55 - Battle for the Spirit Well (Patreon)

As I tracked the time, Yerin had been gone for well over two hours now, verging on two and a half.

What was taking her?

The pool of blood around Orthos was continuing to grow, despite Mercy’s efforts at bandaging him, despite Lindon force-feeding him what few dregs of spirit medicine we had left. At this point, Little Blue was the most useful of us for him, and she was just sitting on top of his shell, cooing sadly as she channeled her madra to relieve his pain a little.

Lindon had even gone through Ekeri’s void key, searching for something in the way of medicinal pills or elixirs, but of course there had been nothing useful. Just a lot of jewelry, art, clothes and so on that were only equalled in their sheer stunning tackiness as by their complete uselessness. Honestly, the void key’s contents had been closer to some trash dragon’s hoard of glitter and rhinestones than a serious sacred artist’s safety chest. 

If Senzin Nora had had a void key, it would have probably looked like Ekeri’s.

Mercy, who had a better eye for these things than us, had a very different opinion on the void key’s contents. Apparently, the items were quite valuable in the sense of culture and fashion and so on. She explained that Ekeri’s stuff was probably valuable enough to fund a mid/high-range Blackflame sect’s operations for a year or three, depending on the buyer. She had even claimed for herself a strange, but beautiful glass teacup–thinner than an eggshell, without a shred of madra or a single line of scripts, and yet stronger than goldsteel–that she claimed could have only been made by a Sage’s working. Interesting, but useless in a sacred arts sense. Farcically useless for our purposes. All we wanted were some damn spirit pills.

There were three possibilities, as I saw it. Either the gold dragons were insane, or they had deliberately sent one of their princesses into the pocket world without anything in the way of even a minimal first aid pack. It didn’t make sense. Was it some kind of fucked up cultural statement, maybe? 

Honestly, probably. It tracked with what I’ve read of the dragon’s Monarch–an old school bloody tyrant if there ever was one, with an ethos to Monarchy that wasn’t entirely far off from the beliefs of some of the more savage primitives in the Desolate Wilds, who believed that the most painful advancement Paths were always the best; to hell with any concepts such as efficiency or education or even basic common sense.

The third option was that Ekeri was simply stupid, and I was not even remotely ruling that option out. Not that it mattered. It changed nothing for us. 

The point was, we were shit out of options. Orthos’ window for survival was narrowing fast. It was a feat and a half to convince Lindon not to go out after Yerin; in the end, I had to compromise and told him that if it took another hour, he could go.

If we ever–when we got out of this, I swore to god, I would find, I would make a way to recruit a life artist to the ascension crew. Or at least stuff our void keys so silly with high-grade spirit medicines that we would never be in this situation again.

In the meantime, as an outlet for his nerves, Lindon was furiously throwing himself into experimenting with the insights he had gained from the Script Lord’s partial treatise on pure madra battle Paths. 

I was in no fit state to cultivate, mind or body, so I just sat there, watching and commenting as Lindon cycled his pure madra in fitful starts and stops, trying to form the beginnings of what I knew would become his Soul Cloak. I monitored Lindon carefully with my Copper senses, Jade sight, and the keen ability to read energy flows and madra efficiency that my Path gave me. And most of all, my refiner’s mind. Even Starfire Surge’s ability to slow down my relative mental time, which allowed me to mentally track the real-time mathematics. 

Everything that my crippled self could offer, I focused on Lindon.

“Careful with your madra output locations. You need to focus more on the midpoints of your channels, not the endpoints. Again.”

“Are you listening? Think, Lindon, think. This isn’t the Burning Cloak, and you don’t need so much of your spirit focused around your feet and your joints. Again.” 

“The way that you imagine the flow state of your madra matters. Pure madra isn’t like Blackflame, and it isn’t like water either. Again.” 

I had read the Script Lord’s memories just as Lindon did, but it seemed like he hadn’t recollected that much of it. That was to be expected: the Archlord’s thoughts had been light and sedate, because his attention had been on elementary matters. But his mind had been swimming with many impressions and subconscious ideas supplementing his surface-level thoughts. 

It became increasingly clear that much of it had flown over Lindon’s head. He needed more experience with dream tablet reading.

“Recognize the pure madra for what it is, on its own terms. Visualize the most perfect technique your pure madra is capable of forming, then manifest it through your spirit. Because imagination is a weapon, and the sacred arts are how you weaponize imagination. Again.”

“Hold up, wait, stop, stop–cycle your madra through your pure core a bit more slowly. You’re trying too hard. Again.”

“The release rate of madra from your channels into your muscles needs to be equalized across your body, including your organs. Again.”

“Equalized, you hear me? Enforcing your muscles and tendons alone is a great way to turn your spleen into a grapefruit. Trust me, you don’t want grapefruit. Abominable stuff, honestly. Again.”

“You could literally drown a puppy dead in all the madra you’re venting off. Energy efficiency, you hear me? Energy efficiency is the key to any technique worth a damn. Think of the puppies. Again.”

“You need to think about the best configuration for the technique’s outer contours. Make it as close to skin-tight as you can. It would be too lossy to try for anything bigger while you’re still Lowgold. Again.”

“Your technique’s textural boundary is shit, you’re still venting too much madra to the air. Firm it up. Again.”

After maybe half an hour, and perhaps hundreds of stops and starts of Lindon’s cycling, fine-tuning which channels to use, the speed and flow rate and density of pure madra to use and so on, Lindon closed his eyes.

I could also feel it. We were getting close. Towards the end, Lindon had no longer needed my commentary. His intuition was guiding him towards the most energy-efficient adjustments all on his own.

“Again,” Lindon muttered. 

Pure madra erupted around Lindon in a controlled, blue-white corona that sheathed his body like a glove. Lindon marveled at the changes, and tried walking with the newly birthed Enforcer technique. Just… walking. Which seemed a mundane use of the technique, until one remembered that it was almost literally impossible to merely walk while empowered by the explosive fire and destruction aspects of the Burning Cloak.

Then he decided to push what he could do and simply appeared on the other side of the room, almost as fast as the Burning Cloak could have managed at top speed–but without the Burning Cloak’s explosive, overkill movements. It really was quite impressive, almost the platonic ideal of what an Enforcer technique could be. It was an Enforcer technique that even the best in the world could have been proud of.

But I knew that it still wasn’t good enough.

“How’s it feeling?” I asked.

Lindon met my eyes, excitement writ across his features. “Test me.”

I fired off a very weak Solar Flare from a cutlery knife, since I was too weak to pick up my spear without, eh, better reason than this. A bit of sword aura helped when forming Collapsing Star techniques, which had fire, light, force, and sword madra components–so even the bit of sword aura coalescing around an ordinary kitchen knife made forming the technique a bit easier, since forming madra around a weapon’s ambient aura let you skip several steps in actually forming a battle-ready sacred arts technique.

The knife wouldn’t last for long, since it was no sacred instrument, but I wasn’t in a mood to particularly care.

The Solar Flare was about to reach Lindon, but then he just… flickered to the side.

“Yes!” Lindon said, in as satisfied a voice I could recall ever hearing from him. He was almost giddy. Adorable. “What should I call it?”

“You aren’t done yet,” I gave him a pained grin. I paused for a moment, carefully judging the energies I would need to pull this off without causing him an actual injury. “Again.”

I fired off a much stronger Solar Flare. Much, much faster as well. This one lit up the entire Spirit Well chamber, and managed to disturb Mercy from her quiet cycling.

The smell of burning skin filled the chamber.

“Sky!” Lindon hissed, cradling his scalded arm. I had gotten a glancing blow on him even after he had dodged away. I had corrected my aim as well, dragging the Striker technique after him. He had been fast, I’d give him that. Not fast enough, though. “Why?”

“Better me than an enemy,” I said seriously, as the molten remnants of my knife dropped from my fingers and pooled atop the tiles. “This new Enforcer technique of yours will be effective against ninety-nine point nine percent of sacred artists at your same advancement rank, thanks to the absurd reserves you get from Eithan’s cycling technique. And you still have an arm despite taking a hit from my Striker technique, meaning the technique’s inherent spiritual defenses are top-notch. We just tested that out. Your new Enforcer technique is good. But that’s not good enough, not when you’re contending against the best in the world, like me.”

Lindon gave me a wordless, skeptical look. I could only shake my head at his lack of confidence. “Yes, the Path of the Collapsing Star really is that powerful, even by world standards. If there’s a Path anywhere that can create better Striker techniques with madra alone, I haven’t heard of it,” I said, before stopping to cough. I wasn’t in a mood to start explaining that the real good stuff with this Path of mine only started at Lord. Power was only the half of it. I would get faster activation, better madra control, better stability. But more importantly, once I had soulfire, I’d be able to move beyond the mere ignition stage of the Collapsing Star path and start incorporating fission into my techniques. Just fission, sadly. Fusion came much, much later. 

“...But we have to assume there are other equally dangerous Paths out there, especially in the Monarch factions. If you can’t defend against me, or even evade me, crippled as I am, that just means you aren’t ready yet.”

“I understand,” Lindon said seriously, settling into a loose stance as his Iron Body finished healing his arm. The pain and hurt disappeared from his features. “What do you think should be the next step of this Enforcer technique, then?” 

I grinned. “A name, first off.”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

True, but, eh. After some back and forth hashing, Soul Cloak it was. A bit unimaginative, but it was close enough to accurate, honestly.

“Now then. What do you know about mutated madra aspects?”

Lindon stared at me blankly for a moment. He must have been expecting me to throw more Solar Flares at him. Fuck that, I wasn’t a sadist like Eithan. I was pushing him towards results, not more of the madman’s thinly masked willpower exercises. 

After a moment, Lindon firmed up, abandoning his battle stance. 

“I… know that vital aura is the basis of the sacred arts,” Lindon said slowly. “Even without the sacred arts, living things can sometimes mutate in response to stress, and in that same way, madra can also mutate when living beings spend enough time living, growing, cycling while taking in unusual aspects of aura. The nature of vital aura is a reflection of the world, and the reflection of the world’s life and how it relates to aura is the sacred arts.”

I nodded like the professor I had once been. Honestly, not a bad answer, even by Imperial College standards. He was even quoting Balciter, one of the old greats. 

Meaning that he probably had, in fact, ended up reading some of my waylaid College textbooks. I’d been wondering about that.

“You’ve more or less got it. The archetypical madra variants–fire, earth, force, ice, lightning, shadow, wind, dream, blood and life and so on–are all just a starting point. You can consider them the foundation blocks of sacred reality, or perhaps the first mosaic in the infinite tessera of complexity that is the unified study of the madra arts.” I paused, then gave Lindon a questioning look. Honestly, I didn’t know that much about the day to day minutia of how Eithan had trained Lindon’s fundamentals up. Had actual books ever been involved? I didn’t feel like rehashing a lecture that eight year old children just starting out their sacred arts Paths typically received. At the same time, I didn’t want to confuse him by skipping right into the Cradle-equivalent of post doctorate-level terminology.

