A guttural bark pierced the night, and they came at us in a mad rush. A stampede of fur and fangs barreled forward, kicking up powdery snow as they charged like an avalanche. They were massive, easily the size of the Kannibal Kids from the twenty-fourth floor, but beefier—thick with pale blue muscle beneath tangled white fur. They tore across the clearing on all fours, moving like oversized gorillas, snarling through twisted maws that leaked strands of blue drool.

  A barrage of tags appeared, briefly flickering above each of their heads.

  Dweller 0.49345B – Snowmaw Yeti [Level 45]

  Behind them, clinging close to the tree line and far from the front lines, was another Yeti—different than the charging behemoths of muscle and rage. She was bent and frail-looking, though her eyes glared with a malevolent pale blue light. A green cloak covered with icy-white sigils trailed down her back, and she carried a gnarled candy-cane stripped staff of white and red.

  Dweller 0.49348A – Snowmaw Hag [Level 48]

  Imagine if your grandma got possessed by an ice demon, moved to the Himalayas, and decided her retirement plan involved blizzards, necrotic frostbite, and commanding a personal entourage of beefcake murder apes.

  That’s the Snowmaw Hag.

  As frail as she is mean, the Snowmaw Hag is often the runt of the Yeti liter, and significantly less domineering than the rest of her kin. But don’t let her old-lady shuffle fool you, what she lacks in physical prowess she makes up for in magical might. While her roided out cousins are busy smashing things and gibbering incoherently, she’s in the back whispering curses to the snowdrifts and turning your internal organs into gourmet popsicles.

  She boosts nearby Yetis with enchanted snow totems, ice rune chants, and something that smells suspiciously like peppermint schnapps. And her arctic-themed arsenal is loaded with classics like Golf Ball Riot, Icicle Barrage, and the absolute bastard of the bunch, Black Rot Frostbite. If that last one hits you, congratulations—you’ve just won a one-way ticket to Amputation Town. Hands and feet blacken, shrivel, and fall off like overcooked chicken wings. It’s not instant, but it is inevitable. Like taxes. Or Yeti hugs.

  If she starts chanting in Old Ursine and the temperature drops twenty degrees, it’s time to run. Or throw a firebomb. Or both. Mostly both.

  Though she looked far less formidable than the other Yetis, the Codex entry made it clear that she was the real threat. She brought the heel of her staff crashing down and a ring of power rippled out. The other Yetis began to glow with a ghostly blue light as ancient sigils climbed across matted fur and slithered over arms and legs. Some kind of team buff—though I wasn’t sure what exactly the spell did.

  Jakob dashed forward with both shields raised to meet the charging monsters head on. Temperance raced along beside him, cleaver in one hand, baseball bat in the other, a manic grin stretching out the corners of her lips.

  “Finally,” she yelled, “a proper fight to be had.”

  More of the Yetis charged from behind us, their pounding footfalls carrying across the clearing accompanied by furious, inhuman warcrys.

  I thrust both hands out and a trio of black rifts split the air as my Horrors shambled forward. With Temp and Jakob locking down one flank, the Horrors formed a ragged line behind us—our last-ditch stopgap to keep the Yetis from circling around and tearing out our spines. The summoned Horrors burst into motion with chainsaws and angle grinders revving madly, the noise alone enough to make a few of the Yetis hesitate.

  Drumbo launched a windblade, carving a deep gash in the nearest Yeti’s chest before driving his metal gauntlet directly into the monster’s face, shattering its jaw. Blue blood and a score of jagged teeth arced through the air.

  The Yeti countered with a brutal haymaker that caught Drumbo on the chin, snapping his head back as a thin layer of ice crept across his face and slithered down his neck. Then came the follow-up—a massive yellow snowball, roughly the size of a bowling ball, that exploded against Drumbo’s chest in a steaming spray. The impact sent the Horror staggering drunkenly. I had serious doubts the elephant man could take the Yeti in a straight-up brawl.

  Luckily, Synthia evened the odds, unleashing a column of fire from one hand that roasted the Yeti alive.

