Cradle: Foundation (Cradle Collected Book 1)

by Will Wight

  Ozriel could have done this in moments, but he was gone. For the first time, she felt a hint of personal resentment for that.

  “After this reprieve, Makiel expects you to throw your full effort into the search for Ozriel. He wants results within a standard decade.”

  Suriel turned to him, temper hot. Calling the power of the Way both demanded and produced inhuman self-control, but Gadrael was testing hers. Her Razor thrummed in her hand, sparking and hot.

  “Do I have autonomy in this matter?” she asked coldly.

  He had to see what she was doing, but he nodded once. “You do.”

  Everything about her blazed as she flexed her power—hair emerald, eyes purple, Mantle and armor white, Razor a flickering blue. She burned with the colors of a celestial glacier, until even Gadrael had to conjure barriers over his eyes.

  “Then this falls under the purview of the Sixth Division, not the Second. If you interfere before I have finished my operation, I will consider you to have violated the Pact and take action accordingly. Let it be witnessed under the Way.”

  She couldn’t kill him, as he may have been the hardest man in all existence to actually destroy, but there were any number of ways one Judge could make life difficult for another. Schisms among the Court of Seven were not common, but they were known to happen. Suriel would not risk the stability of the Abidan on a personal vendetta, but Gadrael—and by extension, Makiel—were threatening her authority.

  If she allowed that to happen, she would not be worthy to remain Suriel.

  A curtain of rich, layered blue tore open on the starry canvas behind Gadrael, and he stepped back into it, arms still crossed. “Six months,” he said, “then you find the Reaper. We have set aside Iteration two-thirteen as a quarantine zone for your infected, so bypass Sector Control. A channel will be open for you.”

  Makiel. He had known she would never leave the survivors, and had planned accordingly. Even before she’d come here, he had known.

  The Way zipped closed, and Gadrael vanished.

  [Four hundred sixty-two Grade Six anomalies and counting,] her Presence said. [Pursuit recommended before expansion threshold is reached.]

  Suriel set thoughts of Gadrael aside. He was a loyal dog, collared and leashed, and she would gain nothing from a conflict with him. Makiel was the one writing the script, and his plans could span eons. She had to meet him face-to-face.

  But first, she had a job to do.

  A world divorced from the Way gave birth to chaotic distortions. These were nightmarish monsters, entities that strained the rules of existence. If Harrow was allowed to fester over the next half a year, it could give birth to thousands of these abominations. Once they entered the void, they would drift, until even Makiel couldn’t predict where they would emerge.

  She had to destroy them now. At the same time, she had to reach as many of the two million survivors as she could, transporting them to Iteration 213. The world was known as Scour, the most inhospitable place she’d ever seen with a native population, but it should keep them alive.

  On the north pole, a black spire shattered the ice, shooting thousands of kilometers into space until it stood out like a rigid hair against the surface of the planet. A featureless black tower, an obelisk standing so tall it shouldn’t be able to physically support itself. An anomaly.

  Suriel gripped her Razor and blasted forward.

  Like a dying animal, a world was most vicious at its end.

  ***

  As Lindon hurtled through the blackened forest on the Thousand-Mile Cloud, chasing after a legion of monsters, he contemplated their greatest danger: thirst.

  They flew for the rest of the first day and past dawn of the second, and Yerin skirted every Remnant or rotten beast they encountered. But they had no more water, and the few times they stopped at a likely pond or creek, they found the surface stinking and corrupt.

  Whatever blight produced the black, rotten trees and the twisted dogs, it extended to the water. They didn't need to taste it to know it was poison.

  Before long, Lindon's head pounded and his throat burned so that he could hardly talk. It frightened him how quickly he'd weakened without water.

  So when the trees parted to show a pyramid in the distance, Lindon's first feeling was not a call to adventure or a sense of danger, but a heavy relief. A structure meant people, and people would have water.

  When Yerin slowed the cloud at the sight, Lindon wanted to strangle her.

  She choked out a word, swallowed, and tried again. Her words were simple and quiet, as though she meant to save water by speaking as little as possible. “That's it. Headed there.”

