High above, the albanic stands stalwart. Staring down. Wind curls around her arms and legs to keep her aloft. The touch of breeze passes over her wounds, freezing the blood and stemming the flow.

  All around us, the storm rages. Only in her vicinity — the centre of the blizzard — does the wind falter, slowing to a stop. The last volley of razor icicles pelts my scales, leaving nothing more than scratches over my form where before they cut deep. When the wind halts, so too do those countless blades.

  The sapient’s gaze is nothing if not serious. Rage burns beneath the surface, barely repressed, but mostly her features express the blank sincerity of battle preparedness. No longer does she treat this as a simple extermination or hunt. This is a fight for her life.

  With the entirety of my body freed from its isolated space, I have enough length to bunch up beneath myself to hold my head high above the former forest canopy. My head rises near fifty times the size of my opponent, and she still flies higher.

  Even in the lull, she holds herself above me. Despite finally realising this isn’t a fight she can handle, it’s as if she still believes herself superior. The arrogance churns my anger, but I force it to settle. I’m familiar enough with emotion now that I know this isn’t the time to allow it to go unchecked.

  Anger leads to aggression. And blind aggression will only be used against me by a sapient so clearly in control of her emotions.

  With her flying so high above, I’m wary of leaping at her as I have until now. The air grows stiff, far colder than before, feeling more like I’m pushing through ranked stone than something intangible. There is no wind, but I don’t have to feel the power thrumming through the air to know that means nothing. The albanic’s bright, analytical eyes wait for an opportunity.

  With the air as suffocating as it is, I will have to leap hard and fast to assure I reach her before she dodges. Even then, she’s far enough that she has a decent chance of avoiding me anyway. I can already see how she could take advantage of a scenario in which I miss; the slowed air is her doing, she could simply undo that and allow me to become a free target until I finally crash down to the earth again. Maybe I can put all my strength into my strike and hope I find the ceiling of this cavern, but there’s also the problem that the earth beneath me isn’t likely to support such immense forces.

  After a few moments of the two of us simply staring at each other, I discover the temperature is still dropping. A forest of ice stalagmites rise to replace the wooden one shredded to nothing. She’s not waiting for me to act to do so herself, I realise. She’s already attacking.

  The stalagmites do nothing but rise around me, but the air itself grows impossibly cold. The chill seeps through my body, passing through even my strongest scales. As with my smaller form, my muscles and bones gradually grow stiff and unresponsive. The longer I wait, the worse things will become.

  I don’t hesitate any longer. I snap forward, crushing the earth beneath me and shattering every nearby icicle. The air, instead of flowing out of my way, fractures like ice without ever being solid. An explosion of sound deafens my ears as I spear towards the albanic floating above.

  As expected, a wind appears to knock her out of my path. In retaliation, I create a bend in hers. To avoid being trapped again, she alters her trajectory, but that leaves her within striking range of my tail.

  With my full weight behind me, I coil and twist, slamming my length into the albanic and transferring as much momentum as I can to the small creature before me. It is, unfortunately, a glancing blow at most, yet I still hear something crack, and she shoots through the air above.

  One of her arms dangles uselessly. Energy laden lines shining and blinking out of existence repeatedly along the broken limb. She struggles for a moment, before the energy through the arm ceases entirely.

  Both of us rise through the air quickly now, and I need to scramble for a way to get closer to her before she gains distance and pelts me with more of her blizzard. I whip my tail out behind me, and find that the physical air is enough to push off. It isn’t much, but in an instant I figure how to slither off the air as if it were a more slippery water.

  The albanic, in the meantime, isn’t even looking my way. Too busy readjusting energy through different lines of her remaining limbs. As soon as a set of the shining lines snap into place, a sudden, intense gust pushes down on her from above.

  The wind is indiscriminate; slamming into me just as much as her. It takes effect on her quicker — what with her far less mass — but as she is rising far faster than myself, we come to rather similar heights before falling again. It isn’t until we’re on our way down that she returns her attention to me, but I’m already swimming through the air and gaining on her. The moment she deviates, I will strike.

  She understands this. With the ground rapidly approaching, and a giant serpent baring down on her from above, her head whips around, looking for something to save herself. She makes her mind at the last second, deciding to knock herself sideways. But with that broken arm of hers, it seems what kept her afloat doesn’t work as perfectly as before.

  The wind slams into her, but also angles me her way. With my weight, it’s ever so slight, but I barely need to stretch to slam my head into her back and sent her crashing through the earth. An instant later, I impact the ground. Earth, multiple times my length all around, caves in. What doesn’t, explodes outward, only to be swallowed by the motion sapping cold permeating the air.

  I shake off the stone and slither toward my challenger. An impact like this isn’t much to worry about, but as I catch sight of the albanic, I discover it very much was for her. She is bloody and broken, struggling to stand after being thrown through a hill.

