by Will Wight
It was like he'd struggled all his life to juggle nine balls at the same time, and suddenly it had become as natural as breathing. One of his older cousins, who had earned a droplet of ghostwater twenty years before, had described it to him as 'strengthening his mental power,' but he hadn't pictured what that meant.
The power faded after only a breath of time, the point of light in his skull dimming. The ghostwater was tapped out, but it would draw from his body and spirit and restore itself over time.
One breath of increased control meant the difference between victory and defeat in a fight. Now, he could consider himself invincible among those of the same stage. And soon he would step into a new realm entirely; the tree had made his steps clear.
He pulled out the second Eye of the Deep.
He would be the first Akura since the Herald who found this place to return more than one Eye. Only a handful of people in history had attained ghostwater at all, and he would have more.
...assuming the tree accepted this one. It shone purple, thanks to the light from the construct inside the gem, and it was talking to him.
“Oh, this place is amazing! I'm a little insulted I didn't know about it, but you know, I guess they couldn't tell me everything. I mean, they could, because I do exist to store knowledge, but it's fine. It doesn't hurt at all. Although now that you mention it, I do feel a sort of connection. Like that is the place I'm supposed to return to. You think that's the Eye talking?” He paused for a moment, considering. “Hey, how about this for a plan: let's not put me in there. I know you've sealed me inside this vessel, but how about you let me go? Hm? I don't trust mysterious compulsions that are telling me to go somewhere.”
The construct pushed against the script keeping it locked inside, and the script flared. Harmony reinforced it with his madra again.
The Blackflames had corrupted this Eye somehow, maybe fusing it with a Remnant or the memories of one of their dead sacred artists. He knelt and held it up, hoping the tree would accept it anyway.
But before he could open his mouth to ask, his spirit whispered a warning. Instinctively, he looked up to the ceiling.
A dark, furious sun had dawned above and behind him. It was like feeling a dragon's birth.
The aura was only Truegold, but it carried such fury and destruction that his spirit trembled. It surprised him; he hadn't thought any Truegold could be a threat.
“Did you feel that? Is that Lindon? I tell you what, let's wait for him. I'm sure we could talk this—”
A cage drifted down from the tree, and Harmony shoved the Eye inside.
The construct shut up as though choked off. The cage started to rise, but it froze only a few feet up.
The branch trembled, and the gem shone purple. The ring of script inside glowed as the spirit pushed its way out, and suddenly Harmony could actually see it emerging from the crack in the sapphire.
It spoke as though through gritted teeth. “...not going to...stay...here...”
The tree's light shone brighter.
When it did, the cage continued to move. The spirit was drawn back inside the gem with a yelp, and the cage settled into place.
The jewel shone purple for another few seconds, and then its light dimmed.
The spirit was finally, blessedly, quiet.
~~~
Lindon held up his hand of flesh, and the madra of a Truegold Blackflame burned the dreadbeast's blood away.
He'd done some quick surgery on a few of the monsters in the garden, extracting the twisted corkscrew bindings in their body. They were hunger madra, the same as his arm, and he'd been able to patch up the hole in his skeletal limb.
It was still scarred, and you could tell where the different sources of madra butted up against one another, but it worked. That was all that mattered.
And he was Truegold.
With Orthos' power running through him, and the water from the Spirit Well to guide it, he was filled with a sense of strength he'd never felt before. Orthos told him that it was always best to spend a few days practicing and cycling after advancement in order to get used to his new power. He'd heard such advice before, and generally agreed.
But not only were they out of time, something felt different about Truegold. He felt complete, as though he were a bowl that had been completely filled.
He suspected that was partially overconfidence, but it was partially that he was approaching the limit of his Blackflame core. When he reached the end of Truegold, he would have advanced as far as he could normally.
After that, he'd have to reforge his body and spirit in soulfire.
Even minutes after advancing, he was looking forward to the next step.