  Between the thirst, the lack of sleep, and the tension of the past few days, Lindon was having trouble thinking past the possibility of food, water, and shelter. He grunted something that sounded like “What?”

  Yerin stabbed her finger at the pyramid. “Aura.”

  With an effort that felt like crossing his eyes, Lindon focused on the aura around the pyramid. The edifice stood as high as Elder Whisper's tower back in Sacred Valley and a thousand times wider at the base, but it was assembled from layers of house-sized stone blocks. It was brown as mud, its first few layers obscured by black trees, but the visible portion was enough to dominate the landscape like a mountain jutting out of a field.

  A rainbow of vital aura rose over it, spiraling down into the structure like a narrow cyclone. The aura from miles around had been drawn here, which meant...

  He finally caught up with Yerin's observation. If the aura was drawn here, then those trees at the foot of the pyramid would be swarming with Remnants and twisted beasts.

  He nodded to show that he understood, even as she took the cloud a little higher. The cloud was meant to skim over the ground rather than fly, and it started to struggle at about ten feet above the earth. At fifteen, it stopped entirely, and Yerin's face tightened in focus as she held them there.

  From their new vantage point, they surveyed the land ahead of them. Two things stood out immediately.

  First, while they couldn't see any sacred beasts through the canopy, there was something swarming around the pyramid: people. Lindon glimpsed a distant crowd, the peak of a few tents, and even a wagon rumbling across a clearing. These people must hold the structure against the Remnants and sacred beasts. Maybe the pyramid was their home, and they were drawing in aura for some purpose.

  But Lindon couldn't consider that for long, because the second feature of the landscape had snared his attention: a wide lake, bright as sapphires, just south of the pyramid. He could only see the corner of it through the trees, but it was obviously not as tainted as the rest of the water around. His throat convulsed involuntarily at the sight.

  “We have to get there,” Lindon croaked.

  Yerin didn't say anything to agree, she just pushed the cloud to its highest speed and slammed back into the ground, dashing through the trees at reckless speed. For once, Lindon didn't mind that he was almost sent hurtling off the back of the construct. He added his own trickle of madra to the cloud, hoping that it might coax a little extra speed out of their mount.

  It wasn't entirely a surprise when they crested a hill and ran straight into a slaughter.

  Lindon had long expected to catch up to the host of twisted beasts, and he’d smelled the heavy scent of blood even before they’d reached this hill. But he still wasn’t prepared for the field of torn, dismembered, and disassembled creatures strewn over the ground.

  For what must have been a mile across and many miles wide, the black forest had been cleared. Stumpy logs dotted the ground here and there, and the grass must have been lush before some battle mulched the soil. The people camped at the base of the pyramid would have wanted a clear perimeter, so they cleared the trees so that anything advancing on them would be visible. They posted guards, obviously waiting for any Remnants and sacred beasts to attack.

  And when that horde of creatures had rushed at them, the guards had turned this field i
nto a butcher’s shed.

  Half of a corrupted bear-sized beast hung from a slowly dissipating Forged spear. A pack of six rotten dogs had been blown apart, bodies strewn in pieces around a fresh crater. A pile of glowing green debris marked the death-place of one of those insectoid snakes that had been stalking Lindon and Yerin; one centipede leg was still scratching at the bloody mud even as motes of green essence drifted away from it. Similar scenes of destruction marred every step for a mile.

  Across the clearing, a line of sacred artists stood in front of a low wall of spiked wooden logs. Even at a distance, Lindon could tell they were powerful.

  There was a unique confidence, almost arrogance, in highly advanced sacred artists. The Patriarch of the Wei clan had carried himself like a lion among cats, and Yerin spoke as though she was destined to win and her enemies had already lost.

  The warriors against the wall moved with the same awareness of their own superiority. One figure, carrying a huge hammer on its back, knelt to rifle through corpses as though sacred beasts may have held something valuable. A group of people carrying hook-curved sickles took turns kicking a rotten dog to each other. It was the size of a full-grown wolf, but the sacred artists kept it in the air as though it weighed no more than a leather ball. The twisted hound turned in midair, trying to bite each new human, but a foot always caught it in the side and sent it sailing away.

