Coldsnap: Storm's Call

Chapter 40 (TBOS): The Ascendant's Final Judgment

We last read Chapter 39, in which Coldsnap has her climactic duel with Commander Windsor Galeforce. Though the commander initially gets the upper hand over the Harbinger of Ice in a heartbeat, she quickly manages to turn things around in her favor thanks to the timely intervention of her girlfriend, Keena, who arrives on the scene on Coldsnap's ice dragon just in the nick of time to help her out. Coldsnap then proceeds to dominate Galeforce, slice both of his hands off, and sends him presumably plummeting to his doom and emerging as the victor of their fight. However, after she reunites with Keena after the fact—and the two of them discuss helping their friends clean up the remaining Storm Sect forces—the battle is then abruptly joined by The Ascendant himself, who insists that he can no longer ignore the Storm Sect after eons of them working apart from him, and that he has come to usher in their "day of reckoning". This time, we learn more about what exactly The Ascendant is here for, and bear witness to a rather thrilling escape sequence indeed.....

***********************************************************************************************

"What are you doing here, Creator?!" Keena exclaimed in disbelief, still unable to process his appearance in the midst of everything else that was already going on. "Wait....." She gasped. "Whoa.....! Have you come to help us?!"

While Keena had a rather touching experience with The Ascendant earlier, Coldsnap had no such pleasure; in fact, her latest interaction with him prior to this point had been a massive argument regarding how The Ascendant had handled the Storm Sect in the past.

And now here he was once again, no doubt about to screw everything up once more.

She glared at her deity's visage and shook his head. "Don't do this.....please....."

Initially brushing aside the two girls, The Ascendant turned his attention to everyone within Skycrest, as all mages on both sides of the battlefield ceased their hostilities and gave him their attention.

"To the Mage Aspects who still follow my path.....Coldsnap, Firebird, Keena, Sledge, Geode, and others.....I thank you all for sticking with me thus far. We may have had a few disagreements here and there....." He briefly shot a glance with Coldsnap at that line. ".....but at the end of the day, I have learned from you just as much as you have learned from me. As you all may know already, I'm not perfect. I created Frost King Alpin and Morton Flamestar, and.....they proceeded to nearly destroy the planet we all hold dear. Indeed, I created Coldsnap to counteract them, but ever since then, I've felt great guilt."

Coldsnap raised an eyebrow. "Huh? What do you mean?"

"I put all of that hassle.....all of that burden.....all of that weight.....solely on your shoulders."

The heroine already knew where this was going. "What? No, no, no, I was happy to carry out your---"

"I set you on a path that I clearly could have helped you on....and I did not do it," The Ascendant continued. "Instead, I left everything to you and your friends, when it was technically my fault for even creating them in the first place. To you, Coldsnap.....to you, her friends.....and to you, the Mage Aspects.....I am truly sorry for how passive I have been over these eons. The world almost ended once before due to my negligence.....and at the hands of my own creations, no less. It seems that history is starting to repeat itself....but I shall not let that happen again."

His tone then became notably more decisive and condemning as he shifted his speech towards the entirety of the Storm Sect. "And to you all.....your recent actions have broken my heart. You set the humans of the world below against each other, and all for what? The Earth has already suffered enough death and sadness as is; the last thing it needs is another world war. The sheer loss of life which you have inflicted on mankind has sealed your fates."