“I know that Eithan focuses far more on practical instruction than formal study, but you do at least know these basics, right?”

To his credit, Lindon did end up nodding, albeit reluctantly. I wasn’t sure how much of his hesitation was due to a lack of knowledge, or the fact that I’d just burned his damn arm badly enough that he needed to cycle into his Bloodforged Iron Body to fix it, so I just assumed for the best and continued the lecture. 

“Furthermore, in any real-world scenario, pure aura has always been, and always will be instantaneously overprinted by any other madra aspect that has even a whiff of elemental nature to it. That’s just the nature of things. Pure energy gets subsumed by elemental energy, every time, because the elements have actual structure to them. For all those reasons, paths of pure madra are very rare, and are usually considered pretty useless in battle–with good cause, honestly. Pure paths do exist,” I said carefully, thinking of Blackflame’s Senzin clan, perhaps even Nora herself, though I never saw fit to ask, “but they tend to be in noncombatant Paths related to merchantry or banking or so on, and very rarely are brought past the level of Truegold.”

“However… once you start looking at the mutations of madra aspects, things start to get interesting.”

“Mutations?”

“Some of the most powerful Paths in the history of Cradle have been mutations of fundamental madra aspects. And pure madra, too, has mutations. That’s important. Because what even a lot of scholars tend to miss is that pure madra is also one of the aspects of madra that can mutate.” I let Lindon chew on those words for a moment, before continuing. 

“This isn’t appreciated often because of how… limited the study of pure Paths are. That’s because pure aura doesn’t exist, and can’t exist, at least outside of the most extreme of theoretical laboratory conditions. And, for that matter, pure madra only occurs in humans, not in nature, and not in sacred beasts, who in almost all cases receive their species’ generalized Paths from birth–dragons and breathing fire, for example. Because of that, all the variance and potential and possibility of nature, which gives birth to almost every other Path under heaven, is useless for our purposes. The natural world collectively offers us nothing when it comes to learning the methods of pure aura or madra. Meaning there has never been a choice but to build pure madra Paths from the ground up–which is mostly, and mostly accurately, seen as a useless endeavor.” I took a breath, then continued. 

“Most of the sacred arts, ninety nine percent plus of all the Paths in the world, really, aren’t genuinely innovative. They’ve mostly been plagiarized. They’re scavenged from the Paths of sacred beasts–which are obviously already proven to work, since the beasts are using them–and then repurposed to be usable by humans. Or the Path originates from the unique aural properties of some natural treasure or sacred location, which is then weaponized. Or, most commonly, a Path originates from some scavenged-together combination of all those factors. Building a Path from the ground up is hard. Because it requires genuine innovation, which is, sadly, a concept beyond most of humanity. It can take centuries of trial and error, the accumulations of generations of knowledge to create a genuinely original Path that’s worth a damn.”

Lindon was following along, nodding every so often. I took that as an encouraging sign, and decided it was time to actually get to the point.

“Even in Sacred Valley, you’ve probably heard some iteration or another of the saying that ‘knowledge is power,’ but in broader world-level sacred arts, that saying is very, very literal. The strongest, most established Paths–or more specifically, the sects and empires that are founded on the backs of those Paths–treat original Paths knowledge as something beyond price. Because stealing and plagiarizing is easier and cheaper than innovating at that level, and that’s the honest truth. Sages and Heralds and Monarchs have conquered nations and sold their own daughters for even scraps of original, relevant Paths knowledge, and committed genocides to hide the same. It’s actually one of the more common causes of wars, if you look over Cradle’s cultural mythology. The hero of a legend gets subsumed into a Monarch’s family for their Path innovations. Sometimes, they resist, and rise to Monarch in their own right to contest those influences. Other times, they are killed for their hubris, thinking they could stand against the will of Monarchs. Classics, really.” Lindon nodded along.

“Now then. Pure madra mutations.

“For example, did you know that scholars have a ranking of the most powerful Paths to ever exist? The majority of Archscholars consider the most powerful Path in the modern world today to be the Path of Celestial Radiance, which is a pure-path mutation that emphasizes the subsuming property of pure madra. The Ninecloud Monarchs created an entire Path around weaponizing that property of the mutated pure madra in their bloodline, which they later came to name royal madra. It’s one of the oldest Paths remaining in the world, and is still almost impossible to defend against. Every other Path in the entire world has had collective millenia to come up with countermeasures, and still, there’s almost nothing. That’s how powerful pure madra mutations can become.”

“The Script Lord, whose memories you’ve gone over, emphasizes that certain specific aspects of pure energy are a bit more resistant to being subsumed than the others. Take that resistance far enough, put enough energy into the reaction, and you have a pure madra aspect that can reverse the normal state of reality and actively subsume the elemental aspects instead. This action could easily be interpreted as… cleaning, or cleansing. Does that remind you of anything?”

Lindon had withdrawn into himself. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how much of my lecture he was still listening to. He seemed to be… thinking about something.

“Blue,” Lindon called carefully. “Come here, please. I would like you to help me test something.”

My trepidation disappeared, and my face split into a beaming grin. 

It looked like the second cornerstone of the Path of Twin Stars would be laid down much, much faster this time around–

The locked door to the Spirit Well’s chamber opened, and we instantly all got up off our feet.

“Yerin!” Lindon shouted. “Did you get–”

Ah shit, I sighed internally.

It wasn’t Yerin.

000

The intruders were three in number, and unmistakably of the Ninecloud Court, though I didn’t have a damn clue who they were.

“You must be the intruders,” said the one in front, dressed like a peacock at Pride month. He wore gemstone lamellar armor and a goldsteel hauberk underneath an embroidered outer robe of rainbow colors, and had a flared, wide collar around his neck that actually had a row of orbs that reminded me of a peacock’s tail. Strapped to his arm was a goldsteel buckler shield, and sheathed crosswise over his shoulder was a massive greatsword that looked like it had been carved out of a single diamond.

Behind him were two drop-dead beautiful women, both identically long-haired and red-headed. They had the identical look of twins, with shining nine-colored eyes and slender, perfected features that belonged in an artist’s painting, not at the bottom of some dark pocket ocean. They wore wide, flared halter top dresses that looked almost impractical for battle, more fitted for a ballroom than the sacred arts, and wore capes of all things, secured at the shoulder by a wintersteel brooch; all in every color of the rainbow, all shimmering with the otherworldly and ever-shifting texture of liquid gemstone and sacred silks.

“And who are you?” I asked politely, after a moment’s pause.

The lead guy, who must have been in his early thirties, with hair more orange than red, spoke brusquely. “I am Sha Dellian, Radiance Guardsman of the Inner Ninecloud Court, here to escort my Sage’s two young charges to the Spirit Well. Your presence here is… unexpected, but not outside our expectations. You must also be holding an Eye of the Deep, to have gotten through the chamber’s doors.” He was staring me down as if I was an ant. What the hell. 

“I have been instructed by the Tourmaline Sage himself to offer you people the chance to surrender and withdraw from this trial with dignity, despite your trespass. You will be allowed to keep whatever you have found thus far from the pocket world.”

“And if we don’t?” Lindon said.

“There’s a good outcome here for all of us,” I said, smiling desperately. “There’s plenty of Spirit Well water for all of us to share. We literally won’t stop you. Just take what you can hold. We mean you no harm.”

“Who do you think you are, peasant?” One of the distractingly gorgeous redhead twins said, with an expression and tone colder than ice. “You do not negotiate with the blood of Radiance itself. You will submit, or fall. Wounded as you are, how do you hope to stand against us?”

“You’re being unreasonable. We–”

“Sky,” Lindon muttered quietly. “There’s no point trying. Just look at them.” Oh no, they’re too rich, we’re too broke, run for cover! Fuck that!

I let out a brittle, frustrated breath. Why now? Why now?

I did not like Lindon’s odds against a Truegold and two Highgolds of the Ninecloud Court. He was still a Lowgold. Was there something I could do to even this? Anything?

Lindon walked forwards, Blackflame in his eyes as he put his hulking body directly between his wounded friends and the three Ninecloud Court Golds.

Mercy, for once, said nothing at all. She only stared at the intruders with a serious expression, and used her Strings of Shadow–on herself. She covered her entire splinted left leg with a layer of woven shadow madra–and then she was upright, glaring resolve at the Ninecloud Court, as Suu transformed from a staff into a draconic bow of shadow.

She wasn’t standing, per se. She was animating herself with her own sacred arts. 

All right, I had to admit, that was pretty hardcore.

“We won’t attack you!” I said, “Wounded as we are, exactly as you said! We have no reason to fight!”

“Trespassing Golds do not negotiate with the blood of Monarchs,” Sha Dellian said placidly, with no change whatsoever in his features. He seemed almost bored, eyeing and dismissing each of us by turn, though, almost unnoticeably, his gaze did linger upon Mercy for a moment. “Submit, and show due gratitude that this trial falls outside the jurisdiction of imperial Ninecloud law and its unbending jurisprudence as it regards to pirates, interlopers and thieves.”

I stared at him for a moment, slack-jawed. Did he just call us–

“Still your madra,” Sha Dellian ordered. “Faces against the ground, hands behind your backs. I will open my gate key and send you outside, where you will explain yourselves to the Sage of the Silver Heart and other arbiters.”

That would be nothing less than a death sentence. For me, for Orthos. For anyone not named Mercy, really, depending on Akura Charity’s mood. For all that she was a protector of humanity, she had almost none. Especially for those outside her family.

Then I unpacked those words some more, and realized–

This guy was nothing less than a flying pig, cut from the same cloth of bastard as the Bai Rous and Naru Gweis of the world. This one was just rainbow-colored, rather than Skysworn emerald. He wasn’t even seeing us. Just our supposed ‘offenses.’ A creature of hierarchy who saw the world through only one perspective: looking down, looking down on anyone and everyone not of the hierarchy. The kind of man who made me hate this world.

“Still your madra,” Sha Dellian repeated, more dangerously. His eyes were narrowing, and he was beginning to unsheathe his sword. “Faces against the ground, hands behind your backs. Now.”

Lindon was right. I would have better luck negotiating with a stone. 

Shit and fuck. This fight was going to break out in seconds. We were… horrifically… outmatched. I was crippled. Was there anything I could do? 

“Blue,” I muttered. “Get to Lindon. Now.”

Lindon looked back at me in shock. “What are you doing–”

Sha Dellian took that chance to attack. Lindon scooped up Little Blue just as his attacker threw a web of Forged madra at him, of nine different colors. The Absolute Decree. Once that technique landed, it would fully restrict the target’s spirit.

Lindon took the attack head-on, and my eyes widened in disbelief.

