59 - Lord of the Dawnwing Sect (Patreon)

The days passed like minutes for Orthos. This had been his reality for at least two centuries now. Sometimes, he would blink and wonder where all the days had gone.

It only felt like yesterday that Lindon had been an Iron barely capable of handling Orthos’ power. Now he was almost at Orthos’ own level. 

It had only been a year.

It had felt more like a week. A week where a bunch of children had suddenly infested his life, dragging him along a wild and deadly ride through the most dangerous parts of this world: a jungle infested by malevolent spirits in the wake of a Dreadgod’s passing, and now the personal research facility of a Monarch.

Just the scant few days they had spent in this Spirit Well, although it had made a world of difference to his withered mind, body and spirit, it still hadn’t changed his perception of time.

They were moving too fast.

Orthos was moving faster than he would have imagined, too.

Every morning, he would drink of the Spirit Well, and his spirit would push further towards a wall he had stared at for decades.

No one gave Orthos any advancement elixirs. He never asked for them, and had always been content with cycling aura, confident that his lifespan would allow even that fractional exercise to take him to the heights he desired in time.

He had never been in much need of time.

And now he was staring at an additional stint of eternity.

Underlord.

But these children would not stop there. They would not be satisfied by only that.

Sky jogged up to where Orthos sat and sat down in front of him abruptly, sketchbook in hand. The boy had made a dramatic recovery from their first day in Ghostwater. His skin had regained a healthy, glowing complexion, and had filled out where before he had looked almost emaciated. More radiance had returned to him in the form of his regrowing Goldsign hair, now quarter-inch long tiny curls. “Hey, I’ve got a few drawings that I wanted to run by you.”

Orthos blinked.

“What?”

“Nothing much, you know, just wanting to pick your brain,” Sky said, “Now, of course, you don’t have to feel pressured by any sort of expectation, but I’ve always been fascinated by the bodily transformations of Lord-level sacred beasts, and I’m curious to see what the outcome will be for you. Now, obviously, I was thinking… what if you became a black dragon?”

He opened the sketchbook and revealed a drawing of a serpentine black dragon with segmented horns, long whiskers and a gray mane. “Would fit with your Path, and it might even make it stronger, since the Blackflame Path is after all a specific adaptation of this species. Of course, the whole serpentine format might be a little trite, so how about this?”

The beast he revealed in the second page was a hulking, four-legged reptile with a pair of wings on its back, and a long neck. Its head was still similar to the previous drawing, but it had a row of dark spines on its back. “As far as I understand it, this is an atypical dragon form on Cradle. Most, if not all, mainstream species prefer a serpentine form. Not quite sure why, I’ve always preferred this form. Looks far more powerful.”

“It barely looks like it can fly,” Orthos said, dismissing the idea.

“Fair. Maybe the wings need to be bigger. In any case, I am aware of how fond you are of your shell, so another idea did occur to me.”

He revealed another drawing of Orthos in his turtle form, but on the sides of his shell grew draconic wings. Orthos huffed. “This is the worst one of them all.”

“Because of your fear of heights?” Sky asked, sympathy etched across his features.

“Who said anything about fear?” Orthos demanded.

“Apologies. I misspoke. Your reasonable wariness towards deadly heights,” Sky corrected. “With these wings, you will be able to survive a fall from any height by simply flapping them.”

“The shell doesn’t cover them,” Orthos said, “They are offered no protection.”

Sky looked at the drawing. “True. Maybe we could design a shell system that opens up to reveal the wings, sort of like a beetle?”

Orthos despised that idea with a passion. “Just turn the page already.”

Sky looked especially excited now, probably taking that as Orthos’ tacit approval of… this circus. In truth, he just wanted the conversation to continue so it could end sooner.

The next page stood a black and gray dragon turtle on two feet. His arms were covered in two spiked bands each, his shell had distinct spikes growing from them, and he now seemed to have a pair of gray horns as well as a collection of horn-like growths that looked like hair, growing from the center of his head and going down to the nape of his neck. Instead of a beak, his mouth looked far more rounded and smooth, and within were sparse rows of spiked teeth. “This could be your peak Truegold form, or maybe your Underlord form.”

Orthos’ stomach fell at that. Not for any particular reason.

Just that… this form actually seemed far more realistic to him than any other, strange spiked accessories aside. Provided he intended on taking a human form, and was working up towards that vision.

“Where did you get these art supplies?” Orthos asked.

