Rise of the Ice Queen 5
The Magic Trials
Slowly. Slowly but surely Beatrice's eyes open to the familiar cavern. She did not dare move yet, her mind still processing what is real. The walls seemed to bend and wave around her with the same consistency of water. She felt numb, but oddly... sensitive. Like she could feel things that weren't there. She did not speak for fear of her tongue falling out, nor did she remember what her voice sounded like. She just stayed lying on the slab, unsure of how much time was passing as she tried to regain her senses. There was one thing that she could say for certain; she had survived the One that Called.
"Are you sure that we should split here? We don't have the Ice Queen to back us up." Catherine, usually the more intrepid one out of the captain duo looked to Astrid, whose eyes were trained straight ahead.
"Suddenly lost your nerve?" Astrid's voice was cold and distant, part of the reason that the oft cavalier Catherine asked in the first place.
"Nah, I just know you, and I know this."
Astrid didn't turn to face her partner, did not even flinch. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Of course you don't." Catherine, the berserker that had made a name for herself in only a few weeks as a harbinger of chaotic fury, shook her head as she walked away from the statuesque Astrid. Her hair, now a pale green instead of her dusty blonde even without the surging magic of the domination armour, started to glow as the thin strips of metal around her frame clenched her flesh before trails of emerald flame flowed behind her. In an instant, Catherine was gone.
Astrid, still motionless, could not bear to let Catherine help her with this. This is her fight alone. The stoic captain sighed heavily before finally moving back to her war camp. Her thirty Knights of Ruin stood behind an army of nearly one thousand soldiers. Four strange machines sat in between the two groups, machines that fired frost-tipped ballistae, shattering even reinforced stone with its frigid magic. This castle, the Castle Worhin, was the largest castle in all of Borea other than the capital of Fherin, yet not one soldier looked nervous.
"Ready for your command." The Knight Command saluted her commander, followed by the other knights as Astrid motioned at ease before taking her position in front of her knights. She wished she could be as comfortable in her armour as Catherine, but she still felt the gazes as her dick hung out, even in her most relaxed state it was never flaccid. There was a bit of wind today and it still felt weird that her breasts, exposed in all their glory, did not feel cold at all. The bindings that wove up her legs gave an almost eerie sense of comfort that she never had felt before in her life.
Whatever. She had to take the steps she did to come to this point, she needed the Ice Queen's power. She knew that the lord welled up in this castle was dangerous, Astrid needed to steel herself to become just as ruthless as she. She should not be the one here...
"Commander!" The scout interrupted Astrid's thoughts as she came running towards her, bowing immediately upon arrival. "News from inside the castle!"
She had sent spies into Worhin when they first began this campaign three weeks ago. This was always going to be the breaking point of this war, especially without the Ice Queen.
"Report."
"Three thousand troops line the castle walls in waiting."
"We already knew we'd be outnumbered."
"But, reports came in just yesterday, about..."
"Spit it out."
"There have been sightings of some Desolate within the castle, ready to fight."
"Makes sense, we are nearly at their border."
"They are said to be of the Red Curse."
Astrid paused at that information. Even though she was from western Borea, she knew very little about their western neighbours. To say there was tension, even before the Ice Queen's ascension would be a severe understatement. The borders between the two countries split one of the largest rivers in all of Aguilar in half, making any travel on it always a contentious issue. But beyond anything was those of the Red Curse, at least that's what Boreans called it.
It had been said that a few Desolate bloodlines were blessed by the Goddess at the Rebirth, but it was harder to parse truth from this legend even more than others because of the nature of the Red Curse itself. Those that can wield it are said to be able to bend the wills of those around them, affecting everything from memories to desires. So it is hard to take any information from a source that can be easily swayed cannot be readily used as truth.
"...Ready the assault."
It's true that this was a large kink in her plans, but she needed to continue. She was too close.
Beatrice still lied motionless, exercising every meditation technique she knew to try to combat this loss of senses. Her vision had come back slightly, but the cavern walls still seemed to phase in and out of existence. She saw that the Trio were sleeping around her, still breathing it seemed. Every breath she took felt stranger and stranger, as if she could 'feel' the air inside her lungs, the strange sensitivity only growing greater with every moment.
One at a time, the Ice Queen move her fingers slowly, then her toes, then her full arms and legs. Her body seemed fine, better than fine, really. She raised her head from the stone, her platinum hair falling over her shoulders. Once the first silky strands brushed against her exposed areolas, the true level of her sensitivity was released. It seemed like every neuron fired off all at once, her body convulsing as she painted the cavern wall in front of her white.
This new state was going to take some getting used to...
Astrid watched as the ballistae rolled into range, wanting so badly to rush in and personally deal her fury. She tried her best to assure her that there would be time for that, that this is not the pushovers that had come before. Especially with the word of the Red Curse within the castle, it will make this whole operation all the more precarious. The wheels come to a stop more than two hundred feet farther than most ballistae, but for these this distance is no problem.
On Astrid's command, all four fire their frost-tipped bolts towards the castle walls. With devastating speed they crash into it causing some of the outer walls to break, the magical frost quickly creeping to anything it can touch making the surrounding walls all the more brittle for the next attack. The castle defenses were powerless as the range of the ballistae was just too far for a counterattack.
She was just about to commence the next wave before Astrid stumbled to the ground. She felt like she got hit by a massive boulder as she struggled to get back onto her feet. Her Knight Command rushed to her side as the other knights surround her in a defensive position, looking for the cause of the phantom attack. Astrid's pride did not want to take her subordinate's hand, but she did not know if she could truly get up otherwise.
"Stand down, it wasn't an attack." She leaned on her knight, her exposed skin tingling with any touch.
"Do you think it might have been the Red Curse?"
Astrid did not know enough about the foreign magic to know for certain that it wasn't, but somehow she could feel that this was not an attack against her directly. It felt like it was just a wind that only she could feel, as strange as that was to say.