It was over.

Unless…

Little Blue’s tiny form light up, and Lindon exploded with pure madra, forming his Soul Cloak. He ran up to get his scythe, and the next Striker technique that they threw, he parried it with the scythe, his movements taking on an additional layer of mastery and smoothness.

Lindon had awoken.

000

Diving back into the ocean of Ghostwater had Yerin cycling her madra furiously in preparation for threats. 

But she saw nothing, felt nothing in the range of her spiritual senses. Just an odd school or two of sacred carp plying the waters for the smaller mundane fish that they called food. There were no sea drakes in sight.

Her Blood Shadow had abandoned its human form, and was now slithering through the water like some sort of unformed worm. But it did keep one human arm formed, which made for a rather strange sight as Dross, the strange memory construct, continued to project a line of purple madra towards their destination. 

Annoyingly, her Blood Shadow seemed to find a sort of pure, almost childlike enjoyment in being free and out in the world for a purpose other than combat. And Yerin could not deny that it was useful to have an extra set of eyes at her back. 

If only it were anyone else’s eyes.

She swam in silence, moving through the water in a common, but deliberate breaststroke of the sort that her parents had taught her the beginnings of before she even was six years old, and her master had taught her the final forms of far more recently. 

Her parents had taught her to swim for the pleasure of it. But her master had taught her that this specific style of swimming was the best way to keep your head swiveling and your eyes on the move, searching for threats. 

She was no child anymore; she was a sacred artist grown. With the Steelborn Iron Body given to her by her master, she could swim many times faster than the girl she had once been, even without cycling her madra. She moved quickly, as quickly as her Iron Body would allow her without actively being pumped with madra. Yerin preferred to keep herself veiled here, stilling her madra; the better to avoid being detected by any hungry fish, or by any sharks with a grudge. Her Blood Shadow, thankfully, copied her without needing to be ordered.

Despite her searching, she saw no sign of Palutin or his dolphin. No doubt off hunting somewhere or another. All she could see was the darkness of Ghostwater’s pocket sea, sometimes dotted with brightly colored dots of light, some bigger, many smaller, above and below, and to all sides that represented the many dozens, perhaps hundreds of habitats that this sea held. Points of mostly far-off lights amidst a tapestry of darkness.

A minute or two into her swim, Yerin suddenly felt something coming from above.

Tidewalkers pulling the same old trick again? Yerin snarled, instantly unveiling herself, forming her master’s memories and her madra and will into an Endless Sword that she was confident would cut through even that ridiculous Enforcer technique of theirs, but then–

She realized she wasn’t sensing Tidewalkers at all. Something… else.

Yerin and her Blood Shadow both prepared for battle, watching with silent alarm as two figures descended from above, sinking through the water as if they were made of solid pig iron rather than flesh. 

A pair of peak Truegolds that… all but ignored the both of them.

They made no move to attack Yerin or her Blood Shadow.

She recognized neither of them. One was a sacred beast, some sort of mostly-humanized whale as far as she could tell, with a black whale’s head and a white lower jaw and throat. Was he some other kind of Tidewalker? He felt far… far more dangerous than the others she had fought. A weight in her spirit. A trembling of the ambient vital aura. He was a force artist, beyond any doubt at all, though she couldn’t even begin to say what Path.

The other was easier to tell the general nature of, at least. A human, a young man and sacred artist on the famed Path of Celestial Radiance if there ever was one, all crimson hair and shining rainbow clothing and eyes.

Concerningly, both were dressed like princes. That meant nothing good, not for her, not in a place like this.

But even as Yerin’s goldsigns raised around her like hackles, the two strange figures made no move to attack.

They just… kept descending.

They both stared at her, silent and judging as they sank through the dark water. Yerin’s eyes tracked theirs until they disappeared into the endless dark below, descending into Ghostwater’s abyssal depths. They disappeared from her spiritual senses not long after.

What in the name of the donkey-bitten heavens? 

Yerin met her Blood Shadow’s eyes–she had turned human again, pointlessly, in preparation for battle–and could only answer the Blood Shadow’s confusion with her own silent shrug.

They stilled their madra again and resumed swimming, despite their shared confusion.

What had that been about? What was down in the deepest waters that had two peak Truegolds diving so far? Far deeper than even the deepest of the habitats. 

Her master had sometimes told her of his adventures at sea, chasing for rare refiner’s ingredients; apparently, sea dragons, though largely nomadic, liked to roost in caves on the ocean floor, and were fiercely territorial when it came to their true homes; they would guard their treasures and sacred places like they were their own children. 

The abyssal depths of Ghostwater. She reckoned that was where the sea drake’s spawning grounds were, if anywhere. Drakes were close enough to dragons, weren’t they? 

Why would Truegolds willingly venture there? 

Sky had mentioned nothing about what other treasures might be in Ghostwater apart from the wells and Dross.

Something to ask him about, she supposed. Or Dross, who seemed to know just about everything there was to know about this pocket world.

Soon, she was swimming past a cluster of different habitats over on her right. There, slightly below and off to the side of her path to the Spirit Well’s habitat, there were half a dozen or so other habitats closely grouped together, all glowing with a sort of bronze-copper light, all converged around a larger central one like a sort of aquatic constellation of bronze. 

It was in the waters above those closely-grouped habitats that she saw a battle to the death between other sacred artists.

Ordinarily, that would not have attracted too much of her attention; it was a common sight in the wild, especially when sacred artists were competing for natural treasures. But her hackles raised when she realized she was seeing the Tidewalkers again. She thought there were even more of them, at first, but then she realized that the sharks had now teamed up with two gold dragons, who swam through the water as easily as any fish. Seven or eight Golds, including two Truegolds, all teamed against…

Yerin cursed.

It was the one Mercy and Sky had both warned her about, told her to steer far and clear from. 

The Akura shadow artist with the white robes and black halo.

Yerin thought for a moment about jumping in to help him–if nothing else, she could always get behind helping humans against honorless beasts and their pack tactics; but then she realized that something was strange about this battle. 

The sharks and dragons were the ones bleeding, not the vastly outnumbered Akura.

Nor… did she see any wounds on him… 

Then Yerin, her eyes flickering and widening as she tracked the movements of the battle, realized.

The Tidewalkers and the gold dragons weren’t fighting the Akura. 

They were trying to flee from him.

And he was chasing them.

In the water.

He was moving through the water without swimming, freely flying through Ghostwater’s dark sea on currents of shadow aura as if he was a Lord ascending through the sky with the aid of soulfire. 

Probably with the aid of some specially prepared construct, like Sky’s masks, but on another level.

His entire body was encased in a bubble of air, not just his head. 

He had butchered a third gold dragon–two separate halves of dragon were currently sinking into the deeps nearby him, Remnant already dissipating into essence–and he looked placid, face utterly unconcerned, fighting and killing the sacred beasts with all the disinterest of a man plucking grapes. 

Many of the sharks and one of the surviving dragons bore long, deep wounds that bled red into the water, cuts that must have penetrated their defensive Enforcer technique. Cuts that could have come from a sword, though she saw none on the Akura; she saw no weapon on him at all, actually.

Even as she watched, a Diamondscale Sea Drake emerged from the deeper dark, jaws set to envelop not the Akura, but a piece of dragon corpse nearby him–and he slashed downward with two fingers and beheaded it without even looking down, using a technique she had never seen before, but vaguely reminded her of the Rippling Sword; some sort of instantly-manifested fissure of purple-black shadow and sword madra that descended on the Drake’s neck like an executioner’s axe, thinner than a hair and dozens of feet long.

The Drake hadn’t even been going for him. 

He had executed it just for… approaching him? Annoying him?

Bleed this.

Yerin wanted no part of whatever was going on here. She switched from her breaststroke to a faster form that made more use of her legs, pumped her Iron Body full of madra and hurried until that bloody battle was far behind her, and she could no longer see either the battlers or the outcome, or what they had even been fighting for.

She finally reached the Spirit Well habitat and passed through the barrier. It was only after she could breathe again, only after she had finished taking long, deep gulps of actual air that she realized her heart was still pounding.

Bleed me.

Maybe Sky’s warnings were worth half a hair after all.

Didn’t matter anymore, though. She had gotten off, was back in the Spirit Well, with the Life Well water that would save everyone.

She had done it. 

Sky was going to owe her for this. She looked forward to that almost as much as saving Orthos.

Then her Jade senses lit up with impressions of battle. She immediately kicked up into high gear, jumping clear over the shelves of the labyrinthine tablet library and hopping from one shelf to the other.

Lindon, eyes red and black, was battling, or, more accurately, holding on against three sacred artists, one Truegold and two Highgolds, all wearing rich clothing. It reminded her, actually, of that red-haired man that had dived down the ocean along with that whale man.

Lindon sent a Black Dragon’s Breath at the pair of Highgolds. The Truegold jumped forward and immediately Forged a mirror. It ate the technique and spat it back out, this time with a thin layer of rainbow madra surrounding it. Lindon ducked beneath his own technique, sprinting so low to the ground he was nearly parallel with it–and then he was punching and kicking at the Highgolds, trying to disrupt their Striker barrages with martial arts and pure aggression, refusing to give them any space. 

Dark arrows rained down on the trio, and the Truegold repositioned his mirror to take them–before turning back to Lindon. Mercy was somehow fighting, and her spirit radiated with the force of a Highgold. As far as Yerin could tell, Mercy was trying to peel the Truegold swordsman away from Lindon, but the older man wasn’t taking the bait. For some reason, all three Celestial Radiance sacred artists were focusing on Lindon, as if the Lowgold was the higher priority to them than the Highgold archer. Why?

That’s when Lindon got in close, trying to grab one of the Highgolds by the dress. Not with the Burning Cloak, no.

This was a pure madra enforcer technique. Even as she watched, one of the Highgold women blasted Lindon with a Celestial Radiance technique that should have put him down, body and spirit. Lindon took the Striker hit… on purpose as far as Yerin could tell… and it did nothing, apart from slowing down his movements for less than a split second. His face twisted in pain, but he took the trade, advancing one step closer to the highgold woman, sweeping for her neck with his scythe. How?

In that instant, Yerin saw Little Blue flare with madra and blue light. The little Sylvan Riverseed was riding the back of Lindon’s neck like he was a horse, clutching at his hair for dear life.  

A second later, Lindon was trading blows with all three Celestial Radiance artists from within the center of their formation. As far as Yerin could tell, he was aiming to disrupt, trying to minimize their opportunities to use Striker techniques by never giving them a clear line of sight. Lindon was using their own teammates against them. 

Had he mastered an entirely new technique in the three hours she had spent away from them? Or had he been holding out on her?

Her entire body and all her instincts urged her to jump in to fight alongside Lindon, but it was a memory that stopped her.