  Her eyes snap to mine. Cold fury burning in her gaze and overtaking that calm intellect that held her prior. She is a sapient, and despite her strength and intelligence, not even she can overcome the emotions that writhe within her.

  I slither forward, and she hurriedly lifts herself with that same stilted wind. I don’t intend to give her the chance to gain air again, but she doesn’t rise high before she stops. Her eyes burn as the lines across her body rapidly intensify with cold energy.

  Out of caution, I pause. There is so much energy flowing off her that it far outstrips what the pillar of my old home could achieve.

  The hurricane surrounding us stops. Thick mist and icicle blades hang unnaturally motionless. The roar of the storm dies, leaving not a whisper to remain in the dead land.

  “This is not how I find my end,” she murmurs to herself. “Not against some beast from a pit. Not with the Henosis war so close.” Her eyes narrow. The gaze itself, cold enough to freeze all air around.

  “Fucking die already.”

  Her words, again infused with the weight of her presence, slams into my mind with intent. I can feel the hatred, the frustration, but mostly the determination layered through her words. She will put everything into her next attack. Anything to wipe me from existence.

  The storm moves again. No longer does it spin; it funnels inward. From further than I can see, winds, icicles and unrelenting cold collapses towards us. Instead of converging around her like the blasts from earlier, it simply crashes down upon us with rapidly increasing force.

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  At first, it’s hardly worth note, but it rapidly intensifies to the same strength as that blast. The hurricane tunnels inward, and with each moment, my body grows colder, my muscles cramp, and my spine becomes increasingly brittle.

  The rush of air is loud in my ears; a Titan’s roar. As the world collapses around us, the chill becomes impossible to ignore. My scales freeze, then fracture under the downpour of suddenly far more powerful ice needles.

  I twist and rush for the Albanic. She is no longer immune to the frozen winds and blades; they slice open her skin, leaving her fake outer layer shredded in moments. The damage is less than myself, and avoids her head and heart, but she is hurt.

  My body snaps forward, the storm doing everything in its power to freeze me in place. To knock me off course and keep its origin safe. But my mass is too great even for such intense winds. Only the damage it does to my innards threatens to stop me.

  As I lunge, I create a bend both beneath her feet and besides her arms. She recoils from both, keeping her extremities close to her body so they no longer get trapped. Her winds carry her out of the range of my fangs, but with the entire storm continuing to crash down on us, neither of us can rise high. I’m shoved into the earth again with a heavy impact, while she floats, avoiding the brunt of the storm.

  My tail grows heavy. Much of its length refusing to move as I command. I cannot fail my next strike.

  She hovers in the air, but I notice that the wind holding her aloft has to fight against that of the blizzard crashing down. She cannot move up fast, but should she need to, she could probably rocket downward in moments. I doubt she doesn’t realise that. In fact, it’s likely her plan to avoid me. But I can’t just strike out below her, that gives her too much room to dodge any other direction.

  An idea comes to me.

  I snap forward, aiming below her legs. Predictably, she keeps the wind rising beneath her, intending to carry her up and out of my range. I decide to give her an assist.

  Two bends appear below her feet, both redirecting the intense stormwinds upward. They add to the speed of her ascent, surprising her, and taking away the time to react to the third bend that appears right above her head.

  It is the widest I can stretch it, and her head slides through an instant before it destabilises and slams shut. Or at least the distortion tries to collapse. With her neck in the way, the bend snaps tight, but doesn’t close. If it were a rift or rend, then I have no doubt she would have been beheaded.

  Her immediate reaction is to reverse her wind direction, but it is already too late. The wind simply stretches her legs down into my mouth as I twist in mid-air to snap at her. My fangs miss her completely, passing around the outside of her legs. But as my jaw slams shut, my smaller, gripping teeth sink into the flesh of her thighs and hold tight.

  As my weight continues through the air, the albanic is suddenly pulled hard against the spatial noose that holds her still. The bend is the first to cave under the forces. It widens just enough for the albanics head to slip through before disappearing from existence.

  A bloody mark beneath her chin reveals where all the force was being applied. I am incredibly surprised she’s still alive after that.

  Carrying the albanic to the earth with me, I readjust her in my jaw. Her first reaction to losing sight of the outside world is to strike at me with her one good arm. Unlike the power of her ice and wind, her physical strength leaves much to be desired. I ignore it and continue to try and crush her in my jaw.

  She doesn’t leave that as is. My jaw suddenly grows cold; the frost permeating my tongue teeth and muscles become unresponsive, and I feel my mouth loosening from the cold.

  Reacting immediately, I coil around my head, clamping it shut tighter than my own jaw could crush. On the earth, I curl into a tight ball crushing the albanic in my grasp while also defending as much of my head as possible from the constant rain of an ever worsening storm.

