After several hours of navigating the frozen wastelands northeast of Winterhold, Torin finally found himself crouched behind a weather-scoured boulder at the edge of the shore. Auri knelt beside him, one knee pressed into the snow, her breathing slow and controlled despite the biting cold.
They peered around the rock at the scene before them.
A flat platform of ancient ice jutted out from the coastline like a frozen tongue lapping at the Sea of Ghosts. Smaller patches of drift ice surrounded it, bobbing gently in the grey water, connected by thin, treacherous bridges of frozen spray.
Atop the main platform, five pale shapes drifted in lazy, aimless circles.
Ice wraiths.
They were beautiful, in a terrible sort of way. Translucent as frosted glass, their serpentine bodies caught the weak sunlight and scattered it into faint prismatic glimmers. They moved without sound, without apparent purpose, simply existing in the cold that birthed them.
Each was perhaps ten feet long, coiled and uncoiled in the air like smoke given form.
Torin watched them for a long moment, cataloguing their movements, their positions, the way they seemed to avoid the patches of open water.
Beside him, Auri moved.
Her bow came up in one smooth, silent motion. An arrow slid from her quiver and nested against the string. Her eyes, sharp and green, tracked across the floating wraiths, calculating trajectories, wind drift, the optimal order of elimination.
Torin's hand shot out, clamping gently but firmly on her bow arm. "Whoa, whoa, whoa." He kept his voice low, barely a whisper. "What in the nine are you doing?"
Auri glanced at him, one eyebrow arched. "Thinning their numbers." She said it like it was obvious. Like breathing.
Torin stared at her. "Aren't I supposed to kill those things? That's why we're here."
Auri's expression didn't change, but something amused flickered in her eyes. "Your test is to vanquish one ice wraith with a firebolt spell. Not five." She paused, letting that sink in. "Faralda was very specific. One wraith. Firebolt. Anything else is... extra credit, I suppose."
Torin gave her a long, up-and-down look, his expression caught somewhere between amusement and mild offense. "What? You think I can't kill five ice wraiths?"
Auri's grin widened, sharp and teasing. "You? The Storm-Caller? The man whose axe cleaves stone and men with the same ease?" She shook her head slowly. "I'm sure you could manage. Probably without breaking a sweat."
The grin turned crooked, almost sly. "But not with only a firebolt spell. Not five of them. Not before they closed the distance and turned you into a giant-shaped ice sculpture."
Torin let out a low hum, considering the platform, the wraiths, the cold water surrounding it all. She wasn't wrong. Firebolt was an apprentice spell—good for one target, one shot. Against five, even if he could cast it repeatedly, the cast time alone would leave him vulnerable. And ice wraiths were fast. He'd read that much.
He could, of course, ignore the restriction. Enhance his mobility with a haste spell, and dance around them while hurling spells, but there was really no point in that.
His initial prejudice against Destruction magic had long since faded. He understood it now, respected it even—a tool like any other, capable of precision or chaos depending on the hand that wielded it. But he still didn't have much interest in it.
As such, he most certainly didn't feel the need to prove himself within its narrow confines. Not against Auri's gentle needling.
He settled back against the boulder, gesturing toward the platform with a lazy wave. "Fine. Thin away. But at least leave the big one for me. I want Faralda to have something to grade."
Auri's grin softened into something warmer. She nodded once, then turned back to her target, bow coming up, arrow finding the string with practiced ease.
For a brief moment, she was utterly still—a statue carved from focus and intent. Then she released.
The arrow flew swift and silent, a whisper of death cutting through the cold air. Torin watched its trajectory with a hunter's eye, and almost immediately his brow furrowed. The shot was off. Way off. It had deviated noticeably to the left of the clustered wraiths, and at this rate, it would hit nothing but empty air before sinking uselessly into the grey sea.
The jab was on the tip of his tongue—something witty about Bosmer eyesight failing in the cold—when one of the ice wraiths shifted.
It was a small movement, almost imperceptible. A lazy curl in its aimless drifting, the kind of thoughtless motion the creatures made constantly.
But it was just enough. Just enough to bring its translucent body into the arrow's path.
The shaft struck.
The wraith froze in mid-air, its serpentine form going rigid. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then it ignited—a burst of fierce, orange flame that consumed the creature from within.
