Watching Mordecai launch himself into the zone of churning ice blocks all alone was not easy for Moriko, but she understood his strength well enough to understand why this was probably everyone's best option. Also his stubbornness and his overprotectiveness, but that was beside the point. Ironically, for all that Mordecai was clearly the most powerful of them, the real problem was that he wasn't powerful enough.

He was unleashing massive amounts of heat and energy as he rampaged, both drawing attention to himself and disrupting the functionality of the zone, but he had no method to focus that much power. If Mordecai could take all the power that he was expending over time as he traveled, and condense it down into a single beam for a brief fraction of a second, then he could readily and safely carve out a path for them to all travel safely, especially if he could focus it into several less intense bursts.

Instead, every time that he was pushed to the upper limits of his power, Mordecai became unsafe for anyone else to be near him.

Moriko shook off her wandering thoughts; they were simply distractions from her worry, and she needed to focus on her own tasks. She looked around to confirm that everyone else was ready.

Bellona was up front with Xarlug, ready to fully activate her fire aura. Xarlug's fiendish heritage was enough to protect him from that aura, making him the only one who could remain close by her side.

Their rear was covered by Fuyuko and Amrydor, with Fuyuko having switched to a pair of axes with picks on the back of their heads.

Kazue was going to be in the center of their formation, and Moriko would be covering their flanks, including above and below. Sparks and Carnelian Flame were going to be roving, which the dragon hatchlings were very good at.

She didn't really expect the formation to last, not with the way they could be attacked from any direction, but it felt better to start with a well-defined order.

Now it was time to wait for the next opening that was large enough; they needed a gap that was moving slowly enough for them to all move into before it passed, and large enough for them all to fit. Bellona was in charge of calling it.

Time seemed to creep along slowly as they waited with little to do but watch Mordecai tear his way through the ice and leave a trail of glowing sand to help them see through the gloom. It was already helping Moriko track some of the creatures here. Even when there wasn't enough light to properly illuminate a creature, even a little bit of back lighting from the slowly spreading grains made it much easier to spot something moving in the ice.

Bellona called out, "This one, careful, it will be dropping away." The ice block in front of the entrance had been turning as it slid past, and the opening presented was currently the top of that block. The party followed Bellona's lead into the moving gap, with Amrydor and Fuyuko having to drop down a few feet by the time they got in.

Of course, that was the easiest part. Now they had to watch in every direction for possible attacks, while also looking out into the chaotic mess of ever-shifting ice to see when there might be an opening, or possibly a new motion that would try to close the gap they were currently in.

They had moved into new gaps twice before any of the creatures seemed to notice them; Mordecai was proving to be quite the effective distraction. The first set of attacks came swimming in from both above and below, but too many of their party were used to aerial combat to be caught off guard so readily. Moriko directed Thunder and Lightning to focus on the attack from above, while Moriko took on the pair below them herself.

Everyone else would be fighting too, of course, but Sparks and Moriko were the most suited to attacking the moment that a creature breached the surface of the ice. While the ice itself was a poor conductor of electricity, the creatures themselves were not so well protected. Well, most of them at least. A few turned out to have some electric abilities of their own.

The creatures appeared to be semi-random combinations of different aquatic animals, such as the squid-like creature with a mix of either a beaked mouth, shark-toothed mouth, or a lamprey mouth on the end of each of its tentacles. It was a horrible design for a creature that needed to hunt and live normally, but it was well-suited to a design meant to inflict as much damage as possible before it was killed.

Making the battle more difficult was the ever changing nature of their environment; the floor was almost never level or completely even, and it was always moving.

Moriko's first kill revealed something else interesting: the ability to swim through ice appeared to be something given to the individual inhabitants, rather than something implemented in the zone for all inhabitants. The moment Moriko had killed the squid-thing, it had become locked in the ice, rather than continuing to move through it like a liquid.

That presented both a problem and a boon. On the one hand, if the body was locked in place, it was harder to see other creatures that were approaching from behind it, but on the other hand, those creatures also had to maneuver around their dead comrade, which made things more crowded and helped keep the party from getting swarmed.

