Chapter 11 - Chp8-9

all the time. Like he did. "He's spent more time underground than a mole. At least he's got Yerin with him, she's a good girl, but she wouldn't rest if someone killed her. You have to slow them down, you hear me? They're not Underlords." She lowered her hand and sighed. "Not yet." Eithan's eyes were wide and his mouth slightly open. After a moment, his smile came back, but this time it was soft. "Honored grandmother, I will take your words to heart. I'm sorry for worrying you." Then he pressed his fists together into a salute and bowed low. Gesha cleared her throat and reddened slightly. "Well. So long as you know." Before Lindon could gather his thoughts, she'd already scooped up her chest and scurried out the door. Eithan stared after her, chin in his hands. "You know," he said, "I don't believe I've paid enough attention to her." "I apologize for her," Lindon said, dipping his head slightly. "I have no complaints about my work over the past year. I know it was done for my benefit." "Not entirely for your benefit," Eithan said. "I was initially hoping that Jai Long would serve as a motivation for you, of course, but the situation evolved as soon as Jai Daishou inserted himself. I was hoping to reap some benefits for the Arelius family, and though I didn't get everything I wanted, I still made some measurable progress. I'll chalk this whole thing up to a win, though we may have indirectly led to the destruction of the entire Empire." Lindon was meant to ask about the destruction part of that sentence, he knew. It was bait, set by Eithan, trying to capture Lindon's interest and attention. Normally, it would have worked. This time, Lindon shrugged his right shoulder, drawing attention to his missing arm. "You could have finished off Jai Daishou immediately." Eithan's smile faded. "I could have, yes." "You drew it out. You were trying to get him to bring out that crystal ball." "The Archstone. It's a—" Lindon cut him off. "He took my arm."

Eithan clasped his hands behind his back and studied his disciple. Instead of deflecting or pointing out that technically Jai Long was the one who had removed the arm, which would be typical Eithan tactics, the Underlord simply nodded. "He did. If he hadn't given the order, Jai Long would have left you alone. If I hadn't put him under such pressure, he wouldn't have given the order." The admission both made Lindon feel better and much, much worse. It tore open the bandage he'd wrapped around his anger, and he could feel tears welling up in the corners of his eyes. "Why?" he said. "Why did you have to push him? I just...want to know it was worth it." Eithan looked to the ceiling for a moment, considering, then looked back down to Lindon. "What do you know about the Dreadgods?" "Nothing," Lindon said. "I don't know that I've ever heard the word. Are they like dreadbeasts?" "Yes. Yes, they are." Eithan chewed on his words for a second, as though trying to gather his thoughts. Or trying to decide how much to tell Lindon. "They are...disasters. Four monsters, big enough to blot out the sky, hungry for destruction, and so powerful that the most advanced sacred artists in the world have to join forces to drive them off. Drive them off, you understand. None of the Dreadgods have ever been killed." "They're sacred beasts?" "Corrupted ones. Like the dreadbeasts of the Desolate Wilds, they were warped and twisted by their own powers." "Where do they come from?" Lindon asked, caught up in the legend. He briefly wondered if this was another tactic to distract him...but if it was, it was working. "They're scattered all over the world. They burrow into a secure location and wait for decades...but when they wake up, they're hungry. Fortunately for humanity, no two have woken at the same time in centuries. "But the last time they did, they destroyed the original Blackflame Empire." From Orthos and Eithan, Lindon had heard of the fall of the Blackflame family. But from what he could piece together, even that family had taken over the remains of another, more powerful Empire. And even that ancient nation had fallen to these Dreadgods.

"The original Empire was ruled by dragons, not men," Eithan said, with a tone that suggested dragons building an empire was nothing unusual. "As they advanced as a culture, they began to study civilizations even older than theirs. And they stumbled on a...vast, underground complex. It was abandoned even then, and it was so massive and so dangerous that not even the greatest of the dragons could map it fully." That reminded Lindon of something, but before he could voice it, Eithan nodded to him. "You've seen one of the shallowest corners of this massive labyrinth in the Desolate Wilds. What they called the Transcendent Ruins was, in reality, just a corner of this huge maze that stretches all over the Empire. There are entrances all over, but to have seen one is your good fortune." "Two," Lindon said. "There was one in my homeland." He remembered the ancestor's tomb in the Heaven's Glory sect, and a stone door marked with four beasts. Now, that carving carried an eerie significance. "Is that so?" Eithan asked, surprised. "Well, you're lucky indeed. And even luckier that you didn't explore too far inside. The dragons of the first Blackflame Empire found that out firsthand when they plundered weapons from the depths of the labyrinth. At first, they only took Highgold or Truegold devices, wanting to study them, but they became greedy for more when they learned that the weapons had such miraculous effects." "The Ancestor's Spear," Lindon said. "One of the weakest objects in the maze. The spear wasn't even unique, you know, though it is enough to dazzle the eyes of anyone below Truegold." Eithan stared longingly into the distance. "The labyrinth is a true treasure trove, but there's a reason we've left it undisturbed for so long, only nibbling at the corners every once in a while in places like the Desolate Wilds. Because when the dragons delved deeper, withdrawing Lord treasures like the Archstone..." He paused, picking up from a different point. "You should understand that the dragons left the doors open for years as they explored the labyrinth, making war on one another and settling petty grudges with their new weaponry. They didn't realize that something in that place drew the Dreadgods like wolves to fresh meat. "Records of that disaster are very spotty, as you might expect. But the warnings they left are clear. Most of this continent was reduced to a blasted

wasteland, from which it has not entirely recovered even to this day. Billions of people and sacred beasts died, and the former Blackflame Empire was nothing more than a Remnant haunt for generations." Eithan slowly shook his head. "We can't know how many dragons survived, but it wasn't more than a handful. The survivors returned all their weapons to the labyrinth, leaving dire warnings to future generations. To delve past the shallows of this maze is to invite death. They destroyed as many of the entrances as they could, and sealed up the rest." "And Jai Daishou opened one?" Lindon asked. "Desperate men cannot see beyond their own desperation," Eithan said, with the air of a man quoting. "There was an entrance to the labyrinth in his territory. He would have kept the door open for less than a day. A minor risk, he must have thought, though a risk to the entire Empire. When he brought out the Archstone, Naru Gwei and I knew what he had done. We knew that he had risked bringing the Dreadgods down on us once again." A wisp of Lindon's anger rose up again. "You pushed him to it." Eithan held up a finger. "I closed off his options to push him to do something foolish. Otherwise, I'd have been leaving my reputation entirely on the outcome of a single fight. I don't prefer to gamble without an overwhelming advantage." "But you knew exactly what he had. You knew it was a hidden weapon, you weren't guessing." "Yes, well, I was watching when he opened the door. I was shocked he would go so far as to risk the wrath of the Dreadgods, but there it is. That was my plan: to get him to incriminate himself in front of the Skysworn. Even if he had survived, with Jai Long victorious, his reputation—and that of the Jai clan—would never recover. They are the lowest-ranked of the great clans, and the Arelius are ranked number one among the major families. They will lose their spot in the Empire, and we will take it." He grimaced, looking uncertain for just a moment. "I am...sorry that you lost what you did. Only know that you were a part of something greater. The Arelius family will rise because of you, and you can only benefit from that." Lindon nodded, but his gut was still a little twisted. He shouldn't be complaining about a lost arm. Back in Sacred Valley, if Eithan had offered to raise him to Gold in exchange for a lost arm, he would have handed the man a saw himself.

But this didn't feel like he'd sacrificed something for a greater goal. It felt like he had been a pawn in the plans of the powerful. "The Dreadgods," Lindon said at last, trying to change the subject. "Are they coming for us?" "Most likely not," Eithan said. "But just in case, the Emperor is gathering his Underlords to him." "Will you fight them?" Eithan let out a bark of a laugh. "As an Underlord? No, they could evaporate my blood from a hundred miles away. We'll be working to keep the populace under control in a state of emergency, should we see signs of a Dreadgod's approach. And we'll be messengers to the people that might actually help." Before Lindon could ask who, Eithan explained. "The Monarchs. They're the most powerful individuals in our world, though the best they could hope for would be a stalemate. None could win a fight against a Dreadgod alone. Not Seshethkunaaz, not Akura Malice, not the Eight-Man Empire or the entire Ninecloud Court." Lindon's breath caught. He remembered two of those names, but he had never expected to hear them from Eithan. How much did Eithan know about them? Monarchs, he'd said. Lindon had never heard the term applied to sacred arts. It sounded like there was a whole group of people at that stage, not just the three examples Suriel had shown him. He took the thought to its natural conclusion, and a fist seemed to squeeze his lungs. Suriel had given him the names of three people with the power to save Sacred Valley: Sha Miara the Queen of the Ninecloud Court, Northstrider the dragon-eater, and the Eight-Man Empire. If those were the most powerful people in the world, that meant whatever was approaching Sacred Valley was even more horrifying than he had imagined. It might not be one of these Dreadgods, but it would be something equally destructive. He couldn't even imagine it. "I've heard of them before," Lindon said. "I would imagine so. They're very famous." "No, in a vision. Suriel showed me. She said...they were the ones that could save my homeland."

Eithan nodded slowly. Over the months, he had scraped most of the details of Suriel's visit from Lindon. All without giving up the details of his own vision. But Lindon had never been specific enough to name the individuals Suriel had shown him. But that brought up another point, and Lindon could sense an opportunity. He seized it. "Speaking of visions..." he began, and Eithan's back straightened. "Later," Eithan promised. "I lost an arm for your plans," Lindon said, the heat of Blackflame leaking into his voice. "I have earned your trust." It was perhaps the most firmly Lindon had ever spoken to Eithan, and a trembling part of Lindon's mind—the part that still remembered being Unsouled—begged him to apologize. But Lindon kept staring into Eithan's blue eyes. "I owe you a full explanation," Eithan said. "And I will give you one. The more you grow, the more I can share with you. For now, I beg you to trust me." That was an irritating non-answer, but Eithan spoke more earnestly and openly than he almost ever did. Reluctantly, Lindon nodded. "That's good," Eithan said, and his grin returned. "Cassias will be here in Sky's Mercy to retrieve you any day now. Rest. Fisher Gesha was right; you've trained like a madman for a year, but that's no way to live forever. There will be plenty of time to advance when I return." "When will that be?" Lindon asked. The idea of staying in bed for months horrified him. What if he fell behind his advancement? "That depends," Eithan said, "on whether or not there's a Dreadgod coming to kill us all."

