Chapter 178: Breaking the Shadow Voice
Nancy’s violet eye flashed. The living-shadow coat exploded outward in a dozen lashing tendrils of pure darkness.
"I’m not going to attest to that!"
She moved fast. One tendril of shadow whipped toward Levi’s throat while two more swept low for his legs. At the same time she flicked her wrist and sent a spear of condensed night straight at Lucy’s chest.
Levi’s golden barrier flared. The throat tendril and the low sweeps blackened and scattered on contact. Lucy sidestepped the spear with a laugh, letting it punch a clean hole through an empty forge instead.
"Oh, she is fun," Lucy said, already closing in.
Vespera raised both hands. Northern cold met the next wave of living shadow and froze several tendrils solid. They shattered when Nancy tried to retract them.
"Predictable angle," Vespera noted.
Serakel’s third eye glowed. A precise force blade sliced through the shadow coat’s left side, forcing Nancy to spin away or lose a strip of the living darkness permanently. "She is better than the forgemaster. Still not good enough."
Isha’s slime shot across the platform in wide arcs, trying to wrap Nancy’s ankles. Nancy vaulted over the first tendril, but the second caught her calf and yanked.
She hit the iron deck in a controlled roll and came up with a long blade of solid shadow in each hand.
"I was being polite," Nancy snarled. "Polite is over."
She blurred forward, both blades aiming for Levi’s ribs. The golden barrier rang under the impact. Levi caught one of her wrists, twisted, and forced her to drop the left blade. She reversed the other and nearly opened his cheek before the barrier thickened again.
’She is quick. And she is angry. Good. Angry makes the claim cleaner.’
The pit-wyrm hybrid growled and took one heavy step forward. Levi lifted a hand without looking.
"Mine."
The hybrid stopped, disappointed.
Lucy came in from Nancy’s blind side—the side with the black lens—and locked her blade against the remaining shadow sword. Sparks of gold and black sprayed. "You should have knelt when you had the chance."
Nancy snarled, living shadow erupting from her coat in a sudden burst that shoved Lucy back three paces.
She used the space to leap straight up, shadow forming temporary footholds in the air, and tried to come down on Levi from above with both feet and a reformed blade.
Levi was already moving. He stepped inside her descent, caught her by the coat, and slammed her hard onto the iron platform. The impact rang across the entire forge level. Nancy’s remaining shadow blade skittered away.
She still was not done. Shadow spiked upward from the deck in a forest of razor edges. Levi’s barrier burned a clear circle around him.
Vespera froze half the spikes. Serakel shattered another cluster. Isha’s slime smothered a third group and dissolved them with a cheerful hiss.
The Reverend Mother Superior simply walked through the outer edge of the attack, holy-gold light turning every spike that came near her into harmless smoke.
Nancy tried to rise. Levi planted one boot on her chest and pressed her back down.
Gold light gathered in his palm.
"Last chance was two minutes ago," he said.
Nancy’s violet eye glared up at him, still defiant. The black lens over the other eye cracked under the pressure of the Sovereign Domain. She spat a mouthful of dark blood onto the iron and tried one final surge of living shadow.
The gold light swallowed it.
[Expending 7,000 Aether]
[Sovereign Domain: Direct Claim – Forced]
The mark punched into her hard. Nancy arched under his boot with a raw, unwilling cry. The living-shadow coat thrashed once more and then went limp, the darkness thinning until it was only ordinary black cloth.
The cracked lens over her left eye fell away in pieces, revealing a matching violet iris that now carried a thin gold rim.
[Target: Nancy, Last Free Voice of the Black Maw]
[Desire Level: 0% → 100%]
[Claim Complete]
Nancy’s body shuddered through the final wave of the claim. When it passed she lay still under Levi’s boot, breathing hard, both violet-and-gold eyes staring up at him with exhausted fury that was already turning into something else.
Levi removed his foot. "Kneel."
For a long second it looked like she might refuse out of pure residual spite. Then the gold mark at her throat pulsed, and the last of her resistance folded. Nancy rolled onto her side, pushed herself up, and dropped into a proper kneel on the hot iron, head bowed.
"Master," she said, voice rough. "The Black Maw is yours."
Lucy exhaled and sheathed her blade. "She put up a better fight than the rest of the city combined. I respect it."
Vespera nodded once. "Competent. Annoying, but competent."
Serakel’s third eye dimmed with satisfaction. "The quiet ones always last longest."
Isha crouched down to peer at Nancy’s face, slime dripping curiously. "You have pretty eyes now. The gold matches."
The Reverend Mother Superior looked around at the watching demons, all of whom had gone very quiet. "And the city has run out of loud voices. Convenient."
Levi glanced across the forge platform and the crater walls beyond. Every major power in the Black Maw now carried his mark. The remaining demons were already kneeling or carefully finding somewhere else to be.
’Another free court down. The underground is learning.’
He looked at the five women, then at the newly claimed Nancy still kneeling at his feet.
"On your feet," he told her. "You are going to show me every remaining ledger, armory, and war-beast pen in this crater. After that you will send word to the other free courts that the Black Maw answers to the Sovereign of Neverland. Any court that wants to discuss terms can come here. Any court that wants to test those terms can also come here. Both will receive answers."
Nancy rose, a little unsteady but already recovering her composure. The gold rim in her eyes caught the forge light.
"As you command, Master."
Levi turned toward the deeper levels of the crater city. The five women fell in around him. The pit-wyrm hybrid resumed its place at the rear.
Captain Reth and Forgemaster Drak waited for orders with the rest of the newly claimed.