Chương 106: White Maw

"First off," Vera said, "you're going to want to change your loadout." Her Vaultring gave a faint pulse as she started pulling items from storage.

"The theme's easy enough to spot, but you don't need to overbuild against frost. Some rimeward gear is fine, but if you stack it like this is Shiverkeep content, you're probably wasting slots. The storm's more concealment than damage, so just build enough to keep it from chewing through your focus." Her slightly travel-worn mantle vanished into the Vaultring, and in its place came a too-long mantle of smoke-gray hide stitched with black sinew and thin strips of dull silver.

It settled over her shoulders with heavy, ugly practicality, all function and absolutely no concern for flair. The Grave-Wolf Mantle. She'd always hated how it looked. Next came her boots, which she switched for a pair of blackened sabatons with hooked silver ridges along the soles and heels. The Gravemark Treads. After that came a narrow throat guard, a pair of ash-gray bracers, and a ring set with a cloudy white stone that left her fingers faintly numb when it settled into place.

Then several phials and elixirs appeared in her hand. Vera downed them one after another, grimacing only once, before applying temporary coatings to her equipment. Palebinding Dust went on her boots in a thin chalk-white smear. A few drops of Wintergrave Oil followed on her bracers, sinking into the metal with a soft hiss.

"I'd recommend Sunderbrand Glass and a Cinderwake Ampoule for you," she said.

"Extra firepower's going to matter more than trying to turtle through the cold. Especially since you're on add duty. The hard part is going to be making this thing vulnerable, but I'll handle that. Just cover my back." Cin followed her advice, changing his coat first, the dark fabric folding inward and being replaced by a fitted mantle of heat-darkened plates, each one thin enough to move with him but marked by faint copper sigils along the edges.

A heavier glove locked around his left hand, its knuckles set with three small red stones. Then a narrow band of black iron appeared on his temple, glowing faintly. He gave her a long, measuring look.

"This was not a boss in Ashen Legacy. How do you know its mechanics?"

"Well…" Vera tilted her head for half a second.

"I guess you could say it comes with the job title."

"And what job title is that?"

"A glorified janitor, maybe?" Judging from Cin's expression, he didn't find that answer particularly useful. Ahead of them, the walls of the blizzard shifted as countless roars rolled across the Thryne Passes, rising together as if the storm had formed a hundred throats. Vera studied it, then glanced back at Cin.

"By the way, where is Mira?" He met her eyes.

"Have you realized how reckless you were in pulling aggro this soon?" She laughed under her breath.

"Name one time I've regretted a pull."

"I can't recall any."

"Exactly."

"That wasn't an endorsement of your judgment." Vera shrugged and flicked her mantle out of the way as she turned her attention back to the storm.

"…But Mira would join in if she's nearby, right?" Several seconds passed before Cin answered.

"I'm not sure," he said.

"Mira left not long after we sensed your presence. She seemed to imply that you would have to catch her."

"Huh? Why?"

"Apparently, there are old 'journals' that you would want to burn." Vera froze.

"…Are you sure that's what she said?"

"Yes."

"I'll kill her." Murder was the only rational response. She thought she'd already gotten rid of all the evidence in Sablewatch Hollow. She thought she'd defused that particular bomb. She was not going to let Mira rearm it.

"She mentioned something else," Cin said. Vera turned to him, suddenly worried about what kind of fuel Mira was about to add to the pyre.

"She seemed to imply I had reason to be angry with you." His eyes narrowed slightly.

"Do you know what she meant? Have you done anything?" Vera blinked.

"I have no idea what she's talking about. I haven't even been around for that long, so how could I—" She paused, closing her mouth. Cin's eyes narrowed further.

"Vera." Vera looked away.

"Yeah, nope. No idea. She was probably messing with you." There was Cin's Slag Sentinel, which Vera had wrecked back in Caer Virell and hadn't bothered fixing, but it probably wasn't that. Probably. She could feel Cin's stare pressing into the side of her face like an anvil, carrying with it a dry warmth she was fairly sure was only half imaginary. Still, she refused to let her expression crack. Eventually, he seemed to give up on extracting an answer. The passes shuddered. The storm swelled.

A massive surge of Resonance rolled out from its heart, dense enough that the air itself seemed to buckle beneath it. The blizzard climbed higher, spreading in great twisting columns of snow and cloud, and the wind sharpened until even their warded section of the mountaintop trembled. Frost started crawling up Vera's feet.

"Something has changed," Cin said, his voice dropping.

"This is significantly more power than anything the storm has shown so far."

"Yep. That's what we get for sharing its name." Vera brandished Stillwake as her own Resonance moved.

"Pretty sure that counts as dereliction of duty on my part." She smiled faintly.

"Not that it matters. I'm killing it anyway."

