She was maybe ten years old, standing with her master beside a stream. Every morning, he would bring her a boulder and have her try to cut it in half with the Rippling Sword. Every morning, she failed, and he took the stone away, only to bring a new one the next day.
She’d thrown her training sword aside in disgust. “I can’t do it,” she had said.
“Been waiting for you to say that,” he’d responded.
He had taken her to a cave behind a waterfall, where he had kept all of the stones she had tried and failed to cut. There were the marks of her failure: slashes in the rocks where her madra had cut. The scars started faint, but they got wider and deeper. And the stones got bigger.
“This is what you did yesterday,” he’d said, pointing to the largest rock, the one with the deepest cut. “I can’t wait to see what you do tomorrow.”
At the time, neither could Yerin.
Now, she stood under the dragon, feeling the echoes of her master’s spirit inside her.
“Surrender yourself, Highgold,” he said. “We will not make this painful.”
Yerin’s sword rang like a bell.
He reacted to the sword aura, striking with the back of his hand against the rush of silver. He knocked away the blow, but one tinkling scale was knocked free.
It took with it a drop of blood.
This time, the technique had felt right. It resounded in her master’s spirit, resonating between the two of them. She basked in that feeling, memorizing it.
Then the barrier in her spirit crumbled.
Her madra faltered, slipping from her fingers. This was the hazard of pushing for advancement in the middle of battle; it tended to throw you off your game. And this time, her opponent wasn’t sweet-minded enough to give her some time for herself.
Scenting blood, the Truegold dragon jumped down from his cloud.
“Page three,” Mercy announced.
Yerin had time to wonder why Mercy had said that out loud before an arrow the thickness of her arm pierced the dragon through the gold-scaled chest. Mercy’s Truegold aura blanketed the clearing in heavy darkness, and this time, the arrow didn’t feel like one technique. It felt like three different techniques crammed into one arrow, and two of them were not friendly.
The force of the arrow carried the dragon back, so he fell to the ground far away from Yerin, but he burned it away almost immediately. His scales oozed blood—so at least this technique did some damage, unlike the arrows Yerin had seen her use before, which didn’t even break the skin.
But now, the darkness that crawled over his skin felt like poison. He screamed, breathing fire on himself, but the darkness kept creeping.
That was all Yerin saw. Rivers of silver aura rushed to her, blinding her, filling her spirit. They flooded into her veins, far more than she could ever cycle, rushing to her core.
Her master’s Remnant blurred, soaking more completely into Yerin’s madra. The sense of his presence weakened again, as it had when she’d advanced to Highgold.
Then, like a deep breath released, the sword aura burst from her in a wave.
Every tree in the clearing exploded under the strike of a thousand axes. Mercy wasn’t spared; violet crystal covered her chest in a breastplate, taking the brunt of the force, but scratches still appeared all over her body.
The Highgold dragon Derianatoth had been webbed up by Mercy at some point. Yerin guessed when she was focused on the Truegold. She couldn’t defend herself, and her black cocoon burst into sprays of blood.
Blood spurted from the Truegold’s scales too, but it wasn’t enough to kill him. Not until she followed it up with a Striker technique.
Seconds after the wave of sword aura passed through the forest, his body fell into chunks of flesh and bone.
And then the forest was quiet.
Sunlight streamed down on them, unfiltered by branches. A chill wind blew through now that it wasn’t blocked by trunks. Mercy’s presence faded back to Lowgold, and her bow relaxed to a staff. She hobbled closer to Yerin.
“Congratulations! Should we run?”
“Not yet,” Yerin said, eyeing the bodies. “Can’t leave the Remnants to follow us. And we can’t look like cowards in front of our new guest.”
Guided by her Truegold perception, she turned to look into the forest.
A young man stood there, emerald horns shining very slightly in the shadow of the trees that still stood around him. He wore a faded gray cloak, leaned on a hammer as big as he was, and wore an expression like he’d died two days before.
“Looking to pick off the winner?” Yerin asked, her sword starting to shine with the Flowing Sword Enforcer technique. It hummed with a might she’d never felt before; the strength of a Truegold.
He took a long, slow breath, letting it out like it was his last. “…no,” he said.
It looked like it had taken him a week of effort to force out that one word, but she had Remnants to deal with. They rose like sunset-colored serpents from the bodies of the dragons. At least in death, they looked like proper dragons: flying, serpentine creatures of flame.
As she’d expected, they both turned to Yerin.
Sword aura wouldn’t do much against these non-physical Remnants, but madra would. She whipped a Striker technique at the Highgold, dashing at the Truegold herself. A few strokes of her master’s blade left the Remnant in a few hissing puddles on the ground.
The whole time, she’d kept her perception locked on the newcomer. He didn’t feel like he was ready to step in. He felt like he would fall over at any second.
“We have to go,” Yerin said to Mercy. She didn’t like running past an unknown threat, but the Lady was coming from the other direction.
Wait…no, she wasn’t.
Yerin’s spirit crawled. In the instant she’d taken her perception off the dragon, the woman had covered miles.
Dreading what she would see, Yerin looked behind her.
The Underlady stood there, a sword in hand. It crackled with orange lightning. “On my blood and my name,” she whispered, “I swear that you will suffer as none have suffered.”
Perfect.
Yerin’s Blood Shadow spun out from behind her, and this time she didn’t try to stop it. Like a red Remnant copy of her, it spread its Goldsigns. Its right hand flattened into another sword, and it leaned forward, ready to fight.
“Don’t suppose you have another one of those shields,” Yerin said. Mercy gave a flat, lifeless laugh.
The stranger stepped out of the trees, dragging his huge hammer behind him. It carved a furrow in the soil as he walked, as though he barely had the strength to pull it. “I am the Beast King’s witness,” he said with a sigh. “I witness a Lady attacking two Golds. Fall back, or he has cause to intervene.”
The dragon’s shrieking laughter pierced the forest. “And who are you?”
“Underlady,” he said, “believe me when I say that I am no one at all.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she took him in from the tips of the horns to the bottom of his time-worn cloak. She bared fangs. Then more.
“No,” she said at last. “I will not bow to you. Nor even to your master.”
With a sweep of her sword, she whipped a rush of liquid flame at Yerin.
Yerin had expected it all along. Together, she and her Blood Shadow both launched a Rippling Sword at the incoming Striker technique. The Blood Shadow’s technique did about as much good as a kitchen knife against a tree. Her own wave of silver energy crashed into the flow of orange flame.
But the Underlady’s technique, like a river of fire bursting through a dam, pushed right through.
Yerin met the madra with the flat of her master’s blade. It pulsed with the power of her Enforcer technique; though it felt like pushing against an ocean’s tide and the heat of molten metal all at once, she gritted her teeth and braced herself.