Chapter 8 Sky's Mercy was a cloudship maintained by the Arelius family: a large blue cloud with a house in the center, flying through the air. Yerin had seen stranger things before—stranger cloudships, too—but there was something about a floating house that especially knocked her off-kilter. There used to be a second building on the cloud, and Yerin missed the barn. She had more room. Instead, she and Cassias were inside a single bedroom-sized cultivation room, surrounded by wooden walls that had been reinforced by scripts so they didn't fall apart with every flying Striker technique. He was showing her what it took to be the second-ranked Highgold in the Empire. She kicked off from the wall, slashing the air in a Rippling Sword technique: a wave of silver madra that sliced through the air like an extension of her sword. Cassias stood before her, back straight, one hand on his thin saber. He looked like Eithan's more serious younger brother: his golden hair was curly and short, his blue eyes calm, and he wore no smile. He sidestepped her technique, raising his weapon to return a strike. But she had counted on that. She'd gathered enough aura around her sword, and she struck that aura with her madra as hard as she could. Her sword rang like a bell. A ripple ran through the sword aura in the room, exciting it, causing invisible cuts to appear on her robes...and then the wave of aura reached Cassias. When it hit his sword, the weapon should have burst into a wave of slicing sword-energy that cut him to pieces, but instead he gathered aura himself as he pulled his saber back. The aura she'd affected with the Endless Sword was drawn in like straw into a cyclone, and it swirled around his sword in a silver cloud visible to her Copper sight.

Then he stabbed forward, carrying all that aura with it. The thrust stabbed across the room in an instant, piercing the air and passing an inch over Yerin's shoulder. A few strands of her hair fell away, and she shivered as she felt the air disturbed by her ear. His technique landed on the wall, where a script shone and dispersed the aura, leaving only a slight scratch on the paneling. Cassias sheathed his saber and frowned. "If you haven't recovered from last time, I'd be happy to wait." Yerin's ankle was still sore, but nothing that would slow her down in a real fight. "You never woke up with a dull edge? Happens to everyone, sometimes." Cassias had defeated her in no more than three moves each time today, and normally she could hold him off for six or seven. She was a Highgold now, technically his equal, but he had experience and skill that she couldn't match. Yet. Cassias nodded, expression softening as though he understood. "Don't worry. Eithan has taken too much interest in Lindon to let him die so easily. And in you too." Yerin snorted in disbelief, but she turned her head so as not to meet his eyes. What did he know? Sacred artists risked their lives every day. That wasn't enough to worry her. Even though people died all the time where they weren't meant to. Her master had died in Sacred Valley, maybe the safest place in the world. It wasn't the trap you saw that killed you. Without her around, Lindon wouldn't know what to watch for. Would Eithan look out for him? Cassias pulled an intricately carved wooden device out of his outer robe and checked it, tucking it back inside after a glance. "It's almost time. Before we go, Yerin, would you mind if I asked you a personal question?" "How personal?" "No one pushes as hard as you do without a goal. Pardon me if I'm overstepping my bounds, but I'd like to know what destination you have in mind." She'd started wondering that herself recently. "To become a Sage," she said. His eyebrows lifted. "I wouldn't have thought you were so ambitious." "Most Sages don't take disciples. Not real ones, anyway. They don't want to pass on their Path. My master trusted me, and now he's gone." She

ran her hand over the hilt of her master's sword. "I'm not letting his Path go to waste." Cassias moved to the door, gesturing for her to follow. "That's a noble goal, and an impressive one. I met a Sage as a child, back in my family's homeland. It was a humbling experience. But it took him centuries to reach that height. Most people can't handle the pressure of training at that level, day after day, year after year, with no guarantee that they'll ever make it." They passed through the door on the second floor of the house, moving to the stairs. Through the tall arched windows, she caught a glimpse of the deep blue Thousand-Mile Cloud that was their foundation, as well as the islands of white that surrounded them. "Never understood that myself," Yerin said, vaulting over the railing and landing on the first floor instead of taking the stairs. Cassias took them carefully, one at a time. "Don't know what I'd do if I wasn't practicing the sword. You think I'd rather put down roots, or what?" "That's not what I meant to imply," Cassias said, unbuckling his belt and tossing it and his sheathed saber onto a nearby rack designed for the purpose. "Only that it often helps in a fight if you have something to fight for." Preserving her own life had always been enough to push Yerin along in fights. Should be enough for anybody. But that wasn't always the truth, was it? She wanted more than that. The Sword Sage had always said the pursuit of perfection in the sacred arts was a lonely pursuit, and anything else was a distraction. She'd come to think that advancing alone wasn't just boring, it was painful. Which had made it such a stab to the gut when Eithan told her she couldn't come to watch Lindon fight. Especially when he'd taken Fisher Gesha, of all people. "She won't be allowed to watch either," Eithan said. "I'm bringing her for her unique talents. And I can't carry two people." That had sounded like an excuse to Yerin. Cassias stepped up to the wooden console at the front of the room, before a massive wall of paneled glass. He looked out, through the clouds, over a series of strange mountains that rose from the ground like a forest of spears. One of the closer ones had something that looked like a temple on the top.

"I only ask you to consider...expanding your interests," Cassias said, moving his hands over the script-circles on the wooden panel. They lit up, and Sky's Mercy shuddered in response. "Even your master was a famous refiner, in addition to being an accomplished swordsman. Many experts find that splitting their focus can actually increase their results." Yerin folded her arms, considering. She did spend all her time practicing the sacred arts in some way. Made it hard to care about anything else, when that was her world. Problem was, she didn't know anything about the world outside of her training. It was the only thing the Sword Sage had raised her to do. She needed a breath or two to think, but the floor shuddered again, and Orthos came stomping in. The turtle was so tall and wide that he couldn't pass through most of the doors in the house without tearing holes in their frames, so he stayed in the corner of this main room. He'd walk out of the larger outer doors when he needed to relieve himself or vent his madra, standing on the Thousand-Mile Cloud. But he was tender as a newborn chick when it came to heights, so Yerin usually had to guide him out so he could close his eyes. For a massive, black reptile with a shell that smoldered with dragonfire, he didn't have much of a spine. Even now, he glanced from side to side with his black-and-red eyes wide. "We're not on the ground yet?" he demanded in a deep, rumbling voice. "We were supposed to land. Why haven't we landed?" Cassias turned around, his hand reaching into his pocket. Beneath his outer robe, he wore a shirt and pants, which still looked strange to Yerin in a fight. Everyone she knew fought in either a sacred artist's robes or armor. "I apologize, Orthos," Cassias said. "I should have given you your medicine already." Orthos shifted from one leg to another like a wobbly stool, his eyes flicking from one window to another, staring at the clouds. "We're not...it's not...why are we so high? Hm? Why do we have to be all the way up here?" Cassias held out a violet pill streaked with blue. "Take your medicine, Orthos. It won't be long now. We're on approach. When you wake up, you'll be with Lindon." "He was weak," Orthos mumbled, stretching out his head to snap up the pill in Cassias' hand. "So weak. He's probably dead. I'll be going back to the way...I was..."

In seconds, he drifted off, withdrawing his head and his limbs into his shell. Now there was a great black mound in the center of their living room, smoke drifting up from him as though from a dying fire. "He's cheerier than a ray of sunshine," Yerin said. She'd already heard about Lindon's bout of weakness following his duel, but Orthos admitted that he might feel the same way if Lindon had died. He'd never felt a contractor's death before. He thought Lindon's madra had recovered since, but he couldn't be sure—maybe he was just getting used to the sensation. So she couldn't shake a little worry. Not enough to distract her, of course, but some. "Well, at least the pills still work," Cassias said, eyeing Orthos' sleeping form. "They've kept his madra quiet as well, even when he's awake." "He hasn't torn the house apart. That's a prize and a half, if you ask me." Cassias turned back to the console. "That was our last pill, so we'll have to rely on Eithan and Lindon for the trip back. One breath of dragon's fire, and we'll hit the ground like a meteor." He had angled the house down slightly, so that the cloud was now drifting toward the temple at the top of the mountain. She walked up to stand beside him. "That it?" "Eithan's down there," Cassias confirmed. "I believe I saw some Remnant parts set out in a room as well, so Fisher Gesha must have set up." That, or some Remnants died in a cave. And she noticed he didn't say a word about Lindon, one way or another. She turned to go find a seat—she'd learned it was best to be sitting during a landing. As she did, she felt a surge of power miles away to the south, the opposite direction of the mountain. Only a few miles, and it gave off the familiar feeling of blood madra. At least it wasn't any closer. A sudden battle between experts could be like an earthquake in a ceramics shop. Maybe that fight would— Her Blood Shadow unraveled. That quickly, the knot tied behind her slipped free. The seal her master had left for her was gone. No warning. Her belt loosened, uncoiling like a serpent. No time to panic. She dropped to the floor with Orthos' heat behind her, focusing on her spirit. A bloody red light was already stretching deep into her, its roots questing for the silver light of her core. She pushed her madra

