Sixty: Probing

“Finally willing to show your real face?” Lilith pointed at the black‑haired Demon, voice sharp as a flicked knife slicing silk. “Not much to look at—no wonder you hid as a Vampire.”

“Shut up. A white‑hair junkie like you can’t grasp the beauty of long, straight black.” Eve clicked her tongue, disdain cold as frost, eyes on the Little White Dragon’s snow‑white hair spilling into her cloak like wind‑tossed silk.

“But I like black hair too—just not as rich as Nidhogg’s shade.” Lilith thought of the Black Dragon lady in the Dragon Territory, ink‑dark and aloof. She’d said Fafnir had given her one last task. Do it, and the chains would fall; then she’d travel with the little dragon like swallows chasing spring.

Why did that sound like a student prepping for a thesis defense, cap and gown waiting?

The little dragon shook her head, focus narrowing to a blade’s edge on the Demon woman before her.

Lilith ran a classic play, a chessboard set in the mind: needle with words, kick up a dust devil in the heart, carve openings like water through rock.

In short, she talked trash, pepper hot and needling.

“Oh? Poor thing. You’ll never get to savor my true beauty.” Eve sighed like smoke curling off embers. “No matter. Soon this face will be the last you ever see, carved into your dusk.”

Her flirty smile faded; cold settled like winter stone. Even her words carried pressure, a mountain’s hush that brooked no noise.

The black‑haired Demon tore a seam in the air, like ripping night cloth, and drew a matte longblade from the cut.

Eve wiped the dark‑gray edge, a gesture like stroking a sleeping viper. She raised the blade in her right hand and leveled it at the White Dragon.

“I’ll taste dragon blood,” she said, voice like iron dipped in wine.

“Big talk gets you snatched at midnight, okay?” The little dragon didn’t flinch. She gripped her Broken Sword with both hands, eyes flooding with dusky blue light like deep water. She ran fast math on herself and Eve, beads sliding on a silent abacus.

Lilith was much shorter than Eve, though Eve herself kept a girl’s frame, reach no vast river.

Lilith’s usual ambush, born of a small body darting like a sparrow, wouldn’t sing today.

The real gap was in iron and inches, not spirit.

Her weapon was a broken longsword, a tide cut short; its reach lost to Eve’s longblade by a street. And Shattered Ark had that flaw—its guard needed resetting, like a drum that won’t keep beat.

The good part? The Broken Sword bit sharper than that knife, like a winter reed. And Lilith believed her body was tougher, bones like braided bamboo.

In the clinch, they’d be even, two storms locked at arm’s length.

But Lilith still didn’t know Eve’s magic, and Eve held Abaddon’s shadow—those dark‑purple vortices, those locusts like iron rain were threats humming at the edge.

She weighed the gap in her heart, a scale tipping under moonlight, and chose her best river: speed.

“Starlight!” She raised her left hand. A white orb pooled in her palm like a pearl. Her chant flared, and the light burst, noon sun in a cavern, washing half the space.

Eve moved like a shutter slamming. She closed her eyes and raised a vortex, a purple shield like a whirlpool in front of her, cutting a wedge of sight from the world.

That blind wedge was the opening Lilith wanted, a door ajar in a storm.

“No change at all.” Eve swung right without hesitation, her longblade biting air. It met Lilith’s Broken Sword with a crisp clang, sparks like fireflies.

Lilith ducked low, slipping past the vortex’s rim like a fish skimming a whirl. The block landed, and she whipped her slender tail toward Eve’s shin, a white ribbon snapping.

“Whatever works is best. Why fuss over the rest?” Lilith’s tail met a hard stop. The Demon pressed down, bouncing the sword point off course like a drumstick, then stabbed toward the incoming tail, a strike like a thorn.

But the tail was a feint, a decoy leaf on the wind. Her true strike bloomed in her left hand, Star Energy gathering like frost.

“Freezing Ray!” Pale‑blue power wrapped in ice burst between them, a winter gust exploding point‑blank. At this range, Lilith figured Eve had to eat it, snow to the face, and Lilith didn’t let the river stall.

Magic’s recoil barely brushed her, a moth on glass. She gripped the Broken Sword again and chopped through the ice fog before it thinned, a clean arc like a crescent moon.

Metal rang clear. Eve’s longblade caught the Broken Sword once more, edges sparking like flint.

The fog peeled away like torn veil. Lilith stared—Eve stood unmarked, winter never landing, the spell’s weight swallowed to bone.

How?

Lilith glanced at the massive dark‑purple vortex behind Eve, a storm‑eye churned from ink. One line on its surface gleamed a notch brighter, like a vein lit from within.

“Your vortex can absorb magic?” Her voice carried a gasp, a pebble dropped in a still pond.

Surprise or not, Lilith kept the pressure on the blade, overhead chops wide as banners. Each swing hit hard, but it opened her own flank, ribs like exposed tiles.

Eve angled her blade, a slight tilt, and Lilith’s Broken Sword slid down the dark edge, friction hissing, sparks spraying like a short firework.

Eve seized the beat. She lashed a side kick at Lilith’s abdomen, a boot like a battering ram hitting a drum.

“You think I’d tell an enemy my ability?”

Kicked back, Lilith did the unexpected—she let go of Shattered Ark with both hands. One hand clamped Eve’s shin, pressing down like pinning a snake, and her body dropped low. She surged in, a wave breaking, and threw a punch at Eve’s face.

“You villains love Q&A, don’t you?” Her words were a grin, teeth bright as flint.

Star Energy wrapped her fist, pale‑blue starlight like frost lacquer. She didn’t know if Eve drank raw mana or only formed spells, so she layered power on flesh, iron wrapped in winter.

That vortex was huge, a dark lake. Plenty of room to test, coins tossed to see where they sink.

“You think I’m a storybook villain?” The purple whirl flashed again. Lilith’s fist slammed into a sudden vortex mid‑air, a ghost shield spinning like a millstone. The star‑light on her white knuckles snapped out, sucked like rain into sand. Another stripe on the vortex lit, a tally etched in night.

“What a pain.” Lilith shook the hand that had kissed the whirl, a ring finger tingling like a bell. She bent and scooped her sword, motion smooth as a reed bending in wind.

Looks like magic’s off the table, she thought, eyes cold as moonlight on steel.