The cold hit immediately, spreading through my body the moment I breathed in, and I knew we couldn't stay out in the open for long without proper preparation.
There was nothing around us but endless snow and ice stretching out in every direction, flat and completely empty as far as I could see.
"Ahh, why the hell are we here?!" Anna's voice cracked behind me, frustration written all over her face.
Not that I particularly cared about her comfort, though she could actually die out here if we weren't careful, and I needed her alive long enough to help me get that book, so her survival was a practical concern more than anything else.
I looked down at the emergency escape relic in my hand, the one the clerk had given her at the counter, and I wasn't entirely sure why he'd handed it over so quickly, though seeing her surname on the ID had probably frightened him badly enough to cooperate without thinking too hard about it. If that was the case, there was likely a tracking enchantment on it, and he'd already notified the Estellia family by now, probably assuming I was holding her hostage.
Which wasn't entirely wrong.
I pushed ether into the device and threw it at a frozen tree, and the explosion it made echoed out across the frozen landscape and sent ice shards flying in every direction, and when everything settled there was nothing left of the tree except charred bark and scattered debris.
I turned back and found Anna staring at me with wide eyes, disbelief and horror competing on her face.
"You just destroyed an escape relic, are you an idiot?!" she shouted.
"Get down, break some ice, and eat it," I said, and turned and started walking deeper into the wilderness.
She started screaming immediately as the slave seal forced her body into compliance, compelling her to follow the command regardless of how she felt about it, and I walked away while my mind moved ahead to other things. She'd almost certainly figured out what the relic contained but had pretended not to, probably assuming I'd keep it around given its value, which meant she was smarter than she wanted me to think.
I stopped when I noticed the rocky outcropping ahead, where a cave entrance was visible among the ice formations, and I made a mental note of it, because that was the kind of place I needed to be looking for, though finding the right one was going to take time.
Boom.
The ground shook under my feet and I looked back at Anna immediately, and the sight of her was genuinely unpleasant even by my current standards, blood covering her face and body, her white dress already torn apart from the ice, snot and tears mixed in with everything else.
"Stop eating," I said.
She looked up at me, completely wrecked.
I threw her a healing potion, the second one I'd given her, the first having been back in the forest to deal with her broken bones, and she rushed for it and caught it and uncorked it and drank the whole thing in one go, and her wounds started closing almost immediately, though the blood stains stayed on what was left of her clothing.
"I hate you," she said, tearing a strip of fabric from her dress to wipe her face and throwing it away.
"Are you trying to seduce me, because you'd have better luck talking to a rock," I said, noticing where she'd torn the fabric from, which had left a gap that revealed her undergarments, though I couldn't tell where she'd gotten those from, and I turned and started walking again without giving it much more thought.
"HA HAHA! Seduce you?! Why would I, Annabelle Estellia, try to seduce you? There are literally better people in the world, better looking, better built, take Auston for example, he's everything you aren't, you stupid son of a bitch!"
She kept going but I'd stopped listening, because something had made a sound earlier that I still couldn't place, and whatever was out here with us wasn't going to be friendly, so I looked around and assessed what we had to work with, and the frozen trees looked climbable enough to give me a decent vantage point.
"Stay where you are until you spot a beast," I said, activated my ether, and ran straight up the nearest tree trunk, which didn't have the wide branches of a normal forest tree but was manageable enough to hold my weight.
"WHAT ARE YOU PLANNING?!" she screamed up at me, and I could tell from her expression she would've strangled me in my sleep if the seal allowed it, but every time she tried to move from her spot the pain stopped her and sent her right back to where she was standing.
We waited, me scanning the horizon from up in the tree, and then movement caught my eye.
"An ice orc?" I muttered, because they usually came in groups and I was only seeing one, which meant the others were probably nearby and waiting.
"An orc?" Anna said from below, her voice carrying a note of genuine fascination, and I didn't see what there was to be fascinated about.
"Kill it," I said.
"You don't have to tell me twice," she said, stretched her hand forward, and a lance of ice formed and shot toward the creature fast and clean.
I threw her one of the wands from my spatial ring, and it seemed to help her focus her ether more effectively.
The orc deflected the lance with the massive shard of ice it was carrying as a weapon, taking some damage to the shard but staying on its feet, and then it bellowed and came straight at her.
I'd told her she couldn't move, which was a problem now, and I sighed and watched as the panic hit her and her ether spiked hard, and a wall of ice went up between her and the charging orc faster than I expected.
Her casting speed had improved under pressure, which was interesting.
The orc smashed through the wall anyway and closed the distance immediately, and Anna had pushed herself slightly out of position despite the pain it cost her, blood running from her nose from the effort of resisting the seal.
I pushed my sleeve up and looked at the tattoo on my right arm, glowing clearly against my skin, and raised my hand toward the fight below.
"Ice," I said, and held the image of a large spear of frozen water in my mind.
The ether drained out of me instantly and completely, and I gritted my teeth against it, but the spear materialized in front of me, large and sharp and perfectly formed.
I tilted my head at it. "Interesting."
"Damn it!" Anna screamed as the orc's weapon came down on her shoulder, and her eyes went bright blue as a huge spear of fire started forming in her hands.
Boom.
My ice spear went straight through the orc's chest, and the creature fell back, dark blood steaming as it hit the snow, and the fire spell in Anna's hands faded away unused as she looked up in shock.
I sighed from my branch. "Stop staring and come get me down from here."
With my ether completely gone I was practically useless, and I needed to remember that limitation or it was going to get me killed, because the power was real but the cost was immediate and total, and I couldn't keep throwing it around without accounting for what came after.