through its cycles, her breath coming too fast, silver light forcing back the red. It wanted to slither inside. Infect her. And her master's protection was gone. The thought made her breath come even faster, but she calmed herself before she lost control over her madra, pushing back, forcing the Blood Shadow to retreat. She was a Highgold now, and it hadn't quite caught up yet. She was still ahead of it. She could still keep herself under control. Something shifted on her waist, and she snapped her eyes open. The Shadow reached for Cassias. It stretched out from her like a questing limb, the end of its bloodcovered length splitting into fingers. A hand. It was actually reaching for Cassias now, its fingers grasping for the back of his head. Its fingertips were sharp as knives—shaped by her sword madra. She croaked out some kind of warning, but it was hard to talk while every part of her was straining to hold back her uninvited guest. She even seized it with both hands, trying to pull it back, but it dragged her seated body a few inches across the floor. The parasite's knife-edged hand closed on Cassias' golden curls. And without turning around, he slid away. With one punch, he drove a spike of silver madra from his fist and into the center of the crimson palm. Blood madra spattered on the ceiling and then dissolved into essence with a hiss. Yerin was still trying to push out her warning, sweat streaming down her face, but she finally closed her mouth. An Arelius might as well have eyes in the back of his head. The Shadow moved again, a blur of red, and Cassias stood his ground. Both of his hands struck, blasting pieces away from the Blood Shadow. But when the exchange ended, there was a scratch on his arm. It oozed a single drop of blood. "Get away," she managed to grunt out, hauling on her uninvited guest. "Blood!" Cassias looked from her to the parasite and dashed back without asking questions, but the drop had already fallen to the ground. The Blood Shadow fell on it like a hawk taking a fish, slapping its palm down on the droplet on the floor. Blood aura and madra flared, twisting

with one another into a horrible and complex technique, even as the parasite relaxed. It retreated, allowing her to haul it back a few feet. She knew why. She had seen this technique before. It had destroyed her home. As though that single drop of blood had been a seed, a creature sprouted in seconds. It was a doll of pure crimson, formed as though from solid blood, shaped like a man but only half the height. It had no features on its head, but it turned to Cassias like a hunting dog. It loped toward him, using its arms for balance, like an ape. Her master had called them bloodspawn, and they were the stuff of her nightmares. She shouted a warning to him, still hauling on her Shadow. Cassias kicked off, away from the console, a flash of silver driving a hole in the floorboards. His Silver Step technique brought him forward with such speed that he vanished, reappearing behind his opponent. He slashed his hand back, trailing silver light, passing through the bloodspawn's head. Its head was blasted apart, but it was made of ooze. It latched onto him, grabbing him by both shoulders and across the chest. Each bloodspawn was different, but this one had been grown by a Shadow that fed on her madra. She knew what would happen next, but it still caught her off-guard with its speed. It sharpened into a forest of blades, like it had sprouted razors. Cassias let out a sound like a grunt, soaked in his own blood in an instant. The bloodspawn dissolved, having poured its own power into the technique, but the wounds remained. His shirt was shredded, and a stain slowly spread over his chest. He staggered, even as a sheet of blood fell from his wounded scalp and covered his eyes like a waterfall. He looked up to the window, where the mountain temple had grown huge in his sights. He stumbled to the controls, leaving a bloody handprint on them, starting to level off their flight. Guilt squeezed Yerin's gut. This was her fault. But no, she had to focus. If she let the Blood Shadow take over her spirit, things would only get worse. She tightened her grip on the parasite, both physically and spiritually. But it seemed to sense Cassias' wounds...or perhaps the blood aura. It surged toward him, transforming into a razor-edged mace that smashed down at his back. She managed to shout a warning this time.

He turned with both his hands raised, filled with silver light, driving forward with spikes of sword madra. The technique blasted into the Blood Shadow, splattering power onto the walls, and turning its course aside. He was able to take one unsteady step to the side, avoiding its strike. But it smashed straight into the console, blasting it to splinters. The parasite had lost much of its strength in confronting Cassias, so Yerin was able to level herself to her feet...but all she could see was the mountain in the window. Growing closer and closer. The Blood Shadow drew itself back in, like a pet falling asleep, twisting itself around not only her waist, but her shoulders and hips as though it would never let go. She shuddered, but at least she was in control over herself now. She dashed forward, seizing the wounded Cassias. He struggled against her for a moment, but he was too weak. Yerin ran out the door, dashing onto the deep blue cloud as wind tore past them. She cast a glance back at Orthos, but he was withdrawn into his shell—she hoped it would be enough to protect him from the crash. Whether it was or not, there was nothing she could do. She leaned over the edge of the Thousand-Mile Cloud and forced herself to wait. Her every instinct told her to jump out now, abandoning the doomed house, though it would splatter her like a...well, like anything dropped from this height. The temple loomed closer, and she refused to blink, staring straight into the wind as they approached. When the edge of the mountain was finally beneath her, she jumped. With Cassias over her left shoulder, she drew her master's sword, slashing at the air in the only Forger technique she knew. She Forged a blade beneath them—it would be thin enough to see through if viewed edge-on, but of course she didn't want to fall on the edge of the blade. They fell onto the flat side. Her master had used a variation of this technique to fly. She only hoped she could do half as well now. She couldn't. The sword shattered like glass and they tumbled down toward the rock, barely slowed at all. She tried again, crashing through it once more, and then she drew her sword back to try a third time. They hit the stone.

She couldn't feel her limbs. A disturbing sense of cold passed through her, and darkness pressed into the edges of her vision. A roar sounded nearby, and some part of her guessed that had to be the house crashing. Before she lost consciousness, she realized there was one thing she could still feel: the power rising from behind her, like a blood-red sun. It was getting closer. Something was coming, and it had given her Blood Shadow its strength. *** Pai Ren had joined the Skysworn to see the world look up to him. Not only was the green armor of the Skysworn among the most respected uniforms you could wear in the Blackflame Empire, you also got the chance to fly. People watched him from below as he flew over, and they looked up at him in jealousy. Until today, he had considered it the best decision of his life so far. Now, he thought it might be the worst—and last—decision he ever made. Death had come to Lastleaf Fortress, where he had been stationed. He was only investigating the Empire's southern border. It was a standard inspection, and the sacred artists in Lastleaf had welcomed him like an honored guest. He had spent the last three weeks feasting on the products of the southern jungle, which he had been honored to visit. Now, somehow, the sun had been stained red. He stood on his personal Thousand-Mile Cloud, looking out over the rest of the fort below him, horrified. Blood aura choked the air, so that he had to close his Copper sight and withdraw his spiritual sense, lest he lose his lunch. The fortress was a vast complex, wider than it was tall, spread out beneath him in layers like the rings of a tree. Each ring was walled, and the strongest sacred artists lived in the heart of the fort. The sacred arts of this School, the Path of the Last Leaf, turned trees into deadly weapons. Vines and trees had been planted within the fortress for the purposes of cycling aura, dotting each layer. The innermost layer was almost a forest. Ordinarily, there was a natural flow of students and experts flowing throughout the fortress, passing between walls and going on a thousand different tasks. It had been soothing to watch. Today, it was a horrifying scene of carnage.

Beneath him, the artists of the Lastleaf School tried to stand in desperate pockets against an army of...not Remnants, exactly, nor sacred beasts. Were they constructs? He couldn't be sure. He'd call them monsters. Creatures of blood, born of blood. Every wound created another one—a faceless, shambling creature that sacrificed itself in order to kill another sacred artist. They would latch on to a Lastleaf artist, split into a thousand crimson vines, and then strangle the man or woman to death. It looked disturbingly similar to a technique from the Path of the Last Leaf, as though these blood-creatures used the sacred arts of those they killed. Or perhaps they took the sacred arts from the blood when they were born. Ren's mind tried to unravel the puzzle even as his body stood, frozen and horrified, stuck to his Thousand-Mile Cloud. He was a Truegold, stronger than most in the Empire, but he couldn't imagine himself doing anything about the tragedy he saw unfolding beneath him. A trio of women stood with weapons in hand, standing against a tide of crimson creatures. One slashed a green sword, and leaves were Forged from nowhere, slashing against them. Another raised a construct device, which flashed green, to no apparent effect he could see. A third swung a hammer, smashing a single monster to a splatter. A wave of creatures overwhelmed them in seconds. He could probably have heard their screams, if they didn't blend into everyone else's. A couple pulled their child between them, running from a line of red monsters. They wouldn't make it. An elder directed a tree to raise its branches in a fist, smashing down on the blood-creatures and reducing them to paste. A group of disciples huddled behind him, frightened, but there seemed to be a new batch of enemies born from every human death. There was no end to them, and the elder's madra could only last so long. Similar stories played out all over the fortress, such that he found it harder and harder to focus on any individual detail. It was just a mass of horror, like a nightmare spread out beneath him. He could descend on that elder who was holding out. Perhaps save a disciple or two on his cloud. But...

He glanced behind him, where the red light had condensed into a shaft of what looked like a beam of crimson sunlight. He had withdrawn his perception already, but he still felt something from back there: dread. Horror. Overwhelming power. There was something only a mile or two south of this fortress, something ancient and powerful. It had caused this, he was sure. And if he died here, the Skysworn would never know about it. There was a sealed box on his thigh, scripted and reinforced so that it was almost impossible to open by accident. Among the Skysworn, it was considered shameful to open this box. He flooded it with his madra, unlocking it. It popped open, causing a stone to fall into his gauntleted hand. This green egg-shaped stone was, in fact, a simple construct. He crushed it, releasing the power inside. The power gathered into a small, winged creature like a four-winged hummingbird made entirely out of green light. The construct flitted around his head for one lap and then streaked into the distance, heading for Skysworn headquarters. The messenger would alert the Underlord, drawing reinforcements, but it couldn't carry any detailed information. He would have to tell that story himself. He retreated into the sky, urging his Thousand-Mile Cloud forward. Away from that disturbing shaft of red light...and from whatever it was shining on. As he flew away, he spotted someone standing on the outer wall. A young man, with utterly pale skin and black hair that fell down almost to his waist. Even among the brutal scenes below, he stood out. Ren slowed, wondering if he should pick the boy up. He didn't look older than eighteen, but something warned him off. The young man wasn't watching the fighting around him. His eyes were calm, and on the sky. Watching Ren. Ren gained some distance, rising into the sky. The young man was wearing a shapeless black coat that covered him from shoulders to feet, but he reached out a hand. The hand was solid red, as though it had been dipped in blood. With one sharp gesture, the young man made a fist. A lance of pain shot through Ren's heart.