"Sharing its name did this…?" she heard Cin mutter. She didn't doubt the man was already building theories in his head, arranging her words beside whatever observations he'd made until some neat little structure started forming. She also didn't doubt that at least one of those theories would end up fairly close to the truth. A sigh left her. It was unfortunate that letting the White Maw loose was probably necessary, but it clearly hadn't fully entered this realm yet.

The thing was pressed against the world, hooked into it, feeding itself through cracks and lesser bodies while its core had to hide within the storm it conjured. Stolen novel; please report. If she wanted to kill it, it had to be here. All of it. The blizzard began to turn in broad, uneven pulses. Then the first breach opened. It split the far end of the pass, not as a clean rift but as a long, ragged wound curving along the side of a mountain.

Snow twisted around it and poured inward through rows of colorless teeth that hadn't been there a second before. Another opened. And another. Within moments, the Thryne Passes were full of mouths.

"You're going to have to handle those," Vera said. Stillwake cut a Hollow Reach open in front of her.

"Fair warning, they'll probably spit out a few dragons or something equally annoying. But you've got it, right?"

"Vera," Cin said with a tired note.

"Great. Reliable as ever, boss." A violent pressure swept across the peak. Snow ripped from the stone. Loose rock tore free in chunks and flew toward them, breaking apart against the wards in bursts of dust and sparks. The edge of the mountain groaned, then vanished behind a wall of white as the blizzard slammed over it. Vera planted one foot behind her. Mark of Ember Sight. The world sharpened in layers of red. It didn't let her see clearly, but it gave her enough to separate empty snow from moving death.

Mark of Ashen Slip. Mark of the Gray Reliquary. Hollow Veins. Breakstep. With a crack, she shot forward through the Hollow Reach. She was instantly swallowed by snow and ice from every direction. The cold slammed into her hard enough that it tried to lock her limbs in place, but it failed to bite through her armor before her Resonance shoved back. Stillwake swept out. Crescent Severance. Twelve pale arcs followed the halberd's blade, carving through the blizzard.

The gap they opened sealed again almost immediately, but Vera still caught a glimpse of hooked spines rising through the white. Her strikes bit into them, sending a tremor through the immense shape hidden around her. Something moved to her right. Mark of the Mourning Tithe. The barrier curved into place just as an impossible mass slammed into her. It wasn't a limb in any ordinary sense. It was more like a ridge of the surrounding mountains had decided to move, wide enough to blot out everything as it struck.

Her barrier bent under the impact, fractures racing across its surface. Vera was hurled sideways. She let the force carry her for half a breath, though there was no telling how far even that sent her. Breakstep. Her boot hit the air hard enough to split the surrounding storm. Momentum snapped her in another direction just as the vast mass kept sweeping after her. Stillwake dragged behind her, its edge grinding against frozen armor and carving pale scars along the point of contact.

Gray Reliquary spread the curse of stone while Hollow Veins drank from whatever Resonance the blade opened, pulling stolen power into her before the storm could reclaim it. Vera sensed something else rushing toward her through the snow. Dreadwake Ascension. The butt of the halberd hammered against the White Maw, and Vera's body shot upward in defiance of gravity. She felt the snap of closing teeth pass beneath her, close enough for the pressure to rattle through her bones, but she didn't waste thought on it.

Her attention was already fixed on the maelstrom of Hollow Resonance gathering around Stillwake's crown. Dreadwake Ascension was a Fifth Seal Form, but it didn't technically trigger fully until she landed. Right now, with the storm shredding everything around her into white confusion, there was no telling how far up she'd been thrown or whether she'd even manage to come down somewhere useful enough to trigger the effect. So why not cheat a little? Combining Forms in Ashen Legacy had never really been a thing.

You could chain them, sure, but that wasn't the same. Here, Vera had experimented enough to learn that the rules were more flexible. Hollow Rend. Even as Resonance gathered at Stillwake's crown, building to be unleashed in a burst of divine violence, another current pooled along the halberd's haft and into the hooked blade at its back. Vera twisted with it, letting the weapon draw a perfect circle around her. For one breath, the storm surrounding her stopped. Then it moved toward her.

A howling spiral of snow, ice, broken stone, and shredded cloud collapsed inward, dragged into Stillwake's orbit. They followed the halberd's blade, compressing until the edge shimmered with so much condensed force that space appeared ready to give. The blizzard thinned, and Vera caught glimpses of hooked limbs shifting and pulling away through the storm. In the distance, from a breach torn into the side of a mountain, a valley-sized mass of ice and packed Resonance surged toward her.

It came like a glacier deciding to become a spear, wide enough to swallow everything between the ridges as it tore through the pass. A line of red cut across the white. It was thin enough to miss at first. Just a single ember-bright thread. But then it widened, and the thread flared into a crescent of furnace light that struck the oncoming attack from the side. That was Cin's Mark of Sunderbrand. The valley-sized formation of ice and Resonance sheared apart.