  My head is long numb when the blizzard abates. I can’t tell if the albanic is dead, but I don’t dare open my jaw to check. Instead, I force my throat to swallow. It’s a bit difficult, considering I can’t actually feel whats in my mouth, but soon the source of the cold hits my stomach.

  My initial reaction is pure disgust. Such cold meat is worse than horrid, but before I even need to bother stopping the instinct to regurgitate, a feeling of satiation greater than any I’ve felt before floods my body. The energy of even the skin breaking down is immense. More than even an ōmukade.

  And this is all packed within such a small body.

  I am not in a good state. As I uncurl, a forest of crystals shatters. The frozen growths settled all over my body and the surroundings leaving a mountain of ice with me at the centre. It takes a lot of flexing and uncoiling — which stabs me with pain each time — to break free. My body is less scale than it is open wound. My exposed muscles are more like slush than flesh.

  I stretch out, and simply slump in relief. She’s dead. Probably the hardest battle I’ve ever had. One I certainly would have lost without both sapience and Scia’s distortions. The albanic posed a threat I didn’t think the sapient species up here could possibly pose. It now makes sense that they are unopposed with beings like that as part of their warrior caste.

  I am thankful that the creature is so cold that it numbs my taste, as I’m sure it would be horrible, but the feeling of nutrients flowing from my stomach and spreading through my body is glorious. An unbeatable sensation of both achievement and satisfaction.

  As I lay still on the frozen earth, simply resting after such a battle, I notice the ground moves ever so slightly beneath me. Bringing my gaze down to focus on the phenomena, it soon becomes obvious that it’s not the ground but me who’s moving.

  It is minuscule, but every moment, my scales shift along the ground. I’m growing. But I’m already at my largest size?

  For the next little while, I simply watch as my size trickles upward ever so gradually. The energy of my prey fuels my growth by such an unprecedented amount. I add an entire tenth to my size in the time since swallowing her. Nothing else has had this drastic an effect.

  And her flesh is still digesting.

  Suddenly a path opens up for me. This is how I can take on the lynx. Using the intelligence and alternative methods of sapience to achieve success is great, but those khirig were still weak and fell to the first random chance encounter that happened upon them. Unfortunate creatures.

  If hunting beasts of such great energy allows me to grow, then I have an option before me to at least reach the point where I can make use of the methods I learnt from the khirig.

  I cannot simply sustain myself on a meal once every dozen rests now. That won’t be sufficient. I need to actively hunt those that can give me such growth.

  My tongue darts out and I suddenly smell dohrni, tinged with… something else. I turn my head their way, I spot them walking out of the frozen forest at the edge of my sight left mostly undestroyed. Well, the trees were frozen, riddled with holes, and all their branches were shattered, but they weren’t the cratered, gelid, icicle stalagmite riddled waste that surrounded where our fight ended.

  I watch them close, wary that I might have another attempt on my life. I’m not ready to take on another at that albanic’s level, but I don’t feel all that much threat from the one before me.

  My body rises, painfully, and I glare down at the creature. My tongue darts out as I begin to hiss at the dohrni, but immediately I halt. That second scent; it’s serpent. Specifically, it’s my own scent. Why do they smell like me?

  The dohrni’s body is covered in small welts, obviously having not been excluded from the blade rain of the blizzard. The creature shivers as it approaches. The cold must be terrible for one not of sufficient strength, and yet they push forward.

  My tongue darts out, and I find my scent is more specifically coming from the fake-claws at her sides. Considering it has my own scent, should that make it not-fangs?

  Clearly terrified, it approaches my form that towers far above its head. I can see it in their eyes; they want to do nothing more than run, but the dedication there prevents it. It is determined to do what it must, even if they must face a being far beyond oneself. I suddenly empathise with this creature. Another sapient showing me what it is I need to do.

  “Do you understand?” she asks, cowering beneath eyes larger than her torso.

  She is another willing to communicate with me? I raise my head in surprise, accidentally startling the dohrni and having her stumble back before she gets a hold of herself and stands stiff.

  The presence of another willing to speak almost fills me with joy… but I have already dedicated myself to a goal.

  I gather a breath and with the full intensity of my presence, I layer the hiss that escapes my jaw with as much intent and knowledge of word as I can. With effort, I morph my serpentine hiss into understandable language.

  “Yes-”

  The creature, instead of responding to my word, simply freezes. Instinctual terror a natural response to the heavy weight of my pressure. It is unfortunate, but there is no avoiding this situation.

  I’ll simply have to take this talent taught to me by the ice albanic, and work on speaking. Even if it is through presence.

  Turning away, I leave the dohrni to her unfortunate frozen terror, and make my way back the way I came.

  I am going to kill the lynx, and to do that, I need to return to the warped tunnels.

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