He clapped a hand to his chest, his lungs freezing up, and the break in his concentration made his cloud shudder. An instant later, the script in his armor flashed, breaking off the blood Ruler technique that had almost killed him. The red aura was pushed away from him, his heart relaxed, and he heaved a huge breath. This time, he flew as fast as he could. There was no thought in his head besides escape. He made it a few more yards before something seized him around his ankle and dragged him off his cloud. Before Pai Ren hit the ground, he screamed one last time. No one heard him. *** Lindon hobbled out into the sunlight to see what the noise was about. He and Gesha had been preparing his new arm when the mountain shook with an overwhelming crash. He still hadn't fully recovered from the fight, his body still sore, his madra still weak. Little Blue had cleansed some of his madra channels, but they were still scraped raw.. His body felt as though it was made of clay, and he was pushing it through each step with sheer willpower. Gesha had tried to keep him in his bed, assuring him that he needed his rest, and that she would investigate the noise. But Yerin was supposed to arrive today. Fisher Gesha held the door open for him, but she was distracted. Her bun of gray hair was in his face as she stared out the door. Before he saw anything, he was distracted by the feeling of a huge power to the south. He looked that direction first, and it was as though the sunlight had been filtered through a lens of red glass only a few miles to the south. But when he realized what was lying right in front of him, all thoughts about that distant power were pushed from his mind. The wreckage of Sky's Mercy was strewn all over the side of the mountain, with dust and smoke rising from the debris. Blue wisps of cloud were still dissolving in the air, and here and there he could see something he recognized: a chair lying upside-down, a twisted piece of what had once been a dragon-headed banister. Then he spotted a figure in black robes, and he shot forward, his wounds forgotten. Yerin was lying there on the stone, bloody and broken, with

Cassias next to her. His spirit told him Orthos was nearby, but only a quick glance assured him the turtle was fine: his limbs and head had been retracted into his shell, and he was sitting at the center of the wreck like a smoldering coal. If Lindon was reading his spiritual sensations correctly, his contracted partner was sleeping. But when he looked at Yerin's condition, his throat tightened up. She was lying on her side, blood pooled beneath her head, with her legs twisted around one another. Her arms were limp, her fingertips twitching, her bare sword lying twenty yards away. At least she hadn't fallen on it. Even her belt had come undone, somehow, twisting around her body instead of coiling around her waist. He knelt beside her, raising trembling fingers an inch away from her lips to feel for breath. An instant later, he felt her exhale, and he released his own breath. As long as she was alive, she could be saved. Cassias' corpse was a few steps away. Lindon only looked him over once before knowing he was a lost cause. He didn't need to check for a pulse; the man was covered in wounds and soaked in blood. No one could — Cassias stirred, raising a hand to his head. Lindon jolted, hurrying over to the older man to help him sit up. "Don't push yourself," Lindon advised. "We're here." He had no idea what they would do, but it seemed important to soothe a man who had just survived a violent crash. When it seemed Cassias could sit up on his own, Lindon began to walk back to Yerin, but the Arelius seized his arm. "Stay away," Cassias said, voice rough. He was shaky from the crash. Lindon had seen this before, back in his clan, on people who had survived battles. He tried to pry himself away gently, but Cassias' grip was like an eagle's talon. He staggered to his feet, pulling Lindon away from Yerin. Toward Eithan. Eithan had, of course, made it here before Lindon and Fisher Gesha had even made it out of their rooms. But Lindon hadn't noticed until now that the Underlord had made no effort to help his family member or his disciple.

Instead, he stood on the very edge of the cliff, staring at the red light in the distance. Which, now that Lindon thought of it, seemed a little closer than it had been a moment ago. Wind tugged at Eithan's hair, and for once he wore no smile. He stared into the red light like a man contemplating the approach of an advancing army. "Her Blood Shadow has awakened," Cassias reported to Eithan. "It's no wonder, considering what's coming," Eithan said, still looking to the south. "We should remove it. We should have removed it before now, I can't imagine what you were thinking." "No, you can't," Eithan said, pulling out his black iron scissors. With one swift motion, he sliced open the tip of his finger. Then, without warning, he turned on his heel and headed for Yerin. Yerin's belt stirred and struck like a serpent when Eithan moved closer, which startled Lindon. Fisher Gesha scuttled away on her spider's legs, looking terrified, but neither Cassias nor Eithan seemed surprised. The Underlord simply let the end of the blood-colored rope strike him on the neck, where it did no more damage than a limp string. Eithan pulled Yerin's robes apart. He tore the cloth easily, exposing about a foot of her belly. There were thin scars even there, though not as many as on the skin of her arms and face. It was just her stomach, but Lindon still thought about looking away. But the sight stopped him. The bloody rope that she had always worn like a belt stretched out from her navel, as though it was made of her intestines. Or, a more disturbing thought: as though it stretched into her core. Eithan sketched in her skin with his blood, writing a circle of symbols around her navel. It must be a script, but Lindon recognized none of it. He took in a breath, and then a gray fire ignited the symbols. Soulfire: the power of an Underlord. Lindon still didn't understand it, as Eithan refused to explain, but soulfire was the hallmark and the signature of a Lord. This script used it as power. And the red rope crumbled away. It wilted and shriveled like a dying plant, dissolving into what looked like flakes of dried blood before it finally

evaporated to red essence. Just like that, it was gone. The circle of symbols on Yerin's stomach had been blackened, as though they had been burned into her flesh. She woke up only a second later, coughing. She groaned. "Somebody find the ox that trampled me." Lindon hurried over to her, but Eithan had returned his gaze to the south. "You'll feel worse in a moment," he said. His scissors were still in his hand. "Battle is upon us." Lindon was going to ask what he was talking about, then he saw the wall of red had pressed against the edge of the mountain. His eyes widened. Then red light swallowed them all.

Chapter 9 It was as though the sun had turned red. Even in Lindon's Copper sight, everything was died crimson. His stomach heaved, and bile rose in his throat—this felt like being submerged in a pool of blood. He closed his spiritual sight before he lost himself, but what he saw in reality was even more disturbing. Where Cassias and Yerin had been lying on the stone, creatures rose from their blood like Remnants from corpses. They were only half the size of a person, with featureless faces, and their bodies had been formed from gelatinous blood. There were six of them in an instant, turning their heads toward Lindon and the others as though they could smell living flesh. They lurched forward, but Eithan blurred through their ranks, his scissors sweeping through the air. Blood madra sprayed into the air and dissolved into essence, and all six of them deflated. Fisher Gesha pointed a trembling finger at the sight. "That! What is that? Hm? Did you bring those back with you?" "These are bloodspawn," Eithan said, shaking the last stains off his scissors as the liquid madra evaporated. "They are the least of the Bleeding Phoenix's creations." Gesha seemed to shrink into herself even more, though she didn't have much size to lose. "The...the Bleeding Phoenix? Did you...are you saying..." Cassias grasped at his hip as though feeling for a sword that wasn't there. He frowned at the space, then fumbled at his other hip. Of course, there was still no weapon. The crash had shaken him. "What happened here, Eithan?" he asked, finally giving up on his saber. "Jai Daishou opened a door he should not have," Eithan said, moving his head as though watching something move through the air. Something

that Lindon couldn't see. "Someone noticed." "Dreadgods," Fisher Gesha repeated, shaking. "Dreadgods..." "Bloodspawn rise from spilled blood," Eithan said. "When it's still inside you, or on your skin, your madra still has control. The Phoenix's power can't do anything with it until it leaves the influence of your spirit." "Unless the Phoenix itself rises," Cassias pointed out. He was leaning against the back of an upturned couch that had fallen from Sky's Mercy, and he still didn't look balanced. Eithan nodded absently, still watching something in the air. "A Dreadgod doesn't care for the protection of your meager spirit. This isn't its full attention, just a side effect of its awakening." More bloodspawn formed from the drops spilling from Cassias and Yerin, but Eithan dispersed them with a couple of quick blasts of pure madra. Lindon needed to learn that technique. "Forgiveness, but we should leave," Lindon said at last. He felt like he was stating the obvious, but no one else had said it. If the red light was the extent of the Phoenix's influence, they had to escape it. Eithan responded without turning. "I could take myself out of here. I could take Yerin with me, and perhaps Cassias. You, with your ThousandMile Cloud, could take Fisher Gesha. But what about Jai Long and Jai Chen." Lindon started. They were still here? "And what if we have to fight our way out?" Eithan continued. "Do we abandon our charges? If we are to run, we first have to clear some space." Yerin rose unsteadily to her feet, clutching one arm as though it pained her. "Then let's stop jabbering and do it," she said, hobbling over to her master's sword. Leaning over and picking it up was an agonizing production. "Better than sitting here." "Don't worry. They have come to us." A young man appeared beyond the edge of the cliff, his pale face framed by black hair that stretched down to his waist. He wore a dark, shapeless coat that covered his shoulders, and as he slowly rose up the side of the cliff, Lindon saw that the cloak covered even his feet. He was standing on a rising tide of blood. The newcomer stepped from his red platform onto the edge of the mountain without a word, his gaze locked on Eithan's. "Underlord," he said, his voice a whisper. He sounded as though that single word pained him.