“We’re in a library,” Sky said with a shrug. “I looked. If you are going the human route for Underlord, you might try and go for something like this,” he revealed a dragon of a man with a shell on his back. The shell would only offer protection for his back, and there was no way he could retract any of his decidedly human limbs or his head into it. But that was a given. A sacred beast taking a human form would inevitably trade their species’ natural advantages and raw power for increased madra control.

And in some cases, increased chances of being accepted in human society.

“The end-goal might look something like this,” Sky said, turning the page again to reveal a muscle-bound man with no shell. He was a wide man brimming with power, tree-trunk-like arms folded. His skin was dark, almost a black sort of gray, and his hair, white for some reason, was tied up in thick locks that reached down to his neck. This could have looked like someone that was related to Sky. Or, perhaps, someone that looked like a person from where he came from. “I did take some creative liberties with the hair,” he admitted with a bashful grin. “As you already know, this form would afford you superior madra control in exchange for durability and raw power. You would have to expend soulfire to change back to being a turtle, but the unfortunate nature of a sacred beast advancement is that it is better to develop a battle style using one form than both.” Then Sky gave a warm smile. “That being said, you don’t need to make a choice at all if you don’t want to.”

He turned to the final page now, and revealed an incredibly detailed drawing of Orthos’ new form. It looked so different from how he usually saw himself that he wondered if this was maybe an idealized image of him.

No. This was him now.

It was clear that though Sky had put much effort into those other drawings, effort that would no-doubt have cut into his own advancement schedule, this turtle drawing had been done with far more care and precision.

“I don’t care what form you choose,” Sky said, “Human, dragon, turtle, big or small. As long as you choose it while staying with us. Your family.”

Orthos was taken aback by that sentiment. “That’s… so far away. I need not worry about that,” he lied to himself.

Sky nodded. “The truth is, you guys are all I have left in this world. I’d hate to lose even one of you. And I want to support you through your journey of self-discovery in any way that I can. You got that?”

Mercy then stumbled upon them and her eyes widened. “You’re taking a break?!” She immediately sat down next to Sky. “Ugh, finally. Nonstop working drives me nearly insane. Even with all the Dream Well water, I’ve missed just… sitting down and not doing anything. Anyway, what are you doing?”

Sky looked to Orthos as if to ask if it was okay to talk about. Though Orthos felt that he would likely never stop feeling wary towards the Akura girl, he didn’t mind this. He gave a nod, and Sky explained. Mercy latched onto the topic gleefully, looking over the drawings. To Orthos’ satisfaction, she didn’t enjoy the winged turtle design either, nor the beetle idea that had spawned off from it. They discussed for a moment the feasibility of retractable wings attached only to his front-legs, the balance issues that would spring forth from such a design, and moved on to the other designs as well, all the while asking Orthos for his own opinion, which was almost consistently ‘that sounds terrible, stop it’.

They would not.

Soon enough, Lindon joined in as well. Lindon radiated concern as well as comfort, and also shared Sky’s resolution that no matter what Orthos’ form became, he would always have a place with this… family.

Yerin joined in soon after, and ripped away the page with the winged turtle design and sent an Endless Sword at it, tearing it to tiny pieces in moments, to Sky’s scandalization. They bickered for a while as they were wont to do, while Mercy tried to smooth things over. All the while, Little Blue, who had arrived with Lindon, was laughing herself silly. 

A part of Orthos felt tempted to look to Lindon and ask him why they could not take more time. Orthos knew why. Lindon had no time. His one mission had pushed him down the sacred arts at speeds that no turtle could hope to match. All the others ran alongside him, capable of matching his pace with no difficulty.

Orthos had not dreamed of Underlord for centuries. Now, it was a real possibility.

And he did not know if he could keep up. Even if the soulfire and madra was provided to him, he would be entering an entirely new realm of combat and skill, a field of transcendent experts.

It would only be a matter of time, then, that they would all leave him behind.

Although Sky’s words had been a comfort, Orthos feared that they were wasted on him.

000

Ziel had expected to find plenty of things while on his way to the Spirit Well. The inclusion of those random sacred artists had thrown… everything into flux, making what should have been a relatively uncomplicated journey towards yet another dead-end in his search for a cure to his condition… complicated.

The beast factions had been rather willing to throw themselves at him in spite of the truce that should have seen him protected. 

In doing so, they had forced him to use his madra.

