Chapter Eighty-Seven -Trouble in Parad-ice!

The moment the rope was in my hand I had to move. First I pulled myself back towards the centre of the golem’s back, then I looped the rope around one of the thick joints of the golem’s rear legs and tied a quick and very crude knot.

I yanked the knot tight just as the rope went taut.

Having the very fast platform I was sitting on come to a complete, and rather jarring, stop wasn’t the most fun.

I was thrown off with a yelp only to crash on the icey floor and slide a dozen meters on my side. ”Ouch,” I said.

I panted while staring up at the domed ceiling for a moment. Then the loud booming crash of golems running into each other had me craning my neck up to see what was going on.

Three of the golems had tangled together and were sliding across the floor on a direct path for me.

I ‘eeped’ and rolled onto my front, feet kicking out for purchase as I tried to get up.

They were almost on me when my foot caught and I launched myself into the air and out of the golem’s path.

This time my landing was a little better as I hopped onto the stone disk in the centre of the room and took a moment to stare at the carnage Awen and I had caused. Three of the golems had crashed together and were wriggling about, trying desperately to untangle their now-bent and battered limbs. A fourth had veered so badly off course that it was now embedded into the far wall, though it was still alive, judging by the twitches.

Two of the golems remained intact, circling around the middle at a dizzying speed. I tried to think of a way to take them out, but nothing came to mind.

Then I shrugged. I didn’t have any weapons on me except for a camp knife--my shovel was somewhere in the pile up off to the side--which meant that I only had myself to use.

I ran along the middle of the disk, then jumped, timing it so that I landed atop the golem closest to the middle. The moment I was on it I slid one leg over its centre and rode it as if it was the strangest horse ever.

Throwing my weight from one side to the other didn’t do much, and I didn’t think my magic could do anything to really hurt the golem. I could try filling it with fire, but my fire was always a little anemic and I didn’t think I could get it hot enough to ruin its mechanisms.

“Broccoli!” Awen screamed.

I looked up in time to see her spinning around on the ice, then she flung something up and high into the air.

My eyes widened as I recognized her hammer.

“Got it!” I screamed as I jumped up and caught the weapon out of the air. The extra weight made my landing back on the golem’s back a little precarious, but I managed to keep my feet.

And then I had the perfect tool to fix my golem problem.

“Hah!” I screamed as I brought Awen’s hammer down on the crossbow atop the golem’s back. It went ‘sproing’ and a few bits flew off in a most satisfactory way. The next blow hit one of the golem’s legs, bending it and throwing the golem to the side for a moment before it shifted its weight to the other legs.

That gave me an idea.

I searched around until I spotted the golem pile up way off on the other side of the rink. We were approaching it fast though.

I whacked at the next leg on the golem’s side until it too tore off. We began to veer towards the pile, but the clever golem shifted its feet to change directions.

“Oh no,” I said as I whacked its head as hard as I could.

The golem went haywire.

I jumped off its back and landed in a slippery crouch just before the golem ran into its buddies at full speed.

Congratulations! You iced two (2) Brass Ice Slipper Golem, level 7!

Just two? I looked over and counted. There was only one golem left moving, the rest were all in various states of... crashiness. Still, they were twitching and moving, so I supposed that they counted as alive.

My attention snapped back around to the final golem.

The bot shifted, planting all of its skates down at an angle so that it slid sideways and threw off a huge spray of ice. Then it clicked and clacked around, walking on the ice instead of skating in interminable circles as it had been.

“That’s different,” I said as I weighed the hammer in my hand.

The golem shifted, first becoming wider, then unfolding so that parts of its body slid into others. It reminded me of those toy cars that turned into neat robots, only this thing was turning from a neat robot into something else.

I learned what when, with a final shift of its legs, the golem unfolded into a large brass scorpion, its huge tail tipped by three crossbows that were pointing right at me.

“Oh shoot,” I said.

The room went white. I felt the air warming up and my hair rising.

When I blinked back the green tinge that covered my vision it was to find that the scorpion golem was sitting in a puddle of foot-deep water, parts of its brass frame still glowing white-red and other bits looked like they had fused together.

The cords tied to its crossbows were on fire, and sparks were bursting out from the side of its head. It was, in short, dead.

“Hah! I’m not useless!” Amaryllis cheered.

Then her feet slipped out from under her and she crashed to the ice again.

I lowered Awen’s hammer and looked about. “Well, I guess that’s it for this one.”

Skating over to Awen, I handed her back her hammer with a big goofy grin. “Thanks, that was good thinking.”

“Awa, th-thanks!” She said.

“You should go finish off the rest of the golems, I think a few of them are still alive and I don’t know if you’ll get any experience if I kill them off myself.”

“Th-that’s generous.”

