Chapter 1 Jai Daishou labored up the side of the sharp peak alone, madra trickling through his body in a pathetic dribble. The white metal strands of his hair flogged his back with each step as he pressed against the wind, moving higher with every step. Remnants blacker than the night sky lined his path. They were voids against the stars, their caws like shattering glass, their feathers drifting down like shredded shadows. The feathers hissed as they landed on the rocks, eating into the stone. They had dissolved his shoes already, but an Underlord's flesh was not so easily seared away. He felt his weakness in every step, as agony traveled up his ankles and into his spine like lightning. His spirit was no longer strong enough to prop up his fragile body. A month ago, he could have made this journey without pain. But back then, he'd still had options. Many plans in play, many pieces on the board. He had already been dying, but not so quickly. Now, he only wanted his clan to outlive him. Anything that prolonged the life of the Jai clan was a virtue. No matter what it cost. As raven Remnants screeched at him, he climbed toward a gamble he never would have made, had he any other choice. This was the first of his last hopes. He reached the end of the road, a sharp cliff overlooking an ocean of clouds. It stretched out before him as though he stood before the end of the world, and overhead the stars glared down at him. Mist swirled before the cliff as something moved beneath the cloud's surface. An instant later, wings of shadow rose from the gray cloud. Each of these wings was the size of a ship's sail, and the head that followed was bigger than a horse. It looked like a bird formed from living ink. The vast raven filled his vision, floating in the air with still wings. It remained motionless, not disturbing the icy wind with a single flap, drifting
like a ghost instead of a living thing. Curls of darkness rose from its feathers. Jai Daishou inclined his head. As a supplicant, he should have bowed, but his back had locked up so tight he thought he might fold over backwards. His lack of respect might kill him, and that thought chilled him as much as the Remnant's presence. No matter how much he had prepared to throw his own life away if necessary, nothing could prepare him to come face-to-face with a spirit of death. "I greet you, Lord of Specters, and I come with an offering." From his robes, he produced an ebony box, holding it out in both hands. He could only hope the spirit heard him over the screeching of its flock. Not all those who sought the Remnant's services brought an offering, but the wise did. It was quite separate from the raven's price, but a freely given offering bought a measure of protection. Returning a gift with betrayal incurred a soul-debt, which the Remnant should want to avoid. A gift would not save Jai Daishou if he truly offended the Lord of Specters, but it couldn't hurt his chances. Two of the raven Remnants fluttered down from their rocky perches, landing on his arms. They radiated a cold that infected him, stealing his warmth, seeping even into his spirit. With an identical motion of two beaks, they flipped open the box. A severed head lay on a bed of stained velvet, its skin waxy and blue, its tongue swollen out of its mouth. This was a servant of the Arelius family whose name Jai Daishou had never learned—he had needed a head, and so he had taken one. Better to steal from his enemies than from his friends. The great raven opened its beak and inhaled. In the Jai Underlord's sight, a dark and nebulous mist lifted from the corpse's head like smoke from a fire. Death aura had once been difficult for him to see, until he had learned the trick of it. Until he had become accustomed to its presence. Once the Remnant had its mouthful, Jai Daishou threw the box—head and all—out over the cliff. It would have been more polite to kneel and place the container on the ground, but his knees were giving him almost as much trouble as his back. The Lord of Specters opened its beak once more, and a voice issued forth like a distant chorus singing a dirge. "Tell us the name of your enemy." The screeching bird-spirits grew louder, their discordant song scraping his ears.
In the Blackflame Empire, when you wanted an Underlord dead, you had precious few options. There were weapons that could do it, but killing an Underlord yourself risked reprisal from their family and friends. And most assassins were Truegold at best. Any poisons that could affect a body forged in soulfire would cost a fortune, and the refiners with the skill to make such poisons were difficult to silence. Still, there were a few specialists, if you had the resources and the fortitude to hire them. Among them, the Lord of Specters was the most… palatable. "The feud between us cannot be solved except by blood," Jai Daishou said, raising his voice over the smaller, squawking Remnants. "I cannot kill him, and I fear that when I die, his family will tear mine apart." The raven remained silent, listening. Some legends said that if the Lord found your reasons insufficient, it would feed you to its flock. "His name is Eithan Arelius." Instantly, the broken-glass screeching of the ravens died. The night was silent but for the wind, which gasped across the spear-sharp peaks of the mountain. "Eithan Arelius will not be taken," the Lord of Specters sang. "Choose another, or be gone." Jai Daishou stood in shock, like he'd taken a step forward to find his foot poised over a chasm. He had come prepared for a failure of negotiations, or for hostility, or for the Lord of Specters to demand a price too high. But not for an immediate, flat-out refusal. "Lord of Specters, your servant can prepare a handsome price. Blood essences from life-Remnants more than a century old. Spirits sworn to your service by oath. Scales of death and shadow from the Path of the Twisting Abyss. Name any wish, and if it is within your servant's power, I will fulfill it." The Lord finally flapped its great wings, and ice crawled along Jai Daishou's spirit. His madra pulsed brightly in his channels, fighting against the darkness—a weaker sacred artist might have withered in that one gust. "Eithan Arelius is a friend to the flock. He has given us great gifts." "Only to protect himself," Jai Daishou insisted. "He wants to tie you down so that none can hire you against him; he has no loyalty to you."
"Even so," the great raven said. "To act against him would bind our soul with chains of debt. You may name another, but not a feather of ours will harm Eithan Arelius." *** "Let me tell you something about that family," Mo She said, slamming his clay mug back down on the tavern table. "You don't ever take a contract against an Arelius. Not a real Arelius, anyway. They always see you coming." Mo She looked like a desiccated corpse someone had unearthed from an ancient tomb: a skeletal, shriveled man with skin tight over his bones and hair like drifting scraps of mist. His eyes were mismatched; one a blind, milky white, and the other a statue's eye carved of green jade. "And then there's this Arelius in particular," Mo She continued. "He doesn't just see you when you strike. He saw you when you got up this morning." Jai Daishou stiffened in his chair. He may be on the last leg of his mortal journey, but he was still an Underlord. He had enough power to punish insolence. "You speak of him as though he were above me." In the half-empty tavern, quite a few eyes turned to Jai Daishou. The barkeeper, polishing his counter with a towel, chuckled. A one-legged boy in the corner grinned at him, mocking. They knew exactly who he was. They knew of his pride, but they showed open contempt for him anyway. You did not join the Path of the Last Breath if you cared about staying alive. Mo She held up his hand for peace, taking another drink as he did so. "Me and my boys would take a contract out on the heavens themselves, if the price was right. Worst that could happen is we die, right? But going up against somebody who knows you're coming and can do something about it…well, there's a difference between gambling and throwing your money down a well." From his robes, Jai Daishou withdrew a gilded box the size of his palm. He clapped it down onto the table, then slid it across to Mo She. With his thumb, Mo She cracked the lid. As he did so, a gust of wind pushed the box all the way open, along with a pale green light. Wind aura gathered around the box, a gentle storm of green, and air rushed and spun
all around the box. Mo She's brown robes rippled in the wind, and his hair blew away from his face. "A top-grade scale," Jai Daishou said. "Forged by the Emperor himself. I have collected seven of these over the years, for my services to the Empire." He had never meant to use them as currency, carrying them instead as badges of honor. But when the enemy was at the gates, you used any weapon at your disposal. Mo She didn't have anyone who could swallow the scale directly—it would take an Underlord to process even a fraction of this scale's energy— but it could be used to power weapons of wind madra, to fuel a massive boundary formation, or to nurture wind-aspect sacred herbs. Failing that, Mo She could just sell it. This was the most valuable coin in the Blackflame Empire. With clear reluctance on his face, Mo She forced the lid shut. "It's a pretty offer, but you'd have to prove to me that he's not watching us right now. You want somebody for a suicidal mission, sure, we're your guys. But this is just suicide." *** Even in the depths of night, the jungle air was still hot and choking. Water aura swirled in Jai Daishou's spiritual sight, almost equal to the power of wind. But brighter than both was the vivid green of life aura, which made the dense mesh of vines and trees around him look like an emerald bonfire. The trees loomed over him, swallowing the sky, filtering the sunlight through their wide leaves. The noise from the jungle's inhabitants was like a force itself. As ever-present as the heat, that mass of chirps, growls, screeches, and screams crushed his ears. At the southern edge of the Blackflame Empire, this lush green expanse had once belonged to the Tanaban clan. Before they had been driven to extinction by the mad Blackflames. Now, this was the home of a thousand squabbling families, none large or important enough to be called a clan. If the heavens provided, he could enter and leave without anyone ever knowing he'd been here. A crash echoed through the jungle, and he tightened his veil: the technique that hid and contained his power as an Underlord. He forced his body to hurry despite the sharp pain in his knees, huddling behind a thick bush.