For she recognized this Path. Not from personal experience, but from the Sword Sage’s warnings. That memory, now combined with her own newfound insights of his Remnant, rang extra clear in her mind.

“When you walk the path of a sacred artist, you’ll clap eyes on all sorts of oddballs and Paths you never knew were even possible, paths that challenge your understanding of the world,” he was reclined against a chair that he had bent out of some trees using some Sage ability no-doubt, making it so that the tree looked like it had deliberately been made to grow in the shape of a chair, “Walk long enough, and you might even run into a pure Path. Even longer, and if luck isn’t on your corner, you will run into the most powerful pure madra Path of them all. The Path of Celestial Radiance. It’s a Bloodline Legacy, and it’s the nightmare of many a sacred artist. It is the only Path in the world that can actually turn your own power against you directly.”

Lindon’s arm got caught by a lash of rainbow madra. He growled in agony as his own spirit rebelled against him–and then Little Blue’s form flared again. The rainbow madra disappeared from his skin instantly and he swung his scythe.

Yerin considered her approach. Tactically. Despite being two advancement ranks higher than Lindon, unlike him, none of her techniques could directly counter the Path of Celestial Radiance. If she took one hit, even tried blocking, she would probably be out for the count. And she would rather eat her own sword than go down that stupidly.

She would wonder later exactly from where Lindon had dragged out an Enforcer technique that could counter one of the world’s most famous Paths. That was a mystery and a half she planned to shake out of him.

Later. 

After she figured out a way to feed her sword to these too-colorful Ninecloud dogs. 

Don’t let their techniques touch you. Don’t try blocking them, either. Those tactics both went without saying. Even in favorable Path matchups, the Path of the Endless Sword was next to useless at blocking. If they hit you, your body and spirit will be stunned. A Sylvan Riverseed will have to cleanse you, like Lindon. That was… impractical. Because unfortunately for her, the only Riverseed worth half a chipped scale in this habitat was the one on Lindon’s shoulder. 

The Spirit Well should have similar properties, of course, but that would mean that she would have to go there every time she got hit. That wasn’t an option.

She pulled in her Blood Shadow. It didn’t resist, thankfully. A fully spiritual being would only be a puppet waiting for its strings in the face of this Monarch Path.

Her eyes scanned her surroundings, until she saw the fallen form of Sky, lying on the ground in a pool of slowly growing blood, far away from the battle.

Shocked, she sprinted over the tops of the dream tablet shelves, jumped down and kneeled next to him. Something had burned a tiny hole straight through his right lung, robes included. He stirred and opened his eyes, smiling wanly. Blood was leaking from the corners of his lips. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he wheezed, “Your face… scars… Got water?”

Yerin quickly opened the void key and came back out with a jugful of it. She tipped it over to Sky’s open mouth, his eyes pleading and desperate. He closed them, as if to relish the flavor. Then he seized up as the powerful life aura plied its magic.

Sky didn’t immediately recover as Yerin had expected. He bucked in pain, hissing from between clenched teeth in a sort of half-muted scream. His mouth, eyes, ears, nostrils, and a burned hole going through his right lung all glowed with a burning green light, and she felt pure vitality course through his body, melting into him and replenishing his blood essence and healing his injuries in seconds. Then, the remaining effect of the Life Well water coalesced upon his  thin, fading lifeline, adding and reinforcing to it. But before his lifeline could be even halfway replenished–

The glowing stopped.

“More,” Sky hissed. Yerin was still stunned, this was nothing like how the Life Well’s water had reacted when she had taken it. “Now!”

Yerin panicked. She dumped a lot of the jug into his open mouth, before pouring the rest over the rest of his body–especially around that scar on his chest where that Blood Shadow had nearly killed him several weeks before.

Sky rolled on the floor, insensate with pain, unable to hold back a few screams. But after thirty or so seconds, he clambered up to his feet, panting, spear in hand. 

“Sky? Yerin asked.

“I was even closer to the dark than I realized,” Sky muttered. He met her eyes, still supporting himself by his spear. “The Life Well’s water is a miracle, but it is not gentle. Not for those near the edge.” His expression was serious, “We moved Orthos away from here for his own protection. I’ll take this water to him.”

“It could kill him,” Yerin warned.

“I’ll be careful,” Sky promised. “Trust me.” Sky closed his eyes, let out a breath, then breathed in again. He did this once, twice, three times as he slowly began cycling his madra, experimentally at first, as if inspecting himself for lingering problems or remaining hidden injuries, then, finding none, cycled faster and faster. He slowly straightened, expanding inch by inch, vertebrae by vertebrae, until the shadow of the hunched cripple he had been was nowhere to be seen. At the end, when he met her eyes, he was someone else entirely. 

A warrior.

A man worthy of her trust.

He nodded over to the battle near the Spirit Well. “Don’t use madra externally against them,” Sky cautioned, and with a self-deprecating grin, he added, “I got to test out that Nine-Light Mirror of theirs first-hand. It works. Got me with my own Striker technique.” He tightened his grip on his spear, as his eyes began to glow white with his Enforcer technique. “Oh, the indignity.” Glowing bands of light covered his body, “Void key,” Sky said, and Yerin quickly tossed it to him. He caught it, and in a flash, he was gone.

Well then.

Yerin turned back to the battle, where Lindon was still holding on, almost alone.

No external madra. That eliminated three out of four of her techniques. Well, two out of three really, since she’d have to be chipped in the head to ever consider using the Hidden Sword in battle.

She’d have to test how sturdy their defense against aura was.

This would be a great opportunity to sharpen her Endless Sword even further. If the heavens willed it, it might even push her to the Whisper Stage.

The Spirit Well was right there, and she had only just had the Life Well, meaning her body was in perfect condition.

This didn’t have to be a difficult fight, if she played her cards right.

000

Lindon had danced on the edge of death plenty of times in the last few weeks.

That, he reflected as he deftly avoided a Highgold’s combination of techniques, had been far less stressful to him than now. So what was the difference?

He was outnumbered.

Outmatched in advancement.

And behind him were three wounded friends of his.

He had forced himself to not feel despair, forced himself to put his everything into a battle that could only have one conclusion: victory. Anything else was too terrible to imagine.

He figured that if the odds were against him, then the only thing he could employ, really, was pure, unfiltered delusion.

He would win this.

As the two Highgold women hemmed him in with their Striker techniques, cutting off his directions of movement and forcing him to react in straight, predictable lines, the older Truegold pointed his crystal greatsword. His sword’s binding’s effect was to release a net of Forged madra, of all things. A net of nine colors that his spiritual senses screamed at him to avoid. 

They were trying to trap him. 

Lindon refused to let them succeed.

He lunged to the side and endured one of the Highgold’s rainbow-colored Striker techniques, grimacing in pain in those moments before the combination of the Soul Cloak and Little Blue’s madra resolved the effects. 

Every time Lindon did this, he saw the bafflement and frustration in his enemy’s eyes grow deeper.

Suriel had shown him that there was no such thing as certainty, not even in the eyes of heaven. If a man’s Fate was nothing but the series of opportunities he was capable of grasping with his own two hands, then he would win this. 

No matter how impossible. The swordsman, Sha Dellian, was as formidable a sacred artist as he had ever fought. Not a peak Truegold, not like Ekeri, but far more experienced, far more dangerous for the fact that he did not make mistakes. 

Ekeri had been young and rash. A simple opponent, despite all the power of her advancement. How much of her spirit had been forged by her own accomplishments, and how much had been gifted to her by the pills, elixirs and treasures of her Monarch family? The answer to that question was beyond Lindon. But he had his suspicions. Just as he had the certainty that Sha Dellian was not like her. 

Sha Dellian fought like a teacher, like a protector, like a man who had taught others the art of battle for decades.

The two Highgold women were nearly as dangerous. While Dellian acted the vanguard in their formation of three, they took the part of flankers, staying at range and taking advantage of any openings Dellian forced open, lashing at Lindon’s spirit with their strange rainbow-colored techniques that left no wounds, yet injured the spirit itself. Even through his Soul Cloak. Even after dodging or parrying ninety nine out of every one hundred attacks, Lindon would have lost control of his own body and spirit and collapsed long ago if not for Little Blue’s cleansing madra. 

Occasionally, one of the Highgold women would step back and allow the other to attack alone. But whenever that happened, the attacker’s madra was… strange. Their Striker or Enforcer attacks sometimes felt almost sentient; the techniques moved erratically, deftly, like there were two minds controlling the madra  and activating techniques independently, but also in a way that didn’t put pressure on her channels.

Every technique they delivered when this happened was… textbook. Perfect. Deadly.

None of the three were using any Ruler attacks. Lindon could not understand why–the vital aura around the Spirit Well didn’t feel too far off in nature from the madra of the attackers. But that only made the two sides equal; Lindon, for his part, saw no hope of using the Void Dragon’s Dance here, not in this chamber where neither fire nor destruction aura seemed to even exist. Which also seemed to be the rule in almost all of this pocket world.

Lindon slid around an overhanded slash from Sha Dellian, then took his hunger arm off from his scythe’s haft and palmed down the flat of the man’s blade–driving it even further down, all the way into the floor and wedging it into the scripted tiles. An instant later, Lindon’s followup palm strike was already an inch away from the man’s throat–but then the older man let go of his own sword and stepped backwards, just out of range. 

He left his weapon behind. That would have opened up an opportunity for him, but then the two women bombarded Lindon with a furious volley of Striker techniques that he had to evade in half a dozen different ways, backstepping and backsliding for dozens of feet. 

Dellian gave him a furious look–before he whirled and blocked (and instantly reflected) another of Mercy’s arrows with his golden buckler shield. His shield had a binding of reflection, and Mercy had to pick her shots carefully–Dellian and both Highgolds could send her own arrows right back at her with ease.

In that space between breaths, the older Truegold extended his arm and wordlessly summoned his greatsword back to his hand. Either a second binding of summoning or a script to the same effect, Lindon assumed, in those brief moments between the breaths of battle that were his only opportunity to think. 

They traded dozens of blows in the next few seconds, scythe versus greatsword. And the scythe was clearly the better weapon–Dellian’s gemstone greatsword was giving increasingly unhealthy chimes the longer the exchange went on, like glass being brought to its limits–

But then Lindon was on the backfoot again, being forced to defend against a single Striker technique from both Highgold women that didn’t dissipate when he parried it. Instead it returned, aiming for his heart, and he had to parry or dodge it half a dozen times before the last of its madra finally dissipated. It was less of a Striker technique than it was a crystalline snake of every color with a mind and will of its own. 

Sha Dellian should have been on him in those moments, taking advantage of the opening–but he was being increasingly kept away by Mercy’s own efforts as she wore away at him, despite his shield’s ability to reflect arrows. She had bound her leg in madra to keep it solid enough for this fight, and it almost looked like her leg had never been shattered at all. Her spirit had flared to a Highgold’s again, and she was flickering around the Truegold swordsman on strings of shadow almost as if she was flying, hardly ever even touching the ground, peppering him with barrages of arrows. 

