Waybound, p.15
Waybound, page 15
But Northstrider stripped far more power from Lindon than he lost. Flesh was torn from Lindon’s legs, though he endured the agony and regenerated them. Bones were shattered, blood flew, and Lindon’s spirit was in chaos. His soulfire dipped low, and his will lost its iron strength. Even the technique layered over his left hand wasn’t growing anymore; it was all Lindon could do to maintain it.
Northstrider almost didn’t want to continue. His disgust was too much.
Ordinarily, anyone tough enough to trade blows with him had the skill to back it up. A weaker opponent would have died already, but someone with proportional experience would be more of a threat.
This felt like bullying a child.
The oracle codex checked Fate and confirmed that the flow of events was heading without deviation toward a victory of Northstrider’s. There was virtually no other outcome.
Not that Northstrider needed a complex fortune-telling device to tell him that.
A serpentine blood dragon grabbed Lindon in its jaws and crashed into the ground, slamming him into a crater that grew deeper and deeper. The oracle codex showed Northstrider that he could follow up and tear Lindon in half, but he stopped in midair.
He hovered over the young man. Malice’s amusement was palpable, and she drifted down to join him, a mocking smile on her lips.
“How satisfying,” she said with a sigh.
“How did you let him beat you?” Northstrider asked.
“We already squeezed him dry today, didn’t we? It can’t be easy, juggling the labyrinth and a Dreadgod weapon while fighting Monarchs. Poor boy.”
She sounded delighted.
Northstrider looked down into the crater. Lindon’s cores were still bright, but madra capacity was only one aspect of endurance. If his body and will couldn’t keep up, he still couldn’t last.
“Surrender,” Northstrider called down.
Rocks stirred below. Lindon was holding onto the Blackflame claws in his left hand, and his spirit was still chewing away at the power he’d taken from Northstrider. He was a sack of bloody skin over crushed, misshapen bones, and his eyes rolled aimlessly as he tried to focus.
Malice giggled, but Northstrider didn’t feel anything but revulsion and frustration. He had warned Lindon repeatedly.
He’ll try an attack, the codex warned him, highlighting the danger. Northstrider dropped from the air. He slammed his foot into Lindon’s left wrist, and Lindon cried out.
His Blackflame technique shuddered like a candle on the verge of being extinguished. Lindon reached up and grabbed Northstrider’s leg with his right hand, attempting to Consume.
Northstrider didn’t allow it to happen.
The oracle codex scoffed. He’s too weak. Definitely. We’re in the clear. It showed him the future, spinning out in an unbroken line: Northstrider tucking away the Silent King Bow and binding Lindon in oaths.
Northstrider would have the labyrinth, the Dreadgod weapon, and Dross. With those together, he could finish his projects and challenge the Abidan.
Even he felt his heart move with excitement. He owed Lindon some gratitude for this foolishness. Without it, he might have taken—
Something tickled the back of his mind, and he returned his attention to the oracle codex.
Repeat what you said, Northstrider ordered.
Lindon’s Consume technique was too weak to feed on Northstrider. The Dreadgod arm pulled at Northstrider’s ankle again, but nothing came through.
I, uh, I said he’s too weak. What’s the problem?
The oracle codex was a calculation device. Not a person.
And it did not speak like one.
Oops, the codex said. Would you believe me if I said I’ve advanced in the middle of battle? No?
Northstrider would be a fool if he didn’t recognize the voice now. He pulled his leg away from Lindon…and found he couldn’t.
[Game’s up, Lindon,] the oracle codex said in Dross’ voice.
Lindon’s eyes snapped open, and his willpower wasn’t as exhausted as Northstrider had thought.
Suddenly, Northstrider realized Malice had been speaking to him, but he hadn’t heard it. Something had been blocking his ears.
“What are you doing?” Malice demanded. “Stop him! Why are you just standing there?”
Northstrider’s strength was flowing out of his leg in great rivers, pouring into Lindon. The Consume technique had worked after all, he just hadn’t felt it.
The Consume technique that he himself had taught.
“Release,” Northstrider commanded immediately, but Lindon spoke at the same time.
“Feed.”
Their workings wrestled against one another, but Northstrider knew his would win. He was the strongest, and that belief was founded on his unequaled authority.
He believed it until the moment Lindon’s working swallowed his, and the Consume technique devoured him from the inside.
Lindon released his leg for a moment, but only to stand and get a better grip on Northstrider’s neck. The Monarch resisted feebly, but Lindon had the lion’s share of his power.
Lindon’s body knitted itself together, wounds reversing themselves and bones crackling back into shape.
In Lindon’s left hand, his Blackflame technique roared to life. It blazed like a dark sun with razor claws, and it trailed a serpent of smoke-like power. As Northstrider watched through dazed eyes, the power took on more and more of the aspect of a true dragon. He could see its scales, feel the power of its claws.
And Northstrider saw something else. Flickering and fitful, an indistinct image began to appear in the air behind the technique. A twisting, dark, serpentine dragon. The Dragon Icon.
This wasn’t a true advancement. Lindon wasn’t fully manifesting the Icon, as he had never established the proper authority.
