Forty-Four: Crystal Forest
Lilith pressed her palm over the Demon girl’s mouth, a lid clamped on a boiling kettle. Abaddon waited, pitiful, eyes glistening like wet glass. The Little White Dragon ignored that gaze. “Stop looking. Time to move.”
It wasn’t cruelty; worry crawled over Lilith like cold mist. Abaddon needed a minute to soothe her beaten, swelling backside, but they’d already wasted too much sand. Even if Abaddon swore Eliza and the others were inside this pocket, unease still gnawed at her.
This place was the Void Sect’s nest. Run into devotees they’d never met, and her Vampires could end up bleeding for it.
“Do you know where Eliza and the others are?” The Little White Dragon asked Abaddon, who hung in the air like a hooked lantern.
The Demon girl tilted her head, baffled, as if the question skipped off her like a pebble on water.
“The Vampires you dragged in with me. Where are they now?” The realization pricked Lilith—she’d never introduced names—so she kept it simple.
“Mm. Let me see.” Abaddon bowed her head over a purple whirlpool, fingers stirring it like ink. The Little White Dragon had no clue what she could read from that mass of violet rings—but that was her art. Maybe, to Abaddon, the void was a Star Canvas, speckled with messages the way Lilith read constellations.
Lilith waited, heartbeat tapping time. Abaddon searched slowly; anxiety pinched her pale face like crumpled paper. Something felt off, a splinter under the nail.
“What is it?” The Little White Dragon couldn’t hold back; Abaddon’s ghost-white features had knotted into a tight fist.
“How did they end up there?!” Panic cut Abaddon’s voice like broken glass. She folded the vortex away, grabbed the Little White Dragon’s wrist, and let her locust haul them forward through the air.
“Quick—your Vampire friends blundered into the Crystal Forest. You and I must pull them out before they sink into memories like bogwater.”
“Crystal Forest? Sink into memories? Can you explain first?” Lilith stumbled as Abaddon tugged her; the feather-light Little White Dragon lifted like a paper kite. The locust hooked them both and streaked on.
“We talk there. Follow me!” Abaddon spun up a vortex, clearer than the rest of the void—glass in a sea of smoke—and dove with Lilith.
“Hold steady. Teleporting feels rough; grit your teeth and it’s over.” Abaddon warned as they plunged. The locust flicked, and the Little White Dragon got tossed into the whirl with a whoosh.
“Wait—mmf!” The twisting purple pulled Lilith down. It felt like being crammed into a cheap tumble washer; she spun in a cramped, dark-violet barrel, speed hammering her skull and gut.
Just as she started to adapt, breathing through the spin, the dark-purple shell popped a narrow tunnel ahead. Before her mind caught up, she shot out like a primed cannonball—whoomp—and vanished through.
“Waaah!” Lilith screamed, arms clutched tight. Launched like a human cannon, she curled small, fear freezing her limbs. Instinct snapped her wings open; her slim dragon tail wrapped in, and she balled into a snow-white sphere.
“Oof!” She slammed a hard, slick surface, bounced like rubber, then hit ground with a dull thud and a breathless groan.
“Oof… that hurts.” Lilith unfurled her wings, rubbed her bruised little backside, and wobbled to her feet. The void had spat her out into a forest that speared the sky.
Not an ordinary wood. No lush green underfoot—only a skin of rainbow, translucent crystal, glowing strange and seductive under the pocket realm’s dim light.
Towering trees of crystal braided the canopy. Below, white crystal bushes tufted in clumps, flickering with a steady rhythm, like a heartbeat in stone.
“Where is this?” Lilith couldn’t help asking.
“The Crystal Forest.” The voice drifted behind her. Abaddon floated out of the void, locust in hand, and spoke. “The only living thing here besides me.”
“Living? You mean these are creatures?” Lilith stared at the pulsing crystal glow. She’d heard of strange life across these lands, but plants made of pure crystal—her breath still hitched at the idea.
“Not these pieces. The forest is the creature.” Abaddon shook her head, soft but firm. “What you see are parts, not the being itself. Think of them as… hair on a body.”
“The true organism is the forest itself.” Abaddon pointed at the ground beneath Lilith’s feet.
Lilith followed her gaze. The earth here wasn’t the same dark-violet stone—softer, with a subtle swell and sink. Maybe it was a trick of nerves, but it felt like breathing.
“This Crystal Forest was the original master of this pocket realm. Lord Satan left it to watch me, so I wouldn’t run.” Abaddon’s eyes gleamed. “It has a curious name…”
“The Keeper of Secrets.”
