179 Ice Is Heavy, 916.7 kg/m3 (That's A Lot)

"Neat! Wanna fight to the death?~" 

Qivittoq tilts his head in response to my question, and I can almost picture the quizzical look he wears under that hood of his.

"Vat? No. Why would I vant to fight?" He asks, making me frown and give him a shrug.

"Got anything better to do?" I say as I manifest my right wing, shooting a crystalline spike of blood at him almost in the same instant.

Yet, the spike only makes it half the distance between us before his foot twitches and the ice rises to form a wall in front of it.

However, he underestimates me, because my spike pierces clean through the wall of ice with ease, causing my opponent to feel a small spike of panic, raising five more, thicker walls in an instant, the third of which is enough to stop my attack.

"You are.. how you say... not very nice person," is all he says after my attack is stopped and his walls are returned to the frozen land we stand upon.

Meh, I've been called worse.

"But," he continues before I can respond, "you are not incorrect. I am not busy."

The moment he finishes speaking, half a dozen spikes of ice rise from the ground between us, shooting at me with surprising speed. But I'm still faster, so I don't struggle to dance between the spikes, either dodging them completely or shattering them with a simple palm strike, showring myself with even more icicles.

Continuing the 'testing period' of sorts, it's my turn to attack this time and I escalate things even further, bringing out my other wing and sending a slew of projectiles at not just him but the area around him, curving the shots that miss until he is completely surrounded by nearly a hundred bone-white spikes of crystalised blood.

Yet, it hardly matters as once again he raises a wall in response, this one surrounding himself completely and clearly  far denser considering that none of my shots make it through this time.

Once his shield is covered in spikes and my attack over, it cracks and shatters into dust that raises into the sky, joining the storm surrounding us in a rather aesthetic display.

However, as his wall is collapsing in on itself, I briefly notice that the walls seems to be made up of numerous thinner layers of ice stacked together like a lattice, which I assume is how he made it more durable than the first wall that couldn't take a single blow.

"Good defence!~" I say with a smile, "but how is your offence?~"

The ground shakes with all the force of an earthquake and the ice behind and around Qivi explodes into the air for  miles, forming  thousands of ornate spears of ice to cover the skies, each the size of a school bus and pointing right at me.

".....Pretty good, then." My dry response doesn't seem to amuse him as he only lets out a short hum before raising his arm, like a General holding an army.

"Good offence," he says, his accented voice bringing a wild smile to my face as I predict his next words, "but how is your defence?"

Blood  pours out of my body like a fountain, wrapping around my body and forming a segmented armour so thick that my overall size more than doubles, yet becoming a bigger target does not take away my immense speed, something I demonstrate once the wall of ice spears meets me.

Both of my arms transform into humongous curved blades and become  blurs as I cut and block every spear that comes close enough, each spear shattering with ease under the force of my blows.

Yet, the spears that I dodge do not simply fly past me, instead they abruptly stop once they pass me, spinning around and shooting straight back at me faster than I can spin around to block.

Luckily, I have more than just my hands to use and my wings block the first couple of strikes before my ribbons  violently burst from my back, slapping aside every spear that tries to close in while my tail grows and lengthens, swinging in a wide arc over the battlefield and straight for Qivi.

Naturally, a wall of ice as thick as a building's width shoots out of the ground to intercept my limb, succeeding as my tail only manages to smash itself halfway through the construct before being stopped.

Yet, the momentary distraction was more than enough for me to clear the immediate area around me, and before he can think any further, I  lunge at him, the ice  cratering underneath me for hundreds of metres and I reach him in less time than it takes to blink, having crossed my arms in front of my face to crush all of the ice constructs in my way.

The moment I am within arms distance, I rear back my right and thrust the bladed appendage directly at his torso, only to stumble and miss as I lose my footing.

The reason for which becomes clear once some of my many eyes look around and see the entire  world around us rising into the air. The ice sheets breaking apart to show the see below before that too freezes and rises to join the ice in the sky.

