“Back to work for me,” she said. “But you want to speed things up, that would be golden.”
She dashed out of view, and the Remnant screamed again.
“I think it's time for the fast way,” Lindon said to Eithan, who nodded.
“That's what I thought too.” Then he pulled a squirming sandviper out from behind his back.
Lindon recoiled, pushing himself against the wall to get as far away from the creature. Its centipede legs kicked at the air, its serpentine head baring fangs as it hissed. Its carapace was tan and bright, exactly the color of a desert in the sun.
Eithan held it calmly, regarding the monster with something like fascination. “This isn't one of the corrupted dreadbeasts of this region, you know. It's a perfectly natural sacred beast, it just happens to be hideous. For the first step, you must allow it to bite you. Once the venom is in your blood, you can use your madra to guide it, and it will actually burn channels into your body that madra will be able to follow later. It's unbelievably painful, but it's quick, and you will heal once you advance to Iron. But you have to guide it yourself to keep it from running wild, which means you have to stay conscious.”
Lindon's mouth was hanging open in horror, but he didn't close it.
“It gets more disgusting,” Eithan continued. “As the Sandviper sect found out so many years ago, you also must drink the blood of the sandviper itself. It helps slow the venom's progress into your organs, making it easier to control. And slightly less likely that you will die.”
Fumbling for his pack, Lindon pulled out the sheaf of yellow papers that was originally the Heart of Twin Stars and was now his personal Path manual. A small brush and portable inkwell followed. He flipped to one of the later pages, filling in the details that Eithan had shared. The motion gave him time to think, with each stroke steadying his shaking hands. Even the pain in his damaged fingers faded as he worked.
Eithan waited patiently even as Yerin fought in the distance.
Finally, Lindon had finished recording, and his own heart had settled. If this was the path forward, he was going to walk it. He'd come too far to turn back now.
But first, he gathered up one of the straps on his pack and placed it between his teeth.
“I'm ready,” he said, voice muffled around a mouthful of padded leather. With eyes squeezed shut, he extended his wrist.
“Breathe carefully,” Eithan said. “Cycle.”
As Lindon did so, pain flashed like someone had stabbed through his arm. Then the venom came, and his blood burned.
If anything, Eithan had understated the pain.
Venom cycled in his veins along with every pulse of madra, and Eithan poured coppery blood through his clenched teeth. Lindon bit down on the leather strap through a mouthful of sandviper blood, and bit down just as hard on memories.
The mountains of Sacred Valley, knocked over like towers of sand. Everything he loved, washed away.
Li Markuth, like a monster in a world of children, and Suriel who could pack him up like an old toy.
If this pain was all it took to approach them, it was a small price.
Lindon pushed the venom everywhere he hadn't already worked his madra, forcing it into his muscles, his skin, even the very center of his bones. It was an endless moment, but still over sooner than he'd thought.
His aching jaw went slack, the blood-stained leather strap falling from his teeth. He panted, losing control of his cycling technique just to fill his lungs with oxygen.
He tried to open his good eye, but the lid wasn't cooperating. Now that he noticed, his limbs were moving out of his control; his fingertips twitched and his back arched as though someone else had tied strings to him and started to pull.
Finally, he wrenched his eye open and was distracted by his own flesh. Black veins stood out along his skin, tracing lines like a map over every inch of himself he could see.
“Is that all?” he croaked out, and Eithan stared at him for a moment.
Then he gave a pure, rich laugh.
“You tell me,” the man said finally, wiping a tear from his eye with one finger. “Not even I can sense your insides better than you can.”
Lindon closed his eye again, cycling madra to get a sense for his own condition. The venom had indeed permeated his own body...but not as thoroughly as he'd expected.
“I think I could fit some more in,” Lindon said, though half of him couldn't believe the words were coming from his own mouth.
Eithan shrugged. “I'm no Sandviper. I've only read about the Bloodforged Iron body. But if you don't think this is enough...”
He tossed the mangled corpse of the sandviper aside and reached into his outer robe, producing a second live specimen.
Lindon recoiled again, just as he had the first time. “Would you mind telling me where you're getting those?”
With his free hand, Eithan lifted the bloody strap to Lindon's mouth. “Once more,” he said.
Again, Lindon bit down on the padded leather and squeezed his eyes shut.
Five of the little sacred beasts had been all that Eithan could scrounge from the Ruins—it seemed that once they knew he was hunting them, they'd started to run away.
The fifth was still alive, squirming in his hand and sending out its madra to try and burn away his hand, but he kept it suppressed with his own spirit. The other four were dead, having been drained of both venom and blood. The husks rested on the ground at his feet, twisted and broken.
In that respect, they looked much like Lindon.
His body wasn't moving much anymore, as he'd run out of energy sometime in the night. When he twitched, it was like lightning moving through dead flesh more than any conscious attempt at motion, and his skin was all but invisible beneath swollen black veins. Sandviper blood ran from his teeth as his own blood ran from his ears, the corners of his eyes, and even sweated through his pores.
He'd lasted more than a day, which had left even Eithan astonished. His standards were high—too high, really—but this Copper had still surprised him.
Yerin had done well for herself too. She'd fought almost without rest for a full night and most of the next day, and was even now finishing off a pack of twisted dreadbeasts. He kept his eyes on Lindon, but it almost didn't matter; he could still see Yerin, shoulders slumped in weakness, dragging her sword behind her as she limped back to their little enclosure. She passed through their barricade on the stairs, eyes moving to check Lindon's condition...
...and Eithan stepped aside to avoid the sword plunging into his back.
“You buried him,” she snarled, heat in her eyes and aura gathering around the edge of her sword.
He held up both hands to show his innocence, forgetting for a moment that he held a live sandviper in one. That didn't paint the best picture.
“He asked me to!” Eithan protested.
The sword-arm on Yerin's back stabbed in Lindon's direction. She really was getting better with her Goldsign, thanks to his guidance. “He asked for this?”
Under other circumstances, Eithan would have had trouble believing it too. “I'm performing as instructed. If it helps, I'm as horrified as you are.”
Her eyes filled with disgust, and she drew her sword back, flooding it with madra for a strike that would be...at best, inconvenient to avoid.
Instead of dodging, he seized Lindon’s wrist, holding up the boy’s blackened hand. It was curled into a fist so tight that blood leaked out of the palm. Eithan scrubbed away dried blood and grit from a line of metal on Lindon’s finger: a halfsilver ring.
“Do you happen to know what this is?” he asked, and before she could respond, he answered for her. “This acts as a filter for madra, refining madra quality during the cycling process. But it makes cycling twice as hard, and it takes twice as long. Like running with weights strapped to your legs.”