This was a true daughter of the Akura clan, the daughter of a Monarch. Despite her personality, she could do at least this much.

But would it be enough?

If he was fighting any one of these strange sacred artists alone, Lindon knew he could have exploited the openings his martial arts were creating. Their sacred arts were a poor counter to his, that much was obvious. But the pressure the three of them together could exert prevented him from advancing, and it was all he could do to hold on. The coordination between the two Highgolds especially was… beyond instinctual. Almost alien. 

His channels were straining. Despite the trickles of Dream Well water left in his system, his will was fraying. His body was… at the edge. It was all he could do to breathe quickly enough for his lungs to keep up with his body’s needs. If it wasn’t for Little Blue–

Lindon expelled that thought of doubt and tried to veil his mind with delusion as much as he could. The delusion that allowed him to put up an honest effort against a Truegold and win. The delusion that had forced him out of the only home he ever knew, in order to gain the power to save it. 

The delusion that he still had a chance, even though he did not have thirty years, but closer to three, to save that home.

One thing Lindon noticed as he fired up the Soul Cloak was that when he used it in conjunction with the cleansing madra that Little Blue had introduced to him, his movements changed. They became… cleaner, almost.

Cleanliness. Cleansing. Emptiness. The major principle of pure madra behind Little Blue’s energy.

That was worth further noting. This must be the insight that Sky had been leading him towards.

Even his channels were still humming, only strained even after all this thanks to the combination of pure madra’s baseline ethereal smoothness and Little Blue’s cleansing. Only strained. There was no pain yet. That meant he could still push further, even after all this. How long had he been fighting for?

This Soul Cloak technique was so efficient, so much easier on his spirit than the Burning Cloak.

If only it had the Burning Cloak’s decisiveness. 

Lindon heard a distant roar of some beast. It washed over him, ignored entirely. His view of the world had never been narrower. There was nothing in his heart but the three enemies in front of him. He already had enough to worry about during this fight. Just maintaining his sacred arts under this pressure was taking every scrap of what he had to give.

After all, the efficiency of his spirit’s madra flow and the crispness of his movements did come with a tradeoff. The physical strength he could bring to bear was… less. That made sense. The Riverseed’s madra was weak and diffuse compared to Lindon’s own. Any technique that used her madra as fuel would naturally be weaker.

The Highgold women were still following Dellian’s lead. As he kept advancing on the increasingly frustrated and distracted Truegold, who was still reflecting one of Mercy’s arrows back at her every few seconds–

One of the women tried to drive her scepter into the back of his knee. Lindon kicked out, driving her back a few meters. But then the other woman was suddenly behind her twin–

The next maneuver they pulled should have been impossible, at least without eyes in the back of both their heads. An impossible level of martial arts coordination. All he knew was that the woman he kicked had used her twin’s suddenly all too perfectly placed shield as a springboard to jump off of and strike back at him, without ever even touching the ground–

Yerin arrived like a leaping bull, coming down on the Highgold woman with a sword strike like a hammer–a killing blow that was cleanly intercepted by the other Highgold woman’s shield, though it did drive her down to one knee. Although her appearance did fill Lindon’s soul with gratitude and joy, he also noted that she looked different. How—

Her scars. They were gone. 

That only meant one thing. She had gotten to the Life Well after all.

Orthos would be saved.

Lindon refocused on the battle ahead, one weight burdening his soul finally lifting. Yerin’s attempt at a follow-through strike was aborted by Sha Dellian, who launched a Striker technique in her direction. Yerin dodged, keeping Mercy at her back as the archer launched a volley of six Forged arrows that Dellian intercepted, cutting at the air with his greatsword in swift lines and arcs, then reflecting the last arrow–not back at Mercy, but at Yerin, who cut it out of the air herself before charging for him. 

The older man cast Lindon one last baleful, frustrated look before he turned in Mercy and Yerin’s direction–just in time to save his own life.

Yerin’s Endless Sword rang like a bell that had been strung only once. Sha Dellian threw up the hand not holding his rainbow sword, dispersing the singular wave of sword aura with his buckler shield, turning one cut into thousands of tiny ones. They barely broke his skin. The majority of the aura technique disappeared into his shield.

Then he thrust out his shield, sending a column of sword aura that looked exactly like the Endless Sword that Yerin had used. Except it was now glimmering with nine-colored light at the edges, as if Dellian had added his own strength to it.

Yerin’s eyes widened. She lunged out of the way of her own Ruler technique.

Lindon stared for a moment, his heart sinking. They could copy Ruler techniques, too?

But Yerin’s arrival had changed everything for him. Together, she and Mercy finally grabbed the full attention of the Truegold swordsman. 

Now, it was just Lindon and the two Highgolds. 

“Who are you, Lowgold?” One of the two women asked. 

“How are you doing this?” asked the other. “Who are you?”

Lindon didn’t bother responding. Talk had no place in battle, and they had already chosen violence, already chosen to attack the wounded and the crippled. The Highgolds asked more questions, but he ignored their words entirely. His silence, apart from his panting, was the only answer he had to give them. He only tightened his grip on the haft of his scythe, breathed as much as his strained lungs would allow, and took advantage of the momentary lull to check on Little Blue with his senses.

She was still riding on the back of his neck, but had climbed a little higher so she was now cocooned into his hair, gripping it like handholds. 

Little Blue’s spirit no longer gave off an impression of terror. Now, there was nothing in her but an unbending, unbendable… emotion. It took Lindon a moment to realize it wasn’t Little Blue’s determination he was feeling, but her faith. The faith that he would never fail, could not fail. 

His heart almost melted.

She was prepared to cleanse Lindon again at any time. And she felt… strong. On the level of a less advanced Lowgold, maybe. Her hours spent in the Spirit Well had all but remade her; she was now powerful enough to help him in real battles. 

She had come a long way from being just another prize in Elder Rahm’s treasure hall.

But, Little Blue was tiring. Her reserves were starting to run low. She had maybe another dozen or so cleanses left in her. Lindon felt guilty for that. He had never demanded this much of her before. 

He would have to end this fight soon. 

The Highgold women, bereft of their protector, seemed to come to a similar conclusion. They nodded to one another, then their dimly shimmering Enforcer techniques both flared with incandescent rainbow madra, as if there was a second stage they had been holding back on. That worried Lindon, but it didn’t make him hesitate. There was nothing but iron in his heart, no space for the contemplation of defeat. 

He was alone, fighting enemies he did not know, wielding techniques he did not understand that originated from a Path he didn’t even know existed. 

He knew nothing. He felt like the frog at the bottom of the well, seeing only a thin line of sunlight in the dark.

Protect Little Blue. Combine her abilities with the Soul Cloak. Keep her safe. Don’t let her run out of madra.

But still, a thin line of sunlight was a path forwards. He could follow that line. He could claw after it, even through the dark. And if he followed it for far enough, he was sure it would show him the path towards victory. 

And then the battle was rejoined.

Then there was only an unending cascade of the exchange of blows and techniques, only those eternal instants between the notes in the song of battle. And in those brief moments, his thoughts felt more and more focused. He didn’t know how much was due to the Dream Well water’s effects that still lingered in his spirit, and how much was just… him. The steel in his mind, the iron in his heart, the copper he could taste on his lips. They were all a resource to be burned, the fuel for kindling the fire of his spirit. 

He had never had to block or dodge or endure so many attacks, not so quickly. Even if it was just the two Highgolds he fought now, this was not to his advantage. Before, while they followed behind Sha Dellian’s vanguard, they had been comparatively lax, and there had been hope to catch them off guard and take them out, which would have allowed him to focus on Dellian.

Now there were no such illusions, and no holding back. From either side.

It felt like he was either fighting half a dozen sacred artists at once, or two sacred artists who each had three minds and could act in perfect coordination. This second stage of their Enforcer technique had not only empowered them, it brought a new level of flexibility to all their attacks; but especially the Striker techniques. They all felt almost independently sentient. They struck at him like hydras, Striker techniques that had to be blocked or countered several times before they destabilized or dissipated.

He was certain now. Absolutely certain that the two Highgold women were somehow sharing their wills and spirits, even worse; they were somehow directly infusing their madra with their will without the aid of soulfire-enhanced madra, something Sky had taught him was impossible. How was this even possible? 

Lindon had heard of Paths vaguely like this, but only in rumors and legends. The kinds of Paths that only twin siblings or actual clones could practice. Dual cultivation arts combined with perfect madra compatibility, weaponized to create a single spirit in two bodies. But that was only a small, small facet of the sacred arts of these Highgold women.

The three combatants traded blows across the tiles, but Lindon was now decidedly on the back foot, surrendering three steps for every one he took.

Not ideal. But–acceptable. Within the tolerances of his plan. He couldn’t retreat straight for the Spirit Well, that would make his plan too obvious, but as long as his retreat approached the well by lateral vectors, his plan remained workable. 

What was this second level to the Highgold women’s Enforcer technique? It felt… strange. It wasn’t a simple increase in power, it was as if both their spirits had become one, and yet neither of them was lessened for it–which didn’t even make sense. What Path were they on? What was this multicolored madra? It felt like every type of madra combined, and yet it was none of them. He had never seen anything like it before, nor had he ever fought against techniques that were so strange. Their techniques had no power to affect the aura of the world, and yet it felt like his madra itself–the power of his own spirit– was meant to kneel before them.

Never. That would never happen, not for as long as he drew breath.

They were faster than before, stronger. They felt like Truegolds now, and as the exchange of strikes escalated and they upped the pressure on him, it was all he could do to avoid their subsuming madra for long enough to complete an arc of his scythe. Every time he was hit, Little Blue was forced to cleanse him. Every time, he would be stunned for a moment, and the Highgolds would gain ground. Whenever he struck back, the two women darted away like crimson dancers, swift and decisive. They fought, spirit and body, as if they were a single being.

Taken together, the two Highgold women were even more dangerous than Jai Long had been. This was the capability of the young masters of Monarch factions? It was… humbling. They weren’t even Truegolds.

At this rate, nothing would change, and he would continue to be pushed back until either gained an advantage or Little Blue ran out of madra. Was it possible for him to throw her back into the Spirit Well, even for a moment? Would these two Highgolds give him even that small opening?

No, they wouldn’t give him that opening. He would have to take it.

Despite the soreness of his strained channels, Lindon switched to his Blackflame core. The Highgolds would be expecting to defend against Striker techniques now, but Lindon had already wised up to their spiritual defense. 

And also how his scythe was somehow immune to their attempts at… manipulating it with their madra. They had been frustrated after throwing that net of rainbow madra on his scythe with nothing happening afterwards. He had used that to force a distance between them. He had even shattered some of their mirrors with it.

