His movements, previously a blur of terrifying, fluid grace, became distinctly sluggish. His massive black coils twitched erratically as the paralysis began to fight against his ancient immune system. He ripped the spear out of his back with a pained hiss, throwing it aside, but his breathing was suddenly heavy and labored.
Kaya dropped lightly to the floor, landing next to Veer, who was wiping a trickle of blood from his chin and grinning like a madman.
"I think the interior decorating looks much better in the dark," Kaya said, spinning her hunting knife in her hand.
Lord Siss stared down at them, his chest heaving, his amber eyes burning with an ancient, murderous hatred. He was injured, he was freezing, and his body was fighting off venom. But he was still a three-hundred-year-old monster.
"You think this is over?" Lord Siss hissed, his jaw unhinging completely as a thick, blinding cloud of toxic green mist began to billow from his throat, quickly filling the enclosed treasury. "I will melt the flesh from your bones!"
The toxic green mist billowed from Lord Siss’s unhinged jaw like a tidal wave of death. It cascaded down his massive black coils and hit the obsidian floor, instantly fizzing and popping. Where the mist touched the scattered gold coins, the metal bubbled and melted. Where it touched the stone, it ate away the marble with a horrific, hissing sound.
It was a highly concentrated, airborne acid, and it was filling the sealed treasury at an alarming rate.
Kaya immediately clamped a cloth over her mouth and nose, backing away as the green fog rolled across the floor toward her boots. "Don’t breathe it in!" she screamed, her eyes watering just from the ambient fumes.
She looked at Cutie. The giant bear-rabbit was paralyzed, slumped against the treasure chests. If the mist reached him, he wouldn’t be able to move. He would dissolve alive.
Kaya spun toward Veer. "You’re a Vulture!" she yelled, pointing at the shattered balcony high above them, where the cold night air was whistling in. "Do you have wings or are they just for show?!"
Veer’s feral grin widened into something truly monstrous. "I was wondering when you’d ask, wife."
With a guttural, bone-cracking sound, the back of Veer’s heavy dark coat violently ripped open. From his shoulder blades, two massive, terrifying wings erupted. They were easily a fifteen-foot wingspan, covered in razor-sharp, obsidian-black feathers that seemed to absorb the faint light in the room.
Veer planted his boots firmly on the cratered floor, crouched low, and snapped his massive wings forward with explosive force.
The resulting gale was like a localized hurricane inside the treasury. The sheer concussive force of the wind slammed into the rolling green mist, halting its advance instantly. Veer beat his wings again, faster, harder, the muscles in his back bulging. The hurricane-force winds caught the acidic fog, churning it upward and violently blowing it straight out through the shattered hole in the balcony and into the freezing canyon night.
Lord Siss was caught completely off guard by the gale. The freezing air rushing in from outside, combined with Veer’s manufactured blizzard, hit the cold-blooded Snake Lord like a physical wall. His body temperature plummeted. The paralytic venom in his spine flared with vengeance. His massive coils stiffened, scraping awkwardly against the stone as he fought to stay upright.
"My turn," Kaya muttered.
She didn’t run away this time. She ran straight at the three-hundred-year-old monster.
Lord Siss saw the human charging him. Even freezing, even paralyzed, his ancient pride refused to let him be bested by a magicless ape. He let out a deafening hiss, lunging his upper body forward. His elongated, venom-dripping talons swiped down in a massive, diagonal arc, intended to cut Kaya completely in half.
But Kaya was already moving. Channeling every ounce of her strange, weightless power, she didn’t just jump over the claws—she slid on her knees across the slick, blood-stained marble, slipping directly *under* the massive swipe.
As she slid right beneath his towering human torso, Kaya reached up with her hunting knife and drove it to the hilt directly into the soft, pale flesh of his stomach, tearing a massive, jagged line upward as her momentum carried her through.
Siss shrieked, a sound of absolute, unadulterated agony. He twisted wildly, his massive tail thrashing out blindly in pain, smashing into the stone pillars and bringing chunks of the ceiling crashing down.
"Veer! Now!" Kaya screamed, rolling out from beneath the thrashing tail and coming to a halt near the treasury doors.
Veer was already in the air.
Using his massive wings, the Vulture chief launched himself off the floor, soaring high above the chaotic thrashing of the Snake Lord. He tucked his wings in, diving straight down like a missile locking onto its prey.
Lord Siss looked up, his amber eyes wide with panic as he clutched his bleeding stomach. He opened his jaw to release another cloud of venom, but he was entirely out of time.
Veer landed squarely on the Snake Lord’s broad shoulders, his heavy boots digging into the flawless porcelain skin. Before Siss could even attempt to throw him off, Veer crossed his twin curved blades directly under the Snake Lord’s chin.
"The skies belong to the Vultures," Veer whispered coldly into the serpent’s ear.
He violently scissored his arms outward.
The dark steel bit through the microscopic scales, sheared through the muscle, and severed the spine with a sickening, definitive *CRUNCH*.
Lord Siss’s flawless, beautiful head detached completely from his shoulders. It tumbled through the air, his amber eyes frozen in an expression of absolute, arrogant shock, before hitting the obsidian floor with a wet, heavy thud. It rolled a few feet, coming to a stop right against the toe of Kaya’s leather boot.
The massive, thirty-foot serpent body stood rigidly upright for a fraction of a second, a geyser of dark blood erupting from the severed neck, before finally collapsing. The three tons of dead weight hit the marble floor, shaking the entire cavern one last time.
Then, absolute silence descended on the treasury.
The dust settled. The cold air rushed in through the balcony. The invincible ruler of the Western territories, a monster who had terrorized the continent for three centuries, was dead.
Veer calmly wiped his blades on the heavy tapestries hanging from the walls, his massive black wings folding back into his body until they disappeared entirely beneath his torn coat. He walked over to Kaya, completely unfazed by the gore, and offered her a dangerously handsome smile.
"Well," Veer noted, kicking the severed head of Lord Siss aside like a piece of trash. "I’d say that was a highly successful interior redesign. What do you think, wife?"
Kaya looked at the dead Snake guards, the mountain of stolen gold, and the headless corpse of the ancient serpent. She reached up, wiping a smear of dirt and blood from her cheek, and let out a long, exhausted breath.
"I think," Kaya said, sheathing her hunting knife, "that the Free Clan just got its first official treasury. Now go help Cutie before he wakes up and realizes he missed the best part."
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