by Will Wight
But he was not taking care of himself. His eyes had rings under them, ugly welts and fresh scars remained in spite of his Iron body, his hair was unwashed and his skin pale. Whenever he glanced up, his eyes were dull but determined, as though he’d pushed himself to stay up all night every night.
Sometime soon, she would have to force him to take a break. She wanted him pushed to the very limit he could handle, but no further, and she had seen too many gifted young sacred artists ruin their minds, bodies, or spirits by over-training.
She removed her consciousness from her owl and drew a book from the pocket of her outer robe. She made a quick note to find a task for Lindon that might help him relax.
When she looked up from her note, her father stood in front of her desk.
Akura Fury held up a hand in greeting. “Hey, Charity! Who are you watching?”
With his wild, shadowy hair, his bright red eyes, and his huge frame, Fury should have been a terrifying figure. Many of the family's enemies found him so.
But for those who knew him, his personality undercut all possibility of intimidation. He acted on his own whim, and it was almost impossible to get him to do anything he didn't enjoy.
He looked forward to fights most of all, so advancing to Herald had been one of the great regrets of his life. Now it was so hard to find a worthy opponent. Fury spent most of his time veiled and restricted, trying to wheedle Lords into duels.
Charity let her madra flow into an orb at the corner of her desk, and the owl's viewpoint was projected into the air. Now her father could see what she'd seen: Lindon in his basement, slamming his empty palm into a scripted tower the height of his chest.
The scripts on the tower lit up, but Lindon shook his head, frustrated. His Sylvan Riverseed, playing at his feet, ran over to pat him on the ankle.
“Oh, it's Mercy's friend. How is he?” His tone was only mildly interested, and Charity knew that if Fury wasn't intrigued, he might wander away at any second.
There would be little danger of that once he heard what she had to say. The trick would be keeping him interested without having him challenge Lindon to a duel.
“His most frightening aspect is comprehension speed,” she said. “His mind-spirit should still be asleep, but he has completed all the training I prepared for the first six months.”
Fury rubbed his hands together. “Really really really…How long has he been here?”
“Three weeks.”
“Hmmm, I see, I see.” A dangerous interest gleamed in Fury's red eyes.
“But his techniques are poorly developed,” she added hastily. “I'm having him do self-guided technique training. With a little more effort—”
She looked to see how he was taking it, but he had already vanished.
Seconds later, he showed up in her projection.
~~~
Lindon turned around, surprised by the sound of a casual “Hey!”
He had been prepared for the possibility of someone showing up out of nowhere as soon as Dross had pointed out the Sage's owl in the corner, but this wasn't Charity's voice.
Had one of the young Underlords come straight into his house? He hadn't sensed anything...
[Try not to panic, but you are now sharing a sealed basement with a man who could destroy this whole city. I recommend deep breaths.]
Lindon fell to his knees when he saw the intruder: tall, robes open to bare a muscular chest, red eyes, shadowy hair, broad grin that reminded him of Mercy.
The Herald, Akura Fury.
He and Dross had done a bit of research in the few weeks since arriving at Moongrave. Fury was Malice's child from before she was a Monarch, and he was the Sage Charity’s father. He was the only direct descendant of Malice to have ever made it to Herald, and was Malice's favored child.
He was known for waging war singlehandedly. His techniques toppled cities and blighted forests. He had killed a dragon Herald, the Eight-Man Empire had a bounty on his head, and some cultures included him in their mythology as an omen of war. He was Malice's sharp sword, a legendary one-man force of devastation.
Fury dropped down into a squat and twisted his head almost upside-down so he could look Lindon in the eyes. “It's going to be hard to talk like this.”
Lindon rose to his feet, staring into the wall, but Fury bobbed and weaved so that his face was always in front of Lindon’s. Finally, Lindon gave in and met his eyes.
“Saw you were practicing a palm strike. It just so happens that I...who's this? Hey there!”
To Lindon's horror, Little Blue had scurried up to the Herald's feet, staring up at him from the ground. Lindon darted forward to grab her, but Fury had already squatted down again.
He gave a broad, open smile, holding one hand out to Little Blue.
With a cheery ring, Little Blue reached up to grab Fury's fingers, hauling herself up onto his palm. She immediately ran up his arm to his shoulder, staring at his face from an inch away.
Lindon was afraid to move. This looked friendly enough, but he was terrified that the Herald would grow suddenly offended and crush the Riverseed from existence.
“What's your name?” Fury asked gently, and Little Blue gave a series of chimes in response.
“That does make sense. Are you having fun here? No problems? ...yeah, training can be lonely. You'll be back with your friends before you know it. Speaking of friends...” He turned to look at Lindon, and so did Little Blue. “What do you think of him?”
Lindon had never before been so worried about Little Blue's opinion.
She made a long, complicated whistle. It carried more meaning than Lindon could untangle.
Fury's drifting, shadowy hair rose to a point. “Really? Well, I look forward to that day.”
Little Blue squeaked and hopped off his shoulder, sliding down his robes like a child down a hill. Then she scurried back over to her toys: a pile of miniature junk that Lindon had arranged for her to play with.
