Just before she made her choice, a strange, indescribable sensation ran through her mind.
Her instincts told Kai'Sa that if they parted now, then the chances of ever finding each other again would become vanishingly small.
So she made a choice that looked utterly reckless in Zihark's eyes. She swung her claws at the burrowing worm's needle-legs, trying to tear through the barrier blocking her way.
But Zihark was right.
Kai'Sa struck with cold resolve, only for a lightning-fast projectile to intercept her claw mid-swing.
She looked up in a daze and saw a flexible tube wrapped around her armguard, pulling tightly against the arm she had just swung.
It was the burrowing worm's long tongue.
Then the tube snapped taut, and the force yanked her into the air.
Below her was that cavernous throat lined with fangs. Its fleshy walls pulsed and contracted, and those jagged teeth looked fully capable of grinding bone to pieces.
If she fell in, she was dead.
"No!"
Zihark lunged forward in an instant. His small body slammed into the burrowing worm's torso, but he could not even make it budge.
Kai'Sa reached the top of her arc and began to fall. She saw Zihark throwing himself at the monster in a desperate attempt to save her, and tears burst from her eyes.
At the edge of life and death, time seemed to slow.
The moment stretched out before Kai'Sa's eyes. But what flashed through her mind was not a replay of her own life. It was the image of Zihark after her death, alone and silent in the endless dark.
Then the desire to grow stronger exploded inside her like a volcano, too fierce to contain. A blazing conviction surged through her chest, crashing over and over against her heart.
If...
If only she were stronger. If only she could live up to Zihark's hopes...
How could she let some worm tear them apart so easily?
How could she die here in tears and let death carry her off?
How could she leave Zihark to live on alone in the dark?
Kai'Sa's burning will reached the Void living armor, or perhaps the armor itself had sensed the threat of death.
She clenched her fist, and the living armor released a surge of power. In an instant, light and shadow twisted, purple radiance swelled in her hand, and a strange crystal appeared just ahead of her fist.
Kai'Sa had no idea what was happening. Driven by a desperate urge to survive, the pointed end of the crystal suddenly spat out violet firebolts, all of them blasting straight into the burrowing worm's throat.
The blasts exploded inside that fang-lined abyss. The violent shockwave, carrying a nauseating stench, sent Kai'Sa flying again.
And because the tongue was still pulling on her, she was flung straight into Zihark.
He caught her without a word and held on for dear life. She slammed him to the ground, and the force sent both of them rolling together until they crashed into the base of the rock wall.
They looked at each other, tears glinting with the joy of surviving by a hair. Then the light of the flames drew their eyes upward, and both of them looked at the burrowing worm.
The monstrous thing let out a dreadful scream.
Its flesh split and tore open. Its upright body looked like a ruptured barrel, black pus pouring from the burst wounds, smeared with violet fire like burning oil.
Terrible flames were consuming its huge body from the inside out. Zihark could tell at a glance that this was fire born from the Void.
At last, the burrowing worm's massive frame, riddled with holes by the flames, toppled like a burned-out torch.
It was dead...
That monster had seemed impossible to overcome only moments ago.
And now it was dead just like that?
Astonishment flashed through Zihark's eyes as he looked back at Kai'Sa's armguard. First he tore away the severed piece of tube-like tongue still wrapped around her arm, grimacing in disgust. Then he looked at the strange crystal floating at the front of the armor.
He only needed a glance to understand what it was.
The crystal was a ranged weapon formed by Kai'Sa's living armor, created entirely from pure Void energy. Its uneven many-sided shape looked like a huge rough-cut amethyst forged into a fist-blade, like a violet crescent hovering an inch in front of her fist.
From its tip, it could fire powerful plasma bolts and flame rounds. This fist-blade would become Kai'Sa's main weapon from here on.
Zihark had originally thought it would take until her whole body was covered in living armor for this weapon to evolve, but in the end it had awakened early under life-and-death pressure.
Kai'Sa's powerful desire to survive had played a major role in that, but his strategy of funneling resources into her had helped as well. Otherwise, the energy stored in her armor might not have been enough to condense the violet crystal fist-blade at all.
Sure enough, the purple light inside the weapon was already dimming. It was about to be reabsorbed by the living armor.
When Kai'Sa saw that the burning corpse of the burrowing worm had forced the voidspawn swarm back, she acted quickly. Before the fist-blade could fully come apart, she fired wave after wave of firebolts into the tunnel walls around them, creating a wall of flame to cut off the creatures' pursuit.
Then she took Zihark's hand, and the two of them ran together into the tunnel they had chosen earlier, until darkness swallowed the deadly fire behind them.
...
The two of them collapsed in yet another tunnel, exhausted.
Another tunnel. Still a tunnel. Always a tunnel.
Down here, there was nothing but caves, tunnels, and abysses.
The one time they had found a "lake," they had witnessed birth itself and ended up hunted by a swarm of Void creatures.
First came the terror of staring death in the face, then the strain of that long desperate run. By now, the tears fear had dragged out of Kai'Sa and the sweat covering her face had mixed together beyond separating.
"That was incredible!"
Kai'Sa chattered excitedly, rolling up her sleeve to wipe her drenched face, then brushing the sticky hair away from her forehead.
As she wiped herself down, the markings on her cheeks and brow stood out more clearly than before.
"Incredible? Incredible my ass. I almost lost you." Zihark sat bolt upright and fixed her with a dark stare that sent a chill through her.
"Uh... haha..." Kai'Sa gave an awkward laugh and tried to defend herself. "There wasn't really any other choice."
She rolled over and crawled toward him, wanting to make up for it by wiping his sweat too, but he shoved her away at once.
She landed on her backside, completely dumbfounded.
"You are unbelievably disobedient! Keep this up and one day you'll either scare me to death or make me die of anger!"
He threw that line at her and stood up at once, looking as though he meant to walk off and leave her there.
Kai'Sa's family had held a fair amount of standing in the village. She had never been treated like this before, and her temper flared immediately. At the top of her lungs, she shouted, "If I had listened to you, we wouldn't even be together right now!"
The moment the words left her mouth, she regretted them.
In that situation, Zihark's choice had been the right one. She had only gotten lucky and stumbled into an option that had not existed before.
"I haven't even settled this with you yet, and you still dare talk back? Fine. Then I'm leaving. If I go, you won't have to listen anymore!"
Zihark spun around and stalked off in a sulk, angrily kicking a stone by the roadside as he went. It bounced wildly around the tunnel, and that was when Kai'Sa finally realized just how furious he really was.
She swallowed hard to soothe her throat, which felt scorched raw, then ran around in front of him and stretched out her arms to block his way.
Zihark still looked at her coldly, but he did stop, as if giving her a chance to explain herself.
"If this will calm you down..." Kai'Sa swallowed again, then turned around and deliberately stuck her butt out at him, trembling from head to toe.
"Then... please spank me as hard as you want!"
"?"
Zihark's expression turned strange.
So this was how it was going to go again?
Did she seriously think that as long as she got spanked a few times, any mistake could be forgiven?
Was her understanding the problem?
Or was he the one teaching her wrong?
[End of chapter]