The Bleeding Phoenix, flying into the Trackless Sea.
Not fleeing.
[Behavioral deviation detected in the Bleeding Phoenix,] his oracle reported. [It acts according to unknown purpose.]
Northstrider didn’t need the reminder. They both knew they hadn’t driven it off; it was flying somewhere with intention.
“Do you think it’s feeding to regain its power?” Malice asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Oooh, I know how much you love that.” She was smirking, he was sure, but she had always valued useless conversation. He continued cycling, seeing to his spirit, categorizing how much strength the battle with the Phoenix had cost him and how long it would take to recover.
“He did this,” Malice said at last.
“Yes.”
It would be no mystery among the Monarchs who was responsible for the strange actions of the Phoenix. Only one among them even claimed to have any influence over the Dreadgods.
“He has gone too far,” she said, and now he could feel her cold anger bleeding out into the world around her. “He’s toying with forces that could be the ruin of all of us. What could he possibly expect to gain from this?”
Northstrider opened his eyes. “I will know soon.”
Wearing more veils than he ever had in his life, Reigan Shen shoved his way through collapsed houses and upturned trees. He was still in his human body, and he was both sweating and breathing heavily.
He felt as weak as an Iron. It was like wearing a suit so tight that it had burrowed into his skin.
Even so, he wasn’t doing the work himself. He may be a sacred beast, but he wasn’t an animal.
Jade-level constructs pushed beams aside, dispersed soil, and lifted boulders so he could pass. More scoured the area, clearing the entrance.
It had taken him hours to reach this point, and finally the starting point was within reach. The last chunk of masonry rolled away, revealing a towering stone door. It was carved with the image of a gaunt, sunken human with many grasping hands, its eyes hollow and mouth open unnaturally wide.
This was Subject One, at least as he had appeared long ago. A Dreadgod, though few knew that. The man who had become warped by hunger aura. The origin of their bloodline.
Shen’s willpower was veiled, but still powerful. He commanded the door to open, and it obeyed.
With great ceremony and a hissing release of power, the Nethergate swung open.
Inside, a wood-paneled hallway was lit with flickering scripts. Finally, Reigan Shen had gained the wish he’d dreamed of ever since Tiberian’s death: entrance to the western labyrinth.
Only the shallowest layer, to be certain. The bulk of the work was still left to be done, and the depths of the labyrinth would surely be locked down tight. Fortunately, he had the key.
Reigan Shen strode into the tunnel, on his way to retrieve his new weapon.
Epilogue
With his Remnant arm in a scripted sling, Lindon faced the Ancestor’s Tomb. It had come through the Wandering Titan’s attack more or less intact.
Part of its roof had caved in, one pillar was cracked, and it was covered with debris like a small town had dumped its garbage all over it.
But Heaven’s Glory must have done their job well when they rebuilt it, because the Tomb still stood.
There were no security measures left around it, all of them having been destroyed either by the trembling earth or roaring winds, so he walked through the front doors of the Tomb easily.
Once he stood inside the open temple-like room, he faced down the sealed door at the other end. A mural of the four Dreadgods covered the entrance.
Lindon had learned many things from the Wandering Titan’s memories. Too many things, he would say; it was impossible to process all the impressions, instincts, and thoughts. Dross had been going through them, but even for him, it was difficult to separate what had come from the Titan and what from Lindon’s own mind.
Still, a few themes were clear. One was that the Titan had detected its goal here. The one meal it needed. The source of hunger madra.
When it had arrived and felt nothing more of the sort, the Dreadgod had assumed it wasn’t here. Like a dog chasing after a stick, only to never find it.
But Lindon had more than a few reasons to suspect the Dreadgod’s prize was still here. Just locked away. Buried.
Besides, Lindon’s arm had been strained and cracked by absorbing so much of the Titan’s power. He needed more weapons of hunger madra if he wanted to rebuild it. And improve it. Scavenging from dreadbeasts wouldn’t hold him forever.
He had to pick his way across a field of debris as he crossed the room; evidently some people had used the Tomb as shelter during the Dreadgod’s attack. As it had been before, the inside of the Ancestor’s Tomb was just a wide-open space lined with pillars.
At the end of the room stood an ornate door, sealed shut. The entrance was undamaged by the previous collapse of the building, which didn’t surprise him. If it was part of the labyrinth below, it had to be made of stronger stuff.
Lindon had been reaching out for the door already, silence filling his mind where Dross’ chatter belonged, but he stopped as he noticed something.
The door had no mechanism to open it and no clear script-circle, which meant he would have to use his authority to open it, but that wasn’t what had seized his attention. It was a trace of someone else’s authority over to the side of the hall, a little to the side of the door.
An indentation in space. Like an invisible bump.
Lindon’s alarm went up immediately. Someone had torn space here, and if it wasn’t him…
He should call for help in case there was something deadly on the other side. Dross could have done that.
The spirit wasn’t gone. Not quite. He drifted in Lindon’s soul, right around the base of his skull as usual, but Lindon didn’t see details. His eye, his boneless arms. Instead, Dross felt like a loose cloud of dream madra. Like a two-dimensional copy of his former self.
Eithan insisted that it was possible to bring Dross back, but Lindon understood the nature of spirits. If Dross returned, there was no guarantee that he’d be himself anymore.
Lindon shook himself free. Dross wasn’t here, but some of his passive enhancements to Lindon’s mind remained.
He focused on the bump in space. It didn’t feel like a tunnel to him, or a trap. It felt like a sealed void key more than a tunnel somewhere else in the world.
Though he supposed there could be anything inside the void key.
He stretched out a tongue of Blackflame, infusing it with his authority and using it to slice through space. It was much easier than when he had tried the same thing with only his will; when he commanded the world to “Open,” he cut through the barrier separating the spaces almost without resistance.
As soon as a doorway in midair unfurled, opening onto a huge room cluttered with various objects, he noticed two things more than any others: the art and the swords.
This room actually had walls, and on those walls hung brightly colored tapestries, long black-and-white landscapes painted on scrolls, framed portraits, even decorative lights and constructs of slithering color that were clearly designed only for decoration.
Between the paintings were swords. Some were elaborate and ancient, shining with power, while others were dull, pitted, or rusty. Some were just hilts, their madra blades having faded away to essence, and still others had Forged blades that were perfectly preserved.
A scripted cauldron sat cold in the corner, next to buckets, boxes, bags, and bundles of herbs, spirit-fruits, pills, and elixirs. Next to it was a rack of sacred artist’s robes, all black, many of them nicked and cut.
Lindon’s stomach twisted.