Chapter Fifty-Five: Infiltration

A passage buried under years of dust, like ash layered on old altar stone.

A floor filmed with gray, a quiet desert of silted powder.

White snow stacked like small mountains, dunes frozen in mid-breath.

Walls of carved stained glass, petals of light set in frozen lattices.

Lilith walked that narrow path, blue eyes brimming with curiosity like a pond catching sky.

The Little White Dragon glanced everywhere, quick legs pattering like a kitten exploring a new home on a polished floor.

“Don’t sprint.” Nidhogg shadowed her, night like a cloak over steel.

The Black Dragon caught Lilith by the nape and tugged her back, calm as a hunter stilling a pup.

“Remember we’re sneaking. Keep low, don’t get spotted,” she said, voice like frost on glass.

“But it’s so pretty.” The Little White Dragon nodded, joy bright as lanterns in snow.

Lilith pointed at the iridescent glass ceiling, a rainbow frozen in petals.

“I’ve never seen a ceiling this gorgeous. Is this a church? Or a palace hall?”

“It’s the largest cathedral in the Grand Mausoleum.” Sakunae Mashiro finally spoke, her tone like ink settling on paper.

“She wrote me about it in her letters. We’re at the very center of the great nave, a heart under ice.”

“Sadly, the lower section is buried in snow. Otherwise we’d see Undead idols carved of ice and dark plants, night-vines twined like constellations. It’s a rare marvel.”

“Oh, a shame.” Regret pricked Lilith like a cold thorn, then hope warmed her like tea.

“No worries—once we take down Eternal Life, the storm will break.”

“I’ll sweep the snow clean and come back to admire it,” she said, spirits rising like steam.

“If we can, I want to come too. It should be beautiful,” Mashiro said, a soft smile like winter sunlight.

The fox lady and Lilith shared a wavelength, sparks leaping like fireflies.

Nidhogg stood aside, wordless, like granite under snowfall.

Her teammates didn’t act like infiltrators in a den of foes, but like tourists in a crystal museum.

For Lilith, it was a first visit, childlike wonder bright as firecrackers.

For Sakunae Mashiro, the scene stirred old feelings, paper lamps of memory unfurling.

Even unspoken, Nidhogg could guess her mind was full of the Undead princess’s letters, petals pressed between pages.

Nidhogg sighed, breath a small cloud.

The Black Dragon, the only steady anchor, had to watch for Undead ambushes and keep two curious kids from wandering off like sparrows.

“Hold up. Something’s off.”

After they’d crossed half the cathedral hall, Nidhogg felt a prickling wrongness, like bristles under skin.

The Black Dragon warned the two behind her, voice low, a drumbeat under snow.

“East side—there’s a scent.” Lilith twitched her small nose, a hound under moonlight.

She smelled death, the chill of graves and rot, drifting like a swamp fog.

“Close now. Heavy stink of death and decay—feels like a big one, nasty to handle.”

“Can we run?” Nidhogg asked Mashiro, calm like a blade wrapped in cloth.

Hard to imagine, but Mashiro was the slowest of the three, a willow instead of wind.

Nidhogg was only a shade faster, though she had tricks to push her speed like sudden fire.

“Not sure.” Mashiro measured the distance to the main doors, eyes like abacus beads.

“At this range, without making noise, we won’t outrun it.”

“Then we hide.” Nidhogg chose cleanly, like a cut through silk.

“Lilith, plant an eye.”

“On it.” The Little White Dragon crouched, a snow hare tucking in.

She conjured a tiny ice crystal and set it on the ground, a star sealed in frost.

From her fingertips, she gathered a pale blue thread of Star Energy, moonlight spun to string.

She flicked it, and ghost-blue light kissed the crystal, a firefly caught in ice.

“Now lay it out.”

With Lilith prepped, Nidhogg signaled again, crisp as a snapping twig.

The Black Dragon and the fox lady moved fast, hands like winter sparrows.

They whipped out camping gear and raised a makeshift little camp, a stump of shelter under drifting white.

“Conceal.”

Lilith snapped her fingers; the snow beneath them fell away like a trapdoor.

The camp and the three dropped into a soft pit, a burrow cut in sugar.

Snow swirled and sealed the gap, a white lid wiping tracks clean.

Only the tiny ice crystal remained on the surface, a glass eye in snow.

“Lilith, keep watch.”

Inside the snow-wrapped camp, Nidhogg and Mashiro spoke, voices muffled like talk under quilts.

“I know. So far, no problem.”

Lilith linked her Star Energy to the crystal, sight flowing like river-light through ice.

