for the throat like twin vipers.
Night Frost snorted, cold as sleet, and spun like a gyroscope; steel breath chased her skin. She stepped on air like a dancer on mist and slid along the girl’s wrist to the other side.
She didn’t stop; the flame spear stabbed like lightning. The suited girl bent like a reed, dodging a heart-pierce, yet Night Frost’s thrust still picked her and flung her back like a leaf in wind. She slammed a railing and staggered upright.
Power weighed like stone on a scale; the suited girl felt the gap and refused the head-on river. Her craft was to melt into shadow like ink in water, then press her edge until it cut.
They tangled again like vines in dusk, yet the suited girl refused a knot. She held steel like a crescent moon and moved light as a butterfly; blade-arcs cut silver lines through night. Every strike left afterimages like ghost petals, and Night Frost couldn’t tell lake reflection from the real swan.
Night Frost clenched her right fist, and Crimson Gold Flame danced in her palm like a small sun. Heat gusted in jets like desert breath; she lunged like an arrow and hammered down, the flame fist a comet. The suited girl’s form wavered like heat haze, and the blow hit nothing.
She stole that empty beat like a thief and flashed toward the Old Woman, who wrestled the hammer girl amid dust and sparks.
Earth and stone rose into a towering hand like a cliff’s palm, and metal met rock with storm-noise; neither yielded, and their friction spat bright sparks like fireflies. Shockwaves rolled away like breaking surf.
Boom...
Another collision cracked the night, and the Old Woman flew back like a tossed root, carving a deep trench in the ground.
The suited girl saw her moment like a falcon sighting prey; a shadow skimmed the trench, direct for the Old Woman’s life. The Old Woman kicked across like a desperate branch, and pain jolted her legs numb like frostbite.
She dodged death by a hair like a moth escaping flame, yet a dagger still bit into her arm like a thorn; Night Frost felt the wrongness like winter wind and swung in to cover.
Their pairing lagged the enemy’s like a cart behind a gallop; minutes in, Night Frost and the Old Woman were nicked and bloodied, one arm half out of action like a wing dragged. The other pair wore only scratches like cat marks.
The gap bit like cold; Night Frost crouched, calm returning like snowfall, and buried an array plate underfoot. She’d carved it in the car, simple as a field charm, yet nested with all she’d learned across a life like rings in old wood.
Two layers intertwined—attack and defense—a modest Formation at her current limit like a rope at its last braid.
Her motions were fine as thread, but the suited Magic Maiden, once a Recorder, caught them like a librarian catching a whisper.
She raised a hand to halt the hammer-swinging partner, then echoed Night Frost’s crouch like a mirror. A palm showed a book from thin air like a leaf appearing, and a black ink pen tapped above it like a raven’s beak; a page sketched Night Frost’s pose. She enlarged the item in Night Frost’s hand until it filled the page like a moon.
She hadn’t seen many Formations, but the smallness of Night Frost’s move rang like a bell; the thing mattered.
Still, as-is, the ledger was a camera—ink for memory. Its true bite was false recording, a way to overwrite the world like rewriting a riverbed, but that devoured Mana and mind like wolves. She wouldn’t spend that now; she’d watch the current first.
The hammer girl whirled that giant hammer like a stormmill and sprinted along the trench like a charging bull. Concrete cracked beneath her feet into riverbed lines, and she hurled the hammer with monstrous force like a boulder from a catapult. It slammed an invisible light-curtain before Night Frost and rippled it like wind over silk.
Only then did the suited girl grasp the craft, and she inked another page like a second snapshot. She drew a slow breath, Mana streaming from her fingertips like rain, and her black ink bled into rainbow smears—patches of blue and red glued over Night Frost’s array plate like dye on cloth.
Up in the air, the hammer girl whispered like a prayer; the Magic Stone set in the hammer’s flank lit with silver like moonlight. A silver skirt-armor wrapped her like fish scales, and bracers budded down her arms like new bark; they supported the hammer as she hoisted it above her head like a tower.
The Old Woman wouldn’t bend, stubborn as bedrock; the Magic Stone hidden at her nape flared, and stones beneath the high lanes answered like a herd.
“Mother Earth who births life, spread your merciful arms and guard your faithful children. When kindness is called weakness, gather faith into toughness… Sighing Wall—Anastenagmos!”
Her lips parted light as dawn, and the Magic Spell poured like wind through reeds. Her hands pushed up like lifting sky, and stones on both sides rolled like waves; walls rose from earth like a forest, wrapping Night Frost and the Old Woman.
Night Frost felt pressure like a stormfront; the suited girl’s pen and ledger smeared her array plate and muted it like damp ash. The hammer’s force breathed heavy like thunder, and Night Frost touched the wall and felt damp earth like a riverbank; she read the Old Woman’s intent like script in clay.
Crimson Gold Flame warmed her palm like a kiln, baking the inner wet soil dry like pottery. She left a wet outer skin to drink the hammer’s rage like a sponge, while the inner layer hardened into clay like fired brick. With the Old Woman’s power, cracks from the heat stitched like healed bark, bracing the wall.
The hammer fell onto the wet outer layer like a rain on swamp; its swagger sank into mud, and the leftover bite struck the inner wall like a dull axe. Hardened clay held and hummed like a drum.
Even without Night Frost’s hand, the Old Woman’s Magic Spell would have held like an old fortress; the Mana cost would be cruel like winter hunger.
Her usual wall and the Sighing Wall weren’t the same river; the everyday wall was a thin stone sheet pared from the greater spell, a quick lift; the Sighing Wall could hoist a rampart ten meters thick like raising a cliff all at once.
The Old Woman panted, breath ragged like bellows; over a decade without casting, and one use cut deep like frostbite. She glanced at the risen wall and murmured like talking to soil.
“If I could reach Cantata Three, I could raise a small city’s walls in one pull like drawing a curtain.”
Night Frost saw the strain and thought of Zhao Qingsnow, whose big spell could shroud a villa like fog around a manor; even with a heartbeat’s delay, the gap between Magic Spells yawned like a gorge.
Back to the fight—iron against earth. The hammer girl barely cracked the wall like splitting old bark, yet she and the suited girl sagged like spent bows. They’d thought this would end it like a thunderbolt, and the wall swallowed it like rain into loam.
Night Frost stepped forward like a hunter, kicked aside broken earth like shells, and the Crimson Gold Spear in her hand thrummed like a string.
“Inferno, burn it down!”
The spear drove through the hammer girl’s chest like a rod of dawn; other spears gathered like a meteor shower. The suited girl whipped her record-book like a talisman and swung it; the spear in her partner’s chest winked out for a heartbeat like a star behind cloud.
The suited girl coughed blood like rust, staggered, and caught her skewered partner like catching a falling branch. Drones poured from the dark like locusts, and the two Magic Maidens slipped away like shadows at sunrise.
Night Frost opened her mouth, then looked at her spear and sighed like wind over embers.
Why does it always sputter like a firecracker in damp snow when it’s me?
