The gray sand was quiet.
Vespera sat with her arms crossed, golden eyes sharp and distant, fixed on nothing in particular. Sabrel lay on her back a few paces away, white hair spread across the shore as she stared up at the red sky. Neither of them spoke. The silence stretched between them until it began to feel heavy.
Vespera finally sighed. Sabrel turned her head slightly.
"Have you come up with anything? Any strategy? Or should we just return to Rhelga?"
Vespera gave a small nod.
"There is a way. But it will not guarantee a complete victory."
Sabrel sat up.
"What is it?"
Another quiet exhale left Vespera.
"I can use dark magic to try to weaken the creature. It will take time to fully take effect… and a beast of that age may already possess abilities of its own."
Sabrel frowned.
"It really has abilities?"
Vespera's mouth curved.
"Such monsters are never just strong in body. Each one is born with something meant to protect it from things even we do not fully understand."
Sabrel rose to her feet and brushed the sand from her short white dress. A small, steady smile returned to her face.
"Well… You are the Blood Queen, so I will trust you."
Vespera looked at her for a moment, then smiled more deeply. She lifted one arm.
"Help me up."
Sabrel reached out.
The air changed.
A sudden, crushing wave of mana swept across the entire Red Sea and the shoreline in a single heartbeat. The pressure was so immense that the gray sand beneath their feet trembled. Both women froze, their eyes widening as the surrounding air seemed to grow heavier.
Sabrel slowly turned toward the water.
For several long seconds, there was nothing.
Then the sea exploded.
The Abyssal Matriarch erupted from the depths in a colossal column of black water and force. All ten tentacles uncoiled at once, tearing through the surface and whipping toward the crimson sky as her enormous jaws split wide. A screaming roar tore free—raw, ancient, and furious—and the sound itself became a physical wave that raced outward in perfect rings. The sand flattened beneath the pressure while the red water surged away from the creature, throwing stone and debris into the air as the Matriarch reared above the ruined coastline.
Her eyes flared with an unnatural crimson glow before her enormous head lowered.
Those six burning eyes scanned the ruined shore until they locked onto the two small figures standing there.
Sabrel and Vespera went cold. They glanced at each other once.
The Matriarch roared again and brought every tentacle down like falling towers.
The two women vanished.
The tentacles struck the empty sand with tremendous force, and the shoreline simply ceased to exist beneath them. Stone and water erupted upward in a cascading wall of destruction as the impact tore through nearly a hundred meters of coastline.
Yet before the debris had even finished rising, Vespera was already moving.
She shot upward along one of the rising tentacles in a golden streak, her blood scythe materializing in her grip as she accelerated along the creature's dark, armored surface. Two massive limbs swept toward her from opposite sides, but she dropped beneath the first and twisted around the second without losing momentum. The scythe flashed through the air and carved a deep, glowing wound into the Matriarch's hide. She continued forward, striking again and again as she moved, each swing leaving another radiant cut across the ancient flesh.
On the opposite side of the battlefield, Sabrel landed lightly on another tentacle just as five more came crashing down around her. Her feet touched the surface for barely a moment before she launched herself upward, spinning through the air as a long white sword blazed into existence within her hands. Brilliant light gathered along the blade as she climbed higher, compressing around the weapon until the surrounding air began to distort. She reached the peak of her ascent and swung with enough force to release a crescent of concentrated light toward the Matriarch.
Two tentacles crossed into its path.
The crescent shattered against them in a violent burst of radiance.
Sabrel immediately twisted away as another limb swept past her face, then flipped over a second that came from behind. She kicked off a third and launched herself higher, her sword disappearing for an instant before reappearing in both hands. This time, the light did not spread along the blade. It compressed into a single point at the tip as Sabrel pulled the weapon behind her and prepared a piercing thrust.
The sword screamed with concentrated power.
No... This is not it.
Sabrel shot forward. Her body became a white streak as she drove toward the Matriarch, leaving a trail of light hanging behind her.
Then three tentacles erupted from behind. There was no warning. They crossed the distance almost instantly.
Sabrel's eyes widened as the first slammed into her side, the second caught her across the back, and the third struck her head-on. The combined impact folded the air around her and sent her body plummeting toward the sea like a meteor.
She spun violently in the air, her white hair whipping around her face as she fought against the force carrying her downward. At the last possible moment, she twisted her body and halted herself in midair with a burst of mana, creating a compressed pocket of air beneath her feet.
