by Will Wight
His Blood Shadow caught him.
It formed into his copy, standing on the railing, its hand grabbing him by the leg and pulling him back onto the ship. Longhook didn't even look surprised, his coat fluttering in the wind as he landed.
“This will be worse than last time,” the emissary promised, locking eyes with Eithan.
Eithan drew himself up, cycling madra through his channels. He let his power as an Underlord blaze forth, matching Longhook face-to-face.
“It will,” he declared. “Last time, I did not reveal to you my ultimate technique.”
A flare of chaotic madra from below his feet was all the warning Longhook had. Eithan had scripted the veils into the cloudship's cabin himself.
Then a beam of deadly madra, thick as a barrel and bright as the sun, blasted through the cabin of the ship and washed over Longhook. The light streamed out in a bolt like condensed lightning, too bright to watch directly, streaking from the ship up into the sky. It faded out as quickly as it had emerged, the light fading to a thin line.
Longhook fell from the ship, smoking and unconscious. He would probably survive the impact with the ground, but he wouldn’t be happy.
“I call it the 'ambush,'” Eithan said.
Fisher Gesha poked her head through the ragged hole in the ship's deck. She held in her hands a smoking, twisted launcher construct. It looked much like one of the simple, physical weapons some lower sects used for defense: a cannon.
“I didn't miss! Hm. I told you I wouldn't miss.”
Fisher Gesha, a shrunken old woman with gray hair tied up into a bun, looked like she shouldn’t even be able to hold the cannon. Spider legs stuck out from beneath her, as she stood on her drudge construct for transportation. And to reach things on high shelves.
Most Gold-level techniques couldn't do much more than scratch an Underlord's skin. But she had come up with a plan for a compound launcher construct that used six Striker bindings at once. If they were properly contained and focused, she had theorized, they could produce an effect that was greater than the sum of its parts.
Under normal circumstances, the weapon would be too unwieldy to set up and use. The enemy would sense it coming a mile away, and activating six Striker bindings at once put too much of a strain on the construct's vessel. It was the sort of method that sounded better than it was.
But Eithan had found her plans, and had wanted to see them in action.
“A lovely strike!” Eithan called. “How did the script hold up?”
“Strained.” Gesha tapped a ring on the metal of the cannon's outer layer. “Warping already. And the Song of Falling Ash binding is an inch from falling apart, if you ask me. Not that you did.”
“We'll need more goldsteel plating,” Eithan mused aloud. He couldn't afford that himself—not without the resources of the Arelius family. That irritation still threatened to prod him to anger. He would have to deal with that, when he was done mopping up Redmoon Hall.
Of course, he could save up top-grade scales and eventually afford most of anything in the Empire. But it would have been so much easier with the family behind him.
He pushed that annoyance aside and returned his attention to the battle in the sky around them.
“What was that?” Naru Saeya asked, holding her rainbow sword to one side, staring blankly into the rain. She ended up repeating herself: “What was that?”
Chon Ma was bleeding from a cut on his face now, delivering a speech about honor to the remaining Redmoon Hall emissary, whose arm hung broken and bruised from his shoulder.
“You skulk in the shadows,” the Cloud Hammer Underlord proclaimed. “You rely on power that will never truly be your own. This is why you are weak.”
Eithan turned to Fisher Gesha. “Do you think you could squeeze out one more shot?”
The construct flared to life.
Chapter 7
There were any number of reasonable objections that Dross could have made to the Soulsmith operation, but since the construct seemed happy enough going along with it, Lindon certainly wasn't going to say anything.
First, he moved the bucket of Dream Well water in front of Orthos. Then he forced the turtle's mouth open and poured a vial of the purple water down his throat.
It didn't quite wake him, but Lindon could feel his consciousness smooth out. His sleep went from rough and fearful to soft and deep. When he woke, he'd need some water, so hopefully the bucket would be enough. He’d always had trouble wrestling his thoughts, too; maybe the Dream Well could help him.
With Orthos settled, Lindon sat Little Blue on the turtle’s head. She gave a chirp, and he patted her with one finger. “When I’m done here, I’ll have some food for you.”
Then he got to work.
Binding a spiritual construct to a physical vessel was one of the basic skills of the Soulsmith. Essentially, he had to hold the construct into the exact shape of the vessel, then merge the two while using his own madra to tie them together. To stuff a ghost back into a body, both ghost and body had to match.
There was only one complication that mattered: the sapphire already had a construct in it. So he was trying to meld two constructs and fix them both to the gem.
Fisher Gesha would tell him to extract both Dross and the Eye of the Deep construct, then break them down piece by piece until he could rebuild them into one construct with the functions of both. Then he could bind that single construct to the gem or, preferably, another suitable vessel without a hole in it.
Then she would have hit him for trying to do this without guidance.
But Lindon had neither the time, nor the experience, nor the equipment to do it that way. He wasn’t sure that a living construct like Dross could even be safely deconstructed. He’d have to roll the dice.
Not that he would put it to Dross that way.
