[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/5r7OTIh.png[/img]
[b][color=Aquamarine]wordcount:[/color][/b] 3,364 (+4)
[b][color=Aquamarine]Midna: level 7[/color][/b] EXP: [color=Aquamarine]/////////////////////////[/color]//////////////////////////////////////////////// (25/70)
[b][color=Aquamarine]Location:[/color][/b]  Sandswept Sky - Baur’s Reach
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Fortunately, the big frozen guy didn’t wake up, and Tora’s little insight about a certain master hand’s appearance being expected before any boss encounter put a stop to any thoughts that the frozen titan might be the guardian they sought. Of course, that did raise the concern of what, exactly, on this frozen mountain could be of greater power than the sealed titan.

They’d find out eventually, Midna supposed. For now, however, they still had a mountain to climb, or, to be more specific, a frigid catacomb to explore, as that was what lay beyond the precarious pathway set before the refrigerated giant.

Midna ended up scouting ahead of the main group, racing through the halls on her wolf-dran mount with such speed that she sped past many of the undead who by the time they rose from their tombs in response to her passing the princess was long gone. Instead she found the foes already up and on the march.

[color=Aquamarine]”Wait is that?”[/color] Midna said as she rounded a corner and came across a familiar foe, only to be forced to leap back when it hefted an icy spear and hurled it her way.

[color=Aquamarine]”Yep, that’s a chilfos.”[/color] she told her mount which was panting from the exertion of doing the rapid stop, turn and flight needed to keep its rider safe all in the time it took for the frozen undead to prep and hurl its weapon. 

[color=Aquamarine]”Don't worry, we… I know how to deal with these''[/color] she told it, before slipping off of her steeds back, taking a moment to pull the Clubba Club out of the twilight ream and then hauling it with her shadow hand. She got a wag of that spiky icy tail while doing a dragon dance for speed and then told the wolf-dran [color=Aquamarine]”When I say, go,”[/color] before stepping back out round the corner.

The chilfos, which had been advancing after her, stopped and hefted it’s replacement spear to throw when it saw her.

[color=Aquamarine]”Yeah, that’s it, come on”[/color] Midna, who had slid to a halt as soon as she was in view, encouraged it and then, when the throw came, simply raised her shield and caught the thrown weapon on it. 

[color=Aquamarine]”Ha!”[/color] she laughed before commanding her wolf-dran to [color=Aquamarine]”Sick it!”[/color] and do so it did, bursting out around the corner, pelting up the corridor towards the chilfos as it was conjuring a new spear before leaping and grabbing its spear arm. With her target caught by the beast, all Midna had to do was step up, whip her head and hair around, swinging the Clubba club like a ball and chain and slamming the spiked mace’’s head into the frozen undead, shattering it to bits in a single blow.

[color=Aquamarine]”and done! Catch and smash, just like Link used to do!”[/color] she declared as the wolf-dran trotted back over to her, a frozen arm held in its mouth, [color=Aquamarine]”ew. Spit that out”[/color] 

It did so, and the princess remounted, popped the spirit away and declared [color=Aquamarine]”If that’s all this place has to it this should be a cake walk compared to Snowpeak”[/color] 

It wasn't

[hr]

Midna’s scouting may have been fast, but unfortunately for her, wound up taking her deeper into the tomb, not towards the exit they sought. Still, she had speed on her side, a familiar foe to face and little propensity towards grave robbing to slow her down. Even the various pots did not call to her like they would have caught the eye, sword and/or combat roll of her old friend, but even the princess couldn't resist the call of a nice chest. Rather than stop and push them open however, Midna had a more rapid solution, which was to snatch chests off of shelves with a shadow hand as she passed, before reeling them in and then dump them to the twilight realm with a tap of her hand. This inadvertently worked as a convenient detection method for mimics, as normal chests didn't exactly have a tendency to mutate when exposed to the energies of her home realm.

As a result of her speed, she barely even knew the draugr were there. Not till she hit something awake that more dangerous than the lone chilfos, and that was a whole patrol of them moving through the halls, and at the center was a [url=https://i.imgur.com/k3Ma83w.jpg]armored drugar[/url] with a one handed sword that seemed to be leading them, along with a handful of its shambling fellows bringing up the rear.