"An emissary of Redmoon Hall, if I'm not mistaken," Eithan said. His voice was cheery, but he still wore no smile. His scissors were held ready in his right hand. "I am Longhook," the emissary said. A gleaming red hook appeared at the end of his right sleeve, as though it were made of crimson-dyed steel. In that light, everything looked red, so its color could have been nothing more than a trick of the eye. Though he doubted it. The hook slowly slid to the ground, revealing link after link of red chain. In a moment, the hook hit the ground with a clink. Eithan looked from his enemy's weapon to his own. "Longhook, is it? You can call me Tiny Scissors." Longhook didn't seem to appreciate the joke. He stood like a statue carved from ice. "What does your master want?" Eithan asked, casually strolling away from the other members of the Arelius family. "North," Longhook whispered. "He wants the treasure of the north." "By all means, go around us," Eithan offered. Lindon wondered what Eithan was doing. Why was he trying to make a deal with the enemy? Eithan often preferred to talk his way around problems, but he had already said they would have to fight. And he had dispersed the bloodspawn with no problems. Why didn't he knock this newcomer off the mountain? Gingerly, feeling as though he were submerging his arm in sludge, Lindon extended his perception. Only an instant later, he understood the truth. Longhook blazed with the power of an Underlord. "No," the emissary responded. "A piece of the treasure...here." His breath rasped, so many words apparently having been too much for him. Eithan froze a moment, then his smile reappeared. "Well then, I think we can come to an—" In the middle of his own sentence, he exploded into motion. The air clapped behind him when he moved, driving his scissors at his enemy. Lindon couldn't follow what happened next, only the explosion of sound, a rush of wind, and a flash of red light. A column of stone exploded under Longhook's weapon, the hook having missed Eithan and slammed into the building behind him. Eithan avoided

even the chain as though it were red-hot, vaulting over it, and slamming his fist into Longhook's chest. A ripple of colorless power surged out, blasting past the Redmoon Hall emissary. This exchange of blows was still too fast for Lindon to follow, but the emissary didn't seem slowed down by Eithan's attack at all. It ended in Eithan leaping backwards, and Longhook with one arm extended. It stuck out from his coat, and his arm was sheathed in solid red. Was that his Goldsign? Or was he covered in one of those bloodspawn? He'd hauled his hook back to himself, and now he whipped it at Eithan. It struck with an impact that hurt Lindon's ears, carrying the sound of steelon-steel as Eithan blocked with his scissors. The impact sent him flying back toward the building on the mountain, and Longhook was after him in an instant. From start to finish, the whole exchange took perhaps two seconds. Lindon stared after the crashes and explosions coming from inside the building. He shivered. He couldn't have blocked a single one of those strikes. He would have died in an instant. He'd started to think of Jai Long as close to Eithan's level, but the first step toward Underlord was nothing compared to the real thing. "I say we leave," Lindon said, moving to help Yerin walk. She waved him away, though she winced at the motion and her arm was starting to swell. He stayed next to her, just in case. Cassias was in even worse shape, his eyes distant. Fisher Gesha nodded to Lindon's words, scuttling off to the side entrance of the building—the sounds from Eithan's fight had already grown distant, but she was still careful. Slowly, Cassias shook his head. "Not yet. There are more coming." Lindon scanned the ground, but no new bloodspawn had risen. It looked as though the blood from Yerin and Cassias' injuries had been exhausted. "Not ours," Cassias said, and pointed to the edge of the cliff. Where Longhook had first appeared, there were now a host of featureless heads popping over the edge. They clambered up with their malformed arms, but these seemed somehow different from the ones before. The others had been slightly angular, with sharp features and long limbs. These were still made of blood madra, and still had no faces, but their bodies were twisted and gnarled. As though there were a skeleton of wood

underneath. There was even a pattern in the flow of their crimson "skin," where Lindon caught an impression of fluttering leaves. His guess was confirmed an instant later, when one of the bloodspawn exploded into a branch of crimson vines covered in scarlet leaves. The vines rushed across the ground for them, like a nest of hungry snakes. Next to him, Yerin shuddered. Her skin was even paler than usual— although that might have been the blood loss—and she clutched her master's sword in both hands. He had never seen her so panicked before. "No, no, no," she said. "Not this time." With a desperate shout, she slashed her white blade at the grasping vines. Lindon heard a sound like a bell, and something sliced at the edges of his robes. The vines splattered to liquid madra, which quickly began to dissolve. So did the ranks of the bloodspawn. Lindon caught her with his left hand as she sagged, exhausted, but his sudden motion pulled loose the scripted band around the stump of his right arm. Pain flared back again, dull but immediate, and his eyes lost focus. He fell to his knees, taking her with him. She shook for a moment, then her eyes fastened on the space where his right hand had once been. "Your arm," she said, looking up to him with wide eyes. He forced a smile. "Better than my life, isn't it?" "Doesn't make it smiles and rainbows just because you lived," Yerin said. "Heavens know, I'm sorry. I'm just…" She looked back to the splashes of blood and shuddered again. "I am sorry." In mortal danger they may have been, but her sympathy warmed him even as it caught him unprepared. He thought she would say he should just bear it and stop complaining. "I've been down that road," she said, rolling her sleeve up to reveal a scar around her left elbow. "Lost both of them, to tell you true." Another scar ringed her right wrist. "And chunks out of both legs so they hung there, useless as rust on a blade. It's no joke. Nothing worse than an itch on a limb you've already lost." "How did you get them back?" Lindon asked. As interested as he was in the powers of a Remnant arm, if he could get his own arm back... "Master had a pill for everything. He could regrow a limb faster than a flower. Expensive, though, so he always made me work for it."

She stood on her own now, and despite the blood running down her face, she seemed more like herself now than she had only a moment before. Lindon's missing arm had shaken her out of whatever had taken hold of her. He looked to the still-vanishing puddles of blood madra. "Pardon, but have you seen these before?" She went still for a moment before giving him a single nod. That lost expression returned. "I've seen them. Too much of them, when this showed up," she said, clapping a hand to her stomach. "I guess it's time to—" Then she seemed to realize her belt was missing. She stared down, dumbfounded, and felt around her waist. "Where is it? It can't just...crawl off..." She was starting to breathe quickly, and she squeezed her eyes shut. A moment later, her breath returned to normal, but her shoulders slumped. "It's still there. Coiled like a worm in an apple." Her lips twisted in disgust. "But somebody bottled it up. Eithan?" "Eithan." Another explosion in the back of the mountain led to a rising column of smoke. "Let's go. We should be ready to leave when he wins." Another bloodspawn poked its head up the cliff, and Fisher Gesha threw a web of purple light at it. It was jerked down the side of the mountain as though she'd tied a weight to its ankles. Carefully, Cassias stepped up to the edge of the cliff and glanced down. Almost instantly, he staggered back. "We have to leave. Right now." He marched back toward the entrance into the mountain, though every second or third step he swayed as though he stood on the deck of a ship. Yerin and Gesha followed him, but a strange curiosity took hold of Lindon. He walked to the edge and peered down. Dozens—perhaps hundreds—of bloodspawn were stuck to the side of the mountain. Some of them looked like gnarled trees, others like clouds of gas, and still others like a mass of jagged crystals. Most of them weren't moving quickly, but they all crept up the side of the mountain. But beneath them, covering the hills, was an ocean of writhing red figures. Lindon couldn't begin to guess how many there were. An army. He ran back, hurrying after the others. There were so many. So many. And if they fought, new ones would be created every time a human was injured.

They would be overwhelmed in minutes, dragged down and torn apart by monsters. His exhaustion and the mental burden of losing his arm seemed to retreat in the face of a rising tide of panic. One of the doors to the sanctuary had been blasted off its hinges. Redstained sunlight streamed in through a hole in the ceiling. A bloodspawn was forming right in front of them, from a tiny splatter on the wall. It was transparent as red glass, and it seemed taller and thinner than the others. Cassias drove a spike of silver madra through it, but the bloodspawn didn't seem to mind the hole in its chest. It held its arms wide, trying to catch the Arelius in an embrace. Lindon moved up, cycling pure madra. His madra channels still pained him whenever he cycled, and he had to improvise a different pattern to use his technique with his left hand. He usually used his right. But a second later, he had driven an Empty Palm into the bloodspawn's midsection. It popped like a bubble, spraying him with liquid madra. The madra burned slightly, tingling against his skin, but it started to evaporate almost immediately. No one commented; they were all on high alert as they moved through the red-lit halls, heading for the entrance to the complex below. So many walls had been blown out by the battles between the two Underlords that Lindon wondered about the sanctuary's structural integrity. As he watched, a few boulders bigger than his head crumbled from a hole in the ceiling, smashing into the ground. The wind, whistling through the walls, now sounded ominous. After an agonizing minute or two of navigating through the fractured halls, they finally came upon a door at the end of a hall. Debris was lying against it, holding it closed, but at least they hadn't run into another bloodspawn. Lindon would count that as a success. Fisher Gesha lashed lines of purple madra to the debris, hauling them back with her power. With a single palm strike, Cassias shattered a block bigger than he was, though he had to lean against a wall and take a breath afterwards. He looked as though he'd bathed in blood, and his wounds were obvious. More than any of them, he needed to get out of here.

Yerin simply grabbed chunks of stone and hauled them away with her bare hands. Lindon switched to Blackflame and joined her, though the Burning Cloak was better for sudden, abrupt motions than for sustained strength. He ended up kicking stones away, then shattering the door open. He was relieved when he saw the steady runelight of the script-circle in the stairway behind the door. It led down, toward the chamber where his pack waited. Once he retrieved Little Blue, his belongings, and his new arm —which was still in the process of being created—they could all leave. Fisher Gesha had some belongings of her own as well, which she couldn't leave behind. She wasn't even carrying her goldsteel hook. They started heading down when Eithan crashed through the ceiling behind them. A red hook had been driven into his shoulder, and the Redmoon Hall emissary had hauled him down through the ceiling. Longhook was standing behind them, on the ground floor, and none of them had noticed him show up. Now he stood over Eithan's squirming body, holding his chain in two crimson hands. Eithan forced his eyes open, though they were hazy with pain, and both of his hands were holding the hook in his shoulder. He craned his eyes back to see Longhook, though from his perspective the emissary must have looked upside-down. He revealed a grin of bloodstained teeth. "It's not too late for you to surrender," he said, pulling the hook from his shoulder with a sick, wet sound. He shuddered as he did so. Longhook had a cut along the side of his neck, and his coat had been sliced in a few places. But otherwise, he seemed the same as when he had first appeared. Lindon gripped the edge of the doorway, rekindling the Burning Cloak. A loud voice in his mind urged him to run down, grab his belongings, and leave. But Blackflame pushed him to action, which is why he kept it surging through him. He had to help…without getting destroyed by a single casual backhand from an Underlord. He gathered a dark fireball between his palms, focused on Longhook. Fisher Gesha shook her head frantically when she saw what he was doing, but he was staring at his target. Blackflame madra was known for piercing

