East of Nowhere Part 7- Ruined Ice Princess

They come upon an intersection, and there are four different paths to take. Sasha says, “I’ll take the middle.” Winter says, “I’ll take the first path on the left.” Gerald says, “Well, I’ll take one of the other two paths, can we all meet back here and then we can explore the last path together. Please be safe you two. Let’s make it back here alive.” Winter turns and heads down the farthest path on the left, (It’s been a while since she’s felt this alone) she thinks to herself as she keeps walking down the path, strangely this tunnel is illuminated in small, blue glowing mushrooms. The light they give off isn’t very much, but it’s enough to keep the darkness at bay a little bit, and enough to see by.

Instead of the dark being pitch black, it’s just dusky now. She’s staring in wonder at the small stalagmites on the ceiling, and smaller ones that come out of the walls, she touches one of the mushrooms on the wall, and it starts to glow a bright blue, illuminating the area she’s in with a bright light. She backs away from the wall and turns to head back down the tunnel. She steps on a rock, instead of it pushing into the bottom of her boot like a normal rock would, it depresses into the ground and becomes level with the tunnel floor.
Suddenly, there is an impossibly loud scraping noise. She turns and looks behind her, and where moments ago there was just a tunnel floor, now there was a huge ice wall rising out of the ground. In the middle it looked like there was a circle carved, a hammer came down from the ceiling and suddenly smashed into the wall.

The outside of the circle fell away, revealing a perfect sphere which started rolling down the tunnel path from the force of the hammer hitting it. Winter stands there in shock, afraid to move as the ball starts rolling towards her picking up speed. She grabs two arrows, notches one and fires at the ball. It hits the center perfectly! But shoots off towards the ceiling, like it was deflected. She shoots another arrow at the ball, and it’s deflected again.

She thinks (Fuck this) and starts running down the tunnel away from the ball as it starts chasing her. The ground is shaking so it’s hard to keep her balance as she keeps running, and jumps over a small stream that is in the middle of the path. The ball hits the edge of the stream, soaring a few feet in the air and slams back on the ground, and shakes the whole tunnel before picking speed up again. Winter keeps running for her life, her breath coming in huge gasps as she starts to get a stitch in her side from being afraid for her life. She’s panting and starts to feel short of breath. (I can see the end of the tunnel!) She thinks to herself, she picks up speed for one last run. (Almost there! I’m almost there!) Suddenly, she stops and screams.

Unfortunately, she was moving so fast she stumbles and falls. The ground is shaking, stalagmites are falling off the ceiling and crashing around her as she’s laying on the ground. She scrambles to get up and comes face to face with the end of the tunnel. Which is just an ice spike wall! She puts her back to the ice spike wall, this is her last stand! She starts shooting arrow after arrow at the ball, some hit the middle and a few hit the edges. She finally realizes the middle is just ice. If she hits the edges of the ball, it’s just snow, which falls away. Winter is finally able to use enough arrows to make the ice ball small enough that she’s able to run up the tunnel towards the ball and put her hands out and vault over it. Where she was a second ago, the ball passes that spot and slams into the ice spike wall shattering the spikes and exploding sending ice shards all over the tunnel. Cutting her on her arms as she covers her face with them as the ice rains down on her.

Bruised and bloody Winter stands up and starts to stagger up the tunnel, collecting her arrows as she goes. Some are broken in half, others are just missing part of the tip or feathers, and others luckily aren’t damaged at all. She fills her quiver with the unbroken ones, and partially broken ones, leaving the completely ruined ones on the tunnel floor. (I can always get more at Sacred Hills) she thinks to herself. She continues to head up the tunnel and finally walks into the main area. She leans against the wall and slides down it. She sits on the ground and closes her eyes, trying to catch her breath and slow her racing heartbeat. She drinks out of her water pouch, and eats a little bread as she sits there and waits for the others to arrive at the main entrance.