  Someone in blue-and-white robes hung tucked between the wooden spikes, lounging at his ease, with something that appeared to be a bottle clutched in one hand. Yellow hair—possibly a wig—hung down over the wall. A figure in darker blue casually spun a spear in elaborate loops, the spearhead catching the light more brightly than steel should account for.

  Lindon almost missed the movement, as it appeared just as relaxed and natural as the ones that preceded it. One second the blue-clad sacred artist was spinning the spear, and the next second he whipped the spear in Lindon’s direction.

  The spear didn’t actually go flying through the air, but the light did. A Striker technique, Lindon realized instantly, but too late for him to do anything about it. Silver-white light the width of a finger screamed through the air, blasting for their Thousand-Mile Cloud.

  Even Yerin was caught off-guard, judging by the way she jerked backward, but she still responded as befit a Gold. The bladed arm that hung over her shoulder flickered forward, catching the light. It slammed into the flat of her sword, deflecting slightly to the side as he’d seen her do with beams of Heaven’s Glory madra.

  With Heaven’s Glory, though, there had been heat as a byproduct. It would have scorched him. This time, he felt no warmth from the light passing nearby…but a slit appeared in the sleeve of his outer robe, as though someone had sliced a razor across his arm and narrowly missed skin.

  “Die and rot!” Yerin shouted, and driven by her Iron lungs, the sheer volume of it pounded Lindon’s skull. He winced and stuck fingers in his ears before the next words. “You got a grudge with me, you come out and draw swords like a sacred artist.”

  The spear-spinning figure froze, then vanished. When it reappeared, it had moved close enough that Lindon could make out some detail: the spear artist in blue robes was a tall man with an even taller spear. His hair stood straight up as though he’d frozen it in sharp waves, and he rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand.

  “You have my apologies, new friend. We’ve seen no one but monsters come from the west.” He paused, then added. “From a distance, anyone would mistake your cloud for a Remnant. Take that into consideration and forgive me, would you?”

  He clapped his hands together in what Lindon took as an apology, though he was still holding his spear between his palms.

  Yerin hopped off the cloud, gesturing to Lindon. “I’m hauling a Copper,” she said. Her voice was still hoarse from thirst, but anger lent her words strength. “You nick me with your spear and I’ll survive, but how’d you apologize if you gutted a junior?”

  The spearman had walked closer, and now Lindon could make out the evident surprise on his face. “Never seen a Copper so big.” The stranger surveyed Lindon frankly, then turned back to Yerin. “Is he, eh…” He tapped the side of his skull.

  Yerin stood absolutely straight, steel arm poised over her head like a scorpion’s tail, one hand on her sword and her tattered robe blowing in the gentle wind. “What do they call you?” she asked.

  The man in blue tucked his spear under one arm in a practiced motion, bending at the waist. “I am Jai Sen, of the Jai clan whose honor echoes in every corner of the Blackflame Empire. To repay the insult I have caused you and your junior, I would take responsibility for guiding you through the camp of our Five Factions Alliance.”

  “Five Factions?” Yerin asked, but Lindon had joined her by then, with pack on his back and Thousand-Mile Cloud drifting behind him.

  “Water,” he said, and Yerin pointed to him.

  “He’s right,” she said. “Water.”

  Jai Sen patted at the cloth wrap that belted his waist. “Ah, forgive me. There’s no drinkable water for a dozen miles outside the Purelake. I should have considered that you’d be thirsty.” He pulled a stoppered waterskin out of his wrap and laughed. “Half a minute into our acquaintance, and I’m already a bad host. Forgive—”

  Yerin had already snatched the skin from his hand. She guzzled it down, spilling water over her chin, and Lindon suddenly had the crazed, suicidal idea to jump for her and try to wrestle the water away.

