Bloodline (Cradle Book 9)

by Will Wight

  A great pulse of will passed between all the Monarchs, and they nodded as one. Yerin got the impression that the wave of intentions and willpower had moved far beyond them, connecting to Reigan Shen and Sha Miara and maybe some others, wherever they were.

  “As the arbiter of the Uncrowned King tournament and the representative of the Monarchs’ collective decision, I agree to grant your request,” Northstrider said formally. “Brace yourself, and receive your reward.”

  Suddenly the images of all the Monarchs flickered, and they were standing before her…but they were also standing thousands of miles away, and their wills reached out and held her, cupping her, surrounding her like an eggshell.

  It was a disturbingly vulnerable feeling, as though they could flex their fist and crush her, but something else around her was unraveling. She couldn’t even tell what. Her fate, maybe?

  Many voices spoke in unison, and it was as though the world itself spoke.

  “Be healed.”

  Yerin’s senses blanked out.

  She came to herself an unknown time later, standing on the bough of the giant tree, staring down into the ruined valley of the gold dragons. Smoke and clouds of dust still rose.

  Malice stood at her side, wearing a mysterious smile. “How do you feel?”

  “If I’m any sturdier than I was two seconds ago, I couldn’t prove it.” Yerin felt cheated. She had only the Monarchs’ word for it that anything about her had changed at all.

  “You will feel the effect of your request once you return to the boundary formation, but the true value you should hopefully never feel. We have removed problems that you would have faced, so if we have done our job, then you will never see them at all.” She ran hands down her bowstring and looked into the distance. “Now, shall we go greet the Wandering Titan?”

  Yerin had thought she was following along, but now her thoughts scraped to a halt.

  “…you played me like a flute.”

  “The others will feel my power when I engage the Titan, but the more misinformation I spread about my intentions, the better.” She shot Yerin a wink. “Also, you called me petty earlier, so I thought I would prove you right.”

  “Never said that.”

  “That’s what you meant. Of course I was always going to help you. You killed Seshethkunaaz, may his name be forgotten by all who walk the earth. At the moment, you’re my favorite.”

  Yerin was thoroughly sick of Monarchs. “What was all that about losing cities?”

  Malice shrugged. “What’s a city or two compared to the favor of the Uncrowned Queen?”

  Reigan Shen emerged from a tear in the world, striding out onto the blighted rock of the Wastelands.

  He had gone to absurd lengths to disguise his actions from the other Monarchs. Usually, they would be able to track him the moment he stepped through the Way. Especially if they were watching him, and Malice had kept purple eyes trained on him for days.

  He couldn’t imagine why.

  Now, not only had he covered his tracks with false trails, dummy portals, and truly delicate manipulation of spatial authority, but Malice had finally taken her attention off him.

  It would take her too long to realize her protections had been breached. By then, it would be too late.

  Reigan Shen clasped hands behind his back and surveyed the round crimson shapes sticking onto the landscape. There were millions of them, like seed pods clutching anything they could reach all the way out to the horizon, each the size of his head. Some clung to crystal arches, others shone from within caves, and still others stuck to one another and hung from petrified trees like clusters of grapes.

  Eggs of the Bleeding Phoenix.

  When they felt the power in his blood, the eggs began to roll toward him or stretch out hair-thin feelers. He kept them away with an effortless use of aura.

  The eggs couldn’t be destroyed, not really. They could be broken apart, but they would only re-form. Any attack capable of removing them conceptually would prompt the Dreadgod to reintegrate. Or, as with a lethal attack on any Dreadgod, would awaken the other three of its kind.

  The previous generation of Monarchs had learned that the hard way.

  The only realistic way to slow the Bleeding Phoenix’s recovery was to give its eggs nothing to feed on. Malice had quarantined this entire area, sealed it with scripts, troops, and constructs, and thereby kept as much prey away as possible.

  Even so, every creature with blood running through its veins that had once lived in this section of the Wastelands was now part of the Dreadgod.

