by Wight,Will
Only then did Lindon notice the...elaborate curtain...was actually a sacred artist's robe. It didn't have an outer robe to it, but was all one piece, with loose sleeves and enough room in the legs that it wouldn't inhibit movement.
Under the circumstances, he couldn't complain. It didn't matter what the robe looked like, it was better than one he had on.
He glanced between the pink and gold ensemble in Eithan's hand and his own ruined set of bloody rags, considering.
“Yerin, if you don't mind,” Eithan said.
Her silver sword-arm flashed, briefly overlaid with light in Lindon's spirit-sense, and his clothes were slashed to ribbons. He snatched at them, trying to preserve some level of modesty.
She turned quickly, which surprised him to some degree. He'd thought of her as a Gold first, but she was still a girl his own age. Now that he thought of it, that might have been a blush coloring the back of her neck.
Eithan grabbed the twisted blue seashell from Yerin's hand and activated it, sending a flood of water gushing out. It didn't end until Lindon spluttered at him to stop, minutes later, every inch of his body scrubbed clean by the force.
Something bright fluttered toward him, and he caught the pink-and-gold robe out of the air.
“It's surprisingly absorbent,” Eithan said, “and it will dry before you know it. The threads are plucked from the mane of a sacred beast known by the natives as a 'Celestial Lion-Horse,' and it is both comfortably warm and pleasingly cool. I had to hire a whole family to work on it for months. It's supposed to be worn as the inner part of a set, but I'm forced to waste it on you.”
“Gratitude,” Lindon said, wincing as he wrapped it around his wet body. If it was that expensive, he hated to ruin it. He could sell it instead. How many scales would this buy him? Come to think of it, how many scales would it take him to reach Jade?
He chided himself for thinking of Jade so soon after reaching Iron, his hands moving automatically to fold and tie the robe.
Maybe it was the expensive fabric, but something felt strange.
He stopped halfway, considering. The robe was tight across the shoulders, and the robe—which he'd expected to reach the floor—only stretched to his ankles. He looked back up to Eithan.
“Do I seem taller to you?”
Eithan glanced him up and down. “Older is the word, I think, more than taller. Your muscles have developed further, and we need to get some food in you, because you've burned most of your fat in the transition. You don't look like a child spoiling for a fight anymore, but there's still...what do you think, Yerin?”
Yerin turned back around and considered him. “Like he's ready to tear into someone with his bare hands.” Coming from her, that sounded like a compliment.
Eithan moved his hand back and forth. “Eh...I'd say he looks like an evil sect leader's rebellious son.” He thought a moment longer and added, “Wearing his mother's robe.”
Lindon's response was cut off by something flying through the air toward him; his hand blurred as he caught it, body responding as fast as thought.
“I thought you might want that,” Eithan said, and Lindon opened his hand to see the wooden badge carved with the symbol for empty.
He stared into it as a tide of joy swelled in his chest.
After a few breaths of silence, he spoke. “It doesn't fit me anymore.”
He clenched his fist closed, crushing the badge with no more effort than it would take to smash a dry leaf.
The pieces spilled from his palm, landing like so much trash, but he tucked the shadesilk ribbon into his pack. It was still valuable.
Eithan slapped him on the back. “There's nothing quite like advancing, is there? It's like you're reborn.”
Lindon couldn't agree more, but he gave a humble bow. “I'm only glad to be past the pain.”
“We will have to get you something to eat soon,” Eithan reminded him. “Otherwise, your body will devour itself from the inside out.”
Lindon's look of horror must have been something to see, because Eithan gave him a pat of reassurance. “Nothing to worry about. We have a whole day, probably, before that starts to happen. Plenty of time. More urgently, our break time has ended.”
Yerin nodded and drew her sword, running up the stairs.