A tree lifted one mass of roots like a leg, taking another step forward, wading through the foliage like a man through shallow water. It crushed a sapling underfoot, and a panicked squeal cut through the noises of the jungle. A plump creature the size of a dog shot away from the walking tree, whimpering loudly. A tenderfoot scurried off, thankfully not in Jai Daishou's direction. If he had to unveil himself and destroy one of these ancestral trees, the Underlady of the southern jungles would sense him in a blink. Tenderfoots were like wild pigs with the long, floppy ears of rabbits. They bred quickly, fed on roots and leaves, and served as prey for most of the jungle. A hand of vines reached down from the tree and snatched up the tenderfoot, which kicked its legs wildly as it was shoved into a widening gap in the bark. When the tree crunched down, blood and one severed leg fell to the ground. There were thousands of ancestral trees in this jungle, and most of them fed on blood and flesh. When Jai Daishou had flown in on his ThousandMile Cloud, he had seen a dozen of them circling the ocean of leaves like sharks in the surf. He had to withdraw his spiritual senses in order to maintain his veil, but he estimated this tree was only Jade. The Lowgolds could move faster, and some of them had developed eyes. The Truegolds could be crafty, in their way. Above that... This was a vast and wild land. Some of these trees were truly ancient, and truly powerful. When the tree had finished feeding, a flock of colorful birds fluttered down from its branches, fighting over the bits of flesh that had fallen from the plant's meal. They tugged the meat between their beaks, glaring at one another. As they fought, the nearby soil swirled up as though caught in a sudden wind. Sacred beasts. They lived in the branches of the ancestral trees, feeding on leftovers and the occasional spirit-fruit the tree produced. In return, they helped defend their tree against rivals. When the tree had finally gone, Jai Daishou progressed. The scripted eight-sided plate in his hands glowed softly blue to the north-northwest, so he headed that way.
He wasn't supposed to know the exact location of this prison, and it would go badly for him if anyone knew he'd marked it for later return. The Deepwalker Ape had killed thousands before it was finally subdued by the previous Empress, and officially it had been executed. Unofficially, the bloodthirsty creature had been given to the Underlady of the South to imprison. One did not simply throw away an Underlordlevel sacred beast. Not when it could be turned to the good of the Empire someday. Jai Daishou intended to turn it to the good of the Jai clan instead. He finally reached his goal in a clearing: a massive boulder the size of a house, dropped into a ring of trees as though it had fallen from the sky. Now that he was out of the shade, the sun beat down so hard that even he began to sweat. A human without a robust Iron body might have been killed by this heat. The Underlord struck one unremarkable knob of rock, and a hidden circle lit white. He repeated that process six times in different places, and finally the aura in the area shimmered and dispersed. A formation designed to lock the boulder in place. If he hadn't helped design this prison, he would never have been able to remove this lid. And only careful interrogation of some of his old friends, who had actually placed the seal, allowed him to find its location. Now, though... He braced his hands against the blistering hot rock, Enforcing his body with madra. The flow of power strained against his veil, almost revealing him, but he limited himself to the level of a Truegold. Even so, his soulfireforged body had advantages no Gold could ever hope to imitate. Jai Daishou shouted, both to chase away the pain in his joints and to focus his attention. He pushed against the rocky soil, shoving the boulder forward. His feet started to dig down into the ground, and he used a quick Ruler technique to add force aura to his push. Force was not quite his chosen Path —sword aura was a specific adaptation of force aura, but in practice, they were cousins at best—but his mastery was such that it was enough. The stone slid away from its resting-place, slamming into a pair of trees with a crunch and knocking them over. The lid's removal revealed a wide, circular pit ten yards across. A stench billowed up from within, like blood and sweat and carrion left to rot in the
sun, but its contents were shrouded in absolute darkness. Jai Daishou drew himself up despite the aching in his back, Enforcing his lungs. "Ape!" he shouted down. "Jai Daishou, Underlord of the Jai clan, brings you freedom!" Except for the buzz of insects and scream of a distant cat, silence reigned. He looked to the edges of the hole, where chains thicker than his wrists were still securely anchored. They were steel with veins of halfsilver, and they should anchor the ape's madra as well as its massive strength. The last he'd seen the creature, it was half-mad with rage, and had sworn bloody revenge against the Imperial clan and every Underlord in the Empire. This beast would be a disaster, one that he was reluctant to unleash on the Empire, but it shouldn't be too hard to steer it toward the Arelius family first. Afterwards, it could be dealt with. But he had expected it to howl and rage at the sight of him. Instead, it was quiet. Was it dead? Or had it learned patience in its long imprisonment? Jai Daishou reached out to the power of the sunlight around him. There was no light aura in the pit, but it was strong up here. He gathered the light with his Ruler technique, focusing it, shining it down into the pit as though he were magnifying it through a telescope. The beam shone down, revealing the distant bottom of the pit. The prison was a long cylinder, many stories deep, its walls circled with security scripts. The Deepwalker Ape should have waited at the bottom, staring up at him in rage. Or its body should have lain there, broken after decades of isolation. Instead, the floor was spotlessly clean. No fur, no muck, no blood. Nothing. Only two characters scratched into the stone floor, so large that they were visible from the entrance so far above. Two words: "Nice try." Jai Daishou didn't need to have seen the characters before to recognize Eithan Arelius' handwriting. He staggered back from the edge of the pit, clutching his stomach. All his life, he had heard of people coughing up blood in anger. He had always thought of it as an expression, an artistic way of illustrating the toxic feel of anger.
But now, he really felt as though he were choking back blood. It had taken him weeks to reach this jungle, far from his lands. And it cost him a small fortune to keep it secret. All the while, he had been nothing but a fool dancing in Eithan's hand. Jai Daishou actually did cough then, and he spat into his palm. The saliva was stained red. So you could cough up blood in rage. Or perhaps his time was even closer than he'd thought. In a fury, Jai Daishou tore away the veil over his core, uncaring of the consequences. He cycled his madra to its limit, and white blades of light shredded the trees, tearing apart the forest in time with his rage. The Deepwalker Ape had been the last piece he could play with only one life on the line. The last weapon he could buy so cheaply. But now? Now, he would see Eithan dead at any cost. If his clan had to burn, if the Empire itself did, Eithan Arelius would burn with it. *** Lindon sat with legs crossed, surrounded by a ring of fifty candles. With his eyes shut, he could feel the aura around him. Fire aura, bright and red, radiated from each of the candles. He pulled wisps of it into his core, pushing it through his madra channels in time with each of his slow, measured breaths. In his time here—however long that had been—he had reached a deeper understanding of the Path of Black Flame. At first, he had seen fire and destruction as two entirely separate powers. He had wondered how he could possibly train both, without access to a dragon's den like the one in Serpent's Grave. But the aura of fire and destruction went hand-in-hand. Even now, tiny sparks of black power surrounded the wicks of the fifty candles as they were burned away by the flames. Destruction aura. He could harvest almost five times as much fire aura as destruction, but he limited himself. Balance was important...or so he'd learned after his madra had revolted and he'd scorched the back of his hand. In his core, he visualized a stone wheel grinding away with a deliberate, agonizingly slow rhythm. It pushed at the boundaries of his core, stretching him, expanding his spirit. Even after all this time, the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel still felt like breathing through a thin straw. Sweat covered his forehead, his
lungs burned, and each inhale was ragged. Only determination kept him breathing in time with the cycling technique. Of course, it was more than just the restrictive technique that was making him feel trapped. There was also the fact that he was, quite literally, in prison. Not that you'd know it from his surroundings. The Skysworn had brought him here directly after leaving Serpent's Grave. They had dumped him into this room and left without answering a single question. If not for his twice-daily meals, he would assume that they had forgotten him. At first, he hadn't thought of these rooms as a prison cell. They didn't look like one. For one thing, they were rooms. He had a privy equipped with water-generating constructs, a small bedroom, and a sitting-room. The furniture was polished and finely carved, and the walls were smooth wood. His meals were simple but varied, and he was served tea with each one. He wanted to burn through the walls and escape. Every time he shut his eyes to cycle, it felt as though the walls shrunk to an inch from his skin. He remembered his time sealed in the Transcendent Ruins, and sometimes he had to snap his eyes open to remind himself that he wasn't still there. He actually had burned through a panel of the wooden wall to see if escape was possible. The wood was only a finger thick, with scripted stone beneath that did not give way to Blackflame. If he became more desperate, he might try blasting through even that. He needed out. He didn't even know how long he'd been here—he had no window by which to judge the passing of time, and they'd confiscated his pack. He could have counted meal deliveries, but he hadn't thought of that until it was too late. The duel with Jai Long was approaching, and he wasn't ready. They might wrench open his door one day and haul him to his death. It couldn't have been more than a week. Could it? Even if freedom was too much to ask, he just needed a word. He could speak to his jailors through the door as they delivered his meal, and they would provide him with any reasonable request. They'd given him a few books on cycling theory, several loads of candles, and a new teacup when he'd broken his first. But they wouldn't speak to him. He was at the point where he would trade one of his meals for a single— Boots tapped against the stone outside. Mealtime already.
