He was exhausted, and wished he could sleep as long as he wanted without worrying about another life-threatening battle popping up.
But there was a small part of him that was focused and excited. They hadn’t killed him from behind, so this was a puzzle with a solution.
He moved over to Yerin, ready to calm her down.
Then the light turned red, and the world was cast into chaos.
Chapter 16
Cassias walked through the barn, waving to the workers. His team of cleaners was preparing it, shoveling manure and dirty hay, sweeping cobwebs, and building temporary pens for the livestock. The Arelius employees would be staying here, for the time being, unless and until they could reclaim their former territory.
Their homes had been ravaged by bloodspawn.
Cassias passed families where only one parent wore the dark blue outer robe of the Arelius, but the others worked just as hard. He was squeezing forty-two people into this barn, and he might have to find room for even more before this was done. Considering that virtually all of their branches in the south had been closed by the advance of Redmoon Hall and the rise of the Bleeding Phoenix, he was dealing with as many as fifty thousand people either evacuated or displaced. And those were only the ones attached to the Arelius family. The Empire as a whole was in a crisis even if the Phoenix never rose.
He moved out of the back of the barn and looked to the south, where blood-colored light hovered like a permanent sunset.
It had grown. When he had left Stormrock, only a few days ago, the light wasn't visible from this far away. In the worst-case scenario, he might have to pack everyone up again, and find room for them even farther north. He didn't have a way to transport so many people so far, unless Stormrock agreed to help, and he suspected they would be packed to capacity as well.
Well, that wasn't the worst scenario. The Dreadgod might decide to go on a rampage and kill them all, without a Monarch to turn it aside into the eastern wasteland or the uninhabited sea to the west.
If it marched straight north, killing everything in its path and spreading bloodspawn, no evacuation would matter.
He reached the back of the barn and stood beneath a particular tree.
"We don't have to meet in secret, Eithan," he said without looking up. "These are your employees."
Eithan sat with legs dangling over the edge of a branch, staring south. "You don't think this is more exciting? Besides, I don't want to deal with greetings and farewells and all the ceremony."
"You never do," Cassias said, stretching his shoulder. Despite the attentions of the Skysworn, his wounds were still sore, especially when he moved around for too long. "Have you come to help with the evacuation?"
Eithan laughed as though Cassias had made a joke. "I actually received some new information that deserves prompt action. Suffice it to say that this will not be the only disaster of this scale in the coming years. We may be heading for interesting times ahead, little brother!"
"I'm not your brother," Cassias said, his mind racing. First of all, he had to know if Eithan had gotten this information from a reliable source, or if he was relying on his own guesses. Knowing that a disaster was coming could make all the difference.
He said as much, and Eithan nodded along.
"A wise question," Eithan responded. "I cannot reveal my source, but it is...worthy of trust."
"Then we need to suspend normal operations immediately. We should pull back to our strongholds, prepare for sieges...can you convince the Empire that we're in danger, or should we accept censure?"
"Instead of that, we're going to send teams south and west."
Cassias looked up to stare at his Underlord, horrified and disbelieving all at once. The South was a slaughterhouse, and the West was the home of the crumbling Jai clan. "You want me to send families to die."
"Not if you do it right," Eithan responded lightly. "I'm not asking our clansmen to throw their lives away, but these are the places where we are needed. We're equipped to help rescue and repair efforts, as well as to gain information. On Redmoon Hall, the Bleeding Phoenix, and the western labyrinth. That information will soon be very valuable, as will the allies our assistance will earn us."
"It's not worth the risk." Cassias gestured behind him, to the barn that was halfway through its transformation into a shelter. "We'll have enough trouble keeping these people alive if we're not walking straight into the Phoenix's nest. You can't ask them to—"
Eithan dropped to the ground, landing as though he weighed nothing. "I am not asking them to do anything. Put the best face on it, and certainly don't feed anyone to the Dreadgod, but I am commanding them to take a riskier path for greater reward to the family." He clapped Cassias on the shoulder. "Make it so, Cassias."
Cassias' heart boiled. Personally, he was still grateful to Eithan. But as the one-time heir to the Arelius family, he itched at the Underlord's attitude. He would always do things according to his own whims, and would never listen to anyone else.
Now, it fell to Cassias to tell these people that they had to leave their families and head back into danger.
After Eithan left Cassias to his simmering thoughts, Naru Jing returned. She was carrying their three-year-old son in one arm and a basket of firewood in the other, eyeing the sky.
One of her eyes and one of her wings had been replaced with glowing orange Remnant prosthetics, which meant one of her wings could no longer be fully retracted. It stuck out over her left shoulder, folded up.
Both her soft brown eye and her bright false one scanned the sky. "Was Eithan here?" she asked curiously.
Cassias dropped to the ground, leaning his back against the tree, and told her everything that had happened.
When he'd finished, she'd set the firewood down and was examining him with a steady gaze. "I owe Underlord Eithan the same debt you do," she said at last, "but we can't let gratitude overshadow our duty to the family."
Cassias nodded along. He'd let Eithan overwhelm him, causing him to forget his other options. Although...did he really have any?
"You have to take this to your father," Jing said, spelling out what he already knew.
Sighing, he nodded. The elders of the Arelius family could rein in the Patriarch, if they wanted to.
But would they oppose him after he'd brought down the Jai clan, leaving an opening among the great clans that the Arelius could fill? They might, considering that Lindon had lost his duel to Jai Long, which had cost the family some reputation for no reason.
Cassias knew his father, though. The former Patriarch of the Arelius family had never approved of all the time and resources Eithan spent on his own whims.
Though he felt like he was betraying Eithan, he had to ask his father's approval. For the family's sake, it was the right thing to do.
A screech cut off his thoughts. Glass shattered next to him, but he didn’t hear it. Instead, he stumbled over to his son, clapping his hands over the boy’s ears. Jing had already woven a barrier of wind around them to cut out the deadly sound.
A crimson light shone from behind him, and he didn’t need the horrified look on his wife’s face to understand what had happened. He already knew.
The floor tilted and Lindon scrambled to grab onto one of the bolted-down tables as Stormrock accelerated as quickly as possible. The whole city shook, the table in Lindon’s arms shaking as though in an earthquake.
All from the force of a scream that was more than a scream, as though the sound had been given life. It was layered, like a thousand birds shrieking at once, so loudly that he felt a sharp pain in both ears.