He extracted a pair of gold-plated tongs from the roll of tools, holding them up to show Dross. “I’ll be using these to remove you from your vessel,” he explained. “Then—”
Dross zipped out of his rusted container.
He hovered in the air, a purple cloud filled with violet sparks. Within the cloud, Lindon could see patterns of crossing lines, like Dross was made of a structure of ghostly timbers.
“Done!” the construct said cheerily. “Now what?”
Lindon put the tongs down. “Now…try not to resist.”
He put his left hand on the Eye, pouring pure madra into the construct. It was already filling most of the vessel, so he only had to focus on holding it still. That was easier said than done; it felt like trying to keep hold of a living heart that tried to escape his hand with every beat. Essence drifted out of the crack more quickly.
Lindon reached out with his inhuman right hand, then hesitated. He needed his hands free to project the madra, which meant he couldn’t hold the tongs.
Of course, strictly speaking, he didn’t need the tongs.
After a moment of hesitation, he reached out for Dross with his white grip. “Please don’t move.”
As Lindon seized Dross, he actually felt the construct in his Remnant hand. It felt like gripping a handful of cotton. A pang of hunger ran up the arm into Lindon’s soul, but he kept the limb under control. An instant of lost focus, and the arm would devour Dross.
“That gave me a tingle. Is everything all right?”
Sweat rolled down Lindon’s face, but he forced a smile. “Hold still, please.”
Now came the hard part. He had to project more pure madra around Dross to hold him in place. And it had to be exactly the right shape of the sapphire.
Well, one step at a time.
His madra still hadn’t recovered much, so he needed to do this quickly. With a rough grip of madra, Lindon contained Dross’ cloud-like form into a jagged form roughly the shape of a cut gem.
“It occurs to me,” the construct said, “to wonder about my identity. You know what I mean? Was I me before I could think freely? Now, when you merge me with this key, I’ll be taking
on…who knows what memories and functions.”
In order to get this part of the process exactly right, Lindon should have made a mold of the sapphire. It was too late now, so he Forged Dross to match the cut sapphire. As closely as he could, he tried to get every ridge and facet in exactly the right place.
His spiritual grip was slipping, and he was essentially bleeding madra. Even with the added focus from the Dream Well, he was having trouble holding both constructs in the right shape at the same time. Dross kept shifting gradually.
“Will I think of myself differently? How will I see the world? Will I even be able to think anymore, or will I be like I was before?”
Heavens help me, Lindon thought to himself. Then he shoved the constructs together, hoping they would match.
“Will I be myself? What if I hate being a key, but it’s too late?”
There was resistance. Lindon had to push the last of his madra into the effort and shove them together until he forced them to click.
It was a good thing Dross didn’t have a physical body, or this would have been excruciatingly painful.
“On second thought, I’m not sure I…” Dross’ voice froze halfway through the sentence.
The light in the gem flickered and rippled. Lindon’s spiritual grip tightened; had he failed?
Motion passed through the light, as though something were swimming inside the sapphire. The light started to change, staining the vessel purple.
“…want to do this,” Dross continued. “It’s too risky, isn’t it? Who would gamble their very self on a game of chance?”
Lindon fell back, leaning against the wooden chest, holding up the gem that now shone purple.
“We’re done,” he said, swiping sweat from his brow.
“We are? Oh, that’s good then. Now you mention it…” Dross flew out of the crack in the sapphire, leaving the jewel dull and dark. He looked very different than before: his nebulous cloud-form was more of a defined orb, and instead of simple lines, now he was a complex interlocking mechanism of what looked like gears. The sparkling lights whirled in a deliberate, complex cyclone.
“I feel good. I feel great, actually. It’s like I’ve had one eye closed all my life, and now I’ve opened the other five.” The drifting matrix of phantom machinery drifted around Lindon’s head. “You’ve got quite a complicated soul, don’t you? Two cores, I feel like that’s an unusual number. And I can see your face so much more clearly now! It’s…well, at least you have a wonderful spirit. Yes, indeed. That spirit of yours, wow.”
That was a little alarming. After this one operation, Dross had gained senses like a Jade’s. Had the Eye of the Deep always sensed what was going on around it?
Lindon folded his legs into a cycling position and fixed his gaze on Dross. “Now, maybe you can help us. We need to find a way out of here.”
“That’s right in my wheelhouse. A guide and a key, that’s me. Everything you need to find your way, all in one convenient bundle. Are we talking out of the Ghostwater world entirely, or out of this room?”
“Both.”
“Ah, okay, right. Hmmm…there’s a portal outside, which—”
“Apologies, but that’s no longer an option.”
Dross drifted slowly in a circle, like a man pacing. “There’s another portal just like that one, but I won’t lie to you: it’s a little deeper in the facility. It’s located in…Northstrider’s…personal quarters.” He said the Monarch’s name in a hushed whisper.
A stone sunk into Lindon’s gut. “Can you open a Monarch’s door?”
“I am the Eye of the Deep now,” Dross said confidently. “No problem at all. And this Monarch was of the opinion that the best security was his presence. I can open his door, don’t you worry, but getting there is the trick.”
