The closer the girls drew toward the village, the more fire spirits they ran past took on that, strange secondary form. The foxes were powerful enough already, so if they were pushed to this extreme, Hat Kid couldn't help but worry over whatever awaited them ahead.

Even this far in, the main paths were still barricaded by walls of towering flames. While she'd seen the wisdom in cutting off Vanessa from the easiest routes through the forest, it hindered her and Bow now. They eventually reached the long-broken bridge connecting her domain with the rest of Subcon only to find it completely inaccessible. If anything, the barriers there seemed stronger than usual. As fire and ice continued to push back against each other, through the resulting haze, the girls watched as a few fragments that remained of the damaged structure snapped off and fell into the abyss dividing the landscape.

There had to be another way around… There weren't nearly this many statues that typically these parts of Subcon, so they had to cross over from someplace. The girls' best option was to follow the path of the ravine as much as they could until they found another way over it.

For the time being, they had to backtrack a bit and detour through thick of the swamp. Maneuvering around the mire had never been easy and the viscous weather only made it worse. With the swamp spirits temporarily on their side, there was no concern of anything reaching up to drag them under; however, the waters themselves had now turned perilous. Partially frozen over, any misstep could send either child crashing through and then trapped under the surface by the ice.

Practice would have made the journey easy if it weren't for the winds that threatened to knock them down or occasional warriors left guarding the area that couldn't pay them any mind. While not as intense as around Thane Fen's post, the battle nevertheless had stretched far in their current direction as well. Thrown objects nearly hit the young aliens and shattered through the ice. Swamp spirits equally as determined to keep out of the chilling waters nearly knocked the two children down in pursuit of their enemies.

Hat and Bow Kid spaced themselves apart—bounding from root; to fallen log; to the rare, solid, floating block of ice—to quickly and carefully navigate over any stable platform they could find. Soon enough, they reached a tall ledge that blocked off that side of the swamp from the village. Hat tore her gaze around on instinct in search of a Dweller bell, to hopefully reveal a way safe way up, without luck. She spotted the bell, but no Dweller guarding it, the ghost likely having already retreated to safety.

Meanwhile, Bow Kid tried scaling the ledge by herself without success. She just couldn't pick up enough momentum to throw her weight over it. She searched frantically for a way to climb higher and at last spotted a rusted, put-out lantern swinging haphazardly in the wind from a nearby tree. She fired her hookshot, just barely catching the object and vaulting herself into the air. Even if it didn't get her high enough to swing over the ledge, the blizzard was fierce enough to give her the extra push she needed. Catching on mid-way, Hat Kid followed after her.

Hat landed feet-first with a huff, lungs aching from the cold air that rushed through them with each tired breath, and once again broke into a run with Bow right beside her. By that point, whenever they crossed paths with one of the possessed statues, the pair had figured out that it was easier to leave them to the spirits rather than attempt to face them.

Two appeared from behind the trees and gave chase. A familiar, bulging shadow hovered over the ground several meters ahead of them: Instead of avoid it as usual, the girls ran directly toward it, leaning their pursuers directly in-range of the arachnid that came crashing down as soon as they passed.

That left one crushed under the spider with the other steadily gaining. Slowing only to glance at it once over her shoulder, Hat Kid tossed a potion behind her. It exploded, but she didn't see if she hit the statue—the statues were so resilient that it didn't matter much anyway. The best she and Bow could do was alert yet another one of the spiders and keep going.

She nearly ran into a thin, frozen pillar thanks to the blinding snowfall. Stumbling back and skirting around it, it took her a few seconds for her to realize what it was: One of the cursed nooses. The rope hung so low that the ice that encased it had merged with the ice on the ground, creating a strange monolith. Somehow, the noose's firm silence was more eerie than its typical goading…

Hat and Bow Kid both tripped over a fallen tombstone hidden under the snow from one of the many gravesites that littered every part of Subcon—especially close to the village. Another strong light from a bonfire appeared in the distance, shining almost like a tall beacon against the dark background of the wood. They'd wrapped around the village to cut through the trees to the far-right side of the usual trail going in.

If the fight near the Thane had been bad, then the one in the village was total chaos. Here, blue clouds of smoke mixed with the falling snow from the vast number of potions thrown around, and enemies and allies alike had been hit by them. The ice continued to push forward in waves from all sides of the village, and the fire spirits were so strained that more of them were in their overheated state than not. Statues laid in scattered ruins along the earth, and with little room to run, the ghosts that possessed them were forced to face their many opponents—foxes, swamp spirits, and minions alike—head-on.

Getting a good look at them up close for the first time outside of their brief appearance in the time rift, they were more terrifying to witness than Hat Kid had expected—more like how she initially thought a ghost would be before she ever set foot on Earth. Almost all of them were powerful enough to materialize in a much stronger form like Snatcher or Moonjumper with a long, ethereal tail and a semi-human abdomen. Their grey figures were jagged and hulking, as if they still wore the armor that so many of them had died in. Because of this, their features also seemed flat and obscured—helmets melted to faces—with little to distinguish them from one another. Most strikingly, they all somehow still had those vivid, red eyes to match their queen.

While many of the spirits could handle them one-on-one, it wasn't the same for the minions or few regular Dwellers that also remained. In life, the knights were trained to fight against forces far beyond average human beings. That training clearly carried over in death, so much that fighting against the Dwellers' limited abilities was child's play. They towered over their former friends and neighbors, beating them back with ease.

