A chilling snowstorm raged through the mountain, covering it in a thick layer of snow.
Trees were toppled and buried, animals died...or worse.
Yet four figures still persisted against the wicked cold, moving higher up the treacherous slope.
Soon, their path was blocked by yet another wall of rock and snow.
Niko summoned the dead to move the debris, but to no avail.
There were hardly any intact bodies this high up on the dreadful peak, and the few corpses he had managed to summon could barely make a dent in the pile of rocks.
Luckily, several vines shot out from the ground, moving the rubble out of their way.
Niko glanced at Hana with a thoughtful frown on his face.
He found himself wondering how that ability of hers worked. There were no living plants here, and yet she was still able to summon her vines just fine.
Regardless, he still couldn't let her do all the work. So, with a sigh, Niko started moving the rocks with his bare hands.
Tai joined in to help too.
As they dug through the rubble, Tai glanced at him.
"You seem a bit down, is everything alright?"
Niko looked at him briefly, and then waved a glowing hand at the ground. Of course, nothing happened, and Niko got back to work with a frown.
Tai raised an eyebrow at first, but then widened his eyes when he finally understood.
"Ah, you're feeling like you aren't being useful enough?"
Niko nodded.
Having gotten his answer, Tai turned his attention back to the pile of rocks.
But after a few moments, he spoke again with a sigh.
"I...think I understand how you feel."
Niko looked at him and tilted his head, prompting Tai to explain further.
"Well, it's just that...I feel like none of this would have happened if I had been able to help in the fight against that Spirit, maybe we could have chased it away before it could curse everyone. Maybe if I had been stronger, I could have prevented all this..."
He glanced briefly at his scorched hand, which had never healed since getting burned that day.
It stayed with him, serving as a reminder of his failure.
"Or maybe if I had been more capable, I could have reached the top with Yuko before everything turned for the worse. That way, we could have gotten that flower before that avalanche occured. I...I feel useless."
He looked at Niko, perhaps hoping for him to respond. But, Niko simply stared at him blankly, prompting Tai to turn away and sigh dejectedly.
But then Tai felt a hand patting him on the back.
When he turned back around, Niko looked at him and simply pointed forward, where the huge pile of rocks was nowhere to be seen anymore, before continuing to walk forward.
While the Child of Death couldn't give some inspirational speech to cheer Tai up, he didn't need to. The proof was right there.
Tai wasn't useless, because they had been facing every obstacle that came their way with his help.
The young hunter smiled, before following after him.
Just then, a nearby howl reached Niko's ears, but he paid it no mind and kept moving.
The wolves wouldn't bother them, so there was no point in worrying about it.
However, the very next moment proved him wrong, as a hungry wolf jumped at him from above.
Its mouth was wide open, revealing rows of sharp teeth encased in ice, as it prepared to bite down on the boy's head.
Niko raised his arm to shield himself, and the wolves maw snapped shut around it.
The sharp fangs tried to tear through his flesh, while its chilling breath tried to freeze it solid.
Of course, that didn't happen. The sharp teeth shattered against Niko's skin, while the icy breath barely managed to cover his arm in a thin layer of ice.
Niko jerked his hand, throwing off the rabid wolf.
The beast quickly scrambled back to its feet, rushing towards the Spirits with frightening speed.
They all dodged just in time, and the wolf crashed head-first into the hard rock behind them.
The force of the impact crushed the wolf's head, chunks of its flesh flying off in all directions. It was left at the brink of death.
And yet, it still rose up again, laboriously staggering back to its feet.
The top of its head was utterly destroyed, along with most of its upper jaw, while the lower jaw hung wide open.
One of its eyes was also missing, while the other was hanging down from a long string of flesh.
That second eye madly darted around, trying to find the Spirits again. The moment it locked onto their figures, the mad beast charged once more, blood and drool flowing out of its broken mouth.
Tai grimaced in disgust.
He tore off a branch from a fallen tree and ran forward, plunging it into what remained of the wolf's brain.
With its entire brain thoroughly destroyed, the wolf finally stopped moving, falling down on the thick snow.
"What...what was that?!", Tai panted, still a bit shaken from what he had seen.
Niko frowned, before raising his hand, green light pouring out of it.
The wolf had died, and its soul was gone, leaving behind a corpse that he could control.
However, no matter how hard he tried, the body of the wolf refused to move, remaining completely unaffected by Niko's call.
Niko's confusion continued to grow, but he shook his head and continued moving on.
There was definitely something strange going on, but right now, they didn't have the time to try to figure it out.
So, he intended to let these strange occurrances be for now.
Sadly, fate didn't care about his plans.
Hardly any time had passed after that strange encounter, when more weird beasts came running their way.
They all had ice covering various parts of their bodies, and frenzied rage filling their eyes.
The strange beasts were neither scared by Niko's terrifying aura, nor affected by Hana's soothing presence, attacking the Spirits relentlessly with hateful rage.
Niko tried knocking them out, but just like the wolf from before, the monsters refused to stay down, attacking again and again.
Unable to stop them otherwise, Niko gritted his teeth and punched hard, killing the mad beasts by shattering their skulls.
He had to make sure that these creatures didn't reach the other three, because while he could easily shrug off the monsters' freezing attacks, the rest of them were not as durable.
But as more and more creatures started attacking them, Niko started having a hard time fighting them alone.
Tai cursed, before rushing forward. Using the tree branch in his hands as a makeshift spear, he stabbed one of the monsters through the eye.
