Book One – Chapter 13

The scene unfolded with a speed and complexity that defied comprehension. The eruption of magic and stone was so sudden, so precise, that Midnight felt the ripple of its power shuddering through her very essence. The magnitude of the trap was suffocating, sending a tremor through her darkness. She recoiled, her tendrils fraying as she reeled, and immediately sought the source of the stone magic.

She had been watching the orich all along. He had cast the seal, using the frosthearts embedded within the boulder from an almost unimaginable distance. But it was not him who had controlled the stone. Midnight extended her reach further, her darkness uncoiling across the Snowtrail in jagged waves, widening the net that carried her senses, and then she found him.

Perched on a narrow plateau beyond the boulder, concealed behind an impenetrable wall of ice, stood a second orich. Midnight immediately discerned the precision of their coordination. The first orich had not only manipulated the ice to attack but had also used it to shield and obscure the presence of the second. While the first had lured the golem into the trap, the second had captured the golem. While the second had closed the boulder, the first had simultaneously sealed it.

They were a terrifyingly effective combination: one manipulated stone, the other ice, and together they wielded the inexhaustible resources of the Albweiss. The mountain had become their weapon, its very bones rearranged to serve their strategy. Their frosthardened stone shell confined even a creation as powerful as the golem. And more, they used seals. Midnight had not known that orks could, but she understood without a doubt that this was advanced magic. The pulsating frosthearts embedded within the boulder fed an intricate web of energy crisscrossing through the stone, threads of magic that completely arrested the golem within the magical lattice.