Chapter 102: Leviathan

Chapter 102: Leviathan

Find them! Kill Them! Let them not escape!

The distant words thundered inside her skull like a monsoon that had made landfall. So many times, his orders were insistent but resistable, for it was hard to force water into any shape that it did not choose. For example, the day before when, the voice had demanded that she crush that boat. Hed meant the one with the children, of course, but she had resisted, for she hated the slaughter of children and vented his bloodlust of the boat that had followed it instead.

Given time, the Lich would have ordered her to destroy the second skiff too and drown all those innocent lives, but it had more important matters to focus on and had left her to gather the mangled bodies of the drowned and bring them back to its lair.

Today, there was nothing to distract it from seeing its will done, and those commands built up with a tidal force that could not be denied. They were a lightning bolt into Orozas heart. They made her shackles burn with power that made it impossible to resist her own destructive impulse. At least for the moment, though, she could face off against warriors that probably deserved it.

The knight glowed with a light that no longer existed in the world that made her think of cool spring days after the snow melt had started in earnest, but the reminiscence wasnt enough to give her the strength to resist the Lich. She would save that strength for the moment it forced her to indiscriminately murder the children who were huddled in fear nearby.

The knight led with a series of strikes as the white fire coruscating across his gilded armor burned even brighter. These werent strong enough to do real damage. He was simply testing her mettle and buying time for his friend.

At first, she thought the other man sought to escape. She hoped he did. Running him down would buy the children valuable time to flee. Some might yet escape with their lives.

He didnt do that, though. He did something far stranger. He cast a spell, which was something shed only seen a few times since shed been chained to this corpse. Instantly, blue lightning struck her hard. It cooked the flesh where it went up her arm and then down into one of her left legs. It did very little damage, though, and she roared in annoyance more than pain.

She charged him then, planning to deal with the mage before he could think of some more effective tactic. He responded with fire.

The body of the swamp dragon was impossibly strong, and though the fire was enough to make her shy away for a moment due to her aversion, it could do nothing to the tanned skin or thick scales of her artificial, necrotic prison.

As the flames cleared, though, it was clear that theyd provided just enough distraction for the paladin to charge through him. The main was clearly insane, but his burns healed even as he moved, and when his glowing sword struck, it glanced off one of her ribs and pierced the heart of the body that contained her in her chest.

It was a violent, terrible pain that represented more damage than anyone had done to the monstrosity since Oroza herself had savaged it. It wasnt enough, though, and she batted him harmlessly away into the grass.

Her blow didnt keep him down any more than his blow had kept her down, though. Neither did her tail. He dodged it entirely, though she did succeed in sending the mage sprawling. She doubted that one would rise again, which was just as well because she hated fire.

The bars of the ribcage were coated in ugly, rusted iron, but at their core, they were still bone, and when she crushed them, they fell apart like rotten wood in her rubbery finger. As Oroza jumped to the ground, free of her cage for the first time in an eternity, she was sorely tempted to immediately drop the corpse shed been bound to and flee into the water. She didnt, though. Not yet. She still had things to do.

Standing there on one foot and one stump, she turned her attention to the straining corpse of the swamp dragon that loomed above her.

You cannot escape me! The Lich screamed in her mind, but she ignored it. Without the chains hed held her with for so long, his orders and compulsions passed through her, leaving only a ripple in their wake.

I am no longer yours to command, she whispered as she engaged with it in a battle of wills over what the swamp dragon would do next.

Now that she was no longer attached to it, shed lost some of her advantages over the darkness that was trying to make the hodgepodge of reptile bones strike her down, along with all the other living creatures currently sheltered in her wake.

They stood like that long enough for the knight to stagger to his feet and make his way toward the fragile boat that everyone else was already aboard. She ignored that, though. Instead, she forced the dragon to reach up and crush its own skull between its two monster paws while the Lich raged in her soul at what she was doing.

That didnt stop her from forcing it to grab the structural clavicle that held her cage in place so long and rip it off of the rest of its body before it collapsed into pieces on the ground next to her.

I shall rebuild my dragon and devour you once more, goddess! the Lich bellowed, but she could hear its fear now.

If you are foolish enough to enter my waters again, you shall be the one to pay the price, she whispered. Already walking to the water.

The Lich started to respond, but she didnt hear it. By the time it had started to scream again, her toes had touched the water of the river, of her river, and she immediately left the corpse, which collapsed into the shallows like a puppet with the strings cut.

It was an exhilarating feeling. She knew she would never truly feel clean again thanks to all of the horrific things that the Lich had done to her, to say nothing of the things it had forced her to do. She still allowed herself a moment to just experience the feeling of being one with the river once more. Her consciousness rippled along the length of her domain, from the still-tainted headwaters to the brackish delta shed spent so much time in the last few years. Everything was where she had left it, more or less, and she could now begin again in the endless cycle of nature.

First, though, she had to finish dealing with the Lich. With a thought, the current rippled, snatching the corpse that had been her for far too long and dragging it down into the depths for the fish and the eels to devour. She had no idea what the darkness might be able to do with something so powerfully associated with her, but she would rather die than find out the hard way.

Once that was done, she blended in with the currents, finally unfurling the ghostly, sinuous nature that was a river dragon and using it to drag the boat back out into the channel and upstream against the current before the Lich could launch some new monster to slaughter all the children onboard the fragile vessel.