by Will Wight
Lindon triggered all the launchers at once.
Striker techniques of every color and description lanced out, tracing a web all over the pandemonium of fleeing people. Bloodspawn splattered, melted, imploded, wilted, dissolved, collapsed, and deflated.
The second, third, fourth, and fifth shots came on the heels of the first. Some of the bindings and unfinished constructs broke after the first shot, some after the second, and a few more on the third.
In only a breath, over a hundred bloodspawn had been eliminated. Not a single bystander was scratched.
Lindon let the expended launchers fall to the ground, hissing essence of every color into the air, and returned the functional constructs to his void key. His eyes were on the sky.
The footsteps were growing heavier.
The entire process had taken only a breath, but it was still time they couldn’t afford to lose. The constructs traded place with his Thousand-Mile Cloud, and he raced into the sky.
Jai Long had felt Lindon arrive.
Even exhausted and weak as his spirit was, he could sense the arrival of a spirit much stronger than anything in his immediate vicinity.
He didn’t feel any hope. He was too tired for that. Even if Lindon had come to save him specifically, Jai Long couldn’t spare any attention from the battle.
He climbed over dreadbeast corpses, hefting the halves of his broken spear in each hand. His sister screamed nonsense as she stabbed her dagger into a rabbit dreadbeast’s eye, and he hurled his spearhead through a flying bloodspawn that had tried to take advantage of her distraction.
Then the sky lit up.
Pulses of light—Striker techniques—rushed out in every color. Dreadbeasts exploded into corrupted flesh. Bloodspawn were torn to essence.
Where monsters were, light followed.
Jai Long’s weapons fell from numb, tingling fingers. He had seen sights like this before; when an entire sect of sacred artists unleashed a barrage of Striker techniques all at once.
He turned to the source.
Lindon hovered in the air, his back to Jai Long. He was surrounded by a halo of shining constructs, firing in every direction. A rainbow of colors streaked out from him, and just for that moment, he looked like he had sprouted a pair of wings made of light.
For a frozen moment he hung there, blazing like a many-colored phoenix.
Then the Striker techniques stopped. The world settled down.
Compared to the noise of battle before, the silence that settled over them in that moment felt unnatural. Jai Chen hobbled up to stand next to her brother, her mouth hanging open and an expression of awe on her blood-spattered face.
Sound returned with a deep rumble as the earth shook like a drum. A footstep of the Wandering Titan.
Lindon summoned a Thousand-Mile Cloud and flew off.
Sage of Twin Stars, Jai Long thought. He believed it now.
Then he collapsed.
18
Iteration 129: Oasis
Images, impressions, and desperate voices screamed through Suriel’s head. From a hundred Iterations at once, Abidan begged for help.
The Vroshir had held nothing back. In one world, their war machines crashed through deserts, while in another their fleets blackened planets, and all across the cosmos their champions met Abidan guardians blade-to-blade.
They were defending only a pathetic number of worlds, and only the ones held by Judges had any guarantee of victory. Dozens of Iterations called for Suriel to defend them.
As she entered Oasis, she cut off their voices.
This world needed her more than any other.
The fabric of reality itself trembled, every particle quaking in fear. Oasis’ central planet was a blue marble beneath Suriel’s feet, and she could feel the sudden terror rising from the billions of lives down below.
All across the thousands of islands that made up Oasis’ land, those sensitive to power collapsed under the weight of visions, or screamed at the feeling of a predator descended to take them all. She sent out her own influence to calm them, but there was only so much she could do.
She couldn’t hide the power of the Mad King.
Her Presence showed him drifting on the other side of the planet, eyes blazing from beneath the shadow of his bone helmet, his yellowed armor and fur cloak shrouding his figure. He clutched Ozriel’s Scythe in his right hand, and glared in her direction.
But not actually at her.
She floated next to Makiel, in his full battle gear. His seamless white armor covered him up to the neck, and he held the Sword of Makiel in both hands. The massive two-handed blade had once been used to pass capital punishment on the first generation of Abidan, and purple energy passed through its steel in complex veins.
Unlike the other Judges, he hadn’t perfected his physical form. His dark skin was weathered by his mortal life, and his hair had been touched with gray for millennia. His weary face did not turn to her as he spoke. “You could save more lives elsewhere.”
“Not yours.”
She might really be able to save an entire Iteration of her own if she left, but Makiel would be much safer with her around. Perhaps together, they could drive the Mad King away.
Together, they looked into Fate.
The future crackled and twisted, each vision unfolding with slippery uncertainty as the King’s chaotic presence warped Fate itself. But with the stabilizing presence of two Judges, and Makiel’s skill and significance at her side, they could see victory.
With the two of them together, a chance had opened up.
Not of slaying the Mad King, of course. It would take at least one more Judge joining them to make that a possibility, and they couldn’t abandon too many other worlds.
But she could see herself reverting a wave of devastating chaotic fire to nothing, giving Makiel the chance to strike a full-power blow and piercing the Mad King’s armor.
The outcome was by no means certain, but they could do it. If they made the Mad King leave the field, they would free up the Judges. The entire battle, across all of creation, could turn here.
