Frozen Fractals Team 1

[Vyx'aria]

Szesh crashed beside her. Blood pooled and shimmered across his scales in nets of crimson, glinting against the frost-rimed floor. Vyx’aria’s vision swam, pain still screaming from her frozen arm, her skull pounding from the wall impact. But she saw him, truly saw him. Not as a beast or brute. Not now.

As a weapon. Or perhaps... an ally.

The glimmer of magic yet radiated from his chest, a furnace not quite extinguished. And she had seen the flame, the wrath he could call forth, the fire that could sear through this eternal cold.

Vyx’aria rose, slow but deliberate. Her ruined arm hung limp, blue from frostbite, but her good hand clenched the hilt of her emerald-forged blade, its grip fashioned from the shed scales of Neha.

She turned to Szesh. "Lend me your fire."

Her voice cut through the wind, low and serrated, a command, not a request. She held the blade out, angled toward him.

If he listened, her weapon would ignite, not with mortal fire, but something honed, ancient, and hungry. Flame would chase along the emerald veins, the draconic core within the sword roaring awake. The air would shimmer with the strength of true dragonfire.

With a twist of her body, Vyx’aria launched.

She became shadow and blaze, a spiral of silken motion and sudden, lethal strikes. The Queen had just torn the conjured beast in half with a final pulse of magic but too late. The creature collapsed in a heap of frozen sinew, its prize clutched in one claw, the navel crystal, torn from the Queen's body.

Vyx’aria was already moving.

She slashed low, the fire-imbued blade carving clean through the Queen’s right arm, leaving a cauterized stump of ancient, blackened bone. A deafening screech shattered the air. The Queen turned, and her staff began to rise for a retaliatory strike but too slow.

Vyx’aria whirled, ducked, pivoted on her heel, and her fire blade cleaved through the Queen’s left arm, the one clutching the scepter. Severed just below the shoulder, the limb flew skyward, spiraling end-over-end.

Time slowed. Bloodless, crystalline ichor glimmered in the air like falling snow.

And with a snarl of effort, Vyx’aria raised her boot, whirled around and kicked.

The arm and scepter launched like a javelin across the throne room straight at the mage knight for him to snatch out of the air.

"FINISH IT!" she roared, voice ragged, bloody, triumphant.

The Queen shrieked, blind and burning, twisting in agony, her heart crystal, the most important one, now exposed.

Szesh
Vaezhasar Drakspae

 

[Szesh]

((Excuse the quick out of order but just so we're clear))

Szesh obliged Vyx'aria's request. Something in him recognized the scales of that hilt, but he could not consciously remember how or where, nor did he have the energy to try. With a painful inhale, and a forceful exhale, he washed the drow-queen's sabre in fire.

It would have to be enough, as his reserves were running low. The same processes that generated that fire were trying desperately to warm his body against this unnatural cold.

 

[Vaezhasar Drakspae]

Szesh
Vyx'aria

Vaezhasar seized the severed arm, still clutching the scepter, out of the air.

This was, in his current state, miraculous. Not in the theological sense, though there were probably several deities who would have found the situation bemusing enough to lend a hand, no pun intended. More in the sense of "how is someone with more holes than mother nature designed them to have catching airborne...anything, with any level of precision."

He had good reflexes, certainly. The suit aided him, absolutely. But he'd thought himself far too ventilated to commit to such a pinpoint maneuver. Turns out: not so much. The body has a remarkable capacity for ignoring its own damage reports when survival is on the agenda, and survival was currently having a board meeting with all stakeholders present.

He wrenched the scepter from the arm's grip, the fingers putting up a decent fight, and threw it down. Then he stomped on the severed limb.

There was a satisfying crunch.

All the while, the creature he'd summoned, now severed at the waist, which really should have been fatal but had elected not to be, did not die.

Its upper half moved forward, propelled by its powerful arms in a baffling parody of locomotion.

And chomped clean through it.
It wasn't the sort of flesh-tearing bite one would expect from a predatory animal; none of the shaking or dramatic flesh-tearing occured. It was something more akin to a cookie cutter meeting gelatine. More than half of the Queen's knee simply... disappeared, replaced by a U-shaped absence. Negative space where positive anatomy had been making rather important structural contributions just moments before.

