Yerin breathed deeply. She hated feeling like she was cornered like this, and the fact that they had left her with no option other than to do as they wished made her want to refuse out of sheer brick-headed stubbornness.
But that would be stupid.
“This will help me work in Sacred Valley?” she asked.
“The suppression field will affect you no more than your peers,” Emriss confirmed. “You won’t be able to fully express the powers of a Herald until you reach the peak of Archlord no matter what we do, but this will remove the weaknesses and potential problems that might prevent you from getting there.”
“And you’re all telling me to do this?”
“You’d be stupid not to,” Larian said bluntly. “You’ve got time to get anybody you really like to safety, and even if everybody else dies, you’ll be able to save more later.”
The Blood Sage nodded along, which almost made Yerin change her mind.
“Right, then.” She’d hoped to return to Sacred Valley with her chin up, proudly saying that she’d taken care of the Dreadgod. But if she couldn’t do that, at least the suppression field wouldn’t cut so many of her strings anymore.
So there wouldn’t be any confusion, she continued. “As the Uncrowned King—Queen, whatever—I’m wishing for you to fix me up. Do what you can for me.”
And, because she didn’t want to leave too much of a bad impression on the collected Monarchs, she added, “Thank you.”
Though this was the wish they had decided on her behalf, so her gratitude had definite limits.
A great pulse of will passed between all the Monarchs, and they nodded as one. Yerin got the impression that the wave of intentions and willpower had moved far beyond them, connecting to Reigan Shen and Sha Miara and maybe some others, wherever they were.
“As the arbiter of the Uncrowned King tournament and the representative of the Monarchs’ collective decision, I agree to grant your request,” Northstrider said formally. “Brace yourself, and receive your reward.”
Suddenly the images of all the Monarchs flickered, and they were standing before her…but they were also standing thousands of miles away, and their wills reached out and held her, cupping her, surrounding her like an eggshell.
It was a disturbingly vulnerable feeling, as though they could flex their fist and crush her, but something else around her was unraveling. She couldn’t even tell what. Her fate, maybe?
Many voices spoke in unison, and it was as though the world itself spoke.
“Be healed.”
Yerin’s senses blanked out.
She came to herself an unknown time later, standing on the bough of the giant tree, staring down into the ruined valley of the gold dragons. Smoke and clouds of dust still rose.
Malice stood at her side, wearing a mysterious smile. “How do you feel?”
“If I’m any sturdier than I was two seconds ago, I couldn’t prove it.” Yerin felt cheated. She had only the Monarchs’ word for it that anything about her had changed at all.
“You will feel the effect of your request once you return to the boundary formation, but the true value you should hopefully never feel. We have removed problems that you would have faced, so if we have done our job, then you will never see them at all.” She ran hands down her bowstring and looked into the distance. “Now, shall we go greet the Wandering Titan?”
Yerin had thought she was following along, but now her thoughts scraped to a halt.
“…you played me like a flute.”
“The others will feel my power when I engage the Titan, but the more misinformation I spread about my intentions, the better.” She shot Yerin a wink. “Also, you called me petty earlier, so I thought I would prove you right.”
“Never said that.”
“That’s what you meant. Of course I was always going to help you. You killed Seshethkunaaz, may his name be forgotten by all who walk the earth. At the moment, you’re my favorite.”
Yerin was thoroughly sick of Monarchs. “What was all that about losing cities?”
Malice shrugged. “What’s a city or two compared to the favor of the Uncrowned Queen?”
Reigan Shen emerged from a tear in the world, striding out onto the blighted rock of the Wastelands.
He had gone to absurd lengths to disguise his actions from the other Monarchs. Usually, they would be able to track him the moment he stepped through the Way. Especially if they were watching him, and Malice had kept purple eyes trained on him for days.
He couldn’t imagine why.
Now, not only had he covered his tracks with false trails, dummy portals, and truly delicate manipulation of spatial authority, but Malice had finally taken her attention off him.
It would take her too long to realize her protections had been breached. By then, it would be too late.
Reigan Shen clasped hands behind his back and surveyed the round crimson shapes sticking onto the landscape. There were millions of them, like seed pods clutching anything they could reach all the way out to the horizon, each the size of his head. Some clung to crystal arches, others shone from within caves, and still others stuck to one another and hung from petrified trees like clusters of grapes.
Eggs of the Bleeding Phoenix.
When they felt the power in his blood, the eggs began to roll toward him or stretch out hair-thin feelers. He kept them away with an effortless use of aura.
The eggs couldn’t be destroyed, not really. They could be broken apart, but they would only re-form. Any attack capable of removing them conceptually would prompt the Dreadgod to reintegrate. Or, as with a lethal attack on any Dreadgod, would awaken the other three of its kind.
The previous generation of Monarchs had learned that the hard way.
The only realistic way to slow the Bleeding Phoenix’s recovery was to give its eggs nothing to feed on. Malice had quarantined this entire area, sealed it with scripts, troops, and constructs, and thereby kept as much prey away as possible.
Even so, every creature with blood running through its veins that had once lived in this section of the Wastelands was now part of the Dreadgod.
If someone else managed to break through the layers of security, they would only become Phoenix food. Even another Monarch wouldn’t be able to do much except potentially antagonize a deadly foe.
They didn’t have the key.
From one of his isolated pocket spaces, Reigan Shen pulled an oblong rectangular box. To the eye, it seemed to be made of seamless, unblemished steel polished to a mirror’s shine.
No force in Cradle could break this container. It was an Abidan artifact, one of the few in Shen’s possession.
It responded to his will as its rightful owner, unfolding like a flower into a square platter presenting its contents. The key to the western labyrinth, which Tiberian had once shown him.
A shriveled, mummified, chalk-white right hand.
Hunger of every kind passed through Shen. Hunger for food, yes, but also for recognition, for respect, for love, for attention, for success, for safety, for power. Greed flowed through him, and bloodlust, and plain old classic lust.
He relished the sensations as, around him, the stone shook. Pebbles lifted into the air, drifting closer to the hand as its hunger warped even gravity.
The Way stirred around him, affected by an artifact of such incredible significance. If he held the hand exposed long enough, it might manifest an Icon.
He wouldn’t need that long.
With shocking speed, eggs tumbled into one another, sticking together, forming a shapeless clump. Soon, living creatures infested by the eggs would come running to donate themselves to the Dreadgod. Nine out of ten victims of these Phoenix fragments became mindless husks controlled by their parasite, and the tenth gained the dubious honor of a Blood Shadow.
The balls of blood and hunger madra began to melt like wax, taking on a more familiar form.