The Burning Cloak was riskier. It gave him speed and strength, but reduced his innate defenses, increased the demands on Little Blue. But that was fine. It would have to be. He would play this defensively, avoid their attacks, pretend to be on his last legs, use the scythe to block every attack he could. He would let the enemies take him to the Spirit Well so they couldn’t see through his intentions.

There was no delusion in him any more. If he could restore Little Blue, or if Orthos or Sky somehow also joined the fight, victory would be his. Lindon was certain of it.

He just had to endure.

000

Eighty parts Spirit Well water, ten parts Dream Well water, and ten parts of Life Well water. I mixed all of that up in a jug and then I pulled Orthos’ head out from the head hole of his shell.

“Woaw! I feel good! Dururururururu—” I sang as I gently pried Orthos’ mouth open and poured the water inside. Ideally, we would have started with some Blood Essence, but Orthos genuinely felt too weak to do anything but sleep. Even the Dream Well hadn’t worked well on him.

Orthos’ shell lit up with green as he let out a violent, agonized gasp. I stepped back, smiling cautiously. “Come on, come on…! You’ve got this, Big Orthos! The Dragon Outlives!” 

There was no fear in my heart now. Only expectation. Only confidence. Orthos would live. I had promised him this boon months ago. I had finally delivered. I wouldn’t waste any time dreading the worst case scenario.

Orthos opened his mouth and roared. The wounds on his shell gushing with green light slowly closed by the moment as Orthos’ spirit was alight in my senses, a foreboding black sun of destruction and fury.

Blackflame madra gushed out from his mouth, and I took several more steps back, observing the process and praying for the best outcome.

My spirit and aura sight already told me the good news, however. Orthos’ lifeline was thickening to an emerald obelisk, his blood essence was a healthy and vibrant red, and his spirit was beyond perfect condition.

All that was left for him was his mind, which the dream well water should have taken care of.

Orthos’ gray, textured skin became a smooth, glossy obsidian. His shell seemed to shed centuries of age as well. That stone-like finish it always carried around smoothed out, becoming metallic, solid.

Orthos looked like a turtle remade, going from craggy and wrinkly to smooth and polished. He opened his eyes, and they were wide with wonder. “Is this the afterlife?” He asked. Now, his voice didn’t sound like falling boulders, but like gravel. Almost human, if you kept your ears shut.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, relief flooding through my every cell. Despite myself, I had been nervous. But all was well in the end.

Orthos lived.

“Do you feel dead?” I asked, cracking the widest grin that I could.

“You finally look like a pack of crows aren’t constantly nibbling at your liver, so I assumed this relief was only the sweet release of death,” Orthos said, his voice coming faster than normal. 

I laughed uproariously as I went to hug Orthos’ head. “We made it, Orthos! We actually made it! We’re healed!”

I pushed myself off him and did a backflip, landing in splits, shouting “Woooh! I feel nice! Like sugar and spice!” I sang. “Darararararara!”

So good!

So good!

“There is a battle!” Orthos shouted. He exploded into a haze of black and red, and immediately sped off.

Leaving me to celebrate on my own. Sure, there was indeed a battle, but this was also worth celebrating! I no longer felt like a wet noodle, only a step up from being completely paralyzed.

The twist of flesh on my chest had actually smoothed out, leaving behind a starburst-shaped scar of white skin. The scar was here to stay, however. That was weird. But not as weird or annoying as the fact that it still kind of hurt. Not debilitatingly. Not even to the point that I would consider taking a drug to manage the pain.

This was perfect. Not literally, no, but I could work with this at least!

After loading up a vial with Life Well water, I activated Starfire Surge and joined the battle. Last time, I had stupidly tried to fire my laser on them. The Nine-Light Mirror that their Truegold had thrown up just in the nick of time had saved their lives, and almost killed me in the process.

The Life Well water had easily healed up the hole left in my body after that stupidity of mine. Yet it hadn’t miraculously cleared away all traces of my older injury.

At least my foot finally felt better. Get that one finally squared away.

A few advancements more, and I was sure I’d eventually get to live a completely pain-free life.

I stopped next to Mercy—who was wisely staying far away from the battle—vial of miraculous elixir in hand. She saw the vial while she had pulled the string of her bow back. Quickly, she lowered her bow and took the vial, gulping the contents down with gusto. I pulled her away from a Striker technique, placing myself between her and the battle, head half-turned to supervise it.

It barely took more than ten seconds before Mercy ran into the fight, Suu in staff form.

Lindon was still engaging the two Highgolds, but the moment the Ninecloud Highclouds saw reinforcements coming for him, they broke off and reappeared next to their leader. I gave Lindon a side-eye, shocked that he was still standing. Lindon, for his part only panted for air while glaring Blackflame death at them, though he gave me one brief, silent nod.

He had taken no physical wounds, and even his clothes were undamaged, if perhaps stained by sweat. But my spiritual senses told me another story entirely. I could see exhaustion in the outer lines of his spirit, see the fumes of madra venting off him; his will was starting to fray at the edges, and really, he felt to my senses like a man who had just gone through an entire war.

The Ninecloud Court assholes all opened their void keys, and out from them flew an array of constructs. Three of them covered them each in a bubble of golden light, while the rest of them were charging up powerful Striker techniques.

Then the Truegold, Sha Dellian, finally spoke. “These constructs will annihilate all of you to a man. But they are expensive. I will choose not to use them, and in exchange, you will allow us to take from the Spirit Well what we need, and then move on.”

“Oh!” I said, “Like the first thing I fucking proposed, right? You want to go back to doing the first fucking thing that I fucking proposed before you attacked my friends and I while most of us were wounded.” I put on a grin that hid my inner turmoil, “And now that we’re in better shape, you’re just shitting bricks and now you want us to forget that you started all of this…” I wagged my index finger at them, “Just so you can still get what you came here for,” I spread my hands apart in apparent confusion, “Is this how the Ninecloud Court teaches diplomacy?” I looked at my friends questioningly. To my infinite pride, they returned my looks with feigned confusion. I returned my focus back to the Ninecloud assholes, “Attack first, beg for forgiveness after? Is that truly it?”

“A sight too late to be negotiating,” Yerin growled, “You attacked us like cowardly dogs while three were crippled, and the last one standing was Lowgold.”

Sha Dellian sighed, “I had assumed that your advancement would give you the perspective necessary to take a good deal when you see it.”

Yerin scoffed, answering his arrogance with nothing but a raised sword and her bared teeth. And for once, I completely agreed with her. This–this was beyond arrogance. This was a microcosm of everything that was wrong with this world. Just another elite standing atop a skyscraper of hierarchies, unable and incapable of seeing the common humanity of those lower on the ladder.

I wanted to kill this guy. I wanted to nail his head atop my spear and make a flag out of him, as a shrine to tyrannicide, as an omen of woe to every arrogant Monarch faction motherfucker breathing.

“We don’t have to fight,” Mercy said, “But you have to leave. Why should we trust you after you refused our kindness?” I gave Mercy a nod. For a moment, I had been worried that her better nature would make her more amenable to this concession.

But she was pissed, too. I could see it in the wrinkle in her forehead, and the tension in her muscles. In her own gentle, restrained way, she was as furious as any of us. She was still ready for a fight. 

Everyone was.

But in the end, that didn’t matter to me, or to these Ninecloud douchebags, as much as my displeasure. I was joyous, happy beyond belief that things had turned out this well. Orthos was rejuvenated, and alive! And Yerin had made it back! Everything had gone splendidly, and I was happy about it!

…But.

That emotion did exist parallel to this burning, incandescent rage that had taken me ever since Bruno had shown me that nightmare, ever since these Ninecloud people had attacked us.

Ever since that Blood Shadow had completely shaken my faith in every person that I knew—tried to cast me adrift in this new world without anyone having my back.

It tried to force me to be alone.

By myself. An endless ocean of uncertainty and despair. Being alone in this world without any of the protections of my future knowledge. And the protections of Lindon, Yerin and Mercy. The two best young sacred artists I knew of.

Without Chiara.

Without Chiara!

It made an attempt to sever every social bond that I had.

I despised this creature to my core. 

Almost to the point that I would burn it for extra power. I wanted to rip it apart with my teeth and then strangle that fucking phoenix to death.

But no. I had greater plans for Bruno.

Aside from that fury, there was, of course, the arrival of the Ninecloud Court.

Relatively minor, in all seriousness.

I had tried to be nice. I had attempted diplomacy. 

Then they almost fucking killed me.

They almost fucking killed me.

That bore FUCKING repeating.

They almost. Fucking. Killed. Me. ME!

I was no saint. 

I was… just a guy, in the end. And while to forgive is divine…

I’m no God either.

I wouldn’t just let that go.

While veiled and careful to hide the radiance of my madra, I had cycled slowly for a technique that I had only recently discovered. I still needed to come up with a name for it, even. I cycled while I talked to them, cycled while I glared at them, and made sure that they would have no idea what was going to happen. 

I had tracked their eyes, after all.

With the power of the Dream Well water, I had followed their attention at me, and every time it slipped—on all three of them—I would breathe the pattern of my technique. Thin the madra, every madra aspect of the Path of the Collapsing Star forming a rod so thin it was better described as a mathematical line than something I could put into words. Double the temperatures, again and again, until my Highgold Collapsing Star madra could ignite no more.

Breathe their incoming demise.

Prime the technique for ignition.

If they wouldn’t surrender, they would fall.

In pieces.

I kept breathing slowly, steadily, carefully, making sure to avoid the notice of each Ninecloud—

Yerin’s Endless Sword rang like a sharp and clear bell, shocking me into action. She clearly had the same idea as me, I figured, as I rushed through the last bit of my own technique, losing some of its efficacy.

The constructs flying in the air, charging techniques of destruction, were cut in half cleanly, as sharp as though a razor had sliced them in half. Or, they were cut by the line of burning white madra I had swiped over the air, faster than the constructs could activate. Another of them were bound up in shadows. It fell to the ground uselessly, then exploded inside the shadowy cocoon.

The Truegold glared daggers at us.

Get so fucked, asshole. You think you can just walk in here, bang us up, and then walk out with what you wanted? “I guarantee you,” I growled, voice shaking as I spoke, “On my fucking life,” my voice cracked with emotion, “That none of you assholes are stealing any of the Spirit Well water, or so help me God, I will kill all of you personally. LEAVE!” I shouted with a loud, painful growl. Every muscle in my body clenched as I shouted the word.

“We can pay you,” Dellian said.

I almost attacked him there and then. Another salvo of the still-to-be-named Striker technique (I’d go with Fucking Death Laser, for now, or FDL) was already forming along the entire length of my spear.

This time, I would cut no corners, hide not a scrap of my madra or a single shred of my intentions. I’d like to see their Path of Celestial Bullshit deflect this. There was no such thing as a defensive sacred arts technique that couldn’t be defeated if penetrated by something with a high enough madra density, assuming same advancement.

