Chapter Ten: The Ambush (1)

Lilith snapped to full alert, nerves taut like drawn bowstrings.

Annoyance flared first. She'd been wasting focus on sparring words with the Black Dragon, and missed they were circling like a dog chasing its tail.

All Nidhogg's fault, she cursed, a cold spark popping in her chest.

She turned, gripped her pink longsword, and whispered to Abaddon, voice low as fog before dawn.

“Abaddon, use locusts to shield yourself and Litt. We don't know who or what did this. Until we learn more, don’t touch your pocket dimension. If the enemy clocks your trick and follows you in, it gets messy.”

“I know,” Abaddon said, calm as cooled iron. “Don’t judge me by size. Most folks can’t even scratch me.”

She moved before Lilith finished speaking. Five locusts buzzed into being, half-encircling her and Litt like a crescent of chitin.

The gap they left, Nidhogg stepped into, a black wall under a storm.

Seeing the Black Dragon prove useful, the Little White Dragon let the grudge melt. She wasn’t a villain, after all.

Once she felt safety settle behind her like a closed gate, Lilith drew her focus forward. The Little White Dragon’s senses cut sharper than steel.

When she poured herself into a single sense, her sweep rivaled high-grade detection spells, a hunter’s gaze slicing mist.

Even so, she found no attacker. Only the Grand Mausoleum’s dust pricked her nose.

The Moonswallow Mist hung in the air, a dry cold that defied instinct, like winter under a harvest moon.

Dark magic bled up from the soil beneath her boots, a tar-black reek steeped in furrows.

The taint was thick enough to choke. Without razor focus, she couldn’t tell if it rose from below or drifted from elsewhere.

Like… above.

A prickle lifted her nape. She looked up—and met a white figure’s gaze in the high gray.

Fear struck first, cold as water. Before thought caught up, campaign reflex wired her body to guard the blow from overhead.

Her tentacles snapped up on instinct, a braided shield like rooted vines. Against skeletons, those cords were unstoppable.

Now they went soft as butter under a hot knife. The impact chopped them apart within seconds.

That brief block was enough. The Little White Dragon switched defense to the Ancient Ark, like swapping a reed shield for a stone bulwark.

Her pink longsword kissed the strike and flared brilliant, a dawn-pale blaze charging on contact.

Packed with biting power, the blade slid through the downward blow. The white figure skidded aside and slammed into the earth.

“[Still]!” The white figure barely brushed dirt and tried to charge again.

Nidhogg moved faster, a hawk stooping. A Word Spirit Magic froze everyone in place like frost on grass.

That included the Little White Dragon, who had almost no resistance to Word Spirit Magic, and Abaddon, still catching up.

Luckily, the little demon’s resistance was absurd. She slipped the hold with barely a hitch, like oil off glass.

The Little White Dragon and the white figure weren’t so lucky. They ate the full duration.

“The one who jumped us—odds are she made us circle,” Nidhogg said, stepping to Lilith’s side like shade to a tree.

She tapped the Little White Dragon’s shoulder. The Black Dragon could release her own Word Spirit Magic that way.

Lilith dropped with a thud, face-first into dust. She rubbed her cheek, pushed up, and let out a sigh like wind through reeds.

“Why a beastkin?”

The white figure was a fox. A steel muzzle clamped her jaws, the kind you’d strap on a rabid hound.

An iron tag hung at her neck, dull as old moonlight. At this distance, even Lilith couldn’t read it.

She had reason to sigh. On this land, beastkin guard their pride more than most—second only to dragons, who wear dignity like proof they live.

She couldn’t picture a beastkin choosing gear that makes them a pet. Hence the sigh, bitter as tea left cold.

“Look at her eyes,” Nidhogg murmured, voice low as midnight.

The Little White Dragon looked—and found ghost-blue fire burning in the fox’s pupils, a lantern lit in a drowned well.

“Moonswallow Mist,” she said. “It eroded her. The Reaper Fragment in the Grand Mausoleum puppeteers her body. In that state, no stunt is too strange.”

“But why would a beastkin wander into an infected Grand Mausoleum? The Little White Dragon doubts these proud folk would swallow that for a mid-level threat.”

“Probably her former trade,” Nidhogg said, lifting her gaze to the fox frozen by Word Spirit Magic.

The Black Dragon snapped her fingers. The spell on the fox broke with a brittle crack.

She exploded forward like an arrow loosed, white blur under gray sky.

The fox smashed into Nidhogg’s firm belly, a muffled thump. Before her claws could taste prey, the Black Dragon pinned her to the earth.

“She’s likely an adventurer,” Nidhogg judged, calm as stone. “A strong one.”