Lillene

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“A tortoise to judge a tiger?” The White Tiger sniffed derisively. “As if that could work. Power is all that matters, and I hold it. Your dragon and your phoenix add nothing to your power; they are far too human to matter.”

“The old tales set the requirements to judge another, that three must judge the fourth. We have the three so we may judge you. It is right and what you have done is wrong.” Ikatha took a half-step forward and nudged Serenity. He wasn’t certain if she wanted him to act or forgot there wasn’t enough room to move freely.

The White Tiger snorted again. “Try it and see, oh shelled one. You are protected if you hide in your shell, but I can kill everyone else in here before you can act and then where will you be? At my mercy, like any other single creature.”

Serenity growled low in his throat. She was underestimating everyone in the room except for Ikatha, her son, and probably Brightleaf, but Serenity didn’t want it to come to a fight no matter who would win. He stepped forward and directly between Ikatha and the White Tiger. He glared at the White Tiger. “That’s enough. We’re not going to fight in here. We’re going to stop threatening each other and solve our problems properly.” 

The White Tiger coughed a quick laugh. “And who’s going to make me? Your shaman,” she said the word like it was somehow distasteful, “may have lured me here with my son, but none of you are strong enough to face me.”

Serenity sighed. Strength shouldn’t be the only measure of value; in fact, in this case, it wasn’t. He was fairly confident that they had a solution for the White Tiger that didn’t require killing planets and might be more reliable if she would only listen. Some people wouldn’t listen until they were punched in the nose. He could hope, but he might have to fight. “We can find a better solution than eating World Cores. Your son is in far better shape than when we found him; we can-”

“Who are you to tell me what to do, half-dragon?” The White Tiger snarled at Serenity and pushed her aura across the entire room. It was immediately clear that she was the highest Tier person in the room; if he had to guess, she was somewhere between Tier Fifteen and Tier Twenty. She was more than twice the Tier of anyone else present and probably in some pain because she out-Tiered Berinath fairly noticeably. 

She wasn’t that far off the Tier of many of the dragons Serenity heard tales of when he was Vengeance; it was very, very difficult to reach above Tier Twenty. Vengeance managed it, but that didn’t make it common.

Her Tier made sense, since she was managing interplanetary teleportation without being a specialist in Space magic or any of its relatives, but it also made it harder to convince her that anyone else present was even potentially dangerous to her. At the same time, it was clear that it had also made her arrogant and unwilling to listen to anyone else.

Serenity wasn’t sure what it was about her declaration that ticked him off, but he knew that it had. He thought it was probably because she was directly threatening Earth with her arrogance and therefore indirectly threatening the people he cared about.It was hard to be certain, though; it could be because she ought to care more about her children than her pride and she clearly didn’t. She was stronger than they were, but that didn’t mean a fight wouldn’t harm her son. That was especially true when he was hugging a creature that was potentially higher Tier than he was.

There were reasons not to kill her, but in that moment Serenity wanted to. It wasn’t just her son, either; she had other cubs, including cubs scattered on other worlds. More importantly, she could tell them how she figured out something that even sort of worked and if anyone else knew about it. That was important. Very important.

Serenity also knew that despite everything else he’d worked towards, there was only one thing he could claim that would stop her. He simply wasn’t certain it was worth declaring himself when he could simply kill her. It wouldn’t be as easy as killing Apollyon and it wouldn’t find her cubs or anyone who might know about her method, but he could do it. Only the thought that he might end up facing this again in the future if he didn’t get her to talk here stopped him for that moment.

“Tier Ten?” The White Tiger snarled at her overestimate of Serenity’s Tier. “You’re not even a challenge, boy. Sit down!” She lazily swung a paw at Serenity. Her claws were barely even out; she clearly didn’t consider him a threat. It reminded him of Curio playing with a new toy, one he didn’t want to break too quickly.

Serenity had only seconds to decide what to do. He had to pick one of two bad options; neither could be taken back.

It wasn’t, in the end, a hard decision. There was only one choice he could make and be true to the self he wanted to be rather than the man the Final Reaper became. 

“Who am I? I am Death’s Incarnate.” Serenity reached out to Death as he flared his aura and let it fill the space around him. Power poured into him and his aura stretched farther than it had since he returned through time and covered the entire spaceship and a good portion of the dome. There would be consequences for that later, but he’d deal with them when they happened. For now, he needed to be as impressive as possible.