He was using Northstrider’s.
The oracle codex—under Dross’ direction—now showed him the real flow of Fate. After defeating him here, Lindon would turn to Malice and drive her off. The clash with the Weeping Dragon was still uncertain, but it became much less so with Northstrider’s stolen power.
Merciless and colorless eyes watched the realization in Northstrider. “To death or surrender,” Lindon said.
Northstrider struggled weakly. He would never surrender.
“Gratitude,” Lindon said.
Then a black dragon crashed down onto Northstrider and blasted him into the earth.
Malice flew back as the wall of dark fire exploded outward. Lindon’s technique didn’t just envelop Northstrider; it detonated in an explosion of infernal, all-consuming heat. She sheathed herself in armor and endured the tide.
Northstrider wasn’t dead. She could feel his presence far below. He was weak, possibly unconscious.
Lindon, on the other hand…
Blackflame madra splashed against the barrier around Sacred Valley like water against a dam and retreated. The tide left nothing but smoke in the air and miles of territory scorched to dust.
As ash fell from the sky, the Queen of the Ashwind Continent felt the first notes of fear echoing in her soul.
She had looked into Fate and not seen this outcome. His skill in shrouding the future was growing by the day.
Wei Shi Lindon Arelius drifted closer to her, and he blazed with Northstrider’s power. His right hand opened and closed, still hungry, and the white in his eyes shone with the same appetite.
She readied her bow, but she already saw the trap that had caught her.
The trap she had walked into, too confident in her foresight.
“Northstrider is not dead,” Lindon said. “And he didn’t surrender.” Blackflame kindled in his hand. “You’re not going to interfere in our duel, are you?”
It was hard to twist a soul oath against its intention. Malice hoped it wouldn’t work this time…but her spirit tightened at even the thought of turning her bow on Lindon.
The duel really wasn’t over. The possibility remained that Northstrider could have his own trump card and turn the tables, and she knew it.
More importantly, she knew that Lindon couldn’t take on Northstrider like that without losing something. The boy might be in worse shape than he looked and could die on his own before Northstrider did.
With those possibilities still clear, she couldn’t violate her oath.
She scanned him with the full force of her perception, but she sensed little besides chaos. He certainly wasn’t at his best condition, but a Monarch’s power still ran through his channels undigested, his cores were full, and two minds resisted her intrusion.
Dragon’s breath slammed into her armor, and she was forced back much farther than she expected. The stability of her bloodline armor trembled, however slightly.
The authority of the Dragon Icon had been added onto a Path of black dragon-fire.
And Lindon hadn’t sworn an oath not to harm her.
Malice could only run and hope he didn’t chase her. She could feel the Way warping around him as he prepared a great working, and she moved herself before it landed.
“Home,” Malice said, and twisted space through shadows. She slipped into darkness and ran to Moongrave.
Three days. By that time, she hoped Lindon would be food for the Weeping Dragon. Though at the first opportunity, she would look into the future to confirm that.
Because she feared the truth would be the other way around.
11
Not only did Lindon not follow Malice, but it was all he could do to maintain consciousness.
Northstrider’s power was like a new opponent all its own. Madra thundered through his channels and stuck in his Dreadgod arm, a will equal to Lindon’s own tried to wrestle control away, and the strength stored in his body was like nothing Lindon had felt short of a Dreadgod.
Even his memories were heavier than usual, so that Lindon was buried in their sheer weight. Dross handled as many as he could, but the mind-spirit was at his limit too.
[I’m…not going to be…good for much,] Dross said, his mental voice strained. [Not unless we want…to kill me again. Which we don’t. I’m…speaking for both of us.]
Even reinforced, enhanced, and repaired as Dross was, exerting control over Northstrider’s oracle codex had taken everything he had. Especially doing it while hiding from the Monarch, which had also taken a massive working of the Void Icon.
As for Lindon, he barely had a thought to spare about Dross. All his attention was going to the Heart of Twin Stars as it divided the spiritual river they’d drained from Northstrider into tiny streams of many colors.
He was only holding on by the tips of his fingers. For their ruse to work, he’d needed to deceive Northstrider into thinking the fight was over.
The trick to deceiving Monarchs, he’d found out, was to make your lie ninety percent true.
His will really was strained, his body ravaged. Using a Dreadgod weapon while manipulating the labyrinth was a heavy enough burden, and to duel a Monarch afterward…he still had plenty of madra left, but that was virtually the only resource he wasn’t out of.
The weight of Northstrider’s energy was settling into him. His Bloodforged Iron body had seen to his wounds and supported the Heart of Twin Stars in processing blood essence. It seeped into his muscles and bones, bolstering them.
The stolen authority of the Dragon Icon raged through him. He could see what Orthos meant now; the nature of a dragon was in more than their natural instincts and inborn strength. It was the arrogance and certainty of being born a higher being.
And with it came power.
Northstrider’s memories were a waterfall of images and impressions, but Lindon had to let them go without inspection. There were surely lifetimes of lessons within, but even a fraction of Northstrider’s knowledge was like having a thousand books crammed into his mind at once. If he tried to dive in, he would be overwhelmed.
