by Will Wight
Lindon pulled his pack from his shoulder, slinging it around, intending to pull out the Sylvan Riverseed.
“Here it is,” Renfei called. She swept out a hand, and a bolt of dark cloud slammed into a tree in front of it, crushing it and sending it tumbling into the forest.
In front of her stood a jade doorway, not surrounded by any wall. The door was rectangular and covered in script, and it shimmered blue-green like a murky pond with its surface disturbed.
Renfei pulled out the Eye of the Deep, glancing at it and then back to her partner. “Bai Rou.”
The huge, green-armored man had already left the ship, his hat of dried straw shading his face. He strode over to her, where they exchanged an animated discussion.
“What's crawled up their armor?” Yerin asked, nudging him with the side of her silver Goldsign.
Mercy stumbled in the sand, but braced herself with her staff of smooth black. Its dragon head hissed at her, glaring with violet eyes. “The door wasn't supposed to be open.”
Lindon rested his hand on Orthos' shell, considering.
“They're going to separate us,” Lindon said, keeping his voice low. The other two turned to him, Mercy looking resigned, Yerin's face darkening. “One group goes through to scout, and the other stays out here until the first reports back. They'll divide us so that each of them can handle a group on their own.”
Yerin's hand moved for the hilt of her sword. She'd been allowed to have the weapon back when none of the Skysworn could sense anything exceptional about it.
It was the weapon of a Sage, but neither Yerin nor Lindon had said anything. It seemed the Sword Sage's blade could hide from lesser artists.
“Let them try to split us up. Now's our chance; we fight them out here.” She nodded to Orthos. “Big guy ties up the big guy, and the other three of us take Renfei.”
Lindon exchanged glances with Mercy, and both of them extended a hand in a calming gesture.
“We don't need to go that far,” Mercy said.
“It's too much of a risk. We don't need any more enemies than necessary.”
Yerin gave them a sour look. “You two got in step awfully quick.” She took her hand away from her sword, but her Goldsigns twitched as though ready for action.
“Wei Shi Lindon,” Renfei shouted. “You and the beast are with me. Ladies, you stay with Bai Rou. We will observe the situation and report back within the hour; I can relay a message to Bai Rou at any time.”
Unsurprised, Lindon rapped his knuckles on Orthos' shell. “It's time, Orthos.”
The turtle's limbs slid out slowly. He didn't feel tired. Quite the opposite; it felt as though Orthos were wrestling to keep himself under control. The rings of red in his black eyes were bright, but he nodded to Lindon.
Lindon and Orthos joined Renfei, facing the portal. Its rippling surface gave no indication of what waited on the other side.
“We walk through together,” the Skysworn said, cloud rolling over her head.
Lindon took a deep breath and stepped forward. Yerin stopped him, hand on his left arm.
She looked as though the words had gotten caught as she tried to speak. She cleared her throat. “...stay sharp,” she said at last.
Mercy gave him a wave.
“Gratitude,” Lindon said, dipping his head to them both.
Then, with Orthos on one side and Renfei on the other, they stepped into the jade doorway.
As he'd experienced before, the world was swallowed by an endless expanse of blue light that looked thick, as though he could reach his hand out and run his hand down it as though down a veil.
But this time, it only lasted an instant.
Chapter 2
The air ripped like a torn page.
Lindon stepped through the portal into a bubble of air the size of a castle. His shoes crunched on the dry sand of the ocean’s floor, which spread out in front of him to the edges of the bubble. Twisted rock formations and bunches of brush-like weeds rose in irregular patches, with tiny crabs skittering from shadow to shadow.
The water outside the bubble was black as ink, but the space was brightly lit by…Lindon hesitated to call it a “tree.” It looked more like a glowing, abstract sculpture meant to represent a tree: a bunch of blue tubes spread out like roots coiled together to make a trunk, and at the top—where he would expect leaves—were clusters of glowing yellow lights. They weren’t too bright to stare at, but all together they lit the bubble like late afternoon.