The steps grew louder, and he snapped out of his cycling trance. He jumped to his feet, wiping the sweat from his face and preparing a smile. They glanced in sometimes, and he wanted them to see him in control and friendly, not desperate. They might take desperation as hostility, and treat him as an enemy. An enemy might never get out. The boots stopped. The top half of his wooden door could swing open separately, leaving the bottom half in place. There were bars behind the top half, and they could hand him his food and tea through the bars. Unfortunately, that always gave him a clear look at the person who was refusing to talk to him. If they were faceless, sliding his meals under the door, maybe he could forget that they were humans at all. Pretend that his food was delivered by construct. As he had for every other meal delivery, he stood with back straight and waited with a smile for the top half to swing open. This time, he was left smiling at his door. Firmly shut. He kept his expression in place as each breath stretched on. He hadn't heard anyone walk away, so surely someone was still there. Was this silence designed to make him uncomfortable? Or had it only been a few seconds, and his frantic mind was stretching each instant into an eternity? He took three deliberate breaths and confirmed that no, they really were making him wait. Why? Every other day, they had simply delivered the food. An instant later, he was given his answer. The door swung open. Normally, a balding old man delivered a box with his meal in it, collected his old box, and left without a word. Lindon had deliberately not picked up his old box today, in the hopes of prodding a sentence out of the man—a demand, a curse, anything. It hadn't worked when he'd tried that before, as the man had simply gestured and the wind had carried Lindon's empty box to him, but surely anything worth trying was worth trying twice. Eithan and Yerin stood outside, both smiling. The Underlord had a smug grin on his face, hands in the pockets of his blue silk robes, long yellow hair tied behind him. He looked like a child who had the satisfaction of seeing a trick he'd pulled work flawlessly. Yerin's smile came with a breath of relief, as though she hadn't expected to find him here. He stared at her like he hadn't seen her for months: her skin covered by razor-thin scars, her black robes sliced and tattered, and
two silver blades hanging over her shoulders. A sword was buckled onto her hip, strapped onto a red belt that seemed to be made of liquid...or perhaps a living Remnant. Even after all the times she'd saved his life, he'd still never been happier to see her. Eithan...he couldn't be quite so happy to see Eithan. Usually, when the Arelius Patriarch popped up unannounced, that meant he was about to put Lindon through something dangerous. Lindon stared at them for longer than was appropriate. He knew his eyes were wide and his lips parted, but he still couldn't quite believe that they were here. Now, with no hint and no warning. "You like looking at me so much, I might get the wrong idea," Yerin said, grinning and rapping her knuckles on the lower half of the door, which was still shut. "You going to ask us in, or what?" Lindon stammered for a few moments before saying, "...in? You're not coming to get me out?" Eithan put on an offended look even as he levered the handle and slid the rest of the door open. "Get you out? After all the trouble we went through breaking in here? That would just be rude." He shut both halves of the door behind them when they entered. Yerin glanced around the room and nodded approvingly. "Not bad. Can't even call this a proper prison, can you?" Eithan ran his hands over the scorched hole in the wall paneling. "Ah, what happened here? Training accident?" "No, I was trying to escape. I stopped because I thought you might come for me." "Just to visit you," Eithan said, leaning against the wall and folding his arms. "Looks like you have a cozy place to call your own. I wouldn't want to ruin that." Lindon had no response. Yerin kicked the side of Eithan's leg so hard that it sounded like a hammer hitting the ground, but the Underlord didn't so much as flinch. "The Skysworn say they haven't arrested you," Yerin explained. "They like to fiddle with words. Basically, they're keeping you like a fish in a pond so they can keep an eye on you. You're not in danger." That was a relief, but it didn't explain why they weren't freeing him.
Eithan buffed his fingernails on the edge of his robe. "I'd prefer not to antagonize the Skysworn more than I already have, but I couldn't let your training stagnate with such an important deadline looming. So I decided to bring the training to you! We can all three continue our pursuits in this very room. Convenient, isn't it?" Lindon wouldn't have called it convenient, but he still had to admit he was greatly relieved to see them here. At least he wouldn't be alone anymore. And there were some burning questions he finally had the chance to ask. From his pocket, he withdrew a glass ball that burned with a blue flame in the very center. The Skysworn had confiscated it from him—along with most of his belongings—when they brought him here, but it had appeared beside him one morning when he woke up. "You showed me something like this before," Lindon said, voice low. "Where did you get it?" Eithan tapped his fingers together. "That's an interesting first question. You don't want to know about my Path, perhaps? The techniques I could teach you?" "Of course, yes. But this first." "Very well. I inherited it from my family." Lindon waited for more, but none came. "Did you know all along?" He asked. "Is that why you...picked me?" This was one of the questions that had needled him ever since he'd seen Eithan produce the marble with the void at its heart. Had Eithan really singled him out because he saw a singular opportunity, or because he'd recognized Suriel's marble? Was Lindon only special because of the glass ball in his hand? Eithan patted the pocket on his right hip. "I keep mine in here. Close your eyes and stretch out your perception, if you would." Lindon followed instructions, reaching out to sense Eithan with the extra sense he'd developed when he grew to Jade. He was still growing used to the impressions given by his spiritual sense—it seemed to only feel the nature of madra, ignoring anything physical, so something could feel as though it was right next to you even if it was blocked off by a brick wall. At first, he felt Yerin's power: sharp, cold, and somehow not fully formed, like a gemstone halfway through cutting. The sword on her hip gave off a different power, distant and cold as a far-off mountain. He
couldn't get a grasp of exactly how powerful that weapon was. Her belt...he pulled his perception away from the belt. It always made him think of murder, of blood-drenched hands and the scent of a slaughterhouse. He felt almost nothing from Eithan, as though the man were made of air. Eithan had mentioned before that he wrapped his core in a veil: a technique that allowed him to mask his power. Lindon wondered if Eithan would teach him, now that he had enough power to mask. Sharpening his focus, he dove into Eithan's pocket and encountered...a gap. He wouldn't have noticed anything strange if he hadn't been specifically looking for it, but it was like something in Eithan's pocket was hidden, concealed so that he couldn't sense a hint. He pushed further, tightening his perception, trying to penetrate it. He may as well have saved his effort. Confused, he ran his perception into the marble he carried. Suriel's marble was warm and comforting, even to his spiritual sense, and it also brought a sense of order, of rightness. Like the flame added something into the world, rather than taking it away. When Lindon opened his eyes, Eithan dipped into his pocket and withdrew the void marble. He held it up so that Lindon could see: a perfectly clear orb the size of a man's thumbnail with a perfectly dark hole in the center. Lindon still felt nothing, as though the object had no power whatsoever. "The legacy of my bloodline works slightly differently," Eithan explained. "An Arelius sees things as though with our physical senses, seeing and hearing and smelling rather than picking up on spiritual perception. As such, I saw the marble in your pocket like a ball of glass...but I could see nothing inside." He closed his own eyes and nodded. "Even now, I can see you holding a transparent ball, but I can see no blue flame." He tossed his own marble up and caught it. "As for mine, however, I can pierce it quite easily with both my bloodline powers and my perception. It is the same for you, yes?" Lindon nodded slowly. "So what did you think it was?" "Naturally, I assumed there was something inside. I thought it was a Lord-stage barrier meant to protect a small treasure, or perhaps a pill or construct. And I was very curious to learn what Copper had caught the eye of an Underlord. It was only later that I began to suspect it had been produced by someone far above any Underlord."
He held up the void marble, inspecting it. "As far as I knew, this was the only example of such a heavenly relic in the world. If I ran into another, I would have expected it to look like mine. How interesting that I was wrong." "I would love to hear that story," Lindon said, sensing an opportunity. "I'm only too happy to share mine." "He is," Yerin confirmed, fiddling with one of the edges of her outer robe. She must have been bored. "Shared it with me more than once." "And I would be delighted to listen," Eithan said, closing his fist around his marble. "Later. Unless this heavenly messenger told you something urgent?" Suriel had said he had thirty years, and he'd spent slightly more than one. He supposed he could wait a little longer, though the curiosity might kill him in the meantime. He sighed and shook his head. The glass ball vanished into Eithan's pocket. "Excellent! Consider our conversation a prize for when you defeat Jai Long, hm? Something to look forward to." Lindon dipped his head in acknowledgement, but he wasn't satisfied. Suriel had seen something in him, even if he wasn't quite sure what that was. She must have seen something in Eithan as well, or at least someone else up there had. Eithan had said more than once that he wanted to pursue the sacred arts to their height. And he thought Lindon and Yerin had what it took to join him. Maybe the heavens thought so too.
