Chapter 28
At the first shiver of disturbance, the Little White Dragon moved. The Primordial Ark, barely stowed, flashed back into her palm like a returning comet. The shears knew no temper; they snapped up and took the first blow for Lilith like a faithful shield.
Her eyes tracked like hawks on a cliff. What came at her were thick steel rebars, pikes stabbing from the dark. The Little White Dragon felt the next wave would hit from every side. The wrongness stung like frost. Lilith skipped any chant and loosed three Frost spells, cocooning herself in a solid lump of ice.
As expected, the very next heartbeat, a brutal impact slammed into that ice, like a battering ram on winter stone.
The shock carried the Little White Dragon out of the room like a leaf in a flood. She hugged her head tight, so she wouldn’t crack her own ice in the tumble.
Nidhogg reacted a beat late. Only when the ice shell bloomed did the Black Dragon spring.
She lunged like an arrow, lips moving in the wind. Word Spirit Magic rose from her throat.
[Fix!] Nidhogg didn’t have time for a stronger Word. She burned half her mana and pushed that single glyph to its widest edge.
The attacker stalled for a blink, then ripped through the binding like a wolf through reeds. It barreled for Lilith and blasted her out of the cramped room in a spray of dust.
Nidhogg rushed after. Broad, night-black wings unfurled behind her like storm-torn sails, and she dove along the fissure where Lilith had been dragged, chasing into the split earth.
A crimson dragon head thrust up before her like a sunrise of blood.
Nidhogg couldn’t be wrong. That was the head of the Golden Dragon.
Stronger by far than the shade they’d met in Bosaklie’s depths, the Golden Dragon’s true soul loomed before her like a mountain in dusk.
“Hard bone to chew,” Nidhogg chuckled, scales of midnight flooding her hands like ink. She clenched both fists and smiled thinly. “Too bad. I’m harder. If you could snatch her, you’ve got support. Let me guess—your bones? Or your blood?”
“Relax. You can’t beat her,” the Black Dragon said, pointing past the soul of the Golden Dragon with a careless flick, like flicking ash. “If you’d come sooner, before she got a new weapon, maybe you’d have forced a slog. Now? You’re just her whetstone.”
She knocked her fists together. Her face sank like thunder gathering over sea.
“I’m in a hurry to see her. I don’t care what you are. Don’t block me.” Her hands had become dragon claws, her body swelling fast into a true wyrm’s silhouette, like a storm cloud swelling to burst. Ever since leaving the Dragon Territory, she hadn’t cut loose. Truth be told, her claws itched.
A blind fool had come knocking. Perfect knuckles to test.
Lilith felt weight vanish, as if tossed into deeper dark. The ice sphere she’d called creaked like a boat in ice. With only a third of her Frost magic feeding it, that shield wouldn’t hold long.
A breath before it gave, the Little White Dragon snipped the Primordial Ark forward. The great blade sheared a bone in the attacker, its edge slicing the air like silk, taking a length of white with it and slowing the rush.
She wouldn’t wait to drown. Back when it was only the Elemental Ark, she could cut space and slip like a blink. With the Primordial Ark, it was a knife through paper.
She snapped a second cut. Space split before Lilith like torn canvas, a rift yawning. The Little White Dragon slid into it like a fish into a current, and the next instant she stepped out behind the attacker, thunder cracking in her wake.
The relentless barrage stuttered and broke. It clawed empty air, then ate a neat combo from Lilith. The attacker tumbled out of the wall, bones clattering like hail off stone.
Bones, one after another, knit before the Little White Dragon, lacing themselves into a colossal skeleton of a dragon.
No—more precise, the skeleton of the Golden Dragon took shape, towering like bleached cliffs.
A bone dragon stood facing Lilith, skull lowered, eye hollows fixed on her like cold moons, as if weighing how to deal with a small, troublesome mortal.
Lilith spotted it: gold liquid welling under its feet, gleaming like molten dawn. The Little White Dragon knew that was the Golden Dragon’s blood. She didn’t wait. Two ice lances snapped from her fingers and pinned the climbing gold, nailing it to stone like butterflies to cork.
“Sharp. Fitting for that one’s descendant.” The golden blood recoiled like a tide, then gathered, condensing into a dragon of metal-bright gore, smaller than the bone wyrm beside it, a river against a mountain.
“You mean Gaia? I’m not her kin. Wrong door if you want revenge.” Lilith gripped her blade. She still remembered Gaia slapping this thing into pulp—no elegance, all splatter, a mess of ruined beauty.
“Not so. The Mother of Earth is fearsome, but we no longer fear sleeping ground. We walk with death, and the God of Death has slept too long. That seat should change hands.”
The Golden Dragon’s words wiped the smile from the Little White Dragon’s face like wind dousing a candle.
“You’re eyeing the Grim Reaper’s throne? The Nameless One’s not dead—he’s just pinned in bed by Lord Icarus every day and can’t get up. And you think you can poach the Reaper?” The Little White Dragon hadn’t expected ambition this high. Eyes on the heavens, mind full of stolen thrones.
The last would-be god had gotten popped over Morris, a blister under her blade. This one wouldn’t end better.
“So I’m your mark? What good am I? Shouldn’t you—” Lilith paused. The pieces clicked like stones in a stream. “You’re after a Divine Fragment. Somehow, your bones and blood didn’t vanish. I bet you seized the Reaper Fragment stored in Bosaklie. You can’t reach the other Reaper Fragments in Morris or the Grand Mausoleum. So you set your sights on me, the one carrying another Divine Fragment.”
“Of course.” The Golden Dragon nodded, cool as frost, confirming her guess. “I meant to move on the Reaper Fragment trailing you. But only when my blood meets the Legendary Sword can I unleash all my strength. In that case, we had no choice. Hitting you was the highest-odds play.”
“Then you really underestimated me.” Lilith raised the Primordial Ark, her gaze cold as moonlight on steel. “You dared reach for Litt? You’d better be ready to lose your head.”
