As the dragon prepared to attack, Kazue created a swirling wall of light mere moments before Mordecai cast a spell creating a wall of metal a few feet closer to the party than Kazue's spell. She was expecting a more powerful version of the sandblast attack that the drakes had used at the start of the battle, and the probability-diffracting properties of her spell should break that up pretty well.

Her magic wall was inclined towards a form of chaos that could briefly shift reality and redirect forces into random directions. This would force blasts of physical material hitting it to scatter in the same way light scattered when encountering a formation of crystals.

Instead, condensed light slammed against her wall of prismatic light in a continuous beam, and the unrelenting light washed away the bright colors of her wall into white as they were overwhelmed. Kazue could feel that she was still affecting the assault of light, forcing it to spread and wasting some of its energy, but a lot of it was still getting through. Enough that Mordecai's wall of metal was beginning to glow.

She hastily switched tactics, dropping her wall as she pulled out a wand for channeling ice magic. Kazue hesitated just long enough to be sure she had her mental image right before she began channeling her mana into the wand. Her spell started as a diffused cloud of cold fog, but Kazue kept pouring more mana into it, slowly ramping up the intensity of the cold and the density of the fog. If she wasn't careful, her magic could shatter the wall of metal instead of cooling it properly.

Moriko's voice whispered over Kazue's earring, "Well done, but freeze it now." She didn't question the instructions and immediately tried to ice over the still-glowing wall. The simpler magic freed up Kazue's attention, so now she could focus on Moriko, who had a pair of black lightning tethers connecting her to the wall, drawn out to the tether's limit. Just as the rapidly cooling metal started to crack, Moriko's feet slammed into it, shattering the wall and sending shards flying back at the dragon, which had started to move around the wall.

Oh.

Kazue hadn't noticed that the assault of light had ended while she was trying to cool the wall off. She shook her head to clear it, then turned her attention away from the dragon. That had been tiring, and the dragon had Moriko and Mordecai's full attention. Instead, she focused back on the threats that the others had been dealing with.

Her wand disappeared back into her bracer, and she swept her staff toward a fresh swarm of giant wasps. The insects immediately became erratic, veering off in random directions and attacking anything they encountered, including sand drakes, each other, or random bits of sand or debris. Both their minds and their wills were weak, and Kazue was much better suited for dealing with them. Plus, Carnelian Flame thought they were tasty, as did Thunder and Lightning, and the hatchlings were happy to hunt them down while they were buzzing around erratically. Kazue decided to not think about that too much and did her best to ignore the random crunching noises coming from that direction.

This took the pressure off of Fuyuko and Amrydor, who had been the target of the swarm while Bellona and Xarlug had been dealing with more of the sand drakes. Kazue suppressed a shiver; none of them had been free to focus on defending themselves from the dragon's attack, and it was clear that the drakes and wasps were willing, or rather, had been ordered, to sacrifice themselves if it meant that the dragon's breath weapon could hit their opponents as well.

After killing a few wasps that had still gotten too close, Fuyuko swapped her blades out for her bow and turned her attention to the big dragon, trusting Kazue and Amrydor to keep her safe while she started firing. She was doing full draws now, using her more limited supply of thick-shafted, heavily enchanted arrows instead of normal ones, and each hit created cracks in the dragon's carapace.

Kazue let Amrydor, Sparks, and Carnelian work their way through the confused wasps and focused on a new trio of drakes that were surfacing. She tweaked the emotions of one of them, her magic briefly overriding the control of the nexus as that drake suddenly turned and attacked one of its fellows, trying to eat the other drake alive.

The third drake ignored the struggling pair and blasted its breath weapon at Kazue. Or at least, where it thought Kazue was. It then proceeded to attack and fight empty air, as only it could see the imaginary version of Kazue in its mind.

