Drowsy and fogged, Lilith blinked awake, lying on a soft bed like a drift of clouds and yawning up at a ceiling she knew like an old sky. One blink later, she was back in Tartarus’s home, the room still as a quiet pond.
The Little White Dragon pushed herself up on the springy mattress like a cat stretching in a sunbeam, then slid lazily out of bed like water over stone.
On autopilot, she shuffled toward the ensuite like a sleepwalker in mist; ever since Fan Yu crossed into Lilith, her first half hour after waking was a blank shore. Her body moved on habit like a wind-up toy, and in those first days here she’d even fetched water and doused the hearth’s glow, then cursed herself while cleaning up the soggy mess.
She took her tooth cup like a ritual bowl, filled it right to the brim so the brush could soak without spilling, and started brushing with a dopey-cute look, foam like little waves. Squinting, she peered at the mirror like it was a still lake; around now her senses usually flowed back like a tide, and by the end of washing up she’d be sharp as morning frost.
But today the gears jammed; the brain-freeze dragged on like winter refusing to leave, and only when she dabbed away the droplets on her cheeks did the oddness bite. She’d been using her left hand like a river changing course; her right felt numb, dead wood with no sap.
She stared at her right hand, then squealed like a startled sparrow. “What is that?!”
Sleep fled like smoke in wind. Her right hand had become a dragon claw as big as her head, and the whole arm was a size thicker like a tree grown wild. What on earth had happened, a storm overnight?
Memories surged back like a burst dam, slapping her sleepy mind with cold water, and she didn’t even hang the towel like a flag back on its hook. She hurried out in two steps that felt like three, aiming for Tartarus like a homing bird, and smacked straight into Nidhogg like a moth into a lantern.
The Little White Dragon blinked big, glassy eyes at the Black Dragon girl’s face, her small head a nest of question marks like fireflies. “Y-you—why are you in my room?” Her voice quivered like a plucked string. “W-what time is it now?”
“Oh, relax. You didn’t sleep long. It’s the next day,” Nidhogg said, pointing at the wall calendar like a stone sundial with one square crossed.
“That’s… good—wait, no!” Relief lifted like a breeze, then flipped like a kite in a gust; she remembered there was still someone crouching in front of her. She hopped in place like a sparrow pecking and glared. “You still didn’t answer what you’re doing here!”
“What else? Checking how your body’s developing,” Nidhogg said with a shrug, tossing the line like a pebble into a pond.
“Yikes! W-what do you want?” Lilith slapped both hands over her meager chest like a shield and backed up in quick steps, curling into the corner like a rabbit in a burrow. Three years ago she’d have thought, I was a man; if someone looks, it’s her loss, a brittle joke in a mirror. Now she was a cute girl with some strength like a spring sapling, while this dragoness could punch through meters of stone like paper; one slip and she’d punch a hole clean through her like an arrow.
Once, the man in her lost his pride to the sheer gravity of being a woman, a sigh drifting like smoke.
“Quit it. A proper checkup, you lewd Little White Dragon,” Nidhogg said, and knuckled her on the head with a soft thunk like a fingertip on a melon. Lilith clutched her head and whimpered, big eyes shimmering like dew, confusion spilling like rain onto Nidhogg’s unamused face.
“No idea what that dragon was to you,” Nidhogg went on, words painting scenes like ink on silk. “When it died, all that weird miasma rushed into you like a black tide. Your right hand and your forehead lit up like lightning behind clouds, and you started dragonifying in patches. I didn’t even finish picking the Black Dragon’s spoils; I grabbed you and ran like a thief in a storm.” She gestured, wings ghosting her shoulders. “It wasn’t just your hand. Wings sprouted like sudden thunderheads. If you’d woken then, you could’ve gone straight to your coming-of-age—joined the clan and hit adulthood in a week, a legend where the rite comes before the Shell-Breaking. Shame it all receded while you slept; only your right hand’s still dragonified, like embers under ash.”
“Is that so? Then how did you explain it to Tartarus?” Lilith asked, worry prickling like sand; her gaze snagged on the scarf at Nidhogg’s neck like a thorn. “Oh—your injuries aren’t light either.” She could picture the bite under that cloth like a torn cliff, the magic dragon’s jaws greasy with malice. “You carried me back like this, and I was full of holes like a sieve. Wasn’t Tartarus mad?”
“No. I told her you fell into a half-draconic berserk, and I fought you to pin you down like staking a tent. I knocked you out and brought you back,” Nidhogg said, voice flat as slate. “She doesn’t know I’ve got word-sorcery, so she didn’t suspect a thing.”
“So you threw the blame on me?” the Little White Dragon pouted, lips like a cherry with thorns, muttering under her breath like a kettle. “You dragged me into a cave, I opened the door, I fought, I got hurt, and I still take the fall like a scarecrow.”
“You took the reward too,” Nidhogg said with a dry sigh, like wind over dry grass. “That Black Dragon’s ability isn’t great, but it has its uses; I didn’t waste the trip. You, on the other hand, picked up a nice sword.”
“That Broken Sword? Not even a dog would want it; it’s worse than my Holy Blade… in power,” Lilith huffed, turning her small head aside like a swan snubbing bread. She lifted her right—now a claw like white iron—and tried to summon her old partner, the Holy Blade, like calling a falcon.
Nothing stirred; the air went so still you could hear a pin drop on ice. “Huh? My Holy Blade!”