Sasha enters the second tunnel, and walks down it. Her light orb hanging by her head, lighting her way. She starts looking around at the mushrooms and all the stalagmites on the ceiling in wonder, and she’s about halfway down the tunnel when suddenly she is attacked by a small, green troll man, wearing nothing but a small apron around his waist. He was using a small pair of scythes. He jumps towards her screaming, and brandishing his scythes. He swings at her and she’s able to block the first one with his sword, blocking the second with her shield. She swung her sword faster, knocking his scythes aside, one was wrenched out of his hand landing on the ground a couple feet away. She fought him as hard as she could, either gaining ground or losing it as the fight went on for what seemed like hours, but couldn’t have been more than 5 to 10 minutes.

She was finally able to gain the upper hand and shoved her sword through his chest, and right into his heart. The troll’s body sank to the floor slowly, the light fading from his eyes as she watched. She yanked her sword out of his body and kept walking down the tunnel, she walked until she saw she couldn’t go any farther. She had hit a dead end. She turned around and started walking up the tunnel again, and then suddenly found herself walking through the forest again. (How did I get here? I was just in the cave at Sacred Hills.) she thought to herself.

She has a flashback and she sees herself waking up at the very first spawn point and looking at her map. She can tell she’s deciding something, probably to go to the dungeon where she got raped in the clearing. She follows herself from a distance and sees her walk into the clearing. She stands behind a tree and watches the orc/demon Zukran rape her body, and making her scream and cry while she can’t take it anymore. Zukran continues to rape her body, and she sees him finish inside her and then kill her. The flashback suddenly ends and Sasha sinks to the ground in pain, shock and horror. She’s back in the tunnel again, standing in front of her is Zukran. He is exactly as she remembered from the flashback. She grabs her sword and rushes towards the orc, he grabs his sword and meets hers with a violent clash of sparks.

(I will have my revenge finally.) she thinks to herself. “I am going to kill you nice and slowly orc.” She says to Zukran with a smile. “Oh, really? You think you can? Let’s go for round two, Bitch.” He says with an evil grin. They meet each other in the center of the tunnel, clashing swords, each trying to get a better foothold on the other. They’re almost evenly matched in power. The two of them dance in the tunnel, fighting for their lives. Zukran was able to block her attack with his sword and manages to stab her in her right shoulder because she over reached, after he hits her, she flew backwards and landed on her back.

Blood pouring out of her shoulder wound. The blood is making her armor appear red, and it starts flowing down her arm making her hand slick, she starts having trouble holding her sword. She switches to her left hand, luckily, she has trained using both hands for sword fighting. She starts attacking him again, using combo attacks with her sword and shield. She starts moving faster until her sword is a blur, and he can’t keep up and block all her attacks. Sasha sees a small spark of fear enter Zukran’s eyes as he falls back and keeps trying to block her blows. She is able to batter him down, little by little and she finally knocks his sword out of his hands.

It goes flying and gets stuck in the wall from the force it went soaring away. She holds her sword to his throat and says “You’re done. I am finally going to get my revenge on you. I hope you rest in hell.” She slashes through his throat, blood pouring down his chest. She brought her arm back and held her sword aloft and swung it with all her might, and cut through his neck and spinal cord completely severing his head from his body. His body drops to the ground like a sack of potatoes, and his head goes flying a shocked, morbid expression on it frozen in death. As if he was shocked that he was beaten, even in death. Sasha rips her undershirt, turning it into a makeshift bandage. She wraps it around her shoulder trying to stem the flow of blood, she has starts to have blurry vision and she’s feeling weak from blood loss.

Sasha is finally able to stop the blood, by tightly wrapping her arm with the bandage. She sits down on the ground to catch her breath. As she finally gets her breath back, she stands up and walks up the tunnel towards the main entrance. As she exits her tunnel, she sees Winter sitting on the ground leaning up against a wall. She runs over to her, or walks as fast as she can, Winter jumps up and hugs Sasha, both happy that the other has lived. Winter decides quickly that she’s going to kiss Sasha. She presses her lips to Sasha’s for a quick chaste kiss as she hugs her and pushes their chests together. Sasha stands there in shock for a second, then kisses Winter back, pushing her softly into the wall making sure not to hurt her, but she keeps kissing her. Pushing her tongue into her mouth.