The drakes had much stronger wills and minds than the wasps, but they were still very vulnerable if she targeted them one by one. The elementals hadn't been much smarter, but they had much more raw power protecting their minds, and the senses of elementals were odd. Kazue didn't understand them well enough to create proper mental illusions for elementals, and it seemed a waste to create nearly-real illusions when the elements had already been under control, well, mostly under control.

She resolutely ignored the patch of weird ice that still existed somehow, complete with maintaining a cold fog. It wasn't living ice, and it didn't even seem to be magical beyond having been created by magic, but it did not look right. The blue was a bit darker than normal ice, and it had formed into weird shapes. Well, weird for ice. The shapes reminded her more of uncut gems, and the resemblance was only enhanced by the occasional flash of yellowish or purplish colors from the depths of the ice crystals.

For the moment, there did not seem to be any new enemies, so Kazue focused on her storage ring long enough to bring out a potion. She briefly lifted her mask and drank the potion down before covering her pale skin with the opaque mask, before it could do more than slightly redden from the light. More like force it down. Not that the potion tasted bad, but she already knew what to expect from mana potions.

They were much more difficult to make than other restoratives, and unlike stamina or health potions, they did not feel good to ingest. She could feel energy spreading out from the potion and flowing through her body as it began restoring her reserves of mana, but until it was fully assimilated, the mana felt foreign and not a part of herself. Kazue really hated that feeling, and no one else seemed to like it either.

If they could afford more downtime, Kazue would have been much happier with meditating after the fight, enhanced by the alchemical potions and pills that they had gotten from Moriko's parents. Speeding up the rate at which she could restore her mana herself was a much gentler feeling.

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Then she brought an ice gun out from her bracers and began firing at the pair of struggling and injured drakes. This broke the mental compulsion she had put on one of them, but it was too late for either of them to recover in time to attack her. She glanced at Amrydor and gestured toward the remaining drake. He looked around to double-check for any wasps that might still be dangerous before he nodded and started moving toward the drake that was fighting empty air. It was much harder to rely on body language and head movements; with the masks fully opaque, no one could see anyone's expressions, and even with all the ice that had been produced and had since evaporated, the air was too dry to make shouting a good idea.

Kazue moved to have a clearer shot, then fired a burst of ice bullets into the drake, breaking the illusion and throwing the drake off balance right before Amrydor's war-scythe sank into its flesh. She then hit the drake with a dazzling sparkle of colors before it could manage to focus on Amrydor properly, leaving it exposed and unable to defend itself.

That seemed to be the last of the small enemies, and the dragon was being finished off by Bellona and Xarlug while Moriko and Mordecai recovered; those holes at the top of the dragon's armored plates turned out to be vents to spit out a mixture of boiling water and oil. The sprayed oil also tended to ignite when enough of the water had steamed off.

She ran over to her husband and wife, the loose sand slowing her steps, while she pulled out more recovery potions so that they didn't have to worry about casting any more healing spells. They were stopped near the strange ice Mordecai had created, resting towards the outer edge of the relative cool it was still throwing off. They nodded their thanks before quickly lifting their masks and drinking the potions, and Kazue pulled out more potions to pour over the tears and worn sections of their armor. She wanted to hug them both, but she didn't dare until those steam and oil burns healed.

Mordecai recovered first, and he pressed his forehead to hers before saying, "Thank you, love." The rasp she heard in his voice caused her to glance at the patch of strange ice before dragging her gaze from the odd material. Looking at it too long threatened to strain her eyes with the way it made the light shift.

"Alright," Moriko said as she retrieved another potion of her own, "what is up with that stuff, and how did you hurt yourself with it?"

He cleared his throat and swallowed before replying. "I charged my breath to be as powerful as I could, but I felt I needed to make it colder. So I held it a moment and wove void magic into it, to draw even more heat out of it and dump that heat into the void between worlds."

Kazue took a moment to process that information, then said, "You held two different, contradictory concepts of cold in your mind at the same time, and wove magic using one concept into your breath weapon that was based on the other concept? Mordecai, I'm supposed to be the crazy one with the loose grip on reality."

