Orochi pulled the second sword free of the earth with one tremendous heave, shaking the earth as it dropped the huge blade at its feet. It had been waiting for this moment. Finally, its fangs reached where the sky shimmered and strike at the barrier dividing natural and supernatural. Orochi turned all of its attention skyward, smashing and hacking a quickly-growing rift in the sky. The first of a sky filled with white-gray clouds shone through, undistorted by the barrier against the backdrop of the stormy black.

  . Falling ice compacted and pulled moisture from the air. Colossal hands of ice formed and grasped the two remaining blades of light. They drove them deep into the earth, yanking the raised heads down and shy of the barrier once more.

  "Yamata no Orochi," mused Aileen. "Let's see… yes, I remember. The wicked serpent slain as it rested in a drunken stupor. But I don't have any wine on hand, do I? Certainly not enough for this many heads."

  The mythical beast rounded on the armored knight that had tied it down yet again. Huge necks flexing, countless heads coiled and struck—

  Caladbolg howled to life. Its blade spanned several hundred meters in a single swing. Every neck in its path was cleanly severed, and many more badly wounded. The ground rocked as lifeless serpentine heads crashed down, tumbling through the rubble past Aileen.

  Noxious blood splashed on her armor, sizzling as it attempted to eat away at the ice that masked her body. The rain washed it away. The severed stumps boiled and raw flesh burst forth.

  "Poisonous blood, and every head taken becomes two… you must be fused with the Lernean Hydra. In that time, you were slain by fire…"

  The air crackled. The heavens flashed. A barrage of lightning struck the regrowing stumps in rapid succession, one deafening clap ringing out after the other. Flames consumed them—but still, Orochi's heads regrew, shrugging off the fire as black scales closed over them.

  "Is it because you were raised by Goukei? Born again from the flames of hell? Or were you fused with a third dragon?" Aileen watched as the divine dragon shuddered and flexed its necks, fresh new heads growing until it was even stronger than before she attacked. "I suppose it doesn't matter. One way or another, I see he pulled out all the stops. You were tailor-made to be unstoppable. At this size, you're a demon even the Three Equalizers would struggle to defeat."

  One of Orochi's heads bared its fangs and struck again. This time, a great hand of ice jumped forth to meet it and crushed it in its massive grip. The blood solidified mid-spray and the entire shattered head froze solid in her grasp.

  "Did you know? There's one technique I never could figure out." Aileen planted her sword before her. Caladbolg vaporized and dispersed into the storm as she strode forth, deep blue cape billowing. "My control weakens on water in the bodies of others. It's easy enough to freeze someone solid, but being able to unfreeze them alive was always out of the question. The formation of ice destroys them on a cellular level. But that's not a concern today, hmm?"

  Breathed jets of flame withered and died out under the merciless storm. One head after another struck. They all found another glacial hand crushing their jaws shut. Orochi's necks jerked and pulled, huge sinews flexing. Aileen's grip refused to yield.

  The wind roared into punishing gales so strong, even the great dragon faltered. Still bound in glowing red ofuda, the gigantic chains shifted and rattled. The sheets of hail didn't fall so much as fly, their path turning near-horizontal.

  Aileen raised her arm and brought it in. At the edge of the city, the coastline responded in kind, and a tremendous tsunami crashed into the side of the beast. White sprays of water filled the air and then the wave too joined the currents taking flight around their master. Orochi's silent bellowing roar trembled the city.

  "I don't know if you can regenerate from just one cell," said Aileen. "But that doesn't matter. The years of my life, my happiness, my family… finally, I have a purpose for the power I traded everything for."

  A whirling pillar of water spun to life at her feet, lifting her high into the air. Higher than the leveled cityline, higher than the shining blades, and higher yet until she was the one looking down on the beast. The shining armor melted away, blue coat unfurling around her and hat flapping wildly in the wind.

  Orochi's many eyes turned to her, the one at the eye of the storm.

  Spellcasting required a medium, whether that was through physical motion, runes, or other means. Often, it was only at the highest level that one could begin to achieve the same effect through their mind alone, with no external means of action.

