I decreased my size and felt the mana inside me compress. At the same time, I released a wave of cold that flash-froze the snow under my feet, stopping it from crunching under my weight. I put my hand on the rocks under me and moved ahead slowly.

  On all fours, I approached the next batch of the damned moving up from the trail. Three of them were in human forms while one of them loomed over them in its ten-foot reptilian form. Its thorn tail swung side to side in agitation as it shivered in the snow. The lizard-like damned stopped and looked back towards the cave. Its eyes flashed and embers rolled over its scales. They immediately dimmed in the cold.

  “Stop doing that,” the leader watched the largest member of their party stop and ordered.

  “Duh… Duh… Do what, Captain?” the malformed lizard asked.

  The damned around the larger one snorted.

  “Use your magic. Keep it stored for when we need it,” the leader of the group said sternly.

  “Captain, it is cold. Can you not let the boy shift back to his human form and put on some clothes?” the man next to the captain asked.

  “Do you want to join him?” the captain growled.

  The man took a step back and raised his arms to placate the leader. “No. No, Captain. I was just saying that because this is taking too long with this one. He is too slow. And I want to get this patrol over with.”

  The captain exhaled from his nose and his breath came out in white vapor that momentarily obscured his face.

  I repositioned myself closer to the squad, using their distraction to my advantage. They were so involved in their conversation that they didn’t even see me jump down from the top to a mound of snow and hide behind it.

  In a calmer voice, the captain explained, “Do you know why we always have one or two of us in battle form? Because someone needs to be able to see further than the rest of us and smell them before they approach.” The captain turned to look at the damned lizard. “Take a deep breath, boy. Tell me, what do you smell?”

  The lizard did as asked and sneezed loudly. The damned cursed.

  “Blight, boy!” one of the men spat.

  “Curse you, you stupid child,” the captain growled.

  The third man just laughed.

  “I am ss… sorry. My no… nossse is blocked,” the lizard apologized with hisses.

  The captain rolled his eyes. “That is because you keep using embers to heat yourself up. You have given yourself a cold.”

  “But it’sss co… co...cold. And lizzzards are cold-blooded, ca…ca...captain. They da… da… die in cold,” the damned hissed in between shivering stutters.

  The captain snorted. “You won’t die, boy. You are immortal now.”

  The third man snickered. “But you will suffer.”

  “Enough of this.” The captain rolled his eyes. “Let’s finish the patrol.”

  The man turned to walk down the path. The damned behind him followed. After just a couple of steps, the damned in its battle form slipped and fell face first into the snow.

  The captain turned back with his hands on his waist and cursed. “Blight! What is wrong with you, boy?”

  They all waited for the boy to get up. When the damned in its battle form didn’t respond, the captain waved for his men to help the drake-like damned.

  One of the men approached the boy and looked at his face. “I think he passed out, Captain.”

  The captain groaned and waved at both of his men. “Go, wake him up. We have a patrol to finish and it is getting dark.”

  “How do we do that?” one of the men asked.

  “Piss on him if needed. I don’t care,” the captain growled.

  The two damned in human form chuckled. With loud grunts, they trundled back through the snow and approached the damned boy. One of the men grabbed the damned by his horn and lifted his head. He looked at the damned in battle form and noted his rolled-over eyes and lolling tongue.

  “What is wrong with him?” the other damned asked.

  “He is…” The one holding the damned reptile by his horn hissed and let go of the head. “Frozen?”

  The second one touched the damned and hissed. “Yes. He is frozen solid!”

  “How is that possible?” The two men looked at each other and turned back to their captain. “Captain, the boy is…”

  They stopped mid-sentence. They did not see their captain anywhere.

  “Captain?” The man looked back and forth for his leader. “Did you see where the captain went?” he started asking the question while turning to his mate.

  His squad member was nowhere to be seen. He had disappeared like his captain. He turned in a circle looking for his team. All he saw was the white of the budding snowstorm.

  “What? What is going on?” the damned asked, walking to the spot where his captain had been standing. “If this is a joke, it is not funny, Captain. I am no longer the new one. If you are going to pull a trick, pull it on the boy.”

  He heard the sound of trickling and turned back. He sighed. “I knew...”

  The damned man expected to see his captain or squad member urinating on the boy. Instead, he saw blood trickling down the new boy’s throat. A shiver of panic went through the damned.