Lindon opened his void key, the closet doorway appearing in the air. This time, when he pulled Little Blue off his shoulder, he handed her a pure scale.
His pure core was still Highgold, but that was higher-grade than he'd ever fed her before. She smiled at him before tilting her head back and swallowing the coin whole. Her blue body rippled for a moment until she let out a drifting hiss of satisfaction.
He reached into the void storage, placing her inside. She squeaked, just as she had last time, clambering up his arm.
Now, he met her eyes. “I can't take you with me this time,” he said.
Little Blue let out a sad note.
“I know. But we have to bring Dross back. You remember Dross?”
She whistled.
“I'm going to have to fight for him, and I'm afraid I can't look after you at the same time. You understand?”
She frowned for a moment, but then turned and walked to the edge of his fingers. She was six inches tall now, and he actually felt her weight as she leaped off like a diver, landing lightly on the edge of a jar filled with Dream Well water.
Little Blue sat down on the jar and gave him an impatient peep.
“I'll be back as soon as I can,” he said, and closed the void key.
Outside, Orthos gave the hatch a sideways glance. “This is not wise. I've changed my mind. The courage of a dragon is valuable, but it must be balanced by the wisdom of a dragon.”
Reaching into his pocket, Lindon withdrew the gatestone. The chalky ball shimmered in the light as though it were made of crushed blue glass. “Then you'll be relieved to know that I have decided to use the gatestone.”
Orthos brightened. “Really?”
“Yes.” Lindon lobbed the stone so that it landed a few feet away from the hatch. Before Orthos could ask what he was doing, Lindon extended a finger. A quick beam of dragon's breath struck the gatestone dead center.
The device let out a blue orb big enough to swallow a person, then disappeared. The stone was unharmed, a man-sized web of cracks hovering in the air.
Orthos rounded on him in a fury. “What have you done?”
“The scripts around the Spirit Well were disabled, and I thought about why. The cracks must have sliced through the runes and interrupted the script.” Lindon pointed to the ground, where many of the silk-thin cracks ran into the stone. “Even if that's not what happened before, I'm fairly certain it would work that way now. Look.”
He extended a palm, and a much thicker bar of dragon's breath punched through the hatch.
There was no flaring script to defend it. This time, it blasted through the metal, and Lindon moved it from one side to the other to obliterate the hatch. The edges of the tunnel now glowed white-hot, but there wasn't as much melting metal as he'd expected. That would be the destruction aspect of Blackflame at work.
He walked over to the edge and prepared to hop in. Orthos peered over the edge.
“That's a long way down,” he said.
“Look at it this way: the entrance is plenty big enough. You'll fit just fine.”
“What if it gets narrower as you fall? My shell is not meant for tight spaces.”
Lindon looked down into the darkness, swept it with his spiritual perception, and then took a deep breath. “I'll let you know,” he said as he jumped.
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There was a rush of air and darkness, then he hit the ground. Even without an Enforcer technique active, he absorbed the impact lightly: the benefit of the meat from the Silverfangs and Diamondscales.
He would probably look back on this month in Ghostwater as one of the most profitable of his life...assuming they made it out.
“Nothing down here,” Lindon called up. “You can jump.”
“Are you certain?” Orthos shouted back.
“I'm going to start exploring. If you don't think you can join me, you can leave it to me, and I'll let you know what I find.”
A moment later, a dull red meteor crashed into the ground as Orthos hit shell-first. He swung from side to side to right himself, marching over to Lindon.
“A dragon doesn't hesitate.”
Orthos had hesitated for quite a long time, but Lindon said, “I'm glad for that. I think we should head this way.”
The room at the bottom of the shaft was nothing more than an open space with three dark tunnels leading in different directions. Since advancing to Truegold, Lindon's spiritual senses had immediately expanded, so he headed through the entrance where he most clearly sensed Harmony's shadow madra.