Standing here, on a block of ice the size of a building, I can only watch in  awe as Qi fills the skies with ice until there is no more below us, a crater  miles long that is now completely bereft of ice and water, showing the bedrock below.

Idly, I note how his power is pretty similar to Shatterbird's, just with a focus on ice instead of sand. Opposite side of the same coin and all that.

Should be fun!~

Amongst the new archipelago in the sky, my eyes spot Qi's now distant form as he stands upside-down on a block of ice, still with his hands in his pockets.

I give the  billions of tonnes worth of ice around me one final glance before deciding that I probably shouldn't hold anything back.

With that in mind, electricity starts sparking off of my form, arcing between my limbs as they sway around me, my wings growing slightly as I pump more blood into them, before finally my whole body starts to glow with a faint blue hue, veins of that same-coloured energy forming and running through my entire form.

A feeling of  power fills me like never before, but the sight before me is intimidating enough that I don't let it get to my head for a second, instead, I simply brandish my wings at their full glory, spreading them either side of my body.

Without any further thought, and with an impossibly wide smile on my face, my wings  flash and a sonic  boom fills the air as  hundreds of spikes and crescent blades launch from them, flying faster than the sound they make as the sound barrier is repeatedly violated.

Q meets my offensive with a veritable  avalanche of ice, crushing my attack with pure  quantity, but I was not idle as my projectiles flew. Lightning flashes over my body and I  blur from once floating block of ice to another, making extended leaps with the use of my wings and getting closer by the second, never once stopping my barrage of projectiles.

Yet, despite their penetrative power, none of them get past his defence and I am forced to dodge and parry as weapons of ice attack me from all sides.

I jump off of one block of ice and am forced to twist mid-air in order to avoid a spear to the face, vaulting over the next and kicking off of it to arc over the next, only to end up unable to dodge the wall that comes slamming into me from the side.

I crack it's surface as it impacts me, yet it simply keeps flying with me stuck to it's side from the force until I see another, similarly huge square of ice approaching at similar speeds and immediately figure what is about to happen.

Damn.

Booooom!!

The cubes of ice  shatter into millions of pieces that each immediately reform into more blades, pointing right at me in the next moment as the storm suddenly rages with even more intensity, small icicles scoring constant small cuts on my falling body as the air is replaced with ice, forming a prison around me so thick that all outside sound disappears.

I may have underestimated my foe ever so slightly...

My grin only widens because this is so much fun!

Energy wells up inside of me as I bring my wings before me, an orb of blue light forming between them. 

And then, I simply release the orb in front of me, and the world falls silent for just a moment, before all that is before me is white.

Boooooooom!!!

A resounding  explosion deafens me, only for my ears to heal just to be ruptured again as my world is reduced to a white light and a high pitched ringing in my head.

...Wasn't there something to be said about explosives being a bad idea in enclosed spaces? Ah well, too late for regrets.

And as my vision clears, regret is certainly not what I am feeling.

Before me, as if the very  sky had been split, there is a gaping hole in the storm of ice, showing the clear blue sky above and allowing the sun's rays to fall right on my steaming form.

It takes me only a moment to find Q in the sky of ice, and when I turn to him, I pause to crack my neck, stretching slightly.

"I don't like being put in boxes," I say, my distorted voice carrying well enough to reach him without the need to shout, and he responds by splitting the ice beneath me, causing me to plummet to the ground.

At the same time, he gathers most of the ice around him into seven  enormous dragon heads that he doesn't hesitate to send crushing after my falling form, yet I simply watch with joy as the immeasurably heavy construct speeds down after me, the seven heads all combining into one truly  huge creation as they near my body, being  far too large for them all to hit me otherwise.

But still, I merely smile.

By the time my body is only a kilometre from Greenland's bedrock the dragon head is before me, mere metres away, yet still, I only smile.

You're strong.

Blue energy  erupts from my wings like a pair of jet engines right as the gaping maw is about to crash into me, and I  flash to the side just in time for the constrict to sail right past me.

