Ren hobbled with desperate velocity.
Her right leg was screaming, her head was throbbing, and her clothes were falling off, but she didn't care. She scrambled down the obsidian corridors, ignoring the terrified hisses of fleeing servant girls.
'It can't be him,' her brain argued. 'Vex said he was trapped by Vara. It's impossible.'
But her heart knew better. It was the sound of the big cat who had purred against her chest in the bamboo forest.
She burst into the Grand Foyer.
She skidded to a halt, bracing herself against a pillar, gasping for breath.
"Holy kaiju," Ren whispered.
The scene before her was something out of a blockbuster movie, but with better CGI and terrifyingly real stakes.
On one side, coil upon coil of black, armored scales rose toward the high ceiling. Syris, in his Titanoboa form, was a nightmare of muscle and purple mist, his massive head hovering high above the ground, his jaws ready to snap a buffalo in half.
