Far stretched the ice of the northeastern mountains, forming an impassable wall separating Leon’s small party from what lay beyond, from what was scattering his magic senses. It wasn’t like a sheer cliff, but the amount of ice—several great hills and ridges of it that curled upward and outward into an enormous icy curtain that came close to rivaling the size of the smaller mountains beyond—was more than enough to form an effective barrier over which Leon didn’t think he and his party would be able to move.

At least, not without flying. With Anzu back in Vale Town, he with his flight suit was the only one of them who could fly. Without greater access to the air, not even Maia was confident that she could get over the ice.

Part of that was because of the much more noticeable demonic aura it emitted once they got closer. Maia wouldn’t be able to control that ice with it inundated with demonic magic.

Looking out at this problem from a hill close to the ice stood Leon, Maia, and Valeria. It was damn cold even with a quarter-mile between them and the ice, and the Forest of Black and White had ended about a quarter-mile behind them, with nothing but broken, steadily ascending ground and the occasional patch of grass or stubby tree between them and the forest.

From their vantage point, they could look out over essentially the entire Vale, and look out ahead at their new obstacle. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be as many dangers out in the foothills of the Frozen Mountains as there seemed to be down in the forest, so they didn’t have to contend with ice wraiths and banshees while investigating the demonic ice.

[Do you have any ideas, Xaphan?] Leon asked his demonic partner. He’d been staring out at the fields and great curtains of ice that stood between Leon and something that had probably been built by his Clan.

[All of that ice was definitely made by a powerful demon,] Xaphan observed. [Probably several. Note how all of it seems to stem from five ‘sources’, as if the demons stood at those locations and let loose with their power, sealing up these mountains with ice.]

Leon nodded to himself, agreeing with Xaphan now that the fire demon pointed out the pattern.

[If I had to guess, I would say that the superior demons that commanded the ‘ice wraiths’, as you call them, probably sealed up the mountains, then vanished. Perhaps they returned to the Void, perhaps they ventured into the mountains. No matter what happened, they don’t seem to be around anymore, though their ice remains.]

[Does that mean they might still live?] Leon asked. He remembered the battle he had with the vampire that ended with him down an arm. Once the vampire was dead and the connection between his demonic patron and the fires that he’d started was severed, the fires immediately vanished. That this demonic ice was still present led him to think that the demons that put all of it there were still around somewhere.

[Maybe,] Xaphan replied. [I doubt either of us will ever be able to say for certain. However, it would appear that for whatever reason the demons set up this barrier, it was probably to prevent something else from coming south through these mountains into the forest, so they built it to last. It wouldn’t need them to continually supply it with power if it were properly built and enchanted.]

[Would you happen to know any way to get past it?] Leon asked.

He could almost feel the immediate indignation rising out of his soul realm as Xaphan practically spat, [Yes. Use my fire.]

[I’m not strong enough to use it continuously, though, and even then… that would be a lot of ice to get through even if we just made a thin path for us to move through.]

[You’re not going to be melting a path through all of that,] Xaphan said matter-of-factly. [Have you ever tried to melt demonic ice? You’re not getting through that in a timely manner.]

[I hope you’re not suggesting that we climb over all of that,] Leon replied.

[You can try that,] Xaphan said, his tone taking on a few shades of delighted expectation. [I would love to see you try and resist the cold of demonic ice. Even with the aid of fire magic, I wouldn’t bet on you making it halfway.]

[So that leaves cutting our way through these ice hills or flying.]

As if she could hear Leon and Xaphan’s conversation, Valeria murmured aloud, “Do you think there’s a way around? Surely all of this ice isn’t a ring around whatever is beyond these mountains…”

“I wouldn’t recommend going deeper into the mountains,” Leon said. “For the most part, the kinds of things that live in the extreme environment of the Frozen Mountains are much more dangerous than the fauna that live down here in the Vale. The last thing we’d want is to disturb a flight of wyverns or griffons while we’re just trying to find a way through the passes, assuming we even could find a way through.”