  The monster’s oily fur went up like a bonfire as the blaze raced along its arms and slithered across its legs. The creature flopped to the snow, rolling frantically, as it tried fruitlessly to dose the fire. It was no use. Timmy pounced on the downed creature like a feral dog, shredding it with merciless claws.

  “Harper,” I barked, “get your boundary flags up, ASAP. Croc, be her shadow, understand?”

  “You got it, Dan. Nothing will touch her.” The dog shifted in an eyeblink, limbs bulging and growing as it reared up, now a towering blue bear, tentacles writhing hungrily from its gaping belly-maw.

  I cast Psychic Sovereignty and rocketed upward—though I made sure to stay well-below the treeline and the Polaris Vora, still hovering in the sky overhead.

  While Harper raced across the field using Tactical Zoomies, planting her boundary flags in a rough grid, I took a few seconds to hastily reconfigure my Spatial Core. My friends needed help, but I wouldn’t be much use without my magical arsenal. I swapped Drone Zone for Spike Fault, then removed Erlenmeyer’s Molotov Cocktail and Existential Dread before adding Echoed Aura and StainSlayer Maelstrom back into my active rotation.

  The piercing wail of a broken car alarm erupted from Jakob as he triggered his newest Relic, and the Yetis swarmed toward him—driven by the primal need to silence the awful racket.

  An army of spectral chains exploded from the snow, wrapping around one Yeti, pinning it in place, while Jakob fought like a cornered honey badger against two more of the monstrosities.

  The Cendral activated Cow Catcher, launching a devastating counterassault that drove one of the Yetis back, momentarily stunning the creature. It just stood there, dazed and swaying on oversized feet. Temp hit another of the monsters right in the face with a ball of Dire Mosquitoes. As the Yeti swatted at the voracious bugs crawling across its fur and burrowing into its skin, Jakob brought his plasma shield screaming around in a wide arc.

  The edge of the shield sheared through an outstretched arm, cutting the limb off and cauterizing the wound in its wake. The Yeti howled, but the scream quickly died as Temperance scampered up the creature’s back and slit its throat with her cleaver.

  The beast dropped, bleeding out in the snow, but more Yetis were already closing in.

  I sent a whirling barrage of tools forward to meet them.

  The blunt head of my hammer pulverized meat and shattered bone, while the demolition screwdriver left a score of deep puncture wounds and my tactical speed square carved through fur and skin. The Bowling Ball of Rolling Momentum was a force of nature unto itself, breaking legs with every pass.

  While the tools worked with deadly efficiency, I spammed Fault Spike, raising a forest of sharpened earthen spears that tore through feet and created crude walls—natural barriers that funneled the rampaging Yetis into more easily defensible chokepoints.

  I activated Echoed Aura, paired with StainSlayer Maelstrom in Group Punishment Mode, conjuring an icy blue aura that wrapped around me and each of my allies, including the three Horrors fighting for their lives.

  StainSlayer Maelstrom (Group Punishment Aura): All enemies within range suffer 2 points of continuous Chemical Burn Damage per second. Additionally, all chemical-based attacks deal 25% more damage to affected targets.

  If that wasn’t an invitation to melt these furry fuckfaces into the earth, then I didn’t know what was.

  I cast StainSlayer Maelstrom and churning blue clouds formed above the battlefield. Bleach fell in a sheet, searing fur and pockmarking skin. I triggered pH Balance, converting a portion of the damage to health for my teammates.

  While the bleach storm raged, I triggered Hydro Fracking Blast and started carving through the Yetis from a distance. The creatures seemed to be particularly weak against fire-based spells, so the attack was brutally effective.

  A lance of water cut one of the Yetis clean in two, then I split the beam, drilling a hole through another Yeti’s chest. The beam chewed through the monster’s HP bar and once it had accumulated two stacks of Scorching Erosion, I activated Mana Overpressure doubling the spell’s damage output.

  In seconds the Yeti burst into flames, its blood burning as it died.