One Tidewalker had narrowly avoided being turned into a fine spray of red mist before the rest decided to flee, but that had only inflamed his spirit more. Once more, nonexistence had eluded him. 

Even the gold dragons that had come to test him later were about as effective as the first sharks. They too had ended up fleeing, scarcely seconds after Ziel bothered to pick up his hammer. Unfortunate.

The wildlife of the pocket world were his only remaining opponents, but even they went down with annoying ease.

He wandered the pocket world for what felt like months until he finally found it. The tablet library habitat.

He dragged his hammer along the stone tiles, the squeal of metal grinding on stone hardly as loud as the squeal of his spirit as he inched towards another inevitable failure.

And what waited beyond the doors of the Spirit Well was likely just another hideout of enemies too weak to do the job.

He turned a corner of the library, and finally saw the entrance to the Spirit Well. It was open. Well, at least that saved him the effort of busting the door open, which had been his plan from the start.

Ziel could sense spirits as well. Eight spirits of note. Many other smaller ones of far less note. Natural spirits, most likely. He had heard from the Beast King that this was a natural birthing ground of Sylvan Dreamseeds, close cousins to the Sylvan Riverseeds that Ziel had once sought for healing.

Unfortunately, even the Overlord-equivalent Sylvan Riverseed that he had encountered in his tortuous journey throughout the world had not been able to heal his ravaged spirit.

If a spirit that powerful could not have done anything, then what hope did this Spirit Well stand? Why did he keep letting himself fall for these stupid traps? 

The Beast King was far too persuasive for Ziel’s good.

He walked into the Spirit Well, and immediately caught sight of Marigold the crimson rabbit gnawing on the exposed tailbone of what had to have been a Sea Drake, while Dolph was seated on top of a nearby tablet shelf, sleeping.

Palutin appeared from out of nowhere and threw his hands in the air. “He’s here, everyone!”

That was when several more powerful spirits gathered towards him. He looked around and saw an eclectic bunch of sacred artists: one had dark brown skin, wearing a white and blue coat, and white pants. He had a head of closely shaven, curly white hair that seemed to glow. He gave Ziel a grin. Another one was a tall and pale-skinned burly young man with a mean scowl. He seemed to be even taller than his white-haired friend, in fact. They were accompanied by two women as well. One had two sword appendages growing from her back while the other had violet eyes and hands that looked covered in tar. The Goldsign of the Path of the Chainkeeper. Between that and her violet eyes, she was clearly an Akura, and probably quite close to the main family.

Why the Heart Sage had decided to sneak in one more contestant of her blood, thus angering the other factions, was beyond Ziel’s understanding. 

The mean looking young man bowed at him over two fists pressed together—a respectful gesture if there ever was any. “Greetings, Ziel of the Wastelands.”

Ziel sighed as he eyed Palutin. “You told them about me.”

“These fellers kicked the hornet’s nest somethin’ fierce,” Palutin said with a toothy grin, “Figured we’d try and study up on everyone already inside. Speakin’ of, any chance you seen hair or hide of that Ninecloud who was ‘posed to be in here with ya originally?”

Ziel frowned, “I remember he tried to fold me into some scheme. I turned him down.” He had been quite… professional, given that he was a sacred artist from a Monarch’s faction. He hadn’t taken the rejection badly at all. “Haven’t seen him since.”

The dark-skinned man stepped closer to him, a curious glint in his eyes. “And Jingye?”

“No,” Ziel replied, already tired of this conversation.

All the original contestants of Ghostwater had done a remarkable job of staying out of his way. He supposed he could give them praise for that, if anything.

The dark-skinned man gave a nod and a polite head bow. “In any case, welcome to the Spirit Well. As you can see, there’s a ton left, so take whatever you want. We won’t get in your way.”

Really? That was a shame. 

“Also, I’m just about done cooking,” he said, gesturing at a table where plates of glistening fish steaks with sides of blue rice had been prepared. “Grab a plate if you want. That carp is stupid tasty if you cook it right,” he giggled gleefully.

Palutin nodded eagerly, “If’n that ain’t the truth!”

Heavens. This was worse than anything Ziel could have imagined.

They were going to try and be nice to him.

Infuriatingly enough, that fish did smell delicious.

“My name is Glassy Sky Arelius, but I go by Sky,” he said, as he then gestured at his other friends. A moment later, they took the cue to introduce themselves.

“Apologies,” the big one said as he bowed his head, “My name is Wei Shi Lindon.”

