The forest beneath Nico kept stretching on while he sat on that branch with eyes fixed on X-97's marker on his map.
And far away from that, X-97 hovered high above a clearing.
Her wings of fire were spread wide, but dimmed low to a controlled glow that was just enough to keep her aloft without announcing herself to the world below.
From this height, she was nothing more than a small shimmer in the sky as she watched the battle below
Four humans stood in a broken ring around a three-headed black serpent.
Its body, thick as a siege tower, coiled and re-coiled across the clearing like a living calamity. Three heads rose from its necks, each one breathing a different kind of death.
The middle maw spat a viscous green venom that ate into the earth where it landed.
The left head exhaled gouts of fire that stuck to things like oil.
The right breathed a creeping frost that crystallized all it touched.