Lindon tried to smile. “Apologies. I'm sure she intended no disrespect.”
Fury gave a blank look, as though he didn't understand what Lindon meant. “Oh, okay. Anyway, she seems to think that you'll pose a threat to me one day soon.”
Lindon felt as though every pore in his body had started to squeeze out sweat. “She didn't mean it! Certainly, I wouldn't oppose the Akura clan. Did she really say that?”
“You should give yourself more credit. Sylvans with a state of existence this complete are good judges of character. And I hear the leader of the gold dragon team is out for your blood.”
Lindon winced—he could imagine why the gold dragons might be after them. But Fury beamed at him.
“If you can't threaten me in a few years, I'll be disappointed!” He gave a broad, hearty laugh as though he expected Lindon to share it.
Lindon forced a few chuckles.
Fury ran a finger under his eye as though to wipe a tear away. “Ahhh, that's enough business.” He clapped his hands together. “Charity says she has you doing focused technique training. Let me see that palm strike again.”
Again? So it hadn't been just a Sage watching Lindon train, but a Sage and a Herald?
He pictured an entire room full of people crowding around to watch him lose fights and practice his self-taught techniques, and he suddenly felt very self-conscious.
[Don't worry about that,] Dross said. [You already have me watching you all the time. What's a few more?]
Feeling Fury's eyes on him, Lindon hesitantly stepped up to the post that Charity had delivered to him.
The script on the center was three concentric rings. He was trying to control the output of the Empty Palm so that he could light up either all three or just the one in the center. The ultimate goal was to improve the effect of the Empty Palm so that he could use it for more than just disabling the enemy's core.
Lindon drove the Empty Palm into the script, trying to spread his madra out as much as possible. Two rings lit up.
He shook his head and prepared
to try again, aware of Fury's attention on him, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“Okay, that's enough.” The Herald pulled him away from the pole. Fury put his chin in one hand, thinking, as his black hair drifted away behind him. Finally, he snapped his fingers. “Seems to me you've got a few options. You could go with a standard Enforcer attack technique, like this.”
Lindon felt the madra moving in the Herald's body, sure that the man had exaggerated the spiritual movement for illustration. Fury gently slapped the pole, there was a surge of black madra, and all three rings lit purple.
“If you keep developing it in this direction, you could make it so that a direct hit on their core blocked out their powers for a little while, or even crippled them for life. A hit anywhere else could deal some real damage to their madra channels, which is about the same thing.”
He took a few steps away from the pole, then slowly drew his hand back, pulling madra into it with the motion. His spiritual movements were overstated again.
When he thrust the hand forward, a black lance of madra speared through the circle from five feet away. All three circles lit up.
“You are projecting madra, so you could develop it into a Striker technique. It's a little slower and weaker, and you'd be giving up the ability to lock down their entire spirit for a while, but you could still disrupt their madra channels. In most fights, that will be just as good.”
Fury laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles, walking past the post. “Or you can try for the best of both worlds. It'll take a little more work, but I like the flexibility.”
He cycled his madra obviously once again, this time in a more complicated pattern. He was facing the metal-plated wall, in between the bands of script that ran along the ceiling and the floor.
When his hand crackled with black madra, he gently pushed it against the wall. A palm strike at one-thousandth the speed.
When it touched the wall, a dozen black hands, Forged from madra, struck at the same time. The room thundered as though he'd cracked the wall in two.
Every hand left a ragged handprint blasted into the metal.
Lindon stared in awe. It was as though he'd struck with thirteen palm strikes at once.
Fury turned, grinning and shaking out his hand. “This is the Crushing Black Palm. It's a Forger echo technique and an Enforcer attack technique all together. Not that you need to do exactly what I did, but you should be able to learn something from it, yeah?”
Lindon was staring at the wall, his mind churning. Dross, did you get that?
[I mean, I remember it, but I don't know if I can help you do it. He's using shadow madra, and he's just...you know, a lot better at this than you are.]
Dross ran him through a quick simulation in his mind. Lindon moved slowly on the outside, cycling his madra, trying to create the feeling that the Herald had just produced.
The first models that Dross fashioned didn't work well. It was a hard feeling to grasp; Fury had been using shadow madra, and Lindon was trying to make use of the same principles with an entirely different aspect. Not to mention that he'd never tried Forging something so quick and rough. It was more like a Striker technique than like Forging a scale.
He ran through the motions, both spiritually and physically, at reduced speed as Dross worked to process new possibilities and present them to him.
After a few false starts, Lindon made an attempt. It was like localizing the Soul Cloak just to his arm while executing the Empty Palm as he always had, and at the same time projecting a second copy of the technique off to the side. It took all of his concentration, aided by Dross, and it still felt as though he'd cobbled the technique together.
When he struck the post, he lit up all three rings of script. And there was a blue-white blur in the air above and to the right.
“Wrong,” he muttered.
[On the right track, though!] Dross encouraged him. [Who knows? By the time the tournament starts, you might be able to slap all the spectators at once.]
Lindon snapped out of his concentrated trance to find Fury looming behind him, red eyes blazing, shadowy hair writhing in excitement. He wore a crazed Eithan-like grin.
