Elevation of Mana Chapter 207 To Win

“You're alive!?” Chien said, clearly not quite having expected this. “How?”

The question was valid, missing multiple limbs and clearly still very heavily injured she hovered there, supported by her magic. It took me a few moments to process, during which I just stared wide eyed.

“Matriarch,” I said, looking at the heavily injured woman in both surprise and alarm and trying to keep them both from my voice. “You need a healer urgently.”

“I will soon yes, but I've stopped the worst of the bleeding so I'll be fine for awhile yet.”

I didn't believe she knew what she was talking about. Bleeding or no, there would be disease, there would have to be with the still open wounds I was seeing here. Even if she'd covered them quickly, even if she had put something there to sterilize them as best she could, those were massive burns. Dead cells and exposed layers that were never meant to touch the air were doing so, and festering as they did.

“I'm not worried about the wounds, I'm worried about disease Matriarch, we should go now.”

“Oh? Together? Even after you left me back at the battle?”

Chien gulped.

“Don't worry, I'm not too cross about that. After all it would have looked like I died, and I certainly wouldn't have wasted time on any others myself. We'll talk about it, but first I've my first prize to claim.” Her words were cold, hard, almost delusional sounding, like she just didn't care that half her limbs were ripped away.

With a small motion of her one remaining arm she pointed at the corpse of our enemy. The white-skinned reptile moved a bit, body twisting as something came from its chest, ripped away slowly, carefully. I saw the crystal, large and whole, floating up from the ruin of a body.

“I got the other one already, stashed it somewhere safe so don't worry; we can't have such artifacts going to waste, certainly not now that we've exterminated these vermin.”

“Vermin isn't the word I'd use,” Chien said, sounding worried at the way she spoke, her tone was so different to what I'd heard before.

“Perhaps not, but it's the word history will use. I the victor, and my two aides destroyed the last of these monsters, ripped them apart. Then I rose to rule the whole of our kind, uniting us into one nation, all grateful at my kind and gentle rule.”

I felt a chill, and not from the frozen wind all around us. She was planning on taking over everything, probably by force if she needed to, and nobody was around to stop her now. The other Ancients were all dead, save for her, and most of the elders too, if she tried people would probably just come to her banner without any fight at all. Everyone knew better than to fight someone for no reason when they'd surely die.

“But we killed them?” Chien said, sounding confused, but I could see he wasn't, just trying to milk her for information. That was good, that was smart, dangerous, but we needed to know just how far down the rabbit hole she'd gone.

“However would you have done that young man? No, we'll tell everyone the truth, that I did it. I do hope you don't plan on arguing, after all, while you're good, your friend is so much better, easier to control too...”

And there it was, she'd gone all the way down. Sure, she could control me, for awhile, but threatening my family? Was she stupid? Was she unaware of how I dealt with that? Honestly I'd been pretty clear about it in the past, to her face even.

“You know, I think I do remember you doing a lot there...”

“Smart boy, now come, we need to get back to Icehome. Neither of your can fix this mess up, and it really does need fixing. You know my arm itches, even though it's not there, it's driving me absolutely mad.”

Before we could say anything else I felt the magic wrap around me, hauling me up from the ground and into the air behind her. Had to admit that I was jealous a bit, her flight seemed so effortless, and so much cleaner than mine was. Perhaps she had some better ideas than I had, or just practiced that much more, I didn't know, but it irked. Mad was also the word I might well use.

“So you plan to take over everything? I hate to tell you this, but I'm not sure that you've enough people for it.”

“I've plenty, did you notice how many of mine came to that battle? Not many, though few were truly ready for such a thing. Ready enough to take over villages and cities though? They certainly are, and while I've not too many elders, they're all so loyal to me. Unlike you southerners who threw them out when they got old enough we don't do that up here, instead embracing them as new members. Personally I think it's a better plan.”

“Hard to argue that,” I agreed, both because she could crush me, and because she had a good point.

My mind was spinning though, trying to find some way out of this. We'd probably need to kill her, that much was obvious, and if she was smart, and she was, she'd be able to keep us from gathering the mana for crystals, as those took some time to make. No, I needed something, some trick I'd not yet employed, something from a different paradigm than we were used to.

Chien was pulled up beside me as we began to very quickly float along over the ice sheets, not at the speed of a plane, but certainly faster than a horse could run. How long would it take us to get to where we were going? I couldn't guess, but as we moved I saw his hands, moving quickly through weird shapes at his sides, almost like he was trying to keep his balance.

That almost brought a smile to my face, but I abstained, knowing we needed the secrecy. His fingers flashed through something I'd only half formed to him once, an idea never brought to full completion.

We'd had so many conversations over the years, thousands of subjects covered. At one point I'd suggested converting the language into something like sign. I'd never spoken sign, nor did I have any practice with it. Heck, even my aborted attempts at making letters had been kind of poor, flailing like a child on a project in the back of a classroom, a secret code.

There were of course some basic hunting signs and whatnot already, but not quite a full language. What Chien was using now though were those early, poor attempts of mine to try and join with me and form a plan, any plan. I smiled as he worked out a couple of ideas, pointing out things he thought we might exploit, it was slow, and clunky, but if we could talk, we could plan, and if we could plan, we could win.