Queens Gambit

“Sophie! RUN!”
My own voice was a rasp, but the command was unmistakable. I didn’t wait to see her go. I shoved my daughter and Adrian deeper into the dense shadows of the forest, then spun around, planting my feet on the relative stability of the untouched earth.
Atlas was a grotesque sight. The Elder God’s power was fighting against the sheer, physical trauma Marcus had inflicted and the backlash from the collapsing nexus. His left arm hung uselessly, and the purple energy crackling around him sputtered like a dying wick, but his eyes were fixed on the pregnant Dragon Queen, and the desire to possess what he believed was his was a terrible, living thing.
He took another staggering step forward. We were barely ten feet apart, and the stench of burnt magic and black earth was suffocating.
"You can't save him, little Queen," Atlas grated, his voice still a ruined whisper of triumph. "Marcus is gone. He gave his life for you, and now you will give yours to me. The children are irrelevant. It is the blood of the next nexus I require."
I felt the immense, terrifying pull of the vortex behind him. It was still hungry, waiting.
A distraction. That’s all I need.
I had no fire, no claws, no dragon armor. My magic was depleted, and I was holding a child—the next Dragon King—in my womb. But I had something Atlas didn't: a precise knowledge of the Heartwood Grove’s weakness, and a single, blinding moment of desperation.
I drew on the deepest well of my remaining strength, not to cast a spell, but to generate a terrifying, purely psychological weapon—a burst of concentrated King’s Presence.
The air around me crackled, not with golden fire, but with the cold, silver-white light of raw authority. It was a bluff, an echo of the power Marcus wielded, but it was startlingly effective.
"You are wrong," I spat, ignoring the scream of pain from my side. "He did not save me. He sent you to HELL."
I raised my hands, palms open and empty, focusing every ounce of will on the ground behind him. I didn't have the power to create a new tear, but I could destabilize the existing one, making the ground beneath his ruined feet less stable, more volatile.
Atlas flinched. The sudden burst of silver, the sheer, cold rage in my voice, and the memory of Marcus’s final, annihilating fire were enough to momentarily break his concentration. His eyes widened, distracted by the potential threat I posed.
"Liar!" he roared, lunging forward, ignoring the subtle shift beneath his boots.
That was my moment.
Just as he crossed the line into the forest, I ducked, rolling desperately to the side, emptying all the residual magical energy I had into the ground he had just left. The silver light pulsed, and the edge of the sinkhole nearest him shattered.
The hole didn't just expand; it inhaled.
The ground Atlas was standing on gave way with a sickening, grinding sound. He lost his footing, his scream of triumph turning into a howl of furious terror as he felt the gravitational pull of the unstable magic.
He thrashed, his good hand scrabbling at the shattered rock, his eyes still locked on me. He wasn't afraid of dying; he was terrified of failing.
"You… you BITCH!"
He was dangling precariously over the dark, spinning mouth of the vortex. He had seconds. He made his choice: victory over revenge. With a monumental, terrifying surge of the Elder God’s power, he ripped a massive chunk of earth from the forest floor, throwing it at me as a distraction, then used the resulting recoil to hurl himself away from the sinkhole's edge and deeper into the forest, vanishing into the trees in the direction opposite to my children.
The chunk of stone slammed into the ground where I had been standing a moment before. The explosion was deafening.
I lay gasping, the last reserves of my strength gone. I had won the distraction, but at a terrible price: Atlas was still alive, and he was loose in the world. He was wounded and maddened, and he was now hunting in the same forest where I had just sent my children.

I pushed myself up, dizzy and shaking, my focus snapping back to the one thing that mattered.
"Sophie!" I whispered, scrambling to my feet. "Adrian! Where are you?"
There was no answer, only the sound of distant, agitated wildlife and the rhythmic, terrifying hiss of the collapsing grove behind me. The forest was too dark, the shadows too thick. Had they gone the wrong way? Had Atlas somehow circled around?
Then, a faint, metallic clink reached my ears.
It was the sound of a small, consecrated object—the dagger I had dropped when Marcus first arrived. I saw the faint silver glint of its hilt, wedged into the root of an oak tree just beyond my line of sight.
My children were gone, but the dagger was a sign. Sophie had dropped it, or perhaps left it as a deliberate marker, a trace for me to follow.
I lunged for it, grasping the cold, blessed steel. I had no idea where they were, or how far a maddened, god-fueled king had run, but I had a path, a weapon, and an unshakeable maternal purpose. The chase was on. I turned my back on the pit, on the memory of my lost King, and plunged into the darkness.