Chapter 2 Outpost 01: Oversight People from various worlds often likened the Way to a tree, or a branching vine. Suriel had always thought of it more as a network of veins, stretching out in all directions from a central heart. The Way touched everything, bringing order, stability, and protection from the ravages of the void. Only in the shelter of the Way could life and reason exist. In the center of that heart of the Way, at the nexus of everything that existed, was Oversight. As she drifted in endless blue, thousands of kilometers away, she could see the entire station: one blue-and-green planet of standard size orbited by no less than sixteen moons. Each of the moons was so close that it almost looked like they skated along the planet's surface, and she could see city lights blanketing every surface over all seventeen spheres. This was the headquarters of Makiel's First Division: the Hounds. He had created this system himself, hand-selecting the fragments from the void and binding them together with the force of his will. He had positioned it here, manipulating the Way to enforce natural laws. The inhabitants of Outpost lived as naturally as they would in an Iteration, but with an endless blue sky devoid of sun or stars. Twelve billion people lived here, and the vast majority of them were not Abidan. They were simply people. They went about their lives, living and dying with no knowledge of the greater cosmos. These were his ties to Fate. Every sentient being was a tie to the Way, and even here at the heart of it all, Makiel wanted to be closer. As staggered as she was every time she thought about the vast expenditure of time and personal power that must have gone into the creation of this outpost, it frightened her as much as it impressed her. Every
other division of the Abidan was headquartered on Sanctum, so they shared a cultural understanding that facilitated interaction. Not the Hounds. The First Division was centered here. They tracked targets forward and backwards in time, reading Fate to find criminals and predict disasters, and their official excuse for their location was a desire to see as clearly as possible. Suriel had no doubt that was true. From Oversight, a sufficiently talented Hound could glimpse the destiny of every Iteration in existence. It was especially easy to locate those places where one Iteration's fate overlapped another's, and investigate for violations. But even here, she couldn't sense Cradle. She touched the Way—so easy here—and simply adjusted her position in space. One blue flash later, she stood on an endless arctic plain, a layer of gray clouds overhead and snow drifting in the wind. The north pole of Oversight's main planet. Makiel's home. She glanced down at the two hundred meters of snow and ice beneath her: this was Makiel's front door. Suriel tapped the Way, flexing her authority as the sixth Judge of the Abidan Court. Blue power flared from her back like wings, and the seal on the door responded. A symbol shone blue in response: a three-headed dog, one hundred meters in diameter. The symbol of the Hounds. The ice cracked, sliding apart, snow trickling down in white waterfalls. The ice split beneath her feet, but she stayed floating in the air until it had parted enough for her shoulders. Then she let herself drift downwards. Into Makiel's lair. The room beneath her was huge, hundreds of meters, its tiles marked in a giant circle of runes meant to focus sight. It was lit by a diffuse purple glow, all emanating from violet-edged "screens" that floated in the air at various heights. These were celestial lenses, used by Judges and most highranking Abidan for monitoring Iterations from the Way. They displayed images of the future, which looked odd to the naked eye, as though they showed dreams. Actions would have two results, or would rewind and play again on a loop. Numbers flashed with each image: chance of occurrence, temporal deviation, Iteration number, and so on. The lenses opened like eyes even as others blinked shut. They were rectangles, some as small as a palm and others as big as a barn wall, all
angled toward the center of the room. The chamber was packed with them, such that no one could possibly see them all at once. Unless you were both powerful and very skilled. Makiel stood in the center, surrounded by eyes. Manifestations of his Presence. His white-gauntleted hands were a blur of motion as he tapped one eye and another, transmitting messages to one sector or another. When he tapped an eye, it flashed blue and disappeared, transferred through the Way to its destination. For every eye that disappeared, a celestial lens vanished. By her brief count, he was tracking over a thousand threads of Fate at once, over hundreds of different worlds. Any other Judge would have delegated this work, in order to focus their power and attention only where it was needed. Not Makiel. The only busier Judge should be Telariel, the Spider, who coordinated communications for all the Abidan and simultaneously scouted for invasions…but he used his subordinates to cover practically every one of his duties. No wonder Makiel's Hounds worshiped him so. He was worth a division all on his own. The First Judge himself had an unremarkable appearance. He looked like a natural human, as though his genetics had remained the same since birth. Suriel, and every other Abidan she knew, had altered themselves in some way to improve their performance. Rumor said that Makiel never had, and that he worked solely on natural talent, but of course he would never allow a scan to confirm those rumors. He had dark brown skin, slightly wrinkled like a man in his fifties, and silver at the wings of his black, short hair. He was trim and solidly built, with a square jaw; as a girl, she would have said he looked like a soldier. Only his eyes stood out, blazing a brighter violet than the celestial lenses around him, as he watched Fate. "Suriel," he said, and his voice resonated through the room. "Will you verify for the record that Ozriel is dead?" Her Presence had prepared her for this. Suriel had not told Sector Twenty-one the story of the survivors she'd pulled from Ozriel's shelter, but Makiel's mandate included watching the past as well as the future. Her actions would have alerted him, and he would be able to piece together a picture of the truth, even from the ashes of a dead world.
"I cannot," she responded, finally settling down on the tiled floor. "I am not myself convinced." She could feel the energy passing through the circle beneath her feet, urging her to gaze into the future. Makiel's hands were still a blur, eyes fluttering into existence and then vanishing several times a second. He didn't seem to be looking at her, but she knew he saw everything. "Yet he was already missing. Why stage his death?" The First Judge would have considered all the possibilities already. He was asking her for her opinion, so she gave it. "To encourage us to look for a replacement," she said. "He has left us in a scenario where we have no choice but to act as though he is dead. He may have thought that we would simply wait for him to return, even as the cosmos crumbled around us." [Based on models of Ozriel's personality, this explanation is sixty-two percent convincing,] her Presence told her. [And only eighteen percent likely to be the sole explanation.] Makiel's hands paused for half a second, and she felt a ripple in Fate as possibilities began tumbling like a handful of dice. For her to feel such a working even in the midst of his normal activity meant he had exerted himself. To check something, or to change something? She would have to investigate later. "It seems your task has ended, Suriel," he said at last. "That took much less time than I anticipated. Ninety-two out of a hundred projections had you on his trail for decades." Her own predictions had suggested as much. "And a twelve percent chance of finding him eventually," she added. "In those cases, I had a ninety-one percent chance of persuading him to return. How were your odds?" Makiel gestured, and his Presence stopped manifesting. The arc of eyeballs in front of him vanished, with a single purple eye hovering over his shoulder just as the gray ghost hovered on Suriel's. The celestial lenses in the room all remained frozen in the air, emitting violet light and flickering with images and scrolling numbers. His eyes blazed as he faced her, crossing his hands behind his back. "Tell me. What were you doing in Harrow?" Anger flooded her system, but she flushed it out. He was provoking her, just as Gadrael had when he had sent her to Harrow. On Makiel's orders.
"Is the Hound's eye so blind that he can no longer see his own actions?" "Gadrael was ordered to show you the cost of Ozriel's absence. You chose to stay and cleanse the world yourself." Which he had surely known she would do, but she remained silent. She would not give him excuses. "It only cost you a handful of standard months, but those were months in which you were not seeking Ozriel. That you stumbled on evidence of him was due to his foresight, not your own success as a hunter. And where were you before that?" It was dangerous, here in the heart of Makiel's power, but she couldn't let him play her like a puppet. She activated her eyes and scanned Fate. Immediately, she saw where he was headed with this line of questioning. He hadn't bothered to hide it. Her stomach twisted, and her anger gained greater heat before she choked it off. "You were in Cradle," he continued, overlooking her glimpse into the future. "Where you knew you would not find Ozriel, because he could not hide there. He would have a better chance of hiding in Sanctum itself than in Cradle, but you knew you had a plausible excuse for checking his home world." "I want to restore the Abidan," she said, her power crackling blue in the air between them. "You have been tearing the wound deeper for centuries." She was trying to distract him, to pull him away from his plan, but he remained doggedly focused. "You went to Cradle for a breath of fresh air, to consider your options, to decide if you wanted to hunt Ozriel at all. Convenient, then, that your search has ended before you ever started looking for him." He would go on for another minute if she didn't stop him. He would say that she had been manipulated by the Reaper, and allowed him his freedom. That if Ozriel was still on their side, he would have told Suriel before his departure. She was his closest friend on the Court, after all. There was no need to hide it from her, and then place an elaborate distraction to keep her from looking for him. He was controlling her. Looking down on her. Exploiting her sympathy. That was the Hound's objective. Since she couldn't deflect him, she cut straight to it. "If he didn't want me looking for him, there were easier ways to stop me."
"He knew you could find him," Makiel said. "Your odds of finding him must have been much higher without this plan. Since I didn't know about his fake death scene, I couldn't factor it into my projections. He blinded me, and he kept you sidetracked." "Then he succeeded. I'm returning to my division." She tapped into the Way, preparing to depart directly. Leaving this way was disrespectful, but she was beyond caring. She always left Makiel irritated if not disgusted. He had only summoned her here to produce the results he wanted, and then he had the nerve to accuse someone else of manipulation. The worst part was, he was probably right. Ozriel could have warned her about his departure, but he hadn't. He had moved her like a pawn to be manipulated. She would feel better if he really were dead. "The quarantine," Makiel said, before she left. "I would like your vote." "Ozriel said he left a total of sixteen shelters," she said, light tearing into a blue-edged portal overlooking Iteration 001: Sanctum. "Evacuate the other fifteen, prepare those worlds for corruption, and you have my vote." "Already done." When she turned back to the portal, he continued. "Now, let's talk about the changes you made to Cradle." Behind her, all the screens vanished except one, which swelled to take up the whole wall. It showed Wei Shi Lindon. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with short black hair and his expression locked in a glower. He looked sullen even when he was fast asleep, and she knew his face alone had provoked more than one fight. That face was even more unpleasant now. His eyes were solid black but for the irises, which were solid red. They shone as black fire gathered within his hands. He was practicing a new Path. [The Path of Black Flame,] her Presence supplied. [Its sacred artists imitate the power of a tribe of black dragons.] Suriel didn't care about those details at the moment. Why had Makiel shown her this? She turned, allowing her portal to close. Makiel fully faced the image on the lens, his hands still behind his back, looking away from her. "What changes did you make in this young man's life?" he asked.