  [Level Up x 1]

  I ignored the notification and locked onto a new target, slicing off an upraised arm, before driving my Bowling Ball into the side of its knee, shattering the bones and dropping where it stood. I cast Spike Fault and more rocky spears exploded upward, skewering the creature in half a dozen places. It wailed and thrashed, but before it could pull itself free, Temperance was on it, driving her cleaver down over and over again—thwack, thwack, thwack—hacking through the meat of its neck.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  It wasn’t a clean kill, but the Yeti died all the same.

  Although Jakob and Temperance were holding their own despite the level gap, my three Horrors weren’t fairing quite as well. One of the Yetis had Timmy pinned to the ground. One of Timmy’s arms was gone—a ragged stump just below the elbow—and another Yeti was mauling Synthia, its claws leaving deep furrows in her chitinous armor, its teeth ripping away undead meat.

  I cast another round of StainSlayer Maelstrom then redirected my Bowling Ball right into the side of the Yeti’s head. Its skull cracked and the monster stumbled away, giving Synthia enough time to gain her feet. I cocked my finger like a gun and blasted the hairy son of a bitch right in the neck with a lance of water. It staggered sideways, grabbing at its ruined throat with one claw-tipped hand.

  Instead of finishing it off, I wrapped the Yeti in a hand of mental power and hurled it upward with all the force I could muster. It spun and flipped gracelessly through the air… and right into the waiting tentacles of the Polaris Vora.

  The Yeti shrieked as its skin melted, and its limbs were ripped away.

  I scanned the field, searching for a new target, but before I found one, a wave of icy spikes sailed through the air, aimed at my chest. I took evasive action, and darted left, but I wasn’t quite fast enough.

  Most of the spears went wide, but one clipped my arm, slicing through the fabric of my robe and leaving a deep gash that burned like a tire fire. Frost leaked from the wound, creeping up my shoulder and down my elbow, toward my hand. The limb quickly went numb as another notice appeared.

  You have been afflicted with Creeping Frost Touch, causing an icy crust to slowly spread across the affected area. The afflicted limb will become fully immobilized for five minutes or until cured.

  Jesus, Mary, and Jospeh—that was just what I needed right now.

  I whirled in the air in time to see another barrage of ice spikes sailing toward me, courtesy of the withered Snowmaw Hag, still cowering near the tree line. I raised my good hand and blasted the incoming projectiles from the air with thin threads of pressurized water. Super-heated water met ice spears in a thunderous crack and they ruptured midair, steam wafting up in a plume as frozen shrapnel exploded outward, peppering the snow.

  But the Hag was just getting started.

  She raised her gnarled candy-cane staff and steely gray clouds formed in the sky, swirling and intermixing with the blue clouds I’d already summoned. A second later, hailstones the size of golf balls began to fall in a heavy downpour. I attempted to shield my head with one arm, but that was about as effective as trying to lasso a tiger with a wet spaghetti noddle. The hailstones pounded at my shoulders, leaving huge red welts wherever they landed and my HP dropped sharply as a result.

  Unbale to take cover, I cast Neural Slipstream. My body shimmered, growing intangible. Allowing the hailstones to pass harmlessly through my spectral form. Time lurched and slowed, the battle creeping to standstill. I shot forward, skimming just above the snowy landscape, phasing through a wall of stampeding Yetis as I quickly close the distance with the Hag, frozen in an eternal moment.

  I recalled my hammer as I flew.

  In a matter of seconds, I covered the distance, landed directly behind the Hag, then promptly deactivated Neural Slipstream. My body became corporeal once again and, without missing a beat, I slammed the hammer into the side of her head, knocking her bony ass to the ground. She was fast, though, and quickly rolled back to her feet, still chanting under her breath. She brought the heel of her staff crashing down and an avalanche of snow swirled around her, momentarily obscuring her from view.

  “I’m not so weak as I look,” she cackled as the impromptu blizzard retreated.

