Blue light flowed around the shadow of a nearby stalk.
He expected another of those luminous serpents in the dark water overhead, but his spiritual senses screamed a warning and his eyes snapped up.
From behind the nearest blade of grass emerged a fish the size of a bear. It swam through the air as though through water, and its fanged mouth couldn’t close fully over its needle-sharp teeth.
A quick flash of his Copper sight showed him blue-green aura gathered into a cushion beneath its fins.
It was swimming through water aura.
The fish’s silver scales rippled as it swam by only two feet from Lindon’s head. His scalp tensed at the discomfort of having those teeth so close, but the creature gave no sign that it had seen or sensed him. It drifted along, vanishing into the towering grass.
Back in the direction Lindon had come from.
Carefully, with no idea whether these things even had ears, Lindon turned and crept after it. He hated to be the kind of idiot who would follow a tiger back into the jungle, and he was haunted by images of the fish flashing out from behind a stalk in front of him with jaws open, but it might be headed for Orthos.
After a moment, that harsh shriek came again, but it was much closer this time. It stabbed his ears, followed by a shuffling sound like something digging through sand.
Lindon ran.
He hadn’t traveled far; it only took him a few seconds to retrace his footsteps to the gap in the stalks where he’d left Orthos.
The fish was eating him. It had the turtle’s shell in its massive fangs, and was working itself back and forth, trying to chew through the hard plate. Orthos’ body shook like a rag seized by a dog, spraying sand everywhere. The fish wasn’t getting anywhere with the shell, but it quickly bit another spot, and Orthos’ body turned a little more. Getting that much closer to exposing his underbelly.
The last of his Blackflame madra raged through Lindon’s channels.
His power gathered in his palm of flesh, a ball of dark, liquid fire. It would take a breath or two to condense enough that he could use it as a Striker technique, but as soon as Lindon began gathering power, the fish released Orthos. It spun around, baring its fangs and hissing at him.
Then, with an abrupt silver flash, it struck.
Lindon couldn’t split his concentration to ignite the Burning Cloak, but his right hand came up without his order. The skeletal, bone-white arm flew up eagerly, seizing the creature.
Slightly pointed nails met the creature’s scales and clawed for a grip. Madra flowed through the sacred beast, so his Remnant arm could seize it easily, but it wasn’t satisfied with only a handful.
His arm held the fish in place for an instant, dragging it to a halt, though the force of its resistance dragged Lindon through the sand. He almost lost his hold on the dragon’s breath technique, but he didn’t have the mental energy to wrestle his arm for control.
At last, black fire lanced out from his left hand. The bar of dark flame speared the fish through the middle, burning it from the inside out, and emerged from the fish’s tail in a spray of smoke and burning chunks.
The madra continued at an upward slant, eventually hitting the water overhead and vanishing. His right hand drew on the handful of madra like a mosquito drawing blood, and it seemed to grow a little brighter. A brief impression of sated hunger passed through his spirit as the madra dissolved to essence.
A chorus of shrieks, identical to the one the fish had let out, rose in the distance.
Drawing from his pure core, which still shone bright as the moon in his spirit, he funneled power through his body and tucked the box under his left arm. Madra flowed through his replacement arm as well, and he seized the underside of Orthos’ shell in his white grip.
Box under his arm, Little Blue on his shoulder, Lindon dragged Orthos forward step by step.
Silver-blue light rose behind him, casting more waving shadows as he passed through the stalks, but he concentrated on pushing ahead. He didn’t have a hand to spare to pull out the Eye of the Deep, but the general direction was straight away from the wall where he’d entered.
Which was perfect, because a sacred fish’s Remnant was rising back there.
He pushed himself faster, though it felt like his knees would buckle with every step. This was where he needed the Burning Cloak, but not only had he totally exhausted his Path of Black Flame, his madra channels were at risk of serious injury if he kept straining them. Pure madra was far easier on the channels than Blackflame was.
He needed Little Blue’s help to recover. Better yet, he needed a spiritual healing elixir, a few good meals, and three days of rest.
More fish, identical to the first, darted out of the forest of stalks. The Remnant was nowhere to be seen, but the others circled him curiously one time. Then, with the single-minded unity of a school, they all turned to Lindon.
He extended his spiritual perception over them. The fish felt like furious whirlpools, and the Remnant like a raging river. But there was something else moving toward him, something that emerged from the darkness like dawn breaking.
Before the fish struck at him, a golden whip emerged and struck it on the scales, leaving a scorch-mark on silver.
Deafening shrieks rose once more, and the three fish turned in a fury on the source of that heat. Lindon didn’t stay to watch the sacred beasts fight the dragon-girl; as soon as they moved to attack, he hauled Orthos away.
He’d never developed a full-body Enforcer technique for his Path of Twin Stars, so he had no way to efficiently cycle it to his limbs for strength. He was wasting madra like this, but without the power of his spirit, he would never have been able to haul Orthos’ weight. Sweat beaded on his forehead, his elbow trembled where it met the white of his Remnant arm, and every breath was a labor.
Still, he pushed himself faster. She had chased him. He was certain she hadn’t followed him immediately after he left, because she hadn’t bothered to veil her spirit. He would have felt her approach.
Which meant she had waited before chasing him. Why? He wasn’t sure why she cared to chase him at all, but if she did, why give him a head start? Fair play?
Her voice rose to match the shrieking fish, shouting insults at them and promising punishment for their insolence. She had started mocking a group of fish.
Well, considering that they gave off the same pressure as a Highgold and they were undoubtedly sacred beasts, maybe they were intelligent enough to understand her. Regardless, he could only hope they stalled her long enough for him to reach his destination.
And that this destination would actually save him.
Every step in the sand cost him another fraction of his pure madra, and Orthos’ presence in his mind was a constant, dark well of weakness and suffering. Every time Lindon pulled on his shell, he worried that he would soon be pulling a corpse.
But his exhaustion didn’t leave him much room to worry about others. Soon, his vision had narrowed to nothing but that point on the horizon, and his mind was filled with nothing but the next step.
He almost didn’t realize when he arrived.
A huge shadow washed over him, and he jerked his sight up, certain for a moment that a fish was descending on him from overhead.
A rocky tower rose from the sand, slightly taller than the waving weeds all around. Wearily, Lindon dropped the box in his left hand and the giant turtle in his right. He fumbled for the latch, but his white hand passed right through it again. This time, he focused, cycling pure madra through his hand and flipping the box open.
After another moment of exhausted flailing, he came up with the fist-sized sapphire. When he poured another trickle of madra into it, he realized exactly how low he was; the construct drew out fully half of the power he had remaining.