She told the truth, as it would not matter. The Eledari Pact only prevented Abidan from changing the destiny of a healthy Iteration. Saving one young man's life wouldn't have altered anything. "He was caught in a spatial violation, which I reverted. After conversing with him, I determined that he was fated to die in a disaster, and I set him on a course to prevent it." "You stayed within the bounds of the Pact," Makiel agreed. "But someone else did not." Cradle's deviation. It hadn't been her interference after all. But who… The answer came to her before she even finished answering the question. "Ozriel left something behind, it seems," Makiel went on. "For his descendants." The picture changed to show a man in his early thirties, handsome and smiling, with blond hair trailing behind him. He wore a silk robe of fine blue, and he looked down fondly on someone: Yerin, the girl that Suriel had told Lindon to seek. She scowled at a pale white sword as she knelt on the ground, invisible blades cutting at the dirt around her and nicking the edges of her robes. Two silver blades hung on thin arms over her shoulders: Goldsigns. The man was training her. Eithan Arelius, an Underlord in the Arelius family. A touch of anger entered Makiel's voice. "Ozriel's bloodline, from before he was Ozriel. He worked against us before he ever gained his Mantle." Now it was starting to come together in Suriel's mind. Some artifact of Ozriel's had been recently found by one of his descendants, altering that man's destiny. Then Suriel's actions had changed Lindon's direction. And the two had collided. On their own, neither of those changes had been significant. Together, they would be exponentially more dangerous. And more difficult to predict. "Their actions would have affected all of Cradle," the Hound said. "They would work for decades, changing the Iteration, and eventually derailing it entirely. I cannot see any further than thirty years in Cradle's future." That was chilling. Either it meant that Cradle would be destroyed so soon, or it would have changed so drastically that its relationship to Fate
shifted. Either way, they couldn't jeopardize their Cradle. It produced an Abidan candidate every century or so: far more than any other Iteration. "I will resolve this," Suriel said heavily. "This is a violation of Fate. It is the mandate of Makiel." He shifted his gaze to her. "However, I will act with a gentle hand. I intend to accelerate events so that they cannot stay within the confines of the world for so long. The faster they are gone, the lesser the damage." "You have a solution?" "I believe I do. If I am successful, their world itself will eventually force them to leave, and will not tolerate their staying and making alterations. However, this does increase the personal risk to both subjects." The odds were already stacked against Lindon, but the alternative was manipulating his memory and sending him home. This was a peace offering from Makiel to her, fixing the problem she had helped create while keeping her favored mortal intact. All the while demonstrating the damage that Ozriel's meddling could cause. She appreciated the gesture. Perhaps Makiel was willing to work together for unity after all. Suriel nodded, and the Hound reached up to his Presence. *** Jai Daishou stood before a stone door, weighing his life in his mind. The door was marked with a familiar symbol, one that had remained embedded in his memory for decades. It was etched with four beasts: on the top, a coiling dragon surrounded by rain and crackling with lightning. On the bottom, a phoenix with feathers like drops of blood. To the right, an armored warrior with the shell of a turtle and a sword so rough it was almost a club. To the left, a tiger seated on treasure and crowned with light. This was more than just a decoration. It was a warning. By his oath to the Empire, he should not open this door. It was located inside Jai clan territory, beneath a lake and past miles of underground tunnel. This was the deepest into the labyrinth he—or anyone else—had ever dared to delve since the demise of the old Blackflame Empire. Behind him, in the shallow chambers, had once been a series of Goldstage weapons and devices left by ancient Soulsmiths. His clan had plundered that chamber decades ago. But here...past this door were weapons for Lords. Ancient records described a few of their number, and with any one of them, he could shoot
to the top of the Underlord rankings. With some, he could declare himself Emperor. Of course, opening this door was punishable by the death of one's entire clan. Part of his mandate as Patriarch of the Jai clan was to prevent anyone from entering. It was forbidden not because of the power of its contents, but because of their danger. When this door had been opened before, it had called disaster down on the entire continent. But then, it had remained open for years. Now, he would be in and out in a flash. No one would ever know. The Dreadgods wouldn't be watching so closely. He had even consulted some oracles, who confirmed that there was no hint of the Dreadgods in their dreams. At least not for several decades. That was good enough for him. But still he hesitated. Every day of his life, he had been taught to serve his clan so that his clan could serve the Empire. In his earlier rage against Eithan Arelius, he had been willing to risk this, but now that he faced it...was he really willing to put everything at risk? He thought of his clan, doomed to slide into obscurity without him to lead them. If he opened this door and was detected, they would be executed by either the Dreadgods or the Empire. No matter how good his odds, was he really willing to roll the dice with his family's lives? But what kind of lives would they be, without an Underlord at their helm? They would not enjoy the respect, the standard of living to which they had become accustomed. They would have to live like paupers. Dithering over a decision for so long wasn't like him. He was a man of action. And he couldn't wait to see the smile torn from Eithan Arelius' face. With a ward key in each hand, he pressed them against the script-circles to the sides of the door. He had to pour most of his madra into the circles before they activated—far more than he anticipated, enough that the loss of power left him gasping for air—and those didn't even open the door. They caused a pedestal to rise from the floor, set with yet another circle of script. On his fingertips, he ignited soulfire. The gray, almost colorless flame danced for a moment before being sucked into the script. It drew more, enough that he was glad he had woven extra soulfire before coming. When it had finished devouring a stream of dull fire, it
flickered once and then slid back down into the ground. This time, the door swung silently open. Power washed out, flooding him with awe. He glanced at the aura, which seemed both shining white and utter black at the same time, as though he couldn't see through the doorway because it was both too bright and too dark. Either way, the aura blinded his spiritual sight, and he had to close down that sense as he stepped inside the ancient storehouse. He couldn't shut the door behind him while he was inside, or he'd be sealed within to die alone, so he had to be quick. It had taken them years to notice before, so he could probably take his time, but he thought he might as well minimize his risk. The room was a hallway, set on either side with walls of polished wooden cabinets from floor to the ceiling, fifteen feet above his head. That hallway continued as far as he could see...and as an Underlord, he could see quite far indeed. For a moment, he felt as though he'd stumbled onto a dragon's hoard. He was shocked by the sheer value of what was presented before him, overwhelmed by the weight of wealth. He wanted it all. He was surprised at his own greed, but his hands trembling as he reached to open the first cabinet. The bottom row of cubbies was the largest, big enough to contain a large dog, but each row got progressively smaller up to the top, far above his head. Those were only the size of his fist. If each of these cabinets, down this endless hallway, contained precious treasures of the ancients...there might be millions of weapons down here. He might have enough to buy the entire Empire. Or to destroy it. The cabinet was smooth to the touch, and he seized the wooden handle and pulled it open. It was empty. So was its neighbor, and the eighteen others he checked in an instant. He was sweating by this point, his gut heavy with disappointment. Where had all his wealth gone? He shook himself. He wasn't worried about riches, but about the fate of his family. He had to tell himself that very firmly.
