“I don’t know.”
The Sage had never referred to his weapon by name. She didn’t even know if it had one. He had made her use it to chop firewood by hand when he was trying to build up her muscles. He used it because he was too lazy to hunt down an axe.
Instead of talking about that, Yerin asked Mercy another question as they walked away from the cocooned dragon. “How about your Path? Aspects of shadow and force, if I’m not wrong.”
She’d felt Mercy cycling over the last few weeks, so she was pretty certain about that.
“Oh, this is just a restriction technique.”
Yerin glanced back. “I can see that. I’ve got eyes. You don’t want me poking my head into your Path secrets, say so.”
Mercy gave her a surprised look. “I don’t keep secrets. Bad for your heart.” She held out one hand, and a Forged book of shining violet madra popped into her hand.
The cover was entirely covered by the most intricate script-circle Yerin had ever seen. She suspected she could keep staring at it forever and finding new secrets, and the scripts seemed to turn like wheels within wheels. It was a disturbing sight.
And that didn’t even count the way it felt in her perception. It gave off a menacing pressure, like the shadow of a shark circling beneath the waves.
“The Book of Eternal Night,” Mercy announced, holding her book up proudly. “I’m on the Path of Seven Pages. And the first page, the Lowgold page...”
She opened the cover, revealing the first page. It looked more like a thumb-thick tablet than a piece of paper. Yerin wondered if it contained a binding.
This page was choked with more incomprehensible script-circles instead of plain writing. Not that Yerin would have been able to get anything from it either way.
“It’s the central technique from the Path of the Chainkeeper,” Mercy said. “Strings of Shadow. There are seven techniques in this book, one for each page. The Path of Seven Pages unites seven techniques from seven different shadow Paths into one.”
She let it fade away, and this time Yerin traced it with her perception. “You stock that thing in your spirit?”
Mercy patted her stomach like she’d just had a full meal. “When I bonded with this book, they opened up my soulspace early. It’s one of the requirements of my Path.”
A screech echoed through the woods. Either another dragon had caught up, or the first had gotten free.
“All right, that’s enough friendly time,” Yerin said, drawing her sword. “We’ve been too soft on these things. Now, we punch through. I’m getting through that portal before the sun sets, or I’m bleeding out.”
Mercy’s eyes sparkled, and she hopped out in front of Yerin. “Did you say we’re friends now?”
Yerin stared at her.
Another Highgold dragon waited for them ahead, and spots of heat in her perception told her there were more Lowgolds and Highgolds ringing them. They were getting sewed in.
But they were making progress. After an hour of running and dodging through the trees, Yerin spotted something that brightened her heart: the sparkle of light on the ocean.
According to the map, the portal was at the very edge of the island. They were close.
The Highgold dragon roared at them, spraying fire.
A Rippling Sword technique split the fire down the middle. Strings of Shadow dragged its claws to the ground, and Yerin’s sword plunged into the back of its neck.
Its scales actually managed to deflect most of the blow, but blood gushed up, and it shrieked.
Mercy bound it to the ground a few more times as they kept running. She frowned at Yerin. “It wasn’t going to hurt us.”
“It was trying,” Yerin said.
Mercy continued to argue, but Yerin looked ahead. This side of the island ended, not in a sandy beach, but in a strip of dirt overlooking a cliff that dropped to the ocean. She pulled out the map, examining it and pointing.
“Farther north,” she said.
She had to guess the jade doorway would be in the same place as the first one had been. If it was, that meant it would be at the edge of the treeline.
They were getting close to Redmoon Hall territory, but that couldn’t dim her spirits. According to the map, they were within minutes of the Ghostwater entrance. At last, they could leave this boring rotten island behind and join Lindon in the Monarch’s pocket world. It was about time.
A golden shadow passed in front of the sun.
Yerin knew what it was even before she stretched her perception up and felt the presence of the Thousand-Mile Cloud. She knew before the pressure of an Underlord pushed down on her spirit, before dragons roared in triumph and a woman jumped down from the golden cloud, landing easily a hundred feet down.
This was where the Highgold dragons had been meant to lead them. Right into the claws of their leader.
The woman wore a sparkling sacred artist’s robe of intricate red, gold, and purple. Her eyes were golden and vertically slitted, and patches of gold scales remained on the pale skin of her cheeks. Her nails looked like claws, and there were patches of scales on the backs of her hands as well. A thin, gold-scaled tail lashed behind her.
She was doing nothing to restrain her spirit, or the rage that was obvious on her face. The Underlady’s fury hit Yerin only a few steps from the trees, and she fell to her knees, gasping for breath. It was like a bear sitting on her chest.
Mercy fell flat to the ground, in even worse shape than Yerin. She looked like she’d been pinned in place like a corpse prepared for study.
The Underlady was flanked by Truegolds who looked like a cross between humans and dragons. They were scaled, their face reptilian, but they stood upright and wore clothes just like humans would. They spoke to the Lady from behind, but she had furious eyes only for the humans.
“...then they can give me back my sister!” It sounded like she was responding to one of the dragons, but her voice raised to an angry roar in mid-sentence.
Sunset-colored light gathered around one clawed hand, and that technique gave off heat like a scorching bonfire.
Yerin used her sword to push herself up a hair, straightening her back a little bit. “Don’t know...your sister...” she pushed out.
The dragon tossed her head, and Yerin realized she didn’t have hair, but rather a veil of loose scales hanging down from her head so that it looked like hair. “You will meet her now.”
Mercy struggled on the ground. Yerin braced herself.
One of the Truegold dragons lunged at the Lady’s arm, holding her back for just a moment. Madra shone in her hand.
Yerin forced her own sluggish madra to move, lifting her sword in arms that felt a hundred times heavier than usual. She gathered power, Enforcing her weapon, holding it against the Striker technique that was about to come. It wouldn’t be enough, but she had to try something.
“Second page,” Mercy whispered, through gritted teeth.
A phantom image flickered behind Mercy for a second, so quick that Yerin thought she might have imagined it. The violet book, turning from the first page to the second.
Light dimmed about ten feet around Mercy, as though she’d cast a bigger shadow than normal, and suddenly she was giving off the aura of a Highgold. It was the quickest, most casual advancement Yerin had ever heard of.
Not that it would save them. The Lady shook off the Truegold, hurling her Striker technique at the two humans. The liquid madra surged like a river after a storm, carrying the raging heat of a wildfire.
The full-power strike of an Underlord.
Mercy shoved herself in front of Yerin, holding up an arm as though she carried a shield. Another time, Yerin might have been impressed with the spine that took, but in that instant, she was horrified. Was she cracked in the head? Yerin had a better chance of weakening the technique by facing it with her own madra head-on; all Mercy could do was get herself burned to ash a little early.