“Yerin.”

“I’m Mercy!”

A purple spirit of hazy light twisted itself out from Wei Shi Lindon. “And I’m Dross!”

A Sylvan Riverseed in the shape of a blue woman wearing a dress dove out from the water to stand on the rim. She gave a chime in lieu of a self-introduction. Sky gestured towards her, “That’s Little Blue.”

Quaint.

Ziel heard stomps behind him, corresponding to that black sun he had sensed in his spiritual perception for almost half a mile now. He turned around to regard a black dragon turtle. Hopefully, this one would try something.

“You’re that Wastelander,” the dragon turtle spoke.

“That’s Orthos,” Sky said. “Orthos, you’re in time for food.”

“Already ate,” Orthos pronounced imperiously, head raised. “My prey was delicious.”

“I told you not to spoil your appetite!” Sky said, “Not when I was actually going to cook again this time around!”

“I don’t care for human cuisine,” Orthos huffed as he walked past Ziel, unfortunately not moving to fight him.

Ziel let go of his hammer and sighed all the way to the table where he picked a plate with the fish steak and a perfectly shaped dome of blue rice to the side. There was already a pair of cutlery on the plate as well.

He sat down in some corner, hoping to remain undisturbed.

Instead, roughly everyone in the habitat followed him. Palutin sat up against him on one side. Sky on the other. At least the others had the sense not to crowd his personal space, but it still made for a rather discordant dinner.

He probably should have just taken some of the Spirit Well water, determined that it was ineffective, then been on his way. It was clear that this habitat was far beyond overpopulated as it was.

000

I watched as Ziel scooped up a bowl of water from the Spirit Well, and slowly took a sip.

He stood still, and then ducked his head a little as he put the bowl down on the rim of the well.

Poor guy.

It really fucking sucked that he had come all the way here just to get told that his princess was in another castle, the princess being ‘the state of not living under constant excruciating agony’.

It certainly put my own suffering into perspective. I had been crippled for only six days where I was conscious. Nine including the coma that I was in while the Blood Shadow tried to hollow me out. Those still felt like the worst six days of my entire goddamn life bar fucking nothing. Not the Broken Star city, not Mu Shu’s training, not even my Iron advancement.

I couldn’t imagine eight years of that torment.

Eight years.

And he was still trying. Eight years of constant suffering, of having to deal with solitude and the crushing shame and survivor’s guilt of being the last survivor of the sect you were supposed to be the leader of.

I looked at the faded insignia of the Dawnwing Sect in the back of Ziel’s cape. It looked like a mandala or a stylized lotus, but it was so weathered with time that it was hard to see what it had started off as.

Man, it really sucked what he was going through.

Knowing all of that, how could I best broach the issue of getting something out of him?

I’ve long accepted that my intimate knowledge of certain people’s circumstances is creepy and off-putting, so I won’t go up to him and extend to him my sympathies, certainly not right before asking him for a favor. 

Getting him to open up was also equally out of the question. That was just manipulative, and being manipulative is bad.

In this case, being manipulative was also unwise. Ziel wasn’t born yesterday, and I had about the same capacity for guile and deception as a particularly clever zoo monkey. 

Ah, fuck it.

I walked up to him while he still stared at the Spirit Well. “Hey, Ziel, I’d like to speak to you for a moment, in private.”

Ziel turned around to face me glacially. Maybe springing this on him so close to this failure wasn’t wise, but I had my doubts that he was very interested in sticking around for long. He clearly didn’t vibe with this whole set-up. I suspected that the only reason why he stuck around with Lindon for so long was because he found the Lowgold to be cute, and wanted to act as a mentor figure one more time. “About what?”

I rubbed the back of my neck sheepishly. “I have a favor to ask.”

“Of course,” Ziel said, already exhausted by the conversation. Fuck.

“Um,” I said, “It’s really not a big deal. In fact, it would help your benefactor as much as it would help myself. All I’m asking you to do is just put in a good word and introduce us.”

This seemed to catch some of Ziel’s curiosity. His eyebrows furrowed fractionally. “Why?”

I looked around and saw that everyone was pretty much out of earshot anyway. May as well have this conversation here, then. 

Alright, where do I start?

Ah, fuck it.

“I’m certain that the Uncrowned King Tournament will happen again,” I said. Ziel frowned at that.

“You are certain,” Ziel said. “So who are you?”