Right here, right now, I was more than willing to put theory into practice.

But I held back, for the greater good. That would have been stupid to do. Rage helped in certain ways. 

But only if you wouldn’t let it control you.

Only if you wouldn’t let it deviate your path towards betterment.

Sai Hong had said that.

And I… found that it worked… for me.

“There will be no stealing,” Sha Dellian continued.

With a deep inhalation, I schooled my expression, getting rid of my outwardly rage.

To negotiate, it was better to… appear nice. Right? I could do that. “Void keys,” I said, with an easy smile. Start with a strong beginner, right? And we did have the higher ground. We wrecked their constructs. That should give us better bargaining power. “Not what’s in them,” I said in response to the Ninecloud delegates’ confused expressions, “The void keys themselves. You give me those, and I’ll let you walk out with one barrel each, provided you carried them in those void keys to begin with. If not, we do have jugs we can sell you. For a price.”

The Truegold grimaced. “You go too far.”

“Bitch,” I muttered quietly, trying to dispel my rising anger. All right then, I’d move on to item number two in my short, short list of demands. What I actually thought I realistically could get out of them. “All right then. I want your Eye of the Deep. I’ll take that instead, as a reasonable compromise.”

Rainbow boy’s grimace only deepened, and the Highgold princesses actually scoffed at me. “That’s even less negotiable than our void keys. That you’d make that request. The effrontery. Do you even know what the Eyes are?”

“Bitch,” I said, far more clearly, letting out a long, brittle breath of anger. I wanted to kill this guy. “You, my friend, are not at all aware of the situation you’ve found yourself in. We defused your stupid weapons. We outnumber you. You screwed with us first! You owe us!”

Sha Dellian grimaced in frustration.

“I contend we should keep fighting,” Yerin said to me, then looked to Lindon as he spoke, “And then snatch their void keys from their corpses. Wouldn’t have done us any differently. And I don’t contend I’m strong enough to be the all-merciful type, yet. I say we bury ‘em.”

Sha Dellian wasn’t cowed, “I will give you a sacred instrument on the Path of Celestial Radiance. The Nine-Light Mirror, at the Truegold level! We have ten barrels that we wish to fill.”

“You couldn’t have just filled them quietly without fighting us?” I asked, head tilted. “What part of that operation required our deaths?”

He needed to answer carefully, because this would decide whether or not I considered them lost causes.

For trying to hurt my fucking friends.

“We only meant to neutralize your fighter, and proceed unmolested,” Sha Dellian said, “You would have kept your lives.”

“Swear on your soul,” I challenged, stomping my foot at the ground. It made a satisfying thunk against the scripted stone floor.

“I swear on my soul that I did not intend to kill any of you, only neutralize you,” the Sha promised, eyes sincere. “And in exchange for access to the Spirit Well and mutual non-interference, I will grant you a shield with the binding for the Nine-Light Mirror.”

My group and I cast each other looks.

I… personally…

Wasn’t convinced.

I honestly wanted to kill them. I wanted to cut their heads off like what I did to Arakmedes. I wanted to slice them in half like what I did to that Tidewalker.

I wanted a slaughter.

That was how hot my anger was.

Still.

I had learned enough from my efforts to calm my mind. Sai Hong had taught me enough about myself that I could recognize this impulse for what it was: only an impulse.

It had no control over me.

I could overcome this rage. This hatred.

The same way I could overcome my hatred for Bruno; In order to get to more productive things.

Such as this transaction. Everyone I looked at seemed more than amenable to it. Prolonging this fight when we had a choice not to would only increase our odds of being hurt.

This was the smarter solution.

Even if I hated how weak it made me feel.

After I made sure everyone seemed more or less accepting of this proposition, I raised my hand to complete the second part of the oath.

“Provided you actually only take ten barrels, do nothing to sabotage us, or hurt us, or cause us further aggrievement due to an infringement of our dignity, and also give us that shield,” I gasped dramatically for air, “Then we can come to an agreement. What do you say, rainbow-boy?” My statement was a question. It would be up to him to accept my conditions now, and lock our oath down.

He growled. “Fine.”

My soul stirred as I felt the oath take place.

The barriers fell, and I walked up to the Sha, hand outstretched. He took the hand, but didn’t shake it normally. Instead, it was more like a dap or an arm-wrestling grip. Perhaps a part of his culture? “And I want to hear an apology,” I said, jaws clenched and eyes boring into his as I squeezed my grip for all it was worth—not that it was worth much, really—, “For doubting our honor and honesty.”

The Sha clenched his jaws, but pulled his hand back and bowed. Only his head, though. “Apologies.”

Then he stood straight and reconvened with his Highgold companions.

I did the same, turning on my heels to look at my group of friends with the widest grin I could muster. “We are so back!”

Yerin put her hands on her hips, smiling and looking mighty proud of herself. Lindon and Mercy were both busy hugging Orthos.

I dragged Yerin’s soaking wet form over and jumped into the group hug.

“Enough of that, now!” Orthos said hotly, but doing nothing to pull away from us. “We are among enemies! We should conduct ourselves with pride and decorum!” He rumbled, voice so deep that it penetrated my chest. It tickled, actually! I laughed even harder as he protested.

…Speaking of pride, those people were wearing a lot of rainbows. It was literally all they wore. It was in their eyes, too, and in their techniques.

It was downright everywhere. They wore rainbows everywhere.

I mean, far be it from me to besmirch someone’s main theme, but a little bit of variety and perhaps even restraint wouldn’t kill these guys.

Just… just pick a couple of colors! Don’t use all of them! You look like gasoline spills in puddles!

A blood-red figure popped out from the Spirit Well, and I immediately pointed my spear at it before I realized what it was. I lowered the spear and took in Ruby.

Who now looked frighteningly human. Not quite, of course. She still had that airbrushed finish that you could only find on spirits, even ones that took on remarkably solid forms.

Now her skin was pink. And her teeth had whitened, along with her eyes. They were red too, of course, just as red as her hair, but the white was almost convincingly human. She looked like a painting of Yerin’s hypothetical twin sister.

“Bleed her,” Yerin spat, “She slipped her leash again. And now she got into the water.”

The Truegold of the Ninecloud Court stomped over to us hotly. “What is that spirit doing in the water?”

I blinked innocently at him. “Swimming. We did that a bunch, too, actually.”

Sha Dellian gaped at me. “You—how—in the elixir?! Why?!”

I frowned at him like he was stupid. “It’s meant to be good for your skin. You should try it, actually! It’s—”

“I didn’t know the water was tainted!” Dellian shouted, interrupting me. 

“That’s… not any of my concern,” I said. Ruby had already jumped out of the water, and she looked completely dry as she walked up to us. “Sha Dellian,” I said, “I’d prefer it if you left us alone now, or I might consider this an attempt to hurt us. And that would put us back in square one, wouldn’t it?”

Sha Dellian huffed and puffed, but eventually he turned around to leave.

Then I regarded Ruby. “Wow, you look amazing, Ruby! This must have been the work of the Life well, huh? Amazing.”

Ruby was looking at Lindon. Yerin was looking at Ruby, and a split second later, she blushed furiously and reached her hand towards Ruby to pull her inside. Ruby whipped her head towards Yerin and resisted the effort.

“Hey, now,” I said, raising my hands placatingly, “Why don’t we leave her outside for now?”

“Why?” Yerin growled.

“Might help your skill if you learn to work with her. And she could do some of her own training as well.”

Yerin sighed and let go, but still glared at Ruby. “Don’t talk, or I’ll pull you back inside.”

Ruby glared. Yerin then looked at me askance. “Also, maybe my ears are clogged, but I just heard you call this thing Ruby.”

“We can call her something else,” I said with a shrug. Yerin snorted.

“Ruby is pretty!” Mercy said, giving the Blood Shadow a warm grin. The Blood Shadow returned it. “Ah, I think she likes me!” Ruby nodded eagerly.

“Probably wants to eat you,” Yerin said with a frown, looking warily at the Blood Shadow. She returned the look with a scathing glare.

“Don’t be mean,” I said, “Yours is a sight nicer than mine if I’m being honest.” I patted Ruby on her shoulder, and she swatted my hand away. Okay, I grinned awkwardly as I pulled my hand away.

Ruby looked at me. Then frowned. “Don’t… like… you,” it growled, rasped and hissed all at the same time.

Wait, what the fuck?

“Why?” I asked.

Ruby didn’t answer that. Instead, she just walked up to Lindon smiling.

Yerin immediately pulled her in. This time, it was hardly even a contest as the Blood Shadow turned immaterial and slid into Yerin’s core.

Yerin shook her head in disgust. 

“Interesting creature,” Orthos said, “But you must always be careful when it comes to the power of a Dreadgod.” Don’t I know it? Orthos looked at me purposefully, and I nodded. “I mean it, Sky. Yours is a mind unbound by common sense. You will only hurt yourself if you aren’t careful.”

I sighed. Yeeeah, but being careful was boring and annoying.

I’d much rather be a mad scientist. Those were fun.

“Enough about that,” I said. “How are you feeling? Must be amazing, right?”

Orthos’s features split into a crag-like grin. “It truly did shave centuries off my age. I want nothing more than to go out and hunt!”

Lindon held his stomach as it produced  a loud rumbling sound. “I could use some food as well,” he murmured, his voice nearly half a whisper. The Bloodforged Iron body must have taken a lot out of him that he hadn’t had the nutrition to replace. He would need to take an extra large portion of meat.

“Palutin might come back,” I said, “Provided he isn’t… yeah.” Dead, or maybe he decided he had better things to do. “Anything could have happened. It’s pretty dangerous out there.”

“I know that like an arrow that missed my heart,” Yerin said, arms folded. “I’d steer clear of any water if I were you,” she said seriously, “That Akura was strong. Stronger than I would have contended. He fought the rest of the Tidewalkers and other gold dragons at the same time. It wasn’t even close. He was onto them like a fox in a henhouse. A Sea Drake drew close, and he decapitated it with a swipe of his finger, swear on my soul.”

Mercy sighed. “That’s Harmony for you. Even now, he’s still… impressive.”

“Before anything else, I’ll be pushing for Truegold,” I said, “I advise you all to do the same. You can do technique training on the side, and consult the tablet library for any Path inspiration, but raw power would serve us better in the short term.”

“Sounds solid,” Yerin said, “As you might have seen already, I’m Truegold now,” she grinned proudly. “I might make the push to peak if I stay here cycling.”

“That’s amazing!” Lindon said, face lit up like a Christmas tree.

Yerin shrugged, looking away bashfully. “Cheers and celebrations, I know. The Dream Well water helped a sight more than I ever would have imagined. Helped me polish up my techniques.”