At least they were noisy, and so rather than running head first into them like she had some of the chilfos she instead slowed and merely peeked her head round a corner to get a look at them. Unfortunately this did her no good as the far too perceptive Scourge leading the patrol paused and start to glance her way almost as soon as she saw them. 

She ducked back behind the corner, and sighed [color=Aquamarine]”that was close”[/color] perhaps a bit too loudly. 

The Scourge wordlessly halted his squad, and directed a trio of weaker drugar down the corridor to where it thought something that did not belong might be, while holding its better troops and ranged Chilfos in reserve. It turned out he had indeed seen something when the first of the three shambled round the corner and it was immediately slammed into the opposite wall by a giant glowing orange hand. If it still could feel it might have been shocked or surprised by the nature of the blow, but instead it simply ordered the other two regroup with him, at which point Midna sprung out on foot and performed a quick stab into the gut of one drugar using a silver dagger, which send a burst of lighting arching out though both it and the one just behind, but stopping short of the Scourge’s deployed troops.

[color=Aquamarine]”Sh-dang it!”[/color] Midna cursed at the lack of range, before bringing her shield up to catch the first spear and deciding to retreat as more of them started coming in, an exit that was partially helped by the two shocked drugar taking three of said spears in her stead before disintegrating

[color=Aquamarine]”Ok. Too close. We get the others and... wait what is that?”[/color] Midna said as she heard chanting and… felt magic coalescing. Cold and dark magic that should not be. She risked another peak around the corner and found a semi coherent formation consisting of of drugar at the front and chilfos at the back facing her, and behind it, the Scourge, in the mist of pulling something hulkling and [url=https://i.imgur.com/hMxMZJm.jpg]horrible[/url] out of an infernal portal.

[color=Aquamarine]”Oh that’s bad”[/color] she rightly observed, and made a fool hardy split second decision.

A moment of charging a weapon later and Minda, shadow hopped into position. Then her shadow hand exploded out of a half closed sarcophagus next to the formation. With knife held in her teeth and shadow hand slamming into the formation of drugar in a downward slap Midna used the force of the slap to help her leap up and onto a chilfos, before gripped its handlebar like face with dragon clawed toes and then pushing herself further up to touch the low ceiling. A portal to the twilight realm formed, and dropped the clubba club out of it. The oversized metal spike ball on a stick slammed down onto the chilfos and then the mass of electrically charged metal went off like a bomb, blasting the squad with lighting.

As they disintegrated and/or stumbled the princess adjusted her jump with levitation in-order to get close to and kick off of the far wall and launch herself towards the Scourge to stop the summoning, only to find she already had when it turned its head towards her and, of all things, spoke.

“FUS” it shouted and the sheer force of the word foiled her wall jump attempt and caused her to smack lightly into the wall and then tumble back down towards the ground. As the abandoned summoning ritual faded behind it the Scourge approached, ancient enchanted blade in hand rising to strike her down. Then in came the cavalry as Midna’s wolf-dran came bursting through the recovering undead horde and caught the princess on its back, before dodging to the side of the Scourge’s sword swing.

The undead leader turned its free hand after them and blasted a stream of ice their way, against which the princess raised her Arctic Shield. The frozen buckler resisted the cold immaculately, and gave the princess time to direct a hand past the Scourge to outdo his summoning. Her only remaining unaltered wolfos burst from the twilight realm, size rivaling the ice archon the drugaur had failed to summon, and it used this size to plough through the other undead, scattering them yet again and destroying even more of their number.

As it raced forth she grabbed the knife from between her teeth and then barked [color=Aquamarine]”You and me as- scraggly beard! Let's dance”[/color] 

With the longer of her knives in one hand, shield in the other and wolf-dran as her steed it wasn't really a fair fight. She parried its sword swing with her shield, gabbed its attempt to spear her with a magical spike of ice using her shadow hand, her wolf-dran caught its leg to prevent it from kicking her and then she stabbed it in the chest with her knife, sending another blast of lightning spearing out along with her bow.

[color=Aquamarine]”That was too easy… Wait, why aren't you dead?”[/color] she asked the Scourge who was 14 times more durable than the weakest of his kind, right before his shouted “FUS!” right in her face. 

