A low tremor crawled through the floor, vibrating the soles of Tatsu's cloud-pale boots, less a sound and more a tectonic shiver that rattled his teeth.
The frost beneath him convulsed, hairline fractures racing outward in frantic, zigzagging nerves, turning the snow-stained smooth floor into a spiderweb of crystal.
Then, the ice exhaled.
The surface humped upward in slow, sickening swells, the crust groaning as it reached its breaking point.
With the screech of grinding whetstones, the first shape punched through. A crown of jagged ice emerged, followed by a face–featureless, polished to a mirror sheen, and lacking any human softness.
‘Snap.’
‘Snap.’
Two hollow pits in the creature's skull ignited. They tore open with a violent, neon-blue radiance that cast long, predatory shadows against the monolith.
Tatsu's breath hitched, a half-formed gasp freezing in his throat. His eyes became a blur of gold, darting around like a trapped bird as he saw the scene in front of him.
All around the silver perimeter, the cavern was birthing a nightmare. Torsos–sculpted with the lean, corded geometry of a storm–levered themselves out of the frozen earth.
Their limbs moved with a stiff, terrifying deliberate-ness, the sound of tearing stone punctuating every joint's rotation.
Beneath their translucent skin, veins of concentrated cold pulsed with a sickly, electric light. Some eyes glowing a neon-white.
They had no mouths to scream. No nostrils to catch his scent. They simply turned those twin-star gazes toward him in a silent, synchronized pivot.
As they pulled their legs free from the depths, some of the ice didn’t fall away. It shaped itself. In the grip of the large sentinels, the frost elongated, crystallizing into wicked, single-edged katanas, and twin daggers that looked sharp enough to slice the air itself.
The weapons caught the emerald thrum of the structure's walls, throwing jagged, lethal glints across Tatsu's face.
The circle didn’t step; it contracted, the sheer presence of the frozen hosts making the oxygen in the space feel thin and brittle.
“...W-What the hell.” The words manifested as a fleeting ghost of vapor.
Steel provided the only answer.
He drew Ryūkō with a sibilant, hungry hiss. Its thin, spiral ridges wrapped the hilt, each ridge ending in a tiny claw-shaped engraving near the guard.
The guard itself was open like dragon wings, pommel carved like a dragon's head.
A heartbeat later, Karyū cleared the scabbard in his right hand, its flame-like curves along its grip almost flickering when he moved it.
Its guard’s sharp, jagged edges pointing outward like dragon fangs. Its heavier, darker weight that seemed to drink the surrounding light into crimson steel.
The cold crawled up his forearms like numbing shackles. Tatsu rolled his shoulders, the tension bleeding out as he settled into a low, predatory crouch.
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His boots skated a fraction of an inch on the slick surface before his center of gravity locked home.
A jagged grin tugged the corner of his mouth, “Well…” he angled his blades like bared fangs.
“This'll prove I'm an ironheart.”
His amber eyes became a blur of calculation. He mapped the geometry of the slaughter: the dual-wielder on the left with an overextended guard; the heavy-hitter to his right clutching a massive, frozen slab of a blade; the three unarmed shadows at his six, coiled like springs.
Tatsu's weight shifted, his muscles punching for explosion.
Then, he launched himself to the right.
His target was the heavy-hitter, its massive constrict looming overhead.
Its oversized arm already drawing back, the frozen slab fused to it catching the cavern's green glow like a falling star.
But as he closed the distance, the dual-wielder blurred into his path, blades crossing in an instinctive, mechanical guard.
Motion precise.
“Heh.”
Tatsu met it head-on,
Steel screamed.
The clash rang out in a brutal “KLANG!”, the bone-jarring ring of steel against enchanted ice.
Frost burst outward in a white halo as Ryūkō and Karyū locked against twin crystalline edges, Tatsu's mouth pulling a jagged, sharp smirk.
The sound was a dinner bell.
The cavern detonated into motion, the ‘tink, tink, tink’ of their joints sounding like a hail of needles against stone as they converged on him.
Tatsu's eyes flicked left, right and back—burning the battlefield into his mind in a heartbeat.
The swordsman in front of him reared back, both arms hoisting a left ice-hewn katana for a vertical slash.
Tatsu dissolved into a low crouch and slid left as the blade whistled past his ear, the wind of the strike smelling of ancient, stagnant frost.
Something vast eclipsed the light to his left.
A lean figure with a right arm the size of a tree trunk brought its fist down like a falling pillar on Tatsu's crown of the head.
With a guttural grunt, he drove Ryūkō upward in a savage, emerald arc.
“Aaargh!”
The blade bit through ice with a shriek–arm severed at the elbow, the force carrying the cut clean through the creature's neck.
The head split apart in a spray of shattered crystal, fragments chiming as the body hit the ground.
Damn, such hard ice!
He surged to his full height, his blades outflung.
Tatsu pivoted on his heels, body unwinding in a full spin. Snow and powdered ice exploded into the air, a blinding white storm spiraling around him.
For an instant, the world vanished, his pupils narrowing into predatory slits, his vision cutting through the debris.
He felt the resistance before he saw it. His outstretched Karyū took the head of an unarmed entity, the decapitated torso spinning away into the mist.
Simultaneously, he snapped Ryūkō horizontally, catching a desperate downward strike from the dual-wielder.
The impact drove Tatsu back a half-step, boots skidding dangerously on the slick floor, his knees bending to absorb the force.
“Tch.”
He fired Karyū forward, the crimson blade was a blur of motion, the needle-sharp point burying itself deep into the wielder's exposed, crystalline midsection.
The ice cracked inward, the creature recoiling, its guard wavering for a fraction of a second.
That was all Tatsu needed.
He shoved the hilt of Ryūkō into the creature's chest, creating space, and followed with a horizontal slash that cleaved the sentinel's skull in two, halves sliding apart before collapsing into lifeless shards.
The entire exchange was blurred together—motion layered on motion, breath lost to instinct.
Tatsu spun, another unarmed figure charged him head-on, eyes blazing white.
Behind him, a pair of blue stars streaked towards his back.
The white-eyed entity reached him first, drawing back a fist for a left hook. Tatsu waited until the last possible second, then collapsed into a deep crouch.
The punch whistled over his head and slammed into the face of the blue-eyed comrade sprinting from the opposite side.
The sound of stone cracking stone sounded through the cavern. Before either could recover, Tatsu swept both blades in a low, scything motion.
The steel bit through their shins, and the two sentinels hit the floor with twin, heavy thuds.
Then, the world went dark.
Heavy, rhythmic footfall shook the ice to his left.
Tatsu looked up just as the heavy-hitter's club–a massive, slab-like boulder of ice-descended like a falling moon.
Tatsu crossed his blades in a desperate “X” above his head.
“BOOM!”
The impact crushed him downward.
His knees buckled, his boots groaning against the floor as he was forced into a strained crouch.
The sheer weight was tectonic.
The club's surface vibrated against his steel with the pressure of a mountain.
*This ice is so hard!* Tatsu's teeth ground together, the emerald and crimson glow of his blades struggling against the crushing, cold shadow of the slab as more sentinels surrounded him.