Ten more empty cabinets went by before he found something: a ring of pure white, scripted inside and out, set with a single black gemstone. He had no records of this, so he swept his spirit through it. He couldn't sense anything. It would be an Overlord weapon, then, or perhaps even one for Archlords. Reluctantly, he set it back and shut the door. He left all the empty ones open. He moved to the next cabinet feeling like an idiot. Why couldn't he take the ring? Surely he should stuff his pockets. He knew why: because everything he took was another chance to get caught, and he could only carry one object at a time in his soulspace. He had to find a weapon he recognized if he wanted to kill Eithan Arelius. Anything else would only weigh him down. Ten more minutes passed before he found something that initially excited him: a duplicate of the Ancestor's Spear. Until he realized it was cracked in the middle. The scripts around the edges of the cabinet were preserving it, keeping it from dissolving, but he would need a Soulsmith to repair it. Which may or may not succeed. He tucked the two halves of the spear away; it wouldn't be enough on its own, but at least he wasn't leaving empty-handed. Finally, when he was almost ready to give up, he pulled open a cabinet the size of his head. The object inside was so unremarkable at first glance that it wouldn't have grabbed his attention anywhere else. Only that it was here, important enough to seal up, drew his focus. It was a crystal ball slightly bigger than a hand, filled with a dim, diffuse light. The light swirled like smoke, as though something invisible swam within. He touched it with his spirit, and felt an endless will to devour that almost consumed him. He wanted to tear through every cabinet, cramming his pockets full. So what if he died in here? He would die the richest man in the world. The will of an Underlord was not so easily swayed, and he resisted. But he recognized this device from the records. It was perfect. He focused his power onto it, then took in a deep breath. As though he had inhaled it, the stone vanished and reappeared inside his spirit. Inside him, above his core and behind the cage of his tangled madra channels, a crystal ball floated. It seemed to orbit his soulfire, as though the
two attracted one another but could draw no closer. His soulspace was full, and he may have even obtained a replacement for the Ancestor's Spear. This may have been the most profitable day of his life; it was cause for celebration. No matter how much he might be leaving behind. Feeling as though he were leaving behind his own limbs, he left the chamber and sealed it once again behind him. The satisfaction of success carried him away, and allowed him to break the hold of whatever feelings had swallowed him back in the storehouse. Armed with this Archstone, he couldn't lose. *** Information requested: Makiel's influence on Cradle Beginning report… The Jai Patriarch exits the labyrinth proud of his prize. The facility's unique aura shone like a beacon for the duration of his visit: twenty-six minutes. In ninety-nine out of a hundred projections, this aura goes unnoticed. Jai Daishou returns from his trip safely. There is only a negligible chance that a Dreadgod will notice this aura, which calls to them like the scent of meat to a predator, and choose to investigate. His gamble has paid off. Influence detected: designation zero-zero-one, Makiel. Makiel's influence confirmed. Recalculating... The possibility of a Dreadgod noticing increases in likelihood as the probability shifts. The will of the Hound bends Fate, twisting chance. Currently, there is only one Dreadgod within range: the Bleeding Phoenix. Hundreds of miles to the south, it rests beneath a city of tattered cloth. Its servants, the Redmoon Hall, attend to its feeding as it sleeps. During the first twenty-five minutes, the Dreadgod tosses and turns, sending shivers through the members of Redmoon Hall. They sense their master's needs through the parasites embedded in their bodies, and they seek the cause of its distress.
On the twenty-sixth minute, as the aura fades, the Bleeding Phoenix regains a fraction of its consciousness. It catches the scent of power it has almost forgotten, power long lost. It calls to a memory buried deep in the creature's awareness. For the first time in centuries, its bloody feathers stir. The members of Redmoon Hall, from Jade to Herald, fall to their knees in supplication. Their master has spoken to them through its Blood Shadows, preparing them. They must head north and pave the way. Suggested topic: Yerin, reluctant host of a sealed Blood Shadow. Continue? Topic accepted, continuing report... Yerin is seeking the voice of the Sword Sage as she cycles. She has uncovered four of his memories since achieving Highgold, and combs over them every day for fragments of his wisdom. The remaining memories in his Remnants will help polish her techniques, if not advance her to Truegold. At the moment the Bleeding Phoenix contacts its subordinates, she feels a sudden restlessness, an urge to rise to her feet and destroy everything around her. The call seems to be pushing her north. She shifts in her meditation, uncomfortable, but she knows where this compulsion comes from. An idle hand moves behind her, to feel the knot tied in her Blood Shadow, which she wears as a belt. Her fingertips pass through it as though through a liquid, though nothing remains on her skin. The thought is pushed aside, a momentary distraction, and she returns to her training. Report complete.
Chapter 3 Renfei finished buckling on the green plates of her Skysworn armor, clipped the dark hammer to her belt, and sent a whisper of spiritual awareness to test the Thousand-Mile Cloud preserved inside her armor. It was fully powered and ready to deploy. And so was she. She pulled her hair back and tied it into a tail, then walked to the door. As she expected, Bai Rou was waiting on the other side. He had to bend down to see her through the doorframe. "Ready?" he asked. "Time's up," she responded. "Let's go get him." Bai Rou, her partner in the Skysworn, was two feet taller than she was and twice as broad. He always wore a hat woven from dried stalks, which cast a shadow across his face. Only his eyes shone from within the darkness, bright yellow—his Goldsign. He wore the same armor she did, though his was three sizes bigger and he carried no hammer. They had to travel down cramped hallways lit only by flickering, damaged rune-lights—no one had done the maintenance on these scripts for years. Fortunately, their destination was nearby. They reached the end of the hallway in a minute, in front of a...well, it wasn't a door. More like a thick metal plate bolted to the wall, with a script in the center. This script wasn't derelict, like the others. The custodians of the prison knew better than to allow actual security to lapse. From inside a pocket at her belt, Renfei pulled out her half of the key—a ceramic half-disc etched with one part of a script-circle. Bai Rou handed over the other half, and she fit the two halves of the disc together. When the script was completed, she let her madra flow through it. Another security measure: this key was created anew for each new jailer,
and would shatter if power from the wrong Path flowed through it. She pressed it against the circle on the metal slab, and power spun through the door. The metal lit up in lines, as hidden scripts activated. The bolts around the edges, each marked with a script-circle of its own, began to spin out of their mounts. An instant later, they pinged to the ground, followed by the thick metal plate swinging soundlessly open. Renfei walked through the doorway, Bai Rou ducking after her. They found themselves in a room of twisting mist. Images seemed to swirl and die within the mist, as sounds haunted the very edges of her hearing. She heard something like children whispering, a gong sounding, the cries of a thousand birds. It was easy to ignore the illusions, as she and Bai Rou carried ward keys to this formation. The two of them saw only mist and heard only distant sounds, but anyone without ward keys would be snared in convincing visions. They walked across a narrow bridge with no railing, a sheer drop on either side. Though it looked bottomless, Renfei knew that more than simply air and darkness waited beneath. Anyone trapped in the tricks of this world would live only long enough to hit the bottom, whereupon they would be devoured by what waited there. "This is too much," Bai Rou said, his deep voice drowning out the whispers. "Too much to secure him," Renfei replied. "But not enough to keep him isolated." "Not enough?" She sighed. "You know it won't be." The next door was wooden and opened to a simple physical key and lock. She opened into a dark stone room, lit only by light spilling in from the room of illusions. A pair of crimson lions waited at the end of the room, embers burning in their eyes, flames building in their throats. Remnants, sealed to the defense of this room. The Remnants had been Truegold when they were imprisoned here, but were fed weekly to make them even more formidable. If she and Bai Rou had to fight their way through, they might be able to do it, but they would have to pay a heavy cost.
Fortunately, the Remnants recognized them and parted, allowing them to walk through. That didn't lessen the tension—their heat pressed against her like she was locked in an oven, and their burning gazes made them look anything but tame. She brushed her fingertips against the hammer at her waist. Remnants could be bound, but they weren't predictable. These looked like swirls of bright color painted onto the world, their eyes like balls of fire. They glared at her, and she found herself wondering if they might make a fight of this after all. She could feel Bai Rou's madra, like water and nightmares, gathering behind her. She realized she was cycling her own Cloud Hammer madra, and picked up her pace. The next door was made of heavy stone, moved by brute strength. This might be the least secure entrance, but it was made so that it only opened slowly. Anyone who tried to ignore the lions and open the door would find themselves trapped and delayed. This room was thick with water aura, a pale green waterfall splitting the hall in two. It wasn't water, not really—instead, it was liquid madra, water fused with the essences of death and venom. A truly vile combination. A construct provided by the prison allowed them to pass through this one—a personal shield that repelled this exact Path of madra. Renfei was still nervous as she walked through the green waterfall, even though she could feel the shield intact. Bai Rou might survive contact with this liquid, though even he wouldn't enjoy it, but she would die without a doubt. The next room was full of security constructs. The floor was a web of etched circles, and brightly colored devices made of Remnant parts stuck from every wall and the ceiling. Eyes on purple stalks pushed away from a mass of muscle-like madra stuck to one wall, examining them. The ceiling bristled with spiked tails, clenched claws, sparking fangs, and pieces she couldn't identify. She could, however, sense the power of the Striker bindings in all of them. If the scripts beneath them were triggered, the constructs would unleash enough power to vaporize an Underlord. Her heart rate picked up every time, but they were once again allowed to pass. "No sign of entry," Bai Rou noted, as they approached the last door. "There wasn't last time either," she said.
"This is different." Renfei had to admit that she couldn't imagine these defenses being penetrated. Their prisoner wasn't too dangerous on his own—he was locked in more as a political statement than to protect others from him. The Skysworn had received orders to keep him isolated, but that had proven more difficult than they anticipated. Everywhere they put him, no matter how secret or protected, had been infiltrated within days. This time, with the approval of their Underlord, they had placed him in the most isolated facility that could hold him without killing him. Having just passed through the security herself, she had to admit, she couldn't imagine how someone could pass through each of those measures without the keys. Or without blowing a hole through each wall in sequence. Maybe this time will be different, she thought. It wasn't. This cell was originally designed for top-level security threats that couldn't be executed by usual means. Its door was shot through with halfsilver veins, and the room itself was broad and brightly lit. There was a separate prison in the center of the room: a box of bars, at least twenty feet away from each wall. The box itself was fairly roomy for one prisoner, with a bed, a chair, and a pit with a water construct that flushed away his waste twice per day. The only thing a prisoner wouldn't have was privacy— anyone who entered the cell would see everything from every angle, through the gaps in the bars. Even the bars had flecks of halfsilver in them —the empire spent a fortune furnishing this place, and a smaller fortune powering and maintaining it. Wei Shi Lindon Arelius stood outside those bars, his white sacred artist's robe scuffed and torn. He was on the balls of his feet, madra flowing through his body in an Enforcer technique, and blood trailed down from a split lip. His eyes weren't black-and-red, as they had been when Renfei had first seen him. Now he didn't look quite so horrifying, but he had that rough look to him that she associated with lawbreakers. He looked like the kind of young man who started fights for fun. Over her interactions with him in the last several months, she had grown to realize that he was practically the opposite. A troublemaker, certainly, but of a very different type.