It shrieked, a high, piercing sound like breaking ice magnified a hundredfold, and then exploded into a cloud of glittering dust and liquid essence that rained down onto the snow below.
Torin stared. His mouth was slightly open.
He turned to Auri, who was already knocking another arrow with serene calm. His expression cycled through confusion, then dawning realization. He was impressed.
"That," he said slowly, "looked like a lucky shot. But something tells me it wasn't."
Auri just chuckled, low and amused, as she raised her bow again. "Watch and learn, Storm-Caller."
The remaining four wraiths had finally noticed them. Their aimless drifting ceased, replaced by sudden, predatory focus. With a collective shriek that set Torin's teeth on edge, they surged toward the shore—a wave of living frost and malice.
Auri fired.
One arrow. A wraith dissolved.
Two arrows. Two wraiths shrieked and burst anto frozen dust.
Three arrows. The fourth fell mid-charge, its icy form collapsing into glittering fragments.
Four shots. Four kills. Each arrow had flown at a different angle, at a different target, at a different moment—and each had found its mark with the same impossible precision. There was no luck here. No accident. Just skill so refined it looked like magic.
Torin watched the last of the wraiths dissolve, then turned to Auri with an expression of mild exasperation. "No one likes a show-off, you know..."
Auri shrugged, slipping her bow back over her shoulder. "Most people do... those who don't are show-offs themselves..."
The fifth and final wraith was still coming, apparently too stupid or too enraged to register the fate of its companions. It arrowed toward the shore, a comet of frost and fury, its shriek building to a crescendo.
Torin stepped forward. His hand found the haft of his axe, and he swung it down on the boulder, burying the edge into the stone, where he left it.
His hands came up empty and open as he stepped away from the boulder.
Magicka stirred in his core. A small portion, carefully measured, flowed down his arms and gathered in his open palm. It coalesced, compressed, and then ignited—a sphere of roiling flame that grew and stabilized in the space between heartbeats.
The firebolt was fully formed, humming with contained destruction, by the time the ice wraith reached the shore. It lunged, its maw opening wide to swallow him in frost.
Torin let the spell fly.
A javelin of roaring flames, the firebolt flew straight and true, aimed at the ice wraith's translucent core. Fire and ice were about to meet in a spectacular collision—
And then the wraith moved.
Its serpentine body coiled onto itself in a fluid, impossible motion, folding like ribbon as the firebolt passed harmlessly through the empty space where it had just been. The spell continued its trajectory, splashing against a distant ice floe in a harmless burst of steam.
From behind him, Auri let out a low chuckle. "Not as easy as you imagined, is it?"
Torin didn't reply. Didn't move. His feet remained planted on the frozen shore, his eyes fixed on the wraith as it recovered from its dodge and began circling, assessing.
His magicka flowed again—faster this time, more urgent. Another firebolt coalesced in his palm, larger than the first, brighter, hotter. He hurled it without hesitation.
The wraith dodged again. Leisurely. As if it had all the time in the world.
By now, it had closed the distance significantly. Torin could feel its presence now—not just see it, but feel it, a palpable cold that pressed against his skin like a physical force. The creature opened what passed for its mouth and shrieked.
The sound was terrible, but the cold that followed was worse. A blast of frigid air, so cold it flash-froze the moisture in the atmosphere, sent crystals of ice spinning through the air. They struck Torin's face, his exposed hands, his torso, forming a thick, crackling layer of frost that spread across him like a disease.
He didn't move. Didn't flinch. He just stood there, glaring at the wraith with an expression of profound, personal offence.
A lesser Nord would have been on the ground by now, screaming, their blood turning to slush in their veins. A lesser man who wasn't a Nord would have been dead already—frozen solid, their soul already on its way to whatever afterlife awaited them.
Torin just raised one hand, wiped the ice from his face with the casual energy of someone who'd been spat on in a tavern, and flicked the frozen shards to the ground.
Another firebolt. Faster. Stronger.
Dodged again.
For a moment, the two of them simply stared at each other—the massive Nord and the serpentine wraith. Torin's expression was caught between confusion and genuine irritation.
The wraith, if such creatures could be said to have expressions, seemed almost... perplexed. Its icy breath had frozen men solid in seconds. It had seen it happen. And yet this one stood there, wiping frost from his beard like it was a minor inconvenience, still trying to hit it with fire like some kind of stubborn mage-toddler.
