Groans ring out from the priest and the armored guards whom I did not quite kill during my windmill arm flailing. All of my attention is drawn to my formerly trapped colleagues, however.
The moment I disintegrate Nehekaia, her frost traps disappear with her. Purbas shudders as the frost that had been clinging to her carapace does not even melt but vanishes, and she immediately starts to bite through the ropes binding her. Barghash, however, is not in such a relatively advantageous condition. The block of ice shatters into mist, but he was still enclosed inside for a sizeable measure of time. I do not need my memories to understand that, even through his robes and armor, he was hurt by the cold.
I feel the energy in him pulse strongly, and the defiance against nature that I see in his eyes staves my panic. Shivering but grunting angrily, he forces himself to his knees. "Glad to see you managed to break free," he congratulates me, very casually as if it was not the most major defining moment of my life. I guess he has no way of knowing that, since I have not been able to speak until now.
"You...are...welcome," I reply, the words difficult for me to pronounce due to my self consciousness about the sound of my voice. I try to force myself to sound pleasant, but I feel like a child learning to swim.
Ihsan hovers into my field of vision. "You need a curative spell for the frostbite you might've suffered," he tells Barghash.
Despite being burned, smoldering and exhausted, the priest spits out curses at us from the snow. "Monsters like you can't heal; he'll catch a cold and-"
"You can heal," Barghash interrupts him, a steel in his voice smashing the defiance of the priest. "And you will heal."
The priest trembles, his confidence destroyed by two clauses. "B-b-but I don't have any mana anyway! I'm useless to you! And no threat anymore!"
"Not quite." Barghash turns to me from where he is kneeling and shivering. "You...you channeled Nehekaia's mana back into her. Correct?"
He...is asking me? I freeze; this is the first time anybody has ever spoken to me and expected a response. He wants to know what I have to say and what sort of information I could grant him. I feel flattered...I feel like a person.
"Y...yes. I do not know how, but I can give and take mana."
A hard stare, not an intimidating or aggressive one, but a very serious stare locks my eyes to his. "Then take some of mine."
I gasp. "I can not! You saved me-"
"And that's what you'll do now. I'm still a living human," Barghash says, using an odd word as he taps his chest plate. "Basic current flow: consume a measure of my mana, and then push it into this priest here. And he will heal me; I need your efforts if I'm to stave off hypothermia."
Hypo what? He knows more than me, and I feel sad when I see him shiver. I must return the favors he and his companions granted me. "Oh...okay...please, tell me if it is too much," I stammer, more from nervousness than fumbling with my voice.
I tap in to his mana...and it scares me. The power he holds scares me, and the possibility of me overdrawing scares me. I only started to use this ability at will just this morning; I do not understand it, I am not familiar with it, and I really have no idea what I am doing. Forcing myself to ignore how good it feels to munch on his mana, I cut off the line when I feel the reserves within him dip, and I ungracefully shove that line straight into the priest. I was not paying attention and the delivery of mana to him gives him a headache, but I do not care; he performed something called an exorcism on Ihsan, and the shade is technically the person who discovered me, so I am still mad. Emptiness stings me again and I feel that my mana is gone. During the transfer process, Purbas had bound the few surviving guards and lined up the corpses of the dead ones a good distance away in the snow.
I pull the bloodied priest to his feet by yanking on his neck with my crook. "Help my friend, or...uh...or else!" I do not know how to threaten people properly, but my words are enough, and the priest casts a golden spell on Barghash that does not hurt him the way such spells hurt the others. When the priest starts to heal himself, I lay my flail on his back and drain all the mana out of him again, earning a light buzz as the pointy eared man falls into the snow.
No longer trembling, Barghash stands in the middle of us all; I notice that Purbas and Ihsan wait for him to speak, and so do I. "For those of you who survived, then you will be spared; you're prisoners of war of the Forsaken now. Mutiny or fleeing will result in summary executions. And as for you..."
He looks at the dead as he talks, five corpses behind the three captive guards. When Barghash raises his gauntlet again I prepare myself to bask in the warmth. Bright green light the same color as my tools emits from his hand and into the corpses, causing them to jerk into hideous standing positions as his minions...ghouls, if I remember correctly.
Ihsan shifts and floats behind me. "There are Sweetiepie and Dak." He uses one of his shadow orbs to point in a random direction, where the...forest troll, apparently, lurches while the most terrifying creature I have ever seen rides on his shoulder. I look away quickly, still unable to bear a direct gaze from then traumatizing little pipsqueak yet.
"And you," Barghash says to nothing in particular. Purbas is already spinning the priest in her webs, so who could he be speaking to? "There will be no death for you. Not after you've ended the lives of so many among our ranks."
Reaching into what must be a very large mana pool again, Barghash channels that green energy into a splotch of exploded ice, a very light blue stain that sticks out on top of the snow. Icicles and clumps of snow swirl around, weaving in and out of a dark blue light as a vaguely human shaped thing emerges. Like a dark blue version of Ihsan, the icy shade takes shape, one of its arms a long club of ice. The frost revenant struggles for a moment, its featureless face temporarily molding into the form of Nehekaia screaming angrily before settling down into a mere dark blue orb with glowing eyes again. The priest curses until Purbas lays him down on the ground and spins a thin sheet of webbing over his mouth.
"Now, we have what we need to reach the Zeppelin," Barghash announces in the center of the entire group. Purbas chitters and Ihsan beams with energy for a moment, a stark contrast to the now undead Nehekaia, who appears to abhor her state but can not do anything about it. Even Sweetiepie claps in an exaggerated fashion, causing her mummified ride to clap with her.
I smile until Barghash looks at me, feeling a bit self conscious from all the eyes since the ghouls look wherever he looks. "So, obsidian destroyer...what's your name?" he asks, and I immediately feel so light in the head that I fall.