  The snow had formed into crystalline armor that covered every inch of her skin in overlapping plates of ice, studded with spikes. She carried her staff in one hand, but the other now held an oversized crystal sword large enough to cleave me in two without batting an eyelash.

  She spun, a whirlwind motion, and brought the blade slashing toward me.

  I danced back then activated Hydro Fracking Blast at close range. It met her icy armor in a hiss of steam but failed to penetrate.

  She swung the sword with a flourish then lunged with a lightning fast thrust that nearly skewered me through the stomach. I’d already been impaled once today and had no desire to relive the experience. Still, despite my best efforts, her blade nicked my already limp hand, and a fresh surge of pain radiated up into my arm. I glanced down and saw that my skin was turning black as coal, my fingers curling into frozen claws.

  She came at me, fast and furious, and I raised my hammer just in time to block her next swing. The clang of metal rang out, frosty blade meeting forged iron. Her follow-up strike was little more than a blur—a sweep from the staff aimed at my ribs. I lashed out with a thread of telekinetic force, not enough to stop it completely, but enough to shove the attack off target. The staff scraped past me, missing by inches.

  She snarled. Frost bloomed between us, misting the air and clouding my vision in a burst of glittering white.

  Another swing.

  I ducked, felt the edge of her sword whistle past my scalp, then drove my shoulder into her armored gut.

  She barely flinched.

  I shot away and sent a pair of Balloon Menagerie Spell Cards spinning toward her. She batted the first away with her staff and it veered into the trees before detonating. The other caught her in the leg, balloons billowing out then exploding in a cacophony of flame.

  She stumbled, caught off-guard, and I charged. My hammer cracked into her hand with a meaty crunch, and the staff went spinning through the air before vanishing into a nearby snowdrift.

  I didn’t waste the opening.

  Reaching out with my mind, I tried to lift her with Psychic Sovereignty, but it was like trying to levitate a mountain. She was a fortress of Grit—unmoving, unyielding—and every ounce of my power just slammed uselessly against her mental defenses.

  But then it hit me.

  I had another option.

  Fluid Dynamics, my proverbial Ace in the Hole.

  I triggered the spell, this time focusing on the armor encasing her. Although it looked like frozen diamonds, I knew it was just ice. Water, shaped and hardened. I couldn’t melt all of it. But I didn’t need to. All I need was a crack. A weak point. I focused on the helmet, right between her eyes, and channeled mana into the structure, pushing against the molecular bonds with sheer force of will.

  The ice resisted. Fought me. But it was no match for focused pressure.

  A second passed. Then two.

  And finally a small hole melted open, dead center in her forehead.

  She didn’t notice. Or maybe she didn’t care because her frost sword was already swinging back toward me.

  I backpedaled, just out of range of the weapon, then activated Hydro Fracking Blast, targeting the gap in her armor.

  The hole was tiny, but at this range I couldn’t miss.

  The water drilled through her head with 100,000 PSI of raw force. The sword clattered to the ground as she screamed, her HP bar tumbling like a stone. She was high level, but like most caster classes, she was a glass cannon through and through with a Health Pool to match. The Hag was dead before she hit the ground. Her summoned armor evaporated as blood leaked out from the wound, staining the snow blue and forming a halo around her head.

  The kill earned me yet another level for my trouble.

  [Level Up x 1]

  I grabbed her corpse and staff, tossing both into Storage, then rose back into the air.

  Yeti corpses dotted the clearing like grotesque snowmen after a napalm storm. Despite the slaughter, a few of the bastards remained—snarling, swinging, bleeding.

  But they were surrounded.

  Thanks to a little help from Harper’s boundary formations and Croc’s delightful habit of mauling everything within arm’s reach, Temp, Jakob, and my three Horrors had managed to corral the remaining Yetis into the center of the meadow. Now it was just good ol’ fashioned slaughter. The clearing turned into a killing floor. They were hacking away from every direction, hemming the surviving Yetis in tighter with every swing.

