Wintersteel (Cradle Book 8), page 32
The trip would take almost nine hours, which surprised Lindon. That wasn’t much faster than when Charity had taken him to Sky’s Edge before.
But, as Dross reminded him, there was a significant difference between transporting two people and four. If Charity had been the one to send them instead of Malice, it might have taken them an entire day to arrive.
For the first few hours, Fury napped as Eithan lurked nearby and made continual comments about how nice the weather was and how it would be a shame to sleep the day away. At one point, Fury tossed him off the side of the ship.
Lindon cycled the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel until he could stand it no longer. Then he worked on his armor as Little Blue ran around the deck, which ended when she almost pitched over the railing. After that, he kept her in eyesight and chatted with Mercy.
Eventually, the topic turned to their purpose in Sky’s Edge.
“I was surprised to see that Fury made it to see your match,” Lindon said. “I thought he had to stay and keep the Abyssal Palace Herald in check.”
Mercy idly extended a String of Shadow and watched it flutter in the wind. “Everyone is playing by the rules for now because of Penance. If a Herald kills all our Lords, he’s made himself a prime target if we end up with the weapon.” She gave a heavy sigh. “But you can’t lean on your enemy’s restraint for long, so we still need to be back before the dragons get there.”
She was more subdued than usual, and Lindon knew she was thinking about her loss.
But he’d been wondering about the dragons’ strategy. It was too expensive to transport a whole flight of dragons through space, so they would be making a trip across an entire continent.
And…why? They had nothing to gain from the Dreadgod. They couldn’t even kill Fury, in case Yerin won the tournament and decided to get revenge by using it on their Monarch.
So what were they thinking?
When he asked Mercy, she gave a deeper, heavier sigh. “It’s like Northstrider told us: dragons would rather burn a field to the ground than give their enemies a bite to eat. Or however he put it. They have nothing to gain, but as long as we’ll lose out just as much, they’re happy to do it.”
That seemed unsustainable to Lindon. They had to gain more than they lost or their faction would never grow.
But Malice and Fury had been fighting the dragons for centuries, so they knew the nature of their opponents. There were more factors at play here than he could know.
Mercy gave a third sigh. The deepest and heaviest of them all.
Dross was concerned. [Do you think she’s having breathing problems?]
Even Little Blue scurried up to lay a hand on Mercy’s knee and let out a worried cheep.
“It’s difficult,” Lindon said, “watching and not being able to affect anything.”
Mercy patted Little Blue with one blackened finger. “I had my chance. And I just…” She spread her hands and mimed dropping something.
“We still have Yerin.”
Truthfully, Lindon understood how she felt. He hated leaving his fate in the hands of others. But if it had to be someone, at least it was Yerin.
“That shouldn’t be her responsibility. It’s mine.”
Lindon had intended to lighten the mood, but he couldn’t help but saying, “You made it further than I did. I think I could have beaten Calan Archer or Brother Aekin, but I don’t know if I’d have been any good against anyone else. I could never have beaten you, for instance.”
That should encourage her, but it was also honest. She had fought far beyond her level.
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Did losing hurt you that much?”
“Oh, no, apologies, I didn’t mean to suggest that.”
“Aren’t you the one who fought an Underlord prince as a Truegold?”
Lindon hadn’t meant to make this about him, and he tried to backtrack, but she kept talking.
“I’m surprised to hear you say you could never win against someone, that’s all. If I asked you to punch a hole in the sky, I thought you’d say ‘Apologies, it might take me a few years.’”
Was that how she saw him?
Eithan and Northstrider had both encouraged him to think about himself from the perspective of others, so he probed a bit deeper. “I don’t see it like that. I try to do whatever I can, or whatever I have to, but even I know that sometimes there’s no way to win.”
Mercy released Little Blue and turned to look him in the eye. “Says who?”
The heavens? Lindon thought. Reality? Whoever decides what ‘truth’ is.
That would have been too rude to Mercy, so he didn’t say it aloud.
When he didn’t respond immediately, she continued. “You look different when you’re fired up to win and when you’re not. Did you know that? Usually your face is like this.” She scrunched up her eyebrows and firmed her jaw into an intense stare. “And then when you give up, you look like this.”
Her head drooped down and she used her fingertips to pull her lips into a frown.
Little Blue fell over laughing. It sounded like bells in a high wind.
Lindon couldn’t tell if Mercy was making fun of him or not. “Is that true?”
Dross popped into existence in front of him. [I’d say your face looks more like this.]
His mouth gaped open and his one eye grew huge, so that he looked like a shocked and betrayed child. A one-eyed, purple child.
“Do you think I wanted your best impression? Can’t you show me?”
[I can indeed! Thanks to Sir Northstrider, I now have the recordings from the Uncrowned King tournament.]
He projected an image onto the deck, though he used no light aspect, so Lindon was sure it was only an image in his mind.
It was a frozen image of Lindon in battle, dragon’s breath streaming from his palm, as he fought Naian Blackflame.
“That’s it!” Mercy cried, pointing to the projection. “That’s the face!”
So Dross sent it to her too. Lindon hadn’t asked for that.