He was supposed to be inside his cage, but she didn't wonder how he'd gotten out. Instead, she wondered—not for the first time—how all these other people had gotten in. Yerin Arelius stood opposite Lindon, a pale sword held casually in one hand. The Skysworn had obviously interrupted a training session between them—they were facing one another, and Lindon had a few more cuts than just his lip. She had not taken a single injury that Renfei could see. At least, not in this fight. Yerin's whole appearance was a map of battles won and lost, her skin crisscrossed by thin scars, her black robes sliced and tattered, her hair cut straight above her eyes. A pair of silver arms stretched up from behind her, flattening into sword-blades that poised over each shoulder: her Goldsign. A red rope of living madra had been wrapped around her waist, with a complicated knot at her back, and Renfei instinctively kept her spiritual awareness away. The rope was rank with blood aura. A huge black turtle waited in the back of the room, as long as a horse from tip-to-tail, and the peak of his shell as tall as a man. Orthos regarded her with black eyes that burned with circles of red, and then snorted out a puff of smoke, ignoring her. Dull red light smoldered in the facets of his shell, and smoke drifted up from him as though from a dying fire. As she watched, he stretched his neck out and took a bite from the nearby stone. Fisher Gesha was the only one to greet the Skysworn with respect, drawing herself to her feet and bowing over her fists pressed together. The old woman was tiny and almost impossibly wrinkled, her hair drawn up into a tight bun. She carried a sharp-edged hook of goldsteel strapped to her back, and the weapon was almost as large as her entire body. From the bottom of her robes, long purple spider legs stretched out, evidence of her drudge. The Fisher Goldsign, a web of madra between her fingers that slowly gave them webbed fingers, was difficult to make out at this distance. Renfei had checked Gesha's background after finding her with Lindon that first time. The woman was an ordinary Highgold Soulsmith, having spent her entire life in the remote Desolate Wilds out west. If there was anything strange about her, it was finding her in the Empire proper. Body parts of vivid color, so bright they looked unreal, had been spread out on the floor behind Fisher Gesha. She had abandoned these Remnant parts when Renfei came in, and the pieces behaved oddly when left alone:
one claw scuttled in circles, a sapphire lock of hair started to fade as though it were starting to vanish, and a loop of twisted violet entrails reached out a questing tendril as though to slither away. Was she here to work as a Soulsmith, or had she just turned to her specialty to pass the time? A man leaned back from an easel and a half-finished swirl of color, holding a brush in one hand and a shallow clay bowl of paint in the other. With a brilliant smile, he turned to her. Steadying her breath and the flow of her madra, Renfei met his eyes. *** Eithan Arelius wore a brilliant blue outer robe, though he had tucked a long towel into his collar to protect his clothes from the stray splatters of paint. His blond hair flowed freely down his back, his smile was brilliant, and his eyes were as bright as if he had just spotted a long-lost friend. A tiny blue spirit clung to the top of his head, tilting its head to regard Renfei and Bai Rou with childish curiosity. It was like a girl the size of a hand, blue as the deep ocean. She looked human in fine detail except for her legs, which trailed off into a shape like a dress. "Ah, the Skysworn! What a pleasure you could join us today!" "How?" Bai Rou asked, astonished. Eithan waved his brush. "Well, I took painting lessons as a child, but I admit it's not coming back to me as quickly as I would have hoped." "How are you here?" Renfei said. She couldn't let him escape this. No matter where they had taken Lindon, from the most ordinary dungeon to the safe house of their Underlord himself, they had found Eithan Arelius and the others waiting for them. None of the security measures had ever been disturbed, and there was no sign that it had cost them any effort at all. The bloodline powers of the Arelius would explain how he had found them in the first place, but even that explanation strained belief. They had moved Lindon to different cities, sometimes. And even if you assumed Eithan had simply sensed and followed them every time, even an Underlord shouldn't have been able to break the security on this place. It was made to hold Overlords. There was a trick here, and Renfei didn't dare to hope Eithan would share it with them. If he deigned to tell them how he'd done it, perhaps the
Skysworn would have an excuse to save them from the anger of their Captain. He was not happy that Eithan Arelius could come and go as he pleased anytime, anywhere. "Well, we were in the neighborhood when I happened to notice that Lindon was in need of some company. What kind of Patriarch would I be if I didn't serve the least of my family in this fashion?" Underlord Arelius didn't serve the least of his family at all, as far as Renfei could tell. He focused his attention on a few individuals, and recently Lindon was his pet project. It must have taken a great investment of time and resources to raise him to Lowgold in the Path of Black Flame. And after only a few months, Yerin had broken through to Highgold as well. An early advancement—she couldn't be more than eighteen. Supposedly, she had been the disciple of a Sage before Eithan had found her, but Renfei regarded that rumor with a skeptical eye. There were only three Sages on the entire continent, as far as she knew, and Sages never took disciples. Everyone knew that. Regardless, Yerin and Eithan were part of some plot, and Renfei had the sick feeling that she and the Skysworn were playing their role just as Eithan had planned. "Tell me how you avoided our security," Renfei said coldly, refusing to let him evade. She couldn't intimidate this man, not even with the weight of her office—Underlords were too valuable to the Empire to have their freedom restricted, barring great offenses. But she exerted as much pressure as she could to squeeze some kind of answer out of him. The natural spirit perched on his head shrank back as though frightened of Renfei's voice, but Eithan's smile brightened if anything. "Ah, but I think there's more pressing business, isn't there? You can't be here for my stimulating conversation." Lindon had his head respectfully down, but now he looked to her. "Is it time already?" he asked. "I thought I was to have two more days." She supposed he was nervous about the answer, but with his tight jaw and wide eyes, he looked more like he was spoiling for a fight instead. "We must take you to the arena ahead of the others," she explained, turning from Eithan and trying to suppress her frustration with the Underlord. If he would just cooperate, he could make life easier for her, but no. The higher-ups of the clans did what they wished, without concern for
those beneath them. It was a large reason her parents had sent her to join the Cloud Hammer sect, as a child. The cloud hovering over her head was boiling, she was sure. "We can't disclose the location of the venue ahead of time," she said. "To prevent tampering. We will notify the respective Underlords when the venue has been prepared, and then give them time to travel there." These were standard procedures when the representatives of two great clans or families dueled with real stakes, but since both Underlords had personal pride in this, the Skysworn had to have an Underlord of their own to ensure parity. That was a large part of the reason her Captain was in such a foul mood lately; he hated having to waste his time supervising a fight between children. That, and he had to deal with Eithan Arelius. Lindon turned to the others, and even on his contentious face, there was a look of uncertainty. Yerin walked up and tapped him on the chest with her fist. "Your path's as straight as a good road," she said. "Kill him if you can. Try not to die." The words sounded casual, but Renfei detected a tremble in Yerin's spirit. For the briefest instant, her madra was disrupted in its flow. A smile pulled at Lindon's lips, as though Yerin had said something touching, but Orthos bulled in a second later. "Destroy him!" the turtle said, through a mouthful of gravel. "Scatter his ashes around the arena! Crush your enemy, drive him before you, hear the lamentations of his—" "I will do what I can, Orthos," Lindon said, resting his hand on the turtle's head. The sacred beast snorted, pulling back. "Cycle Blackflame and say that to me again." Lindon complied, his spirit going from a tranquil pool to a rolling chaos of dark fire in an instant. Renfei pulled her awareness back slightly— destruction was a difficult power to sense too closely. It always reminded her of insects swarming over their prey, and gave her a headache. His eyes now matched Orthos', giving his features a sinister cast. He had a solid build, such that he looked older than he really was, and the eyes gave him a menacing edge. "I will do what I can," Lindon said again, but Orthos snapped at the air between them.
