Large spears of ice, the thickness of a man and the length long enough to run through the building, pierced to the middle where they were staying.
The ceiling shattered with a loud cracking sound as four of those spears howled through. Metal screamed as ice, far harder, cut into them easily.
The atmosphere immediately turned crisp.
Lito gestured sharply, and the portal she first created was snuffed out. Another painted the ceiling in bright purple, spreading across like ink.
The ice spears ran into the portal and were gone.
Lito stared into the holes that were made in the ceiling. Two of them were dripping with blood that soon froze solid.
"What the fuck," Katty said. The ice spears were thrown right from the top building from outside.
They could see the sky from where they were standing.
"This is serious," the man said tightly. "We should really get out of here..."
"Incoming!" Katty shouted.
The door to their room bent inward as something heavy slammed into it from behind. Another heavy thud, and the door was blown open as if it were made of foil paper.
And in walked the shortest woman they had ever seen.
She looked like a five-year-old, only that she was matured and her face was aged.
"Who is this dawlf?" Katty said.
The woman’s eyes were black, and she wore light leather armor with a mountain peak crest on her chest. She turned towards Katty like a hawk. "Me? A dawlf?"
The room was covered in frost in seconds, and ice spears grew out like tree branches, straight at the four of them.
But a purple shield covered them, and the spears disappeared into the portal shield, only to appear around the woman, trying to stab her, but they all melted.
"Ah. Spatial powers. Not bad. At least you won’t be disappointing me."
Before they could blink, the woman had been covered in ice. It molded around her body. She grew taller, the shield glittering over her skin like a second layer, and in seconds she was standing there as if she had always been made of ice and flesh.
"My armor in the family is the best because I need to put a lot into it. This is the best armor ever created. It..."
Clank!
Suddenly, a sword flashed.
A glint in the air.
A silver whoosh.
That was all they heard of the sword. It was almost too fast.
The woman that had been keeping quiet all the while just swung her sword.
But it sounded like metal against metal when it touched the armor shield that materialized around her.
"Nice try, but I’ve been fighting since I was born. Sneak attacks don’t work on me, not anymore."
Katty scowled. "Old woman, you’re only an Ascendant, just like Lito. Do you think you can handle one Ascendant and three Refined?"
"The higher the rank, the higher the gap. I don’t need to worry about you pups when I can just do this!"
She moved.
She flickered like a shadow and was immediately beside Katty, a punch sent for the head.
But as fast as she was, Lito was just as fast, and her kick met her punch.
Bam!
Her leg was covered in purple light, and when they met the woman’s punch, they shredded through, breaking ice into chunks.
The ice woman jumped back, surprise on her face, her ice already forming around her again. "You! You are stronger than I expected."
Lito shrugged. A lot of people usually underestimated her, and she was used to it. They thought her power wasn’t more than creating portals, but the thing about Talent Ability was that it could be used in creative ways.
Lito sneered, and her hand reached out as if she wanted to slap something out of the air. Instead, a sword arc, thin like a spider web, jumped out, cutting the air fast.
The ice woman grunted, and her shields came to her front to block, but the spatial attack cut through them easily, sending chunks of ice falling to the ground.
But at least the job had been done.
Her shield stopped the attack.
The ice woman shook her head. "It seems a prolonged fight won’t be in my favor."
The ice armor around her melted away, and her form was revealed once more. She raised her hand and pushed forward.
It was a simple gesture, but what happened next wasn’t so simple.
The room turned so cold everything began to crack, a bitter coldness that froze everything it came in contact with. The frost crept on the ground like darkness.
Lito and everyone felt their limbs become heavy immediately.
The three subordinates felt as if their limbs had been replaced by heavy metals.
Only Lito still had most of her mobility. She covered herself and her subordinates in a shield of purple.
And then the second wave of the ice woman’s attack hit.
The ground, the wall.
Everything that had been touched by her frost exploded into sharp, deadly blades of dark jewel ice that rushed towards Lito and her shield.
Like a tide, the attack slammed into her shield and curled around her before everything was frozen solid.
"Hmph! She can’t be dead that easily," the ice woman said.
She stood where she was. Everything else in the room was now enclosed in black ice.
She waited for a bit. "But that should hold her. Her powers are rare. Maybe the family Head will have some use for her."
Then she turned and continued on her way, looking for more people to kill.
Inside the ice was a purple light that was still vibrant.
And inside the purple light was Lito and her subordinates.
"Why didn’t you use a portal for us?" the man said.
Lito shook her head. "I wanted to, but the shield cut off everything at the last moment. They’re not ordinary ice. They seem to be freezing Etherion. I can’t use my powers to just get out of this ice."
"So we’re stuck?" Katty asked, her eyes wide.
Lito turned to the sword woman beside her. "Not exactly. We still have some tricks we can pull."