However, it also made for more mess as the ice scraped past partially extruded tentacles. Which the dragon hatchlings gladly ate while complaining about their impromptu meal's chewiness. There was also no escaping the rotten-brine scent oozing out of the creatures.

Fuyuko's choice of weapons proved quite useful in this fight; the pick side of her axes could quickly dig into and tear away chunks of ice, allowing her to follow up by slashing the bladed side into any creatures that had been trying to lurk just beyond the edge of the ice to launch spells or other ranged attacks.

While not quite as specialized, Bellona's axe also proved adept at a similar style of breaking through the ice, especially when combined with her fire aura.

Xarlug and Amrydor had different answers for how to attack with their polearms. Xarlug's thrusts carried an explosive force that shattered the ice where he struck, and that explosion often stunned any creatures near the point of his strike. Meanwhile, Amrydor was displaying more of that strange technique where his blade seemed to strike one place, but actually struck somewhere else. It wasn't an illusion, it was more that the effects of his attack were slightly offset from where his war scythe physically was, and that let him strike past the surface of the ice even when his blade didn't penetrate deeply.

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Kazue's illusions and dream attacks were completely unhindered by the ice, even when she made attacks with weapons that only almost-existed. Those seemed to completely ignore the ice, striking only what Kazue was focused on.

That gave Moriko an idea, and she murmured a few ideas for Kazue to test, via their earrings. As it turned out, yes, Kazue could attack the ice if she chose, though she couldn't strike the ice at the same time as she struck creatures beyond the ice. That led to some other interesting possibilities, though none that Moriko was eager to test in the middle of battle.

As for Moriko, she could punch the ice at full strength without hurting herself, and this would let her shove her lightning into the ice to attack an enemy that was not too far past the surface, but it took a lot of effort, so she focused on attacking anything that breached the surface of the ice. Fortunately, if she grabbed an exposed part of one of the creatures, she could pull an inhabitant out of the ice like she was yanking something up out of water, which most of the creatures handled poorly. Especially when she figured out how to create a temporary wall or floor of wind that she could slam the creature into. Her reflexes had gotten the better of her a couple of times, and she'd slammed her target back into the ice. Which was not entirely useless, the ice appeared to still have the surface tension of water when the inhabitants entered it from the outside, but it was much better to keep them above the surface until she was done with them.

In addition to the inhabitants, there was one more enemy to be concerned about. The cold. For the most part, they were handling this by tossing the occasional flask of alchemist fire into a corner, but each flask only lasted a short while, and they only had so many of them.

When they were through about half of their flasks, Moriko cast the first of the prayers that Sakiya had granted her. Passion's Heart. She gasped as she felt the heat bloom out from the center of her body, each beat of her heart sending out a pulse of energy in an ever-growing aura that quickly filled their current space.

Moriko couldn't say she understood all the intricacies of this spell, but her goddess had provided basic insight into how it functioned. Each beat of her heart increased the power of the prayer, slowly increasing the heat it provided along with other boons, such as increasing her strength and speed.

Which made it very important that Moriko maintain her calm, for the power of the spell had drawbacks as well. Her martial and meditative training helped here, providing both a low baseline heartbeat and the ability to keep her heart from speeding up more than absolutely needed.

While the spell lasted, Moriko was deadlier than ever, and she was now able to land punches of sufficient force to create shockwaves through the ice. Her increased strength also applied to her power, which she used a couple of times to create pillars of black lightning that repelled the ice blocks at each end.

It took a little more than half an hour of traversing the deadly field of ice before Moriko finally had to release the spell. Though it was mostly hidden from the others by her armor, Moriko could feel the heat beginning to sear and cook her own flesh, and the pain had started to slow her more than the prayer had been speeding her up.

She had forced herself to wait for several minutes past when she wanted to drop the spell, not only because they had been fighting but because she was going to need to recover. It was only once they had jumped into a new space that looked to be clear for a while that she let herself drop to her knees and release the magic.