Gerald walks down his path and doesn’t encounter anything. There is nothing at all in his tunnel except the occasional bat and the weird glowing mushrooms and sharp stalagmites on the ceiling. There is a small creek running through the middle of the tunnel that he stops at to replenish his water supply. As he’s bent down putting his water pouch in the creek, the tunnel starts getting colder and colder, the creek starts to freeze over. He stands up and wraps his cloak around him, and grabs his double-bladed axe and holds it in front of him.

Appearing out of nowhere this giant axe slammed into the ground in front of him. Gerald looks up in shock and had to keep looking up and up. It was an ice golem that was clearly over 20 feet tall, it had huge broad shoulders, bigger than 4 feet in width, and had long 6-inch-long claws that were razor sharp on one hand, the other had a giant axe. This had to be one of the dragon’s protectors! Its body was made entirely of ice, his eyes were emerald green, it had giant spikes all over its back, shoulders and chest. The golem looked right at Gerald and roared, and bellowed out a snow storm, it swirled around Gerald like a white out blizzard. The sound echoing off the walls, which made the sound 10x louder than it was when it came out of the golems mouth. It took one step towards Gerald, and the ground shook, the stalagmites were falling from the ceiling and shattering on the ground. The sound of it was like glass shattering.

Gerald runs straight towards the golem, sliding in between its legs on the ice. He raises up his axe and slices into the back of its left leg, bright blue blood coming out of the wound and falling onto the ice melting it. The golem reached down and manages to land a hit on Gerald, swiping its hand out and hits him full force with a fist. He goes flying into the wall and lands in a crumpled heap on the ground. He slowly struggles to stand up, he’s shaky and groggy. Barely able to stand, let alone grab his axe and continue to fight.

The golem yells at him “It is futile to fight me! You won’t be able to win!” It says as it reaches to grab him and squeeze him to death in his huge meaty hands, or skewer him with his claws. He dodges the first blow and it slammed into the ground by the second. He fights back against it, and slices it with his axe. He cuts off its ice claws on his right hand, and starts swinging his axe faster and faster, hacking at the arm that had the axe blade. The more he cuts into it, the more it starts roaring more and more in pain. It starts swinging its axe faster trying to kill him. The golem slams its axe into the ground again, and it gets stuck, he runs up its arm and stops on its shoulder, Gerald starts bringing his sword over his head and down like a sledgehammer onto the golems shoulder joint, and blue blood sprays out of the wound and he is able to cut through the ice with multiple hits and sever his arm from his body.

Blood sprays out of the severed stump and coats the wall and the ground. The ice melting from the blood. The golem grabs his wounded stump and tries to stem the blood flow. The golem steps back and slips on the ground that’s coated in blood and melted ice. The golem falls on the ground and the entire tunnel shakes from the force of the 20-foot giant hitting the ground, it couldn’t stop itself from falling, because it only has one arm. Gerald jumps up and brings his axe down on it’s face and neck, cutting into it. He finally manages to cut into the golems neck enough, its barely hanging on. As he raises his axe one last time, the golem is able to start using ice to stitch its neck back together. He knows he must hurry or he’ll miss his chance to finally kill this demon. He hurriedly slams his axe down onto the golems neck again and again and again, until its fully severed.

Blood sprays in a huge arc, painting the hallway blue. As he finally finishes killing the golem, he steps over its arm and kicks its head and sends it spinning up the tunnel, bouncing off the walls.
Gerald puts his axe in the sheathe that’s sitting in between his shoulder blades, and picks up the golems head. There was a morbid expression on its face. He walks up the tunnel and back out to the main area. He walks around the corner of his tunnel, and stops a few feet away from an amazing scene. He saw that Sasha had Winter pinned up against the wall, and she was kissing her roughly. Her hand was wrapped in her hair, pulling her head back and they were both moaning in pleasure pushing their chests together.

