Forty-Three
“For a thousand years, only one has ever cracked my shell.” The black silhouette crawled from the giant bug’s head, pulp like mud clinging as it rose. It ripped the leftover chitin like wet bark, and a head pushed through like a seedling breaking loam.
“She tore my shell and glimpsed my true self. So I kept her from her true form for a thousand years. Thinking on it now, it’s time.” The shadow strode out of the remains, step by dragged step, each footfall flattening sand like a slow tide.
“You’re the second in a millennium. I admit, you’re far stronger than she was. Pity.” The shadow stopped before Lilith. Its face was nothing but a slab of ink, an outline filled with night, every detail swallowed by pitch.
“I’ll bury you.” A bolt of blue-violet lightning fell like a banner from the storm, striking the shadow squarely before the Little White Dragon.
The crackling light sketched her features at last. A woman’s face, fine as carved jade, hair a wild river of blue-violet down her back. Scars laced her cheeks like old map lines, the proof of campaigns written on skin. She reached, and a streak of lightning slid into her palm, hardened into a spear’s sharp line, the tip leveled at Lilith.
“No. Maybe we should close the book on history first.” Thousand Legs balanced the spear and studied Lilith for two heartbeats, calm as still water. She rolled the point and let that danger swing toward the Ancestor of Ice Spirits nearby. “A revenge that spans a thousand years—cutting down the avenger who chased you for a millennium is the best medal a warrior can claim. I crave it, the way you crave my death.”
“I’m not as twisted as you.” The Ancestor of Ice Spirits tightened her grip on her wand, frost settling behind her eyes. Her voice hit like sleet. “Of course I want revenge. Look at what you did to my people. If not for you, our young wouldn’t have died in droves. We wouldn’t have fled to permafrost and ceded the broad lands of Usas to those later interlopers. Don’t mix my hatred with your perversion.”
“Say whatever you like. The ending’s the same.” Thousand Legs didn’t care; her boredom showed in the lazy sway of her spear, lightning dripping like rain. “I’ll kill you, then praise you as the brave who dared challenge me twice. You’ll be one more laurel on my glorious record.”
She didn’t finish. While she was dreaming up the best pose to showcase the kill, a blade wrapped in dark red malice flashed for her neck like a blood moon.
“What—” The sudden strike rattled her, a hawk hitting the blind side. But her strength was iron. In a blink, she lifted the spear and caught Lilith’s cut, thunder ringing like a cracked bell.
The half-dragon didn’t disengage. She surged in instead, four thick claws locking down her prey like iron roots, while her tail coiled the spear’s shaft, binding it like a serpent around a branch.
Thousand Legs didn’t flinch at the trapped weapon. She shoved forward, spear braced, weight like a mountain driving the smaller Little White Dragon back. Then she snapped a kick, heel a hammer to Lilith’s belly. The impact folded her, sent her stumbling, and tore a wide opening like a rent in canvas.
Thousand Legs pounced. Blue-violet thunder fell with her stepping lunge, crowning her in sparks. The storm fed her; her speed spiked like a sudden squall, and she nearly ran the Little White Dragon down.
“A sneak attack? Dishonorable. Take my spear!” She thrust. The lightning lance split the air like ice cracking on a river, point streaking for the little dragon’s face.
The Little White Dragon wasn’t unprepared. Fear spiked first, then focus snapped tight. As the thrust came, the Primordial Ark in her palm finished drinking power.
The Great Rend tore the air before Lilith like silk under a knife. She slipped through a tunnel between spaces, surfacing from a slit behind Thousand Legs like a fish breaking dark water. She left behind a spray of needles from the cosmos and a gash in the world, and Thousand Legs, too late to recall her spear, slammed headlong into it and took the wound full-on.
“Aaah!” Thousand Legs screamed, raw as a gale over bare stone. The thunderheads above seemed to feel her pain; they gave a wolfish howl and spat a bolt. Lightning poured down her frame again, brighter, denser, knitting her like fire sealing a split glaze.
“How’s that fair?” The Little White Dragon sighed, frustration first, then helpless humor. She’d scraped a sliver off that health bar with sweat and blood, and the sky just handed it back. How do you fight that?
Her own recovery wasn’t bad, sure. With the power of the White Holy Maiden fully in her hands, Lilith could cleanse and heal her wounds in a blink, soft light like fresh snow. But if it came to ending this, she’d need the Taint. Without it, she had no clean way to break the knot named Thousand Legs.
“Ancestor of Ice Spirits, got any ideas?” Her steps turned lotus-light. She slipped, pivoted, and flowed to the Ancestor’s side like mist, then leaned close, voice low as falling frost.
“I don’t have a good answer.” The Ancestor’s face was grave, a glacier under cloud. Her eyes tracked the lightning stitching Thousand Legs whole. She had seen this human shape once. Back then, she’d bled herself dry against the bug form and finally pried off that shell. The moment she glimpsed the person inside, a few cuts ended her. She truly didn’t know what to do.
“It’s fine. I’ll think of something else.” Lilith shook her head. Disappointment flickered, then steadied resolve. The Ancestor owed her nothing. Better to rely on her own claws than wait on borrowed snow.
While the Little White Dragon weighed ways to handle a foe fattened by storm, the giant bug-shape below the clouds had almost mended under the rain of thunder. Thousand Legs hefted her lightning-forged spear and came on, one heavy step at a time, like drums across a plain.
Watching her close in, the Little White Dragon couldn’t help it—she swallowed, throat tight as dry sand.