She used its gaze to watch the world above, a periscope of frost.

This was Nidhogg’s new stealth method, a fox trick in dragon hands.

Lilith’s ice and snow could shape the ground underfoot, a white sea willing to part.

Why not use it to carve them a hideaway, a pocket under winter?

With Star Energy, the ice crystal solved their vision, a skylight in buried night.

When Undead patrols drifted near, they could dive into the earth like moles.

When Lilith saw them leave, they’d surface again, sprouting like shoots after thaw.

“Feels like playing Minecraft,” Lilith muttered, voice a bubble under ice.

Back home she was a berserker—axe and shield, sunrise to sunset, a storm of steel.

Here, in another world, she’d turned into a dig-three, fill-one coward, a miner hiding from thunder.

“What’s Minecraft?” Mashiro tilted her head, confusion like mist.

“Lilith, did you spot something?”

“Ignore her.” Nidhogg’s tone was flint, dry and sparking.

“She babbles like this all the time. Leave it. The Little White Dragon will quiet down.”

“She drops odd words like seeds in wind.”

“They’re not odd.” Lilith huffed, a soft puff like a tea kettle.

But she didn’t argue; these people hadn’t lived her world.

She had no desire to explain video games, that bright carnival of pixels.

“Wait—something.”

Lilith saw a lump of shadow enter the cathedral hall, a storm-cloud with meat and metal.

She widened her eyes and watched carefully, gaze sharpening like a blade on stone.

“That’s a big lump. What is it—a Wraith? Or a zombie?”

Through the crystal’s sight, she looked at the massive Undead.

It stood taller than Nidhogg, a tower wrapped in rot.

Roughly the size of that gargantuan brute they’d met before, maybe even larger, a mountain moving slow.

“Describe it.” Nidhogg crouched beside Lilith, steady as a pillar.

“Mashiro may have seen him. With your description, she can pin the name.”

“Okay. Let me look.”

Lilith closed one eye, focus like a needle threading silk.

“Mostly green, and there’s red mist spilling off him, like blood fog under lanterns.”

“He floats, looks like a Wraith at a glance.”

“Under the green shell is red, meat-like stuff, probably tentacles,” she said, voice tight as wire.

Below its bulk, several red-black tentacles dangled, like roots dipped in ink.

They looked a bit like the ones Taint summons, cousins in corruption.

“I can’t see the face—maybe a mask, maybe no face at all, just blank stone.”

“Anything else?” Sakunae Mashiro noted the details, memory riffling like pages.

She searched her mind for a matching shape, a silhouette in fog.

“He’s carrying a huge… sword? Should be a sword, but it’s thin, just a line. Can’t see clearly.”

“What kind of giant sword is that—razor-thin, like some overlong tachi?”

Lilith muttered, her humor a spark in cold air.

“A giant sword,” Mashiro said, ignoring the aside, thought like a lantern finding a face.

“Should be the Devourer.”

“Though he floats, he’s a zombie,” she continued, voice steady as a bell tone.

“In life, he devoured countless beings; in death, he never stopped.”

“That ceaseless hunger forged great strength and a shard of wisdom, a mind that stayed clear even under the Moonswallow Mist.”

“Eternal Life took him in. He’s one of Eternal Life’s strongest underlings, a hammer in a storm.”

“His body’s strength is monstrous, and the red mist around him is part of him, a field that devours nearby life.”

“That makes physical approaches treacherous, like wading into quicksand.”

“At the same time, he nearly ignores magic; his body reflexively treats spells as food.”

“Mana becomes his meal, so arcane harm won’t stick.”

“Don’t engage if you can help it,” Mashiro said, crisp as snow cracking.

“If you must, you need a body stronger than his, a head-on clash that wins by raw force.”

“Otherwise, the longer it drags, the deeper the pit.”

“Sounds tricky,” Lilith said, frustration a gust of cold.

“I don’t have a clean answer. Even with Taint and then White Dragon form, I might not have the muscle.”

“What about you, Mashiro?”

“Not great.” The fox lady shook her head, ears low like dusk.

“Even in beast mode, I can’t match his body. If we bump into him, I suggest we run.”

“Trading blows isn’t wise; it’s like fighting a whirlpool with oars.”

“Mm.” Nidhogg answered softly, voice a buried coal.

She said nothing more, acceptance flickering like a knife catching light.

Yet Lilith heard a thin thread of excitement in the Black Dragon’s tone, a drumbeat under snow.

What did she want to do?

—

Nidhogg: hands itching, hungry for battle!