  “What? How?” he asked, and stopped when he saw a sword jut out his chest. Just where his heart was.

  The last thing he saw was a green flash light up the snow falling from the sky and the blood freezing on the ground.

  I kicked the damned off my blade. He flew and landed next to the one in its larger form. His captain and squad member were already there. Hidden behind the large mass of the malformed drake. Dead and freezing in the snow.

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  I left the dead lying where they were. I didn’t bother to hide their bodies. They would act like a marker for Ilya and the Punishers if they weren't covered by the blanket of snow drifting down from the sky.

  I looked up to gather myself. The mana seed under my spine was spinning faster than it had ever. Pulling the cold all around me and compelling me to act. Even the act of kicking the dead damned was unlike me. On any other day, I would have slowly lowered the damned to avoid making a sound. But the cold was indifferent to little things like noise.

  I turned to look at the cave mouth. The cold in my veins wanted to be let loose on top of that. It wanted me to be the avalanche that covered everything in a sheet of white. That was the momentum of mana. I was beginning to understand what Grek meant when he said that all Manaborn were a bit mad. The cold mana in my body was rampaging inside my body. And my death seed wanted to kill everything it saw. No, I couldn’t do that. I was a hunter, not a damned vermin.

  I looked back up and took a deep breath. The white sky and the snow on my face made everything harder to see. My seeds urged that this environment needed to be used to its full advantage. That I agreed with. I couldn’t see anything but white and a hint of a trail under my feet. I took it. Sooner or later, the trail would take me to the mouth of the cave.

  After a few minutes, the familiar sting of spine-shivering cold went down my spine. I stopped and closed my eyes. I opened them in the dark waters. The cold of snow was gone and the familiar cold of death was everywhere. There I saw them. Five more positioned halfway in between me and the large group in the cave.

  I looked at the group in the cave. They were gathering a new party. Did they finally realize that something was wrong? That their immortal friends were dead? Good. The cold would take its due from them too. A grin started to creep onto my face and I stopped it. I shook my head and let the dark waters wash over me. My rampaging emotions lessened. This storm was doing something to me that I hadn’t experienced before. I needed to keep myself in check.

  I opened my eyes back in the darkening world of Gaia and looked around. I couldn’t run headfirst at the damned. I would have to take a different route. I walked off the trail and into the snow. It was deep enough to cover my knees, but it was snow. And I was a manaborn with an ice seed. A little snow wasn’t going to stop me.

  The wind began to howl and snow obscured everything, drifting down from the small station where the damned positioned themselves two bends away from the cave mouth. The two damned in their ten-foot battle form periodically scanned the trail and sniffed the air. The snow blowing in their faces made it difficult, but they tried anyway. When they didn’t find anything, they hunched back down and covered their bodies with a snowy hole they had dug for themselves.

  The ones in their human forms were luckier. They wore wool and leather to cover themselves. Still, the wind and the biting cold made them hunch over. And the roar of the wind had made conversation with the battle-formed impossible. With chattering teeth, the ones still in their human forms huddled together. Meanwhile, the silent reaper inside me listened.

  “Is it supposed to be… this cold?” the man asked his squad.

  One of the women in his squad answered, “It is a snow... storm, genius.”

  “I have lived in the range for years. I am used to snowstorms. They never get so cold,” the same man responded.

  “What…are you…trying to ss...say?” the third member of their squad asked.

  “I am saying,” the resident of Voss range started and finished while blowing air in his palms, “It suddenly got colder.”

  “It’s the… wind. It is blowing… straight... over us.” The woman rubbed her arms to get warmer.

  “Are you trying… to get yourself out of… changing into your battle form?” the apparent leader of the group asked and continued. “If so, it won’t… work. You need to relieve… the brothers. They need to warm themselves... too.”

  “No, boss.” The man shook his head. “I am just saying this current chill is not natural.”

  The woman snorted. “This weather… is not natural.”

  “You are just from… Ascar.” The leader waved dismissively. “They don’t have… cold winters there.”

  “This is not winter.” The woman took a sip of alcohol to warm herself and muttered, “This is…”

  A thud behind her stopped her words.

  “What was that?” the leader of the group asked.

  “It’s the battle-formed brothers. One of them fainted,” the complainer responded.

  A sudden wave of cold made all three shiver and hunch up.

  “Blight! The ss… second one is not… looking good either.” The woman shivered and pointed at the battle-formed with icicles growing down from its scaled skin.