  Everything up to this point, Aileen achieved almost entirely by force of mind. Only now did she sweep her arms out to both sides, raise them, and take direct control of the storm through her own body.

  "Yamata no Orochi… great serpent of destruction. And the one who harmed my son." That warm voice had turned cold as ice. "I won't leave even one trace of your being behind."

  Whirling in the winds, the hail molded itself into razor-sharp edges. One blade alone could not cut Orochi—but one thousand, one million, clashed against its hide time and again, would wear it down as surely as a river sculpted rocks.

  A glacial typhoon formed with Aileen at its center. Stray rubble and chunks of buildings took flight. Flying icebergs that shattered themselves against the beast, sculpted sharks and seaborn beasts as clear as glass, and innumerable blades revolved around the High Magus in a furious storm. The water soaked into the earth, the swirling clouds overhead, the ocean at the city's edge—everything to the horizon was within her reach, and all of it was focused entirely on one target.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Orochi thrashed, its two remaining chains pulling taut one way as gale force winds buffeted it, then the other way as an immense wave broke over it. Its black scales were painted over in deep red, seeping from endless cuts and gashes. The raging storm whittled it away and stripped it of its hide, exposing pink flesh. The world tremored as its immense figure writhed, obscured both by the storm and the steam of its own boiling blood.

  Aileen had no intention of relenting until the entire beast was torn asunder and reduced to the tiniest pieces of ice.

  "Julian, sir! We've lost contact with Darius—"

  "—active typhoon on both Surface and Reverse, supercell generating on the—"

  "—our observational devices are down, the signal can't—"

  A barrage of voices filled the control center, each vying for his attention as he overlooked the mission. Information streamed down the massive set of screens dominating the wall, numbers and maps everywhere. Above it all, one voice cut through the rest.

  "Julian," said Asayuki over the connection. "What the hell is happening."

  "Don't turn back!" he barked. Her blinking signal on the map had stopped. "This isn't your concern anymore. We're working on it."

  "Orochi's emergence caused an earthquake," said Haruka, fingers typing away. "A full-scale typhoon has formed on the Reverse. It's generated a resonant typhoon on the Surface. An alert has already been sent out to the population, but there's only so much we can do."

  "What's the state of affairs on the Surface?" said Julian.

  "Several buildings destroyed by the earthquake. A tidal wave hit the shore minutes ago as well, we're still gathering numbers. Fatalities for sure, estimated at least a hundred deaths. Injuries could be several thousand, and the damages will cost millions. And the numbers are still increasing!"

  "We've lost contact with Darius," repeated the operator on his other side. "There's too much interference. We can't get a good read on anything through the storm."

  "And the condition of the Lynchpins?" said Julian.

  A few clicks on the keyboard and several black spires appeared on Haruka's monitor. "One destroyed in downtown Iwaki. Three heavily damaged by Orochi. Six more destroyed by the typhoon."

  "What's the condition of Orochi?"

  "Its signal is…" Haruka looked up at the main screens. The large red dot that indicated Orochi's position had vanished. "Unaccounted for. We've lost most of our vision in the area with the Lynchpins. Even so, we were able to monitor it until the typhoon set in. I can't tell if it's merely hidden by the storm, or…"

  Julian's arms were folded as he settled his gaze on the main screens. "Aileen… Does this matter to you that much? At any cost?"

  A map of the country dominated the center screen. Rainbands stretched out from the heart of the typhoon, long arms of clouds and storms looming over the entire landmass.

  The wind howled. Rain poured down through the jagged hole between dimensions and fell over the lip in steady streams from the edge of the earth. Erina watched the storm through the hole, standing atop the roof of one of the few units not destroyed by Orochi's ascent.

