Jörmungandr coiled its massive body around the entire Sixty-Sixth Floor, its scales scraping against the walls, the ceiling, the ground. The World Serpent had finally revealed its full form—and it was preparing to strike.
Damien felt it before he saw it.
The mana in the air shifted. Condensed. Focused. Every scale on the serpent's body began to glow with a faint, deadly light.
"Shit," Damien whispered.
He raised his hand.
"Return."
Every shadow soldier on the battlefield dissolved into darkness. Hundreds of them....the Nidhogg Broods, the lesser monsters, the army he had built over months of fighting...all of them vanished, retreating into the safety of his shadow.
He could not afford to lose them. Not to an attack like this.
The glow intensified.
Jörmungandr's entire body erupted in explosions.
Massive AOE magic. Fire and ice and lightning and something else...something older...blasted across the floor. The cavern walls shattered. The ground cracked. The ceiling rained down chunks of stone and ice.
Damien stood in the far from the chaos, watching what could have been the death of his army
When the explosions finally stopped, he was alone.
He looked at the destruction around him. The cavern was unrecognizable. What had once been a vast, frozen hall was now a cratered wasteland of broken stone and melted ice.
"Only the strong survive," Damien muttered.
He raised his hand again.
"Igris. Diana. Adonis. Baal."
Four shadows emerged from the darkness at his feet. His lieutenants. His strongest soldiers. He could not afford to waste mana on an army that would only be obliterated by the serpent's next attack. Better to focus his power where it mattered most.
He pulled his daggers from their sheaths.
"Nyx. Nótt."
"Yes, Master!" Nótt's cheerful voice rang in his mind.
"We are ready," Nyx said, calm and steady.
Damien drove both blades into his chest.
The shadow energy exploded outward. It wrapped around him like a second skin...dark, living, pulsing with power. Armor formed around his body. Regal. Ancient. A crown of shadow materialized above his head. A cape of pure darkness flowed from his shoulders. His eyes turned black with purple hue, depthless, endless.
His fingers became claws...Nyx and Nótt, merged with his own flesh.
"Shadow Monarch" he said.
Jörmungandr's massive eye fixed on him.
It opened its mouth to attack.
"Baal," Damien commanded. "Now."
The goat-headed shadow leaped. Its massive form soared through the air, climbing higher and higher until it reached the ceiling of the cavern. It grabbed a pillar of ice and hung there, its single eye glowing with crimson fury.
The beam struck.
Baal's attack....the last it could use for a long time...shot downward like a spear of pure destruction. It slammed into Jörmungandr's face, forcing the serpent's eyes closed. The creature recoiled, its massive head jerking back.
"Go!"
Diana and Adonis launched themselves at the serpent.
Diana's great scimitar carved into Jörmungandr's snout—not deep enough to draw blood, but deep enough to hurt. Adonis landed on the serpent's lower jaw and drove his fists into the scales, once, twice, three times. Each punch sent shockwaves rippling through the creature's flesh.
Then Adonis grabbed the lower lip and pulled.
Jörmungandr's mouth opened.
The serpent tried to close it, but Baal descended from the ceiling. The massive shadow landed on the upper lip, its weight forcing the jaw to stay open.
Diana moved to Baal's back, her scimitar stabbing into the flesh around Jörmungandr's eye. She knew she could not blind it...the scales were too tough....but she could keep its eye closed. She could keep it blind. and protect others from it's laser beams
"Igris," Damien said. "Inside."
The shadow knight leaped into the serpent's open mouth. His greatsword flashed, stabbing at the soft flesh of the throat.
Damien attacked the lower neck.
His claws...Nyx and Nótt...slashed at the scales where the neck met the jaw. The skin was softer here. Weaker. His claws dug in, tearing through layer after layer. Blood sprayed across his face.
He activated his hidden armor's future vision.
The world blurred. Time slowed. He saw the next few seconds....Igris's sword stabbing deeper, his own claws opening the wound wider, the two attacks meeting in the middle, cutting through the serpent's neck from both sides.
He saw the switch.
He saw himself and Igris trading places...Igris outside, cutting deeper into the wound, Damien inside, doing the same.
He saw the wound connect.
Then he saw the flames.
Icy blue. Cold enough to freeze fire. They gathered in the serpent's throat, hidden, waiting. A trap.
Damien's eyes snapped back to the present.
'It expected this' he realized. 'It wanted me inside'
He did not stop.
He and Igris continued their attack. Damien's claws carved through the scales. Igris's sword stabbed deeper into the throat. They worked in sync, cutting the same wound from both sides, widening it, deepening it.
The serpent's throat glowed with icy light.
'Almost there' Damien thought.
He reached through the connection.
'Shadow Exchange'
He and Igris traded places. Damien was inside the mouth now, his claws carving at the throat from within. Igris was outside, his greatsword opening the wound from the other side.
The icy flames erupted.
Jörmungandr unleashed its hidden attack. Blue fire poured from its throat, filling the cavern with freezing light.
Damien grinned.
'Shadow Exchange''
He traded places with Baal.
The massive shadow appeared inside the serpent's mouth. Damien appeared on its upper lip, where Baal had been holding the jaw open.
Adonis released his hold on the lower lip.
Damien punched.
His fist...reinforced by shadow armor, by the power of the Shadow Monarch...slammed into the top of Jörmungandr's head. The force drove the serpent's mouth shut.
He grabbed the upper and lower lips and held them together.
The icy flames had nowhere to go.
They filled the serpent's mouth. They filled its throat. They built and built and built, searching for an escape.
They found one.
The wound.
The wound that Damien and Igris had cut....the wound that connected the outside to the inside—the wound that was not yet healed, not yet sealed.
The flames erupted through it.
Jörmungandr's neck exploded. Blood and fire and scales sprayed across the cavern. A gaping hole opened in the serpent's throat—large enough for a man to walk through.
Damien released the serpent's mouth and leaped back.
"Retreat!"
His shadows vanished into his own shadow. Baal, Diana, Adonis, Igris—all of them gone, safe, waiting.
Damien stood alone, watching the serpent thrash.
Jörmungandr's head wobbled on its damaged neck. Blood poured from the wound. The icy flames had done as much damage to the serpent as they would have done to Damien.
But the serpent was not dead.
Not yet.
Damien's eyes narrowed. He was not satisfied.
He leaped.
He flew through the air, straight toward the wound in the serpent's neck. The flames had dissipated. The blood still flowed. He entered the gaping hole and landed inside the serpent's flesh.
He raised his claws.
"Shadow Slash."
Five hundred slashes. In a single second.
His claws carved through muscle, through bone, through the last remaining threads of scale that held the serpent's head to its body. The attack was relentless, unstoppable, absolute.
Jörmungandr's head separated from its neck.
The massive skull crashed to the ground, shaking the entire floor. The body followed, coiling and thrashing before finally going still.
Damien walked out of the wound, covered in blood.
He stood over the severed head and let out a long breath.
"That was... satisfying...."
Suddenly he felt a small sting on his neck.
He reached up and grabbed something small, something that had bitten him. He threw it to the ground.
A tiny snake. The size of his hand.
It looked up at him and grinned.
"Die," it said.
Damien stared at it. He did not understand. A tiny snake? A final, petty attack from a dying creature?
He took a step....Two...And after exactly nine steps he fell
Face-first onto the ground.
His vision blurred. His limbs refused to move. His heart pounded in his chest...too fast, too hard, too wrong.
There was toxic venom into his bloodstream
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