Earlier, Ikuno had taken off Kal’s vambrace that held the healing rune and attempted to fix her fingers, only to find that something in the lightning had completely drained her. She wasn’t surprised, other magic-users who had lived through a lightning strike, some who weren’t even using magic at the time, reported finding any crystals on their person emptied along with their natural reserves.
She tried waking Kal up for a quickie, not only to keep him warm but also the subsequent increase in her magic regeneration, however, he steadfastly refused to stir. With things getting starting to freeze she knew that her natural resistance to hot and cold temperatures was eating up a good portion of what magic she regained.
After a few hours she tried again and still hadn’t stored enough to activate the healing rune, though it did glow for a fraction of a second. Worse yet, she discovered another of Kal’s abilities to cause her mild annoyance. Without Kal’s control over how magic flowed into the runes, both healing and the shield rune lit up on the bracer when she tried to heal herself, wasting precious magic trying to create the unneeded shield. Frustrated with their predicament she sat back down next to Kal, leaning her head back and closing her eyes.
With no answers coming to her she looked down at Kal. He was wrapped as tightly in his cloak as she could get him without the use of her hands and had positioned him so he was laying facing the wall, hoping that his body heat would get trapped between the rock and his cloak. For the hundredth time that day, she cursed herself for leaving their bedrolls in the shack, thinking they would be back without any trouble. Ikuno had managed to carefully remove his travel pack with her feet, a process that took a fair amount of patience since she had to be careful not to cut him with the claws on her toes. She was currently using it to keep him propped up on his side.
Ikuno’s eyes widened and she groaned in irritation at her own forgetfulness. Kal usually kept a charged crystal in his pack and the lightning that made the boulder explode hadn’t hit him directly.
“Sorry Kal,” she mumbled as she hooked a damaged hand through the strap and dragged it away, letting Kal roll onto his back. “With luck, we’ll be out of here soon.”
As she began undoing the leather laces with her teeth, movement from Kal made her stop and look in his direction.
Kal was shivering.
The oni bit through the laces, her sharp teeth slicing through the leather with ease. A fleeting thought applauded Kal’s courage to put his penis anywhere near her mouth. With her back to the drop-off, Ikuno carefully dumped out the pack, not wanting to take a chance on the crystal bouncing out and possibly falling off the ledge.
She whipped her head to the side to stare at the rock face on the other side of her from where Kal was lying, she could have sworn she saw something move out of the corner of her eye. Worried that the stress of the situation might be making her see things, she continued to cautiously shake out the pack’s contents. As Kal’s spare crystal bounced out and up against the bottom of the overhang, her eyes were again drawn to the stone wall off to the side. Ikuno carefully picked up the crystal using her wrists then brought it up and held it between her lips. Getting Kal’s vambrace she adjusted it so the shield would activate in a safe direction and began pulling power from the crystal. It took a moment to overcome the strong resistance before both runes on the piece of leather lit up and her fingers resumed healing.
As her hands finished mending she kept looking at the rock face, something wasn’t right about it. There was a small section that jutted out a bit and was slightly different color from the rest of the wall that she was certain had not been there earlier. She pushed it out of her mind as she flexed her fingers and quit powering the runes on the vambrace. With a power source and access to her magic again, it was time to get Kal back on his feet. Ikuno took the crystal out of her mouth and knelt next to Kal’s shivering form, the magic circle of her healing spell appearing in front of her hand as she continued repairing the damage to his body. Once she healed him, she could get them out of there, even if he was unconscious, and down to lower altitudes where it was warmer. The oni smiled as a thought came to her. If she could spare the magic for a speed spell once she got off the mountain, Aradelle would be more than willing to help her warm Kal up.
A rocky hand closed on the arm holding the crystal and pulled Ikuno away from Kal, swinging her out over the drop-off. For a terrifying moment she thought her assailant was going to fling her off the mountainside to land on the jagged rocks below. It was almost a relief when the person swung her all the way around to slam sideways into the rock face before falling on her side.
Quickly getting her bearings, the oni looked over to see a rock golem, an earth elemental who looked like a woman with various body parts made of stone, standing over Kal’s body.
Dropping the crystal, Ikuno dug her claws into the stone and launched herself at the woman. Surprised at the speed with which the oni recovered, the rock girl dropped down over Kal’s body and sank into the mountain, taking him with her.
Ikuno came to a skidding halt, digging claws on both and hands and feet into the stone to keep herself from flying off the other side of the rocky shelf. Standing up, she looked at the place Kal and the golem had disappeared.
Ikuno swore under her breath, she could feel through their connection that Kal was alive, but he was traveling down and away from her very quickly. She made short work of picking up the contents of Kal’s travel pack and stuffing them back into the satchel. Retrieving the crystal, the oni cast a strength spell on herself as she looked at the overhang Kal had fallen over earlier that day. With pack and crystal in one hand she leapt upward, her claws sinking deeply into the stone before pulling herself up one handed and making her way back up the snowy slope to the trail.
“Sorry ‘Dell,” said Ikuno, looking sadly in the direction of the alarune’s forest. Turning away, she began trudging through the snow toward her cave, trying to formulate a plan to rescue her lover.
——
Pleasant feelings from his groin coaxed Kal from his slumber, along with it came a painful throbbing in his head, back, and legs.
“Ikuno stop,” Kal groaned without opening his eyes, “I feel like I was just trampled by an ox.”
As memories slowly filtered back in, Kal recalled watching a column of lightning stop just up the slope from where he had fallen and coming to rest on a boulder, everything after that was darkness. Judging by how his voice echoed, he assumed that something bad happened and Ikuno brought him back to her cavern.
The pleasant feelings continued, which was uncharacteristic of Ikuno, not that he had asked her to stop very often, and then only because he was in the mood for something different at the time. Regardless, before now she had always quit whatever she was doing immediately when asked, with one exception, but that was a special circumstance.