"No! The dragon destroys! Victory is not good enough, you have to finish him." Lindon straightened himself, his Blackflame madra suddenly boiling. "I'll send his ashes back to the Jai clan in a jar." His dark eyes faded, and he smiled sheepishly. "...if I can." Orthos snorted. "We need to have a Soulsmith make you a spine." He wandered away, muttering to himself, and Fisher Gesha approached next. "All right," she said, slapping her palms together. "To business, hm? Which would you like to take?" To Renfei's surprise, she led Lindon to a huge trunk at the corner of his cell. Renfei hadn't noticed it before; she had been too preoccupied watching the people. That was a mistake, and she chided herself for it. She had worked for the Skysworn long enough to know that it was the detail you missed that killed you. The Fisher threw open the chest, pulling out devices of bright color: constructs and weapons. The products of a Soulsmith. "Well, hurry it up," she said. "Tell me what you want." "Everything," Lindon said. He sounded much more certain than when he had spoken with Orthos. Fisher Gesha's eyebrows shot up. "Everything? You want to fight with your pockets bulging like a squirrel's cheeks?" "Everything," he said again. When he was finally ready to leave, he turned to the Skysworn with a bright blue band around his head, a purple bracelet on one wrist, a black bracer on the other, three rods of varying length and color at his waist, a gelatinous red mass that pulsed like a heart stuck to his chest, a bright green dagger in an ankle sheath, and—sure enough—his pockets swollen, spilling multi-colored light into the air. He looked like a clown. More weapons did not mean a more prepared warrior, and everyone present had to know that. She looked to the others as though they would stop him, but even Yerin looked resigned. Eithan beamed as though watching his proud son leave for the first day at a School of sacred arts. "We will send a messenger to contact you when the fight is ready to begin," Renfei said. "Each Underlord is of course allowed a retinue, though we hope that you will conduct yourself with honor, as befitting your respected rank and station."
Eithan turned back to his painting. It depicted a tall, lonely mountain, jutting from the surrounding landscape like a gray spear. The top was flat, as though the summit of the mountain had been sliced off, and it was capped by an ancient stone building supported by columns. Renfei stared at the picture. She was afraid her mouth might be hanging open. "See you there!" Eithan said. *** On the top of a gray mountain, Lindon waited, cycling Blackflame madra to fight off the chill of the relentless wind. The gusts shoved at him, stronger than he would have thought possible—even with his Iron body reinforced by Lowgold madra, he had to bend down and grip the edge of a nearby boulder to stay in place. The power of wind was strong here, covering his spiritual sight in green swirls. A Jade wouldn't be able to survive alone under these conditions; they would eventually exhaust their madra fighting against the wind and be shoved off the sheer edge of the nearby cliff. Lindon had grown up in Sacred Valley, surrounded by mountains, and this mountain was a strange one. It had been sliced off at the top as though by a sword, so it now terminated in a flat plane. A vast stone structure had been built at the center, squat and ancient, supported by granite pillars. It was impossible to reach this place without flying, and even the Skysworn who had carried them here on their Thousand-Mile Cloud had been forced to fight their way up. Sacred eagles with emerald talons had harassed them all the way. Lindon didn't even know where in the Blackflame Empire he was. South, they said, but he had no reason to tell. He had traveled with the Skysworn for a full day, spent the night huddled in a tiny valley, and then taken off again the next day at dawn. When they finally reached this barren peak, the two green-armored Truegolds had stuffed him into a room carved into the base of the mountain for two more nights, leaving him to marinate in nerves. Today, of all days, they'd taken him out only to abandon him on the edge of the cliff while they checked inside the "sanctuary," as they called it, for potential tampering. The Blackflame madra warmed his spirit and his flesh, protecting him from the cold of the wind, but he shivered anyway.
The day had finally come. He hadn't seen Jai Long for months, not since the Skysworn had taken him away to prevent him from causing a panic with his identity as a Blackflame. At first, he had almost been relieved, thinking that his imprisonment meant the duel would be canceled. Then Eithan had shown up and told him otherwise. Eithan had brought Yerin and the others to him more than ten times, and each time the Skysworn either moved him or increased security. It never seemed to matter. Lindon stared up at the stone columns, wind whipping at his hair and his outer robe. Though his heart pounded and his breath was coming faster, he felt a strange calm. The others, especially Yerin and Fisher Gesha, had done everything they could to prepare him for this day. He was as ready as he could be. There were still no guarantees, of course. But this was just another obstacle he had to overcome. Just one more step. ...of course, he was still armed to the teeth. The constructs felt strange against his skin. The blue headband tickled, the purple loop around his wrist squeezed, the mass on his chest pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He had helped Fisher Gesha make every one of these constructs...though perhaps "helped" was too strong a word. She had provided the bindings and the dead matter to make the constructs, and he had simply assisted her and maintained them afterwards. Their essence bled into the air, like tiny motes of colored light rising from the surface of the constructs as their madra dissolved. Lindon couldn't help but worry when he saw that. They would degrade over time, and probably wouldn't be useful in any fight after this one, but they should last at least that long. Still, he couldn't help feeling like they'd crumble at any second. He looked up as two figures walked out of the cavernous entrance to the sanctuary. Bai Rou loomed over his partner, his green armor making him seem as steady as a statue, his glowing yellow eyes in the shadow of his hat striking and intimidating. He seemed to radiate menace. He was overwhelming, but Lindon preferred the impression Renfei gave: she was calm, composed, ready to act at a moment's notice. Her black hair was pulled back in a tail, a gray cloud hovering inches over her head, hammer bouncing on her hip. She didn't seem threatening, just in control.
That was how Lindon wanted to feel. She met him with a direct, unblinking gaze. "We're to confiscate your weapons," she said. Lindon's hands instinctively moved to cover his pockets. The Skysworn had taken his pack when they first captured him and had yet to return it to him, and he felt almost helpless without it. The constructs returned some measure of that control. "Jai Long will have a weapon," he said reasonably. "Surely you won't deny me mine, if this duel is to be entertaining at all." He had some strategies he could attempt against Jai Long. Eithan put Lindon's chance of winning at thirty or forty percent. "Those aren't the worst odds I've ever bet on!" he'd said. But Lindon's chances went down significantly if he had to walk in unarmed. All of the ideas he'd come up with for rigging the fight had involved altering the arena in some way, but it seemed that the Skysworn had anticipated him. Unless he could still get some time alone with the stage... "We will return any weapons appropriate to your stage of advancement," Renfei said. "We can't have you bringing an Underlord weapon into a fight between Golds." Lindon shifted so that his outer robe covered up the pulsing mass attached to his chest. It had been worth a try. They peeled the constructs off him one at a time, and though he put up a few more halfhearted attempts at bargaining, he didn't struggle. They would sense any object of power he had on him, regardless of how he tried to hide. This was within his expectations. During one of their planning sessions, Eithan had warned him that they would likely confiscate anything too powerful, though he had hoped they would match his weapons to the level of his opponent. In that case, Lindon would have been left Highgold and Truegold tools as well. Renfei did give him a reproachful look when she discovered that one of his launcher constructs was made from Underlord-grade parts. As was the artificial heart on his chest. And the band around his forehead. Two more of his constructs were Truegold, and four were Highgold. They sealed all those into a scripted box that Bai Rou produced, but kept the Lowgold devices in a sack. Those would be returned to him quickly, he assumed. He hoped.
"Your first core is…" Renfei flicked her spirit through Lindon's, and he froze, wondering if she would see past the first of his surprises. But she said "…Jade," and he relaxed. "Your second core is Lowgold, so you go on record as a Lowgold. You can take in weapons appropriate to your stage." As expected, they missed Suriel's marble. The glass ball sat tucked into his pocket, burning with a steady blue candle-flame. Had they looked inside, they would have seen it, but they had done all their searching with their spiritual sense. They also left him his badge, which was heavy and cold against his chest. It was made of gold, etched with a hammer, and it reminded him of home. Nothing reminded him that he was a sacred artist of Sacred Valley like that badge. The two Skysworn ushered him inside, and Lindon took a deep breath. As far as he was concerned, the duel had begun. From here on out, he had to take any advantage he could. "What about my sacred beast?" Lindon asked them. "I have a contracted partner. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe sacred artists are allowed to do battle alongside their partners." Bai Rou gave a single, deep laugh. "Traditionally, contracted partners are allowed to duel as a single unit," Renfei confirmed. "However, Orthos is too far above you. That makes you his partner, and if he were to participate, this would be officially recorded as a duel between Jai Long of the Jai clan and Orthos, guardian of the Arelius family. This is not what we were permitted to allow, nor what either side wants." They walked through the entrance, the wind cutting off as though sliced with a knife, and Lindon started to sweat. It was quite cool inside, but every possibility they denied him reduced his chance of winning. This was still within his predictions, though. At least they'd left him some weapons. The hall was a vast, empty space, and Lindon suspected it was rare to see a visitor in a year. Dust had piled up in the corners, cobwebs on the ceiling, and the stone was worn with the passage of time. More, there was no sign of any inhabitants other than the fresh boot-prints in the dust that must have been left by the Skysworn. A single heavy, wooden door waited at the end of the hall, and Bai Rou pushed it open. Yellow eyes bright, he ushered Lindon inside.
Or rather, outside. The room was fairly spacious, but the far wall was open. Only pillars held up the ceiling, and the spaces between them were filled with views of a snowy mountain range. The sight brought back a sudden, unexpected longing for home. Wind rushed in again, though not as fierce as it had been on the edge of the cliff. This room was about a hundred yards square, and had no furnishings at all. Besides the wall behind Lindon, with its single door, everything else was open to the sky. The Underlords were already waiting.