Chapter 37: Titles Are Just Trappings
“Whoa!” Lilith yelped as Nidhogg scooped her up and barreled through the wall of towering knights like a storm through reeds.
The Black Dragon went full brute force, shouldering past leveled spears like a bull through brittle branches. Undead weapons scraped her night-black scales and couldn’t leave a chalk-white scratch. She slammed a knight with a brutal shoulder-check, sent him pinwheeling, then sprinted for the tower with Lilith cradled tight.
Lilith flicked her wrist and tossed an ice sheet behind them, a flash-freeze that turned the floor to winter glass. The Undead gave chase, then skated and crashed in a clattering pile; one unlucky skeleton even popped its skull clean off, bones bouncing like spilled dice.
Nidhogg carried Lilith to the sealed gate of the spire. The Black Dragon set the Little White Dragon down, raised a right hand already twisted into a draconic claw, and slammed. Wood and iron exploded. A hole taller than two men gaped like a broken tooth. Nidhogg snatched Lilith up again, tucked her under an arm, and charged into the tower’s dark throat.
Butt-first and resigned, the Little White Dragon slapped a block of ice over the hole, sealing it in a breath like frost over a pond. The Undead hot on their heels smashed headlong into the doorway with a chorus of thuds. Lilith pointed and laughed right in their faces, her grin sharp as winter sunlight.
Nidhogg ran with Lilith clamped under her arm, pounding through the tower’s first floor like thunder down a canyon. The Black Dragon’s eyes went wide, sweeping the room. Wooden racks crowded the stone hall like a small forest, each hung with weapons. Several Undead stood there on guard, heads wreathed in Moonswallow Mist. At the sound of intruders, they raised faces in eerie unison, blue fire licking in empty sockets, and stared.
A heartbeat later, they lunged. Nidhogg slipped their swipes like a shadow slipping past bars, then bolted for the right-hand stair.
The Little White Dragon never stopped flinging frost over her shoulder, each cast a cold arc like a comet’s tail. Ice Blade! A crescent of blue-white edge whistled back. Freeze Ray! A straight line of winter burned the air. Ice Storm! Shards roared like a hail-fed waterfall.
Her spells boomed louder, a drumbeat of blizzard and crack. More and more Undead froze in place like statues at a winter festival. With both feet sealed in ice, they could only watch Nidhogg and Lilith shrink to a black-and-white pair of dots, then slip from sight like falling snow.
“Grass Slide!” Nidhogg hit the spiral stair with Lilith in her arm, and Lilith snapped the spell the instant the Black Dragon’s foot landed. Classic tower stairs curled up like a conch shell. The spell’s name promised meadow, but what answered was ice and snow—dubbed on a whim, born pure winter.
Every step Nidhogg took glazed over in frost, a silver trail like moonlight on stone. The few Undead who dodged Lilith’s earlier freezes set foot on the steps and went tumbling, clattering downward like a bone avalanche. They smashed into the followers behind them, shattered skulls like cracked pottery, then got ground to powder under the stampede.
Whew. Relief came first, warm as steam in a cold room. Sure they weren’t coming up, the Little White Dragon finally stole a breath. Wedged under Nidhogg’s arm, Lilith wriggled to adjust, guiding the Black Dragon’s grip to her waist. Better that than the constant squeeze on her butt—she’d been forced to use her tail for balance, which was as awkward as carrying tea in a storm.
“Looks like stealth failed,” Lilith said, the wry taste of it like bitter tea on her tongue. “We got spotted before we even stepped in. The whole tower’s probably on lockdown now. Do we have a plan B?”
“Yup.” Nidhogg thought for a beat, then nodded, confidence bright as a torch in fog.
Lilith’s stomach dipped. Aggression rolled off the Black Dragon like summer thunder. “It’s not the thing I’m thinking, is it?”
“It’s exactly the thing you’re thinking.” Nidhogg kept Lilith tucked like a water jug, legs eating stairs, so fast the spiral blurred into a whirlpool. Lilith’s head swam and she had to beg her to ease up, breath catching like a kite yanked by wind.
Lilith knew that plan too well. In the usual design, the door to the next level sits at the bottom, and the boss waits at the top, like a hawk on a high branch daring you to climb. Nidhogg’s idea? Rush the top, slay the boss, grab the key, and sprint straight to the lower door. No tangle with the Undead tide.
The logic held water—clean, quick, efficient, like a sharp knife through rope. Less fighting. Less waste.
But Nidhogg had forgotten one thing.
“Why not go down and find the door? I can just open it,” Lilith said, tapping herself, the thought bright as a pebble skipping water. Her White Dragon blood had warped her puzzle-brain: others hunted keys; she hunted doors. No door could bar Lilith. Not for long.
“Oh. Right.” Nidhogg smacked her forehead, a sheepish grin breaking through like sun through cloud. “Got too excited and forgot how handy you are.”
Lilith stared, blank as a fresh snowfall.
“But we’re already at a door. Do we still fight?” Nidhogg set her down, casual as if she’d strolled a garden path. Only then did Lilith realize they had climbed nearly the whole spire mid-chat. She hadn’t heard Nidhogg pant once. The Black Dragon’s stamina felt monstrous, like a mountain that decided to run.
Lilith shook it off and looked ahead. A sealed gate loomed, iron-black and dust-dulled, like a lid over a deep well. Odds were, the second-floor boss waited behind it. The first floor’s giant zombie had been a thorny problem, a boulder in a narrow stream. If this one proved as stubborn, maybe she shouldn’t open this door at all.
Even if she turned away now, nothing broke. Her gift could crack the door to the lower level, and they could slip down to the third floor. Faster to find the Reaper Fragment. Faster to face the Grim Reaper.
Reason whispered for efficiency, cool and crisp as morning frost. Don’t waste time here.
But her chest burned hot. Pride? Curiosity? She bit her thumb. Warm red beaded up like a drop of sunset. She smeared blood across the iron.
The dust-laden door sighed and gave a thin seam of darkness, like night leaking through a shutter. Lilith pressed, and the gap widened into a slice of black.
She met Nidhogg’s eyes. One breath. One nod. Then she pushed the door and stepped through.
A round table waited in the gloom, a cold moon of wood. Twelve knights sat around it in perfect order, armor still as gravestones. The instant Lilith and Nidhogg entered, helms tilted up in eerie harmony. Twelve pairs of eyes burned to life with ghost-blue flame, Moonswallow Mist pooling in their skulls like drowned starlight, all of it fixed on the two intruders.