  Temperance was a blur of blood and steel, her cleaver flashing as she hurled Dire Mosquitoes that buzzed and exploded in geysers of chitinous bug. Jakob’s kite shield cracked skulls, while his plasma shield lit up the night with pulses of white-hot energy. Harper stood just behind the front line, casting heals rapid-fire—her hands glowing as she patched up torn ligaments and shredded flesh like she was frosting a cake.

  A very messy, screaming cake.

  Croc was truly in its element, tearing into the Yetis with fangs, claws, and the kind of enthusiastic violence only a mutated abomination could muster. Meanwhile, my Horrors—blessed little nightmares that they were—kept the pressure on. I even spotted two Yetis among the melee, their eyes glazed over in undeath, fighting their still-living kin under the command of my Necromarshals.

  The remaining Yetis fought like cornered animals, feral, desperate, and far too dumb to know they’d already lost.

  I cast StainSlayer Maelstrom to cut them down with a bleach storm, then summoned earthen spikes beneath their feet and followed up with a barrage of pressurized water bolts. The trapped Dwellers didn’t stand a chance.

  In less than a handful of minutes, it was over.

  The last Yeti let out a broken snarl, staggered toward Jakob, and collapsed before his shield could connect. A silence settled over the clearing, broken only by our heavy breaths, and even more experience rolled in like a tidal wave.

  [Level Up x 2]

  When I checked my minimap, I didn’t see so much as a blip of movement in the trees beyond. No red triangles. No horrible surprises waiting to ambush us. Somehow, against all odds, we’d survived the Polaris Vora, the Grippledips, and an entire horde of murderous snow apes.

  We were still standing.

  But not without a price.

  True, everyone had survived, which was a miracle in its own right, but as I looked down at my left hand—still a ruined clump of blackened, crusted flesh—I knew the butcher’s bill had finally come due.

  Harper was already at my side, casting Duct Tape Triage with a flick of her fingers. The usual gray glow settled over my hand—then fizzled, guttered, and died. It hadn’t done anything at all.

  “Something’s wrong,” she muttered, forehead furrowed in confusion. “That usually works.”

  “Not this time,” I said, already knowing what the issue was. The Hag’s Codex entry had been crystal clear. Black Rot Frostbite. If that last one hits you, congratulations—you’ve just won a one-way ticket to Amputation Town… It’s not instant, but it is inevitable.

  “Here,” Harper said, pressing an open Zima into my good hand. “Try this instead.”

  I doubted it would help, but I chugged the elixir anyway, hoping the magic would be enough to dispel the effects.

  It didn’t.

  The Zima cured all the minor nicks and bruises and banished the lingering effects of Creeping Frost Touch, but I wasn’t sure that was a good thing. As feeling returned to my arm, so did the pain from my hand. A dull, lingering ache that pulsed with every beat of my heart.

  Harper gently took my mangled limb, inspecting the mess with a mix of horror and disbelief. “I don’t understand,” she said shaking her head. “I’ve never seen an injury a Greater Healing Elixir couldn’t fix.”

  “I have,” I muttered, thinking back to Jakob and his flayed arm. “But let’s not worry about it for right now.” I glanced at the mound of steaming bodies. “Everyone else, okay?”

  Harper shrugged, “Nothing a warm fire and a little rest won’t fix.”

  “Good,” I said, tucking my ruined hand into the outer pocket of my robe.

  There was a way to fix the damage, but it wouldn’t be fun for me. I had a Relic tucked away in Storage called Molt and Mend, which allowed the user to “molt” injured body parts and regrow new, healthy appendages over the course of several days or weeks, all depending on the extent of the injuries. There was a catch, though. Because there was always a catch.

  According to the Codex Entry, the process was exceptionally painful.

  Not even Harper’s Painkiller OD would be able to help.

  But that wasn’t something I wanted to deal with now—not in the middle of a hostile winter wonderland surrounded by corpses and potential enemies.

  “Come on,” I said, pushing the pain down deep. “Let’s loot the bodies before more of those Yeti dickwads show up in force.”

  Because if there’s one thing worse than nearly dying in the snow... it was doing it without loot.