  The leader looked at his subordinates and shivered. “Alright, you both. Get in your… battle form and relieve the brothers.”

  The two subordinates looked at each other and back at their leader.

  “How about you take the first watch, boss?” the male subordinate asked.

  “What?”

  “Yes, boss. Why don’t you take the first watch?” the woman agreed.

  The boss started to glare and then hunched his neck when a new wave of cold attacked every inch of his exposed skin. “Blight, no.” The boss grunted and with chattering teeth glared at his subordinates. “You… both… do… that.”

  The woman snarled. “N...No. Yo...You do it.”

  The boss turned to the man. “You… are from… this cursed… range. You… take your battle… form.”

  The man from Voss range looked at his two companions and sighed. “Fine. Let me first… check on the brothers.”

  The two damned watched the man leave and looked at each other. They exchanged a smile and chuckled.

  After a silent moment, the boss grinned with a glint in his eyes. “If you let me… toss you… I will let you… stay in your… clothes.”

  The woman frowned. “No.”

  “Don’t you like… forcing yourself… on girls?”

  “Yes, so what?”

  “I’ll let you do that… with the women in the cave... if you part your legs… and warm my pecker… inside you.”

  The damned woman gagged. “You are a man… and you are disgusting.”

  The boss snarled. “Fine then… go take your… battle form.”

  The woman glared at her boss and spat to the side. With a loud huff, she turned and walked to the spot behind the two unconscious battle brothers.

  The boss waited for a few minutes and while rubbing his hands asked, “What… is taking so long?”

  In the darkness of night and whirling snow, he missed the reflective armor that sped past him when his back was turned.

  The boss of the squad rubbed his palms together and began to walk towards his still companions. He reached in his pocket and took out a stone. He shook it and a pale blue light began to light up his surroundings.

  The leader looked at the two battle-formed damned. They looked like hedgehogs with icicles protruding out everywhere. He reached out and flicked one of the sharp pieces of ice. It cracked and fell with a piece of skin still attached.

  The boss chuckled. “Oh, you fools are going to hurt when you come back to life. Now where is that cursed whore?”

  The man continued to walk in between the battle-formed. “If she doesn’t get over here in her battle form right now, I am going to gather some of the boys and…”

  The man’s eyes landed on a trail of blood on the snow. He rushed ahead looking for the source of the blood. He followed its trail with his eyes. It went up the floor, to one of the battle-formed brothers' still back and to its spine, where his male subordinate was pinned with an icicle protruding from his neck.

  That was not the most horrifying part. The fact that the lower half of his body was missing and frozen entrails were dangling from just above his waist made the boss take quick steps backwards.

  The boss's foot hit something and he almost fell over. He turned and looked. At first, he didn’t understand what he was seeing. It was something thin, red, and hairy. The boss nudged it with his foot. It moved.

  The man put his toes underneath the thing and flipped it. His eyes widened when he saw what it was. It was the whore. Something had sliced her sideways. He raised the glow stone up above his head and saw the other half of her lying five steps away in the snow.

  The boss gulped and in panic started to say, “Wake up. Wake up. Wake up, boys.”

  He kicked one of the battle-formed brothers and yelled, “We have a monster hunting us.”

  The kick made him hop on one leg. The battle-formed was frozen stiff and felt hard as a rock. The boss reached out to shake the damned and stopped when he noted a stab wound on his subordinate’s neck. He turned wildly to look at the second one and noted a hole in his skull.

  He began to backpedal and stopped when he heard a woman’s voice speak from just above him.

  “Voss, what in the stars?”

  “Hello, sister.” A deep male voice said from just behind the boss.

  “What did I tell you about killing everything you see?” Ilya asked.

  I pointed the Dark Hunter’s Edge at the living damned. “He is alive.”

  “That’s because I reached you before you could kill him.” Ilya, who was flying over me, threw up her arms with a hint of frustration.

  “They are evil,” I tried to justify myself.

  “And we have laws to judge them,” Ilya stated.

  The man turned to look at us and fell to his knees. “Please. Please. I surrender.”

  Ilya pointed at the damned. “Look! Now you are making me feel bad for the evil monsters.”

  “So, I can kill him?” I asked.

  “No!”

  “But then you won’t feel bad anymore,” I tried to reason.

  “We will discuss this when Grisslow gets here.”