“Right…” Valeria said with a grimace. “Not going to lie, though, I’d almost take fighting a wyvern over another group of ice wraiths…”

Maia, hearing their conversation as she bathed the Vale in her magic senses, replied, [All of this ice looks like it’s covering a passage through the mountains. Notice how the peaks are fewer in front of us compared to our east and west.]

Leon looked up, using his physical eyes rather than his magic senses, and saw that she was correct.

“I wonder how far in all of this goes,” Valeria said, continuing to think out loud.

Xaphan responded, though she couldn’t hear, [Probably farther than she realizes. Listen, boy, you’re not going to climb over that. If you want to risk flying in a place that, by your own word, is infested with wyverns and griffons, then do me a favor and let me out of your soul realm before you try. I’d rather not be in here when you get torn to bloody pieces by flying lizards.]

[Yeah, I’ll do just that,] Leon sarcastically responded. He hadn’t been planning on flying in, anyway.

However, before his and Xaphan’s conversation could continue, he sensed the appearance of a massive magical aura not far behind them, an aura so dense with magic that he was completely unable to see through it.

He spun around, his sword appearing in his hand with a flash of light. Beside him, Valeria and Maia had similar reactions, with Valeria summoning her glaive and Maia a water dragon.

What they saw had all of their hearts sinking: the Gorgon rising out of the earth like a goddess of the underworld arriving to ferry their souls to the hells. She wasn’t too far away, perhaps thirty or forty feet down the hill they were on, with her lips turned up in a confident smile as she made no attempt to conceal herself, and she barely reacted at all to their blatant hostility.

She seemed the same as the day before, with her entire serpentine lower half emerging unharmed from the crack in the earth that she appeared from, while her nude upper half was almost flagrantly uninjured. Leon and Maia had gotten in some good hits against her in their last violent exchange, but there was absolutely no sign of any injury anywhere on her body.

“Spread out, prepare to try and flank her,” Leon ordered as he took a couple of steps forward to face the Gorgon head-on. Maia and Valeria, meanwhile, began to move out to the sides. Leon’s heart raced in his chest as his adrenaline spiked. He called upon all of his magic power that he’d regenerated in the past day in preparation for a brutal fight, a fight that they wouldn’t be able to run from with their backs against a mountainous curtain of demonic ice. But before any of them were ready, the Gorgon made her move.

Oddly enough, however, her move wasn’t hostile. She spread her arms out almost as if she were inviting their attack, but a moment later, her voice rang out in their minds, showing that that wasn’t at all what she was doing.

[Peace…] she calmly whispered. [Please, peace…]

Leon froze in confusion and surprise, and his reaction was mirrored in Valeria and Maia, who slowed in their movement and subtly glanced at him.

[I mean you three no harm,] the Gorgon said. [I would break words if you would have them…]

From within Leon’s soul realm, Xaphan quietly said, [My power is ready. You seemed to have gotten your ass handed to you the last time you fought this creature, so don’t hesitate to call upon it. It might just save your life.]

[Thanks,] Leon replied.

To the Gorgon, he spoke out loud, though he had little idea what he ought to say.

“Uh… What do you mean by ‘peace’?”

[I mean I don’t want to fight,] the Gorgon replied, her arms rising even further as if to show that she wasn’t armed, though, to a being like her, that hardly mattered.

Leon glanced at Maia. [What do you think?] he asked her.

[Not a clue,] his river nymph lover replied, glancing back at him with a look of muted astonishment. [Maybe… maybe we should hear her out?]

Leon cocked an eyebrow, but he at least didn’t want to fight if he could avoid it. Still, he kept his guard up and his magic senses projected to watch the Gorgon like a hawk.

Before he could say anything more—not that he had much to say in the face of this surprise—the Gorgon said, [I understand your caution, but please hear me out before making any rash moves! I have some things to say and not as much time to wait around as I would like.]

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Leon wondered. The Gorgon hardly seemed pressed for time, with her easy smile and almost relaxed demeanor.

Leon glanced at Valeria and Maia. Both had gotten a fair bit of distance and were now waiting for him to decide what to do.

And he had to admit, he was curious as to what game the Gorgon was playing.