This ocean clearing was silent in a way the land never was. No wind brushed these plants, and no waves crashed nearby. Only the occasional scuff of sand or the soft drip of water disturbed the stillness, and the air tasted of salt and green plants.
A sense of awe hung heavy over the space, like Lindon had trespassed on an ancient tomb. Invisible pressure pushed on him as though he’d shouldered the entire weight of the ocean above.
It was only a moment before he realized that the pressure wasn’t his imagination. By then, he’d noticed that Renfei had stopped, one hand on her hammer, her cycling madra drawing wisps of dark cloud around her armor. Orthos growled so low and loud that the sand shook.
They weren’t alone.
A young man sat with legs crossed on top of a nearby boulder. His robes were white, his unbound hair spilling down his back, and his features so delicate that at first Lindon mistook him for a woman. A disc of shadow hovered behind his head like a dark halo.
There were others that might have drawn Lindon's eye first, but this man drew his spiritual perception like a magnet. He was a deep, dark weight, and Lindon had to pull back his perception before he touched the young man's spirit. He was cycling now, eyes closed and breath even, but Lindon feared that even the slightest touch would wake him.
Far at the other end of the clearing, where the edge of the bubble met the sand, a sprawling miniature palace of golden madra glittered in the light. A pair of servants in plain, identical white coats stood at attention in front of the curtain that served as the door. A...creature...peeked out of that curtain, shimmering even more than the palace.
It looked like a woman merged with a dragon, covered in gold scales and with a face closer to that of a lizard than of a human. She wore strings of jade, silver, and pearls in layers around her neck, and rather than a sacred artist's robe, she had wrapped herself in silk of every color. As she saw the newcomers, a smile stretched across her leathery lips, and she casually manifested a shining drop of gold madra between her claws.
Lindon began cycling Blackflame. Once, he had caught a Truegold off-guard and burned away the man’s hand. If he could injure Sandviper Gokren so badly, he might have a chance against these strangers. So long as they didn’t notice him first.
His attention was drawn by a deadlier threat: a flash of red from the left, far away from both the cycling man and the dragon-woman.
He recognized that color. He recognized that sensation in his spirit, a shivering impression of a thousand corpses drowning in a crimson sea.
A young woman stepped up, Blood Shadow covering her like a cloak. Her hair fell into her eyes, shrouding her expression, but blood madra trickled away from her feet, steadily spreading across the sand. She didn't bother to veil her spirit, so she blazed like a bloody torch to Lindon's perception. She was Truegold, without a doubt, and a strong one at that. She gave Lindon the same impression as Renfei or Bai Rou, and she looked to be at least ten years younger.
The Redmoon woman made three, but there was a fourth presence nearby.
He cast out his perception and immediately noticed a tiny hut to his right. It looked like it had been slapped together from mud and bundles of dried grass, though he could see neither of those materials anywhere around him.
Another young man, about Lindon’s age, pulled himself out of the hut’s doorway like a corpse crawling from a grave. His eyes were bloodshot and half-lidded, his gray cloak stained and dirty. Two emerald horns rose from his forehead, pointing up.
Lindon a
ccidentally brushed the man’s spirit with his spiritual perception, and he hurriedly pulled it back. The man seemed not to notice, but his aura felt as strong and steady as the roots of a mountain.
He took in the situation with the look of a man who would rather be anywhere else. Though he had done nothing that Lindon could tell, the golden-scaled woman stopped in her tracks, looking nervously in his direction. The girl from Redmoon Hall watched them all.
“Who are you?” the horned man asked the Skysworn, wearily.
Renfei was muttering under her breath. “Bai Rou, do not follow. I repeat, maintain your position and call for reinforcements. Multiple enemies. We will try to disengage.” When the man addressed her, she drew up straight and consciously drew her hand away from her weapon. The black cloud over her head rolled and rumbled.
“We are the Skysworn of the Blackflame Empire,” Renfei announced. “We are responding to reports of a disturbance around this facility after the passage of the Bleeding Phoenix.”