Princes and wolf-dran stumbled away from the force, freeing the Scourge from her and its grip. He scythed his blade down again, which Midna barely caught on her shield and almost fell off of her mount as a result of the blow, discovering a problem with trying to fight with her arms while on wolf-dran back, which was was that she lacked any kind of saddle or stirrups to properly hold her there as thigh and tail grip could only do so much. 

A problem she addressed in the moment by dismissing the wolf-dran from under her, causing an ice spike to wizz between the crests of her fused shadow.

Using dragon claws on her toes to reduce her slipping the princess dragon danced away from the while charging her long knife while the Scourge’s few remaining troops came to form up in front of their boss, all four of them Chilfos who had refused to shatter. For them she summoned her Vibrava. Scaled up it slammed into the ground, bulldozing the stone floor and unsettling  and slowing both them and the Scourge before the princess herself came in again with a full powered blade.

She charged forwards and performed a dancing overhead with her sword, lighting cracking in it and causing two rows of electricity to strike on either side of her as she slipped through the ranks of the chilfos before bringing the sword down not on the Scourge but before him, prompting lighting to blast down on top of him and knocking him back. But she wasn't done yet. Instead the princess kept the sword blow going, spin stepping so that she and the sword did a 360 rotation and in doing so allowing her to perform another downward swing as part of the same motion, blasting the Scourge again. And again. And again. And then she was out of charge. 

Having forced him back and gotten past the chilfos she darted to the side, grabbed the fallen clubba club from amidst the fallen spirits of his squad with her shadow hand. Then she hauled it around in a wrecking ball of a swing, smashing the last of the chilfos as they were recovering from shake and shock.  

That left only the Scourge, and it was on its last legs already. She summoned her wolf-dran once more, but instead of riding it she and it ran in together, charging the undead leader side by side. He tried to chop her with an overhead swing which she blocked with her shield while her wolf-dran lept and caught its arm when it tried to use that to freeze blast her, and then she drove the knife up below its ribs and into his heart while she used a shadow hand to punch its head clean off.

And that was the end of that.

[hr]

After her encounter Midna gathered up the fallen spirits and headed back towards the others. That had been more than enough solo adventuring in the tomb for her liking, and she said as much when she returned. When she did she found out Laharl was taking the drugar as minions and, not really wanting to fuse with them (unsurprisingly) and not expecting much from them from items she added hers to his horde. 

That meant he got the scourge too, if he wanted it as a commander of his undead troops. If he didn't take it, she’d crush it using the mimic hat.

As for the chilfos, well, inspired a bit by Lahral she decided she’d also get herself some undead minions as well. She’d done it before after all, having briefly conjured an army of [url=https://i.imgur.com/wQ7N8kd.png]stalchildren, stalfos and darknuts[/url] to help her during that whole broken time debacle, but had quickly replaced them with the army of Hyrule after they proved much more effective. By beating her skeleton army during a misunderstanding involving a butterfly of all things. Now that did not bode well for the chilfos’s effectiveness, it was true, but she was sure she could make use of a spear volley or two to help mitigate her lack of ranged capabilities.

Once that was all out of the way, someone had at last found a way out, which took them through some underground tunnels full of obstacles that demanded deft jumps and platforming prowess. A demand she could happily ignore in favor of popping floating along opening her chest collection to take a peek at what was inside. Not that this was entirely unhelpful, as one of the first things she found was a [url=https://i.imgur.com/XodX6Wy.png]odd bottle[/url] that allowed anyone who strapped it to their person to perform a [url=https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/terraria_gamepedia/images/5/55/Blizzard_in_a_Bottle_(demo).gif]double jump[/url] using a blast of freezing air.

This she tossed to Minamoto who she thought would need it most, what with the man having to jump around with wheels for feet and all, which likely needed a bunch of course correcting. Also as a minor repayment for the band of friendship she was wearing.

Another held an [url=https://i.imgur.com/hehwr4q.png] incense burner[/url] with plenty of packs of fuel to burn, which produced a scent that cleared the mind and she was fairly certain aided with mental magics. Razputin got that, and the unfortunate side effect of the smell reminding anyone who smelt it of a mime-like creature they had never met (and hopefully never would).