defenses. He had blasted off a Truegold's hand and threatened Jai Long. He could at least distract an Underlord for an instant. As long as he didn't draw too much of his attention. Eithan flipped up, slamming a foot into Longhook's face, but the emissary dodged and caught Eithan in the ribs with a red fist. The blow launched Eithan five feet in the air, where he twisted and fired a Striker technique down at his opponent. A colorless wave washed over the Redmoon Hall emissary, and just a hint of it splashed on Lindon, destabilizing his technique. His ball of Blackflame swelled to twice its size in an instant as his control shook, and it was all he could do to compress it once again before it exploded. The fight between Underlords had continued in a long, ear-shattering roar of strikes and counterstrikes, but Eithan was clearly getting the worst of it. If Lindon couldn't do something, he was going to die. Then Longhook froze. And the world darkened. The crimson light streaming in from the holes in the ceiling was cut off, swallowing them in shadow. Lindon looked up, startled, only to see a deep green mass covering the sky. It rolled like distant storm clouds, or the surface of a lake seen from beneath... No, those were clouds. A massive bank of green clouds. Longhook withdrew his chain, and it slithered back into his sleeve, the hook following. He turned to dash off, but there was another wave of transparent power. He stumbled. When it washed over Lindon, his Blackflame technique was snuffed out like a candle. The purple lights connecting Gesha to the rocks vanished, and Cassias and Yerin both sagged to their knees as the Enforcer techniques they used to keep themselves upright failed. "So rude, to leave in the middle of a conversation," Eithan said, though his words were slurred and his smile was still bloodstained. Longhook's head swiveled on his neck independent of the rest of his body. His hook peeked out the edges of his sleeve again. Then a figure fell from above. It fell through one of the holes in the roof, folding its emerald wings, and landed with an impact that shattered stone. Naru Gwei looked up through the veil of his greasy, gray hair, burn scars twisting his face. His old, battered armor was no worse for his hard landing,

and his wings folded up impossibly small as they vanished into slots in the back of his armor. He knelt with one hand pressed against the broken stone. The other held his massive black sword. "In the name of the Blackflame Empire, and by the authority of the emperor, you are under arrest," the old man said. His voice still sounded bored, if not sleepy. Longhook hurled his weapon. Not toward Naru Gwei; the hook shattered the far door, breaking the way out to the arena where Lindon and Jai Long had fought. The chain continued, impossibly long, until the end of the weapon hooked one of the columns still standing. Without a word, he hauled on his chain, pulling himself down the hall so fast he may as well have been flying. Naru Gwei lifted his free hand from the stone, making a gesture as though grabbing something. Longhook froze like a bird trapped in mid-flight. "I thought I said you were under arrest," the Skysworn said, rising to his feet. The emissary of Redmoon Hall craned his neck with great effort to look back at them. No, not at them. He looked straight at Yerin. Yerin's head rocked back as she noticed, and she drew in a breath. With a barely perceptible motion, he nodded to her. Then he twisted his body, fighting Naru Gwei's Ruler technique, and moved his hands in a strange pattern. Red light twisted, and pain stabbed through Lindon's limbs. He fell to the ground, because the weight of his body was too much for the agony in his calves. Even Naru Gwei grunted, flinching back. A blood Ruler technique, Lindon was sure of it. He was using the power of blood aura to affect their bodies directly. Normally, it might be too weak to harm an opponent, but the power of blood was so strong it was twisting the light. He had more aura to work with than Naru Gwei possibly could. The Skysworn's technique broke, and Longhook shot off again. In an instant, he had vanished beyond the cliff. Naru Gwei looked sharply to Eithan, who was struggling to sit up while leaning against the wall, a bleeding hole in his shoulder. "He has friends," Eithan said, his smile twisting. "He's headed straight for them. I can't be sure if they're coming to us, but I'd rather not find out."

The Skysworn Captain nodded. With a casual swipe, he destroyed a bloodspawn that was rising from the pool beneath Eithan. "Fifteen minutes," he said. "See to your injuries and gather your things. Then we're leaving." Eithan glanced up at the vast green clouds overhead. "You brought your whole fortress along, did you?" "Never thought I'd need it," he said heavily. "No one should have to plan for a day like this." Eithan started struggling to his feet, but Naru Gwei scooped him up with one hand. "The rest of them can join us, or they can take their chances with the Bleeding Phoenix's mercy. But you, Arelius, you're coming with me. The Emperor needs us both." *** Jai Long spun his spear, driving the white-edged point of his spear through a blood-creature, reducing it to a rush of liquid. After every one he defeated, he glanced back to his sister. His instincts urged him to carry her, but he fought back the thought. She could move on her own now. Although not by much. The rush of unstable madra from Jai Daishou had swollen her core with powers he didn't understand. If not for the Arelius Underlord's assurance that she would be fine, Jai Long would have tried his own hand at first aid. Though he knew so little about healing the spirit that he might well cripple her again. She was following behind him, and to the physical eye she looked healthier than ever. Her wide eyes were focused, and she wore lavender sacred artist's robes that had been stained with red liquid madra. She had her hands out as though trying to use a technique. And that was where the problem came in. Her breath was ragged and heavy, and she was extremely focused on the area between her hands, but she couldn't control her madra. A nearby monster exploded into a cloud of red spores, and Jai Long was almost caught off-guard. He spun his spear in a circle, trailing serpents of white madra. The spores met the snakes and sizzled like water droplets hitting a hot grill, and the serpents moved of their own volition to devour more of the blood madra.

They'd run into fourteen of these since they sensed Underlords fighting above them and decided to run. Remnants, perhaps? If so, where had so many of them come from? There were a series of tunnels leading down from the chambers inside the mountain to ground level, and they'd hoped to escape the Arelius family while Eithan fought off...whoever it was. Eithan Arelius may have promised them safety, but they were still enemies and rivals of the Jai clan. It was best to be on their own. Except Jai Chen had been stumbling after her brother, attempting to control her madra, for far too long now. "Don't force it," he reminded her. She could strain her madra channels and cause greater spiritual damage than she'd struggled with in the first place. "I can get us out of here." But he was less and less sure of that. The red light that flooded the world made him shiver. This wasn't the work of a mere Underlord; perhaps a foreign Overlord, or a Sage, or some ancient weapon. No matter what it was, he had to escape it. They rounded a corner, and six more creatures raised their featureless heads to fix on the living humans. Jai Long evened out his breath, focusing on his cycling technique as he spun his spear. His core was dimming, running dry, but he'd seen early on that he couldn't spare his effort. These monsters favored suicide attacks, exploding into a mass of whatever power had been used to create them. They were easy to destroy individually, but if he were to miss even one of them, more could swarm him in seconds. And, as they'd learned, more could be born from even a single drop of spilled blood. He was fighting against a tide, and running out of power. But he would use what he had. He stepped forward, gathering up his madra for a technique. Then the red light receded before a bright tide. He spun his spear around, looking for the creature that had gotten behind him, only to see his sister holding a dragon by its tail. A serpentine dragon roared, surging from the space between her hands. It was like one of his snakes, only far more detailed: he could see a pair of whiskers on its face and scales on its body. It was tinged pink, like the light of dawn, and it raged into the bloody creatures with a majestic cry.

They were splattered across the floor with the sheer momentum of its charge. Awed, Jai Long extended his spiritual perception. The substance of this creature felt like nothing he'd ever seen before. It was something like his own madra, corrupted by that Remnant long ago, which explained life in a creature that wasn't a Remnant. But at the same time, it was also...refined, in a way he couldn't describe. Like Jai Long's power had been boiled down, purified, perfected, and then strengthened. And there were elements that reminded him of a storm. It was a confusing, overwhelming mass of impressions, and he couldn't make sense of them before the dragon burst in a massive flash of essence, dissolving almost instantly. "I did it," Jai Chen said, her smile broad. Then she collapsed. Jai Long hurried over to her, checking her spirit. Her madra channels were strained and dim, and her core was almost exhausted, but there was no further damage. He let out a breath of relief and threw her over his shoulder. There was still a long way to go before he escaped. When he sensed someone behind him, he whirled, readying his spear in one hand. It was Wei Shi Lindon. He didn't have the black-and-red eyes he'd used for most of their fight, but his gaze still smoldered with anger. Although that could be Jai Long's imagination; he didn't know Lindon well, but the young man apologized too much to be the angry type. He just looked like he was spoiling for a fight, with his rough face, tall build, and broad shoulders. Now, he wore his large canvas pack on his shoulders, and he was holding out another, smaller pack in one hand. The only hand he had left. "Forgiveness, but we don't have much time," he said, holding out the small pack. "The Skysworn have arrived. They've offered to take us from here, and it's not safe to stay. I think you may have noticed." Jai Long ignored the offering. "We will make it on our own." Lindon didn't withdraw the pack. "I assumed so, but there are hundreds of bloodspawn at ground level. There's another way." Slowly, Jai Long reached out with the tip of his spear and hooked the strap of the pack. He was still wary of some sort of trick. "Where?"

Now that his hand was free, Lindon pointed down a stone hallway that ramped gently back up. "That tunnel is connected to a bridge that leads to another mountain. That one isn't surrounded by bloodspawn." "Have you told the Skysworn about us?" Jai Long asked, still searching for a trap. Wei Shi Lindon was full of tricks, and not to be trusted. The Skysworn would be hunting down anyone connected to Jai Daishou, and this could all be a plot to lead Jai Long and Jai Chen into capture. "They're not looking for you," Lindon said. "They have bigger problems. But no, of course I have not told them." After a moment of silence, he added, "Please, accept my gratitude. For your...mercy." He shrugged his right shoulder. Jai Long stared at him, but despite his generally surly appearance, he seemed sincere. "You could have killed me, so I appreciate your restraint." He rubbed at the remainder of his right arm. "Forgive me, but I hope you'll make it far away from here." Jai Long returned the sentiment. He shrugged the pack over the shoulder that didn't have his sister on it and began to walk away. Jai Chen spoke from his back. "We're going to the very outskirts of imperial territory," she said. Jai Long hadn't realized she'd regained consciousness. "People there have forgotten about the Empire." Awkwardly, Jai Long turned her so that she could see Lindon without straining her neck. The young man gave her a smile. "That sounds like it's for the best." She shifted on Jai Long's shoulder, and he realized she was trying to give him a polite bow. "I hope the heavens will allow us to meet again." "Maybe they will," Lindon said, lifting his hand. "In the meantime, travel safely." A tiny blue Remnant climbed up onto his shoulder. It looked like a sapphire woman only a few inches high, and she lifted a hand in imitation of him, waving to Jai Chen. Without another word, Jai Long took off. He couldn't sense any trap in the pack. There was nothing in there that gave off any power. No sealed Remnants or easily triggered constructs, which he had expected. Still, he'd have to check it for mundane traps when he had a chance.