For a brief moment, Sabrel steadied herself.
Then she looked up.
Two enormous tentacles were already descending toward her.
Sabrel raised her sword, but there was no time to move.
Both struck simultaneously.
The force was monstrous. The air beneath the impact collapsed as Sabrel was driven straight through the surface of the Red Sea, her body punching through the crimson water and creating a colossal crater that spread outward across the surface. She continued downward through the depths until she finally smashed into the seabed, cracking the ancient stone beneath her and sending fractures racing outward in every direction.
The Matriarch's two tentacles followed her into the depths and pinned her against the broken ocean floor, their immense weight pressing down with enough force to keep the surrounding seabed buckling beneath them.
Far above, the surface of the Red Sea continued to tremble.
The Matriarch's six red eyes locked onto the golden streak.
Every tentacle changed.
What had been heavy, crushing limbs suddenly became something far worse. They accelerated without warning, whipping through the air with enough force to make the sky itself seem to tear. Vespera twisted past the first three in a tight spiral, her dark red hair flaring behind her as a fourth tentacle thrust upward like a spear. Its tip missed her by less than a breath before punching straight through a distant cloud, the pressure alone scattering the surrounding mist.
Then the true speed came.
The tentacles blurred.
For creatures of that size, they should have been slow and ponderous, yet the Matriarch moved them with terrifying precision. Each limb cut through the air faster than the last, leaving screaming trails of displaced wind behind them as Vespera shot higher. She climbed along the length of one rising tentacle in a golden flash, using its own momentum to propel herself upward, but the Matriarch only roared and answered with even greater violence. The remaining limbs swept across the sky in overlapping arcs, crossing over one another until the air itself became a cage of black motion.
Two tentacles nearly closed around her at once.
This is insane...
Vespera's hands flashed.
Magic circles bloomed along the exact paths the limbs were taking, forming preemptive barriers of layered blood-red light. The first tentacle struck, shattering the outer barrier like glass, but she had already twisted away before the fragments could fall. A second barrier formed several meters ahead of her just as another limb came crashing through. It shattered on impact, and she immediately created another farther to her left. She was not reacting anymore. She was reading the Matriarch's movements, following every shift of muscle and every change in trajectory while predicting where each enormous limb would strike next.
For several impossible seconds, she stayed ahead.
How can a beast this size move its limbs with such speed...? It's impossible!
She dodged between sweeping tentacles, pivoted around rising limbs, and threw up barriers wherever the Matriarch attempted to close her escape routes. Every collision sent fragments of shattered magic raining toward the Red Sea, glowing like burning petals against the crimson water while Vespera continued moving through the storm.
Then the tentacles outran her perception.
What's this?... This is just...!
One moment, she could still see them. The next, they were simply there.
They filled every angle around her, black limbs converging from above, below, and both sides with such speed that even her magic could no longer find enough space to form between them. Vespera's expression tightened as she realized she had nowhere left to go.
I cannot keep up!
In the final fraction of a second, she crossed her arms.
A perfect crimson sphere snapped into existence around her body.
All ten tentacles struck at once. The sound was catastrophic.
The sphere held for less than a heartbeat before the combined force crushed through its outer layers and drove Vespera downward like a meteor. She and the collapsing barrier slammed into the gray sand with enough power to excavate a wide crater, pulverized stone and red water exploding outward in a violent ring.
The crimson sphere bounced once.
Then again.
Each impact sent Vespera and the remnants of her barrier skipping across the ruined shoreline in violent ricochets, carving trenches through the sand before the sphere finally cracked apart beneath the force.
Vespera struck the ground a final time and slid through the debris, golden light sputtering around her body as she came to a stop.
Above her, the Matriarch's enormous shadow once again swallowed the entire shore.
Vespera pushed herself up from the cratered sand, golden light flickering weakly around her shoulders. She lifted her head and stared.
Damn it!
The Abyssal Matriarch filled the sky. Against that black mountain of scale and tentacle, Vespera looked no larger than a spark.
The Matriarch's limbs lashed toward her—
—and stopped.
Its great head tilted downward, all six burning eyes narrowing as frost suddenly exploded from the Red Sea. A spreading sheet of absolute cold raced across the surface, climbing up the Matriarch's lower body within seconds and locking several of its massive limbs in place with a sound like cracking glaciers.