“‘With our swords, we carve our place in destiny,’” Makiel recited.
“Don’t quote yourself. It’s not flattering.”
Blue power vented behind him, taking on the image of sapphire wings. “I first heard that from him.”
From the other side of the planet, Daruman spoke, and they heard him. “If you’re standing against me, you must believe you can win.”
“We stand before you to save the lives of trillions,” Suriel said coldly.
“And I am willing to spill that blood so that the survivors can live free. You have to know that you won’t shake my resolve with a few words.”
Makiel raised his sword, the purple lines shining. “Daruman, King of Madness, the Court of Seven sentences you to die.”
“If you believe you have seen that, then the eye of the Hound has grown truly dim.”
Suriel saw the attack a moment before it happened. A black slash, so vast that the concept of size no longer applied.
With one swing of the Scythe, the Mad King sliced the Iteration in half.
The entire universe split with the blue planet at the center, the two halves drifting apart, the Void stretching between them.
The Mantle of Suriel flared, and she channeled the Way, reversing the damage. Restoring order.
Makiel didn’t wait for her to finish stitching reality together before returning a strike of his own.
The inexorable will of the Hound, focused by his blade, closed on the Mad King to tear him from existence. The Vroshir broke the working, but then Suriel had finished restoring the Iteration. Her Razor bloomed from a two-meter bar of blue steel into a multi-pronged weapon of shining blades, like a razor-sharp tree.
She thrust with the full force of her authority. The Razor was a tool for violently separating the diseased from the healthy, and the Mad King was a blight on reality, a cancer. She cut him free, the space around him glari
ng bright blue as she cut at the fact of his existence.
His armor anchored him, and he struck back, a wave of darkness and spinning multi-colored chaos.
Makiel had already predicted it and shunted it off to the side.
Thousands of stars vanished. Removed from reality.
Then the fight began in earnest.
Each of them watched the future, anticipating the enemy’s move and countering it. They only took action when they could ensure an advantage or mitigate a disadvantage.
Makiel and the Mad King traded blows that destroyed both of their mortal forms, the force causing deadly earthquakes on the planet below. But Makiel spared no thought for his own defense; Suriel revived him a moment later, and he reincorporated already spearing Daruman with a dozen ghostly projections of Makiel’s Sword.
The Mad King had to revive himself, and the more he was destroyed, the shakier his existence would become. In theory, they could kill him permanently that way.
In practice…
He gripped Suriel in one fist, though she was hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, and her Presence blared a warning as her armor began to buckle.
While she was focused on protecting herself, throwing up protective barriers of pure order, he struck with the combined authority of the Mad King who conquered worlds and the Scythe who destroyed them whole.
Makiel met the blow with the Sword of the First Judge, the weapon that had been the symbol of order since the ancient Abidan had risen from Cradle so long ago.
Reality itself screamed, existence warping all over the world. Humans died en masse down on the central planet simply from the backlash, and the Iteration’s connection to the Way grew thin.
Suriel stretched out her Mantle, her authority as the Phoenix, as the ultimate healer, and dragged the Way back.
The humans blinked back to life, the shredded atmosphere repaired, the laws returning. As order flooded back in, Makiel broke the Mad King’s blow.
But the Vroshir had gained the momentum back.
They clashed again and again, fighting first in the future and then in the present, angling for advantage over the tiny blue gem at the center of this reality. A working of the Mad King’s would cast Makiel through space, but Suriel would break it. Makiel would blast the Mad King out of the world, and Suriel would try to seal the breach and keep him out, but with the Scythe he could cut his way back in.
The longer the battle raged, the less stable the Iteration became.
Stars winked out from the distant stretches of the universe, galaxies collapsing and fading to nothing, crumbling into the Void. Gravity and reality held less sway, dreams became real, people vanished as though they never existed.
Suriel spent more and more of her power on keeping the world intact, but she was straining herself, straining her mantle, straining even the connection between this Iteration and the Way. She had to give ground, preserving and restoring only the most necessary.
But the Mad King had died many times.
All at once, a path shone in Fate, as though their persistence had opened a door. It was one road, shining and bright, leading to the vision they’d seen before.
As one, without discussion, the two Judges took it.
Makiel met a blow head-on that cast him into the Void, removing him from reality for but a moment. That left an opening that the Mad King exploited, and he swept one arm, casting a wave of chaotic many-colored fire that swept all the way across the planet.
Rather than protecting the world with a barrier, as the enemy would no doubt expect, Suriel did as she had seen her future self do.
With all the power of the Razor, the Mantle of Suriel, and her own will, she focused on the wave of chaos-fire. Though sparks of it fell in a deadly meteor rain onto the planet below, she was able to catch the existence of the attack almost in its entirety.
With the last of her energy, she reverted it to nothing.
The Mad King’s will clashed with hers, fighting her authority, and the wave of fire faded in and out of existence for a moment.
As Makiel popped back into reality, physically only a meter away from the King. He swung his massive sword two-handed, the full weight of his will behind it.
They had seen this blow crack his armor, but in the microscopic instant that Makiel used to swing, Suriel saw her vision of the future warp and twist.
