by Will Wight
He threw his long arms around her in a hug, and she buried herself in his chest.
For a moment. Then he swept back into the party, leaving her to collect herself.
It was another hour before Fury was ready to depart. Mercy stuck with Lindon and Yerin as much as she could, helping to fend off those who wanted a moment alone with the stars of the Uncrowned King tournament.
Finally, after a long exchange with Charity that no one else could hear, Uncle Fury raised his voice.
“Looks like it’s time to go!”
The words boomed through the enclosed basement. One of the less-advanced servants fell to his knees.
“I think I’m supposed to talk about how I’m sad to be leaving you all behind, but I really can’t wait to go,” he continued. “If you’ve got what it takes, catch up.” He looked to someone at the front of the crowd and winked.
Mercy couldn’t see, but she was certain he was looking at his daughter, the Sage.
“Anyway, that’s enough from me. Later, everybody!”
And that was the end of a fairly typical Akura Fury speech.
As soon as the last word was out of his mouth, the room began to…stretch. It wasn’t anything Mercy could put a name to precisely, but it looked as though the room was being pulled like taffy until it stretched into a long hallway.
The end of the basement, where Fury and those accompanying him stood in a large group, was now much longer than it had been before. It looked like a mirage, a trick of the eye, but she felt no madra gathered there.
Only something else.
An absence of madra, maybe. Fury was at the center of it, pushing—or perhaps pulling—on something deeper than vital aura. Something she didn’t have the senses or the experience to name.
A blue light sparked in front of his outstretched hands.
It swelled as he concentrated, expanding to a ball that hovered in front of him. Unlike madra, this blue substance didn’t look like it was made of light, but rather like a patchwork of every shade of blue that existed. It looked almost material, but it couldn’t have been physical, and her eye couldn’t exactly trace its edges or layers.
The blue ball expanded into a circle big enough to fill the basement from floor to ceiling…and then it was no longer a ball, but a circular doorway, the blue stretching on infinitely in the distance.
Mercy thought that whatever technique Uncle Fury was using had been completed, but he braced his hands as though getting a grip on empty air.
Then he pushed.
The blue power snapped into a wide ring. A ring that led into another world.
In the distance, silver towers stretched into the sky. Boxes of rough metal the size of buildings floated in the air, and the sky was surrounded by bars of impossible size, as though the entire world had been caught in a cage.
Immediately in front of the portal, it was a different story. They looked out onto an empty plaza of white stone, crystals the size of a human body hovering a few feet over the ground and shining blue.
Two figures flanked the portal on either side, each dressed in seamless eggshell-white armor. Abidan, like the one who had hijacked the Uncrowned King tournament. They stood under banners that depicted a stylized fox wrapped in its own tail, and as Lindon watched, the fox on the banner curled up tight. As though the ink was alive and the noise had interrupted its sleep.
“Welcome to Threshold, adept,” a dark-skinned woman announced. Though she didn’t sound like she’d raised her voice, her words echoed through the room. “You take your first steps into the world beyond.”
“Thanks!” Uncle Fury said brightly. “Let’s go, everybody!”
The group filed through side-by-side, some excited and others terrified. Lindon and Yerin stared hungrily through the portal.
Mercy tried not to feel like she was losing family.
But she did wonder what was so great about that other world that it was worth losing this one.
In a matter of moments, and to the cheers of the remaining Akura clan, Fury and his branch passed safely through. The portal collapsed in on itself, folding until it vanished.
Leaving the mortals behind.
3
Lindon stood with Yerin on the second floor of their cloud fortress, looking out through the wide windows to see Charity preparing their exit.
The Sage stood over one of the empty doorframes that had been a portal to Sky’s Edge, weaving space and shadow so that darkness leaked from the edges like a gas. A dark haze was beginning to form so that it blocked out the light of the rising sun, and Lindon could feel the sensation of a door creaking open.
She was expanding the already-existing gate, since she wasn’t strong or skilled enough on her own to create a portal leading so far away that could transfer so many people. He couldn’t follow most of what she was doing, but he could feel it, and he tried to remember that sensation.
Not that he could concentrate well.
Yerin leaned against him as he stood over the cloud fortress’ control panel, a warm and soft presence at his side, leaving him with a moment of indecision.
He could put his arm around her. He should, right? They had passed that point already.
But she was on his right side. Putting his Remnant arm around her struck him as a bit like throwing a corpse over her to protect her from the cold.
She glanced up at him and took his Remnant hand in hers. He could feel her, but distantly compared to his arm of flesh, as though he were imagining the sensation instead of physically feeling it.
Yerin laced her fingers with his. “You’d contend they’ll listen to you?”
He didn’t need to ask what she was talking about. She knew what was on his mind.
Would Sacred Valley listen to him?
His family was in greater danger every moment, but no amount of hurrying on his part would make things happen any faster. He felt like an axe was poised over Sacred Valley, and he was leisurely watching it happen.
He had gotten no sleep at all last night, cramming every minute with preparation.
“They will,” he said. “If not to me, then to the army of Golds we’re bringing to their door. I can’t imagine we’ll have to prove something’s coming.”