Bellona stepped close enough to lightly touch Moriko's shoulder and murmur a healing prayer before she focused back on watching for any incoming enemies. This gave Kazue time to retrieve a couple of healing potions and lift Moriko's mask up to feed the potions to her.

Moriko felt practically paralyzed from how weak her body suddenly was, and she found it hard to keep track of what was going on around her. Not that there was a lot for her to do; at this point, most of the inhabitants appeared to be dead, including the giant ice ooze that Mordecai had been playing tag with.

The next opening appeared before Moriko had recovered, and Xarlug scooped her up by the waist in a one-arm carry to pull her through with him before he dropped her so that he could put both of his hands on the shaft of his weapon. Moriko giggled at the wandering thought, then shook her head to try to clear it.

Nope, that only made her dizzy briefly.

It was a good ten minutes after releasing the spell before Moriko could stand on her own. Ten minutes of being helpless on the battlefield. That was absolutely not a spell to be used when alone, though hopefully the side effects wouldn't be as bad if Moriko had the chance to practice with it.

Now they had to just find their way out; their options had forced them onto a very different path from Mordecai's, but his searching for an exit had helped close the gap between them, as it saved them from trying the wrong directions. Relief washed through Moriko when she saw Mordecai leap past the edge of the ice; he'd found the exit corridor.

Then he staggered briefly. Moriko couldn't make out the details through the distortion of the ice, and the bulk of his war form filled most of the corridor anyway, but it was clear that he was being attacked from deeper in the corridor. And they couldn't support him.

Moriko heard Fuyuko gasp when she saw Mordecai struggling, and Moriko instinctively grabbed her daughter with a tether of black lightning, holding the girl close and preventing her from shadow jumping to help Mordecai, and probably get herself killed. Moriko hadn't realized that her lightning could do that before she'd tried, though it made sense now that she thought about it.

"Stay with us; if he's having that much trouble, you jumping in blind is only going to make it harder for him."

Fuyuko glared for a brief moment, frustrated at not being allowed to help, but Moriko held her gaze until Fuyuko let her eyes drop with a reluctant sigh. "You're right. Probably," Fuyuko muttered. "Fine, I'll stay until we can all help him."

It was a stressful time to only be able to wait while watching Mordecai's war form slowly struggle forward toward his foe. Moriko frowned, trying to figure out why he was using his war form instead of his battle form. Then she noticed the broken spines littering the ground behind him. Oh.

She slowly gathered air chi around herself as she prepared for the next opening. As soon as there was a clear gap between them and the entrance to the corridor, Moriko released her gathered power, letting it whip around in an uncontrolled frenzy. There was no need for her to control it, because there was only one direction for it to go.

The burst of air cleared the toxic gases from the tunnel, pushing past Mordecai's slumping body and allowing everyone to leap forward without that worry. Their masks should have been enough to protect them, but Moriko would rather not take that chance. Plus, her wind should have driven any fumes at their enemy, and possibly pushed him around if she had caught him off guard.

Bellona had started charging forward as soon as the opening had appeared, her form flickering with light, before she suddenly appeared in front of Mordecai, her shield raised to ward off a blast of fire. Moriko sent a brief, mental prayer Amirume's way in thanks for the powers she had granted to her champion.

There was a sense of relief with that prayer as well; if Bellona had felt the tug of Amirume's power guiding her, then Mordecai's avatar was still alive, and needed protecting, which itself seemed a miracle given the state of his body.

An arrow flashed past and exploded against the corridor where it began to curve; Fuyuko had switched to some of the more limited, heavy-duty arrows that Dersuta had provided. Moriko couldn't see the mage that Mordecai had been defending against, but the flow of air gave her a rough idea of where he was, and she unleashed a bolt of lightning toward him; lightning that she rode to leap ahead.

Moriko could feel Dimitri's presence, and her fingers briefly brushed cloth as she reached out to grab him, but then he was gone, the lingering traces of a short-range teleport shimmering in the air. It seemed he did not like the idea of someone like Moriko getting too close.

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