Even if Wei Shi Lindon really had helped them out of goodwill, they had quite a journey ahead of them. Their cursed valley was little more than a legend, though evidence suggested it did exist somewhere to the west. If nothing else, they could find a peaceful place for Jai Chen to grow familiar with her new spirit. And they would escape the net of the Jai clan. That was the important part. This was a new start. Whether the heavens allowed it or not, they would never see Lindon again.

Chapter 10 The Skysworn didn't refer to their enormous cloudship as a ship. It was more like a floating city on the clouds, and they treated it as such. It looked like a jagged fortress of midnight-black stone, each building peaked and sharp. The largest facility was in the center of the cloud, a broad tower that loomed over all lesser structures. It matched the image Lindon had of a dark lord's stronghold, and the rest of the city was his evil fortress in the sky. It was not at all the image he would usually associate with the Skysworn, a group of sacred artists dedicated to preserving justice and the rule of law. Renfei and Bai Rou had come down to gather Lindon and the others to bring them onto the clouds above. Lindon wasn't sure if they were chosen as familiar faces, or if they were simply the only two with free time, but he was strangely glad to see them. He didn't know them well, but at least he knew their names. The massive Bai Rou, his face shaded beneath his woven straw hat, marched in front of them down the paved streets. He pushed his way through the crowds, clearing the way for the people behind him. Renfei followed behind, the cloud over her head bobbing with every step. She seemed far less serious and more relaxed now that they were aboard the heart of Skysworn power, and she quickly explained why. "We call this city Stormrock," she said, as they walked past row after row of tall obsidian buildings. "Costs a fortune in wind scales to keep it aloft every second. If the empire didn't have so many Underlords on wind and cloud Paths, we would never be able to fly it at all. This is the home to almost two million people, when it needs to be, and only about five thousand of those are Skysworn or trainees. The rest are our families, as well as the merchants and farmers and such that we need to be self-

sustaining. The Redflower family has quite a presence here, and in times of emergency it actually serves as their family headquarters as well." Lindon vaguely remembered the Redflower family: just as the Arelius served to clean and sanitize the Empire, the Redflowers provided food and irrigation, even to those corners of the Blackflame Empire where farming would usually be impossible. Sure enough, the streets were bustling. People cried out greetings when they saw the green armor of the Skysworn, or else they tried to entice Renfei or Bai Rou into buying some trinket or another. If not for the fact that their party needed medical attention, Renfei said, they would normally have stopped and interacted with at least a few of the city's people. Yerin lay on Lindon's rust-colored Thousand-Mile Cloud and Cassias lay on a green one provided by the Skysworn. Yerin insisted that she could walk on her own, but she didn't get up. Cassias didn't struggle at all, and Lindon thought he might be asleep. The people swarmed around them, all going about their ordinary lives, and only the passage of a couple of Skysworn could break their routine. Well, that, or Orthos' irritation. The sacred beast had woken up sore and irritated. Not only was he bruised and battered from the crash, but now he was on another cloud instead of solid ground. Only the size of this cloudship had appeased him; when he was inside the city walls, he couldn't tell that he was in the sky at all. Still, he snorted smoke at anyone who passed, and every once in a while pulled up a chunk of the street and munched on it. No one stopped him. Lindon had thought they would make a strange sight; they had two Skysworn with them, a giant lumbering dragon-turtle, and an old woman drifting on spider's legs. Even he and Yerin would stand out in a crowd, and Cassias was always visible thanks to his golden hair among the sea of black. Not to mention that two of their number were covered in blood and using floating clouds as stretchers. But despite the admiring looks at the Skysworn and the fearful ones at Orthos, they didn't stick out as much as he would have imagined. Paths of all kinds were represented here on the streets of Stormrock. A woman passed over their party without looking down from a book she was reading, a half-dozen tentacles extending from her back and swinging her from building to building. A pack of fiery dogs passed through the middle of the street, following their leader, who had a golden crown on his head.

They were conversing in quite ordinary human speech about which of them should guard their territory that night. A set of triplets wrapped in identical white ribbons watched the party pass, their eyes in eerie sync. Words floated in midair, as though the characters had drifted up of their own volition: "Mother Lin's Parlor," "Goldhammer Soulsmiths," "The Restaurant in the Sky." It took Lindon longer than he cared to admit to realize that they were floating business signs, and that realization explained the other signs that were etched in physical material above each building's mantle. "Second-ranked Soulsmith in the city available for commissions." "Ranked number one of all mixed bowls in the city (vegetable-only category)!" "Number four purveyor of Thousand-Mile Clouds for civilians, but number one in value!" The experience of the city reminded him of his first arrival in Serpent's Grave: he'd been overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and smells of the city then too. But this time, it didn't take him long to notice a key difference: a level of consistent unease. They were high enough that the red light was beneath them, so there were no bloodspawn here, but they must have picked up on something. Each salesman who called out to the Skysworn also asked them what was going on. Almost half the shops they passed were in the process of packing up and closing. And most of the looks they encountered were nervous and unsteady rather than hostile or curious. It remained so until they made it to the center of the city, where the Skysworn's true headquarters were. That overwhelming spire that Lindon had noted earlier towered over the rest of the city, and its entrance was guarded by a quartet of men and women in green armor. Two of them also had emerald wings, and they were spread as though to stretch them. Orthos snorted smoke at one of the guards, but the young man didn't seem to notice. Instead, he asked Bai Rou if there was any news from outside. He seemed as nervous as any of the civilians outside, but Bai Rou reassured him in a steady voice. Renfei had been keeping up a steady history of the city as they walked in, but Lindon paid closer attention now that they were within the heart of Skysworn power.

She whispered to one of the guards, who flew off over the wall. Skysworn hurried everywhere, the courtyard bustling like a wasp's nest, but Renfei stood calmly in their center. "We wait here for the healers to arrive," she said. "Ordinarily we could take them right in, but we're preparing for a new class of Skysworn applicants, and we don't have anyone in urgent danger of death." She glanced at Cassias as she said this. "In the meantime, let me tell you about the Starsweep Tower. All these facilities are exclusive for Skysworn and trainees." Jerking her thumb over her shoulder, she indicated a door of swirling blue light behind her. Lindon only knew it was a door because of the bronze framework and the goldsteel handle at the center. Otherwise, he would have thought it was a portal or a barrier of madra. "Soulsmith's foundry," she said. "State-of-the-art. All of our ThousandMile Clouds and our weapons are made and maintained in there. We have the most complete dream tablet library of Soulsmith legacies in the entire empire, including one left by an ancient Herald for his descendants." Fisher Gesha's breath caught. Lindon wasn't sure what half of that meant, but he was still aching to take a look inside. "Our armory is over there," she said, indicating a door banded in steel. "We offer public tours, because our weapons cannot be stolen. They're keyed to either the individual Skysworn using them, or to the Skysworn armor in general. They can all be located or deactivated remotely. Confiscated weapons and our suits of armor are stored elsewhere." Lindon wondered how the weapons could be deactivated remotely. He could imagine how you might track a unique weapon down, but how would you deactivate them? Unless they drew from a central power source, instead of being powered by the substance of the weapon itself, and you could simply shut off the power link. Speculation was useless. There was too much he didn't know. Perhaps there was a Path with a technique that could reach across the city and disable any weapon. But the question intrigued him, and he longed to open the door. She nodded to a tall set of copper doors. "That's our technique library. It's more extensive than our Soulsmith library, but it's only ranked third, Soulsmith tablets being so rare. There are Paths that exist only here in the city, thanks to original techniques we managed to salvage in our library."

Lindon realized he'd taken a step toward the door. When had that happened? "We've also assigned as much space to cycling rooms as we have to bedrooms," she continued. "Skysworn can't spend all their time focusing on advancement, like many sacred artists do. They have combat training, study, and assignments. We have to accelerate the advancement process as much as we can, so our cycling regimens are brief but intense." Lindon wondered if there was a cycling room that would work for the Path of Black Flame. He imagined there would be—it was a Path unique to this empire, after all. But maybe they had gotten rid of it after the Blackflame family fell. Would it be sealed up? He could probably find it... "It's thanks to these facilities, and the prestige of the Skysworn, that our recruitment has gone so well," Renfei said. She seemed as proud as if she'd built the city herself. "You're recruiting?" Yerin asked. "Only a week ago, our dream-readers agreed that we would soon need to add more to our ranks, so we opened ourselves to applications. In that week's time, we have received over six hundred qualified Lowgold and Highgold applicants, both from inside the city and outside." "What does an applicant need to be qualified?" Lindon asked, eyeing the Soulsmith's door. "Twenty years of age or younger for Lowgolds, thirty years or younger for Highgolds, and they have to be ranked highly enough. Top one thousand for Highgolds, and top three thousand for Lowgolds. Even so, they have to pass our application process." "What if they aren't ranked by the Empire?" She gave him an odd look. "Everyone is ranked." "I'm not." Renfei pulled a purple card from a slot over her wrist, touching her fingers to it. Wisps of purple rose from it, and Lindon thought he could see shapes in it. Dream madra. "After your duel with Jai Long, you are ranked..." She shook her head, sliding the card back in. "Twenty-fourth among Lowgolds. They must value you highly. Though that only takes individual combat power into account, of course. Your skill, aesthetics, and influence are all lower." "Twenty-fourth," Lindon repeated. He couldn't suppress a little excitement. "I don't mean to overstep myself, but that sounds high."