The view changed. This time, it was an image of Lindon looking upward as Yerin fell toward him, sword raised. This came from one of the viewing constructs in the arena, so it was somewhat far back, but Lindon could see his own expression.
Dross had shown him this perspective before, and he remembered how weak and conflicted he looked.
Then he saw himself change.
Dross advanced the moment slowly, so Lindon watched as life kindled in his own eyes. There was no specific difference he could point to, but it was like a different person had taken over his body. Like his soul had been brought back from death.
[This next one is a creation of mine, but I think it’s even more accurate than a recording.]
Back in a small room in Moongrave, Lindon faced Charity and begged her to let him return home. The details of this one were fuzzier, slightly different than in Lindon’s memory, but he could see the weakness in his face. Doubt, hesitation; a slump of the shoulders, a flicker in the eyes as he tried to think his way free.
Nothing like the gaze of the man he’d seen before.
Dross released the projection, panting and leaving Lindon to think.
Was this what Eithan had meant about seeing himself as others saw him? Would this lead to his Overlord revelation?
“Gratitude,” Lindon said.
Mercy turned away and leaned both her forearms on the railing. Her hair blew behind her in the wind of their passage. “I can say all that to you, but I’ve thrown up three times since I lost.”
“You have?”
“Three times so far. I start thinking about mistakes I made, and that makes me think about what I should have done, and then it’s a spiral all the way down!”
Despite the subject, she still sounded pleasant.
“You’ve hidden it well,” he said. He wasn’t sure if she would consider that a compliment.
“Hmm…I don’t think I’m really trying to hide it, though. I’m just not letting those feelings decide what I do.”
At the front of the ship, Fury shot up. He went from loudly snoring to standing in a motion so fast that Lindon didn’t catch it.
His hair drifted up, and spiritual pressure weighed on them all as his veil slipped away. A shadow crept over the entire ship.
“Prepare for battle, kids,” Fury said. “They’re already here.”
At that, he kicked off the deck with such force that it sent the cloudship plummeting a hundred feet before it stabilized.
When they had all caught their balance—with Lindon sheltering a trembling Little Blue in his hand—Lindon turned to Eithan. “How long until we arrive?”
“Still four more hours. If you were wondering, I can’t see anything.”
The closer they got to Sky’s Edge, the more Lindon could see in the distance. And the more of the situation Eithan shared with them.
It always looked worse and worse.
Darkness collided with golden light in an explosion that lit up most of the horizon and pushed back entire banks of clouds. Even dozens of miles away, the spiritual sensations buffeted their cloudship.
This was why Heralds never came to open blows.
“They’re both holding back,” Mercy said. “If they weren’t, everyone below them would be dead.”
Eithan shaded his eyes as he peered at the battle. “Ideally, a balanced fight will look like this. The most advanced sacred artists will keep each other in check so that those below them are unaffected. Otherwise, all battles would start with the most advanced fighters annihilating the enemy’s entire force of Golds.”
Lindon supposed that made sense, but the problem was that the two sides were not balanced.
Fury wasn’t exchanging blows with the Abyssal Palace Herald who had been there before, but with Xorrus. The left hand of the Dragon King.
That meant at least two Heralds on one side against Fury, though the leader of Abyssal Palace didn’t seem to be taking part in the battle.
Worse, he was starting to see the hundred or so dragons flying circles around the floating Abyssal Palace fortress.
And even that wasn’t the end.
A towering red-tinged cloudship painted with a symbol resembling the Bleeding Phoenix obviously belonged to Redmoon Hall. A floating island covered by a giant pure-white tree must belong to the Silent Servants, as a halo of light that resembled their Goldsign crowned its branches. The Stormcallers were carried on a long storm cloud that drizzled a curtain of rain on the mountains surrounding Sky’s Edge. A number of structures had been built on the cloud itself, so that it looked like they traveled with their entire sect.
Lindon didn’t sense any more Heralds, but he suspected there was at least one. The Blood Sage had attended the tournament, which left the Herald to continue running Redmoon Hall; he couldn’t imagine the man not being here.
But this sight sickened him. Surely no one from Sky’s Edge had been left alive.
He turned to Mercy, but she seemed calm.
“Oh, our side is still alive,” Eithan explained while keeping his eyes on the horizon. “As Mercy told you, everyone is playing quite strictly by the rules. For now. While the battle below is quite heated, it is strictly between Golds and the weaker Lords. They toy with us.”
“For them to have beaten us here, they must have gone to great expense,” Lindon said quietly. “Are they positioning for the end of the tournament? If so, why didn’t we…pardon, Mercy, but why didn’t your mother see this coming?”
“My mother’s weakness is not a lack of foresight.”
Eithan flipped hair away from his face. “I suspect the situation is thus: they are poised to secure the labyrinth as soon as their champion wins the tournament. They have arrived so…aggressively…merely to express superiority and exert their confidence in Sophara.”
“That’s it?” Lindon blurted.
When he put it like that, it sounded…petty.
“I’m boiling down a great many factors, and of course this is all speculation on my part…but many Monarchs are such people. Those who enjoy throwing their power around. They would be certain that Fury can’t fight them all, and even if Yerin wins the tournament, there are so many together that they can retreat without reprisal.”