In the same instant, Sabrel erupted from the water in a white blur, already swinging. Her glowing sword carved rapid, precise lines across the dark scales, each cut arriving faster than the eye could follow as she climbed the frozen bulk toward the creature's stomach. Light flared brighter along the blade before Sabrel planted her feet against its armored hide and drove the sword forward with everything she had.
The Matriarch shifted.
The thrust slid harmlessly along an angled plate of armor, sparks of concentrated light scattering across the scales.
Sabrel's eyes burned.
"You... You are annoying!"
She immediately shot higher, but five tentacles were already meeting her head-on. She slipped past the first, twisted through the next two, then folded her body around the fourth and fifth as they crossed her path. Rather than retreat, she continued upward and began orbiting the Matriarch's upper body like a living comet, her white sword flashing through the air and leaving glowing scars across skin and scale with every pass.
The Matriarch's retaliation shook the sea.
All ten tentacles came at once.
Sabrel rocketed backward, creating distance before stopping hard in midair. For a brief moment, she hovered against the crimson sky, sword held at her side as the storm of black limbs converged below.
Then she launched herself straight into it.
The first tentacle came from her left. Sabrel met it with a full-powered slash that knocked its enormous body aside and sent a shockwave tearing across the water. The second swept in immediately afterward, and she deflected it with a spinning kick reinforced by pure force, the impact twisting the limb away from her. The third and fourth converged from opposite directions, forcing Sabrel to cross her sword through both attacks and redirect them with a pair of violent strokes that sent overlapping shockwaves racing across the Red Sea.
For a moment, she held the center of the assault through sheer strength and precision, moving between the colossal limbs before they could close around her.
Then one tentacle slipped outside her field of vision.
It thrust upward with brutal accuracy and caught her cleanly in the side.
Sabrel folded around the impact and plummeted, a thin crimson line of blood trailing from her nose as the force sent her downward. Yet her eyes still burned—hotter now, almost feverish. She forced herself steady in the air just as two more tentacles came crashing down from above.
Her muscles tightened. She gritted her teeth, then met the tentacles head-on.
The Matriarch looked down.
Its two enormous limbs had stopped.
Sabrel had seized them with both hands, her arms pressed against their armored surfaces as she twisted against their overwhelming strength. White light screamed along her arms while the tentacles strained beneath her grip, their immense bodies trembling as she forced them apart.
"I... shall not... waver!"
The Matriarch's roar changed. There was pain in it.
Two of its colossal clawed limbs rose from the sea, their massive silhouettes cutting through the mist as they moved to crush her.
Sabrel saw them coming.
Frost surged from her body and raced along the two tentacles she had captured, coating their surfaces in white ice before freezing them solid in an instant.
For one heartbeat, the limbs stopped moving.
Then the ice shattered.
The Matriarch's raw strength tore through the frozen restraints, sending fragments of ice scattering through the air.
Sabrel's eyes widened.
The two clawed limbs descended like falling fortresses.
Sabrel shot upward, narrowly slipping past the first, but a tentacle she had failed to track whipped out from her blind spot and struck her full-force across the back.
The impact launched her like a white comet.
She tore across the Red Sea, passing high over Vespera in a streak of light and blood before disappearing beyond the far horizon in a single, terrifying second.
Vespera coughed once, the sound rough in the sudden quiet. Her golden eyes flicked toward the far horizon where the white streak had vanished, concern tightening her expression for a brief moment. Then she turned back to the Abyssal Matriarch.
The two of them stared at each other across the ruined shore. The air between them felt cold and heavy, stretched thin by their mutual recognition of power.
Vespera's lips curved into a small, sharp smile.
"You're too tough," she said, her voice carrying easily over the water. "All that durability… and you still stand there unfazed."
The Matriarch's eyes narrowed. The burning red lights dimmed slightly, focusing.
Vespera raised one eyebrow. The crushing pressure around them eased by a fraction.
"What…?"
A low, resonant growl rolled out of the Matriarch's chest.
Vespera tilted her head.
"Can you understand my words?"
The answer came in movement. All ten tentacles lifted once more, dark and dripping, ready to erase the small golden figure from the shore.
Vespera sighed.
"I need to buy time."
She raised her right hand. Dark-red mana flared at her fingertips like liquid fire. Above the Matriarch's massive head, the air tore open. A wide, circular portal bloomed into existence, its edges rippling with crimson light. The opening expanded rapidly until it hung over the beast like a second, bleeding sky.