  But she tossed the half-full skin to him, breathing heavily, and he had scarcely caught it before squeezing it into his mouth. It tasted stale and musty, as though the water had been wrung from the fur of a wet dog, but he didn’t care. The relief as water cut through the desert of his throat was like shade on a hot day.

  He had only taken one swallow before he choked, doubled over coughing, and had to wait until he recovered his breath to continue drinking. He finished the contents in seconds and bowed, presenting the empty skin back to Jai Sen. He would have thanked the man, but he didn’t trust his own speech.

  Jai Sen eyed him with interest. “Clearly, you have been away a long time. Where did you come from, I wonder?”

  “Our home lies to the west,” Lindon began, his voice still rough, but Yerin cut him off.

  “We’re from beyond the Wilds,” she said. “We have no blood with you or your enemies.”

  Jai Sen waved that away as though it hadn’t been what he meant at all, but he also looked relieved. “There’s no concern of that, none at all. The only enemies of the Jai clan are monsters and tyrants, and even the blind can see that you are an innocent and intrepid adventurer.” His smile included both of them, but Lindon noticed that his words did not.

  “Gratitude, honored Jai Sen, for your generosity,” Lindon said, to improve his image in the eyes of this stranger. “The Jai clan must be great indeed, to defend their home from such an army of beasts.”

  Sen smiled proudly, straightening up and planting his spear in the ground. “You have a good eye, little brother. The Jai clan is not the only faction in the Alliance camp, but we have defended this land as though it was our own for hundreds of years. Since the Ruins rose and the dreadbeasts crash every day like the waves of the sea, the Jai clan has slain more than any other.”

  Yerin shifted her blood-red belt. “We’re fresh across the border, Sen. Heard no whispers or mentions of these Ruins, though I think we’ve met your dreadbeasts.” She kicked the severed head of a dog so far that it arced through the air and over a hill. Lindon winced and looked away, though Sen didn’t seem to notice.

  “Jai Sen, if you please,” he said. “I’m a blood member of the clan. It would be my honor to explain the history of the Transcendent Ruins to you, sister.”

  “Yerin,” she said simply.

  “And you, little brother?”

  “This one is Wei Shi Lindon,” he said, bowing with both fists pressed together. “Jai Sen’s kindness to humble strangers is an honor to his family and
a credit to his clan.”

  The blue-clad spearman laughed out loud and clapped Lindon on the back. “If you keep talking like that, Wei Shi Lindon, I’ll have to keep you around.”

  “If it pleases you, you may call this one Lindon, as his family does.”

  Jai Sen looked surprised for a moment, then sympathetic. He squeezed Lindon’s shoulder with one hand. “They’ll take you back someday, little brother.”

  It seemed the older man had come to some awkward conclusion, but before Lindon could clarify, a hand on his back shoved him forward.

  “Trot,” Yerin said, including Jai Sen with a glance. “This isn't where we want to rest.”

  The smell of blood and worse was beginning to choke Lindon, underscored by the stranger scents of decaying Remnants. He turned to give her a grateful look, but she wasn't watching him. Her eyes had landed on the other sacred artists.

  Most of the strangers were looking in their direction with interest, and a few began to drift toward them.

  Remembering how powerful they were, a chill rippled down Lindon's spine, but he reminded himself not to be a coward. He couldn't let people of this level intimidate him; his goal was much farther away. These shouldn't be frightening enough to discourage him.

  But judging by Yerin's gaze, she wanted to avoid a meeting even more than he did.

  Jai Sen strode forward, oblivious to her wariness or pretending to be so. “Please don't be offended if I assume you know nothing about the Desolate Ruins.”

  The blocky pyramid loomed over them, blocking out light, and it looked even more ominous in his Copper sight.

  “That would not offend us,” Lindon said.

  “Only a week ago, this was nothing but a minor outpost of the Purelake Temple. Don't trust your eyes,” he said, sweeping an arm out to include the wooden walls and the crowds of people Lindon could see inside. “All that you see before you was constructed on the spot by valiant sacred artists of the Wilds. It's amazing what we can accomplish when we unite, as the Grand Patriarch of our clan once believed.”