  If someone else managed to break through the layers of security, they would only become Phoenix food. Even another Monarch wouldn’t be able to do much except potentially antagonize a deadly foe.

  They didn’t have the key.

  From one of his isolated pocket spaces, Reigan Shen pulled an oblong rectangular box. To the eye, it seemed to be made of seamless, unblemished steel polished to a mirror’s shine.

  No force in Cradle could break this container. It was an Abidan artifact, one of the few in Shen’s possession.

  It responded to his will as its rightful owner, unfolding like a flower into a square platter presenting its contents. The key to the western labyrinth, which Tiberian had once shown him.

  A shriveled, mummified, chalk-white right hand.

  Hunger of every kind passed through Shen. Hunger for food, yes, but also for recognition, for respect, for love, for attention, for success, for safety, for power. Greed flowed through him, and bloodlust, and plain old classic lust.

  He relished the sensations as, around him, the stone shook. Pebbles lifted into the air, drifting closer to the hand as its hunger warped even gravity.

  The Way stirred around him, affected by an artifact of such incredible significance. If he held the hand exposed long enough, it might manifest an Icon.

  He wouldn’t need that long.

  With shocking speed, eggs tumbled into one another, sticking together, forming a shapeless clump. Soon, living creatures infested by the eggs would come running to donate themselves to the Dreadgod. Nine out of ten victims of these Phoenix fragments became mindless husks controlled by their parasite, and the tenth gained the dubious honor of a Blood Shadow.

  The balls of blood and hunger madra began to melt like wax, taking on a more familiar form.

  The Bleeding Phoenix congealed in front of him, its eyes blazing scarlet. It was small enough to fit in a barn, for now, but with every second more eggs hurled themselves into its body, adding to its mass.

  Shen’s heart pounded. He couldn’t show weakness in front of the greatest predator in this world, but even before it was fully formed, the Phoenix radiated a pressure that gripped his spirit painfully tight.

  When it lowered its beak and let out a shrieking cry, it was all he could do not to retreat back through space.

  Instead, with deliberately casual movements, he snapped off a fingertip of the mummified hand. The last joint of the pinky.

  Then he flicked the treat to the Dreadgod.

  A beak snapped, and the Phoenix swallowed the tiny piece of power whole.

  Reigan Shen spoke as he tucked the rest of the hand back into the box. “That should be enough for you. Now you know the way home.”

  The Abidan container melded shut, cutting off all power from the hand. The Phoenix bobbed its head around him, trying to sense—or perhaps smell—any other trace.

  The Emperor of the Rosegold continent very much did not sweat as the Dreadgod’s beak brushed by his mane. He remained icy and cool, both mentally and physically, and he would annihilate anyone who implied otherwise.

  He would be able to defend himself from a Phoenix of this level, of course. In a body this small, it posed only a little threat to him.

  But it would re-form soon, and if it remembered him in its complete form, his life could be in danger.

  Fortunately, the Phoenix’s attention left him. It looked west.

  Where it now knew its goal
waited. The being that some called the fifth Dreadgod, and others called the father of the Dreadgods. Their progenitor, the original, from which they were all formed. Subject One.

  The Bleeding Phoenix spread its wings, and Reigan Shen slipped off into another portal. He breathed a sigh of relief when it worked; the Dreadgod could have stopped him, had it wanted to.

  His work here was done, but the next phase of his plan was even more dangerous.

  Now, while the Dreadgod cleared his way, he had to follow it without anyone detecting him. Besides the danger, it was the stealth that really stuck in his craw.

  Sneaking was for mice.

  14

  Lindon drove an Empty Palm into the core of the Third Elder. The plump old man doubled over, wheezing, but Lindon hadn’t used the force he’d unleashed on the Patriarch. The Third Elder would recover his madra in minutes.

  Lindon leaned over to speak into the man’s ear. “I cannot be surprised. I cannot be ambushed. My eye sees all.”

  Though Lindon didn’t summon him, Dross popped out in front of the Third Elder, his purple eye wide open and menacing.

  The elder shuddered, and Lindon played along. “Here it is now.”