[WARNING: Deviation detected], her Presence warned.
The Sword of Makiel landed on the blade of the Scythe. The clash between the two weapons blasted a crater in the central planet of Oasis, and tens of millions died instantly.
Suriel left them to die.
She appeared next to Makiel, adding the defense of her Razor to his Sword. The Scythe still swept down, cracking both their armor.
With Makiel in her arms, Suriel wrenched open the Way.
And fled.
Lindon rose up on his cloud until he was even with the halo of light around Mount Samara. He was still outside the suppression field, but only by a few feet. Any technique he threw into Sacred Valley would be weakened.
But his heart pounded and the skin all over his body tightened as he looked inside and came face-to-face with the Wandering Titan.
In reality, they were still maybe a mile apart. But the Dreadgod was so huge that Lindon felt like it could lean forward and snap him up in its jaws.
Its eyes were swirling clouds of every shade of yellow, and it scanned Mount Samara up and down, as though looking for something.
Far down below, at its feet, the river of fleeing people on the mountain slopes had scattered like ants. Some of them continued running up the mountain to safety, but others scurried any direction that was away from the Titan’s feet.
Even back into Sacred Valley, which had been…broken. Shattered. Churned beyond recognition, like meat in a grinder.
Only three of the four sacred peaks still stood, and the Titan was eyeing this one. Every second the Dreadgod delayed was more lives spared.
And there was only one person here whose techniques could affect a Dreadgod.
“Dross,” Lindon said aloud, “I would be very grateful if you had a battle plan for me.”
[Battle. A battle plan. I’ve got a wonderful strategic retreat plan.]
Lindon was already mentally exhausted just from bringing himself here, but as he understood it, willpower wasn’t like madra. He didn’t have a finite amount that could run out. As long as he could concentrate, he could keep fighting.
He trembled all over. Not only did he feel like a mouse staring up at a lion, but even his spirit shook before the irresistible pressure of the Dreadgod.
And the Titan was being suppressed while he wasn’t.
Still, he drew up his focus. If the heavens were kind, the Titan would turn away and leave entirely. Maybe Lindon wouldn’t have to do anything at all.
Why hasn’t it left the valley already?
[I’ll show you if you promise to take me far, far away from here.] Despite his words, Dross pulled Lindon’s attention to the north, where—even in the fractured mess that remained of Sacred Valley—Lindon could make out shapes. Footprints.
It had walked north, stopped at Mount Yoma, and then headed east again.
Why?
Now it was examining Mount Samara, and Lindon felt an inhalation filled with hunger madra. The Dreadgod was sniffing for something in the mountain.
That wasn’t an attack, and the Titan was still trapped in the suppression field, but Lindon still hoped the act of breathing in wouldn’t be enough to kill the people at the Dreadgod’s feet.
He had the impression that the Titan had been at this for a while, and Lindon fervently hoped that it would continue for even longer. Maybe the bulk of the people beneath him would be able to flee before the Dreadgod had found whatever it was looking for. He might not have to do anything at all.
Slowly, like an old man reaching for his medication, the Titan reached up toward Lindon.
He panicked and shot backwards, bu
t it was clear that the Titan had no interest in Lindon at all. It was grabbing for the circle of light around the peak.
Now was his chance. The collapse of the ring might send madra raining down on the people below…but more personally, Lindon couldn’t bear the thought of the Dreadgod destroying Samara’s ring.
There was too little of Sacred Valley left.
From watching Malice, he hadn’t been able to tell if techniques were weaker if they originated from outside the script or from inside. He would try the former first.
With both hands in front of him, he opened his spirit wide, channeling Blackflame into dragon’s breath. At the same time, he poured his Overlord soulfire into it, which was now a brighter and more vivid silver than the diffuse, colorless flame of an Underlord. On top of all that, he added his will.
Dragon’s breath was a force of destruction. If he was the Void Sage, he should have the authority for this.
A dark beam, thicker than his two arms, burst out from his palms. The technique reminded him of Yerin’s Final Sword, and it carried weight far beyond the power of its madra.
It passed through the suppression field and…faded.
Instead of a liquid-smooth beam, the technique dispersed into a gaseous spray that resembled natural flame. The red streaks were more prominent than they had been, and the authority he’d managed to scrape up weakened to almost nothing.
Dragon’s breath passed over the Titan’s stone arm and washed over, harmless.
A dark fist closed over Samara’s ring. The light was Forged madra, an ancient construct, and the Dreadgod tore away a chunk as though it were made of rotten wood. Bright white-and-gold essence drifted upwards like sparks of a campfire from the damaged construct.
The rest of the ring hung in the air, but the light over Sacred Valley darkened.
The Dreadgod lifted the Forged madra to its face, examining it, and then Lindon felt hunger grow. The chunk of construct disappeared completely, the motes disappearing into the Titan’s body. The cracks of its shell, and the crags all over its body, shone briefly yellow.
When the Titan returned its attention to Mount Samara, its hunger was like a physical force. It didn’t move immediately, but its tail lashed faster and faster behind it. Lindon knew it was about to move.