Sabrel clenched her armored fist until the white-and-silver scales creaked.
"It's too tough."
Vespera's voice came out quiet, almost gentle.
"Easy there, little one."
Sabrel's sharp jaws tightened. She turned her head toward the towering iceberg that held the Matriarch prisoner, white eyes burning.
"I keep getting tossed around like nothing. Its scales are hard as the oldest stone. Those tentacles move like each one has a mind of its own. And those four arms…" She stomped once. The cracked sand beneath her foot split wider with a sharp report. "Every time I think I've found an opening, it just—"
"Calm yourself."
Sabrel shook her head once, hard, then forced herself to draw a slow breath. The aggressive edge in her posture eased by a fraction.
Vespera smiled.
"That's all you have to be. Calm."
She lifted her gaze to the frozen colossus. Morning light glittered across the jagged surface of the iceberg.
"It's true," she said. "Its form is extraordinarily tough. No ordinary sword or physical attack will truly harm it."
Sabrel's tail lashed once.
"But my sword is not ordinary."
"I never said it was." Vespera's tone remained elegant, measured. "But that was never the point. A beast of this age and scale is largely immune to most physical force. That does not mean it is immune to every form of magic."
Sabrel's brow furrowed.
"I already used my frost. It failed."
Vespera nodded, still smiling faintly.
"It did. And there is a reason." She folded her hands behind her back as she spoke, voice smooth and precise. "Your frost is pure elemental cold—sharp, absolute, and beautiful. But the Abyssal Matriarch was born in the deepest reaches of this world, where cold is not an attack. It is simply the nature of the dark. The ice you create is foreign to most living things. To her, it is almost familiar. Your frost can bind her body for a time, but it cannot truly invade what was shaped by colder darkness than yours."
She paused, letting the words settle, then continued.
"Elemental affinity is a conversation of opposites. Yours and hers… are too close to speak with force."
Sabrel raised one eyebrow, clearly lost.
"What does any of that even mean?"
Vespera chuckled softly.
"You do not need to understand it right now. What matters is this: there is still a way to weaken her just enough for a finishing blow."
Sabrel's voice dropped.
"I wish I could use my divinity. But Rhelga told me not to."
Silence stretched for a moment. Vespera kept her eyes on the frozen Matriarch. Then she snapped her fingers once, the sound clean and decisive.
"The Matriarch," she said, "like the generals who once served the Dragon King, is largely immune to ordinary magic. Divinity is different. Divinity does not ask permission from the world's rules."
She turned fully to Sabrel.
"You will use it."
"I can't—"
Vespera raised a single finger.
"One minute. Only one minute." Her golden eyes held Sabrel's without blinking. "Besides… you have used it before. On the day you fought Indura. You reached for it then."
Sabrel's gaze fell to the sand. The sharp points of her teeth pressed against her lower lip.
"Back then my power was still weak. I don't know how much of it has returned. And if I use it now… it could attract the enemy. Wherever they are."
Vespera stepped closer. She reached out and took Sabrel's clawed hand in both of hers, tracing the hard edges of the white scales with careful fingers. Her voice lowered.
"All I need from you is time. Distract her. Keep her eyes on you. That is enough for me to work."
She released Sabrel's hand and stepped back, the cold grin returning.
"When she is weakened… you will deliver the finishing blow."
Sabrel exhaled through her sharpened teeth.
"Fine."
She looked up at the frozen giant, then slammed her armored fists together with a sharp metallic crack.
"So all I have to do is distract her?"
Vespera nodded once.
Sabrel's mouth curved into a fierce smile.
Inside the iceberg, six red lights shifted.
Hairline cracks spider-webbed across the translucent surface. They raced outward, branching and deepening in seconds. Then the entire structure shattered with a sound like a mountain collapsing. Shards of ice the size of towers exploded outward as the Abyssal Matriarch tore free. All ten tentacles thrashed violently, whipping the air, and a deep, resonant growl rolled across the Red Sea.
Sabrel's grin widened.
"Ah… perfect timing to unfreeze."
The Matriarch's gaze locked onto her. Something new began to leak from its massive frame—thin streams of luminous silver mana rising from between the dark scales. The light spread quickly, crawling across its body like living metal until the entire colossal form was sheathed in a pulsing silver glow.
Sabrel's eyes narrowed. Vespera's expression sharpened with genuine interest.
The glow intensified. A high, screaming pitch filled the air, rising until it became almost unbearable. Then the light erupted outward in a single violent burst. A wall of pressure and wind tore across the sea and shoreline, forcing both women to brace themselves as their hair whipped wildly behind them.
When the radiance cleared, the Matriarch had changed.
The once-dull black scales now shone with interwoven plates of dark and silver armor. Its six eyes were sealed behind segmented metal, leaving only six thin, glowing red slits. The tentacles had become leaner, almost elegant, thrashing through the air with unsettling speed and lightness. The four great limbs spread wide, claws digging into the seabed. When the Matriarch roared this time, the sound carried real weight—heavy enough to shove the red waves backward in widening rings.
Sabrel spread her arms. White claws extended fully from her fingertips, gleaming.
Behind her, Vespera took one quiet step back and vanished.
The Matriarch moved.
Its tentacles snapped backward, the tips narrowing and hardening until each one ended in a razor-sharp blade. Then it brought them down like falling judgment. The bladed limbs carved through the shore in massive, overlapping slashes, splitting the crust of the land in deep, smoking trenches.
But Sabrel was no longer there.
The Matriarch's armored head lowered, six red slits scanning the ruined sand. Nothing.
