Chapter 157: 157-Out for blood
"Come on!"
Lumi gritted her teeth and forced more energy into the air. This time, it worked as a gust caught Addessa and Zolani just before they hit the ground, slowing their fall. They crashed down anyway.
Varitreya stood several meters away, surrounded by floating stones. Her breathing was heavy now out of anger, but she was far from beginning to feel the strain.
Still, she refused to lower her hands. Her gaze hardened. "I warned you."
The stones around her began rotating faster, each one held in a precise, silent orbit.
"I am royalty."
The ground cracked beneath her. The core of the earth moved. It was shifting according to her will and unsettling in every direction.
"And none of you will ever forget it again."
Addessa slowly lifted her head. Her eyes still burned with rage. She wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, and then she smiled.
"Big mistake."
Varitreya’s eyes narrowed.
Addessa’s fingers curled into fists. The fire had gathered inside her. It was only waiting to be released.
She had been trying to overpower the earth, trying to force the flames into existence through sheer fury. But the ground was not the only thing Varitreya controlled. Every tremor had taught Addessa something: the rhythm of the battlefield, the instant before the earth shifted, the brief space between one impact and the next.
Her helplessness hardened into focus. She didn’t need stable ground to fight her. She needed one opening.
Deep beneath the anger, beneath the grief, beneath everything Zolani had exposed, something was beginning to burn.
Addessa drew a slow, shaking breath. This time, she did not reach for the fire with rage. She reached for it with purpose, and the change was immediate.
Instead of flooding her arms, the flames gathered close to her skin, thin and controlled. She did not build another massive sphere. She did not waste heat on a roar or a spectacle. She watched the ground, counted the tremors, and waited.
A spark flickered between her fingers and then another. Growing with every minute.
Varitreya shifted her weight. Addessa moved with her. The sparks drew together, tightening into a small, white-hot ember that pulsed in time with Addessa’s breath.
Her smile widened. "Now," she whispered, "let’s see you stop me."
Varitreya just smiled.
Addessa’s fingers twitched. The tiny ember between them snapped into existence.
CRACK!
The spark launched not as a fireball but as a razor-thin streak of burning light. It twisted through falling stones and shards of broken earth, slipped beneath one chunk, curved around another, and shot toward Varitreya.
Varitreya didn’t move out of the way or dodge this time. She stood still and waited.
Addessa’s smile sharpened, thinking shed won. "Got you."
Varitreya’s eyes flicked toward her. "No, sweetie. You don’t."
She drove both hands downward.
BOOM!
The ground beneath Addessa, Zolani, and Lumi vanished. All three screamed as they plunged into darkness.
Addessa reached for her fire, but the pit’s walls surged up around them too fast. They struck the bottom in a tangled heap. The impact crushed the breath from their lungs. Dust exploded into their mouths, packed their throats, and grated between their teeth.
Above them, the opening began to shrink.
"Varitreya!" Zolani shouted.
The princess didn’t answer her. She simply closed her fists, and the earth slammed shut.
BOOM!
Darkness consumed them. Stone sealed the opening and compressed the chamber until it became painfully tight. Walls pinned their shoulders and knees.
There was barely room to turn, barely room to draw a full breath. Every exhale rebounded hot against their faces, thick with dust and the sour stink of crushed stone.
Lumi reached for the air, but nothing moved. Her fingers scraped through the stale darkness. The air clung to her skin, heavy and used, as if the chamber had already breathed it all away.
"No..." She tried again. A faint current stirred around her fingers, then died. "There isn’t enough air."
Zolani summoned her water, but nothing happened. Her power flickered weakly and vanished.
"The earth is blocking it."
Addessa raised her hand. A spark appeared between her fingers, glowed for half a second, then with a fizz. It went out. The darkness rushed back thicker than before.
"No... she doesn’t get to win," she tried again and failed.
Above them, Varitreya stood calmly on the rising ground. Addessa’s attack had vanished harmlessly into the stone. She hadn’t needed to dodge; she had simply changed the battlefield.
Deep below, Addessa slammed her fist against the wall. Pain shot up her arm. The stone barely trembled. Dust sifted into her hair, her eyes, her tongue.
"VARITREYA!"
Her voice struck the narrow chamber and came back warped and breathless, as if the walls were whispering it directly into her ear.
Lumi pressed a hand against the stone. It was cold, damp, and so close it felt like it was leaning into her.
"This isn’t a pit," her voice trembled. "It’s a tomb."
Zolani swallowed. The sound seemed unnaturally loud in the cramped silence. "Don’t say that."
"I’m just stating the obvious!"
Addessa looked upward. There was no sky, moon, wind, water, or fire. Nothing. Only packed earth pressing down so heavily it seemed to crush the darkness itself.
For the first time, they understood what Varitreya had done. She hadn’t merely trapped them underground. She had stripped away every advantage, leaving them bruised, short of air, and surrounded by earth completely under her control.
Addessa’s fists tightened. "You think this will hold me?"
Above them, Varitreya smiled. She could hear them and feel every movement through the earth.
"Feel free to tremble at any given moment, guys."
Zolani looked up sharply. "That arrogant..."
A deep rumble cut her off. The walls tightened by another inch. Stone groaned around them. Their shoulders were forced together. Lumi’s breath caught as the ceiling descended toward the tops of their heads.
Lumi froze. "Guys..."
"She’s trying to crush us," Zolani whispered.
Addessa’s eyes narrowed. "No. She wants us to think we’re already dead."
Another rumble shook the chamber. Pebbles rattled across the floor and vanished into the dust.
Lumi’s breathing quickened. Each inhale came shorter than the last, scraping down her throat. Her next breath caught halfway in.
"But what if we are?"
Addessa turned toward her, eyes burning in the darkness. "Then we’ll just have to be very inconvenient corpses."
Zolani stared at her. Despite everything, a tiny smile tugged at her lips. "That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said."
"Still better than your plan."
"I didn’t have a plan."
"Exactly my point."
Lumi groaned. "Can you two please stop arguing before we die?"
Above them, Varitreya’s smile slowly disappeared. Because beneath her feet, something moved. A faint orange glow appeared through one of the cracks.
Varitreya’s eyes narrowed. "Kheamossa..."
Deep inside the death hole, Addessa raised her hand. A tiny spark danced across her fingertips. This time, it didn’t disappear.
It grew big, sharp, and white-hot. Its glow barely reached the walls, but it painted their faces in flickering orange and revealed how little space remained between them.
The heat touched Addessa’s knuckles, fighting against the cold stone and the suffocating air. Around them, every breath came faster, thinner, more desperate.
Addessa smiled in the darkness. "You should’ve buried us deeper."
The ground exploded, and a force pushed them up to the ground. "See, I told you..." she held her tongue as she spotted the Queen consort, Kheamossa Vancrest and her blackblood guard.
She realized it wasn’t her who got them out of the pit. They did.
"Children," the whiteblood queen consort spoke, it was a whisper, but the sound caused a vibration that forced them to their knees.
The sheer pressure of her presence kept pushing down heavily on their shoulders, except for Varitreya. The others were suffering greatly.
Varitreya sealed her strength and drifted smoothly to her usual mask. She looked weakly at her Kheamossa, tears pooling in her eyes on command. She looked a second away from crying.
"Mommy..."
Addessa, Lumi, and Zolani’s jaws dropped, cold sweat breaking out from the pressure and Varitreya’s change in persona.
Who in the nation didn’t know how much Kheamossa spoilt her daughter, whether in the right or wrong, as long as the princess shed a tear, the consort wouldn’t spare whoever made her cry
"She really is out for blood... our blood," Addessa spoke through gritted teeth.