The final chest with items rather than treasure held hefty two bottles of something called [url=https://i.imgur.com/wG00W3r.png]Dwarven Gut Rot[/url] which nearly caused an incident when Midna popped open a cork and got herself and anyone nearby blasted with the unrestrained scent of mana infused alcohol. That was not exactly an ideal aroma to have assaulting your nostrils while platforming. In her analysis it might boost your mana regen, would probably make the Scout a very happy dwarf and would almost certainly kill anyone else who tried to drink it. The scout got one as a result, while she kept the other for dire emergencies. Maybe they could dilute it and make something less lethal

The rest of the chests held cash of varying value, from one bulging with five hundred solver coins shaped like [url=https://i.imgur.com/oiuKQaH.png]lions[/url], another with thirty odd futuristic [url=https://i.imgur.com/LuakGWN.png]gold coins[/url], a third holding a single very large [url=https://i.imgur.com/TYu131O.png]opal[/url] while the final one held dozens of pouches overflowing with gold coins! 

… 

[url=https://i.imgur.com/kky3pkv.png]drawn on playing cards[/url].

Her final chest contained nothing but teeth, but unlike Tora she found that out after plonking it on a small outcropping surrounded by unjumpable bottomless pits. The chest that had been red had turned a telltale shadowy black when exposed to the darkness of the twilight realm and so, armed with the story of Tora’s encounter, she guessed what was in store. She reached out and tried to open it with a shadow hand’s finger, which prompted to pounce forwards with [url=https://i.imgur.com/HEYWRm8.png ]fangs bared[/url], only to stop when it found its would be victim floating out of reach.

[color=Aquamarine]”Ha! Gotcha! You can’t fool me, and now you're stuck!”[/color] she told the chest, which started hopping about (interestingly enough doing so like it was a chess piece only able to move in cardinal directions in a set distance each hop) angrily, before seeming to realize its predicament. It paused. Saw that she wasn't killing it for some reason. And then resumed its disguise, thinking maybe it could lure some future fool up to this deathtrap of an outcropping.

[color=Aquamarine]”Ah ah ah, no you don't”[/color] she gave it a flick with her finger towards the edge of the cliff which prompted it to try and bite her again to no avail.

[color=Aquamarine]”See I’m wise to your trick, so I could just crush you if I wanted too, but feel this”[/color] she she held up a hand, tightened it and in so doing tightening a grip on the dark magic of her home infesting the monster before telling it that [color=Aquamarine]”You. Are. Mine. I am the princess of twilight and you are now of my realm. So you will obey me or suffer the consequences. Understood?”[/color] 

It really didn’t have much choice in the end, and so it ceased its attempted attack and instead sat there passively, mouth hinged slightly open as if to say “see I’m not trying to trick you again” in submission.

[color=Aquamarine]”Good chest,”[/color] she told it, giving it a pet as a reward. With her shadow hand. She wasn't trusting it quite yet. 

[color=Aquamarine]”Now back home with you. And play nice with the others. I’ll know if you aren't, and even if I didn't, there’s more of them than you”[/color] she told it, before flicking a wrist and dismissing it back to the twilight realm.

With all that out of the way, Midna headed the rest of the way through the freezing caves along with the others. She ended up summoning her wolf-dran mount back and joining in the platforming for a fair bit of the rest of it, a bit to make up for her lack of comradely, but mainly because clinging to its winter adapted body let her steal some of its body heat.

It was upon its back that she rode out of the end of the cramped corridors and into the massive frozen mine that held the elevator they sought. Except it wasn't an elevator, it was instead some kind of clawed lifting mechanism, one who’s chain was frozen to the mast of a strange looking ship.

[color=Aquamarine]”How the f- how in Hyrule did that thing get all the way up here?”[/color] she had to ask. Ultimately that wasn't important however. What was important was that Rasputin and Therion both decided to climb up there when the group had people who could just fly up there present. 

[color=Aquamarine]”I’ll go make sure they get up without getting into any trouble”[/color] she said, mostly to Sectonia, and then headed after them, letting her wolf-dran leap its way up the ice to the deck of the ship rather than floating up. No need to embarrass them in her opinion. Then she slipped off of her beast and left it on watchdog duty, keeping an eye on the rest of the ship, while she turned to face the climbers, shadow hand pulled out like a catcher's mitt just in case one of them fell. She also brought out the as  of yet unused longsword she’d gotten from Mao, and set to charging it with electricity, readying it for battle with anything that wanted to mess with the two climbing lads.