It stings straight through the skeletal structure and down toward the center of my spine, but adrenaline suppresses the pain. Snake heads, bodies, and combined tails whip haphazardly about, forcing me to dodge and weave with gritted teeth. Occasionally I glimpse Kori through the chaos, one freezeblade still gripped tightly with both hands, armor miraculously intact.
“Kori, get out of there!”
“I didn’t come to your rescue so you could kill yourself trying to undo it,” Kori snarls over the cacophony. “Start running, flying, whatever. I’ll follow you once I slow this thing down.”
“You don’t understand. They’re here foryou.I don’t know how, or why”—I block a blast of venom with my good wing, flicking it away from my face—“but they’re not going to stop coming after you until they stop breathing.”
The two-serpent recovers itself, violent thrashes dulling to a languid wriggle. Both heads turn to focus on Kori, unseeing eyes somehow locked regardless, the wounded head spitting stray venom through a grimace, the healthy head flicking its tongue hungrily.
“And there are more of them,” I stammer. “Listen to the fighting all around us.” I hope to the Beyond my army isn’t torn to shreds beyond my sight. Based on the tumult of the distant fighting, this sun serpent attack can’t have gone well for any of us. Is General Isek all right? Or has he gone to join his son? My stomach lurches. “If the rest of the snakes converge, you can’t kill an entire sun serpent nest with one knife.”
Kori’s shoulders sag. “Then we both make a break for it. Two is still better than one.”
The irony isn’t lost on me. Two heiresses to opposing thrones, standing against twin serpents—both pairs woven irrevocably together, almost beyond recognition.
“No way you’ll cover me with that little thing.” I gesture to the remaining freezeblade as I alight beside her. “The snakes are entangled now, so they’re slower. Let me fend them off while you and Aspect run. Take Russ with you. I’ll follow.”
The healthy head lunges for Kori, fangs open wide. She parries one with the sword, sliding aside to avoid being crushed by the snake’s skull entirely. “Wait, where’s Aspect?”
From beneath the nearby crumpled bed frame, Aspect says, “HELLO!”
Kori struggles back to her feet, her grip on the freezeblade shaky. “Aspect, what the hell are you doing?”
Aspect wriggles out from under the bed, kicking themself forward with their uneven legs. Their optical processors gleam amidst the carnage. “PANICKING!”
Even the injured head seems to be regaining its senses. Our stolen moments are running out. “Talk later,” I say. “Run now.” Kori extends the freezeblade to me, but I nudge her arm away. “No, I have the planet’spower on my side. You need that blade more than I do. On my count. Three.”
Horrible hissing slips through the bared fangs above us.
“Two.”
The tangled tails rattle, twin necks arching to strike again at me and Kori.
“One.”
The combined serpents lunge. I lurch forward to meet them, arms coated with as much blazing blue energy as I can muster, my body a battering ram. Aspect squeaks their way to the somehow still-standing door of Kori’s old room, and Kori, cursing wildly in her panic, seizes their metal arm with her free hand and bolts.
My charge works. Too well. Empowered by planetary energy and fueled by my battered wings’ momentum, my fists smash the combined serpents into the ground with a tremendous crack—and the already-heavily damaged floor shatters further. A fissure erupts from the impact and splinters forward. While Russ is able to lunge aside just in time, the floor crumbles faster than Kori or Aspect could possibly outrun.
I scream Kori’s name as she plummets into the gap, reaching for Aspect, who is grasping for a handhold they don’t find.
My vision narrows, darkness dancing at the edges, everything tinged with red. This can’t be happening, not after we’ve come this far, not after I’ve suffered so much and lost myself protecting my people, only for Kori to help me find myself again. I dodge teeth, tails, and splashes of venom in a desperate rush toward the broken floor, toward the pit where Kori fell … how many stories? We’re on the fourth floor. If the hole went down several … if her body alone takes the impact …
The healthy snake lunges after me, but the one pierced by freezeblade is sluggish and pained now, drifting toward sleep. Its deadweight holds the healthy snake fast, and it turns upon its brother. Behind me,fangs pierce scales, venom flooding serpentine throats as these two brilliant beasts proceed to simply tear each other apart.
With any luck, without these two signaling their brethren, the other sun serpents might never find Kori. My soldiers can still fight them off. We can still survive this.
But from the bottom of the pit, a floor and a half down, voice cracked and weak, Kori gasps, “Adria.”
“I’m coming,” I answer, wincing as I tenderly unfurl my wings and descend to meet her. She’s fallen, but she’s in one piece; Aspect somehow is, too, but they took a hard enough blow to send them into emergency shutdown. “Those snakes are taken care of. I can get you out of here, repair Aspect again, take us all somewhere safe—”
“Adria …” Kori coughs. A warm, wet sound.
I shudder as my foot lands in a liquid scarlet puddle, slowly spreading across the stone. In muted horror, I lift my eyes to behold a long, thin, bloody scratch along Kori’s right forearm, torn clean open during the fall, armor and skin alike split and exposed to the atmosphere that, for her people, is pure poison.
It’s over.
Trembling, Kori lifts one hand to press a button at her helmet’s rear. Air hisses as its secure lock to her body armor releases, allowing her to remove the piece.