"Too high," Bai Rou grunted. "It's high," Renfei confirmed sourly. "Forgive me if this is a rude question, but what are most Skysworn ranked?" He really wanted to ask them what their ranks had been when they were Lowgolds, and from the look on Renfei's face, she knew it. "Lower than that," she responded. He wanted to dig for more details, but his Thousand-Mile Cloud zoomed around, and Yerin's scarred face peeked into their conversation. "While we're all singing and sharing together, why don't you tell us about Redmoon Hall?" Bai Rou straightened and folded his arms, yellow eyes blazing within the shadow of his hat. Renfei's businesslike mask returned, and she glanced around as though looking for listeners. Within the headquarters of the Skysworn. "That's for your Underlord to tell you," she said firmly. Lindon wanted to learn more about his ranking, but he couldn't pass up an opportunity to dig up sensitive information. "Underlord Arelius was the one who shared the information with us. He said it was important for us to know, but unfortunately he was wounded against one of their members before he could give us all the details." Renfei hesitated, the cloud above her head rolling as she glanced at her partner. Lindon sensed weakness and pushed. "We only wish to serve. We can't contribute to the Arelius family if we don't understand the situation." Lindon didn't know much about Renfei, but he assumed that a woman who proudly served as a Skysworn would accept a plea based on duty. Reluctantly, she leaned in. "It's the cult of a Dreadgod," she said, so softly that he wouldn't have been able to pick up her words without his Iron body. "Usually, they operate beyond the Empire's southeastern border. They are people who sought out a fragment of the Bleeding Phoenix. They call it a Blood Shadow." She shook her head, in disgust or sympathy. "They're betting they could control it, but nine out of ten can't. Those are just puppets, little better than bloodspawn themselves. The ones who can control it...they're the ones to watch out for. They're still in the thrall of the Phoenix, but they have their own goals as well." "What is it they want?" Yerin asked, eyes sharp.

"To feed their master," Bai Rou responded, but before he could say more, a third Skysworn reappeared. Renfei spoke to her for a moment, then turned back to them. "We've cleared out a pair of rooms for your wounded, and our healers will see them within the hour. The rest of you can follow me." A new Skysworn walked in front of Cassias and Yerin, controlling Cassias' cloud directly and leading them through a plain-looking door that Lindon had overlooked before. Fisher Gesha followed Renfei, as did Orthos, though he took a bite from the frayed end of a nearby tapestry as he did so. Lindon hitched up his pack and prepared to join them... Then he thought once more about Yerin's reaction to seeing the bloodspawn. "I'm going to join the wounded for a while, if that's permitted," Lindon said, following Yerin's cloud. "I'll find my room later." Renfei looked as though she would object, but Bai Rou just waved his hand and kept walking. Eventually, she said, "Settle in before sunset," and followed her partner. "They can't all be Underlords," Yerin muttered from her cloud. "You don't find an Underlord under every rock and tree stump." The Skysworn in the lead was probably close enough that he could hear them over the clanking of his armor, but he was polite enough not to say anything. "They're from outside the Empire. Maybe where they come from, everyone's an Underlord." She tried to sit up, winced, and ended up rolling onto her side and propping her head up on one arm. "My master's feet started to itch after two nights in the same place, so I've spent more time outside this empire than in it. I've never seen a place where Underlords are common as Lowgolds. Besides..." One hand drifted down to her stomach before she stopped it. "I wouldn't call us strangers," she said at last. "They wore a different name, but they still had—" She glanced up at the Skysworn. "Some things in common. My master used to fight against these people. It was how he found me." Lindon looked from their Skysworn to Yerin. "Is this a conversation we should have in your room?" "Won't be easy, no matter where we have it," she muttered, but she didn't object. Cassias was taken to his own room, where a healer was

already waiting. Apparently Renfei had communicated that he was the more urgently injured. Yerin's room was more like a closet, or a prison. It had a single redpainted mat against the wall, blankets folded on the surface. A lidded chamber pot sat nearby, and that was all. When Yerin drifted inside and the Skysworn guide left, it was actually difficult for Lindon to step inside for a moment. He had spent too much of the last year and a half locked inside small spaces. He was irrationally afraid that he would walk inside and be sealed within, though the only entrance was a sliding door of flimsy wood. He could break through it without an Enforcer technique. Yerin eyed him, then the door. "You want me to send you a formal invitation, you'll have to write it yourself." Ever since revealing that she couldn't read, she had made several jokes about it. The subject was starting to make him uncomfortable. Finally, he took a deep breath and stepped inside, sliding the door into place behind him. He fixed his gaze on the small window high up in the wall, though it just revealed another nook of the complex. Focusing on the outside let him forget how small the room was. Yerin clambered from her cloud to her bedding, wincing and hissing at every movement. He would have helped, but he was still trying to keep the queasy sensation in his stomach under control. When she had finally settled herself, she looked up and began again. "You remember my...uninvited guest, true?" "It was your belt, wasn't it?" Lindon asked. He had come to that conclusion through implication and inference, but she'd never told him. She grunted, and he took that as affirmation. "Some people call it a Blood Shadow." A few things slid into place for Lindon at that moment: her reaction to the bloodspawn, the Redmoon Hall emissary looking straight at her, Eithan sealing her belt. One of the silver blades sprouting from her back began tapping lightly on the wall, and Lindon wondered if that was a nervous gesture while she waited for him to finish thinking, or if the Goldsign was out of her control. "But you'd never heard of Redmoon Hall," he said. "Not by that name. Sacred artists would sometimes hunt down these parasites and take them like pills. Hoped they would get stronger." She

sneered as though she were looking down on those sacred artists right then. "Only one in every ten made it, but every sacred artist thinks they're the special exception. For them, it'll work. Problem is, it doesn't just put you in danger." "You didn't do that," Lindon said confidently. That seemed more like something he would do than something Yerin would. In fact, he'd already started wondering what specific benefits a Blood Shadow offered. Longhook had been strong, certainly, but he was an Underlord. Or did the Shadow perhaps allow you to create bloodspawn? No, that seemed to be an effect of the red light. Could they generate that red light? A flicker of a smile crossed her face. "You're starting to learn. A little. No, I didn't look for it. It looked for me." The smile faded as quickly as it came. "The Dreadgod gives birth to...a litter, I guess you'd say...of Blood Shadows at one time. They run around like Remnants, looking to find a host before they starve. When they find somebody, they usually drain them dry and take their power back to the Bleeding Phoenix. Every once in a rare moon, you run into somebody who takes them over instead." "When did it get to you?" Lindon asked, kneeling to face her. "Can't be sure how old I was. Seven, maybe? Eight? They called me a genius." She smiled bitterly. "Everybody in town said how shiny my future was going to be. The star of my town. Made me stick out, as it ends up. Even to a Dreadgod." She was silent for so long that he wanted to prompt her with a question, but he curbed his curiosity and sat quietly, waiting. "Didn't know what it was, but I fought it," she said at last. "It was trying to...burrow into me. To my spirit, more than my body. My dad tried to pull it out, and it cut him. His blood fell on the ground." Lindon had fought the bloodspawn only a few hours earlier. He could picture what happened next, and the bottom fell out of his stomach. "Spawned those...things," she said, though he'd guessed it already. "Cut through town like fire through a dry wood. I'm just standing there, holding on while everybody died. If I let it get inside of me, I figured something worse would happen, so I just held it off. Don't know how long I sat there, holding it, before Master found me." She had started to shake. Her wounds had been wrapped, but not thoroughly bandaged, and some of them had begun to bleed again, but she didn't notice, staring into the

distance. There was nothing Lindon could say to help her. The past had already left its wounds. But he could do something she'd done for him once before. Without a word, he squeezed in next to her, sitting side-by-side though her Goldsign jabbed him in the side of the head. Sweat covered his palms, and he eyed her for any sign that she was uncomfortable or in pain. She didn't even seem to notice him, staring ahead with a blank gaze. He reached across her shoulders and gave her a light squeeze. When she didn't object, he just sat there, holding her with his one arm. Reminding her that someone was there. Back in Sacred Valley, when things had been at their worst, this was all he had wanted. Someone to sit with him and remind him that they were with him, that everything would be okay. Sometimes his sister or his parents filled that role. Sometimes they didn't. Sometimes, they were the problem. But today, Lindon could give that to Yerin. After a minute or two, she leaned into him. "We're going after them," she said at last, her voice confident. "They can't all be Underlords. I'd say we could stop any of them under Truegold, or we could find a way to deal with them. Together. We have to stop them." Lindon leaned away, turning to see her expression. "Yes, we should do whatever we can. We just need to be…careful." She turned to him and the blades on her shoulders shifted. He had to withdraw his arm or risk getting cut. "You're in this with me, true?" "Of course," he said without hesitation. "But we should have a plan." She nodded, her eyes focused intensely on some point beyond him. "Yeah…we have to track down a Truegold, don't we? Cassias could tell us where it is. He points it out on the map, and we slip in like a shadow's whisper. Maybe we could get Orthos in, too, that would ease the fight somewhat." Lindon cleared his throat. "That could certainly work, but I'd like to propose an alternative. We could push Eithan to make us Truegolds. He must know a way to do it, don't you think? If the Ancestor's Spear could take Jai Long from Highgold to Truegold so quickly, there has to be some solution for us."

His new arm might be exactly that solution, but there was no telling until the construct was completed. She backed away, turning to face him head-on. "You want me to sit around on my hands until I advance again? If Eithan can make me a Truegold tomorrow, sure, I'm not going to spit on that. Short of that, I'm not waiting. I'm going with whoever's raising their swords against Redmoon Hall." "But who is that?" he countered. "Who's going to take us? Who can use us? What can we even do? We have to know what we can do before we—" "The Skysworn," she interrupted, folding her arms. "They'll jump to take us." Lindon wasn't sure they would jump to take him, but he had to admit he was tempted by the facilities he'd seen in Starsweep Tower. Then again…what did the Skysworn have that Eithan wasn't already giving him for free? "Let's not rush into anything," he said in a reasonable tone. "We can wait until Eithan gets back, at least." "Eithan's out there fighting Underlords and emissaries and heavensknow-what right now," she said fiercely. "When he gets back, we're out of time." A bearded man in hooded green robes slid open the door, peeking his head inside. "Excuse me, I'm here to see the patient?" Yerin gave Lindon a razor-sharp stare, but she took a breath. "Turn over what I said, see if it looks any better to you. I'm going to see Cassias tonight. If I don't hear what I like, I'm gone. The door's open for you to join me." After Lindon left, he continued turning her words over in his mind. She was rushing to a decision too quickly. There was no reason to take this fight personally; Redmoon Hall wasn't after them. At least they could weigh out their options, they didn't have to dive straight in. No matter how he thought of it, there was nothing to gain from going after Redmoon Hall. It would be a foolish move. Maybe Cassias could talk Yerin around.