Chapter 1084: 1083: Haldis
BANG!
The Leviathan’s head snapped back into place.
A ridge of cracked scales along its jaw had caved in where her fist had landed. Molten light bled from the cracks and dripped into the sea, hissing.
It roared at her.
The Daemoness didn’t wait for it to finish. She was already moving again.
Simon watched her close the distance in a straight line, her armor gleaming wet in the firelight. Her second blow landed under the beast’s chin. The third struck its throat.
BOOM!
BOOM!
Each impact sent a ring of flattened water racing outward across the sea.
"You’re either very brave or very stupid."
Simon turned.
Veyra hovered beside him, arms folded, her dark-blue coat snapping in the hot wind. Her green hair was plastered to her forehead with steam.
"The west is quiet," she said before he could ask. "I left my people watching it. Torvek told me to keep an eye on you." Her mouth twitched. "Apparently with good reason."
"I didn’t plan on it."
"I know. I saw your face when you vanished." She glanced at the drifting chunks of his ice wall. "You blocked the breath of a Supreme Catastrophe Beast… As a Greater Demon."
"Not alone."
"But it was long enough for her to reach you. That’s more than most Daemons who are Demon Lords could manage." She shook her head. "Torvek is going to be annoyed he missed it."
Out over the sea, the Leviathan whipped its tail around.
It was longer than three warships end to end, plated in black scales that glowed at every seam. The Daemoness raised one hand. A hexagonal shield flared to life in front of her, dark green and layered like the plates of a shell.
The tail struck it.
The shield held.
But she didn’t.
The force threw her backward across the surface of the sea. Her boots carved a long white trench through the water before she stopped hundreds of meters away, the shield still glowing on her arm.
Simon’s hand twitched toward the space before him.
"Don’t," Veyra said.
"She’s-"
"Fine." Veyra didn’t even look worried. "Watch."
The Daemoness rolled her shoulder once, as if loosening a stiff joint. Then she lowered her hand toward the sea.
The water rose.
Not in a wave, but in pillars. Dozens of them, thick as towers, climbed out of the sea around her and arched toward the Leviathan. They struck its body from every side.
Steam exploded where they hit. The beast screamed as the water poured over its burning scales, and for an instant its glow dimmed beneath the flood.
"Who is she?" Simon asked.
"Haldis," Veyra said. "The fourth protector of Vhal-Sar."
She said the name the way a soldier talked about a wall that had never fallen.
"She’s the reason this city is still standing," Veyra went on. "When The Dominion first struck, they hit The Wall in four places at once. Rasken, Torvek and I each held a breach. Haldis held the other one, then went to the weakest of ours and held that too."
Simon looked at her.
"The masked ones withdrew the moment she reached them," Veyra said. "They haven’t shown their faces near The Wall since. That’s one of the reasons why they send the sea instead."
The Leviathan shook off the water. Its fin-wings spread wide, and it rose higher, until it hung above Haldis like a burning cloud.
Its chest began to glow again.
"So, she’s the strongest of the four of you?" Simon asked.
"By a wide margin." Veyra watched the glow climb the beast’s throat. "She’s a Supreme Demon King. Rasken likes to pretend the gap isn’t that large."
She paused and then chuckled softly.
"Rasken has never actually sparred with her."
The breath came.
It was a sweeping column of white fire, dragged across the sea in a long arc. Where it passed, the water didn’t just steam. It vanished, leaving a curving trench in the ocean, its walls of water collapsing back inward with a roar.
Beasts caught in its path weren’t burned. They were simply gone.
Haldis dove.
The fire swept over the spot where she had been and kept going. It clipped the edge of a reef and turned the rock to glowing slag.
Simon searched the water with his perception.
He couldn’t find her.
The sea beneath the Leviathan began to churn. The boiling stopped. Then, impossibly, the water there turned cold and dark, and ice crusted along the edges of the steam.
"What is she?" Simon asked quietly. "Her race."
Veyra smiled a little.
"A Genbu."
Simon raised a brow
"What’s a Genbu?"