He stands there in shock, staring at them for a few seconds, he could feel himself start to get hard, he adjusted himself, and then coughs loudly and says “Sorry! I guess I walked in at the wrong time! I didn’t know you guys were together. Call out when you guys are done!” Winter moves her head to the right, breaking their kiss and looks over Sasha’s shoulder, her eyes wide. “I’m sorry you had to see that! And I’m so happy you made it back alive, Gerald.” She says with a small smile, as she moves from behind Sasha and towards Gerald, she walks up to him and gives him a quick hug in happiness.

Sasha comes over and hugs Gerald too, he pushes his hips into her, and she could feel his hard on. He was even more shocked that he could feel… hers? “Oh, I have something for you guys.” He says with a smile, as he tosses the ice golem head to them. Sasha catches it and says “This is what you had to fight? WOW!” She then drops it on the ground. “Well, now that we’re all here, we can either rest for a little bit, or we can continue on and finally clear the last tunnel and beat the dragon. What do you think guys?” Sasha says. “I’m fine taking a break and watching you lovely ladies play around some more.” Gerald says with a wink and a huge grin on his face. Winter says, “Let’s just get this done really quick, and then if we all agree we can possibly, and I mean very possibly all three have fun when we get back to Sacred Hills.” Sasha agrees, and so does Gerald and they all three turn and head towards the fourth and final tunnel.

Sasha uses her flame magic and makes it into a lantern to light their way, and it just floats in the air in front of them. The three of them walk down the tunnel, listening to the water rush down the creek. It’s quiet besides that, and nothing else is happening. They continue walking for a short while, and nothing has attacked them yet. “Huh, maybe we should have gone down this tunnel first, guys.” Sasha says with a laugh. “We wouldn’t have had so much trouble earlier.” Says Winter. Suddenly, there is a loud scream that sounds almost inhuman. It sounds like a woman is screaming. “The only woman in this cave should be the dragon, that has to be her!”

Gerald says as he quickens his pace and starts to run towards the end of the tunnel. They can see a bright light at the end, as the three of them rush towards it and overpowering smell hits them out of nowhere. It smells like death, decay and rotten food. (This is the most disgusting thing I have ever smelled in my life.) Sasha thinks to herself. After what seems a lot longer than a minute or two, our three adventurers arrive at the end of the tunnel. They step into a large cavern like room, there are skulls, bones and body parts strewn around in various stages of decomposition. It looks like something has been chewing on them.

Sitting on a rock in the middle of the cavern is a beautiful woman with bright blue scales running down her left side, electric blue hair streaked with royal blue and blue claws, golden eyes and she was completely naked. This had to be The Ruined Princess Dragon!!
The dragon in human flesh stands up and jumps off the rock landing lightly on her feet. “So, you finally found me again, Gerald. How long has it been? What have you been doing since you last fought me, and I slaughtered your friends right in front of you? I guess I know the answer to that question, you smell like a brewery.” “Who are these people? New friends of yours? Well, I’ll kill them too. I won’t make it easy on you, even if I can’t transform anymore into my dragon form. I’ll still kill you and them.” Says, the Ruined Ice Princes.

Sasha notices that the dragon is holding her left arm a little closer to her body than she is her right. Because there is a huge gash, running down the middle of her arm from her shoulder to the middle of her forearm past her elbow. (The wound was exactly where her wing would be if she was in dragon form, instead of trying to transform and hurt her wing/arm even more by changing shape, she has just decided to stay in human form and try to have it heal that way.) Sasha thinks to herself. Winter just stares at the woman, slightly in shock. Not realizing they were going to have to fight someone who was obviously so strong. She figured she’d be strong, but not this strong, this was something else.

Gerald reaches behind him and grasps the handle of his double-bladed axe, removing it from its sheathe. Winter grabs her bow and four arrows, and notches one, preparing to let one loose as soon as the dragon moved a muscle. Sasha grabs her sword out of its wrapping and pulls her shield off her back and gets into a ready stance, staring at the dragon. The dragon Princess smirks and just stares at them, then faster than their eyes can see she rushes them and kicks Gerald in the chest before he can even blink. He’s thrown backwards and lands in a pile of bones, they cut him on his arm since they’re broken.