A dark piece of fabric blew in front of Hat Kid's face and she batted it away in surprise. It latched onto the sleeve of her coat for a second before the wind snatched it and carried it off once again. A thin trail of fuzz followed after, tickling her nose with a heavy, musky smell. Her eyes followed the direction it came from and she stiffened. Half-buried in the snow lay the doll-like body of a minion with a gaping hole ripped through it, the spectral light that once poured out from beneath its hood now gone.

Someone shoved her from behind—Bow—and the two girls dropped onto their stomachs just in time to dodge of Vanessa's wraithlike warriors as he flew over them and was in turn attacked by a streak from flames from one of the fire spirits. Despite the close call, it took a moment for Hat Kid to pull her attention away from their general surroundings. The longer she stared at the village, the more she found in ruin. Many of the simple, wooden bridges had collapsed, and at least one of the smaller homes had been halfway uprooted. Either thanks to their opponents or the ice itself, several minions had been impaled, torn apart, or frozen still.

It wasn't the first time Hat Kid had seen their abandoned bodies—there were quite a few literally hanging around the swamp—but she still had to tell herself that they were ok. They had to be: In the very least, she didn't see any icy figures of the Dwellers like the ones in Vanessa's manor. At the same time, a part of her wondered where Snatcher was, thinking he should be here. He was probably dealing with Vanessa personally…

Maybe it was better that he was away since it meant he couldn't try to stop them.

"Girls…?!"

A surprised cry called to them over the roar of the battle. Standing just outside of the bonfire's heavily defended ring of foxes—with tiny cracks running up one calf and tracing the corner of her mouth—was Kit. She gaped at them, horrified, and raced to their side before they could pick themselves up and dart away in time.

"You shouldn't be here—!" she started to scold them, but fear of their surroundings kept her words back. Instead, she hurriedly ushered for Hat and Bow Kid to follow her, "No, come quick! Get to fire—we'll protect you! It's the safest place for now!"

The two pulled themselves away from her grasp. Whether Kit meant well or not, they had a mission of their own to do now. There was no way she'd let them see it through and no time to argue! The young aliens veered out of reach and sped off, Hat Kid shouting behind her, "You're doing great! Don't worry about us!"

Stunned, it took the woman a second to realize that neither child planned on keeping themselves out of the fight. Far from it: They ran straight through the fighting! Panicking, Kit chased after them, "S-stop! What are you planning to do?!"

"Don't follow us!"

"Girls!"

The wind picked up and a couple of the fire spirits cried out in warning to each other. As if in response to some, distant call, a much stronger wave of ice compared to the others before it came rushing through the woods, devouring everything it its path. The trees split with a moan, arching in opposite directions as it hurtled toward the village. Lanterns and branches fell and spikes paraded up the trunks in their place. Hat Kid squeezed her eyes shut as something sharply nicked her cheek—either a wooden splitter or piece of broken glass that had taken to the air.

Around a fourth of the fire spirits scurried to stop the rapidly approaching wave by casting a wide inferno in its path. One of the closest to the scene, Kit also rushed over to add her own firepower. The girls hated leaving the spirits behind, but this was their chance! Hat and Bow continued to charge through the village in order to reach the wide ravine on the other side.

Kit watched them go in bewildered horror, shouting at them again—caught between giving chase and minding the encroaching disaster. Eyes away from the fight, her aim was off and the few seconds she had to act lost. A barrage of spikes tore past the flames and rammed through her mid-cry.

Both aliens jumped at the shriek that followed. Hat Kid spun around on her heel. Half of Kit's body was trapped in the ice, a large shard piercing right through her from hip to waist as steam filled her eyes. It struggled with the countering element nursed inside her, unable to immediately swallow the rest of her form. Instead, the ice filtered through and widened the cracks that ran along her skin as if they were water veins splitting solid rock.

Just like with the fire spirit they'd seen by the swamp, the flames cradled in the woman's own body seemed to intensify in reaction. Sparks also burst through the cracks, only worsening them. Little by little, Kit was falling apart like a porcelain doll. And the figure that began to stand in her place was one that Hat Kid had barely caught a glimpse of in her own fight with the vixen. An eye shown pure white as part of her cheek fell away. Her arm crumbled to dust to fully reveal the polychromatic bands seen only through her scars otherwise.

At last, her entire body erupted in a violent flame. If this was her way of 'overheating,' she didn't spawn the extra pair of limbs as the foxes did. Overall though, aside from smaller differences—her height; the number of fingers; and a smaller, more human nose—she looked almost exactly like a fire spirit. Her one, completely distinct feature—which the girls saw as the woman righted herself when the ice began to melt—was a strange, hot pink core radiating in the center of her chest.

Sparks flickered around Kit dangerously and she looked to be in a state of shock. She stared down at her hands, quivering, as if she was no more used to being in that state than Hat and Bow were to seeing it. Hat Kid bit her lower lip, feeling a subconscious sense of guilt: If they had found another way around the village rather than charging through it, maybe they wouldn't have caught Kit's attention at all. She wouldn't have gotten distracted or hurt.

Hat and Bow watched the woman just long enough to make sure she was ok. In the very least, she was well enough to keep fighting. She burned through the last of the ice thanks to the severity of her body heat alone, still for only a few more seconds until a canine yelp snapped her out of her distress. A younger fire spirit hadn't been able to fend off the wave either, caught by the leg. It writhed on the ground as frost crept up its fur, desperately trying to escape. Kit launched herself toward the fox so quickly that she looked like a single streak of flames tailing a gasoline trail—freeing the creature and stopping safely a few meters away. Her path cleaved an obvious line through the snow, momentarily uncovering the barren earth beneath it.

The girls left after that, moving again toward the ravine. Golden light reflected off the snow from the raging fires behind them, their shadows cast wide along the ground.