Then the swarm came.
They poured from the portal in a living flood—hundreds, then thousands. Each one was the size of a horse, yet built far leaner and more angular. Their bodies were a deep, glossy crimson, segmented and sharp, with long, blade-like limbs and translucent wings that hummed with a sound like grinding glass. Faceted eyes glowed a dull, hungry red. They did not scatter. They descended as a single, coordinated swarm, covering the Matriarch's head, shoulders, and upper tentacles in a seething, biting carpet of dark red bodies.
The Abyssal Matriarch roared.
The sound shook the coastline. Tentacles whipped and slammed in every direction, crushing dozens of the creatures against its own scales or driving them into the sea. Yet for every fly destroyed, more poured from the portal, crawling into the gaps between armor plates, latching onto softer tissue near the eyes and joints. The Matriarch thrashed harder, a mountain of black scale and fury trying to swat away an endless storm of sharp-edged beasts that refused to die quickly enough.
Vespera lowered her hand, golden eyes calm as she watched the chaos she had unleashed while the portal continued to vomit more of the crimson swarm into the red sky.
The cuts along her hands and legs began to close.
Dark-red flesh knitted itself back together in slow, deliberate waves. The deeper gashes faded to thin lines, then to nothing. She flexed her fingers once, testing the repaired skin, then lifted her face toward the sky.
Morning light poured down without mercy. The heat of it pressed against her skin, heavy and bright. Her golden eyes sharpened.
"This is a problem," she murmured.
She clenched both fists at her sides.
Fighting under daylight is always harder. The morning light alone holds me back.
Her gaze returned to the thrashing silhouette of the Abyssal Matriarch. The crimson flies still swarmed across its upper body, forcing the ancient beast to waste motion crushing them, but the damage was superficial at best. The Matriarch's roars carried more rage than pain.
The best I can do right now is distract it… or slow it down.
She studied the shifting black scales, the way the tentacles moved, and the places where the armor looked thickest.
My mana isn't enough to break through that durability outright. But if I can focus everything on a single point—forcibly create an opening, even a small one—it might expose a weakness… I think.
Vespera's eyes flicked back to the bright red sky. The light felt heavier than before.
If this fails, I'll have to resort to dark magic.
Her expression tightened. The thought alone carried weight.
It will drain me terribly under this light… but I must try.
She drew a slow breath, golden mana beginning to gather once more around her fingertips as the Matriarch continued to rage beneath the endless storm of crimson flies.
Then... the air behind her suddenly tightened.
She spun just as a blinding white streak tore past her. The shockwave of displaced wind slammed into her side and sent her skidding several meters across the sand. In the same instant, a raw, furious roar split the morning.
Sabrel had returned.
She blazed with brilliant white light, so intense that it washed the red sky pale. Her sword swept in a single, massive horizontal arc.
Frost exploded from the blade in a roaring tidal wave of absolute cold—far denser and more violent than anything she had shown before. The attack did not try to cut the Matriarch. Instead, it engulfed the entire upper body of the beast, the swarming crimson flies, and a wide swath of the Red Sea itself.
In the space of only a few heartbeats, the roaring black mountain of scale and tentacle was sealed inside a colossal, jagged iceberg that rose higher than the cliffs. The trapped flies became dark specks frozen mid-flight within the translucent walls. The Matriarch's furious thrashing slowed, then stopped completely, locked in a prison of pure ice.
Vespera's breath caught as she took in the true scale of the frost. Then a sharp, cold grin spread across her face.
Sabrel dropped from the sky and landed hard in front of her, the impact cracking the sand outward in a wide ring. The brilliant light around her body gradually bled away.
What remained was no longer the same.
White-and-silver scale armor now covered Sabrel from throat to heel, the plates overlapping like living mail yet still rough and incomplete in places, as though the transformation had not fully settled.
Two curved horns swept back from her temples. A long, sharp-edged tail lashed once behind her. Her white hair had grown longer, whipping around a face that was still recognizably hers—except for the faint sharpening of her jawline and the small, predatory points of her teeth that flashed when she breathed. Her eyes burned with raw, barely contained aggression.
Vespera studied the new form in silence for a moment, the cold grin never leaving her mouth.
"This," she said softly, "is perfect."