  [I am the Great Eye,] Dross intoned. [My gaze pierces cloud, shadow, earth, and…what else? Metal. Leather. And cloth, it penetrates cloth.]

  His gaze drifted down from the Third Elder’s face, and the old Jade blushed and hurriedly clutched his outer robe closer.

  The golden sky loomed over them, and the ground shook, so Lindon’s fear shook him to action again. He pulled the elder to his feet with one hand, shoving him toward the buildings of the Wei clan. “You’re on duty,” Lindon ordered. “Search for stragglers. Get them running for Heaven’s Glory by any means necessary.”

  With fists pressed together, the Third Elder started to bow to him, but Lindon shouted “Now! Go!”

  Their trip to the east was a mad rush, and they weren’t the only ones with the same idea. Streams of people trickled in from all over Sacred Valley, pushing for the exit farthest from the encroaching threat.

  But none were as frightened as Lindon. He knew what was out there.

  At least he could vaguely sense the Wandering Titan’s location. While his spiritual perception was still restricted, the Titan was a big target. It hadn’t moved all day, feeding on aura and physical materials from the earth.

  That pause was just a temporary reprieve that could end at any time. Whenever the Dreadgod changed its mind, or drained that location dry, it would move east once more.

  Only a few more of its strides would break through the mountain and set it loose on Sacred Valley.

  So Lindon made sure the Wei clan flowed to the east, occasionally stopping to prevent some Iron from robbing a group of Coppers, or a family from dragging a massive bundle of what looked to be all their earthly belongings.

  For the moment, the elders followed Lindon out of fear. Fear both of him and of the Dreadgod. But most of the clan had no idea who he was, and he couldn’t keep demonstrating his strength to everyone he passed.

  Fear of the Titan would have to be enough.

  The Heaven’s Glory artists and their Grand Patriarch were bound in scripted chains, struggling from the back of a wagon that Lindon kept a special eye on. He might need to use them as hostages when he reached their school.

  But as the day crept along, the golden sky’s shine fading to a duller hue, they finally came up to the foot of Mount Samara. Its ring hadn’t started to form yet, and Lindon could already tell something had changed in Heaven’s Glory.

  The normal path up the mountain, with its wide road crawling upward in a series of switchbacks, was packed with people. That much, Lindon had expected.

  To the side, however, the Trial of Glorious Ascension was gone. The bright pink haze that had once covered the long staircase was gone, leaving flights upon flights of bare stone steps. Some Remnants still wandered in confusion around the slopes, and a few of the scripts still flickered fitfully with dream madra, but it was mostly clear.

  So the Heaven’s Glory School had deactivated their formation to allow people to reach the top faster. Good for them. Eithan must have really taken over.

  Which might explain the other difference he’d noticed: the column of smoke drifting up from the school proper.

  Lindon rose on his Thousand-Mile Cloud, glancing over the Wei clan to make sure they would follow his instructions—although there wasn’t much chance of the opposite, at this point. They were stuck in a thick tide of fleeing people, so there would be nothing to do but wait to move forward.

  He flew toward Heaven’s Glory, keeping his perception extended and scanning for Eithan. He’d expected the Archlord to have taken over one of the Jade Elders’ houses, but he felt nothing from that direction.

  In fact, as he gained altitude, he saw that one of those homes was the source of the smoke he’d noticed earlier.

  When he didn’t spot Eithan where he expected, he extended the radius of his search, sweeping the Heaven’s Glory School.

  Dross cleared his throat. [Don’t be mad at me. It’s a miracle I can see anything with your senses like this.]

  What is it?

  [There’s a battle.]

  Dross dragged Lindon’s attention to the wild territory behind the Heaven’s Glory School, where once Yerin had run from the school’s pursuers. Those slopes were mostly snow and Remnants, with occasional sparse bushes or trees, but Lindon quickly sensed what Dross was talking about: flares of light and heat in his spiritual perception.

  A fight.

  Lindon flew over, but only when he came closer did he feel Eithan’s presence. Weak. Flickering. Low on madra. Heavily drained.

