Chapter 17: By her black plume, beasts to beat!
Fancy Chill’s knights stood before the guardian beast constructs of the forgehome, well, one of them stood, the other just sloshed in place, being slush and all that. The constructs creaked and jerked unnaturally. Perhaps once they had the movement of a real beast, but now they flaked and shuddered as they moved.
All of the beasts were actually made from crude iron, though, it seemed that these parts were replacements, if one opened up the constructs it was possible you might have seen quite a different and more impressive metal. The Forgehome of Released Opal had likely seen better days.
Fancy Chill hummed as she looked at the beasts.
“Twing, Bigjaw and Muscles, I shall think of them as thus” she declared.
“Destroy Muscles!” She commanded.
A spear of ice congealed from the slush knight, then arose from its body, with a crack, the semi-liquid whipped forwards, throwing the spear, piercing through Muscles just as it was attempting to move towards the knights.
It spluttered for a few moments, but what fully did it in was the ice spear turning into water. The construct crackled and the light left its eyes. It collapsed there and then.
Twing’s many eyes blazed and a dull droning sound came out of it.
-Ba-aaaaaaaaattle sp-spspspspace!-
The metal of the tunnel shrieked and pulled apart, the grinding of gears filled the air and quickly the two knights of Fancy Chill were trapped in a large dome with the two remaining beasts and the one that had fallen.
Within the dome, Twing was actually able to fly around, explaining the previously questionable idea of having a winged guardian underground… actually it was still fairly questionable, but someone had gone to the effort of making a transforming battlespace for the thing, you can’t completely disrespect that kind of insane dedication.
While this had happened, Bigjaw wasn’t resting! It had charged at the knights, swinging it’s massive jaw like the bludgeon of doom it was!
Of course, as pathetic as they were, Fancy Chill’s minions weren’t going to fall as simply as that. The slush knight became a puddle and the snow knight became a ball and rolled away. The snow knight did not stop rolling, but rolled up the sides of the dome toward Twing, which started to fire beams from its many eyes at slush.
The slush knight frantically dodged, the nature of its form aiding it well. The snow knight sprung out of its ball form leaping at Twing. The many eye tentacled construct managed to avoid losing a wing, as was the knight’s aim, but it did lose several eye tentacles to the snow knight’s blade of ice and was sent spinning towards one of the sides of the dome.
The snow knight fell inelegantly, and Bigjaw was waiting and with a snap, it tore the knight asunder, puffing out steam in triumph. As it did so, the slush knight no longer suppressed by the beams of Twing rose up and produced spears of ice, one after the other it flung them at Twing, only stopping when Bigjaw charged over and began trampling with its stubby paws.
Twing managed to shoot down a number of the spears, but unfortunately for it, spinning through the air and losing a number of its tentacles made it hard to aim, and eventually it was pierced through, and so it like Muscles fell.
Clearly the juice that Fancy’s minion had absorbed to become a slush knight was a high quality one, or in correct terms, fresh and delicious.
Fancy Chill had glanced away, and turning her gaze back, the sight of Bigjaw trampling over and over greeted her gaze. At first she thought her knights had fallen, but she could still sense the slush knight. She thought for a moment about what to do, and then gave a single direct order to the slush knight.
It transformed into a single spike, a deadly popsicle. Bigjaw’s stubby legs jerked through the air, still attempting to trample, unaware that it was no longer on the ground. The final construct was defeated.
Fancy Chill instructed her last remaining minion to break out and promptly ignored it, turning back to the trial of the frulid family.