“The way forward opened while you were sleeping,” Eithan told him. “The only way out is now at the top of the pyramid, which just so happens to be where the Jai clan spear awaits. What fortuitous chance!” He flourished his wide sleeve, gesturing the way forward. “And a small army of dreadbeasts and Remnants stands in our way. What a wondrous opportunity for training!”
Lindon slid his pack onto his back and reached for the weapon he'd hacked from the Sandviper Remnant two weeks ago: the bright green severed stinger, longer than his own limb, with white cloth wrapped around its hilt to serve as a grip.
He grabbed it, habitually running madra into it to replace the essence it lost over time. It flickered with color in response, rippling brighter, and the motes of madra drifting upward slowed. He was very careful not to let his madra flow into the binding within; it was as dangerous to him as to anyone else, if he used it carelessly.
The severed stinger had never been a heavy weapon, but it seemed absolutely weightless now.
“I admit, I look forward to finding out what an Iron body is like,” Lindon said. That was not nearly enough to describe his feelings. He'd dreamed of Iron his entire life, which seemed to him to be when one really learned to use the sacred arts. And his weeks of agony stretched behind him like a long shadow.
He hungered to find out what that suffering had bought him.
“Fortunately for you, a perfect test awaits!” Eithan nodded forward, where Yerin stood with white blade bared in front of another doorway. And another set of stairs leading up.
Lindon had survived his weeks alone in the Ruins according to his usual methods: he'd trapped, dodged, or tricked every Remnant or dreadbeast that slithered close to his shelter. He'd killed his share of creatures for food, for resources, or in self-defense, but they had almost always been restricted by a script circle. He'd used the Remnant’s venomous needle to butcher helpless foes, not to fight.
So his heart pounded and his eyes twitched at every movement as they made their way up the stairs. Yerin walked ahead with blade drawn, seemingly unconcerned, and Eithan took up the rear. He was whistling.
These stairs were much longer than the ones where Lindon had set up camp, and wider too. They could have easily walked side by side and had room to swing weapons, but by tacit agreement, they all stayed away from the walls.
There were monsters in those walls.
Each stone block was missing a chunk in the middle, leaving a square tunnel onto darkness, and Lindon could hear things slithering or skittering across stone. It was the first drawback he'd felt in his new Iron body: yesterday, he wouldn't have heard the things crawling in the shadows.
It must be worse for Yerin and Eithan, but Yerin acted as though this were no more dangerous than a hike through the woods. A glance back showed that Eithan was walking with eyes closed as he whistled, palms laced behind his neck and elbows in the air.
They had only walked for one intense minute, the stairs spiraling upwards, when Eithan said, “On your right.”
Lindon jumped left and readied his scavenged weapon in both hands. Yerin only turned her head slightly to the right. As something bright red flashed out of the darkness, a Remnant with claws bared, her Goldsign flashed.
The smooth silver blade was a blur as it slashed the Remnant in two. Dead matter hissed as motes of essence escaped like smoke from a flame.
On some instinct that hadn't fully formed, Lindon started to open his Copper senses to feel the vital aura and search for another threat. A hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“Try not to stare into the sun,” Eithan suggested, then continued whistling.
After a moment, Lindon understood. The Remnants and dreadbeasts were gathering because
of how thick the vital aura had become. Lines of script running along the top and bottom of the wall provided all the light they needed, proving that the script was fully powered. It would be funneling all the aura for miles into the room at the top.
“Behind you,” Eithan said, and Lindon staggered forward.
He spun just in time to see a monkey with rotten skin grabbing at his shoulder, its lips peeled back in the grin of a fanged skull. His hands moved before he told them to, swinging the stinger with all his strength.
He smashed the monkey to the ground.
With half a thought, he withdrew the weapon and stabbed again and again, puncturing the monkey's hide each time. It shrieked and clawed at the Remnant part.
And a pulse of red-streaked force billowed out from the monkey, catching Lindon and slamming him into the ceiling.
Like sacred beasts, dreadbeasts were effectively monstrous sacred artists, and every one of them had a level of advancement beyond his. This was not a mistake he would have made before hitting Iron, and for an instant he thought it had cost him his life.
