Chapter 26
Lilith was furious, a stove kicked into flame.
The Little White Dragon went from a milk popsicle out of the freezer to a strawberry daifuku fresh from the steamer, heat flushing under the Taint. Her hidden little face turned pink like a peach petal under frost. She glared at the giant fox, taller than two little dragons stacked like a snowdrift. White steam puffed off her head like a boiling kettle ready to sing.
😡
“I hate this! I already drove you off once, so why come back?!” Rage surged like thunder under her ribs. The tentacles behind her cracked the ground, and the recoil slingshotted her forward like a catapult stone. The white fox lunged with jaws like a bear trap. Lilith, boosted by those writhing limbs, punched its skull like a hammer falling.
Yelp!
The fox’s eyes went crosswise from the blow, its bulk tipping like a toppled cart. The Little White Dragon stabbed two tentacles into its forepaw, then snapped them tight, yanking herself like a cannonball toward it.
Boom.
She hit like a shell bursting, a white blur slamming the fox again. It couldn’t dodge; it ate the impact and crashed to earth, head wobbling like a bell.
“Can’t you listen? Just! Stay! Away!” Lilith seized the moment, sprinted to its head, and with each bitten-off word dropped a heavy fist, drumming its skull like a war drum.
Awooo!
The white-furred beast tanked several blows. As her last syllable fell, it whipped its tail like a steel cable and swatted Lilith from the air.
“Since I’m hiding, stop bothering me, you pest!” Even flying, she didn’t pause. Midair, the Little White Dragon gathered power like ice forming on a window and fired a freezing ray, a blue line that smacked the fox’s forehead.
Hoo—oo—
The fox, just on its feet, braced its head into the magic like a ram into wind. Its claws scraped its own chest like flint on stone, trying to carve something there. Those keen talons couldn’t gouge that iron-hard chest, yet a half-pattern surfaced like frost etching on glass.
Alarm spiked, sharp as a pin. She couldn’t let it finish that mark. Lilith speared her tentacles into the earth; her supple body and those limbs arched into a longbow. She loosed herself like an arrow and swung a kick toward its skull.
Her acceleration was lightning; the fox was thunder, always behind.
But the fox wasn’t a training dummy. As she stretched to kick, it yawned wide like a cave and clamped her slim calf.
This was the brute that could chew through a great sword knight’s armor. The Little White Dragon wasn’t built for flesh-to-flesh. Two bloody holes punched through her leg like fangs through rice paper.
Oof.
Pain burst first, a red flower in her skull. Tears pricked her eyes, vision fogging like breath on glass.
The white fox didn’t pity. It clenched her pale right leg and shook, thrashing her like a chew toy, then slammed her down like a storm hurling branches.
She barely had time to wrap herself in Taint. The nauseating flesh was soft as wet moss, a makeshift cushion. It kept her from becoming a smear, but pain still rolled in waves. She’d eaten a hard hit already; now the fox swung her again and again. Stars popped behind her eyes like fireflies. The world spun like a wheel.
One last smash. The fox let go, then rose like an avalanche and pounced.
Dizziness first, then grit. She tried to stand, but that right calf was ruined, a snapped bamboo stalk. Even if the Taint packed the broken bone, she couldn’t rise fast enough. And lying still meant becoming that knight again—head and hand chewed off, a winter tree stripped to white bone. She refused to be gnawed to a bare-boned dragon.
She rolled hard to the side. The White Dragon’s slender tail and long tentacles shoved like oars, and she tumbled clear, the pounce brushing past like a shadow.
Lilith seized the opening. She gathered Star Energy, cold as a night sky, and hurled a full-charge freezing beam into the fox’s landing lag, the blast biting deep.
Magic bit where steel failed. Frost glazed the fox’s skull like rime on bark; white fur split in ragged lines, and raw meat glistened beneath like torn beetroot.
“So you’re weak to magic, huh?” She spoke between panting breaths. She packed her torn calf with Taint, dark-red flesh knitting like stitches in wet clay. Two white halves of leg hung together by stubborn nerves, like lotus root torn but still strung by threads. The odd image made her snort a laugh despite herself.
The White Dragon clamped the halves together with Taint, the meat welding slow as wax cooling. For now, a tentacle took her calf’s job. Awkward as stilts, but better than crawling in dust.
She wobbled upright. In her small palms, two ghost-blue lights kindled, twin will-o’-wisps over a marsh. She gathered power, ready to serve this annoying fox a lesson it wouldn’t forget.
A roar ripped out. The fox leaped, mouth a red cave, aiming to snap the small dragon in two like a twig.
Not happening. Two tentacles stabbed into its skull-plate and pried, opening the jaws like iron crowbars. Lilith opened her own tiny mouth, heat and cold rising from her chest like a geyser in winter.
Instinct led, older than memory. She breathed out.
What left her wasn’t a childish chirp but a true dragon’s breath, a glacier collapsing through a canyon. She poured that breath and its frost straight down the fox’s throat, a river of winter.
The fox couldn’t even howl. Magic-shy and unlucky, it took the blast, legs buckled like reeds, and crashed to the side like a felled pine.
“Cough—cough.” Lilith clutched her chest, coughing hard, then grinned like a cat in sunlight. “Hmph. You wanna fight me? Good thing I’m the better one.”