Lindon’s tension eased slightly. “And how about out of this room?”
“Even easier.” He bobbed over to the keyhole and flashed brightly. “Here it is! I’m astonished you didn’t notice this before, actually.”
“I'm afraid there may be someone out there waiting for me. I admit, I was hoping for another exit.”
Dross whirled in the air and then swooped over to the keyhole. Half of him dipped into the wall. His insides shone, a mass of phantom gears, and the clouds of sparks within him flickered and rolled.
“Ekerinatoth of the gold dragons,” he announced as he emerged. “She goes by Ekeri, which is good, because that's faster to say. She is waiting just outside for her prey to surface. That's you, by the way. You're the prey.”
Lindon looked from the construct to the keyhole. “How did you know that?”
“This whole place is a network of constructs. Just lousy with 'em. I popped in, sampled their memories for the last few hours, then popped out. Turns out there's all kind of records in there; the same factions have been coming back every ten years for over fifty years now, so we've piled up quite the hoard of juicy gossip.”
Lindon's interest spiked. This was something he could use.
“What can you tell me about her?”
“Well, she's close enough to Underlord that she can take on a humanoid form, can't she? By the time she reaches Archlord, she'll look even more human than you do. And there's every reason to suspect she will. She's the heir to the richest family on the continent, and they didn't get that way by not stealing everything that isn't nailed down, if you understand me. She practices the Path of the Flowing Flame, which involves dragon-fire behaving like a liquid. I imagine that's what she sprayed onto the door for about an hour after you vanished. Didn't do any good, of course. Those are high-quality rocks.”
The thought of fighting another Truegold made him feel like he was backed into a corner again, but he set that feeling aside. This was an opportunity to push himself forward.
“Can you help me figure out how she fights?”
“I don't know everything, do I? What do I look like, a...know-everything construct? That's a terrible name, I'm sorry, I'll try again. What do I look like, an omni-codex?” He brightened. “That sounds pretty good, actually. Omni-codex. Call me that from now on.”
“The only way we're getting out of here,” Lindon said, “is through her.”
A deep, gravelly voice rumbled from behind him. “Now that is the path of a dragon.”
Orthos' eyes were dim, but they still smoldered with orange-red light. The black turtle shifted his bulk, and he let out a cough. On his head, Little Blue jumped up and down in excitement.
Tension he hadn't even noticed melted from Lindon's shoulders. He'd been so concerned that Orthos would never wake up.
The turtle nodded to the bucket. “That's some good water. But I'll need more than that if I'm going to walk out of here. I need meat.”
“Then I need a way to get past Ekeri.”
Orthos laid his head on the ground, eyes sliding shut again, but his mouth crooked open in a smile. “Here's a lesson for you: dragons can be sneaky too.”
~~~
Ekeri rested in her portable shelter only ten yards from the hidden entrance in the stone. The device could make a home out of nothing in only an hour, but it was designed for convenience, not comfort. The rooms in the shelter were bare Forged madra, and she had to carry around all her furnishings herself. She pulled a chair out of her void key and had set it up so she could watch out the second-story window.
She had tried everything she could to force her way into the stone, but it was either dense with earth aura or protected by formidable scripts. Or both. The rock wasn't even scorched after her...perfectly calm and controlled assault.
When that hadn’t worked, she had vented her considerable irritation on the nearby vegetation. Now the sea-stalks around the shelter had been burned away, leaving nothing but sand. There was nothing blocking her view of the entrance.
For the first hour, she watched with perfect patience. In the second hour, she began running her claws down the wall. By the third hour, she had clawed her window significantly wider.
“Replying to the noble lady: they could stay inside until their supplies run out. Surely there would be greater prizes of more interest to milady in another section of the facility. Our maps indicate there is a sacred garden full of natural treasures only a short swim from here.”
Ekeri stopped herself when she realized she was growling. Her attendant was a bland man, younger than twenty, whose expressionless face was almost identical to his counterpart's. Or maybe she was just bad at telling them apart.
“There are secrets in there,” she said, chewing on her claw. “A Lowgold doesn't come in here with a black dragon-spawn for nothing. They have secrets on them, and I want them.”
The two attendants exchanged glances, but their faces were so blank she could read nothing in them.
“Allow me to make a proposal, if it pleases the noble lady. Let us scout out the nearby habitats, and we can report back to you whatever we find. Perhaps we might find something even more valuable than this black dragon-spawn's secrets.”
Ekeri kept gnawing on her claw for a moment as she thought. She didn't like the implication that she was pursuing the wrong prize, but at the same time, she didn't want to give up the other treasures of Ghostwater by focusing on one. Especially if the world was really collapsing soon.
“One of you stay with me,” she said. “I can't allow them to escape, and I won't watch this window on my own all day.”
“It would be my pleasure to stay,” one of them said, voice empty of anything that resembled pleasure, “but surely they cannot escape your perception.”
That was true. There was virtually no chance that a black dragon-spawn or the human borrowing his draconic power could evade her, especially in this area full of water aura. Their madra would stand out like a bonfire in the snow.