“Now that is what I like to see,” the Herald said. “Let me run you through a few more possibilities.”
Chapter 5
Lindon slid on his back across the smooth floor of his basement. As he came to a stop, he spat out a mouthful of blood from a gash in his lip.
A short girl with long pigtails and a massive hammer stood over him. She snorted as she turned away, saying something he couldn't hear over the ringing in his ears. No doubt it was cutting.
That's her third time, isn't it? Lindon asked silently. These conversations with Dross gave him something to focus on besides how much he wanted to stop taking beatings.
[My model of her was at about ninety percent before, but now it's a nice and clean one hundred. If you had asked me for a combat report, you would have toyed with her. Why didn't you do that?]
Lindon dabbed the flesh around his eye, now tender and swollen. I almost had her on my own.
This time, he had gotten close with the Burning Cloak and landed a solid hit with his right hand. He could have activated the hunger binding in his arm and drained her madra or unleashed dragon's breath that would have torn her apart.
But he was trying to beat her using his pure madra alone. With only two combat techniques, it was a rough trail to walk.
Lindon rose unsteadily to his feet as the Bloodforged Iron body drew on his madra, but he stopped as he realized the girl with the hammer hadn't left. She stood with her arms crossed as her friend took over.
When they came to beat him, they almost never came alone.
A tall, lanky Underlord had been shifting from foot to foot in the corner, waiting for the first fight to be over. Now that it was his turn, he stepped forward eagerly, conjured lightning around his fists.
The observation construct intended to witness the fight drifted in the air around them, and Charity's silver-and-purple owl lurked in the corner.
“Wei Shi Lindon Arelius, I challenge you,” the young man said.
Lindon wanted to give up.
But this was the path he'd chosen.
“I accept,” Lindon said, though his voice wavered.
That was all the Akura Underlord needed before he cast a dome of crackling lightning over them both. A Ruler boundary field.
Lindon had fought him twice already. The boundary field was weak, only enough to give Lindon the occasional twitch or twinge of pain, but his opponent used it as a distraction to keep Lindon from concentrating on any larger techniques. In the meanwhile, he whittled Lindon down with thin whips of lightning.
Not every Akura clan member followed a shadow Path. He had learned that lesson early on. It was better for his training this way, because no doubt he would face opponents of all different aspects in the Uncrowned King tournament, but that meant the torments were new with each defeat.
This time, Lindon really didn't want to lose again.
He'd practiced against this young man's model a dozen times. With full use of his abilities, Lindon could win easily. It was all about keeping the fight short. With only his pure madra...
Lindon kindled the Soul Cloak as a lightning whip came flashing at him. He dodged, closing the gap, ignoring the sting of the boundary field.
The Akura triggered a binding in his bracer, and a pulse of force madra flooded out, pushing Lindon away.
But Lindon had already been reaching for it. As soon as the construct was activated, Lindon's right arm was ready. He drained the madra as it came out, so it didn't even slow him down.
The force madra rushed through his Remnant arm in gray veins, but he grabbed it and cycled it through his hunger binding. He had to use it up or vent it, or it would pollute his arm or his own madra.
His control over force madra was lacking, but it was enough for a very simple attack technique. Lindon’s punch to the Akura's ch
est flashed gray as it struck, smashing the enemy backward.
He flew into the wall, cracking his head against the metal plates, and Lindon dashed after him. He gathered madra into his Empty Palm, and the young man looked up with fear in his purple eyes.
Lindon hesitated.
His instinct, born from the last two years of bloody competition, told him to finish off the enemy immediately. If Lindon hit the Akura too hard, he might kill him.
It was only a moment of indecision, but it was enough. The lanky young man reached out to the boundary field, gathering it into one larger bolt of lightning.
It struck in a flash of light, and Lindon passed out again.
He woke up on the floor, aching and groaning, with Little Blue injecting soothing madra into him. She patted his forehead.
He glanced up to find that his visitors still hadn't left. Instead, another Underlord had joined them.
Akura Pride, short and glaring, folded his arms and glared down at Lindon. He stood apart from the other members of his family, and from the looks they shot Pride, Lindon gathered that Mercy’s brother still wasn't the most popular.
“Give up,” Pride said abruptly.
Lindon pushed himself to his knees. When he straightened his back, he could look Pride in the eyes. “They were just giving me some pointers on my techniques. Nothing to be upset about.”
The girl with the pigtails snorted.
“Go home,” Pride continued. “Leave my sister alone. Give up on the tournament. You won't even make it past the first round.”
Lindon was sick of kneeling before Mercy's brother. He rose to his feet, where he towered over Pride.
“That's why I'm grateful to your cousins for their help in my training.” Lindon smiled, tasting the blood on his teeth.
He had trained against Dross' model of Pride many times. Though Dross couldn't swear to its accuracy, Lindon only won three out of every ten simulated matches. Even with his full power.
In a real fight, he’d have to cheat.
Pride stepped so close that his chin almost touched Lindon's chest. He stared up, eyes full of rage. “Uncle Fury's selection is in ten days. I want you to be there. And when I win, I will challenge you in front of everyone. I will beat you into the ground every day until you give up or you can't fight anymore.”