Her voice was smooth and practiced, but her tension infected Lindon. He withdrew Blackflame, changing his breathing pattern and pulling power from his pure core. Blackflame would serve him better in combat, but in a fight between Truegolds, could he even make a difference? Anonymity would serve him better.
The man's perception moved over their group, slow and careless. He dismissed Lindon in a blink, but his spirit lay heavy on Orthos and Renfei. “Who is backing you? The Winter Sage?”
Orthos snarled, smoke and red light rising from his shell. “We need not answer to you.”
The stranger stared at Orthos with absolute disinterest, as though replying was too much effort. Based on Lindon's feeling of the horned man's spirit, his confidence was entirely justified.
A woman's voice piped up over his, airy and amused. “When you're done, leave me their trinkets,” the golden dragon-girl said. “It's so exciting to see a pack just bulging with who-knows-what treasures. And I like the look of that armor.”
The green-horned man sighed. “Not every fight needs to be to the death, dragon. What could they possibly have on them?”
“They shouldn't be here,” came an eerie whisper from the Redmoon Hall girl. The liquid form of her Blood Shadow had almost reached the base of the portal. “They are not bound by the rules. Who can know who sent them?”
“We are here on behalf of the Blackflame Empire,” Renfei said loudly, “under the protection of the Akura family.” She shot a glance to the man cycling on the boulder. “If we have disturbed the honorable representative of Redmoon Hall, we apologize and will withdraw.”
“Back,” she said under her breath to Lindon. “Back through the portal.”
Lindon turned immediately, but a tendril of blood raised itself from the ground and poised in front of him like a snake coiling to strike.
“Hold, Lowgold,” the young woman commanded. “We wait for instructions.”
“No need to bother your Sage with this,” the golden dragon said. She was approaching by then, strolling closer to the portal, though Lindon noticed she gave the cycling man's boulder a wide berth. “Strip them and send their bodies to the ocean. What is that behind your back, Skysworn?”
For the first time, Lindon realized that Renfei was gripping the Eye of the Deep behind her back in her left hand. Her fist tightened around the gem, but she still edged backwards.
“I salute the honored representative of the Desert Monarch and King of all Dragons, and I assure you, if we are allowed to return to our empire, we will send you a greeting-gift that far outstrips any of our meager belongings. Furthermore—”
The world went silent as the young man on the boulder opened his eyes. Like Mercy's, they shimmered like a deep amethyst.
Shadow flashed out from the seated man as though it had been unleashed, dimming all light. His right hand drifted up, then down, like a painter leisurely adding a stroke to canvas.
“Silence,” he said, as his hand lowered.
In a blink, so that Lindon thought he'd imagined it, a thin line of shadow flickered down, passing through the middle of Renfei's body from the top of her head down.
The Akura representative closed his eyes.
Renfei fell apart.
Her armor was still untouched, but her body collapsed in a pile of blood. Lindon stared, too stunned to be horrified, and before he could avert his eyes, the Blood Shadow covered Renfei's corpse.
An instant later, a towering giant of black clouds slid out of the Shadow with an explosion of force that sent both Lindon and Orthos tumbling away from the portal. The Remnant punched two fists of dark fog together with explosions that cracked like thunder, launching itself forward.
The golden dragon-girl met it with a tinkling laugh, sending a wrist-thick river of golden liquid punching through the spirit, but Lindon didn't have time to watch. The Blood Shadow was re-forming, gathering itself up to engulf him.
A massive boulder plunged from above, slamming into the sand, cutting off the Blood Shadow and shielding Lindon.
The green-horned man stood staring at a hole next to him, where that boulder had once rested. He gave no sign that he had even moved, his dirty cloak hanging dead from his shoulders.
“He is not your opponent, Yan Shoumei,” he said wearily.
“But you are,” she said, gathering her Blood Shadow around her and dashing forward.”
The young man walked to the other side of another boulder, kicking it lightly. A green ring flashed as his foot made contact, and the boulder shot forward as though launched from a catapult.
Whether by design or coincidence, it landed inches from the first boulder, between Lindon and the portal.