“Nice!” I said. I was about to continue talking, but something was up with the resident aristocrats. Sha Dellian was lingering farther away, near the chamber’s exit. Good. Exactly where I wanted him.

But the two Highgold princesses approached us, both of them eyeing Lindon before the one holding a shield turned to me brusquely. “Your Lowgold is quite strong,” she said. “The one with the scythe,” she continued. “A Pure Path, among other things.”

The redheads wanted to converse, apparently. I nodded over to Lindon, and he stepped forward to meet them. 

“Your Path is incredible,” Lindon said. “What sort of aspect is it that lets you do all those things? Is it a mixture of every type of madra?”

“It’s the famous royal madra of our Bloodline,” the shield-holding twin said, cold expression turning into a graceful smile as she focused on him, “An ancient mutation of pure madra, though we prefer to call it… a divergence. A divergence like the one you are using. With that Sylvan Riverseed.”

Why were they digging for information? 

“We’ve never even heard of a Path below Lord that can shrug off the Path of Celestial Radiance so easily, except for itself,” the other twin said, smiling as she secured her tourmaline scepter to her belt. “And that’s just what you can do with one of your madra aspects. Did you create your Path yourself?”

“Uh,” Lindon said.

I observed this strange interaction carefully, though I noted, absently, that either of the redhead twins could have easily taken the number one spot on the Blackflame aesthetic rankings. It wouldn’t have even been close.

Now—after my stint at the College—I had learned what went into those rankings, I could safely say that these two were just… textbook. Textbook everything, really. 

No matter how good the genetics were in Monarch families, these twins must have had some insanely good life artist, because from a purely scientific perspective, skin was not meant to look that evenly smooth and unblemished, nor were faces meant to look that… idealized. To the point of no discernible asymmetry. It was almost mathematical.

No. It was overtly mathematical. I could read the ratios on their faces, the meridians and imaginary lines that pushed them to the closest thing we had to human perfection.

It wasn’t overstated, either, which would have immediately given up that they’d had work done. Instead, it just looked like the heavens had smiled on the two of them personally. They were beautiful from every angle that I could spot. No direction or angle was awkward: every region of their faces were coherent with each other, fitting into a perfect, greater whole.

It was truly amazing work, in all honesty. Just… a lot. Too much. It brought up bad memories and associations with a woman I’d much rather just forget.

Besides…

I have a girlfriend.

“It’s a bold Path, truly,” the first twin said. “Two cores, fire and destruction counterbalanced by pure, right? Its cleansing properties not only protect you, they allow you to operate that second offensive Path with madra dangerous to your own spirit without any consequences. Ingenious. That must be how you avoid the fate of Ashwind’s Blackflame family. Are you a descendent of theirs? How do you deal with the physical fallout of your family’s Path? I’m assuming you must have some sort of life-aspected treasures.”

“Your technique must take significant madra reserves to operate for any practical length of time,” the other twin said, her eyes flickering to Lindon’s scythe. “Are you a Herald’s son?”

“Uh.” 

Perceptive, weren’t they. Concerningly so. But then again, rainbow boy had called them charges of the Ninecloud Sage. What did that mean?

The first twin leaned in, in a way that would have allowed Lindon to see down the cleavage of her… abundant… assets. They didn’t even look padded. Interesting. I have a girlfriend. “And that Enforcer technique of yours was remarkable. Such smooth flow of madra for a Lowgold, your Iron Body must be a work of perfection.”

“Uh,” Lindon said. I could practically hear the gears cranking in his head.

“Don’t worry,” the other twin winked at him, “You need not share any secrets with us. You just need to know that the Ninecloud Court has many resources to support someone like you. Especially… within the family,” she wagged her eyebrows. Okay, so that was her game. Christ, this was too good.

I covered my mouth to try and hide my smile, but I unfortunately let a chuckle through. I coughed a little to hide it.

“Uh,” Lindon said again, eyes wide and face steadily reddening.

“Consider this path carefully, Lowgold,” the twin said, crossing her arms together, pushing her bust up, and in clear view. Oh, she was being downright devious with it. “How many people in your position ever get the chance to join a Monarch family?”

“Uh,” Lindon said.

“Of course, we do expect you to meet a standard of strength before we consider you. Highgold should do, don’t you think? Or perhaps even Truegold, as you do have access to all these resources. Hurry up, now. You don’t want to miss this chance.” She grinned lasciviously, looking him up and down with eyes of smoldering hunger.

I coughed harder to mask my laughter.

I looked at Yerin, who was just staring at Lindon’s back in panic. Wow. These girls were dangerous. Hurry up, sister! 

Mercy was just gaping.

Orthos huffed. “A dragon does not let themselves be seduced by paltry promises of flesh and resources. A dragon walks his own Path. Lindon, cast out these harlots at once.”

The twins gasped at Orthos’ comment. I turned to Orthos in shock and surprise. Damn, Orthos! You could stand to be nicer!

Still, I wouldn’t stop him. This was hilarious.

“Apologies,” Lindon bowed his head at the two of them.

“...Apologies accepted,” the first twin said slowly, though it took her a few moments to stop glaring anger at Orthos. “My name is Sha Neraitha, and my sister is Sha Junesca,” she let out a breath, turned back to Lindon, and smiled. “May we ask yours?” 

Lindon was too confused to speak. After a moment, she and her twin both smirked in sync, their smiles widening. “We will speak to you again,” Sha Neraitha said, smiling warmly at Lindon, raising a finger to her lips and winking. “Provided you meet our standards, you will find yourself happy for making the decision.” 

Then she faced me for some reason, with a considerably less warm expression, and… gave me the shield. The Nine-Light Mirror shield.

It was a beautiful work of—

Wait, she said ‘our standards’?

Both of them?

I couldn’t believe my ears.

This was way too good to be true. Once the pair of crimson-haired minxes sashayed off, I couldn’t keep it in any longer.

I fell over on my back, laughing, kicking the air as I did, letting the shield drop to my side.

Then I felt a heavy kick land on my side, throwing me almost three meters. It was Yerin. It hadn’t hurt at all, shockingly enough. I kept laughing.

I got on my feet and stumbled over to the others, laughing and walking like a drunkard. “Lindon, you dog, you. Twins? Really? How did you end up seducing them while fighting?” I stood straight, gesturing wildly as I spoke, “What in the nine hells did you do? Tell me your secrets, please!” I tapped my knees in a mock kneel, picking up the shield as I did.

“Uh,” Lindon said.

Ah. Those girls broke him.

“A dragon will attract any number of mates without their knowledge,” Orthos said, “That is only the nature of our Path.”

“Bwahahahahahaha!” I fell over again, cradling the shield while I laughed.

“They’re chipped in the head,” Yerin said with disgust, arms folded as she eyed the two Highgolds from afar, “Even if they hadn’t attacked you guys, look at them. They’re dressed like they can’t pick what their favorite color is. Who would want them?”

“And they use pure madra!” Dross scoffed. “I mean, who does that?”

“Uh,” Lindon said.

“But theirs is just… cheating,” Dross offered lamely. “And it looks ugly, right?”

“Oh Dross,” I shook my head, grinning. “You have so much to learn.”

Mercy slowly closed her mouth, and just shook her head with an expression of baffled awe. “Not even my mother match-makes that… decisively,” she said, pausing for a moment. Then she seemed to remember something, and sighed. “Usually.”

“Wait, wait, waitasecond,” Dross said, excited. “Match-make. Matchmakers. I know that word, Mercy! A lot of books on the facility’s banned list had plots involving it. Was that a human mating ritual just now? The books said those rituals were supposed to involve rings. Wait.” Dross gasped, delighted. “That shield is round. A perfect geometrical circle! It’s even made of goldsteel! Is it one of those rings? Shouldn’t they come in sets of two?”

Mercy palmed her face with one hand.

“So, so much to learn,” I muttered to myself, still lying on the floor. 

A few minutes later, as the Ninecloud people loaded in the last of their ten barrels into their void keys, I eyed the Spirit Well, taking a gander at judging what our losses from this exchange had been. But as far I could tell, the Spirit Well was almost unchanged. Really, it was more of a decent-sized pond than a well. The drop in its waterline level was almost indiscernible, even to me. An inch lower, maybe?

Why was the Spirit Well so… abundant, in proportion to the others? How had Northstrider created these wells? Could they be replicated? If so, how?

It did piss me off more, though. We could easily have shared this. They never should have fought us. They were at an overwhelming advantage, and yet they had let fear dominate them.

A part of me still resented bowing to this trade, but I knew there was logic in it. Placing ourselves at further risk—needless risk—was obviously a stupid plan.

And I was reckless enough as it was by my lonesome. No need to drag friends into this.

No need to prove that Cassias was right about me.

Sha Dellian approached us alone. He gave us a diplomat’s bow, which more hinted at the impression of bowing than actually doing any bending of his spine. Unfortunate. “Our business here has concluded. We will move on to the Life Well. We will remain true to our party’s oath of noninterference, conditional on you doing the same, though I can’t speak for our prince. May your remaining time in this trial prove profitable.”

Wow, good luck with that. I saw what Yerin’s harvests had been. I doubted there was much more of the Life Well left if she had bothered to fill only two barrels.

“Thank you for showing us the pride and dignity of the Ninecloud Court,” I said to him. He glared.

“Watch your tongue, Ashwinder.”

“Everwoodian,” I corrected, “And your anger is a self-indictment more severe than anything I could have said. Leave. Before I stop being so polite.”

Sha Dellian spat on the floor in front of me. I laughed. What a dickhead. Evidently that reaction was enough for him to stomp away with a huff.

After opening the entrance to the Spirit Well, we saw Palutin coming in, riding on a giant red rabbit, dragging behind him a net the size of a small fishing boat, filled with carp, and a beheaded sea dragon of some kind, with Dolph swimming around. “Who wants some crittermeat?” He yelled. Then he saw the Ninecloud people and gave them a wave. “Hey, y’all!” The Ninecloud people were readying for a fight, but his rabbit just jumped clear over their heads to land right in front of us. They rained blood and seawater over the Ninecloud people in passing. The twins gasped in shock and disgust. Sha Dellian just stomped right out. Palutin ignored them all.  “You look mighty fine for folks that were only half a step away from bein’ corpses just a couple a’ hours ago.”

“Who is this?” Orthos asked. 

“He’s friendly,” I said, bowing deeply to them. “Welcome back, Palutin.” I bowed again. “Master Dolph.” And again. “And master Marigold, I’m presuming.”

Palutin’s grin only widened. “Alright now, who’s hungry?” 

“Uh,” Lindon said.

000

Special thanks to the great Coldbringer/SnowGN for helping direct this fight sequence. We worked on this chapter for far longer than we should have, but I'm incredibly proud of the product of that effort. This may very likely be my longest chapter yet, sitting at an impressive 17k words!