But he hit the back of his skull against the ceiling and landed on his feet. More than the impact to his head, what stunned him was that he was...fine.
The strike to the skull had hurt, but more like being struck by a stick than slamming his head against a rock. And he hadn't had to try to land on his feet, as though his body had known what to do without him.
He shook himself awake—an instant's hesitation could prove fatal, when facing a stronger enemy—but the monkey just scurried back into its tunnel.
Some shrieking followed its exit, as though it had gotten into another fight just out of view, and dark blood splattered onto the stairs.
“Hm,” said Eithan. “They're certainly excited.”
Lindon and Yerin broke into a sprint at the same time. He didn't check to see if Eithan was following; he suspected the yellow-haired man would survive if he was dropped into a pit of Remnants with nothing but his bare hands.
More Remnants and dreadbeasts boiled out of the walls as they continued, and Lindon learned about his Iron body.
For one thing, if combat before had been like trying to stay alive in the middle of a panicked nightmare, now he felt as though he were tearing his way through a lightning-fueled dream. His hands moved faster than his thoughts, his weapon a green blur, and keeping up with Yerin's running pace was easier than walking. His hearing was so acute that every breath of air was a note in a symphony, and he spotted movements he would never have noticed before: the tense of muscles in a wolf's shoulder, the flick of a sandviper's tail.
Compared to his previous self, he felt unstoppable. His blood burned in his veins, and madra flowed steadily from his Iron core, his breathing even and measured.
At the same time, he saw the difference between Iron and Gold.
Just when he was feeling like a dragon in human skin, a pale gray Remnant with six arms boiled up from the depths of the tunnel, howling like wind through a forest. It seized his weapon in one hand, his empty arm in another, and both his legs as its head peeled back to reveal a gaping mouth.
Lindon struggled, but he might as well have still been Copper; it looked insubstantial and blurry, like a weak Remnant, but it still had physical strength far beyond his own. Scrabbling from behind told him that there was a dreadbeast coming from the other direction, and Yerin was dealing with two enemies of her own.
Eithan was still whistling with his eyes shut as he dodged four creatures, but Lindon couldn't count on him.
The hands squeezed tighter and tighter until Lindon's breath came too quickly to fuel his cycling technique. He tried everything he could think of until his wrist went numb, and the Sandviper stinger clattered from his hand. Only then did he scream Yerin's name.
She went from a black-and-red blur with a sword of white to utterly still in a moment. Her Goldsign flashed, and Lindon felt an invisible pulse move through him despite his spiritual senses remaining closed.
It was the technique she'd demonstrated before: the Endless Sword. But this time, she didn't hold back.
The Remnant was blasted away from him, shredded into a thousand shapeless pieces and a cloud of dissolving madra. The dreadbeast behind him didn't even get to make a noise before it was reduced to a chunky puddle, and Eithan quick-stepped forward to avoid the chunks of blood that his own enemies had become.
Five or six cuts appeared on Lindon's arms where the Remnant had grabbed him, flaring to life like fires after a lightning strike, but he was staring at Yerin. She took a deep breath, restoring her breathing before she spoke. “Everybody stable?”
Lindon nodded wordlessly and she took off.
He scooped up his weapon, vaguely ashamed of himself. Just because he'd let the power of an Iron body go to his head, he'd forgotten the sheer force of the sacred arts. Of all the weapons in a sacred artist's arsenal, physical strength was among the least. He might be able to compete with Yerin in the force of his grip now, but she could carve him into pieces with her will.
It was a sobering reminder, but it was also somewhat liberating.
He had something to look forward to.
It wasn't much longer before they reached the end of the spiraling staircase, and by now the constant attacks were taking their toll. He hadn't used much madra, having no techniques in his repertoire that would help against monsters, but Yerin was noticeably weakened. They'd both taken wounds, in contrast to Eithan, who continued whistling as though his surroundings didn't affect him at all.