The knee also bent. Inwards.

The Queen toppled sideways, her damaged leg folding at an angle that no joint should fold at unless it had abandoned all pretense of ever again functioning. The creature immediately mounted her like a rabid chimpanzee, laying her flat on her back with its not-inconsiderable bulk.

It grasped her face on either side and began to slam the back of her head into the floor.

Hard.

Hard enough to leave spiderweb cracks radiating outward from each impact point, the ice protesting this treatment with small musical tinkles that would have been quite pretty in any other context.


Vaezhasar sneaked up on them.


Well. As much as an injured man wearing enough armor to outfit a small cavalry unit could "sneak." It was less sneaking and more "shambling with intent." But the Queen was rather preoccupied with having her skull used as a percussion instrument, so tactical subtlety became somewhat relative.

When the Queen raised an arm, her remaining functional arm, quantities of functional limbs being a rapidly diminishing resource, to try and pry the creature off herself, Vaezhasar raised the scepter and smote her across the wrist.

It broke with a deafening crack, and more than just her wrist. The upper portion of her forearm went limp, like a slinky.


The creature, noticing this development with a sprinkle of so-called tactical awareness, repositioned itself.

It released the woman's head, which had by now acquired several new dents and was looking decidedly non-regulation, and placed its disembodied upper portion a side mount position.

Then it bit down on her other arm.

Crunch-Munch.

Vaezhasar lifted the scepter again.

With great effort, that'd have his musculature filing formal complaints with management later, he drove its icicle-shaped head downward and through the Queen's belly.

She shrieked.

Which was unexpected. He hadn't thought her capable of feeling a damned thing. Her body appeared too... artificial to facilitate anything approaching mammalian nerves. Too crystalline. Too sculptural.

Yet wail she did.

Annoyingly. Unceremoniously. Without any of the dignity one might expect from an ancient monarch facing her demise. She thrashed like an animal. Flailed. Bucked. Looked less like a sovereign and more like an angry, cornered degenerate baffled by the fact that she was receiving just comeuppance, and not particularly graciously either.

There was something almost disappointing about it. Vaezhasar never quite liked sore losers.

Vaezhasar dropped to one knee.

He drove both hands into the Queen's exposed chest cavity, fingers spreading wide, like a seasoned swimmer preparing to break the surface of water. Like someone reaching into a pond to retrieve something valuable that had been foolishly dropped.

He got a good grip on her "heart."
It was crystalline. Blue. Roughly the size of a bowling ball.

He heaved.

He pulled.

He stood up, planting his feet flat on the ground, engaging his legs, his back, his core, all the muscle groups that fitness instructors are always going on about. The sort of full-body exertion typically reserved for moving furniture or uprooting trees and not extracting vital organs from giant sorceresses.

Slowly, but surely, the big blue crystal began to come loose from the colossal woman's chest.

She tried to grab him. Her hands came up, weakly, grasping. But he saw it in the way she moved, the sluggishness, the lack of coordination, that her strength was rapidly departing. Taking its leave. Clocking out early.

With one final tug, a real teeth-gritting, tendon-straining effort that would probably result in several days of regrettable back pain, he ripped the heart out of her.

It came free with a wet, sucking sound.

Vaezhasar held it triumphantly over his head, the crystalline heart catching what little light remained, and exclaimed:"Viiiiiiictory!"

 

[Vyx'aria]

The ice crackled one last time, splintering under the weight of defeat.

Vyx’aria stood slowly, blood crusted at her temple and one arm still limp at her side. But her chin was high, her steps smooth.

She approached the ruined throne. With a small, satisfied hum, she climbed the dais and languidly draped herself across the icy seat as though it had always been hers. One leg draped over the armrest, her good hand idly brushed aside a shard of frozen rib.

A queen's seat for a queen.

Her head tilted, crimson eyes sweeping across the dragonkin, the mage, the remnants of the beast still twitching. Her lips curved in cool amusement.

