Chapter 41

“Got it.” The Little White Dragon answered the Ancestor of Ice Spirits like a breeze across ice. She slipped free of Nidhogg’s embrace, and Lilith beat her pale wings, a flick of frost-white feathers carrying her to hover before Thousand Legs’ head like a snowflake before a cliff.

“Oh? Little thing, you dare crawl up here? Think I don’t eat enough and came to feed me a snack? Really—ah!” The mockery snapped in half. The scream split the air like a torn banner in a gale.

Lilith gave it no chance to spit poison. Her hand rose, the blade fell. She drove the Primordial Ark straight into its open maw, a moon-slice of steel plunging through storms of teeth. The godwrought weapon nearly skewered the giant’s skull like a spit through a boar; the sharpened Ark punched out the side of Thousand Legs’ face. If not for its mountainous bulk, she was sure that stroke would’ve taken half its head like ice calving from a glacier.

The moment the Ark bit, Lilith gripped the hilt with both hands. She dropped her weight, and dragged the sword down like shearing silk in rain. Metal hissed like sleet, carving a long, narrow seam along the worm’s flank, neat as a tailor’s cut across a sail.

Thousand Legs convulsed, a hill of chitin bucking like a storm-tossed ship. It tried to strike back, but her body was a needle of snow in a field of stone; no matter how it slammed itself into the sand sea, it couldn’t squash the Little White Dragon.

So it called the wind. Air howled from all sides, dunes uncoiling like serpents, trying to peel her away. Lilith answered with the Void Command Seat, shaping a wind-dome like a clear lantern in a storm. The gale couldn’t blow her off; instead it fed her momentum, and she opened more wounds as if skating along a frozen river.

“Aaaah!” Thousand Legs howled, a siren of pain tearing the sky. Shock curdled into fear; this tiny shard wielded the force of a thunderhead. It had thought the spell that stalled it earlier came from that once-defeated foe who’d pushed it to a grueling draw. Now it saw even that magic sprang from this nameless splinter, sudden as lightning in summer heat.

Regret burned hot as desert noon. If it had known, it would’ve cast off hollow ceremony like dead skin and ripped her apart in the first breath, not given her time to dance on its back like frost on a blade.

But once the bowstring snaps, the arrow won’t return. It couldn’t shake her now. The giant lifted its head high, a tower rearing over dunes. If wind failed, it would dive into the yellow sands, sink like a stone into a riverbed. The close-packed grains would scour her off its body like grit on glass.

Just as its head arced to spear downward, Nidhogg, who had waited in shadow-still silence, moved. She beat her wings, risen black as nightfall. Scales like wet obsidian flowed over skin; muscle swelled like thunderheads. In a breath she became a great dragon, a storm given flesh.

A twenty-odd-meter dragon looked small beside a creature over a hundred meters, a mountain beside a range. Still, Nidhogg threw herself forward without looking back, and slammed a claw down on the plunging head like a bolt pinning a beam.

Black Dragon talons, sharp as winter’s teeth, tore through the defense Thousand Legs prized like a turtle shell. With monster strength, she raked and wrenched, batting it aside. The giant toppled like a felled tower and crashed into the desert in a plume of dust.

Lilith sprang free at the perfect beat, a swallow leaping from a wave. She left the Primordial Ark buried in the beast, then looped an ice chain around her wrist and the hilt. Just like when she first dropped into Morris, she turned the long sword into a faithful grapple. Even in the air, she wouldn’t be flung like a leaf and lose the back of Thousand Legs.

The next impact hit like a drum. This time, not only golden dust rose in a halo; the jolt slapped a mouthful of green blood from its throat, a bitter spring bubbling up. Two hard crashes, and the damage ran deep, like cracks through bedrock.

Lilith meant to press the advantage. She folded like a diving hawk, matching the same posture Thousand Legs used to flee. But a sudden gale punched her upward, a hammer made of air. Only the ice chain and the sword lodged in meat stopped her from flying off like a kite cut loose.

“Waaah—!” Her cry rang out small and bright, a bell in high wind. She hung there, suspended over a roaring river of air, with no shelter from the storm’s teeth.

As she floated and weighed the strangeness of this force, Lilith caught sight of Nidhogg pinning the head again. The dragon’s claw looked small on that vast skull, but claw and blood-tinged maw worked together like saw and wedge. She split open a hole big as a well, showing white flesh and dark green blood, a winter cave behind a torn curtain.

“Graaah!” With a wet rip, Nidhogg yanked out a dark-purple gland, a bruise-colored seed. The air around them warped like heat over sand. The bound giant erupted with power, an underground spring bursting its banks. The Black Dragon was flung off like a crow in a squall. Good thing she could fly; otherwise she’d have tasted the same sky-to-sand drop as Thousand Legs.

Respect to the legendary tough-as-nails Golden Dragon.

“Careful. It’s gone berserk.” The Ancestor of Ice Spirits’ voice rang in Lilith’s ear like a chime under snow. “The place the Black Dragon broke was the organ that controls its power. Without it, its grip on wind turns wild. Be ready for a super gale.”

“Understood.” Lilith’s answer was steady as a held breath. A hard line set her face as she watched the giant, eyes like ice over deep water.

Wrapped in storm, Thousand Legs suddenly looked awe-inspiring, a mountain walking. Yellow sand coated its black shell, so from a distance it could’ve passed for a dune-ridged peak under a dusted moon.

“Damn you. You ignorant little thing, daring to hurt me? Hear me—I’ll make you pay.” Thousand Legs’ words ground out between phantom teeth, a stone mill chewing grain. Shamed and furious, it fixed Lilith with a murderous stare, and opened its maw. Wind, braided with sand, crashed at her like a desert tide.

As Lilith weighed her dodge like a swallow picking a branch, a massive block of ice hurtled in, bright as glacier glass. It slammed down in front of her, a cold wall cleaving the gale, and took the brunt like a cliff taking waves.

Lilith turned her head. The Ancestor of Ice Spirits had, at some point, lifted a frost-bound staff like a spear of winter. One hand on the staff, one finger pointing to Lilith, she spoke words that fell like warm tea in cold hands.

“I’ll aid you!”