Chapter 1655 (1/2)
Raymund Ballast stood strictly at attention as he stood on a low hill above the smoldering and charred remnants of a forest and received the elite group’s orders from a representative of Military High Command. His hands were clasped behind his back and he kept his chin raised, despite feeling slightly nervous.
As soon as the representative relayed the order, she turned and activated a tool to step directly into the Nexus Ways. In the next second, she was gone without noticing his tenseness at all. Raymund’s lips curled upward at his own behavior and he reached up to rub his neck.
While Helen had taken Randidly to recuperate with the Pinnacle Seekers, the Foxman had moved with DiOrtho to return as quickly as possible to the previous position held by the other members of the Elite Squad. Luckily, it seemed that aside from the final isolated space, the others were only shaken by Elhume’s attack; the elite squad had barely received any damage to speak of as the areas collapsed back to the planet.
When the Vulpine returned to the group waiting on the upwind side of the hill, Charlotte Wick and Vizzeret Clamman both looked at him with extremely sharp eyes. The flame elemental Jieu Ronault schooled his flickering features better the other two, but Raymund could tell that all three of the individuals who had inherited portions of the Ghosthound’s images were chomping at the bit to prove themselves. The fact that they had been too weak to accompany Raymund and DiOrtho in following the Head Drill Sergeant was a source of immense frustration.
Still, the only reason the emotion has so stubbornly persisted is that fool Vant, upon his return, immediately claiming he needed solitude to adjust his mental state, due to a recent epiphany regarding his image. Raymund thought helplessly as he looked at the restless group in front of him. Not that he could blame them.
Their pride had been wounded. For those who had been dotingly raised by the Nexus’ elite, such a state was intolerable.
Every one of them had received instruction from the Ghosthound and his subordinates and only after coming here, and witnessing the force of the Nether Heralds, did the group realize how valuable that experience was. Each was desperate to repay the Ghosthound in any way that they could.
“I have received our orders,” Raymund said formally. “As the Nether Forces are beating a rapid retreat after we… and this is in the representative’s own words, ‘achieved a decisive victory over the cowardly Nether King’, we are to pursue the Nether Forces and eliminate as many as possible.”
The Foxman showed his teeth to the rest of the group. “So let us sound the horns; the hunt soon begins.”
*****
Helen sipped her tea, feeling her lips tingle as she took the mercurial liquid into her mouth. Then she politely put the cup back down on the delicately wrought ice table, wondering how long it would take until her tongue would stop being numb from the ‘homemade’ tea provided by the Frost Matriarch.
She was currently alone, but it felt disrespectful to spit it out on the floor. She settled for half-choking on the liquid for several seconds as her body struggled with the decision of whether to swallow it or not. Which, in retrospect, just kept the liquid in her mouth for longer.
Thank god Randidly isn’t a political type. Helen slapped her cheeks. That’s when the portion of her mouth that touched the liquid began to change.
Currently, it felt like a small blizzard was gleefully making itself at home in her mouth, coating her tongue and gums with a thick layer of ice. Helen coughed lightly and shook her jaw; the joint seemed to function normally, indicating that the miniature blizzard didn’t actually exist. Which only served to make her more disturbed and firmed her resolve to sample no more of the Frost Matriarch Specialities.
Helen was currently sitting in a wide hall on the Frost Matriarch’s base planet. Aside from three ornate, robin’s-egg-blue chairs and a crystalline table, Helen probably had all of fifty square meters to herself. The high ceilings made the space seem even larger still. Behind her was the passage that led deeper into the Frost Matriarch’s compound, but the wall in front of her ended in several large thresholds framed by ornately carved archways.
Helen’s lips twitched as she looked out through those archways at the seemingly endless stretches of tundra that lay beyond. The Frost Matriarch had billed this room as ‘famed for its views’. A chilling wind blew white snow into heavy drifts in strangely mesmerizing wave patterns as Helen watched. There is… certainly a bit of natural beauty to this place, but mostly…
Thankfully, the heavy tread of feet indicated that Helen’s private mouth torture was over. A few seconds later, the Frost Matriarch’s long-limbed gait carried her into the room. Rather than trying to fit her form on one of the Helen sized chairs, the Frost Matriarch waved a hand and conjured a ‘casual’ throne of ice and sat down.
The casual chair was covered in lifelike sculptures of wolves romping across a glittering tundra. Helen made a mental note to, when she had achieved an oppressive level of mastery with her Depths of Horror Domain, engage in painstaking practice so she would be able to ‘effortlessly’ conjure an imposing black wicker chair at the drop of a hat.
“Any change in the Ghosthound?” The Frost Matriarch asked politely. Helen shook her head; as the Frost Matriarch had indicated when they had escaped, Randidly needed some time to recover from his predicament. Currently, it had been two days since the Nether King had escaped right out from under the hand of Elhume and their group skirted their doom. However, Helen wasn’t worried; her connection with Randidly informed her that everything was fine with him.
In the meantime, she had asked for the Frost Matriarch’s help in gathering some information on the situation outside.
The Frost Matriarch leaned back in her throne and frowned out toward the vast white tundra that surrounded her base. Then she seemed to shake herself out of a reverie. “...I have been carefully monitoring the situation in the Fifth Cohort and also the movements of Military High Command. They are much easier to observe than the secretive Engraving Guild… and things are falling out pretty well for your Ghosthound.