“How about you stay over there!” Leon shouted back. “So long as we all stay at a respectable distance, there shouldn’t be any problem with exchanging a few words!” Even as he said this, he focused his magic senses completely on the Gorgon, taking in her every movement, every fluctuation in her aura that he could perceive. If he caught so much as a whiff of killing intent—of which he couldn’t detect any right now, giving him some measure of confidence that talking wasn’t the worst decision ever—then he wanted to be ready to respond in kind.

[That works for me, it’s not like I’ll be the one raising my voice to be heard,] the Gorgon responded, her smile taking on an ever so slightly mocking quality before settling back into something more friendly and unthreatening. [First of all, I would like to thank you. I wasn’t in the proper state of mind when we met, but the power you used against me eventually brought me back to my senses.]

Leon gave her a strange, searching look, but said nothing. He wanted her to say her piece before making his own reply.

[Unfortunately,] the Gorgon continued, [even with the lightning that I captured from you, my condition forces my current lucidity to be only temporary. If I wish to retain my tempered state of mind, I’m going to require some assistance. That’s where you’ll come in.]

Leon couldn’t help but exclaim, “What?!” His eyes sought out Maia, but his river nymph lover was staring at the Gorgon, unmoving and revealing nothing by her stony expression.

The Gorgon’s smile took a bitter turn and her eyes turned toward the ground as if she were ashamed of what she was admitting. After a silent second or two, she looked up again, but this time her eyes were locked on Maia. However, her voice still rang clearly in Leon and Valeria’s minds, too.

[Gorgonism is a strange thing. It twists our bodies into these new shapes if we fail to find a mate. Our power slows until it turns to stone, and stone becomes the only thing that can sustain us. I’ll spare you the details but suffice it to say that this is not a painless existence. Constant physical pain aside, the worst pain is in the mind. Everything that makes you ‘you’ becomes warped and broken, like looking at your reflection in a turbulent lake.

[This happened to me long ago. I traveled all over the plane, seeking out a way to end our dependence on finding mates, to cure Gorgonism once and for all, but I failed… obviously. Now I exist as a monster on the edge of the world, with nothing but a small school of lesser nymphs to attend to me, surrounded by wraiths and banshees and all else in this Vale.

[But yesterday, you used your lightning upon me, and I captured it with a lightning rod that I found many years ago and many miles to the south. Using that power that I captured last night, I remembered myself. Clarity came with the pain of your lightning; it showed me everything that I’ve become while reminding me of who and what I used to be. I can’t tell you how happy that made me once I realized what had happened! My joy was, in fact, matched only by my dismay when I felt the fog returning, when I felt my condition flaring back up and turning me back into a base and primal thing, a monster that seeks only to fulfill her most primitive desires.

[I don’t want that. What I want is your help to keep me being me, to prevent me from sliding back into that fog, to help me return to what I once was.]

Here, the Gorgon paused, awaiting a response. Leon, though, was struck kind of speechless. Nothing that the Gorgon had just said resonated with what little he knew about Gorgons, though to be fair, he truly knew little about them. That being said, he did have a theory or two as to why the Gorgon was now ‘lucid,’ if that term could be considered accurate.

“Be specific with your desires, and with what you’re offering in exchange!” Leon called out. He was tempted to agree if only to satisfy his intellectual curiosity, but he wasn’t about to render his assistance to this monster that had nearly killed all three of them less than a day ago without something in exchange.

Remembering his initial encounter with Maia made him doubly cautious of agreeing to anything that might aid this Gorgon.

It seemed that that was the question the Gorgon was waiting for, though, for her smile widened into something akin to pride.

[I’ve watched for a while, now, trying to figure out just what you were doing here. And I think I figured it out. You want to get past that ice, don’t you?]

She waited again for Leon to confirm or deny, neither of which he did. After an awkward moment, she shrugged and continued on the assumption that her guess was correct.

[I happen to have a way past all of this. All you need to do is to promise to help me in return for helping you. It won’t be an onerous task that I require of you, either, requiring basically no effort on your part. You just need to bleed a little for me, no more, no less. Now, what do you say?]