Chapter 1333: Deeper Into the Abyss

Phei opened his eyes and stared toward the dim crystalline ceiling while his hand continued feeding Healing Touch into the Dragon Lady.

"Boy, I miss them," he murmured, and the words came out quieter than he expected.

The Dragon Lady shifted beneath his palm shortly afterward.

Her shoulder moved first, followed by the long rise of her neck, and Phei immediately eased his hand away until he was certain her breathing remained steady.

She opened one pale eye and began pushing one foreleg beneath herself, the muscles trembling once before she forced her enormous body upward. Her injured wing still moved awkwardly, but it folded more naturally than before, and Phei watched the motion closely before nodding with reluctant approval.

"Better. You still look like somebody dropped a mountain on you, but that is technically improvement."

Her eye narrowed.

Phei sat up and placed his palm against her snout, giving the cold scales there a slow pat. "You got absolutely trashed, little sister. I got trashed too, so I’m allowed to say all shiut I can come up with in my head."

She snorted a cloud of frozen vapor over him hard enough to throw his long white hair backward, and Phei stared at her for several seconds before muttering about little-sister abuse while pushing himself to his feet.

The humor lasted only until both of them looked deeper into the abyss.

The Zone Lord remained there.

That fact had bothered Phei throughout the entire battle and now fascinated him even more:

—he and the Dragon Lady had slaughtered its armies for almost a year, descended through the territory it controlled, fought its two World Transcendent protectors for nearly an hour and finally killed them in a battle violent enough to ruin kilometers of ancient frozen ground, yet the Zone Lord had never moved from the place Phei had sensed it from the beginning.

It had waited everything with a patience so complete that the stillness itself felt deliberate.

Phei should probably have been more disturbed by that.

Instead, excitement began bubbling through him.

He had wondered for months what exactly the Zone Lord was, what kind of creature could enslave World Transcendents, hollow armies into thralls and spend centuries draining a Dragon while remaining buried this deep inside the Primordial Frozen Zone.

He wanted to know why it had stayed here for so long, what it desired deeper inside this forbidden land and why even the destruction of everything guarding it had failed to make it rise.

Phei stepped closer to the Dragon Lady and allowed True Void Perception to spread outward.

This time nothing hindered him.

The two World Transcendents were gone, their crushing presence had vanished from the surrounding hollows and the immense barriers that once distorted his perception had disappeared with them.

True Void Perception flowed through shattered walls, crossed ruined glaciers and slipped past ancient formations buried beneath the ice before travelling farther into the depths.

The light slowly died.

Crystalline veins became sparse, their blue-white glow fading one after another until Phei’s perception entered a region where darkness felt almost material, thick enough that even the frozen essence surrounding it seemed reluctant to move.

Something floated there.

Phei’s breathing slowed.

The Zone Lord hovered silently in the lightless distance, its body still difficult to properly understand even through True Void Perception. Darkness folded strangely around the figure while currents of frozen essence curved toward it in slow, circling streams. It had remained exactly where Phei had sensed it all year, and now that nothing stood between them, he could feel the terrible stillness surrounding the creature more clearly than ever.

It was watching them?

’Or not?’ He wasn’t sure.

Phei suddenly imagined the sight from the Zone Lord’s side seeing a seventeen-year-old boy covered in the remnants of a battle that should have killed him.

A furious wounded Dragon beside him.

Everything the Zone Lord had placed between them lying dead.

The thought sent a thrill through Phei that exhaustion somehow failed to smother, and his lips slowly curved as he stared into the darkness. "So that’s you."

The Dragon Lady stiffened beside him, and the hatred surging through her became so fierce that Phei immediately placed his hand against her scales again. He stroked the battered white surface gently, letting her feel the steadiness of his touch while her breathing deepened.

"Little sister," he murmured, still looking toward the creature waiting below. "This would probably blow your mind after everything that bastard did to you, but you’re not walking back in there alone."

Her great eye shifted toward him.

Phei gave the scale beneath his palm another slow pat. "I’m here. That counts for something."

The fury inside her remained, centuries of pain attached to the thing floating somewhere beyond the darkness, but her breathing gradually settled beneath his hand. Phei could feel the difference.

She had returned to the same abyss where she had once been broken and drained, yet this time chains were absent from her body and someone stood beside her who had already helped tear through everything guarding the path.

"We’re going to meet the bastrad," Phei said softly.

The Dragon Lady lowered herself enough for him to understand, and his grin returned as he climbed onto her back and settled between the familiar crystalline ridges. Her body remained bloodied, battered and missing several scales, yet she still looked magnificent beneath the faint surviving light behind them.

Phei rested one hand against her neck and stroked the scale beneath his palm while True Void Perception remained locked upon the distant figure.

"Ready?"

A low growl rolled through her body.

Phei felt the murderous intent carried through it and smiled. "Yeah. That sounds about right."

Her wounded wings slowly opened.

Phei looked toward the lightless depth one final time, excitement sharpening beneath the exhaustion while True Void Steps gathered around both of them. The surrounding darkness folded inward, the battered cavern vanished, and Phei carried himself and the Dragon Lady across the remaining distance together.

Existence returned around them without the luminous blue glow that had accompanied almost every other portion of the abyss.

Here, darkness ruled completely.

The Zone Lord floated ahead, silent and waiting, while the Dragon Lady stood beneath it for the first time in centuries without chains wrapped around her body.

Phei remained upon his little sister’s back with one hand resting against her scales.

Then he smiled at the thing that had ruined her life.

They had finally arrived.