freezes department store

I had the satisfaction of seeing Tessa’s gloating expression falter for a fraction of a second, tipped off by something in my face, maybe, before I dropped my shield, extended my staff in my right hand, called upon Winter, and snarled, “Infriga!”
A howl of arctic air billowed out onto the display floor, blanketing every object in it—the floor, the ceiling, and the walls—in an instant layer of flash-frost. The sudden shift in temperature condensed the air into frozen mist, a fog thick enough to cut visibility to five or six feet—a situation that would be much more to the advantage of the team with fewer members, making it harder for the enemy to coordinate their superior numbers.
I strode forward through the fog, closing the distance on Tessa so that I could get her in sight again before she recovered and started maneuvering on me. In a perfect world, I would have found her frozen into a block of bitterly cold Winter ice—but she was a sorceress, and not a dime-store amateur, either. As I came in sight through the fog, I saw her stumbling back, her foremost insect-arms crossed in a defensive gesture, her image blurry on the other side of a C-shaped wall of ice that had not quite managed to engulf her entirely.
I gestured with the staff and snarled, “Forzare!”
The frozen wall exploded into chunks and shards of knife-edged, crystalline ice, as deadly as a cloud of shrapnel. She tried to fling herself to one side, but stunned by the intensity of the attack, she didn’t account for the ice-coated tile floor beneath her legs—floor that provided me with footing as sure and solid as a basketball court. Insect legs skittered wildly, and the ice tore into her chitin-covered body, sending splatters of dark green ichor everywhere, even as the mantis-head half slithered up over her human face, swallowing it down again. Hotly glowing green eyes opened above the insectoid mantis-eyes of Tessa’s demonform, blazing with immortal rage, and as the swirling mists closed around them, the eyes of Tessa’s patron Fallen angel were all that I could see of her.


Skin Game Chapter 18, Page 128-129