They walked through a dark hallway with rooms on either side. The hall reminded him of the Dream Well facility, except it was lit only by the subtle glow from Orthos' shell.
The sense of Harmony's madra pulled them straight down the hall, and Lindon started to pick up speed.
Until a man appeared next to them.
He was a hulking figure a head taller than Lindon, packed with muscle, his golden eyes vertically slitted like a reptile's. Black scales covered his arms up to the elbow, and he loomed like an executioner.
Lindon had ignited the Burning Cloak and gathered up a handful of dragon's breath when he recognized the figure.
Northstrider, the Monarch on the Path of the Hungry Deep. Creator of Ghostwater.
He was shocked for a moment, but hurriedly dropped to his knees.
“What are you doing?” Orthos growled. “Get up.”
“Don't you see...”
“No, I see it. It's a projection.”
Lindon swept the image of Northstrider with his spirit. It reminded him of the White Fox madra his family had always used; a blend of light and dreams.
Northstrider's projection surveyed them both, or seemed to, and then spoke. “For you who travel here after my departure, I have left this message.”
“Let's hurry,” Orthos said, and trotted off. Lindon followed him, with Northstrider's image floating along next to them.
“I poured years of effort into this world and its research projects,” he went on, undisturbed by their jog down the hall. “None of them delivered what I wanted: a mind, subordinate to my own, that could manage a small portion of my powers. The messengers of the heavens use such constructs, so perhaps they can only be created beyond this one small world. But I still left behind the greatest mind a man could create.”
Some of the doors had small windows, and the shining lights or shifting movement he saw inside made him want to look inside. But a new sensation from up above had drowned out the trail of Harmony's madra: it was a surge of power that felt like the Eye of the Deep, only many times more powerful.
They picked up the pace.
“I dismissed the researchers, but scattered keys all over the world. Over four thousand memory storage constructs, each gathering knowledge on their way back here. When they return, they contribute to a greater whole. Eyes of the Deep record and gather knowledge, all with the purpose of returning here. To add their information to the collective.”
Now the world was crumbling. This would be the last delivery Ghostwater ever received. It only had a few weeks left, at most.
Lindon extended his perception behind him, sensing a disruption in space that felt like cracks in existence. The spatial cracks were crawling after him, down from where he'd crushed the gatestone.
Maybe they had less time than he'd thought.
“I will allow a few beggars into this world to fight over the other scraps, but you who bring an Eye of the Deep, you will receive the true prize. A drop of ghostwater. If you have tasted of the other wells, you should know they were only prototypes. By-products of our attempts to create this one power. It no longer benefits me, but what is trash to a Monarch may still be treasure to all others.”
The hallway opened up onto a huge chamber, like an artificial cave. A metal tree filled the far wall, with cages instead of leaves and Eyes of the Deep hanging like glowing fruit. Two-thirds of the cages were empty, but it was still bright.
To the right of the tree, there was a jade doorframe. Identical to the one Lindon had destroyed in the first habitat.
And in front of the tree, Harmony stood in front of what looked like a stone birdbath. His Goldsign hovered behind his head, so all Lindon saw was a circle of darkness on his shoulders.
“Return the Eye of the Deep to the tree,” Northstrider instructed, golden eyes turning to the massive scripted device. “You may ask one question and receive one drop of ghostwater. And for the rest of your life, know that you are in my debt.”
Then the Monarch vanished, and Harmony turned to meet them.
Chapter 16
The dark green madra of the tent flickered and fuzzed like it was losing reality. For Forged madra, it had lasted a long time.
Light trickled in through the entrance; Yerin had cut open a hill and buried them in it. All the better for hiding. She'd scratched basic script-circles into all the nearby boulders to help veil them, but the one on the tent was still their best. When it went out, it was only a matter of time until they were found.
She opened a case that had once contained healing salves. As she'd expect from a rich girl, Mercy carried an herbalist's shop worth of pills, elixirs, and sacred herbs around with her.
