More than another year passed, at least by Zihark's reckoning, after the two of them narrowly escaped death in the jaws of those beasts.
During that time, their relationship showed no signs of heating up.
The underground world offered no pleasant surprises, only fresh horrors. Zihark wanted to find some place where they could grow closer, but there was nowhere like that down here.
Kai'Sa had only come to realize that she liked Zihark too, but beyond that she made no further move. She still cared for him, still stayed by his side, but anything beyond that never even seemed to cross her mind.
Saying those things out loud would only ruin them, so Zihark kept quiet. Besides, they were both still young. There was plenty of time ahead for her to figure it out.
The underground world was still full of danger, but after that battle with the hunters, they never again ran into a crisis so severe that they nearly lost their lives.
They did come across several more abysses, large and small alike. But once they understood that the dreadful existence on the other side could sense the approach of living creatures, they avoided every one of them and stayed as far away as possible.
Otherwise, if every approach to an abyss brought some deadly disaster, sooner or later one of them really would die.
As for things falling down from the surface, that kind of accident was rare to begin with.
The underground world was vast beyond measure. In the three thousand five hundred years since the Void War of Icathia ended, the range of Void creatures had spread outward from Icathia into the surrounding lands. By now, traces of them could be found beneath nearly half of Shurima.
And in a space that huge, the odds of just happening to be present when something fell were vanishingly small. Besides, the area where the two of them hunted lay closer to the deeper layers, so anything that dropped from above was usually devoured by Void creatures in the upper strata long before they could reach it. By the time they arrived, not even a trace remained.
And so, after more than a year of steady growth, Kai'Sa's voidskin finally developed shoulder pods, while Zihark at last achieved full coverage.
Huge pods had grown out from her shoulder blades, their fronts linked to her collarbones and hanging behind both shoulders.
They were shaped like sharply ridged shells, with diamond-shaped openings at the front and pointed ends at the back. The middle of each was thicker than Kai'Sa's chest, making them look terribly cumbersome.
And yet, despite how bulky and aerodynamically ridiculous they were, they surprisingly did not slow her down by much at all.
They were hollow and light, far lighter than they looked.
These Void shoulder pods were Kai'Sa's portable ammunition stores. Inside the sacs, just beyond the openings, stretched a lattice woven from Void energy. Like peas bursting from a pod, it could fire multiple plasma bolts at once, and the power was nothing to scoff at.
The only problem was that she could not retract them, which made sitting or lying down awkward. Other than that, they had helped her immensely in battle.
Zihark had no idea when Kai'Sa would originally have completed her evolution on her own, but he was certain that because of his presence, the process had been accelerated by at least two years.
Just from the appearance of their voidskin, the difference in their paths of evolution was obvious.
Though both of them had two layers, Zihark's outer armor had almost achieved full protection over all his weak points, unlike Kai'Sa's, which mainly covered her limbs.
If Kai'Sa looked like a terrifying assassin in a skintight suit, then Zihark looked like a fearsome knight clad in solid bone armor.
He could not turn invisible, and he was nowhere near as agile as Kai'Sa, but his strength and resistance to blows were far greater.
Now, if he were swarmed by a pack of Voidlings, Zihark could stand his ground without being overwhelmed. If he ever ran into a hunter again, he might even be able to meet it head-on in a clash of strength, or perhaps try taking one of its mouth-blasts with his body.
At range, though, he naturally could not compare to Kai'Sa, who specialized in it. All he could do was grow bone spikes from his voidskin and launch them.
Compared with Kai'Sa's energy missiles, his bone spikes were weaker, slower to prepare, and consumed far more material.
He had tried mixing unstable Void energy into them so they would explode on impact, but even then the power only barely caught up to Kai'Sa's attacks.
Maybe that would work against fragile humans. Against Void creatures with monstrous vitality, it really was not good enough.
Zihark felt the best use for the bone spikes was still to grow them along his arms and use them as arm-spikes.
The spikes themselves were hard enough, and paired with the immense strength of his voidskin, most Void creatures died from a single stab.
On top of that, Zihark's long years of trial and error had improved his control over the voidskin.
Unlike the inner layer, the outer armor could actually be shed under his conscious control, like peeling off a shell.
But doing that consumed a tremendous amount of energy when it came time to grow the armor back. In this perilous underground world, that armor was the guarantee of his life, so unless it was badly damaged, he normally would never remove it.
The armor did create a sense of distance when the two of them embraced, but both of them believed each other's safety mattered more than anything else. Sacrificing a little physical warmth was a small price to pay.
At least they could still bump noses and rub their cheeks together...
...
As usual, the two of them walked through the pitch-black tunnels, hunting without any sense of day or night. Only the sacs on Kai'Sa's shoulders gave off a faint glow in the darkness.
The light was nowhere near enough for human eyes to see by, but to survive down here, both of them had developed entirely new vision.
The ones who failed to adapt had all died.
Zihark took the lead, while Kai'Sa watched their rear.
When they hunted, they usually did not talk much. Their attention stayed fixed on tracking prey and listening for movement.
Ever since voidskin had grown over both their hands, they had hardly held hands while walking anymore.
With two layers of Void armor between them, holding hands no longer felt the way it had at the start.
And besides, they were no longer the two frightened children who had first fallen down here. Back then, they had clung to each other in terror of getting lost in the dark. Now, even when they split up, neither of them worried.
They had both grown a great deal.
Ahead of them, the tunnel opened into a cave. In the ceiling of that cave was a passage left behind by a burrowing Void creature, winding upward toward some unknown place.
Now that both of them had achieved full coverage, even steep terrain was no longer a serious obstacle. So they had started moving deliberately closer to the surface, hoping to find an exit back to the world above.
Whenever they found a path leading upward, they explored it.
Standing in the middle of the cave, Zihark pointed up at the passage overhead and turned to look at Kai'Sa.
Too high.
Understanding immediately, Kai'Sa stepped forward, bent her knees, and placed both hands on her thighs. Zihark stepped onto the palms she lowered for him, and then Kai'Sa heaved with force, launching him upward.
At the peak of the throw, Zihark caught the passage with his claws.
But instead of climbing up, he hung beneath the opening, turning himself into a living ladder.
To make sure the rock wall could bear both their weight without crumbling, he grew several bone spikes from his voidskin and drove them into the stone. Only after confirming they were secure did he nod down at Kai'Sa below.
Now it was Kai'Sa's turn to show off that unmatched agility of hers.
She bent her knees, gathered strength, and leapt.
Then easily caught hold of Zihark's thigh.
[End of chapter]