He looked down, seeing the sliced and broken sea-stalks smoldering on the sand.
And, as he watched, they burst into open flame.
Until that point, the greatest source of fire aura had been the furniture in the wreckage of Ekeri’s shelter. That generated enough red-hot aura to fuel her Ruler technique.
But the Void Dragon’s Dance also required destruction. The more the fire consumed, the more destruction aura it released along with the heat. Now, there was enough for him to work with.
Extending his spirit, he gathered threads of black and red energy, controlling it with his madra, wrapping it together, coiling it around himself. The air rippled with heat, his skin tingled, and the edges of his robes started to dissolve as though under the effect of invisible flames.
Holding her larger whip in one hand and a Forged whip in the other, Ekeri rushed after him. She leaped, grabbing onto one Carp with her tail and swinging over a second, snapping sacred beast. She kicked off another, slapped the next in two, and came down on him with both whips descending. All the while, fires dimmed nearby as she gathered fire aura to defend herself.
He was almost out of madra. He couldn’t compete with her in endurance, in physical strength, or in technique. The longer this battle went on, the more options he’d lose.
She’d undoubtedly survived more battles than he had. She’d read his Ruler attack the second he started preparing it, gathering up aura to prepare a defense. By the time Lindon played his last card, she’d still have a full hand.
But, as Orthos had taught him, the Path of Black Flame had some good cards.
When the red and black vital aura had been wrapped together in roughly equal measure, Lindon braided it according to the Ruler technique he’d learned almost a year before.
He turned and faced Ekeri’s whips. His left hand flowed with the power necessary to control the Void Dragon’s Dance, so he couldn’t move it, but his Remnant arm reached out and seized a nearby fish. He dragged it in front of him, using its body to shield him from her attack.
Before it hit, he pushed his left arm forward. With it, he pushed out the tightly coiled aura. It wrestled against his madra, trying to spring free, and his arm and spirit trembled.
Golden light sliced the Silverfang Carp in half, and the second whip descended. He raised his right hand to catch it, though it burned his Remnant palm with a piercing pain that shot through his spirit. At the same time, visible only in his Copper sight, a tightly wound disc of red-and-black aura reached Ekeri.
She pushed against the fire aura with her own spirit, and in only a moment she would unravel the technique.
Instead, Lindon clenched his left fist.
And unleashed the Void Dragon’s Dance.
The aura exploded into a cyclone of spinning flame. It stretched from the ground to the ceiling of the dome, and the heat scorched his face. The column of swirling black-and-red fire swallowed Ekeri, then the Carp around her were consumed, followed by those farther away as the technique grew larger and larger.
But this was not just a fire technique. Empowered by destruction aura, the flames devoured material in a blink. What would normally take hours for the fire to burn instead disappeared instantly.
Every Silverfang Carp touched by the flame was consumed in a snap, becoming little more than ash that drifted down. Lindon projected Blackflame madra around himself as the technique expanded, but the Void Dragon’s Dance was over in only a second.
All of the nearby fish, the remaining stalks, and the yellow-glowing plants had been completely destroyed in a circle around him. Losing the lights left him in shadow, but he couldn’t feel the attendants anymore either. Everything within a hundred yards had vanished, leaving Lindon in a world of sand and ash.
Except for one other survivor. A dragon could not be so easily burned.
Though he had hoped.
Ekeri was only singed, her clothes damaged and smoking, her scales charred. She knelt on one knee with whips crossed before her, spirit trembling. As the ash cleared, her eyes snapped open. They blazed gold.
He braced his knees to keep from collapsing.
There were only a few scraps of madra left in his Blackflame core, but he released a quick, sloppy dragon’s breath to keep her at bay.
It didn’t help. Enforcer technique rippling around her legs, she flowed around his attack, letting her Forged whip vanish in order to strike with her weapon. He ducked it, but she was clearly prepared for him.
Her tail slipped around behind him, locking him into place. Then her clawed hand struck for his chest.
Lindon was past the scope of his plan. They had practiced for everything they could, but no fight could be fully anticipated. At some point, he had to lean on his experience and training.
He only had enough Blackflame madra for one more technique, so he let it go.
And took the hit.
Her claws pierced his chest around his gold badge. They plunged through his skin, sending blood flowing down his stomach.
The pain tore at his consciousness, but he hadn’t accepted the hit by accident. If she wasn’t this close, so close that he could smell the ash on her skin, he would never have been able to hit her himself.
So he shoved his Empty Palm into her core.
Her Enforcer technique vanished and her whip went dark, reverting to nothing more than a needle-pointed silver hilt. Gold eyes widened, and her reptilian lips parted.
Heat crept back into Lindon’s eyes as he pulled Blackflame for one last time.
The dragon’s breath was only the width of two fingers, but it drilled straight through her heart. Severed, her necklaces fell to the ground, leaving loose pearls and chunks of jade and links of gold chain tumbling over the sand.
Lindon shoved her away, stumbling backwards, trying to conjure up enough madra for a Burning Cloak. He should have gone for her head. Now he had given her enough room to recover. She would be coming for him any second, but he couldn’t scrape any more power together.
A full breath of time passed before he realized she wasn’t coming after him.
Instead, she dropped to her knees, scrambling in the sand for her jewelry. Blood leaked from her lips, and she wheezed as though trying to speak, but she ended up coughing blood over the ground instead.
Lindon limped forward. His right arm wasn’t obeying him, but he had to try something. If he left her alive...
Her hand closed over a tiny jade rectangle. With one last frightened glance at him, she broke it.
The air shattered.
Lindon held his hands up to defend himself from this new attack, but all the weight on his spirit had vanished. Before him, where Ekeri had knelt before, there was an intricate spiderweb of cracks in the air. He swept his spiritual perception through them, but they didn’t feel like madra. They felt like nothing, like they were splintered cracks in existence itself.
He did feel something from beneath the web: one or more of those necklaces was releasing an aura like a Truegold weapon. Though every movement sent agony shooting through his whole body, he slowly knelt and slipped his Remnant hand beneath the cracks, reaching for the necklaces.
If they ended up being dangerous, at least he would only lose the same arm.
The pointed tips of his fingers caught on one string…and passed through. This time, he remembered to send pure madra flowing through the limb before he snagged the necklace, pulling the pile of jewelry free of the web and close to him.
He was eager to inspect them, but ash was still falling around him, and the shrieks of distant Carp were growing closer. He could wait until he was back in the safety of the tunnel.
Lindon limped back, passing piles of gray, pressing his robes to his chest to stop the bleeding. When he reached the rock leading into the tunnel, he could only stare at it blankly.