  Dread made his heart pound, and he reached into his void key. Wavedancer flew sluggishly over to him; the aura was just barely thick enough to support a flying sword, but this one was used to richer environments. The artfully crafted weapon lurched like a graceful fish squirming through mud.

  That didn’t stop it working as a sword, though. Lindon clutched the weapon in his left hand as constructs took aim at him.

  Heaven’s Glory had protected themselves from the air.

  An accelerated missile of Forged force madra shot for him, and if Lindon had been any more than a Jade, he would have just let it hit him.

  Instead, he slapped it from the air with Wavedancer’s blade. A gust of the Hollow Domain wiped out a Heaven’s Glory Striker technique, and then he’d located all six flying constructs in the area.

  He pointed and wiped them out one at a time with dragon’s breath.

  When Lindon hovered over Eithan’s location, he stepped off the Cloud and fell through the trees. A few thin branches snapped beneath him on the way down, but as he landed, a pair of sacred artists aimed weapons at him.

  One swung a hammer that gathered earth aura as she swung, and the other was simply planning to club him with a brick of brown Forged madra.

  If their sacred arts hadn’t clued him in, their massive badges—almost like breastplates—showed him their identity clearly. These were members of the Kazan clan. Had Ziel brought them here?

  He slipped aside from the hammer, letting it crash into the trunk of a tree, and the brick he caught in his Remnant hand.

  When he held both Iron sacred artists still, he spoke calmly. “Pardon, but I’m only here to help.”

  Eithan, who had been slumped at the base of the tree, sputtered and spat splintered bark out of his mouth. “Is there sap in my hair? You’d tell me if there was sap in my hair, wouldn’t you?”

  He looked like he’d just crawled out of a fire.

  Half his hair was singed off, his left eye was matted shut with dried blood, and his turquoise robes were burned and shredded. His core was almost empty, and he looked like he had been soaked in blood.

  This was the worst Lindon had seen Eithan except immediately after his fight with the Blood Sage, and concern for the man overwhelmed even his worry about the Dreadgod.


  Briefly. Until he scanned Eithan and realized he wasn’t wounded at all. He was just tired.

  “Not my blood,” said the red-soaked Archlord.

  Lindon let out a breath of relief, but responded lightly. “Apologies. I’m afraid your hair is done for.”

  Eithan wilted against the tree. His eyes slowly closed.

  “Put me out of my misery. Make it quick.”

  The Kazan clansmen were murmuring behind Lindon, but their mutters turned to shouts as Heaven’s Glory techniques blasted through the trees.

  Though it was a drain on his limited madra, Lindon projected the Hollow Domain around himself and the seven or eight Kazan members in range. There were a dozen nearby, and they began to crowd inside when they saw Heaven’s Glory madra melting at the edge of his blue-white boundary.

  “What happened?” Lindon quietly asked Eithan.

  “Believe it or not, they took advantage of my compassionate nature. My reserves are finite, especially here.”

  “I can’t believe anyone pushed you this far.”

  “Lost my Golds at the wrong moment. Hostages are as effective against me as against anyone, but…well, I’ll put it to you this way: they’re running drastically low on manpower.”

  Lindon dropped the Hollow Domain, which was tiring to keep up inside the suppression field, just as a trio of Iron Enforcers charged in.

  Eithan jerked his head in their general direction without opening his eyes. “If you could clean up here, I’d appreciate it.”

  The three Enforcers were covered by three more Strikers, two Rulers, and a Forger. Constructs flanked them all, and they carried steel weapons banded with halfsilver. It was a charge worthy of attacking a Jade, and showed more tactical skill than Lindon had seen from Heaven’s Glory thus far.

  [Not bad, not bad,] Dross said. [I’m afraid to say you’ll have to take a hit.]

  Ten seconds later, Lindon was pinning the last standing Heaven’s Glory member up against a tree with one hand. “Where are your Jades?”

  He released his grip so that the man could answer. Nearby, one of the destroyed constructs finished falling through the air, exploding as it hit the ground.