The sheer strength pouring into Serenity from Death was unexpected, but he hadn’t ever called on his position before, not in this way. Not as her Incarnate. It was clearly a position that was closer to Death than any priest, and as far as Serenity knew, Death didn’t have any priests. Not directly. She didn’t feel the need.

She did, however, have a lot of people who believed in her. Everyone believed in Death. Many feared it while others didn’t care or even welcomed her, but everyone believed. Death did very little with that Faith, and Serenity knew she had no compunctions about lending it to her Incarnate if he wanted it.

He could feel her trust.

The White Tiger didn’t have time to change her attack even if she wanted to. Her paw impacted on Serenity’s Shield of Death and simply stopped. He could have done far more, but there was no need. Not now. If she attacked again, he would not be so lenient.

Serenity glared at the White Tiger. “I am also a Hand of Order’s Voice and the Lord of four worlds and you threaten my home and my family with your actions. I have the right to judge you and the power to make my judgment hold.”

The great cat clawed at him again, but this time her paw moved with its full speed and her claws were fully extended. 

Serenity was a little surprised; he’d expected her to pounce with her teeth if she attacked. This was even better. He killed her momentum again, but instead of canceling the entire attack he only halted her paw where it touched his shield. Her foreleg tried to keep going and a loud crack announced either a broken bone or a damaged joint; Serenity wasn’t certain which. Either way, it was an even better result than he expected.

The crack was swiftly followed by a yowl and a leap from the White Tiger. She clearly aimed for Serenity’s throat and seemed startled when not only did he simply stand where he was but her movement halted in thin air when she crashed into his shield. 

Serenity watched her float there for a long moment and made a mental note that his shield would probably enable him to fly in his chimera form as long as he could keep up with the mana drain. All he had to do was kill his downwards momentum. Perhaps killing the effect of gravity on himself would be easier? 

No, definitely momentum. It was specifically called out in the spell and that meant it was likely to be more efficient and easier to manage. He would have to warp the Skill slightly to make it work on his momentum, but that could definitely work.

Serenity shook his head and took a single step out from under the White Tiger, towards Blaze. Senkovar and Ikatha were both more capable of protecting themselves than the relatively low Tier Blaze. “Are you done yet?”

His question seemed only to piss off the White Tiger.

She was too smart to repeat her earlier attack, even if she was maddened. She yowled, then turned and leapt towards Senkovar.

Serenity still didn’t want to kill her, so he leaned on Death’s power, his knowledge of mammalian bodies, and his skill at aura manipulation. It was hard to directly affect anything inside someone else’s aura, much less their body. It usually required a significant Tier advantage, though a skill aura user could manage it at equal Tier against an unskilled user. The power of Death’s Faith was enough to overcome not only the White Tiger’s higher Tier but her aura; his aura was simply that much more powerful than hers right now.

Serenity reached into the White Tiger’s body and killed her spinal cord at her hips, then followed up with the nerves leading to her forelegs. He didn’t have the time to determine which nerves went where, so he hit them hard and avoided the ones that could kill the tiger quickly. 

She crashed into Senkovar’s shield, but without control of her forepaws, her claws sliced through his shield but didn’t continue on to slice through him. She did knock the World Shaman down; he landed on his rear, buried under the giant cat.

The attack made it clear why she’d expected Serenity to not be a problem even after she he declared himself. Her claws could cut through shields, something Serenity’s claws couldn’t manage.

Unless she had magic, she was no longer a threat. Serenity watched her fume for a long moment, then carefully took a deep breath and let it out before he pulled his aura back to himself. He tried to send Death’s Faith back to her, but it didn’t go and he got the distinct impression that she was telling him to keep it.

Serenity stepped forward and pulled the White Tiger off Senkovar. With her ability to move compromised, she was simply a dead weight as long as he stayed away from her head and he could move a dead weight. Senkovar ought to have been able to move her, but he seemed to be in shock as he stared at Serenity.

The silence was broken by the World Shaman. “For Death’s Incarnate, you certainly don’t like to kill.”

Lillene

The White Tiger isn't about to accept other people telling her what to do based on an old story she hasn't ever heard. With luck, "I can kill you by looking at you" is enough of an argument.