The Beast King had seen through the state of his spirit with a single glance. He shrugged, speaking through a mouthful of roasted meat. “It was a long bet. We can still try it in the form of an elixir. How much did you bring me?”
Ziel tossed him a bottle, which he caught balanced on one finger. Silver eyes moved from the bottle to Ziel. “One? Had the Well run dry?”
“No.” Ziel leaned his head back, resting against the mammoth’s hair. The sacred beast smelled like warm fur, and he found it comforting. The stars glittered overhead, distant and uncaring.
The Herald grunted as though he understood, and the bottle of water vanished into his void key. “How long does the pocket world have?”
“Three weeks, maybe less.”
“Shame. Built by Northstrider, and it’s gone so quickly.” He shrugged, tearing the rest of the meat away and tossing the bone behind him.
Ziel could hear the dogs fighting over it:
“You got it last time!”
“Ah, but you forget about the squirrel that you did not share with me.”
“A squirrel’s bones are tiny and snap easily. It is hardly the same.”
The Beast King leaned closer to Ziel, ignoring the dogs. “Since you seem so willing to help others, I have something to occupy your time. I put a couple of Golds on a task for me, and they seem to have gotten themselves stuck. How about you swing by and un-stick them.”
Ziel had just gotten comfortable.
He reached a hand out to his hammer and gave a long sigh. “Where?”
“Under the gold dragons. I’ll send you close.” He snapped his fingers as though something had just occurred to him. “Oh, and there might be an Underlord in the mix.”
Ziel heaved himself to his feet an inch at a time, like an old man. “Then maybe I’ll die.”
Lindon walked through the outer wall of the new habitat hauling the corpse of a Diamondscale Sea Drake behind him. He held one fang in his Remnant hand, dragging the serpent’s long, silver body behind him as he walked. The blue-and-white light of the Soul Cloak still drifted through and around him.
Orthos followed, roaring with laughter. “You’ll need to eat a dragon’s portion of this one. It’ll put some scales on you, that’s for sure.”
Lindon’s stomach twisted at the thought as he pulled the Drake the last few feet and released it. Each bite of the Sea Drake’s flesh had been a new exercise in agony, and it had required his full willpower and not a little bit of madra to avoid vomiting up every meal he’d ever made of the sacred beast. At least it showed results.
“What we have here is the refiner’s garden,” Dross said from the gem in Lindon’s pocket. “They tried to refine an elixir, from rare plants and the blood of certain sacred beasts, that would make a mental breakthrough in the same way people make spiritual breakthroughs. They kept all the rare plants on hand here, but uh...according to our records, it’s not supposed to be this much of a mess.”
If this was a garden, it was one that had been abandoned for years and then infested by monsters. Flowers that glowed like full moons were trampled by diseased, frog-like creatures the size of cows. Two hideous insects bigger than dogs wrestled in a patch of grass, surrounded by a pile of bones arranged into a nest. Whispers, cries, and twisted laughter rose in the distance, as did a pillar of smoke.
In his spiritual perception, the powers of life and blood reigned in equal measure, all infected by a poison that reminded him of the Desolate Wilds. As he looked closer, he saw black spots on nearby trees.
As soon as he noticed, he returned his attention to the giant frogs with patches of wet rot on their skin. They were dozens of yards away, but their stench carried.
“Dreadbeasts,” Lindon said at last.
“They kept a few samples safely imprisoned in this habitat,” Dross said. “Not quite safely enough, as it turns out.”
Orthos growled, and Lindon let the Soul Cloak drop to switch to his Blackflame core. “Which way to the portal?”
“Life Well first,” Lindon reminded.
Dross slipped out of his gem and bobbed in front of Lindon. “To our good luck, it’s on the way.”
Lindon and Orthos marched forward. Without discussion, they burned more dreadbeasts away.
“The Life Well was really just a side effect of their work here. It bolsters the line of life aura inside everyone’s body, and can even restore youth to the elderly. This was the most rare and expensive of all the water; you’d be lucky to get a spoonful after a successful project.” He flashed bright light in Lindon’s face. “I used the word ‘spoon’ correctly there. Just thought you ought to notice.”
After the Spirit Well, Lindon was looking forward to this one. What could the Life Well do? Could it bring back youth? Heal injuries? Whatever it did, he could find some use to it.
Lindon and Orthos destroyed the remaining dreadbeasts on their way to the Life Well, though Orthos had to use a Ruler technique to quash a few fires that they started in the process.
This time, the Life Well facility was actually a building. It was the size of a large barn, its walls iron-gray. The huge door on the front was decorated with a skeleton cupping its hands; he recognized the pattern on the skeleton’s palms from the previous keyholes.
Dross slid into the keyhole without instruction, and slowly the door began to grind open, spilling green light.
“Where is the portal?” Lindon asked, while the door slid from one wall to the other.
“Right below us,” Dross said, zipping back into his gem. “Good thing that the ground hasn’t caved in here, or we’d be falling right now. There’s a shaft inside that leads down to his quarters, but it’s a one-way trip.”
“How did he make it up?”
“He was a Monarch. He jumped.”
By then, the door had opened enough for Lindon to see the Life Well. It reminded him of a laundry tub more than an actual well, and though it released bright emerald light, it wasn’t nearly as large as the other two wells.
The reek of decay wafted out of the door, and Lindon waited with his hand over his nose until he figured out what he was seeing inside. The green light revealed tall, cylindrical tanks lining either side of the room; they contained bloated corpses of every species and description. There must have been two dozen of them along each wall, and the subjects ranged from hand-sized fish to coiled serpents that barely fit in their tanks. None of them had survived.
The tanks were surely airtight; the stench came from the ones that had broken. Three or four of the glass tanks had been shattered from the inside, shards scattered on the floor, covered by the rotting remainders of their former inhabitants.
Lindon caught a new whiff of something dead, and at first he wondered if something had died recently. By the time he realized the sensation was coming from his spirit rather than his nose, Orthos had already turned and let out a roar, the Burning Cloak springing up around his shell.
Yan Shoumei stood there, hair falling in front of her face like a veil, Blood Shadow clutched around her like a cloak. Her eyes, barely visible through the black locks, glistened with hatred.
“You even followed me to another world,” she hissed. “Tell Anagi that he was too late! I have everything I need.”
Lindon glanced down at Orthos to see if he had followed that, but the turtle had already unleashed his dragon’s breath.
The flow of black-and-red flame streamed from his mouth, but Shoumei punched out with a fist covered in a globe of crimson force. Orthos’ Striker technique hit the globe around her hand and split apart, sending fingers of Blackflame splashing into the undergrowth. Tongues of fire licked up immediately.
She gave a wild laugh, withdrawing a stoppered bottle and waving it at them. “You were days too slow! I have all the blood I need! I look forward to seeing your bodies buried beneath Hearthway!”