Its two halves rushed past Vera on either side with enough force to drag new storms in their wake. One half broke against a distant ridge and erupted into an avalanche that swallowed the mountainside. The other vanished into the blizzard, burning from within as red cracks spread through its body. A heartbeat later, a dragonlike shape emerged from the same breach that had launched it. Vera felt Cin's Resonance meet it before it fully crossed through.

A wall of flames rose in the distance, catching the creature's claws as it lunged out of the rift. That would be Mark of the Cinder Bastion. Vera didn't watch the rest. The force gathering around Stillwake had already gone beyond what she'd used against the Silent Lord. Hollow Rend had dragged in everything loose enough to steal from the storm within miles, stripping the nearby air down to a bare, frozen hush while a ring of stolen ruin circled the halberd's blade.

And still, the White Maw kept hiding behind what remained of its storm. Had the thing spent so long outside the world that it had forgotten how to show itself properly? Fine. Vera would make it. She tightened her grip and forced her Resonance to work overtime, past the point where it even felt reasonable. The pressure dragged at her shoulders as more and more of the storm was hauled toward her, faster now, the pull growing uglier with every breath.

Cinder and ash burned through her body in hot, aching threads, and her arms started to tremble. Another attack launched from a mouth somewhere below her, but one of Cin's Marks burned through it before it could reach her. Vera's eyes darkened as she locked onto a fragment of the White Maw's body retreating within a barrier of hail. She angled herself. Then she let the smallest possible thread of Resonance gather beneath her feet. Breakstep.

For one awful instant, it felt like her arms were going to tear from their sockets. Stillwake almost didn't want to move. The accumulated force around it had become too heavy, like she was trying to drag a mountain by its shadow. But the halberd's own momentum helped, and Vera forced herself through the pull until she was almost directly in front of the White Maw's storm again. Mark of the Stillbound Veil. When she'd used this earlier, the storm had mangled the Mark almost beyond usefulness.

This time, there was less interference, and Vera wasn't holding back. She poured as much Resonance into it as she could spare while keeping her other techniques intact. The Mark spread outward in thin translucent veils, slipping through snow, cloud, stone, and every mouth scattered across the Thryne Passes. The information it brought back was mostly garbage. She'd stretched it too thin, over too much space, through too much hostile Resonance. But it still caught what she needed.

For a heartbeat, every part of the storm, every breach in the pass, pulled against the same Mark. Vera felt the White Maw. Not one mouth, or one rift. Not even the body parts hiding in the storm. She felt all of it, including what was truly hidden away. She completed another turn of Hollow Rend. Stillwake came around, and the gathered destruction followed.

She let the Form's momentum hold her aloft as she deliberately started driving herself downward, pulling most of what remained of the storm with her in a vast gray-white arc. From horizon to horizon, cloud and snow peeled back until they clung only to the shoulders of the surrounding mountains. The fragments she had been tracking vanished. The White Maw had retreated entirely into whatever place waited on the other side of its ruptures. So Vera's next step was forcing it out. The ground rushed toward her.

She made her overstrained body carry one more Fifth Seal Mark. Stillwake rose above her in both hands, its weight dragging at every joint as she prepared the timing. The instant her boots struck the ground, she released everything. Mark of Hollow Reach. Hollow Rend. Dreadwake Ascension. A tear was cut open by Stillwake, connecting directly to where she had found the White Maw. Dreadwake Ascension detonated through the Hollow Reach, carrying Hollow Rend's stolen storm into the tear.

The mouths scattered throughout the mountains convulsed as the attack hit them from the wrong side. Teeth bent outward. Rims split. Snow blasted from the breaches in violent plumes, and the mountains screamed as something on the far side was caught, pressured, and pushed toward the world. Vera's boots sank into shattered stone as the recoil slammed through her. Her arms nearly gave, but she forced them steady with Mark of Hollow Mercy. Across the Thryne Passes, the mouths began to fail. One collapsed into itself.

Another tore wider than the mountain face containing it. A third split from cliff to sky, its rows of teeth breaking apart as something impossibly immense was pulled through against its will. When the White Maw had hidden inside its storm, its shape had existed halfway between this realm and its own space, but Vera bet she had wrecked whatever that space was. Now there wasn't enough of either left to hide in.

The creature emerged from everywhere at once, forced through all the remaining breaches until the scattered glimpses Vera had seen before became one unimaginable whole. Its length wound between mountains and over ridgelines, thick enough to bury valleys beneath it. Mouths opened across its hide without order, some small and twitching, others large enough to swallow keeps. Frost hung from it in long, jagged sheets, but beneath the ice was something older and darker than any beast had a right to be.

Several lengths of its body met near the center of the pass, twisting together as flesh, ice, and shadow folded inward. An enormous vertical maw opened between them, lined with pale teeth that curled outward like a crown of broken glaciers. The White Maw hung there for a moment, crushing the Thryne Passes beneath its weight. Vera looked up at it.

"You're a lot uglier than face to face."