Behind them, Auri had stopped chuckling. She was watching with open fascination now, her bow lowered, curious to see how this particular puzzle would resolve.
Torin took a deep breath. His eyes never left the wraith.
"Alright," he muttered, more to himself than to anyone else. "New plan."
Without hesitation, without ceremony, Torin moved.
He lunged at the ice wraith like a man diving into freezing water—all commitment, no caution. His arms spread wide, palms open, fingers reaching for the creature's translucent, serpentine form.
It was a ridiculous tactic. An insane tactic. The kind of thing only someone who'd spent too long wrestling bears would even consider.
The ice wraith, for its part, seemed genuinely surprised by this development. It hesitated for a fraction of a second—just long enough for Torin's hands to close on empty air where its body had been.
Then it moved.
With the fluid grace of its kind, the wraith coiled. Its sinuous body wrapped around Torin's outstretched arm in a spiral of living frost, tightening instantly like a constrictor. At the same moment, its head darted forward, needle-sharp fangs sinking deep into his shoulder.
The cold hit him like a mace.
It wasn't just the temperature—it was the essence of the thing, freezing magic injected directly into his bloodstream. Torin's entire body seized for a moment as the cold spread through him, ice crystals forming in his veins, his muscles, his very marrow.
He winced. His teeth clenched. A sound somewhere between a grunt and a growl escaped his throat.
But he didn't fall. Didn't scream. Didn't even stagger.
For reasons he still didn't fully understand, Torin had always been more resistant to cold than the average Nord. It was an innate gift, or perhaps just another quirk of his strange existence. Whatever the cause, it meant that the wraith's killing blow—the thing that had felled countless warriors—was merely painful instead of lethal.
His free hand shot up, fingers closing around the wraith's head. The creature's skin was impossibly cold, cold enough to burn, but Torin's grip didn't waver. He pulled, wrenching the fangs from his shoulder with a wet, tearing sound. A chunk of his leather armor came with them, along with a strip of skin.
The wraith writhed in his grasp, shrieking directly into his face. The sound was piercing, ultrasonic, making his ears itch and his vision blur at the edges. Ice began spreading from its body up his arm, coating his hand in a thickening layer of frost, numbing his fingers, trying to claim him.
Torin ignored it all.
His other hand—the one that had been pinned by the wraith's coils—came free as the creature loosened its grip in its struggle.
Magicka surged. Fire gathered. A firebolt, raw and barely contained, ignited in his palm.
He didn't throw it.
He shoved it. Right into the wraith's open, shrieking mouth.
The creature's scream cut off abruptly, replaced by a muffled, internal whoomph. Torin clamped his other hand over its jaws, sealing the fire inside, and waited.
For a moment, nothing. The wraith's body went rigid, its translucent form flickering between solid and mist. Light built within it, an orange glow visible through its icy skin, growing brighter, hotter, more frantic.
Then it exploded from within.
Torin released his grip just as the creature detonated, its body shattering into a thousand glittering shards and a spray of liquid essence. The force of the blast pushed him back a step, and when he looked down, all that remained was a rapidly melting patch of frost and a few scattered ice crystals.
He stood there for a moment, breathing hard, letting the adrenaline fade. Then he looked at his hand—the one that had been gripping the wraith, now coated in a thick layer of frost so dense it looked like a white gauntlet. He could barely feel his fingers.
He sighed. The sound carried the weight of profound, personal disappointment... to think such an insignificant creature would give him such trouble simply because he couldn't use his weapon or favorite spells...
He was barely seven and much weaker than he is now when he killed his first ice wrath, after all.
With a flex of will, he commanded his muscles to move. His fingers curled inward, slowly, painfully The ice coating them cracked, fissures spreading across its surface. He flexed again, harder, and the entire frozen gauntlet shattered, falling away in chunks to reveal red, cold-nipped but moving fingers beneath.
Torin wiggled them experimentally. They worked. They hurt like Oblivion, but they worked.
Behind him, Auri lowered her bow slowly. Her expression was a complex mixture of astonishment, amusement, and honest concern.
"You," she said carefully, "are absolutely insane."
Torin turned to her, flexing his still-tingling fingers. A slow, satisfied grin spread across his face.
"Yeah," he agreed. "But it worked."
...
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