Or she had. They had delved deep into her stock to fight off the burn wounds the dragon Underlady had left them.
There was one vial left in the case, its contents glowing like blue diamonds. Yerin removed it and tossed it to Mercy.
“Last one,” she said. “Make it count.”
Mercy tried to push the vial back to her. “What would I use it for? Look at me, I'm good as new!” She stood up and twirled in place to demonstrate, but she didn't have enough room to stand up straight.
Yerin wouldn't have jumped straight to 'good as new.' The liquid fire madra had burned the hair off half of Mercy's head. You wouldn't know it now. Her salve was specially made to get rid of burn wounds; apparently the Akura family dealt with dragons more than mosquitos. Her hair had even started to come back in, faster than was natural, but Yerin had cut the girl's hair all over to match. Now it was cropped close to the skull; it would be months before she could tie it back into a tail again.
The faint shadows of burn scars remained on her left cheek. Those would never heal on their own, but this salve should take care of them. Her leg was in worse shape. She hadn't been able to put any weight on it for days, but a blood elixir had restored most of the meat. A sacred herb, sealed in a jade box like some kind of treasure, had taken care of the rest.
They had burned through most of the healing elixirs Mercy had brought with her from the Akura family. She wouldn't be able to restock anymore, cut off as she was, but Yerin couldn't think of a better thing to use them for.
So long as Mercy kept getting attention, she'd recover.
Yerin was in a brighter spot. She had a sturdier Iron body than Mercy, and she was more advanced. Whatever Mercy had done by summoning armor onto her arm, it took the lion's share of the blow. Without that, they'd both be dead.
“Use it,” Yerin said. “Don't make me break it over you.”
She'd almost had to do that already. After Mercy had first woken, incoherent from her wounds, she had refused to take anything until Yerin did first. Yerin had forced a healing pill down her throat.
At first, Mercy's spirit had scared Yerin worse than he
r injuries. She had advanced to Highgold during the fight, clear as glass; after waking up, she was a Lowgold again. Yerin had thought it was some kind of spiritual damage, and had avoided bringing it up for days, but Mercy explained that it had to do with her Path.
She could push to open a page beyond her reach, and that book inside her would lend her the power to use it. For a time.
After that, she went back to advancing like normal.
Yerin had immediately asked if she could push to Underlord. Not that far, Mercy had told her. But she could hit Truegold for a minute or two.
That was more than Yerin could say for herself.
The gold Thousand-Mile Cloud was hovering over the edge of the island, and now there were Truegold dragons mixed in with the Lowgolds and Highgolds. Even if the Underlady stayed on her cloud, they were cornered. And the tent had only a day or two left.
Yerin had spent the whole time in this self-made cave cycling and practicing the Endless Sword. She had started touching on the next stage of mastery, but the hourglass was running out like it had a hole in it.
Mercy reluctantly started to apply the salve to herself, but Yerin was staring at the flickering tent. “I need to hit Truegold. Now.”
“We have plenty of time,” Mercy said. That was something Yerin had learned quickly about the Akura girl—if they were about to be buried in an avalanche, she would point out that at least it wouldn't be hot.
“Even if I use my...guest...” Yerin still wasn't comfortable talking, or even thinking, about her Blood Shadow. “...I can't punch through any Underlords. If I don't advance, we're stuck on a raft with sharks all around. I've packed my madra to the brim, so I need something to draw more out of my Remnant and push me over the edge.”
Absently, Mercy rubbed some salve over a scar on her right arm. Her left was still clear, protected by the armor that had—briefly—stood up to an Underlord's attack. “When we reached a bottleneck in our progress, we were taught to find someone to guide us through.”
“My master told me something like that.”
He had said, 'You'd be amazed how much faster you run when there's a hungry wolf behind you.' His way of saying that danger could bring out new depths of strength. Also, his approach to training foot speed.