They had both lived through the rampage of the Bleeding Phoenix, and in their experience, Dreadgods were only slightly less subtle than the heavens collapsing.
“Plenty of room in here for your family,” Yerin pointed out. “Even if they each bring a friend and their biggest dog.”
Lindon looked to the illusory display rising from a script-circle, where an image of a purple cloudship floated. One of Charity’s evacuation fleet.
As promised, there were two dozen ships lined up behind him. In one night. Even after a battle between Monarchs.
The Sage of the Silver Heart kept her word.
“If anyone will listen to us, we’ll save them.” There would always be a number of people who would stay in their homes no matter what he said, and presumably others who would try to escape on their own.
Outside of the clans and schools, there were a few isolated communities that lived in the wilderness at the heart of Sacred Valley. He planned to look for them, but if they really couldn’t fly cloudships into the valley, it might be impossible to get everyone.
But he would do it.
This was what his power was meant for.
Lindon hesitated before squeezing back. Usually, when he tightened his grip on someone with his Remnant hand, it was because he was draining their soul.
She didn’t react in disgust or try to pull away, which relieved him. Both for the obvious reason and because if she pulled away, she might forget her strength and pull his arm completely off.
“I plan to give Heaven’s Glory a chance,” he warned her.
Yerin didn’t look at him, but she struggled with her response for a moment. “Some people, when they’re drowning, you don’t toss them a rope,” she said at last. “They’ll just pull you in with them.”
“We
don’t need to take them with us,” Lindon suggested. “We can give them a warning and then leave them to find their own way. It’s no less than they deserve.”
Lindon didn’t actually expect resistance from Heaven’s Glory, or much from anyone. With their current powers, Lindon would be surprised if they weren’t worshiped in Sacred Valley.
But Yerin had her own reasons. If Heaven’s Glory had cost him someone who had raised him like a father, he wouldn’t feel particularly generous toward them either.
After hearing from Charity about the suppression field around the valley, he and Dross had done some research overnight.
He had to admit, he was a little bitter that the reason Sacred Valley had remained so weak was because of an external force. He had assumed it was a matter of isolation and poor education. Now that he knew there was a ceiling keeping his people from growing beyond Jade, he had to fight back some anger.
Partly at whoever had built the field in the first place, and partly at the Akura clan.
Was it their responsibility to relocate this one group of people in a distant corner of their empire? Not necessarily, but he still blamed them for not trying.
Then again, at least they were helping now.
The reports he and Dross had found disagreed about how intense the effects of the suppression were, but from Lindon’s own experience, he suspected it would lower them down to Jade. Whether that process took hours, days, or even weeks was a matter he supposed they’d learn later.
But even if they were pushed down to Jade the second they stepped across the boundary, they would still fight like monsters compared to the natives.
Yerin watched his thoughts cross his face, radiating obvious concern. “I don’t want to…” She trailed off and started again. “I’m not one to…”
She threw up her free hand in frustration. “Bleed me dry, I’m just going to say it. Don’t kill a bunch of Jades.”
Little Blue, curled up sleeping on the console, lifted her head and gave Yerin a wide-eyed stare.
Lindon felt much the same.
He leaned back so he could study her face more clearly. “Apologies, but I thought that was a talk I’d have to have with you.”
She avoided his gaze. “Can’t imagine what you mean,” she muttered.
Little Blue let out the ringing of a bell, and through their newfound bond, Lindon felt her astonishment.
“You don’t use a Monarch sword to swat flies,” Yerin continued. “Not even when they bite you.”
She stared off into the distance, and her hand gripped his so tight that he could feel the weight of her strength warping reality ever so subtly.
He matched it, mentally thanking Crusher for the donation.
“Are you sure?” he asked quietly.
“I hate them,” Yerin whispered, and there were tears in her eyes. “He never touched them. Never cut them with so much as a word, but they hated him so much. They threw their own bodies at him. Didn’t care if they lived, so long as he died. And there wasn’t…I couldn’t…”
She breathed deeply and wiped her eyes with a thumb. “But they’re not worth half a glance from me, and I’ll be dead and buried before I give them more than they deserve.”
He had thought much the same about killing Jades, but it warmed him to hear that coming from Yerin. She had been thinking ahead, and had decided to treat the weak with compassion. Even considering what they’d done to her.
Lindon wasn’t sure he’d be able to do the same.
It wasn’t as though he had any attachment to the Heaven’s Glory School himself, but he still put his free hand around her, pulling her close. “Thank you,” he whispered into the top of her head.
She tilted her head up to him, cheeks tinged pink.
“He’s watching,” Lindon said.
“We’ll be old and gray before he stops.”
Lindon kissed her.
From the corner of the room, where they had both sensed him, Eithan sighed. “It was more fun when I could sneak up on you. I’ll have to step up my veils.”
Lindon separated from Yerin, focusing on his breathing technique to slow his heartbeat. “Have you heard from Ziel?”
Ziel owned the cloud fortress next to theirs, a blocky castle sitting on a plain blue cloud. He was supposedly traveling with them, but Lindon had heard nothing from him in the day since he’d joined them.
