The Perfect Ice

"Damon!"

Aria woke up in Marcus's truck. Her eyes crusted and tired.

Zrrrroooommm...

She sat up and looked around the old leathered seats. The boxes stacked up in the trunk. She looked to the two front seats. Luna and Marcus both stared off into the sunset, driving into the distance.

"Wha... What happened?" asked Aria as she rubbed her hurt stomach.

"You've been out for two days, Aria. We're lucky- I mean you're lucky. You barely escaped death. Three times," said Marcus as he turned around.

Aria noticed that he was crooked, his left side leaned more than his right. He was off-center.

"Are you ok Marcus?" she asked.

He looked straight at Aria, his face sweating. Luna turned around as well.

"Well... We had to make some sacrifices to save you," she said.

"What sacrifices?"

Luna turned to Marcus. His off-center body. His left arm and his-

"Your arm..."

Aria looked over the leathered seat. She looked at his left arm and his right-

It was wrapped up in a bloody t-shirt. A nub of a once full-length right arm. Aria leaned in closer, her stomach still bandaged, injured. She was distressed. But so was Marcus. His right arm was gone. Clean off gone.

"What happened?" asked Aria.

He turned back around, his left hand on the steering wheel.

"When you two escaped you were followed by the Immortal Army. We tried to stop them with Luna's creation magic, but it wasn't good enough. So I had to resort to... Well... It's a secret spell that I only know. It's from an ancient book dating back five hundred years. It talks about an Ice Witch that lived in the South Pole. It talked about a type of ice strong enough to freeze hell's flames. In Greek, it's called Téleios Págos. But in English, they call it the Perfect Ice."

---

"Killa, what is this?" asked Bryan, as he now stood on the cold Detroit Streets.

He stood fifteen feet away from the bookshop. He looked at the buildings, the streets, the sidewalks. Everything was covered in ice, in blood, in destruction. He turned to the three Immortal Soldiers, their bodies encased in a perfectly clear cascade of large icicles.

"That's..."

Killa Kill reached down and touched the clear ice. As he lifted his finger, he felt something odd about it. The way it froze around the Immortal Soldiers. It's clear blue color, like a water haze that coated in a perfect diamond shape. He touched it again. Its silky smooth texture, its ice-cold touch, like it could freeze him in seconds flat.

"It's unlike anything I've seen before. This is wild..."

"But what about the Immortals? Are they still alive in there?" asked Bryan.

Killa Kill closed his eyes. He touched the ice with his open palm and felt the movement of blood from inside. The circulating heart, the lifeless struggle of death and rebirth.

"No and yes. I can feel through my blood magic that they're still alive, but there is no oxygen inside the ice. They are dying over and over again, from heart attacks, from the sheer cold. Plus their running out of breath over and over and over again. All until they run out of lives and die."

"Then we should melt the ice?"

Killa Kill leaned over, his face looking through the clear diamond-like frame, "it's not possible Bossman."

"Then let's move on and find the girls. They can't be too far."

'Sure thing Bossman I'll call in a car."

"Ummm... Dude can you stop calling me Bossman."

"Sure thing Bossman."

---

Back in Antarctica.

The blue flames of Damon's body started to melt away the perfect ice.

"He's burning and freezing at the same time?" questioned Lada.

He held out his two flaming arms. Every step he took, an inch of ice would melt. Every time he touched the ice it would bend to his will. He forced his way through. To the center of the clear concave. A diamond of Perfect Ice.

The blue on blue.

He slowly reached toward the center of the radiating cold. It's negative fifty-degree temperature change, instantly freezing Damon, but at the same time he was instantly heating up. His front side covered in ice, his backside covered in flames. Two sides to the same coin.

As he forced his way closer to the center, he saw the sword stuck in the ground. It's radiating cold as it fought back against the eternal flames.

As the ice melted around Damon's fingertips he suddenly felt a burst of cold air rush through him.

He was two feet into the crust.

He reached further. But every step blew more air out, stronger air, colder air. He started to feel the Eternal Flames widdling away. He felt the ice take hold. He reached closer. The flames burning harder and harder, the ice freezing harder and harder. His body was being pulled apart. Burned in and out, frozen, cracked, shattered, over and over again.

But for every death, he would take one step further, one step closer.

---

"He's... He's doing it..." expressed Lada with excitement.

"He's strong... When I saw him fighting against the Eternal Flames I knew there was something different about his immortality. I saw the history in his eyes. The pain he went through. And I also saw something else. A hope. Like a new resolve in his body. He felt old and new. Lada... He felt like a teenager trying to get the girl, or a newborn child seeing the world for the first time. He doesn't know what's ahead of him but he's trying..."

---

He reached the pit. The center of the ice. His body still being pulled in two. He looked down at the Ice Sword. It's impossible cold. He reached out. He touched the It.

Its clear-white handle, with a snowflake-like hilt. He grabbed it.

The blade was sharp and pristine, a diamond-like metal, made of the strongest ice, the purest ice. The perfect ice. Right from the source. Right from death. He pulled it from its grave. Then in a sudden collapse of power, all the Perfect Ice around him melted in an instant, turning straight into a rainfall of water.

Olezka smirked, "look Lada. Look. You see that man. He's making history."

Lada looked close at Damon's naked body. The blue flames were now concentrated solely on his left hand, while the ice sword was grasped in his right hand.

He had total control of the two elements.

"What is he?" she asked.

Olezka walked up to the freezing and flaming Damon, "he's ascended past a True Immortal. He's stronger than that. He's now... The Infinite Immortal."