A single point of pure white light appeared high above.
The Matriarch tilted its head upward.
Sabrel was already falling.
She spun through the air like a living comet, white scales blazing, longer hair streaming behind her. At the last instant she cocked one leg back, every muscle in her armored body coiling—
—and drove her heel into the Matriarch's chest with catastrophic force.
The impact detonated across the sky in a perfect, expanding ring of white shockwave. The sound was a physical blow. The Matriarch's upper body folded around the strike; its lower half was driven deep into the Red Sea, sending a towering wall of water and crushed ice skyward. The entire coastline shuddered under the force of the collision as Sabrel's roar mixed with the Matriarch's agonized bellow.
Farther down on a fractured shoreline, Astrath and Ostrid stood watching the chaos unfold.
Ostrid threw a fist into the air, silver eyes bright.
"That's how it's done!"
Astrath laughed, the sound carrying easily over the wind.
"I've never seen you this energetic."
Ostrid grinned, long silver hair whipping around his face.
"Watching battles like this… it makes me smile."
A massive wall of water suddenly rose from the Red Sea and surged toward them, a tsunami born from the Matriarch's earlier impact. The dark wave climbed higher, roaring as it came.
Astrath simply raised one hand and pointed.
The tsunami split cleanly down the middle. The enormous volume of water parted around the two figures as if an invisible blade had cut it, flowing harmlessly to either side before crashing back into the sea behind them in twin cascades.
Astrath lowered his hand, still watching the fight.
"Well. I hope you are enjoying this to your fullest."
Ostrid's smile turned sharper.
"I hope she has what it takes."
Both of them fixed their eyes on the white-and-silver figure still trading blows with the armored Matriarch.
Sabrel weaved between the bladed tentacles in tight, precise arcs, white scales flashing. She shot upward, her sword materializing in her grip with a flare of cold light. At the peak of her ascent, she swung in a wide horizontal arc, sending a long, glowing slash screaming toward the Matriarch's face.
The attack connected—but only grazed the dark-and-silver armor, leaving a shallow white scar across the metal plates.
Sabrel's sharp teeth clenched. Two more tentacles came for her at once; she twisted between them, the blades missing by inches. She answered with a rapid series of thrusts and cuts, each one sparking uselessly against the reinforced scales. A third tentacle swept in from the side; she flipped over it, landed a heavy downward slash on another limb, then spun away as four more closed in.
The sword was buying her nothing decisive.
With a sharp snarl, she cast it aside. The weapon dissolved into motes of white light before it hit the water.
Sabrel dropped onto one of the thrashing tentacles, claws digging into the armored surface. She shot forward along its length, both hands blurring into a series of savage slashes. White energy flared with every cut, carving deep glowing lines into the limb as she raced toward the Matriarch's body.
She leapt upward at the last moment. Three sharpened tentacles stabbed through the space she had just occupied. Sabrel twisted past them, then met a fourth head-on. At the final instant, she leaned hard to the side; the bladed tip thrust past her shoulder close enough to scrape sparks from her armor. She clamped both clawed hands around the tentacle, twisted with her entire body, and wrenched it violently off-course.
The Matriarch roared and snapped the limb like a whip.
Sabrel was torn free and hurled downward. She slammed into the gray sand with enough force to excavate a wide crater, white dust and shattered stone exploding outward around her.
High above the battlefield, Vespera hovered in the open sky.
A crimson aura clung to her body like a living flame. Her golden eyes glowed bright as she watched the white-and-silver figure below trade blows with the armored Matriarch.
She's doing better than I expected, Vespera thought. At this rate… the plan will work.
A small smile touched her lips.
"If only it were a little darker," she murmured. "This would be far less troubling."
She raised both hands. The air behind her tore open as a massive magic circle bloomed into existence—rings of deep red and abyssal black, spinning in opposite directions. Dense mana coiled at its center like a restrained storm, pulsing with every rotation.
Vespera's voice dropped to a quiet murmur.
"I've been refining this spell ever since my kind fell. It was meant for Him…" Her gaze drifted to the glaring sun. "I don't know how much it will affect the Matriarch under this light." A pause. "But it's worth the attempt. I've never used it before."
She looked down at the armored girl on the shore and whispered, almost gently,
"Hold on just a little longer."
--------------
On the ground, Sabrel pushed herself up from the crater.
Her sharp tail flicked behind her. Breath came ragged through clenched teeth. She studied the Matriarch's towering, silver-armored form and let out a frustrated sigh.
I thought this form would be different… but it's incomplete. My power feels split—scattered into places I don't even understand.
The Matriarch turned fully toward her. Bladed tentacles lashed forward.
Sabrel's mouth twisted into a fierce grin.
"I really tried to fight like Him… but it doesn't seem to be working."
Cold, frost-laced mana began pouring from her body in thick white streams. She drew a short, sharp breath.
"So I'll fight the way I know best."
Her eyes sharpened into predatory slits. The small points of her teeth lengthened. Hot steam rolled from between her jaws with every exhale.
The Matriarch brought its tentacles down in wide, killing arcs—
—and the world turned white.
A colossal beam of pure white energy erupted from Sabrel's position, thicker than any of the Matriarch's limbs. It tore through the oncoming tentacles in an instant, burning straight through dark-and-silver scale with a sound like the sky itself splitting.
The Matriarch jerked its head aside at the last possible moment; the beam only grazed the side of its armored skull, carving a glowing trench across the metal and sending a spray of molten scale into the Red Sea.