“He’s fine.” Eithan buffed his fingernails on the hem of his pink-and-purple outer robe. “You may have noticed, but I significantly helped his spiritual recovery. It cost me quite a bit, you know. Time. Materials. Expertise. When did I perform this costly task, you ask?”
“Stone-certain we didn’t,” Yerin said.
“To begin this story, we have to go all the way back to Tiberian Arelius’ creation of—” Eithan’s head snapped to the front, where a ship on a deep purple cloud was slowly looping around to join the procession behind them.
Eithan pointed. “That ship! Watch that ship.”
Alerted by his tone, Lindon and Yerin both focused on the cloudship. Yerin extended her perception, which crashed over her target like a storm-tossed wave. He doubted there was any spiritual power that could escape her notice.
By contrast, Lindon’s own perception was a trickling creek. His perception was better-trained than the average Underlord, but it wasn’t necessarily any more powerful.
However, he could sense things she couldn’t.
He did not feel the strong will from the ship that suggested a Sage or Herald was involved. Instead, he felt the faint, flickering willpower of the ordinary Golds crewing the cloudship. Their will was diffuse, unfocused, barely there.
Between Yerin’s overwhelming scan and his own, which could see into a different spectrum, he doubted they missed anything. They still couldn’t sense the physical, only the spiritual, but something that had no power of madra or will wouldn’t be a threat.
“Harder,” Eithan insisted. “Look harder.”
Lindon did, trying to pierce a veil he had missed the first time. Yerin pushed down with her scan so much that the Golds stopped in place, cycling their madra in resistance, spirits filling with fear.
A scan could be uncomfortable, but it wasn’t threatening. But Yerin’s power was an entire dimension higher than a normal Lord’s, much less these Golds.
Only when he was sure there was nothing on the ship did Lindon become certain that Eithan was just distracting them.
“What happened to no secrets?” Lindon asked in a dry tone.
Eithan gave him a white, beaming smile. “A surprise, Lindon. A surprise. I assure you, you’ll be glad I distracted you very soon.”
Yerin started to extend her perception to the rest of their own cloudship, to find whatever Eithan had tried to hide from them, but Eithan leaped in front of her. “Don’t you want your surprise?”
Yerin slowly let her scan fade. “…I do,” she admitted, in a tone of heavy reluctance. “Got a creeping fear you’re about to teach us a lesson.”
“In a sense, can’t you learn a lesson from anything?”
Lindon reached out with his own perception.
“It’s not a lesson!” Eithan hurriedly added. “This is a fun surprise. Just relax, all right? Be casual.”
In Lindon’s mind, Dross began to whistle.
Lindon returned his attention to Charity, who had expanded the Sky’s Edge gate into a broad screen of darkness. He didn’t fully understand the impressions he was getting from his new senses, but the portal felt like it was almost complete.
“We can still make it, right?” Lindon asked.
For the sixth time since Fury’s ascension ceremony the night before.
Eithan patted him on the shoulder. “The Wandering Titan is known for its inevitability. Not its speed.”
Out the front windows, Charity lowered her hands.
Shadows covered the doorway to Sky’s Edge, stretching up through the clouds in a pillar of darkness. It was a miniature version of the column
that had taken them from the Blackflame Empire to the Night Wheel Valley.
The portal to Sky’s Edge was complete.
Charity lifted from the cloudship dock, hovering in the air. She reached into another pool of shadow on her left: her void key.
A weapon flew out, slapping into her open hand. It looked like a short one-handed sword with a curving blade, but a closer inspection showed that it was a silver sickle. It buzzed and blurred to both Lindon’s eyes and senses. This weapon operated on many levels, its powers interacting in a complex web that he couldn’t begin to unravel.
Charity gestured to their ship, and Lindon activated a script-circle that lifted some of their protections.
A purple-and-silver owl appeared on the scripted wooden panels in front of Lindon.
Little Blue gave a loud peep and scurried up Lindon’s arm.
“This portal cannot convey the Titan,” Charity’s voice said from the owl. “I will travel through first. If I do not return or contact you in five minutes, this way is closed to you.”
A steel shield drifted out from her void key, and she snagged it from the air with her left hand. The shield was a heavy slab of metal half the size of her body, worked into the image of a twisted, grinning, monstrous face. The steel face twisted in place, alive and snarling.
Charity hefted the shield as though it were hollow, holding it to her left and her sickle to her right. “When I give the all-clear, you may follow me. Only fly where I direct you, but accelerate as quickly as you can. The Titan has more tempting targets, but if he does notice you, I will send you back through the portal immediately.”
Lindon braced himself, cycling pure madra and controlling his breathing. Here they were, ready to return to Sacred Valley. The time had come.
Nothing between him and his family except a Dreadgod.
[Could be worse!] Dross pointed out. [There could be two Dreadgods.]
A ribbon seemingly made of liquid steel flowed out of Charity’s void key, tying her hair into a short tail. That was a sacred instrument of concealment and banishment, with powers of stealth and space.
Now that Lindon could feel concepts like that, he had to wonder what his new perception could do for his Soulsmithing.