  "…sudden typhoon has manifested over Japan." A holographic screen hovered in Lazarus' hand. It was flickering, cast in a blue filter, grainy and filled with static, but clear enough to make out the breaking news report. "Its abruptness is highly unusual. Residents in the Fukushima Prefecture, please head indoors immediately and…"

  "What is this scale?" said Erina quietly. "This strength, this power… this is a true typhoon. A natural disaster that levels cities. A phenomenon that can be seen from space. This kind of scale… it's—"

  "Impossible," said Akira. She glowered up as thunder rumbled overhead. "I've never seen anything like it. Don't give a damn who you are, a mage packing this kind of power just ain't a thing that happens. It's not something humans can do."

  "The territory of a god," mumbled Erina. "A god of sea and storm."

  "That's not it," said Lazarus. "This is the truest form of humanity."

  Both turned to her.

  "Gods, immortals—we stagnate. We entwine ourselves with our Affinities, our fundamental identities, and settle in that role. That's the nature of a god. Unchanging, unmoving, eternal." Lazarus took a breath. "From the moment they're born, humans must die eventually. With their limited time, they strive to make their mark on the world before they leave it. That urgency, that desperate need to leave behind the proof that they lived… even if we used to be mortal, we who live for thousands of years can't truly understand that anymore."

  She closed her hand, shutting off the report, and raised it to the rain.

  "And this is the result—the magnum opus of one human's lifetime. A storm that challenges the gods."

  "But still," said Erina, "this is too much. Even for Aileen-san. Surely, something like this… At this rate, she's going to—"

  "Yeah." Akira carefully kept her eyes aimed up at the swirling clouds. "She will."

  "We can't let that happen. Mom, we…"

  Erina turned to her, but Lazarus simply stared back. The expression on her face and the look in her silver eyes was all it took to make Erina's voice die in her throat. They asked her a silent question she already knew the answer to.

  Erina deflated. One hand over her chest, she turned to face the storm again.

  They could only watch until the very end.

  Aileen shuddered. A sensation, one she hadn't known in decades, now cut through her core like a hot knife in her gut. Her mind was clear. The mana flowed more easily than it ever had. Her will brought form to the pouring rain, the whirling clouds, the cutting ice. Her aging body was the one thing holding it all back. It had taken some time, but it looked like she was finally reaching her limit.

  "What would have happened?" she muttered to herself. "If I had said nothing to you?"

  The aquatic column roared at her feet and Orochi writhed far below her as the storm hacked away at it, but her mind's eye was somewhere far away.

  If she had said nothing, that girl would still be wandering in the dark. Even now, she hadn't found her destination yet, but Aileen knew she was on the right course. One day, she'd reach it for sure.

  A hot spike of pain, and the composer of the crystalline orchestra paused. Aileen winced. She took a small breath, stood tall, and the terrifying storm ripped into Orochi with newfound vigor.

  "It's strange," she mused to herself as she tore at the divine dragon. "I feel quite healthy, actually. My back didn't hurt at all this morning. How many days did I have left? Would I have gone quietly in my sleep without ever knowing? Or would it have come for me, suddenly and unexpectedly? Oh, there's no point fretting over it now."

  One of Orochi's heads lifted free of the rest and lunged for her, a single set of serpentine jaws piercing the punishing rain to reach the High Magus at the eye of the storm—

  A screaming blizzard of impossible temperatures lasted for one second, and the head froze solid. Assailed by the storm, it cracked and crumbled away into so many pieces, scattering in the wind.

  Aileen lost her balance and drifted to one side. Her column of water whipped, compensating its master until she found her footing again.

  She couldn't stop until her work was done. Aileen lifted her arms. She forced them to move again, every fiber of her muscles fighting back every inch of the way.

  At first, it was just an unpleasant prickling sensation. Pins and needles on her back and neck. Now her whole body was ablaze with pain. Her mana reserves were all but dry.

  But it was all worth it. In fact, she was overjoyed.

  "This time, I won't turn a blind eye as you suffer on the other side of the world." Aileen could barely muster more than a whisper. Despite it all, she could feel the smile on her face. "This time, I'm here for you… my son."

  She wouldn't give that up for anything.

  The sheets of flying ice and howling winds closed in, obscuring even her vision. Aileen shut her eyes, and the raging typhoon consumed everything.