Coldsnap: Harbinger of Ice

Chapter 43: The End Is Near

While Firebird led the rest of the party in attacking Flamestar and Alpin, Keena made a beeline for Ignicion, who also did the same.

"I'm going to enjoy this," the Vanguard sneered, before they clashed and his blade met the water mage's baton.

"See if you can keep up with me," Keena smirked as she deflected his sword to the side, re-positioned herself behind him and then kicked him onto the floor. Ignicion quickly recovered, summoned his weapon back to his grasp, and took to the skies. As he turned back around and began careening towards the water mage with his blade extended in front of him, Keena twirled her staff and sent a barrage of several water bolt arrows in his direction. The Vanguard, however, expertly weaved between all of them during his descent, forcing her to physically dodge to the side herself, narrowly missing his swing by less than an inch.

"Sorry, little girl.....I've been practicing," he bragged.

"So have I," Keena shot back as she sent a ripple of water across the floor beneath Ignicion's position. Before he had any time to react, the spout burst upward, sending him flying through the air and landing face-down some distance away. Undeterred, he returned back with a charged fire projectile from his longsword, which just missed Keena and instead hit the sparking, malfunctioning husk of the now-useless incendiary accelerator that Flamestar had tried to use to kill Coldsnap.

Upon seeing this, the ruthless Fire Sect leader got an idea. He quickly threw off the fire mages who were fighting him and rushed over to the weapon; perhaps it could still serve a purpose.

"You're still as reckless as ever, aren't you?" Keena remarked. "Wasn't it that exact same aggressiveness that led to the fall of Aurora Keep?"

"You and your water colossus liberally blowing the walls open left and right didn't really help matters," Ignicion replied.

The Vanguard rushed towards her with his blade held tight, with the water mage doing everything she could to block or parry his attacks. She deflected a strike that came from the upper left, and then one from the lower right, before Ignicion opted to just grab her by the throat and fling her over his head back onto the ground. He then tried to slash her from the left again, but Keena grabbed his wrist on the forward swing, stretched it taunt, and sliced his entire limb off with her staff instead, stunning the Vanguard and causing him to clutch at the empty, bleeding socket for a few precious seconds. Not willing to give him even a second to recover, she hit Ignicion in the face with his own dismembered arm twice before dislodging his longsword and impaling him with it, making him fall on one knee helplessly.

Standing some distance in front of him, and in the perfect position to finish him off, she brandished her staff and slowly moved it in a circle around her front, creating several watery illusions of the weapon that quickly surrounded the real one.

"Aspect power......Surging Splash!" she exclaimed as she pointed her baton forward and directed the copies to fling themselves towards Ignicion's already-weakened form, each one exploding into an aquatic burst upon contact. The last one seemed to grow bigger as it flew along its trajectory, also impaling itself into Ignicion's body. However, this one did not detonate just yet.

"Is that.....all.....you got.....?!" he muttered tiredly as he struggled to try and pull himself to his feet.

"Do you want to know why I won?" Keena asked. "It's because I fight for what's good and right. You Seared Hand monsters know nothing but evil, mayhem, and destruction.....and that's why you'll never beat us."

"I.....am the most powerful elemental construct in the Firelands......and you weren't even at your full strength.....how could I fall to such a weak Aspect like you?!" he wailed.