At the end, with the snarling of monsters behind them, they reached a door.
It was a heavy slab of stone, just like the ones before, but this one was carved with an intricate mural. It was divided equally into four sections, each depicting a different sacred beast: a serpentine dragon on a cloud flashing with lightning, a crowned tiger, a stone warrior with the shell of a tortoise, and a blazing phoenix.
Though Yerin moved forward to place her palm against the door, he froze at the sight.
He'd seen this before.
Chapter 17
Yerin removed her hand from the door, readying her sword. “It's some brand of riddle. Script keeps going right on into it, and there's a key buried here somewhere.” The howls of Remnants echoed up the stairs from behind, and the edge of her blade gathered force. “Take a step back.”
“Wait!” Lindon shouted, then coughed politely. “I mean, ah, please wait, if you don't mind. We've seen this before.”
Eithan sat down on a step and began fiddling with his thumbs.
The shrieks from below grew louder, and a Remnant like a giant purple onion squeezed itself out of the wall to Eithan's side. Before it had completely emerged, he kicked it back.
Yerin took a step back and looked at the door. “I do think you’re right. That looks more than a little like the picture in the Ancestor's Tomb.”
“That's a week away on the Thousand-Mile Cloud,” Lindon pointed out.
“Well, that's a head-scratcher,” she said, and then drew her sword back again. The edge of the blade distorted as though a haze of heat had gathered around the weapon, and she took a step forward.
Lindon's instinct for self-preservation kept him from stopping her before she smashed her technique into the door's surface.
It struck with a rush of power that was deafening in the enclosed space of the stairway, ringing in his ears as though someone had struck a bell over his head. Madra and aura flooded forward with her strike until his view of the action warped like he was watching through murky water.
When it cleared, a single chip of stone was spinning on the floor. Otherwise, the door was completely intact.
Lindon would have taken this moment to stop her from damaging the door any further—it was connected to some unknown script, and might bring the entire roof down on their heads if they interrupted the circle, not to mention its connection to Sacred Valley—but he happened to glance behind them.
Dreadbeasts scrambled all over e
ach other as they clawed up the stairs, seeming to blend into a multi-headed mass of corrupted flesh.
Yerin braced her feet against the ground, her Goldsign drew back like a snake preparing to strike, and she gripped her sword in both hands. Colorless sword madra rippled around her until it was like he was looking at her through a cage of razors edge-on. As she gathered power, she focused on the door as though she meant to destroy it with the force of her stare.
Without giving himself too much room to think, he picked up his severed Remnant part and pointed it at the oncoming rush of beasts. His madra flowed down the weapon, trickling toward the binding.
“The big one,” Eithan shouted, but through his ringing ears Lindon heard it as a whisper. The man was standing now, but he was actually leaning his shoulder against one of the wider sections of wall, completely at his ease.
Lindon listened, adjusting his aim to point at the biggest of the dreadbeasts: a warped purple creature like a bear with heavily muscled arms. When he was close enough to see the bloodshot veins in the monster's arms, the dreadbeast hauled itself back on its hind legs. It looked as though it intended to come down on Lindon like an avalanche.
He stepped forward, thrusting the bright green stinger like a spear.
And just as he did, he activated the binding.
He used his weaker core, the Copper one, because it was just barely strong enough to fuel the weapon. The activation drew his core dry, and if that had been his only source of madra, he would have collapsed immediately.
But he pulled on his Iron core instantly, keeping his legs steady even as the binding activated.
Three hazy green duplicates, like less-real copies of the stinger, flickered into existence around his thrust. It was as though he drove four spears instead of one.
The bear fell on top of his weapon, but one of the Forged spears lodged in its hide. Another caught a Remnant in the head, and his actual spear drove even deeper into the bear's belly. The fourth strike missed, dissolving out of existence in a moment, but Lindon threw himself back as soon as his point bit home.