Krenocia says "You are on the other side of the world. A projection for more than a few minutes would have used more power than sending an avatar."

"Oh, that makes sense. Sorry to trouble you!"

Krenocia says "You are nothing but trouble! It's a good thing you are cute!"

"Um, since it is just the two of us I have a question. What did my change do to my time frame?"

Krenocia says "I hate to give you bad news, but it has lowered it. You will need to absorb more life force."

"It is better that I know about it. Warn me if I get below six months left?"

Krenocia says "Yeah, I can do that."

"So, what can you tell me about this ice?"

Krenocia says "It is definitely of divine origin and you were right, it is sealing something. I can't see what is inside the mountain, but I can feel a strong aura of undeath. I would suggest you leave this place alone."

"Can you identify who sealed this place?"

Krenocia says "Not specifically. All I can tell you is that it was cast by a male god with a chaos divinity."

"So a male god of chaos. How much do you remember about the mainland's pantheons?"

Krenocia says "Unfortunately, almost nothing. It has been a long time since we had any contact with them. I can't even say for sure how many there are."

"Hm, then can you tell how long the seal has been in place?"

Krenocia says "Over ten thousand years. I can't be more accurate than that."

"So around the time when the ancients were ruling the peninsula?"

Krenocia says "Closer to when they disappeared. As far as I know they never made it this far so I doubt this place has anything to do with them."

"This is far enough away that anything I mess up shouldn't affect you right?"

Krenocia says "I suppose so. Can't you just leave it alone?"

"What, aren't you curious about what is inside the mountain?"

Krenocia says "I suppose I am. Is this how it feels to be you?"

"Partly I guess. So, am I allowed to experiment?"

Krenocia says "Would it really stop you if I said no?"

"Probably not. But I would have to be sneakier about it."

Krenocia laughs and says "That is what I figured! Go ahead! Just try not to die or destroy the world!"

"Oh, come on! I am not that bad!"

Krenocia just looks at me and arches an eyebrow for a minute before she starts laughing again. Before I can even think of an argument, Krenocia reaches out and starts scratching around my ears. The sudden petting takes me by surprise, but I am more stunned by the view.

With Krenocia reaching both arms to me, she has put her chest directly in front of my eyes. The amazing view leaves me stunned and unable to articulate anything. Then, with no input from me, my body starts purring, causing Krenocia to chuckle.

Luckily, before I can do something really stupid, Krenocia steps back and then disappears. Even after she is gone it takes me a minute to get my head back on straight. If either of the goddesses ever seriously decides to seduce me, I will be in serious trouble.

However, I think if something like that was going to happen it would have already. So, it isn't something that I need to worry about, unlike this strange ice. Now that I have permission I can finally do some more experimenting using divine power.

First I use divine power to enhance my eyes and take a look at the mountain to see if I can see anything. While I can't see what is inside, I can see the structure of the sealing spell. This allows me to look for a weak spot, meaning I can probably break open the seal if I want to.

While I am curious to see what is inside, doing so might very well anger the god that cast it. If an angry god comes after me I am almost guaranteed to die if I can't escape. I should have thought to ask Krenocia if the god would know instantly when the seal was broken or if there is a delay.

Still, I have come this far, I may as well go ahead and see what happens. The seal spell is very intricate, but its weakness lies in the properties of the ice. The weak spot I found will break fairly easily and should cause a large cascade of damage to the spell.

The problem is that I don't know exactly how much damage it will do to the seal. It might open a crack and get me nothing, or it might destroy the entire seal. The only thing I can do is try it and see how it goes, but I should be ready to run or hide just in case.

So the first thing I do is retreat to where the ice ends and start digging into the rock. Once I have a hole deep enough to hide in I do my best to disguise it. Only then do I go back to the mountain of ice and get ready to break it.

First I empower my eyes again and double check to make sure I have not made any mistakes. Then I coat my paw in divine power and punch the spot as hard as I can. My punch creates a boom that echoes around for a minute and after it ends I hear cracking sounds.

The sounds build up getting louder by the second until with a mighty boom the mountain cracks open. The crack runs from where I am all the way to the very tip of the mountain. The widest part of the crack is halfway up the mountain and is only a couple of feet wide.

It looks like I didn't completely destroy the seal, which hopefully means the god won't know. After a minute all the echoes have faded away, but I am still hearing sounds. Several undead wearing armor come out of the crack, but they don't move towards me.

Instead they turn and immediately begin attacking the sides of the crack. It looks like they are trying to widen the crack, maybe to let something bigger escape? After all, why would a god go to so much trouble just to seal away some undead?

There has to be more to this, so I just sit back and watch to see what happens. As the minutes pass more and more undead of all types come out of the crack. They all start attacking the crack as soon as they are free, zombies and skeletons mainly.

There are a few others that look stronger, making me think of the death knights from the trial. By the time an hour has passed there are hundreds of undead and the crack is starting to widen. It is a very slow process, I'm guessing it will take days to seriously widen the crack.

Then again, the undead don't need to rest and their numbers keep increasing. So I might be underestimating the time they need, but I can't just sit around watching. Then again, I may not need to, the seal is open now so maybe the inside can be seen.

"Krenocia, can you see inside the mountain now?"