“I’m a nobody,” I waved my hand in front of my face. “A well-informed nobody, but a nobody nonetheless.”

“The last one was ten years ago,” Ziel said, “They don’t occur very close to each other. It’s usually between twenty to thirty years.”

“Right,” I said with a nod, “And you competed in the last one.” Ziel closed his eyes. He was doubting the veracity of my claims. I had to make sure to really drive home the fact that I was well-informed. “If I recall correctly, you didn’t make it to the top eight that time. You still managed to become an Archlord some years after. Pretty impressive, and… exactly what I’m after.” 

Ziel sighed. “Did Palutin tell you?”

“No,” I said to him, “Anyway, the Tournament happens again because, as you’ve noticed, the Dreadgods have acted erratically. To the point that the Monarchs were unable to predict them. This has moved them into action. They are now especially concerned with raising up new protectors to bolster their numbers.”

“Where do I come in, Sky?” Ziel said. He didn’t seem angry. Just a mixture of irritated and disappointed. 

I sighed. He wasn’t buying any of this. “I know this isn’t important to you, or worth any of your time at all.” I rummaged in my pocket to find a vial with green water. “This is Life Well water. Pretty priceless. It’s yours. No oaths attached. I just want that favor, and things would go a lot smoother with you taking me seriously.”

Ziel frowned at the vial. “You want to compete in this… eighteenth Uncrowned King Tournament under the Beast King’s banner. The problem is, the Beast King provides tributes for Northstrider, who is dead. The closest Monarch he could connect you to would be the Queen of Shadows. You would have a better shot attracting the attention of her agents from where you already are. Can’t your Akura friend do something about this?” So he had intuited Mercy’s clan affiliations. As expected of a former Archlord.

“Just take the vial,” I said, “I have thought this through. Mercy’s the Monarch’s favored daughter, and she could perhaps put in a good word for me, but in the event that she fails, I’d rather not have placed all my eggs in one basket if you catch my drift. The Beast King’s endorsement would go a long way in ensuring my placement.”

Ziel took the vial and put it in his pocket. He cast me an inscrutable look. “And your friends?”

I grinned at him. “I’m worried about them the least. They definitely have a place in the coming tournament. I would consider myself to be the weakest among us, hence my incessant preparations. But in case the worst comes to pass, please pass your recommendations to the Beast King as well.”

“Here is my final question,” Ziel said, “What exactly makes you think that you are worthy to compete in this tournament? I assume you meet the age requirement, but you’re only a Highgold. You need to be an Underlord of considerable strength to even give it an attempt. The Monarch factions have droves of such talented sacred artists. You will be starting from behind, competing against warriors who have spent years as Underlords, weaving soulfire into their techniques with incredible ease. This is only in the best case scenario, in which you manage to advance to Underlord in the first place, and in case you are not aware, this is not an advancement that you can control with brute force and resources.”

I wanted to stick my tongue out at him and blow a raspberry. Ye of little faith. But I couldn’t blame him. I really did come off as some delusional child at the moment. That was true.

But it did allow me an opportunity to keep Ziel close. “Why don’t you stick with us and see for yourself the potential we carry?”

“I would rather not.”

Oh no.

Time to bring out the big guns.

I folded my arms, “How was the food?”

He didn’t say anything to that.

“I’ll make that for you every day,” I said. He looked at the ground in thought. “And I’ll show you some thousand-year-old scripts from a world-famous scriptor and scientist. He was an Archlord on the Path of the Broken Star. Ever heard of it?”

Ziel looked at me intently. “I want that meal every day.”

Success!

“You got it!” I made to hug him, but he held a hand out in an instant. Instead, I just bowed at him. “Welcome to the team.”

“I never agreed to join any team.”

000

Yerin Forged the Hidden Sword according to the principles that the Sword Sage had taught to her once before, the instincts and intuition that his Remnant now lent to her, and her own deductions borne from numerous repetitions and trials.

Yerin suspected that the technique would be useless in battle for years to come. At least until she herself had access to soulfire, at which point many of the Sage’s techniques would be easier to grasp.

Easier wasn’t her path, however. The Sage’s Remnant had been adamant in what remained of its crushed-up will that every stage of the Endless Sword could be accomplished with the toolset of a Gold.

Even the Sword like a Whisper.

