[Erenthril Mael'tharias]

Erenthril searched.

He searched and he searched and he searched. It was nearly exhausting, tracking through the ridiculously complex patterns and figures that Heronythys had woven into the spell. It must have taken the Archmage several candlemarks to perform, to be this intricately connected. Of course, to ever masterpiece, there was but a smaller and similar masterpiece of a much lesser level. It took the Elementalist some time, mere minutes in fact, but he found it nonetheless – a consistent pattern of abjuration and alteration that fed the basis of the spell’s function. This intricate tiny footnote was repeated upon every page of every novel of every encyclopedia of the spell’s written success – it was the very cornerstone of how the spell functioned.

The Elementalist was amazed.

That Heronythys had managed to produce such a spell to where the weaves reproduced themselves, repetitiously, in continuous motion of an altered field, was merely beyond what he’d expected. Well…that wasn’t quite yet, for he’d expected something of this grandeur. But astonishment never trailed far beyond disbelief, and on the verge of frustration, the Syl’rosyian Elflord had discovered, quite plausibly, his single greatest discovery of the brightening.

That single strand.

That single strand that, while inexplicable per the moment, was hypothesized to have led to Heronythys himself. How, the Elementalist wasn’t sure, but it was like a doorway into the unknown. All he had to do was splinter it apart. Granted, it was a stretch, but to cut off the entire weave from the source was just as efficient as cutting an entire ball of yarn off from the sweater. He tried it nonetheless. Summoning the mass of Ara not only from within the castle, but from outside it as well, Erenthril began a brutal disempowering dispel upon that single strand. He would cut it like scissors to thread – not just in one place, for fear of it snapping back together too quickly (the weaves were effectively repairing themselves, like the ebb of a tide) but in multiple places. He would cease the strand’s very existence, cut it off from the castle of Ice, and wait patiently for the toll to be paid.

Thinking better of it, just in forethought, he also cast a brief Elemental Immunity upon himself as well, should all hell break loose (as oxymoronic as it sounded in a castle built from ice) and the walls begin to degenerate in a more aggressively, hostile manner than he predicted. This being if he was successful, of course.