Chapter 61: Out of Control

Calm down. Lilith forced the storm in her chest to still, frost settling over a boiling lake. The Little White Dragon had to read the field between her and Kris, then pick her next thread to follow.

She didn’t fully grasp Kris’s tricks. The Wraith’s earlier Death Magic was ground Lilith had never tilled, and the power behind it hit like thunderheads. Purely in magic, she wasn’t the favorite.

Yet Kris had thrown magic aside and taken the path of flesh and steel. That meant she was stronger than she’d been as a mage. The Ancient Ark couldn’t bite into her—proof enough. Lilith trusted her blade; if her longsword couldn’t cut it, that wasn’t armor you answered with common sense. Meet it wrong, and you bleed for it.

Survival, though—that was Lilith’s sky and wind. Speed first. Back when Kris still cast spells, the Little White Dragon already outpaced her. Now the Wraith wore anchor-heavy plate, and her spear had thickened like a black pine trunk. Even a brute like Nidhogg would feel that weight slow her down. In a race, Lilith would win the wind.

She had more in her quiver: frost wards and other ironclad tricks, the Holy Cloak, clean blocks that shave death by a hair. Kris wasn’t killing her in a blink. Not today.

Think. What else can I do? The iron knot was Kris’s armor. Physical cuts weren’t opening that shell. If a charged Ancient Ark only traced a scratch on the shield, even the bone blade she’d used in Morris wouldn’t change the story.

As for magic—she lacked anything high-threat enough to bite hard. Flinging spells blind would turn this into a mana brawl. She didn’t fancy out-dueling a true mage.

Armor. How do I crack that armor? The thought burned. The Wraith wouldn’t grant her more time to ponder.

“Hah!” Spear leveled, the Wraith broke into a ground-quaking charge, a black tide on legs. Lilith killed the thought, dropped low, and slid past Kris’s flank like a shadow slipping under a door.

As they brushed, the Little White Dragon flicked her blade twice. The steel only left pale streaks. Fine. Stack enough white scars, and even a mountain cliff crumbles. If flesh bleeds out from a hundred cuts, then steel, too, can be shaved thin and pried away.

By habit, the hound in her wanted to snap a tentacle around Kris and run a full combo point-blank. She swallowed the urge. Instead, she slammed the Ancient Ark into the ground, and hurled every drop stored in the blade straight at the Wraith.

“Shadow is the moon’s child.” Good thing she hadn’t gone in. As Lilith turned, unleashing the Ark’s light, Kris whispered the spell. Black mist detonated around her, a night-blooming flower that swallowed the blade-qi whole.

“This mist is a pain.” Lilith hissed. That ring of fog around Kris was a thorn she couldn’t pluck. Without breaching it, she had no door to step through for damage. Bad spot.

Breathe. Think like someone else would. She thumped her too-hot mind, forcing the gears to mesh. If it were Nidhogg, she’d trade artillery with her, black against blue. The Black Dragon wasn’t a pure caster, but a dragon’s grasp of Death Magic ran deep. I can’t fake that. If it were Miss White, she’d fox out and go straight in. She’d probably lose anyway. Abaddon… she’d wear her down with a locust storm. Nothing there I can copy?

“Litt…” The Reaper Fragment who called her mom flitted across her thoughts like a moth. If Litt were here, what would she want?

Eat? The word lit up. Eat. Or say it true—devour. Ever since stepping into the Grand Mausoleum, that’s all the Little White Dragon had done. The Moonswallow Mist could be absorbed by the Taint. She was a human-sized pothos vine, pulling poison from the air. She could drink the Mist from the air itself, even from the Undead.

Then Kris’s armor had to be spun from Moonswallow Mist and Death Magic. Could Lilith swallow it all?

She remembered how the spear’s glow dulled when it touched her Taint. Of course—it had been bled of Mist.

Plan set. Lilith moved.

“Try this!” She lifted her right fist. Flesh and crimson grew over her knuckles like a gauntlet. Then she fired the Taint from her fist like a rocket punch, meat-bullets screaming through the dark.

“That won’t touch me.” Kris raised her shield. The blobs splashed and clung to the black face. Lilith pulled the strings. The Taint drank hard, siphoning Death Magic until the chunks fell off heavy and spent. Tiny holes peppered the shield like worm-bites.

“It works.” Lilith breathed, a knife-thin smile. She knew the road now.

She ran again. This time, the Taint swelled with every stride and shed in clumps, trailing behind her in a long, dark red river.

“I don’t know what you’re plotting.” Kris felt it, keen as a hawk. She chose to cut it off.