The more she practiced, the better she could conceptualize the sheer, gaping canyon separating her from true skill. She became intimately familiar with her shortcomings, with her blind and feeble eyes and senses unable to direct a cut most efficiently, and with her lack of understanding of sword aura, unable to corral it to the Sage’s standards.

The more she practiced, the more she realized with horror how the Sage must have viewed her.

Had he ever believed in her? Or had she just been a distraction, an anomaly that would have kept him busy for a few decades before he moved on to a more promising disciple?

This wasn’t the first time that she thought she wasn’t cut out for her Path, and it wouldn’t be the last either. It was one of the many hazards of learning under a Sage. Every Path was truly only one sacred artist wide. Everyone else eventually had to branch out if they wanted to get better.

“This is hard,” rasped Yerin’s personal branch. She summoned her own Hidden Sword using Endless Sword madra corrupted by blood. The ensuing technique looked like a wound in reality. The Blood Shadow flicked her finger at the Hidden Sword’s flat side, shattering it to pieces. “Easier to spot a bleeding gash in reality than a dairy cow in a palace. Nothing hidden about this sword. How is anyone supposed to use this in battle?”

Yerin held down her revulsion and hatred to consider the Shadow’s words. It helped to remind herself that its state of existence, and what it had absorbed from Yerin, had been enough to dilute the Bleeding Phoenix’s malevolence. Even though that was nearly impossible for her to truly believe. “Master did.”

She had seen memories of him weaving Hidden Swords throughout a battleground, subtly baiting his opponents into cutting themselves on the edges. It took guile, and was as far away from a straightforward fight as you could come, but the Sage had made it work.

The technique was also important in making her understand the principles behind cutting in general, and sword energy in particular—both madra and aura. 

That she knew so little meant that she needed this technique training more than anything else.

Still, she had worked on it for hours now, and could use a break. She pulled her sword out of her sheathe and swung it through her Hidden Swords, shattering them all to pieces. “Let’s swing swords.”

The Blood Shadow gave her a bloody grin of confidence. Ever since Yerin had let her eat the Ghostwater fish, the Shadow had caught up quickly in strength. Not enough to actually threaten her in a full-on fight—it seemed like the spirit would never truly be quite as strong as Yerin—but enough to put pressure on her. It was decent training, if anything. It helped her sharpen herself against an opponent that knew all her tricks, helped her also poke holes at her own technique, and it taught her how to keep her cool, and keep her lunch down, even in the face of her worst nightmares come to life. 

The Sword Sage would have called that willpower training, and patted her on the shoulder.

The two of them rained blows on each other—all blocked or deflected—and continued fighting until Yerin eventually gained the upper hand and put her sword’s blade to her Shadow’s pink throat. As far as fights went, this one was relatively undramatic. They just clashed swords until one lost. An onlooker would have accused them of having rehearsed the fight beforehand. That’s what happened when you fought a perfect reflection of your skill.

Yerin pulled back and slammed her sword down her sheathe, taking the last sips of the Dream Well water left in her jug while she considered that fight. She had several critiques in mind about her style. As those critiques piled up into an entire manual’s worth of points of improvement, Yerin had identified certain key themes that tied them all together.

As always, it boiled down to her eyes.

She wasn’t absorbing enough information in time. She took too long. Even when she was faster than fast, Yerin could sense that the likes of Cassias would have taken advantage of some of her indecision. Some of her inexperience.

Through this exercise, she found ways to address that weakness. The distance between where she was now and where she wanted to be was vast as always, but it didn’t frustrate her, because she knew she was making progress. She knew she could have buried the Yerin of yesterday in an all-out fight, and that Yerin knew the same as well.

It was thanks to the Dream Well water. Every day felt like a week of the best training in her life now. Her only regret was that she couldn’t stay here for years and years, just sharpening herself against the Blood Shadow.

Then the dumb spirit would open her mouth and Yerin would remember why she couldn’t stand it to begin with. “I want to see Lindon.”

That brought forth a familiar headache. Lindon was busy doing his own training, developing his Soul Cloak and reading from the tablet library. Outside of meal-time, they spent very little time around one another. They all had something to do after all. Yerin herself would occasionally take a stroll through the tablet library to learn what she could from whatever tablets they had of sword artists.

She had to push her newfound literacy to locate those tablets, searching everywhere for the characters ‘sword’ and ‘cut’, avoiding everything labeled with ‘Overlord’ or above. They all carried a lesson of their own, and the Sage would have approved of her going around picking the brains of sword artists to deepen her understanding.