"I can't just keep sitting back and doing nothing."
Hana joined in too, but didn't kill the monsters directly, seemingly uncomfortable about killing living beings.
However, she still played a vital role, as her vines ensnared the creatures and trapped them in place, allowing Niko and Tai to take them out more easily.
The monsters kept on coming, attacking them in large groups.
Still, the Spirits kept on fighting, all the while continuing to move up through the mountain.
But the higher they went, the more monsters there were, until they eventually found themselves completely surrounded by a large horde of mad beasts.
Snakes, wolves, boars, birds, every kind of animal on the mountain was rushing towards them to tear them apart.
These ones also had much more ice covering their bodies, looking almost like hideous ice sculptures.
They were also much stronger.
Niko had to wonder if their strength was somehow tied to the crystals of ice growing on their bodies, or if these creatures simply grew more ice crystals as they became stronger.
He would have considered trying to break the ice to find out, but the strange ice crystals were even sturdier than the monsters' bodies.
Dodging the talons of a massive bird, and then smashing it into the ground, Niko took a brief moment to observe their situation.
Things...were not looking too good.
They were up against a wall and surrounded by monsters on all other sides, with more of them rushing in to join the fray.
Tai was struggling to keep up with the attacking creatures. His spear had broken into two at some point, and now he was lashing out with both of its halves, desperately trying to fend off the hungry beasts.
Hana was using her vines to support him, but even those had started to become stiff and slow in the freezing cold.
Even Leta was trying to help, diving down to peck at the beasts. Sadly, the little bird's attacks could hardly make the monster's flinch.
Niko himself wasn't doing too well either.
He was right in the middle of the tide of beasts. He killed them in the dozens, bearing the onslaught of attacks tearing through his body in return.
A boar's tusk struck his chest, but failed to pierce it and broke. A bird's talons aimed to gouge his eyes out, but he swatted them away.
A wolf lunged at him and bit into his leg.
This time, his skin gave way, and a sharp pain spread through his leg.
Another wolf bit down on his neck, while a third lunged at his head with its mouth wide open.
And yet, he remained unfazed, swiftly tearing off the two wolves from his body and throwing them at the third.
Neither the pain, nor the ice spreading through his flesh slowed him down.
It wasn't that Niko didn't feel the pain, rather, he simply couldn't afford to slow down, because for every second that he was too late to react, another beast would get past him to attack Tai and Hana.
So, he gritted his teeth and fought through the pain.
A monstrous claw swiped at his face, but he grabbed it in time, ripping it off from the rest of the body.
A large snake coiled around his arm. It crushed his arm and bit into his neck, only for its own head to wither into a dried husk.
Niko grabbed the serpent and tore its body in half, freeing his arm from its grip.
But he was too late to notice when another wolf lunged at him from behind.
Hana, however, was not.
She summoned a pair of vines, which coiled together to form a sharp tendril, before shooting forward at immense speed.
She winced as the tendril tore through the wolf's body, and her face twisted into a pained grimace.
But she shook her head and continued to fight, straining herself as she summoned more and more vines.
Niko felt a bit relieved that they had her help, and also ashamed that he couldn't help more.
He crushed heads and tore spines, all while lamenting his inability to do more.
If only he could still summon corpses to aid them.
But any bodies his power could work on were too far away for it to reach.
So, with the amount of power he was using right now, he couldn't get any help from the dead.
But maybe if he unleashed more of it...
He shook his head.
No, he couldn't do that, not while Hana and Tai were so close by.
Getting rid of those thoughts, he turned his attention to the monster rushing at him.
It was a huge, white boar, with massive tusks made of jagged ice. The creature had charged straight at him at breakneck speed, completely disregarding its own safety.
Niko sidestepped, narrowly avoiding its attack. Failing to slow down, the boar tore through several other creatures, before falling off the edge of the road.
A sickening sound echoed a few seconds later when the boar's body smashed into the ground below, splattering into a bloody paste.
The four Spirits didn't hear it, of course, because they had used the opening created by the boar to make a run for it, rushing up the jagged road.
But the monsters followed suit, and were soon joined by countless others, all rushing to tear the Spirits apart.
Hana tried to slow them down with her vines. But the girl was quickly nearing her limit, and her vines were starting to freeze in the chilling winds.
Niko gritted his teeth. He wished he could do something to help her.
Maybe if he could create vines like her, he wouldn't have been so useless right now.
But then...what if he could do something like that?
Wasn't there already a power of his that created things using magic?
The boy frowned, casting a glance at his terrible wounds, which were glowing as they rapidly healed.
The torn flesh was being regrown, and the shattered bones were being replaced by new ones.
If he could create flesh and bone to heal his body, then couldn't he also...
But his thoughts were interrupted by a large tremor.
The ground below them shook violently, and a loud rumble echoed through the wind.
Even the monsters froze in their tracks.
"Oh no...", Tai's eyes widened, as a massive avalanche crashed into them all.
The monsters were swept off their feet, most of them falling off the edge of the cliff while the others were buried under the snow.
Leta simply flew up high, completely avoiding the avalanche.
Niko gritted his teeth and struggled to keep himself from being swept away. He was struggling, but he still managed to stay on his feet.
Tai and Hana, however, were not as fortunate. The tide of snow carried them away, dragging them towards the edge in the blink of an eye.
Niko's eyes widened in horror.
His mind froze, and time stood still, as he watched the two of them get thrown off the cliff, Tai's screams echoing through the air as they plummeted down into the darkness below.