A hand of dense shadow madra struck a golden spear from the air before it could be fully formed, kicking up a wind that pushed the Redmoon Hall cloudship back.
[I have some idea of what it costs to move this many Heralds,] Dross said. [As you may remember, some of them were our guests in Ghostwater. They’ll have given up fights all over the world to make this demonstration.]
“What happens when Fury loses?” Lindon asked.
“This isn’t a fight,” Mercy responded. “This is him saying he won’t back down. But…I know him. There will be a fight.”
Lindon noticed they were still heading straight for Sky’s Edge.
[I appreciate how fast and fuel-efficient this cloudship is,] Dross said, [but don’t you think we should check its turn radius? For instance, we could turn around and go the other way.]
“You can drop me here,” Mercy said. She tapped Suu on the deck, and the staff’s dragon head hissed. “I’ll go the rest of the way myself.”
“There’s no barrier stopping us from entering?” Lindon asked Eithan.
“None. If I had to bet, they won’t mind our arrival at all. But they may take issue if we try to depart.”
“And the Lords are fighting on the ground?”
“The strongest participating in the battle are Overlords. They would very much appreciate the arrival of a few more skilled combatants, I suspect.”
“No,” Mercy said firmly. “I have responsibilities here, but there’s no reason for you two to risk your lives.”
Lindon continued speaking to Eithan. “If Sophara wins, are we all going to die?”
He would happily put his faith in Yerin, but he didn’t want to bet his life on the Uncrowned King tournament if he didn’t have to.
Yerin hadn’t even made it through the top four yet.
“Malice has certainly prepared for this, which means that Fury has a way to escape. It’s probable that we will have an opportunity to survive, even if the worst happens and the Monarch is killed. But…” He shrugged. “We will certainly be safer if Yerin wins. Or if we don’t go down there at all.”
Lindon thought of his expression in those tournament recordings.
And he thought of what he’d felt when Suriel gave him a second chance.
He looked down into his palm, where Little Blue was hugging Suriel’s marble. The tiny blue candle-flame matched her perfectly.
“Apologies, Little Blue,” he said. “I need your help.”
She dropped the glass ball and gave a whistling cheer.
There was only one step he could take at the moment to improve his power, and Dross had confirmed it would work. He had hesitated only out of fear for Little Blue’s safety.
But she was eager to help, and he needed her.
“I swear to open my core to you and share my power,” Lindon said, for the second time in his life.
Little Blue regarded him solemnly as she knelt and pressed both hands to his skin.
Then she gave one bright, piping note of agreement and their contract was complete.
Deep blue power slid into him; not an overwhelming amount, certainly not compared to the sea of pure madra he already contained. But more than he’d expected from the Sylvan Riverseed, and more than enough to stain his pure core a deeper blue.
As it did, his own power crashed into the Sylvan Riverseed.
She fell over on his hand, and if Lindon could have interrupted the process, he would have done so out of panic. Her color brightened to a lighter shade, but she became clearer, more solid, more defined. Her eyes gained a new shine, and legs and feet appeared beneath her long skirt.
She doubled in size until she was about a foot tall, and Lindon wondered if she might grow to human size until her form settled.
When she stood on his hand, he felt her weight more than he ever had before.
A new sensation settled in his pure madra as it took on a cleansing, emptying aspect. It wasn’t entirely like her original power, but not exactly the madra he was used to using either. A combination of both.
Little Blue lifted both her eyes and gave a loud chime.
He didn’t hear words, but now he could vividly understand the emotion behind them.
Victory.
Now, after so long being carried around, she could help carry him.
18
Pride trembled, bruised and panting, on the stony ground. He wanted to sink to his knees, but he would rather die than kneel to these opponents.
Not that they seemed likely to kill him.
Most of the Akura forces were inside the fortress walls that the Seishen king had raised in Sky’s Edge, but Pride and his team had been caught on the stony hills outside when the dragons had arrived.
The mine was all but empty, everything of value stripped from the town, and they’d evacuated everyone for miles. The territory was ready for the Dreadgod to arrive, and Pride had only been supervising the return of the Gold workers.
When dragons had swooped in, cutting off their retreat, he hadn’t been too alarmed at first. They would receive support, and there was no one in this group of dragons above Overlord. And they clearly weren’t thirsty for blood, or their Herald would have annihilated them from a thousand feet up rather than sending her descendants.
Then the other Dreadgod cults had arrived, and his heart had fallen past his knees.
Even when Uncle Fury had begun fighting, it hadn’t helped Pride’s position at all. A dozen Lords sat on clouds or floating mounts around Pride and the others, watching. Four of them were Overlord. Five times that many Truegolds and Highgolds watched from further back, a mix of cultists and dragons of all colors.
They just kept sending Underlords forward to duel. There was some joke about reenacting the Uncrowned King tournament for themselves, but really they just wanted to see their opponents suffer.
There were no rules. Whenever it looked like one of them would win, an Overlord on the bench would throw in a Striker technique and claim he was swatting a fly.