I snorted and shook my head. “We’re in this together, it’s just normal, yeah?”

“R-right!” Awen said.

She fumbled her way over to the golem pile off to the far end of the room, her gait a little slow and uncertain, and she almost fell once or twice, but she was getting the hang of it.

I skated over to Amaryllis, stopping with a twist of my ankles just next to the harpy. “Do you want some tips?” I asked.

Amaryllis looked up to me, crossed her wings over her chest, and pouted. “I don’t need help,” she said.

“Of course not,” I said.

She glared.

I smiled.

She glared harder.

I pushed back, and--while cheating a little with some cleaning magic--started to skate around her with my hands behind my back. I even did a bit of a twirl.

“I hate you,” she said.

“And you are one clumsy duckling.”

She shifted onto her tummy, pushed off the ice, and was halfway to standing when her arms shot out to either side and she planted into the ice.

I bit my lip so hard I was almost bleeding. “Do you need help... mallard-y?” I said. Then a giggle escaped.

“There’s no ice where I’m from,” Amaryllis said.

“Don’t you live on a mountain?” I wondered.

“We have fire mages,” she said.

“Ah,” I said. “So your entire species has... trouble with ice?” I asked as I crouched down before her.

She turned her head around and pinned me with a glare. “If I could stand up right now, I would slap you for that.”

Giggling, I moved over to her side and helped her first to her knees, then onto her feet. “Wrap an arm around my neck,” I said.

“Don’t tempt me,” she said, but still did as I asked and placed a wing over my shoulders. She almost slipped, but I managed to keep us standing.

“Okay, so, first, don’t raise your feet off the ground. You move with your hips and with your knees. You need to squat a little.” I instructed.

“I don’t actually want to learn how to skate,” she said.

“Aww, but think how awesome you’ll look when you show up all of your harpy friends?” I asked.

Amaryllis was silent for a bit. “So I need to keep my centre of balance lower?” she asked.

We eventually made it to the disk in the centre of the room where Awen was waiting for us. She had a smile all ready and on full display when we arrived. “I figured out the door,” she said.

“Neat!” I replied. “Amaryllis is only a few hours away from figuring out how to skate.” We had only almost-fallen three times.

We stepped onto the platform, Amaryllis with a sigh of relief, and we all kind of just relaxed for a moment. I stretched a little, then told the girls that I would be back before I skated back to the entrance and got my backpack (and Orange).

“Awa, I found your spade, and one of the golems dropped something,” Awen said as she removed her own backpack and pulled something out of it.

An enchanted compound crossbow of rare quality, new.

I grabbed the bow and turned it this way and that. There was a trigger beneath it, and an all-metal stock meant to be pressed against the shoulder. The forward section of the device had a pair of arms that folded back and swept along the sides of the bow. The mechanism to reload it looked a bit like a large crank built into one side, with plenty of little gears and pulleys.

“Nice,” I said. “What does it do?” I handed it back to Awen who took it gingerly as if it was a baby rather than a weapon.

Awen flipped it over and tapped the underside. “There are two compartments here. This one is for placing bolts that you can reload with the same crank that pulls back the string.” She pointed to an opening on the other side. “This one stores even more bolts, but it’s not connected to the rest. Ah, and there’s more string too. It’s enchanted for durability and there’s an enchantment that increases the draw weight that activates once it’s primed.”

“Cool,” I said. “Well, have fun with it.”

“Awa? Are you sure?” She asked. “It might be worth a lot.”

I shrugged. “Then it’ll be worth a lot to you. I’m not the crossbow-y sort. And Amaryllis, ah, doesn't have fingers.”

“I’m certain I could operate it given some practice,” Amaryllis said.

“Th-then do you want it?” Awen asked. She was hugging the bow in a way that suggested she really didn’t want to give it away.

“Awen, when I want something dead from far away, I’ll call down thunder and lightning on it. I don’t need a toy to do it. Keep it. It suits your specialty.”

“Awa, thank you!” Awen said.

Her smile made it all worth it.

“Okay! Now we need to skate to the other end,” I said.

“Oh please no.”

“I could carry you?” I asked Amaryllis.

“I could fry you,” she returned.

We did eventually make it to the other side, and with minimal spills at that. The door was wide open, welcoming us onto the same sort of glass bridge we had been using all day.

“Oof, that was a rough one,” I said.

“It was,” Amaryllis agreed. “Let’s get this over with.”

Crossing was easy as pie now that we were used to it, and the next door was just as simple as the ones before it.

The room it opened onto was huge, with glass pillars rising a dozen meters into the air, and yet they only reached a quarter way up to the ceiling above. There was enough room under the glowing ceiling to fit a small village.

And in the middle of it, sat a dragon.

***