"Psshk!"
The spear drove straight down through the shell and into the heart, clean and precise, making almost no sound.
It was an almost perfect kill, made possible by Zihark's careful control, Kai'Sa's precise strike, and the flawless teamwork between them.
The smooth success of their first attempt thrilled her. She turned, wanting to celebrate with a high-five, but Zihark only shook his head gravely and refused.
Kai'Sa's eyes widened a beat too late.
She had almost forgotten. They were still hunting. The moment they alarmed the swarm, hunter and prey would switch places in an instant.
She forced down her excitement, pinned the corpse under her foot, yanked the spear back out of its chest, and quickly readied herself for the next strike.
Only the quick and capable survived in the desert. Kai'Sa was still young, but she had learned at least that much.
The second voidspawn came soon after. Its shell was ridged with spikes, and it was much larger than the first.
But to Kai'Sa, they were no different from livestock being led one by one into the slaughterhouse. One came, she killed one. No hesitation.
Their hearts were their only true weak point, and the deadliest one. No matter how large a voidspawn was, once its heart was pierced, it died.
But what if the heart was not pierced?
She stabbed down hard, but the size difference threw off the angle just enough. On top of that, the larger creature's chitinous shell was thicker and harder. Not only did the thrust glance off, it snapped the wooden shaft in the process.
Seeing the splintered break, Kai'Sa panicked. Something had gone wrong outside the plan, and she froze.
The voidspawn began to resist Zihark's control, and the backlash was fierce. It was almost out of his grasp. He kicked Kai'Sa at once, and she lunged forward in a scramble, gripping the broken spearhead and driving it down at the very last second.
"I'm sorry..."
As the feral light faded from the voidspawn's eyes, Kai'Sa let go of the broken spear and turned to throw herself into Zihark's arms, stifling her sobs.
In the end, she was still just a child. Her nerves were too fragile for a mistake that could have gotten them killed.
"It was my fault. I should've brought the smaller ones over first." Zihark comforted her while keeping a careful watch on the swarm for any movement.
Truthfully, he was not surprised the spear had broken.
The workmanship on it had been crude from the start, barely more than makeshift. Void creature flesh was corrosive, and after being soaked in blood again and again during earlier hunts, the spear was bound to be far less durable than before.
And he had mishandled the order too. The first one had only been normal-sized, then the second was twice as large. The jump in difficulty had been too steep.
So when the spear snapped, the blame did not belong to Kai'Sa alone.
Once she calmed down, he gently eased her away, crouched beside the corpse, flipped it over, and jammed his fingers into a gap in the shell. With a hard pull, he pried it open and crushed the heart out whole in his hand.
"Eat it. You need the strength," Zihark said.
Kai'Sa obediently raised her arm, and Zihark pressed the heart against her armguard, letting it absorb naturally.
The violet slurry seeped into the armor and triggered fresh growth. Twisting gray-white matter swelled into bloated tendrils that slapped against the bare skin of her arm, melting and corroding it before replacing it. Then it blackened and hardened into new skin.
The itching was so intense that Kai'Sa had to clamp a hand over her mouth and nose to stop herself from crying out, nearly suffocating in the process.
Zihark noticed that Kai'Sa's armguard actually had two layers. The one pressed against her skin was a grayish-white hide tinged with purple, much like the one on his own hand, soft yet rough to the touch.
The outer layer, though, was a hard black chitin shell with obvious thickness. It was something called dark carapace, hard as steel.
Kai'Sa absorbed both hearts, and the increase was plain to see. The armguard had spread farther now, covering half her forearm.
Watching herself grow more and more like a monster filled Kai'Sa with unease, but Zihark gave her no time to brood. He simply made the voidspawn line up and come die.
Under that pressure, she had no choice but to pick up the broken spear and use her greatly increased strength to drive the point into their hearts.
After enough killing, the motion turned mechanical, numb, like factory work repeated over and over.
Zihark knew this kind of one-sided slaughter would not teach Kai'Sa much in the way of actual combat skill, but there was no helping it. Right now, raw strength mattered far more than technique.
Only once Kai'Sa had grown strong enough would he let her sharpen her instincts in real hunts.
...
The broken spear stabbed down again and again, the same motion repeated until it dulled the mind.
No matter how many Kai'Sa killed, more kept coming.
The satisfaction she had felt at the beginning had vanished without a trace. Now, no matter how many she killed, she felt nothing. But she no longer feared them either, because she had completely mastered the method of killing them.
The overturned voidspawn corpses carpeted the entire tunnel, their blade-legs jutting upward and making every step difficult. Their hearts had been torn out, violet slurry spreading across the ground while the rock itself dissolved and smoked black. There was barely anywhere left to stand.
If they kept going, they would soon have to stand on a pile of bodies just to continue the slaughter.
"That's enough for today."
Zihark rubbed his aching eye. He had pushed it too hard himself. At first, he had only wanted to test his limits, but once he started, things had spiraled. In the end, he still had not found where his limit lay.
Maybe next time he should try something more efficient. Make the voidspawn kill one another, perhaps.
Still, the results of that effort were obvious.
His control had grown more stable. Against smaller targets, even the threat of death was no longer enough to break them free.
As for their spoils...
Aside from the small portion he kept for himself to restore energy, he gave everything else to Kai'Sa.
After devouring dozens of hearts in a row, the armor had spread over her entire forearm and hand. She could now tear open the hard shell on a voidspawn's back with her bare hands and plunge straight for the heart. As for the broken spear, it had finally reached the end of its life.
If Kai'Sa had been hunting alone, there was no way she could have gathered this much in less than a month. And if the losses along the way were counted, becoming this strong would have taken even longer.
Yet even after growing this much stronger, Kai'Sa still looked utterly miserable.
When Zihark said they were done, she said nothing. There was no relief on her face, no sense of release from the bloody work. She simply let him pull her out of the cave, numb and silent.
As if all the good things in her memory had been devoured, leaving her unable to feel joy anymore.
"So it really was too fast after all?"
Zihark thought it over. The changes to her body had stirred up a dark knot of emotion inside her.
They had come too quickly, become too obvious. She could not help noticing them.
But they needed to grow stronger. Being able to kill voidspawn was not enough. Far worse things could find them at any moment, simply because they were living creatures. The Void never needed a reason to kill.
He let out a quiet sigh.
In the end, the threat of death still was not immediate enough. It had not yet made her desperate for strength.
It was not enough for Zihark alone to accept what was happening. Something had to happen—some turning point that would make Kai'Sa accept the changes in her own body too.
Until then, he would have to be more careful with her feelings.
[End of chapter]