"Drow Queen Vyx’aria," she said at last, her name slicing the silence like a blade unsheathed.

Szesh
Vaezhasar Drakspae

 

[Vaezhasar Drakspae]

Szesh
Vyx'aria

Vaezhasar held the Queen's disembodied heart aloft, inspecting it.

The mouth located dab smack in the middle of his chestplate, opened.

It opened with enthusiasm. The sort of enthusiasm typically reserved for mealtimes.

Vaezhasar placed the heart into the cavity.

The mouth closed with a satisfied murr.

It was not quite a purr, not quite a growl, but something nestled comfortably between the two.

Vaezhasar grabbed the horns protruding from his helmet.

Tugged.

The thing came off his face with a wet POP.


There was a brief moment of resistance. A reluctance. The helmet had gotten comfortable. But Vaezhasar persisted, and with a final squelch, the living metal released its hold.
He held the ornate helm to his chest.
It sat there, cradled in one arm, looking vaguely put out in the way that inanimate objects manage when they've just been forcibly removed from their preferred location. The eye mounted on top blinked once, slowly, conveying what might have been reproach but was probably just ocular muscle memory.

Vaezhasar fixed Vyx'aria with an inquisitive stare.

His face, now revealed, was not what one might expect from a sorcerer, for he was neither old, nor scared, nor bearded. It was, in fact, rather handsome in a brooding, overly dramatic sort of way. Strong features arranged with the kind of symmetry that suggested either fortunate genetics or a mother who'd had very specific prayers answered.

Brown hair fell past his shoulders in waves that had somehow maintained a reasonable degree of presentation despite the recent violence. Either remarkable luck or subtle vanity magic was at work here. His skin was sun-bronzed, the complexion of someone who'd spent time outdoors doing things other than lurking in towers reading forbidden texts, though he'd probably done plenty of that too.

But it was the eyes that drew attention. Strikingly, impossibly blue. The sort of blue that didn't occur naturally in human populations without some ancestral meddling from entities that really should have known better.

They practically glowed against his tanned features, marked beneath by the faint traces of dark paint or perhaps natural shadowing that gave him the appearance of someone who'd either been crying azure tears or had invested heavily in dramatic cosmetics.


He regarded the drow with the directness of someone who has just helped her violently disassemble an antediluvian monarch and felt this warranted some degree of fraternization.

"I'm Vaezhasar Drakspae, son of Sandakshatru the Slayer, Maester of Magic and the Archsorcerer."

He stood there, bloodied and perforated, holding a helmet that occasionally blinked, having just fed an ancient heart to his sentient armor, introducing himself with the formality typically reserved for dinners or first meetings with potential in-laws.

 

[Szesh]

Szesh pushed himself to his elbows, then rose from the ice with not a small amount of pain. His wounds oozed slowly but most of the bleeding had or would stop soon. Mostly he had a horrific headache, and felt as though he might not be warm again no matter how close he stood to a fire.

His dark eyes regarded the drow on the throne. It was far too large for her. But she could rule over this court of zero if she wanted. He retrieved his hammer from the broken ice at the throne's base, near the fractured body of the Ice Queen. The frost still clung to it, but it was no longer painfully cold.

He took stock of the crystals, there should be seven... and there were. Some were still partially embedded in cryo-preserved flesh but these could be removed. He eyed the crystal on Vaez's chestplate warily. He wasn't sure what he had expected the man beneath to look like, he wasn't even sure he had expected it to be a man. He looked more youthful than someone of that power should be. Magic could not be pulled from thin air, even Szesh knew this. Typically it took time to learn how to draw upon it that much... but Szesh was far from an expert on this and, frankly, could not be bothered by it any further.

He knelt by the Queen's corpse, propping a hand on his hammer. It was impossible to mask the fatigue that plagued him. "Szesh," he said plainly, indicating himself with his free hand. The name would not be properly pronounced by mammalian throats... but most came close enough.

He continued "The crystals are for the wizard. Gran..... grango....." he hissed a reptilian curse, "I cannot say the name."

After this absolute ordeal he would be getting payment in full.