This was strange. Uncle Fury was known for shirking any duty he could if it didn’t involve advancement or combat.
“It’s all a trap,” he continued. “Don’t get caught in it.”
That sounded a lot more like Fury.
“At some point, you have to start leading.” He grinned down on her and ruffled her hair. “Good luck.”
She had thought of many things to say, but in the end, only one mattered: “Good-bye, Uncle Fury.”
He threw his long arms around her in a hug, and she buried herself in his chest.
For a moment. Then he swept back into the party, leaving her to collect herself.
It was another hour before Fury was ready to depart. Mercy stuck with Lindon and Yerin as much as she could, helping to fend off those who wanted a moment alone with the stars of the Uncrowned King tournament.
Finally, after a long exchange with Charity that no one else could hear, Uncle Fury raised his voice.
“Looks like it’s time to go!”
The words boomed through the enclosed basement. One of the less-advanced servants fell to his knees.
“I think I’m supposed to talk about how I’m sad to be leaving you all behind, but I really can’t wait to go,” he continued. “If you’ve got what it takes, catch up.” He looked to someone at the front of the crowd and winked.
Mercy couldn’t see, but she was certain he was looking at his daughter, the Sage.
“Anyway, that’s enough from me. Later, everybody!”
And that was the end of a fairly typical Akura Fury speech.
As soon as the last word was out of his mouth, the room began to…stretch. It wasn’t anything Mercy could put a name to precisely, but it looked as though the room was being pulled like taffy until it stretched into a long hallway.
The end of the basement, where Fury and those accompanying him stood in a large group, was now much longer than it had been before. It looked like a mirage, a trick of the eye, but she felt no madra gathered there.
Only something else.
An absence of madra, maybe. Fury was at the center of it, pushing—or perhaps pulling—on something deeper than vital aura. Something she didn’t have the senses or the experience to name.
A blue light sparked in front of his outstretched hands.
It swelled as he concentrated, expanding to a ball that hovered in front of him. Unlike madra, this blue substance didn’t look like it was made of light, but rather like a patchwork of every shade of blue that existed. It looked almost material, but it couldn’t have been physical, and her eye couldn’t exactly trace its edges or layers.
The blue ball expanded into a circle big enough to fill the basement from floor to ceiling…and then it was no longer a ball, but a circular doorway, the blue stretching on infinitely in the distance.
Mercy thought that whatever technique Uncle Fury was using had been completed, but he braced his hands as though getting a grip on empty air.
Then he pushed.
The blue power snapped into a wide ring. A ring that led into another world.
In the distance, silver towers stretched into the sky. Boxes of rough metal the size of buildings floated in the air, and the sky was surrounded by bars of impossible size, as though the entire world had been caught in a cage.
Immediately in front of the portal, it was a different story. They looked out onto an empty plaza of white stone, crystals the size of a human body hovering a few feet over the ground and shining blue.
Two figures flanked the portal on either side, each dressed in seamless eggshell-white armor. Abidan, like the one who had hijacked the Uncrowned King tournament. They stood under banners that depicted a stylized fox wrapped in its own tail, and as Lindon watched, the fox on the banner curled up tight. As though the ink was alive and the noise had interrupted its sleep.
“Welcome to Threshold, adept,” a dark-skinned woman announced. Though she didn’t sound like she’d raised her voice, her words echoed through the room. “You take your first steps into the world beyond.”
“Thanks!” Uncle Fury said brightly. “Let’s go, everybody!”
The group filed through side-by-side, some excited and others terrified. Lindon and Yerin stared hungrily through the portal.
Mercy tried not to feel like she was losing family.
But she did wonder what was so great about that other world that it was worth losing this one.
In a matter of moments, and to the cheers of the remaining Akura clan, Fury and his branch passed safely through. The portal collapsed in on itself, folding until it vanished.
Leaving the mortals behind.
3
Lindon stood with Yerin on the second floor of their cloud fortress, looking out through the wide windows to see Charity preparing their exit.
The Sage stood over one of the empty doorframes that had been a portal to Sky’s Edge, weaving space and shadow so that darkness leaked from the edges like a gas. A dark haze was beginning to form so that it blocked out the light of the rising sun, and Lindon could feel the sensation of a door creaking open.
She was expanding the already-existing gate, since she wasn’t strong or skilled enough on her own to create a portal leading so far away that could transfer so many people. He couldn’t follow most of what she was doing, but he could feel it, and he tried to remember that sensation.
Not that he could concentrate well.
Yerin leaned against him as he stood over the cloud fortress’ control panel, a warm and soft presence at his side, leaving him with a moment of indecision.
He could put his arm around her. He should, right? They had passed that point already.
But she was on his right side. Putting his Remnant arm around her struck him as a bit like throwing a corpse over her to protect her from the cold.
She glanced up at him and took his Remnant hand in hers. He could feel her, but distantly compared to his arm of flesh, as though he were imagining the sensation instead of physically feeling it.
Yerin laced her fingers with his. “You’d contend they’ll listen to you?”
He didn’t need to ask what she was talking about. She knew what was on his mind.
Would Sacred Valley listen to him?
His family was in greater danger every moment, but no amount of hurrying on his part would make things happen any faster. He felt like an axe was poised over Sacred Valley, and he was leisurely watching it happen.
He had gotten no sleep at all last night, cramming every minute with preparation.
“They will,” he said. “If not to me, then to the army of Golds we’re bringing to their door. I can’t imagine we’ll have to prove something’s coming.”
They had both lived through the rampage of the Bleeding Phoenix, and in their experience, Dreadgods were only slightly less subtle than the heavens collapsing.
“Plenty of room in here for your family,” Yerin pointed out. “Even if they each bring a friend and their biggest dog.”
Lindon looked to the illusory display rising from a script-circle, where an image of a purple cloudship floated. One of Charity’s evacuation fleet.
As promised, there were two dozen ships lined up behind him. In one night. Even after a battle between Monarchs.
The Sage of the Silver Heart kept her word.
“If anyone will listen to us, we’ll save them.” There would always be a number of people who would stay in their homes no matter what he said, and presumably others who would try to escape on their own.
Outside of the clans and schools, there were a few isolated communities that lived in the wilderness at the heart of Sacred Valley. He planned to look for them, but if they really couldn’t fly cloudships into the valley, it might be impossible to get everyone.
But he would do it.
This was what his power was meant for.
Lindon hesitated before squeezing back. Usually, when he tightened his grip on someone with his Remnant hand, it was because he was draining their soul.