"I understand."
Kai'Sa counted the time in her head, then took the initiative and charged the larger of the two hunters.
It stood in the middle of the tunnel, so tall that its back nearly scraped the ceiling. This time, Kai'Sa could not leap onto its back and attack from a blind spot the way she had before.
She raised a hand and fired several firebolts. The monster neither dodged nor even tried to.
The blasts tore open flesh and left fire clinging to the bone, but the beast ignored it and swept out with a claw.
Kai'Sa flipped backward as the burning claw tore through the space where she had just been and smashed into the rock wall.
The wall exploded instantly. The already narrow tunnel was now littered with jagged rubble, making it even harder for agile fighters like Kai'Sa to move freely.
But instead of retreating, she pressed forward. Bracing herself against the wall, she unleashed a string of blue-violet firebolts that ripped the hunter open and sent black, putrid sludge pouring from its wounds.
She could not give any more ground. Zihark was fighting behind her. She could not let this monster interfere with him.
The moment the hunter exposed an opening beneath its body, she rushed in.
Her combat instincts were excellent. Realizing the narrow tunnel made it hard for the creature to turn around and counterattack, she decided to slip behind it, where she could strike as much as she pleased.
Kai'Sa twisted sideways and slid beneath the hunter.
She had meant to carve open its chest with her arm-blades, but the monster was too tall. Unable to reach it, she quickly made up the difference by firing several plasma bolts instead.
The scorching shots blew apart its flesh, exposing the faintly pulsing heart inside.
Kai'Sa's eyes lit up. No matter how powerful a Void creature was, once its heart was destroyed, it died instantly.
Just as she raised her arm-blades to deliver the finishing blow, another massive maw shot out of the darkness below and clamped down on her lower leg, dragging her away with terrifying speed.
Only when disaster struck did she realize there had been another hunter hidden behind the one she was facing.
One mistake was enough to ruin everything.
She was yanked upside down into the air. Deep grooves were carved into the armor around her leg by the monster's fangs.
It felt as if both her legs were about to tear off. Kai'Sa cried out, and the agony forced her fists to erupt with flame, which she blasted straight into the skull's eye sockets.
The fire engulfed its head, but it still refused to let go. As the monster whipped its head around wildly, Kai'Sa's small body slammed again and again into the rock walls on both sides. The relentless battering left her unable to gather energy for a counterattack. She could only endure the brutal mauling.
Her voidskin cracked under the impacts, and drops of blood flew from the gaps and splattered across the ground.
The situation had turned critical.
Half a minute had already passed. Not only had Kai'Sa failed to kill her target as planned, she had trapped herself instead.
On the other side, Zihark was still using mind control to hold one hunter in place. The third hunter had arrived later, but he had been in the middle of maintaining control and could not split his focus, so he had failed to warn Kai'Sa in time.
"Damn it!"
As he watched Kai'Sa fall into danger while he himself was unable to break free, a mad idea rose in Zihark's mind.
It could hurt her.
It could even kill her.
But it was the only way he could think of to break the deadlock.
He deepened the mind control, forcing the hunter facing him to lower its body.
Then Zihark took the risk and climbed onto its back, using the extra height to aim at the monster hunting Kai'Sa.
Next, he made the controlled hunter gather energy in its mouth and turn its fire on its own kind.
A brilliant violet flash lit up the tunnel. Thanks to Zihark's prediction, the beam scraped past the largest hunter in the middle and struck the head of the one behind it.
It was a strike made with their lives on the line. If Kai'Sa had been flung into the line of fire at that exact moment, he would have killed her with his own hands.
Zihark dared not think any further.
Or rather, he no longer had the strength to.
He was at his limit.
Forcing the hunter to turn traitor had drained what little mental strength he had left. Tears streamed uncontrollably from his aching eyes. His head felt as heavy as a mountain, his thoughts dull and sluggish, as though lead had been poured into his brain. He could collapse at any second.
The hunter beneath him broke free of the mind control and began thrashing violently, trying to fling him off.
In his swaying haze, one thought surfaced.
How was an injured Kai'Sa supposed to deal with three hunters?
And if he failed to kill the one beneath him, would he ever wake up again?
That desperate will to survive kept Zihark going a little longer. He dug his claws into the hunter's back, then slid down along its ribs to its underside, leaving deep claw marks across the membrane as he went.
He had to kill it before he blacked out.
Otherwise, neither he nor Kai'Sa was getting out of this intact.
But how was he supposed to destroy its heart? He could barely tear open its chest, let alone—
No.
There was one more way.
A flash of inspiration hit him in the middle of the crisis. Zihark poured everything he had into it, and a sharp bony spike like a horn grew out from the back of his hand.
He clenched his fist and drove the spike with all his strength into the hunter's chest. The beast let out a shrill scream.
The entire spike vanished into its chest cavity, but thirty centimeters was nowhere near enough to reach the heart of such a huge monster. Zihark had no choice but to straighten his legs, jam his shoulder hard against its chest, and twist his fist like a drill, forcing his way between the ribs.
His voidskin frantically devoured the foul flesh, widening the gap between the ribs. With one final burst of strength, Zihark rammed his entire arm into its chest and churned around blindly and savagely until he punched straight through its heart.
Only after that did he surrender to the darkness.
The collapsing monster crashed down and buried him beneath its body.
The sudden plasma beam had blown away half the other hunter's upper jaw. With its bite loosened, it could no longer hold Kai'Sa and flung her away.
She hit the ground and could not get back up. The repeated impacts had shattered her voidskin in multiple places, and one of her legs had several bloody holes punched through it. The searing pain clawed at her nerves so fiercely that her body would not stop trembling.
Roar—
Even with a hole blasted through its skull, the hunter still tried to pick Kai'Sa up again. But the moment it opened its mouth, she struck.
She had been waiting for exactly that.
Kai'Sa raised a hand and fired several firebolts deep into its throat, detonating the heart once and for all.
One down.
One left.
Kai'Sa turned her eyes toward the largest hunter behind her, the very one she had promised Zihark she would kill quickly at the start.
Its enormous body made turning around in the cramped tunnel a struggle. It had to smash through the rock wall just to face her properly.
The moment it saw Kai'Sa lying there, broken and bleeding, its huge jaws came crashing down.
Kai'Sa planted one hand against the ground and forced herself into a roll, barely avoiding the bite by a hair's breadth. The jaws snapped shut on empty air, and by the time the beast lifted its head again, she was gone.
The smell of blood in the air told it Kai'Sa was still nearby. It lashed out wildly with its claws, but it could not knock her out of the air.
From Kai'Sa's perspective, those enormous claws passed over her head again and again by terrifyingly small margins.
The bones in both her legs had been chewed through. She could not stand. All she could do was crawl along the ground, dragging herself forward with her claws.
Her target was still the hunter's heart. The wound she had opened in its chest earlier had already healed, but that did nothing to dull the killing intent burning inside her.
With her voidskin broken, the time she could stay invisible had been drastically reduced.
But it was enough.
It was enough for her to slip silently beneath the beast.
Staring up at the chest above her, dimly glowing with a hazy purple light, Kai'Sa raised her arm-blade without hesitation and punched through the membrane. Then she fired several plasma bolts in one breath straight into the faintly pulsing heart.
As the hunter let out its dying howl, she finally relaxed and let herself fall flat, her vision sinking into darkness.
With the heart destroyed, thick energy poured from the wound in torrents, drenching Kai'Sa from head to toe.
Her voidskin greedily absorbed the Void energy. Under that lattice of light, it rapidly sealed itself back together while feeding that same power inward, mending Kai'Sa's shattered body from within.
[End of chapter]