Rebirth By Ice

"Rear line, to the front!" Rui ordered the knights in the back. Meanwhile, Rui and the other knights who were in the frontline retreated to the back. The two lines of knights swapped places with each other and they continued the fight.

"Do not confront the dragon, just stall it!" she told the knights. It was too dangerous to fight the dragon now that her ice magic wasn't working.

'Can you figure out what is wrong?' Rui asked the voice in her head. They needed to find out what was stopping the voice from using the ice magic as soon as possible. The siege weapon was gone, but they were still going to fight till the end.

'I don't feel anything wrong on my end,' the voice said. 'Can you tell if there is anything different on your end?'

'No, I don't think there is,' Rui replied back while wiping the sweat that was running down her head and forehead with her sleeve. Was it just her or was everything getting hotter here? Considering how the dragon kept blasting everything with fire, it made sense that the temperature rose. Maybe that was it...

'Maybe it has something to do with the place getting warmer?' she suggested.

'Perhaps... Wait, that might be it.' The cause for her ice magic not working might be because of the heat. Ice appeared behind Rui several meters away from her but it quickly melted into water. 'That's the problem! The dragon raised the temperature around it and since we're too close to it, I can't create any ice.' The heat was stopping ice from being formed.

'I can't create any ice if we're near the dragon, but I can if we're not,' the voice said. But that wasn't very useful to know.

'If you can't use ice magic on the dragon, then how are we supposed to beat it?' This was a problem. They couldn't do anything against the dragon without the ice magic.

'There is a way, but it will have to depend on you,' the voice told Rui.

"Depend on me?"

'I can only use a fraction of my ice magic due to the contract.'

"What contract?" Rui didn't remember making a contract with anything.

'Your hand.'

Rui looked at the glowing mark on her hand. This was the contract?

'Because of this, most of my magic actually belongs to you and since you never used it before, you lack the ability to use it to its maximum potential. I can temporarily allow you to use high-tier spells, but it'll come at a toll to your body.'

"Do it."

'I haven't even explained how it works yet.'

"No time, just do it!" The knights that swapped with them and were now in the front fighting the dragon were getting decimated by the beast. It hadn't been long since they went in, but around a quarter were already dead.

'Get ready, this will hurt a bit.'

Rui felt something move throughout her body. At first, it was just felt strange and there was no pain. It was like if she was feeling her blood flow throughout her body. Suddenly, out of nowhere, she felt her blood go cold and her entire body felt like she was getting impaled by icicles.

Rui clenched her teeth and endured the pain. The other knights saw that there was something going on with their commander and went over to her to see what was wrong. "Commander!" The knights saw that she was shivering even though it was burning hot with all the fire. One of the knights put his hand on her arm and felt cold seep through from her body to his. He quickly retracted his hand and started rubbing it to warm it up.

"She's freezing cold," the knight told everyone else.

"Brrr..." The air around Rui became cold and the knights had to move back so that they wouldn't freeze. The air was so cold that it stung their skins and made it feel like their flesh was going to fall off.

They couldn't do anything but watch as their commander's body turned paler and paler until her face was almost completely white like that of a corpse. "Commander!" the knights continued to call out to her even though she couldn't hear their voice.

The coldness also attracted the dragon's attention and it ignored the knights running under his legs and turned to Rui. The dragon saw whatever she was doing as a threat and couldn't let her finish it. It opened its mouth and shot a mouthful of fire at Rui.

"Everyone, protect the commander!" The knights all formed a wall around her and used the little magic they had left to create a barrier to block the flames. But even with their combined efforts, the barrier wasn't enough. The flames overwhelmed the barrier and tore through it in just a couple of seconds.

The knights watched in horror as the flames broke through their last defense and blotted out the skies. The knights close to the dragon all saw what was going on as well and tried to run towards the Rui and the other knights and put up a barrier to protect them but they were all too far to do so.

"So this is where we all die."

All of the knights were out of magic and couldn't do anything. But regardless, they fought to their last breath. And even if they didn't manage to even harm the dragon in the slightest bit, they tried their best. There was nothing more that they could do.

The flames swallowed the knights one by one until they finally reached Rui who still had her eyes closed and was shivering violently, completely oblivious to what was going on. At the last moment, as the fire was about to reach her and flickered across her face, a cold blast of air suddenly exploded from her body. The fire was pushed away before it had the chance to touch her skin and was eaten away by the cold.

"Time to strike back."

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