“Death is the gaze from beyond the veil.” She leapt. For someone in coffin-heavy plate, she went up like a bird of dawn. Behind the Wraith, red-black fire roared like a jetpack. She hung in the air, a god from a cold sky, ready to pass judgment.

Danger. Lilith snapped her head up and met Kris’s high, cold stare. She swallowed. Instinct screamed. The Little White Dragon beat her wings to rise—half a heartbeat late.

When Lilith dove, she was a raptor folding the sun in her claws—elegant, lethal, a fear that tasted clean. Kris’s plunge was different. It was calamity. It fell on every inch of ground, and nothing under it got away.

She dropped too fast. Lilith only got her wings half open. One foot still kissed the floor.

“Ungh!” The impact blew Lilith skyward. Kris hit like a meteor. White sky and black floor in that pocket-realm smeared to ash-gray where she landed.

The deja vu rattled Lilith. In her ears, a rolling “Oooooooooooh” rose, like a crowd roaring under stone.

No time to drift. Lilith snapped her wings, trying to right herself. Kris jumped again and met her midair.

The Wraith’s spear, its edge a black crescent, came down. Lilith barely caught it on the Ancient Ark. The shock drove her like a nail into the ground. Stone split under her back.

Her wings and the Taint blunted the worst, but the force still shook her bones and shattered the floor. She couldn’t wriggle free in time for the next strike.

“Death is the end of darkness.” Black, viscous flame wrapped Kris’s spear. Lilith knew this was the edge of the Wraith’s power now. She couldn’t haul herself out. She had one road—take it head-on.

Tentacles snapped out and sketched a tight magic circle at her side. As the spear fell, blue fire and black flame twining, Lilith opened her mouth.

Cold breath roared out. Frost and snow and a dragon’s will braided into a single stream, and met the Wraith’s descent. Kris, armored like a siege tower, slammed her flaming lance into the breath. The black shield shouldered most of the force. The spear bit through the rest. Inch by inch, it pressed toward Lilith. She poured more power, and her breath howled thicker.

“Moonlight is where the shadow returns!” Kris spoke again. The ghost-blue in her eyes dimmed after the spell. Lilith’s breath buckled anyway.

“Oooooooooooh!” The lance punched through the frost. It drove through Lilith’s chest. The heavy shield slammed her skull. Skin split. Blood washed half her vision red.

“Kh—!” It felt like the spear had stabbed half her lung. Her limbs went slack. The Wraith pinned her to the floor.

“It’s over.” Kris bent close, her voice a winter bell. “I win. You’re a strong warrior. Even I had to pay a price to beat you. Now I’ll taste your soul. I hope your flavor matches the cost.”

She reached for Lilith’s head—then stopped. The Little White Dragon was smiling.

“I told you… told you… cough… you’re the prey.” Blood broke her words, but her grin was wild.

“What—” Kris moved to pull back, too late for prayer.

Tentacles burst from the floor. Scarlet feelers touched her armor and turned ash in an instant. The next wave surged in, a tide crowding through the gap, eager to fill every dead-white space the dying flesh left behind.

The ground beneath the Little White Dragon had become a breeding sea. The tentacles swamped Kris. Her spear, her shield, her armor, even the mist woven through the air—everything was swallowed by that heaving red ocean.

The lance pinning Lilith was chewed down by smaller tendrils, gnawed to a nub. She staggered up and pulled the last shard from her chest.

The hollow sealed at once under the Taint. Red-black flesh knit the wound, and, in a few breaths, smoothed into Lilith’s pale skin.

The Little White Dragon did not look quite the same as she usually did.

Her snow-white hair bled into red and black, as if Taint had seeped through it like spilled ink. Her white clothes picked up flecks of night, like ash drifting over fresh snow. The mist that used to belong to Kris thinned, then warped into Lilith’s leaking Taint, like clear fog rotting into bog-breath. Even the pair of small, milk-white horns on her head were wrapped and stained, reddened and blackened like coral drowned in pitch.

“You really made me into this.” Lilith eyed her small hands, swaddled in Taint, and let out a light laugh, a bell under a shroud. Like this, she was far more dangerous than usual.

Kris was spat out by Lilith’s tendrils with a wet shudder. She returned to the shape Lilith first saw—fragile and human, like a fledgling fallen from a nest. The Little White Dragon drew every wisp of Moonswallow Mist out of her body, silver vapors coiling like moonlit threads. Now she was free of Eternal Life’s leash altogether, as if the last chain had snapped in the dark.

“We need to find Eternal Life fast.” Lilith pulled back her released tendrils. The Little White Dragon froze an ice mirror before her, a palm-sized lake of glass. Lilith set a small hand to her cheek and whispered, breath frosting the surface, “Before I completely lose control.”