Dross could sort the memories later, when he recovered. There would be treasures buried in Northstrider’s mind.
That thought was a spark of delight in Lindon’s soul. He still struggled to separate the forces he’d absorbed, but he had crested the hill. It would only get easier from here.
He had done it. Bested a Monarch. And not just any Monarch, but Northstrider; the creator of Ghostwater, and one of the first Monarchs Suriel had shown him on her world tour.
He could level Sacred Valley on his own, she had told him, and you could save it, if you had skills and powers like his.
Now, he did.
When Lindon fully processed what he’d stolen, the gap between them would only grow.
Or…
He could hold on. While it would be difficult to do so, the authority of the Dragon Icon would be invaluable for Orthos. He could give Ziel some more memories, and Northstrider’s madra would be compatible with Yerin’s.
As he thought of his friends, he stretched his awareness north.
At which point he froze in sudden fear.
Ordinarily Dross would have warned him first, but the mind-spirit was busy. He noticed a second later than Lindon did, and then they shared the same alarm.
Reigan Shen was approaching Windfall.
King’s Key madra burned against Lindon’s perception, coming closer and closer to the pocket world.
Windfall was hidden as well as Lindon could hide anything, not to mention located over a random stretch of the Trackless Sea, but clearly Shen had found it. He was moving too quickly for this to be a coincidence.
Lindon had left constructs and other security measures, including some scaled for a Monarch, but they would only slow Shen, not stop him. Lindon had to hope the people inside would sense what was happening and defend themselves in time. Or that he could get there.
He flew faster than ever into Sacred Valley, blurring as he flew straight for the Nethergate.
“Home!” Lindon coughed out, but there was no authority behind the command. His will was too scattered, too chaotic. He tried again, reaching toward the ground with his Dreadgod hand. “Home!”
Space twisted around him as he was seized by the spatial authority of the labyrinth, but his vision dimmed and head split. The Monarch power inside him left his control and started to rampage, tearing him up from the inside, but he stayed focused.
He reappeared in a dark chamber at the bottom of the ocean, and he blasted his way up.
Desperately hoping to make it in time.
Yerin sat cross-legged in her cycling room within Ghostwind Hall, gathering blood and sword aura and weaving them together. But at the same time, she also had to operate the blood madra inside her body in a way that resonated with its minor hunger aspect from the Phoenix.
Using one cycling technique at a time was hard enough. This was trying to play two different songs on two instruments at once. And making them not sound like a sack of squealing cats.
An angry hiss distracted her, along with a loud, insistent tapping sound.
She broke off her cycling and looked up, annoyed. The angular skeleton of blood madra drilled its sharpened fingers on a chalkboard, which was covered in complex notations.
“Would be about a thousand miles closer to easy if you would just talk,” she pointed out for the hundredth time. “You’re not tricking anybody.”
The Blood Sage’s Remnant somewhat resembled him in life: a crimson skeleton, though the spirit’s skull had no eyes. At least, not inside it. Eyes floated all around his head, and they glared at her in frustration.
Except for the color, he looked like a Remnant of darkness and dreams. A spirit born from nightmares.
Angrily, he tapped the chalkboard again.
“‘With a crimson desire for violence,’ all right, is this a poem? Are you writing a poem? Crimson desire?”
The Remnant picked up chalk and circled the word ‘desire’ three times.
“I’d give my left arm to know why you’re giving me the theoretical…” She only spent a second hunting for the right word before the spirit scribbled the word ‘underpinnings.’
“…underpinnings of a cycling technique.”
When the spirit began furiously pointing from one word to another symbol, making a case once again for why she needed to learn the basis of the technique.
“I can already do it, can’t I? Just need to sharpen it up. We’ve been practicing in here so long I’m turning gray. If you’ve got pointers, I’ve got two ears, but I couldn’t tell you what I’m missing besides practice.”
The Remnant, predictably, pointed to the words ‘crimson desire.’
Yerin massaged her eyes. On some level, she understood what the Sage’s spirit was trying to tell her. Manifesting an Icon was just making herself resemble a concept, so it made sense to look at it conceptually. She needed to change the way she did things, more than what she did.
According to the Blood Sage, anyway.
…and according to the Sword Sage, which was the only reason she listened to Red Faith at all.
She’d been enduring Red Faith’s silent lectures for days and trying her best to apply them to her cycling, but it seemed like so much smoke and nonsense so far.
Meanwhile, Lindon was having a battle with Monarchs outside. While the information from the outside world trickled in slower than syrup in winter, the constructs brought her the sense of the mythic war he was fighting to protect them.
While she was here. In a classroom. With a mute nightmare skeleton who wouldn’t stop tapping the word ‘desire.’
Yerin wished she could trade places with Lindon. He would enjoy this.
But she couldn’t trade places with him; she couldn’t fight on the same level. Which was why she needed to be here in the first place.
That cycle of frustration kept her thoughts moving in a circle until she wanted to pick up her sword and go to battle with the Blood Sage just for a change of pace. And because she still thought he deserved it.