Lindon ducked behind the stones, leaning around them to look at the place where Renfei had fallen. He was choked by a complex mess of emotions when he saw her half a face—relief that she was gone, regret that he couldn’t bring her body back to her family, and fear now that she wasn’t around to protect him. Though he’d never trusted her, at least she’d been on his side.
But he wasn’t looking for her body. He was looking for a way out.
Her armor was still unharmed; it seemed that the shadow-sword had struck her through the green Skysworn plate without damaging the metal. He wanted to take it with him, but it was still half-engulfed in Yan Shoumei’s Blood Shadow, and Lindon wasn’t foolish enough to stick either of his hands anywhere near that. Maybe his Remnant arm could feed on it like it fed on the bloodspawn, but he wasn’t willing to bet his own safety on it.
Her hammer was nowhere to be seen, which he regretted even more than the armor. As the weapon of a Truegold from the Cloud Hammer sect, it would have been invaluable.
But most importantly…
The sapphire she’d been holding behind her back rolled free, darkened with spots of her blood.
Lindon snatched it up, stuffing it quickly into his pack. If he had the Eye of the Deep, he could deactivate the portal after leaving. Maybe he could lock these others inside to fight it out amongst themselves.
Orthos roared, launching dragon's breath at the gold-scaled girl engaged with Renfei's Remnant, but she ducked to one side of his Striker technique and avoided it with ease. The Cloud Hammer Remnant reared back, preparing to drive a dense fist into the girl's head.
A sigh cut across the battle, and the Akura young man opened his eyes again. The shadow returned.
“I asked for silence.”
Flickers of black, like feathers in the night.
Renfei's Remnant was split into two clouds, which drifted apart as it began to dissolve into essence.
The dragon-girl skidded to a halt, scattering sand into the air. The shadow-blade passed in front of her, leaving a perfect line sliced into the ground.
The horned man raised a hand, and a circle of green script flashed into existence in front of him. The edge of shadow cut into it, and the script flickered at the contact before shattering like glass.
His shield must have weakened the attack, because he didn’
t fall into two pieces like Renfei had. Instead, the skin on his hand split open, leaking blood. He stared at the wound with lifeless eyes, as though watching someone else’s hand.
Yan Shoumei's Blood Shadow cloak was split in half, revealing deep red sacred artist's robes beneath. She hissed and backed away, her Shadow drawing itself together, but she seemed unharmed.
An instant of pain flared through Lindon's soul, and Orthos howled.
His shell split open, spraying dark blood and ruddy light in equal measure. He staggered back, letting off flares of Blackflame madra out of sheer panic and instinct. His pain dimmed Lindon's mind, but it also stoked the rage of the Path of Black Flame. Without thinking, Lindon tapped back into his Blackflame core, and the Burning Cloak sprang to life around him.
Everything had taken only a few breaths, and the battle was so far above Lindon's level that he had unconsciously shrunk back. But now he had a task he could handle: get Orthos back through the portal. If the rest of them could make it out alive, that would be a victory.
It took the strength of his Enforcer technique to restrain Orthos, who was lashing out with blind pain, but Lindon hauled him to a stop and started pushing toward the portal. He glanced back at the Akura man, only to see him lifting his arm again.
That gesture was enough to fill Lindon with terror now, but the purple eyes weren't fixed on Lindon.
He was looking at the portal.
Following his gaze, Lindon noticed with a jolt that the portal was transparent from this side.
Bai Rou was holding Mercy back with one armored hand, dragging her away from the portal. He was clearly trying to retreat. A handful of yellow madra droplets blasted out of his other hand, striking at Yerin.
Who was darting for the gateway.
She slashed back without turning, her white blade casting a storm of invisible swords that shredded Bai Rou's Striker technique. Her eyes were fixed on the portal.
Sometimes it felt like it had been a lifetime since he'd left Sacred Valley. Other times, he felt like a child who had just left home. The reality was, he had been outside the Valley for a year and a half. He was overwhelmed by the weight of so much time. Surely it couldn't have been that long. But at the same time, he wasn't sure how he'd crammed so much into such a short time.