Winter lets loose an arrow and it whizzes right by the dragon’s head, barely missing her. She reaches out, grabs the arrow out of midair and throws it back at Winter, who just manages to dodge it. Sasha rushes the dragon and tries to slam into her with her shield but is blocked by her claws. She brings her sword up and tries to stab her, but instead she suddenly finds herself thrown into the air and she lands on top of Gerald who had just stood up. She knocks him to the ground, where they lay in a tangled heap trying to get back up. While Gerald and Sasha are trying to get up, the dragon starts advancing on Winter, who is now having to defend against the dragon’s attacks by herself. She doesn’t have anything to protect her other than her bow and arrows which she tries to use as she keeps away from the dragon.

Winter is shooting arrow after arrow towards the dragon, a couple she misses with, and two manage to hit their mark. She has one arrow sticking out of her left arm, and one in her right thigh. She lets out an inhuman shriek in pain and rage. The dragon princess grabs the arrow shaft and breaks it off, throwing it on the ground. Blood starts pooling around the wounds in her arm and leg and she looks up at Winter and says “You made a very grave mistake coming here. Now I will show you why.” Her nails start to lengthen and turn serrated, her teeth start to turn to sharp points, sharp blue horns come out of her head, a tail comes out of the base of her spine and has ice spikes on it, her feet grew long claws.

The dragon princess raises her arm, and starts trying to cut Winter with her claws. Winter stands there and can’t do anything to protect herself, arrows aren’t meant for close combat. Sasha see’s that Winter was about to be hurt, and rushes to protect her. Just as the dragon’s claws were going to cut into Winters flesh, Sasha is there in front of her protecting her with her shield. There is a loud screech, like nails on a chalkboard as the claws rake down the shield. Sasha raises her sword and starts trying to stab and cut the dragon.

She knows they must hurry at this point because she can feel herself starting to lose energy, and she is sure the others are feeling the same. She raises her hand and shoots a fireball out of her palm. It hits the dragon in the chest, and there is a black burn mark left there, right between her breasts. The dragon stumbles back a few steps, and stands there looking at Sasha. Winter has her bow drawn over Sasha’s shoulder. Gerald finally jumps back into the fight, and runs straight at the dragon. He appears behind her back, and starts swinging his axe towards her body. “Did you have a good rest?” asks Sasha with a smile. Gerald smiles at the girls, and the three of them start attacking the dragon in unison.

Winter is shooting arrows at the dragon, Gerald is attacking her back, and trying to avoid the spikes on her tail, as she is using it as a shield, and doing a damn good job at it too. Sasha is attacking her front with her sword and protecting against her attacks with her shield. Finally, Gerald can get under her guard while she is distracted by the women, and is able to bring his axe back and swung it very hard and fast and sliced into her tail, his momentum continued, and the axe cut into her back! It cuts through sinew and muscle and bone and lodges itself right under her ribs. Cue the inhuman screeching as she’s in pain and agony because her tail just got sliced in half, half of it laying on the ground and her back just got cut into! Sasha is able to stab her sword into the dragon’s chest as she is immobilized by the pain in her back. She shoves the sword all the way through, until it emerges from her back. The dragon falls to the ground on her knees.

The dragon lets out an unholy screech, and their ear drums burst from the pain. Thinking they have just about killed the dragon, Sasha pulls her sword from its chest and in one last move the dragon brings her arm up and rakes her claws down Sasha’s neck and chest, digging great big furrows in her skin. Sasha screams in pain, but the others can’t hear her, since their ear drums are busted. She falls to the ground, as if in slow motion and passes out in agony, her chest bleeding and bone showing through her wounds.

Winter and Gerald scream in rage and start attacking the dragon more ferociously, Winter starts shooting arrow after arrow at the dragon and is able to pierce her skin. Gerald swings his axe back and is able to chop off the dragon’s head in one fell swoop. Blood pours from the wound as the body falls limp to the ground, the head rolls away and stops a few feet away. Winter drops her bow and sinks to the ground next to Sasha, and grabs her pack and starts trying stop the blood flow. Gerald sits down next to Sasha and holds her hand, as Winter starts to work on trying to heal Sasha’s wounds.

To be continued…

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