William stepped across the threshold, feeling the familiar tingle of magic on his skin as one world replaced another. Tendrils of inky darkness spread across the revenant’s consciousness where the Ai’Bron monks’ magic touched him, a result of his cursed soul seeking to undo the magic of the Citadel. There was power there, a destructive power that made William ache with yearning. He paused for a moment to savor the untapped potential before reigning in his power. There would be time enough later to explore that avenue of possibilities. Now it was time to fight.
A single step was all it took to deposit William into the icy labyrinth that his opponent had chosen. He looked behind him, not surprised to see that the Citadel’s portal had faded, only to be replaced by a curved pathway of snow-covered ground surrounded by luminescent walls of ice. It was nearly identical to the path that had stood in front of him on his arrival. Frowning, William took three quick steps to the passage’s corner and peered around it. The same branching pathways of snow and ice greeted him, just as he’d feared.
“Of course it’s a spirits damned maze,†he growled. “No sense in having a straight-up fight, is there?†He’d been spending more and more time in the Citadel since his return to Radasanth and William was falling back into the old, familiar patterns of the place. It had been dangerous to ask the monks for a challenge, since the mystics views on the subject was, apparently, wildly different from his own.
Thick snows cushioned William’s footfalls, letting only a soft crunch trail him. A sharp knife of cold stabbed into the soles of William’s tough feet, but the pain faded soon enough into numbness and William swept the pain aside. His healing abilities would quickly repair any frostbite that his feet suffered, and banishing the cold all together would be as easy as summoning his war form.
William crunched his way over to one of the softly glowing walls of ice. He swept his burning gaze across the glassy surface, letting his destructive enlightenment seek out the ice’s imperfections. As he suspected, the monks of the Citadel had constructed the ice with uniform perfection, leaving no blemishes that he might exploit. Still, that didn’t mean that they were perfect.
Deciding to test the wall further William shifted his warscythe to his off hand and placed the other flat against the frozen surface. William was strong, far stronger than a normal person. He used that strength and pushed against the ice wall. The crystalline surface resisted for a time, but after a concerted effort on the revenant’s part a sharp snap resounded from the ice and a web of cracks spread in uneven patterns around his hand.
William nodded in satisfaction. Even though they were tough, the thick ice walls were still only ice. Feeling like he needed to give the wall one last test he pulled his hand back, clenched it tightly into an iron fist, and drove it forward. The cracks in the wall shot out several feet in every direction, and a mass of ice chip burst from the inch thick hole which William had just put into the wall.
I’ll definitely need to work that out, he thought, watching as his skin healed and the bones reknit in his shattered hand. It took a minute, but soon enough there was no sign that William had hurt himself in the first place.
William pulled his thick cloak tightly around him and checked the heavy dragon bone cleaver slung behind his shoulders to make sure it was secure. Then he picked a direction at random and started jogging down it, leaving deep footprints behind him.
“Alright then,†he grumbled, watching the heat of the words mist from his lips. “Fuck you, you bastard, wherever you are. You’re going to die.â€
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