“The snow continued to fall. The moon continued to shine. The wind continued to ease itself between the trees, and upon some of its tendrils it he could still hear his name.”

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≈ VII ≈

xvii. The Saga of Frostwood

Upon far off glance, one would think it had been an ice bear, but standing before it, it was twice that size, with claws like daggers on its huge and heavy front paws that were even now bearing down upon Mithrilon.

He dove to his left, rolled, and reached for the red stone, rubbing it quickly before landing on his back and unleashing a ball of fire toward the creature.

It eyes blazed as it turned, and, snorting in a deep breath through its huge bull’s nostrils, it roared a stream of flames back at him. Mithrilon dove into a snowdrift behind the base of one of the bigger trees.

“Fire? Really?” Out of curiosity, he rubbed the white stone, and a thick sheet of ice that had collected in the upper branches fell and shattered against the creature’s horns. He could have sworn he saw it grin, but the teeth behind the steer’s lips were not that of an herbivore.

The snow below Mithrilon hardened in an instant into shard-like razor blades, the earth cracked to send a shockwave through the ground, lifting the shards into the air briefly, and then a maelstrom of wind picked them up and sent them flying all around him, cutting his cloak and his exposed hands to ribbons.

He ducked behind a tree once more, breathing heavily and wrapping his bleeding hands in bits of his shredded cloak.

“Oh, so you have all the elements, do you? Let’s try something a little Elvish.” With shaking fingers, he took the orange stone in one hand and the blue in the other and rubbed them with his thumbs.

One of the Ironwood trees shattered into countless pieces, each forming themselves into a spear on the way back down to the earth as he exchanged the stones in his hands for the yellow and green.

The spears of Ironwood whistled toward the ground. Until they, the air, and even the falling snow stopped.

All but the creature and Mithrilon, but he had not yet activated his Ether Stone to take control of time. The creature fixed him with his gaze.

Someone had created this creature, this golem, to keep the Eternity Stone safe, that was clear. But who could have given it all this elemental magic? None in the realm but he possessed all of the elements, except Eternity, which currently rested on the snow near the feet of the monster.

On a quest, the key is often planning, sometimes simple perseverance. Sometimes, it is even more simple, in the way that humans are.

He cocked back his arm and flung the green stone at the creature as hard as he could. It landed square between the its eyes with a great crack that was not the stone or a skull, but the splitting at the base of one of the great Ironwood trees.

With the creature’s attention diverted, Mithrilon let out a breath, and noted a snowflake float down through it. Then with whistling and a series of thunks, the Ironwood spears found their marks.

The massive creature sunk to the ground, impaled on dozens of frozen spears, before the tree behind it fell, and the snow bled as the falling tree in the forest made a sound that echoed through all the rest.

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