Wasting no time, I  blur upwards, flying right alongside the  pillar of ice, as if a mortal racing for the heavens, swerving and spinning around any pole, pillar or spike that erupts form the tower in an attempt to block my path, until Q decides to just replace the sky with ice, bringing together everything he has left above me into one  humongous sheet that comes plummeting down on me like a meteor.

But I can only smile wider as I raise my arms ahead of me, like an Olympic diver but in reverse, as I streamline my body, letting my claws fill with distortion.

Flying many times faster than sound, I crash into the sheet of ice and pierce straight through it with hardly any resistance, even as my sides get shredded by the friction generated from diving through ice, I do not slow down, my flesh regenerating just as fast as it is being torn off, staining the ice red with blood until I burst out, leaving a bloodied hole in my wake and finding myself alone with Q above the clouds.

He doesn't make to attack me or even recognise my presence, simply staring at the horizon in silence, and a quick check below shows that he doesn't seem to want to continue to attack, which makes me pout.

"Heeeey!~ What gives! I was just starting to enjoy myself, why'd ya stop?" I ask, and he doesn't respond for a moment, yet before the silence can get awkward, he turns slightly to face me, prompting me to float on over to the ice he's standing on and joining him there.

"I do not believe I would win," he says as he finally lowers his hood, showing a relatively lanky man with blond hair, a scruffy beard and sharp features, "my power resonates with ice. I could bring the entire Greenland to the air and throw it at you, but I do not believe I could do so faster zan you could kill me."

....I guess his power really  is like Shatterbird's then... I don't think I could survive having a whole  country thrown on my head. Good job I'm fast then, I guess.

"So you just give up? I'm certain you could have still put up a fight, it's not like I wasn't sweating down there. Do you just  want to die or something?" I ask, still kind of annoyed that he's not fighting anymore, but he just shakes his head at me.

"Nobody wishes to die," he says, making me snort at the unexpected joke, unintentional as it clearly was.

"You should visit America someday, you'd be surprised.~ But if you don't want to die, then you really should keep fighting, else I  will just kill you you know?~"

"I know," he says with a nod, "but as I have spoken, I would not win. However, if continuing to fight you is vat it takes for you to promise not kill me, then I would be willing."

Hmmm, I do want to keep fighting, but there was also something else I had in mind that I specifically commissioned Vendor's help for, so I give him a smile and a nod.

"Sure, I won't kill you.~ In exchange we'll keep fighting for a bit, and you'll also take this," I say as I dig a pair of fingers into my upper jaw, pulling out a pair of rings that I put there for safe keeping, "and do me one favour in the future. Deal?~"

He gingerly takes the offered ring, clean of blood thanks to my power bringing it all back inside of me, while I absorb the other one into my armour, carefully placing it inside of my pocket.

"I accept," is all he gets to say before I grab his collar and throw him back at the ice below us.

"Good.~"

His body meets the ice sheet and it is the ice that gives, folding over him protectively and transforming into a  titanic, skeletal figure of ice with a thousand arms, each wielding a copy of that same ornate spear that are soon poised straight up at me.

It's so nice to meet reasonable people for once.~

With joy flooding through my veins, I step off of the ice platform and freefall at the many-armed warrior, a thousand blades rising up to meet me in the clear sky, making me feel like a David against my own Goliath.

Energy floods my veins as the sheer cold emanating from the blades reaches me before they do.

And then, we clash.

And the sky turns  white.

=================

A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

this kinda feels like a bad fight scene. But I am both tired and not really feeling it, not like I was when I wrote extinction or pastor. This feels kinda like I'm forcing myself so idk if it's just my perception or if this fight really is just worse.

Either way, meh. Dislike.

Also, in case it isn't clear, this arc is something of a montage, so it's just supposed to be Lusia moving around and getting into fights, but I'm realising now that that'll get boring, so I'll probably just end up writing a bunch of interludes too, making this arc something of an in-between where Lusia is doing her training montage and I can expand on what everyone else is doing with their lives.

I've made a lot of characters after all, can't just forget about them all.

(5+)Advanced chapters with the links below!

pat/reon.com/user?u=41732867 (get rid of the first slash or check the description)

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