Sixty-Five: Run!
Lilith plummeted from the high sky like a plucked feather spiraling through cold air.
She pressed her palms to her chest, breath tight as a drumhead, and triggered the last skill she could still use—prayer.
Once-white radiance curdled into sickly gray, threads of mist shot through with thin veins of scarlet like blood on snow.
Her White Holy Maiden mark was stained by Taint; true healing warped into filling torn flesh with filth, a patch sewn with shadow.
It wasn’t good, but for the Little White Dragon, there was no second path under this iron sky.
Her wings regrew, ashen petals unfurling; she hung in the air instead of dropping to the pocket-space floor to be sucked by the Void and tossed back like driftwood.
A single hard truth loomed over her like a mountain: she couldn’t beat Eve.
That Demon hadn’t gone all out; even with some power unsealed, Lilith felt the rest coiled tight like a sleeping serpent.
She was out of moves; her magic did nothing, the weapon she trusted was cracked, the cloak had saved her once and would not wake again soon.
Only the Demon King rune burned on her left hand; if she stirred the Taint in the little dragon’s blood, ending Eve would be quick as a guillotine.
But Lilith refused to yank blindly on that black thread; the more this wicked river is drawn, the wilder it floods, and no dam would hold.
Even if she killed Eve, the Taint would slip the leash; the little dragon couldn’t contain that storm, and all their work would wash away like sand.
So she had no way to stand against Eve; one road remained, narrow as a deer trail between cliffs.
Run.
She could claw a way out of this pocket space, carry Eve’s secrets to Elasha, and let the Vampires hunt a Demon on their night soil.
Vampires knew Demons better than an outsider White Dragon, and in Morris’s own darkness, fangs had home-court edge like wolves in their den.
But those Vampires had slept away millennia; their bite might be blunted, and luring Eve to them might be leading a tiger to lambs.
No time to weigh stones; Lilith chose escape, to hand every piece of intel to Elasha and let the Vampire Princess draw the next blade.
Her own state was frayed; even with Taint stitching wounds, the little dragon was a patchwork kite in a gale—fighting Eve was folly.
So, how to run?
The little dragon could spin a vortex, open a portal, and fling herself out like a fish through a net.
But she had shown that trick already; Eve wasn’t a fool, and her grip on the Void was a craftsman’s hand—she could sever the tunnel mid-flight.
Lilith needed another river to cross.
She thought of the dark-violet vortex, its runes swollen with charge like thunderheads before a storm.
She had her way.
She rose from the platform’s edge, newborn gray wings beating like moth-silk, and flew toward Abaddon’s body, half carved away like a statue unfinished.
Eve stood there, as if waiting, a shadow-lantern in the gloom; wingbeats hissed through air, and the Demon lifted her gaze to the pale fledgling.
“I thought you’d run straight away,” she said, smile thin as a blade, a curl of mockery glinting like frost.
“I did think about it,” Lilith muttered, a stormcloud under her ribs, “but you wouldn’t let me go that easy.”
She drew the Astrolabe from her back, hugging her last weapon like a charm; her Star Energy was guttering, the wick almost ash.
It offered only the warmth of belief, a paper talisman in rain—still better than empty hands.
“I did plan it,” Eve admitted, sheathing her long blade with a hiss; she bent, picked up the gray-white girl on the ground, and tossed her to Lilith like a bundle.
“You came for her, right?”
“You’re just handing her to me?” Lilith watched Eve like a cat at the threshold. Recovering Abaddon was one of her aims; by Eve’s word, take Abaddon’s heart out of Eve and put it back, and the demon girl would wake like spring.
Lilith couldn’t swear that truth, but someone could; she only needed to flee with Abaddon cradled tight.
“Of course. Even with her, you won’t get out,” Eve shrugged, confidence rolling off her like heat. “Once I seal the channel, how do you leave?”
“I always find a way.” Lilith lifted the Astrolabe, its tip pointing like a star at midnight.
“Ice Ray.”
A basic spell, cheap as breath; Lilith was burnt to cinders, and even this ray—meant to freeze air—was only cold fog, a winter sigh on black armor.
It posed no real threat; still, Eve raised a vortex, and the Void swallowed the beam with a wet gulp.
Behind Eve, the dark-violet vortex burst into full light, runes flaring like constellations; the long-primed trump finally came to hand.
“So eager to die?” Eve sighed, weary as a teacher; she dragged the massive vortex forward and laid her palm upon it. “Fine, I’ll oblige. Be honored—opening a giant jet for one soul, you’re the first.”
Boom!
Two scarlet beams, each as thick as Lilith, speared from the dark-violet vortex, red-hot, roaring like lava, racing to melt the Little White Dragon in a heartbeat.
Lilith didn’t dodge; she raised her hand and tore a portal open like a slit in a curtain before her.
The beams slammed into the portal.
That narrow seam couldn’t hold such fury; the dark-violet vortex strained for a heartbeat, then ripped, becoming a jagged space-rift, a lightning scar hanging in air.
The searing light stuttered as the crack unfurled—one second, a snowflake’s span—and that second was the door Lilith needed.
She had waited for this tide; she hoisted Abaddon onto her back and dove as the rift widened like a gaping mouth.
“Thanks for the crack!”
The jagged seam snapped shut; the red beam scythed through the empty space where she’d stood, leaving only the Little White Dragon’s cheeky echo ringing like a bell.
Run!
