A route, which was likely the safest way, flashed through my mind.
"Stop!" I shouted to Lyra. She skidded to a halt, the cold air from her mana crystallization leaving a frosty trail on the pavement. She looked back at me, her expression neutral, but her eyes held a dangerous flick of impatience.
"What?" she said, her voice like a chilling breeze.
"Turn left," I replied, pointing toward the narrow alleyway that skirted the side of the grand library.
I knew she wasn't just going to do as I said. To her, I was still the "Trash of the von Heist family." A pebble in her shoe doesn't get to give the shoe directions.
"Why? Who are you to tell me which way to choose, Cian?"
"Because walking straight into that swarm is suicide." I said, pitching my voice to sound like a man who had calculated the odds of his own survival—and hers.
We weren't even halfway to the garden yet. And in front of us, the sky was already thick with a swarm of Imps.
Unlike the small one from before, these were double in the size, their leathery wings casting jagged shadows over the courtyard.
They were swooping down, plucking students into the air like hawks hunting field mice before dropping them from lethal heights.
Some were even more sadistic, grabbing the limbs of the screaming teenagers and playing a literal tug-of-war until the sound of tearing flesh drowned out the cries.
Passing through that many would be suicide for me, and a massive mana drain for her.
"Look for yourself," I needed to wound her pride just enough to make her choose the smarter path.
"Do you think you can finish every single one of those while also keeping me safe? Or are you planning to let your only lead to Clara get torn apart in the next thirty seconds?"
Lyra looked at the imps, then listened to the students' agonizing cries. She was the "Ice Empress" for a reason. As kids were being slaughtered, torn, or dropped dead just yards away, she didn't show a single sign of remorse or hatred.
As she looked, a few of the Imps, having finished with their previous "toys," noticed us and banked toward us in mid-air.
As they closed in, I realized they were as tall as Lyra, their claws dripping with fresh crimson blood. But Lyra wasn't to be underestimated.
She held her hand up, and a violent whirl of cold wind began to swirl in her palm. A sword of jagged, translucent ice began to form, its edge so sharp it seemed to cut the very air. The blade formed in an instant—before the first Imp reached us.
She gripped the hilt and launched herself toward the sky.
With precise, lethal movement, she closed the gap, her hand snapping out to grab the neck of the lead Imp.
Slice!
Her ice blade whistled through the air, shearing through the Imp's right wing like a hot knife through butter. Its painful screech resonated through the air.
Before it could fall, Lyra pivoted in mid-air, using the creature's momentum against it. She didn't just let it drop; she used its neck as a handle and hurled the one-winged monster directly into the cluster of Imps following behind it.
The moment the injured Imp collided with its pack, the ice mana Lyra had injected into its wound reached its boiling point.
BOOM!
A flash-freeze explosion erupted. A blast of jagged ice shards sprayed outward in a lethal radius.
The one-winged Imp blew apart into frozen dust, the concussive force taking three other monsters with it, sending their shattered remains raining down like hailstones.
She landed back in front of me, her boots clicking softly on the stone, not a single hair out of place.
The ones she destroyed were only a fraction of the swarm. There were still dozens of them in the air, currently too distracted by their own "prey", busy painting the marble pillars red with the blood of the students.
I saw the slight furrow in Lyra's brow as she glanced at the shifting cloud of monsters. I knew she understood the math as well as I did.
Even with her talent, her mana wasn't infinite. Every flash-freeze explosion, every 'Zero Healing' seal she placed on my broken body, was a withdrawal from a bank account that needed to last until we found Clara.
If she tried to carve a path through the main courtyard, she'd be running on fumes before we even reached the garden's gates.
"Fine," she hissed, glancing at the dozens of other shadows turning toward us. "We go left."