In the meantime, she barely had time to discuss anything with Lindon. They had about one or two conversations a day before moving on to gaining strength.

And Yerin always made sure to hold the Blood Shadow in while she spoke to Lindon. 

That spirit had an… annoying fascination with Lindon, one that she was certain that he wouldn’t appreciate. Who would?

“Shut up about Lindon,” Yerin said, “We need to work.”

“It’s not fair that I don’t get to see him.”

What wasn’t fair was that Yerin had to listen to this in the first place. “Life isn’t fair,” Yerin replied, “Now stop waving your lips before you make me pop a vein.”

The Blood Shadow pouted. That irritated Yerin to no end. Where in the world did she get that from? Yerin never pouted. 

She was supposed to be a copy of Yerin’s personality, but with every word that came out of the horror’s mouth, she knew that to be less and less true.

“Bet my soul anything I say would make you pop a vein,” the Blood Shadow shot back.

“What soul?” Technically, the entire spirit counted as a soul, but it was the sentiment that mattered.

“Ha ha,” the Blood Shadow scraped out straight facedly. “You got the whole pocket world howling and slapping their thighs.”

Yerin growled, “Liked you better when you were a monster trying to hollow me out. At least you were quiet.”

As always, the Blood Shadow shut down at the reminder of her past, almost as if she was actually ashamed. If Sky really was correct that she had taken a measure of Yerin’s personality, then she was intensely curious to know how the Blood Shadow actually felt about that past, how it could reconcile the state of being itself with what it had absorbed of Yerin.

Did the Blood Shadow hate herself as much as Yerin hated her?

Sky walked up to her. Yerin didn’t take the Blood Shadow in.

Because she knew that she didn’t like him. It was fun to see her squirm in displeasure.

“Need any more Dream Well water?” Sky said. He was doing his rounds probably, topping everyone up. 

Yerin gave him the jug she had borrowed from him. It had run almost completely empty after the Blood Shadow had gotten into it. To hear the monster tell it, it got easier to ‘be herself’ when she was under the influence of the water. 

In Yerin’s opinion, it just made her too chatty.

Sky took the jug, stepped into his void key, and walked out with the jug, now full of purple water. He gave the jug back, and gave the Blood Shadow a nod. “Ruby.”

The Blood Shadow sneered at him. He returned the sneer with a grin and turned on his heels to leave.

“Can’t stand him,” the Blood Shadow rasped out. “Why do you even keep him around?”

Yerin was loath to go out of her way to defend Sky in this situation, but hearing that come out of her Blood Shadow was especially grating. “He gave you a name. Told me to handle you with baby gloves. He’s the bleeding reason that you’re even standing here, that I’m letting you train next to me. And he saved our life. You could stand to be a hair more grateful to one of the few people in this world that doesn’t want you dead and gone, and heaven knows he’d be right to want that after what your kin did to him.”

The Blood Shadow growled at her. “It’s not my kin.”

“Then who is?” Yerin shot back. 

“You are.”

Yerin wanted to throw that back at her face, but her expression of raw vulnerability stopped her dead in her tracks.

Deciding to change the topic instead, she asked, “Why does he scrape you so raw, anyway?”

Ruby looked down on the ground and shrugged her shoulders. “Just a feeling. He’s annoying. I know he… I mean I,” she hesitated, “I got gratitude for him, sure, but that doesn’t mean I have to like him, do I? I contend he’s careless, moves too fast for our good, and takes everything too lightly. Like it’s all a joke to him, and he’s the only one laughing.”

She recognized that sentiment immediately. This was how she felt towards Sky around the time after she had awakened her Blood Shadow.

This was the sentiment that her Blood Shadow had copied. 

“I know,” Ruby clenched her fists and looked at the ground, “It’s… it’s a mess. I know he’s not all bad, but I don’t know what to think. Don’t know what’s mine and what’s yours. I figured I’d hold onto this one thing to make us different, to make me me. Ruby. But… it’s hard to tell. Hard to tell what’s you. What’s me. And what’s the phoenix.”

She felt raw grief through their spiritual bond. Yerin didn’t know what to say. Except, “What do you contend you need?”

Ruby sighed. “A break.”

Unbidden, she dematerialized into an amorphous blob of blood madra and swam back into Yerin’s spirit through their link.

Yerin Forged another Hidden Sword, slowly getting back into the flow of training. Hopefully it would be easier now without someone nattering over her shoulder.