He shrugged and grinned. "I guess you are just a bad influence then. Oh, and don't let anyone get too near that ice; that fog isn't water vapor. The air itself is condensing onto the ice, though it should get warm enough to stop doing that soon. That's what hurt my throat; even that brief moment that it existed inside of my mouth and throat was enough for it to desiccate and freeze my flesh. Shattered some of my teeth, too."

She had clearly married a madman, and Moriko's disbelieving shake of her head suggested that she felt the same way. But there was no time to linger on that thought; they needed to press on.

After everyone had checked each other over and helped with any armor or gear that needed fixing or adjusting, Mordecai led the way again, using his ice guns to create more patches of living ice. At least it was no longer so blisteringly hot, but it was just as bright, which kept Kazue feeling uncomfortably warm.

No more creatures attacked them; it appeared that they had been swarmed by the entire zone at once. The tri-faced dragon had not been quite as powerful as the raid boss dragon, but they had not known what to expect from it. With the three raid bosses, Deidre had previously given them everything that they needed to know, making it much easier to attack the raid bosses weaknesses and work around their strengths.

"Are you sure that the living ice won't cause any problems in the long run?" Kazue asked, glancing behind them at the trail of growing ice.

Mordecai shook his head. "Once I am no longer adding to it, the edges of the ice should start melting faster than they can grow. This is too hot for it in the long run. And even if not, the drakes should be able to blast it away when they are restored."

That confirmed that Mordecai had similar thoughts as her about the creatures of this zone. Being recently evolved into inhabitants and not having had to participate in the Puritasi's experiments and training, they had not suffered the same sort of trauma and abuse that the ones from earlier floors had; it would be much easier for them to recover and hopefully form a proper bond with Svetlana. Though maybe some physical changes would be in order.

Hopefully, the same would be true for the inhabitants of the next zone.

They carefully descended the slope that led away from the light, and as the light faded, they increased the transparency of their masks. But that wasn't enough; there was no light to be found in this tunnel, and no signs of any light from further down.

Moriko created a small ball of hovering light that followed her, and Carnelian Flame began to glow, but that was still not quite enough light for the group, and a moment later, the center of Bellona's shield began to glow as well. Kazue's wandering thoughts briefly wondered if Moriko's spell was the same as the one she said she'd used the first time she met their husband. They were bright thoughts, especially in this gloomy place.

Mordecai sighed a short while later, his breath creating a hint of fog in the now chill air. "Simple, but effective. Light and heat followed by darkness and cold. It's hard for most groups to be prepared for both at the same time, especially without warning. Also, someone strong against the previous zone would probably be weak against this one."

That made sense, especially if you were specifically preparing to defend yourself against an invasion. Ice began to creep along the walls as they descended, and it became clear that the darkness was an active gloom, trying to steal away any light that was present. Mordecai paused the group and cast light spells on the bottom of Amrydor's boots. "That should let you see where you are stepping without the light blinding you. I assume there are limits to how much you can 'see' objects with your other senses."

"Yes, sir," Amrydor replied, "and thank you."

This left Xarlug, Mordecai, and Fuyuko as the only ones without a personal light source, but Xarlug and Mordecai both had an innate ability to see in total darkness, if in a more limited way than proper sight. Fuyuko had developed a similar ability as she had become more attuned with shadows.

There was also a steady, deep, grinding sound that was irritating Kazue's ears as they got closer to the next zone. Soon, the corridor leveled out... only it didn't open up into a zone. For a moment, Kazue thought that she was looking at a solid wall of ice, which didn't make any sense. Then she was able to focus on a rippling shimmer that showed that the ice was moving.

A gap opened up as the block slid by, showing a glimpse of more blocks sliding and grinding away in the space beyond it, in a chaotic mess that could easily catch a person inside of a closing gap with no way out.

Kazue knew that there had to be a way through it — she had played with the rules of plenty of puzzles herself and there always had to be a way through. But it could take a lot of time. Time they didn't have.

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