Veyra thought for a moment.
"Well… Basically, a mixture of a Black Tortoise and a Serpent. It’s a Royal Bloodline. And apparently, it has something to do with the North, which is why she insisted on protecting that side of The Wall."
She gave a small snort.
"She takes it more seriously than any of us."
As Simon pondered on what her race was, deep inside him… inside his his bloodline world, the Nine-Tailed Byakko lifted its head and turned toward the sea.
The water beneath the Leviathan erupted.
Haldis burst out of it inside a massive shell of hexagonal light, shaped like the back of an enormous tortoise. She rammed straight into the beast’s belly.
CRAAACK!
Scales shattered. Molten blood sprayed across the sky and rained into the sea in burning droplets. The Leviathan folded around the impact and was thrown upward, its fin-wings flailing.
The shell around her faded.
From her forearm, the dark serpent mark peeled away and grew. It was larger than before, as long as a river and as thick as a tower. It coiled through the air and lashed around the Leviathan’s neck.
The beast thrashed.
Heat poured off its body in waves. The serpent hissed, its spectral scales smoking, but it didn’t let go. It squeezed, and the Leviathan’s roar choked into a gurgling shriek.
"And the beast?" Simon asked. "Do you know what it is?"
"Yeah. I’ve read about it before," Veyra said. "A Winged Leviathan."
She frowned at it.
"They usually live near the fire vents on the seabed. Deeper than anything else in these waters. I never expected one to be in this place."
Simon looked toward the distant mist where the siren still sat on her rock, her song broken and uncertain.
"Someone brought it."
Veyra didn’t answer.
She didn’t need to.
The Leviathan’s scales suddenly flared bright orange.
Then they exploded.
Every cracked plate along its neck burst outward at once, blasting molten fragments in every direction like a storm of burning shrapnel. The spectral serpent was torn apart. Fragments rained down across the sea, and where they landed, the water boiled in hundreds of small, furious circles.
Some struck The Wall.
The golden barrier rippled across its whole length. Runes flared and dimmed. On the walls, soldiers threw themselves flat.
Haldis was caught in the blast.
She raised a shield, but the fragments struck from too many angles. Simon saw her knocked sideways through the air, one arm thrown up across her face.
The Leviathan didn’t give her time to recover. It dove at her, jaws open, fire already boiling at the back of its throat.
Simon’s body moved on its own. Veyra’s hand caught his arm.
"Watch," she said again.
Haldis stopped falling.
She hung in the air, hair streaming, and lowered her arm. Her armor was scorched black on one side. A thin line of blood ran down from her temple.
She didn’t look hurt.
She looked irritated.
She held out both hands.
The sea rose again, but this time it didn’t form pillars. It gathered into a single sheet of water that folded in on itself again and again, pressing tighter and tighter. It shrank into a curved blade, a crescent of compressed, dark-green water as long as a ship, its edge so thin it was almost invisible.
Hexagonal patterns spread across its surface.
Shell and sea, made into a weapon.
The Leviathan reached her.
Haldis swung.
The blade passed through the beast’s left fin-wing at the root.
For an instant, nothing happened.
Then the wing separated.
The vast webbed membrane, spines and all, peeled away from the Leviathan’s body. Molten blood poured from the wound in a burning waterfall. The Leviathan shrieked, a sound so high and raw that Simon felt it in his teeth.
It tried to beat its remaining wing.
It spun instead.
Lopsided and screaming, the Leviathan tumbled out of the sky. Its body twisted once, twice, trailing fire and steam.
Then it struck the sea.
BOOOOOOOOM!
A column of steam and water exploded upward, taller than any tower in Vhal-Sar. The wave that followed raced outward in every direction, swallowing beasts whole, and crashed against The Wall so hard that the entire eastern curve flashed gold.
Then the severed wing hit the water too, half a kilometer away, still burning as it sank.
Haldis hovered above the churning sea, the water blade dissolving in her hands.
Beside Simon, Veyra finally unfolded her arms.
"That," she said, "is why you don’t need to help her."