[@Zelosse]
[center][h1][color=a187be]ShiZhen Fang[/color][/h1]
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ShiZhen could feel the cold of the surrounding slowly seep through the layer of water she had wrapped around herself. As a thick layer, it insulated her, but if she let it go, the beads of moisture that remained on her would evaporate with the breeze, cooling her faster than you can say hypothermia. Yet unlike some of her classmates, ShiZhen sucked at creating and manipulating ice.

The ground rumbled under her feet as a section of the glacier further away calved, splitting from the main piece and crashing into the water. In front of her was a pyramid of ice leading up to a platform that led to what she believed was the exit. The pyramid wasn't exactly sheer, but it's slipperiness would make scaling it unassisted impossible. She took a deep breath to calm herself, yet even that proved difficult as the cold irritated her throat and almost sent her into a coughing fit. She walked up to the base of the pyramid and tried to remember her lessons.

[quote=@Zelosse]
[color=004b80]"The trick is directing the water. Not forcing it."

"Perhaps repelling water might not be a good start for you just yet. Close your eyes and focus on the water around you, flowing free, until you can hear it in your mind. When that happens just imagine it collecting over your hands instead of away from them."[/color]
[/quote]

Holding her hands coated in a layer of water over to the pyramid, she touched the water on her palms to the cold surface. She tried to 'listen' to the water. Given her understanding of chemistry, she tried to form a mental image of water molecules bouncing around, hitting the frozen surface, transferring their kinetic energy into it, slowing down, coming to a stop, and forming beautiful hexagonal lattices. A small crackling sound and the feel of cold on her hands prompted her to open her eyes to see that the water that had coated her hands was now frozen to the surface of the pyramid. She smiled involuntarily, proud that it had worked, amazed that she was able to minimally achieve what came so easily to her ice-based classmates.

Now for the hard part. Pulling her hands out, she re-coated them with water and reached higher up on the pyramid. Closing her eyes, she re-visualized the freezing water. It worked again. She shakily placed one foot on the frozen water she had created earlier, seeing if it would hold her weight. It didn't, snapping into ice powder the moment she stepped on it. Her idea to constantly create footholds and handholds for herself to clamber up the pyramid ended in failure.

She tried something else. She coated her right foot in water and pressed her foot against the pyramid. She closed her eyes and thought hard. Opening them, she saw a large chunk of ice had frozen her foot to the pyramid. Okay. Next foot. Lifting her left foot up, she planted it against he pyramid, but higher than the first foot. She closed her eyes. She opeend them. Now her left foot was successfully frozen to the pyramid. Good. She did the same with her hands, freezing them to the pyramid as well. Trying to keep her weight evenly distributed across her left foot, and both of her hands, she tried to thaw her right foot, while simultaneously trying to break free of the ice. Snap. It worked. With her right foot free, she raised it up and pressed it against the pyramid again, but at a higher point. And re-froze it. ShiZhen had made it one foot up the pyramid. Her plan now was to alternately sticking and unsticking her extremities to the pyramid, allowing her to 'gecko'-climb her way up. But each time she had to re-coat a limb in water, her insulated layer got colder. After all, she was freezing the water, leaving it behind, and drawing moisture in from the surrounding cold air to replenish. The question was, did she have the stamina to make it all the way up like this? Did she have the concentration to constantly freeze and unfreeze water, an elemental technique that she had just learned moments ago? Would she be too cold to reach the top, given how slowly she was going, and how with each step, she gave up more and more heat? Her fingers and toes were already quite numb.