Chapter Forty-Two

The Ancestor of Ice Spirits leapt down from on high, her blue-white staff like winter lightning in her grip. She strode to the Little White Dragon’s side, breath cool as frost, voice ringing like chimes. Three, four ice-laced spells lifted behind her, drifting like bright snowflakes.

“Thousand Legs! I never forgot the shame of losing to you,” she said, chin tilted like a blade against the wind. “Let me see—besides getting fatter, did you improve at all?” One hand settled on her hip, the other on the staff, her words flung like hail at a giant bug far beyond her weight class.

“I wondered who dared,” the giant insect rasped, voice dry as sand, pride glinting like a black carapace. “So it’s the former loser. Cough, cough. You’re shameless enough to rely on a junior for revenge?”

Its body—carved open by Lilith—showed several gaping seams, like ravines in night rock. Plates of black shell stood cracked into wide fissures; in the howling gale they trembled, ready to fall like loose slate.

Even beaten ragged, the giant insect’s tone stayed domineering, arrogance piled like dunes. Its most prized shell had been stripped by the Little White Dragon, yet it preened as if crowned. The Ancestor couldn’t hold her breath; laughter burst from her like breaking ice.

“Ha! You look like that and still mouth off. Enough—words are wind. Let me test how much you’ve grown.” Her staff swept like a falling comet, and she hurled all three spells at the towering bug, light glinting like shards of snow.

“Hmph. Petty tricks.” The storming winds around it rose like a wall of sand, batting the spells aside. The blizzard failed to breach the thick dust-guard; only a sheen of frost settled on its brow like a thin winter glaze.

She didn’t blink. She never meant to wound with trifles; strategy flowed cold and clear like glacier melt. She knew Thousand Legs like a map—the hard ridges, the soft underbelly, the force required to break each plate, all etched in memory like carvings on ice.

Those spells had one purpose: draw its gaze like decoys in snow. Then carve a chance for the Little White Dragon.

The creations of the gods are ancient as starfall, of the same era as the divine. Yet gods die by forgetfulness—fading like incense smoke in a temple. Their creations die by killing—simple and sharp as a blade.

So even a giant bug without a clear weak point could be solved: take its head, like cutting the knot from a tangled rope.

But the creature was too vast; even the Primordial Ark couldn’t lop off that mountain-sized head in one stroke. Even the Black Dragon, with his sheer bulk like a storm cliff, could only tear at the skin and flesh on Thousand Legs’ head; ripping it clean was a fantasy, a mirage over hot sand.

The Little White Dragon still found a way, bright as a path through fog.

While Thousand Legs traded barbs with the Ancestor, blind to the pale shadow at its flank, Lilith slipped under the cover of those spells like a ghost in snowfall. The Taint gathered at the Little White Dragon’s waist, shaping into a belt like a dark river.

The Primordial Ark shrank in her hands, steel starlight narrowing like a moon’s crescent, just right to hang from that belt. She slung it on like a rite, movement quiet as night wind.

“This too is ritual,” she breathed, words soft as drifting ash. The Taint condensed in Lilith’s palm into a small box like a heart wrapped in lacquer. She flipped the lid; inside lay richly patterned flesh, pulsing like crimson vines. She pressed it to the blade, red meets silver like dusk meeting stars.

“Transform!” The Little White Dragon drew to the side with a swift motion, a metallic sigh like a reed in gale. The shrunken Primordial Ark wrapped in heavy dark-red Taint, its long blade vast as a river of stars now sheathed in corruption, gaining a wicked aura and a strange, antique grace like lacquered blood.

She shifted into her long-missed half-dragon form, a silhouette like storm and crown. White scales laced with dark red veins made her look like a Demon King loosed upon the world, pressure rolling like thunderheads. Claws replaced hands, keening like knives; her eyes became violet slits, cold as night irises. She shed the gloss of Stellar Magic like silk peeled from stone, showing her true face like a blade drawn.

Before Thousand Legs could react, she leaped, wings flaring white and feathered like snow gulls. They kept their familiar shape—small and clean—only larger by a span, bright as a crescent swan over sand.

Lilith rose with her, a streak through the wind. Cloaked in Taint flesh, the White Dragon drove her blade and body like a spear, and stabbed into the bug’s side, entry clean as ice cracking.

The giant insect thrashed, desert roaring like a drum. This time her strength had surged like spring flood. She still couldn’t meet it head-on like Nidhogg, force against force like colliding storms; that didn’t mean she was helpless. Lilith had crushed a Demon King face to face, a feat bright as lightning. Against a lumbering thing with weak control, the White Dragon had her trick, sharp as a hook in current.

“Nidhogg!” she called, her voice an arrow through wind. In perfect sync, the Black Dragon rose like a black gale; his claws drove in from the far side, talons biting like iron.

White Dragon and Black Dragon carved from left and right, their arcs like twin scythes in harvest. Only a thin tether of flesh still tied the head to the body, a sinew string quivering like a spider’s thread. The giant trembled, color sliding from pitch black to dark violet like ink thinned by rain.

The sand-armored gale around it faded, peeling like husk. A massive black cloud smothered the sky like a lid over a cauldron. Bolts fell from it in chains, spears of white fire slamming down, each strike a bell on iron.

That dark-violet skin seemed to store charge, a battery of storm; blue-violet arcs crawled over its hide like snakes of light. The White Dragon and Nidhogg didn’t flinch, courage hard as granite; but lightning made its flesh iron-hard, anvil under hammer. Even Nidhogg’s claws and the White Dragon’s blade jarred to a halt, sparks snapping like insects in a lantern.

“Old fossil, die!” the Ancestor spat, her voice a shard of ice. She wasn’t here to gawk. She had lost to Thousand Legs once, a scar like a black line across winter. She had dreamed of this moment every day, revenge coiled like a white serpent.

A howling ice storm surged at her call, snow whirled like knives. It sliced the last connection between head and body, clean as a guillotine in frost.

Thunder’s thousandfold weight went silent in a heartbeat, sound swallowed like a stone into deep water. The head hit the ground with a wet slap, and burst into sludge, sticky as tar in rain.

The lifeless body stood like a mountain in the desert, shadow broad as a tomb. Yellow sand drifted down around it like a shroud, sealing the scene like an old grave.

“Is it over?” The Little White Dragon hovered, breath steady as winter fog. Out of caution, she kept her half-dragon form, armor and veins set like runes.

“Not yet.” The Ancestor’s face tightened, calm drawn taut like a bow. She stared at the heap of mud and flesh, eyes cold as moonlight. From that mound, a shape began to rise, slow as a shadow from a pit.

“Ready yourselves,” she said, voice low as wind under ice. “The real act starts now.”