She knew what was locked in the vault, and she knew that with Ozriel dead or missing, the Hound would send for its contents. He would never come himself—that would leave too much of a trail—but this vault would soon open. She only had to be patient.
For nine months, she waited.
Finally, a lesser Hound arrived at the facility. She sat up, the triangles in her eyes burning. Through hundreds of meters of rock, she could see the authority of Makiel on this messenger.
She summoned Ziomachus to her hands, sat down, and kept a tight rein on her excitement.
The messenger passed through layer after layer of security, taking most of the day. Before sunset, he was allowed into the room with the vault. He waved a hand, and his Presence provided the key.
The mirrored cube unfolded like a paper box spreading itself flat one facet at a time. As it unraveled itself, it drifted down until the polished metal sat on the floor, presenting its contents: a rack of weapons.
Each was black and sleek and curved—bladed tools from a simpler age. To the mortal eye, there was nothing special about them. They would be neither effective weapons nor farming tools, these dozen scythes.
The Angler flexed her will, and the obsidian wheel floating between her palms began to spin. Faster and faster it spun, filling her room with a shrill whine and casting off brighter golden light.
She struck with the fullness of her power, and every alarm in the world of Haven went off at once.
Doors snapped shut, sirens screamed, sentries snapped their heads in her direction, constructs took aim at the box buried beneath the ground that they had overlooked for months.
The assistant of Makiel reacted appropriately for a man of his standing and skill. He projected a shell of Way-power around the scythes, lunging for the nearest weapon with his hand and with his mind.
But the invisible line of Ziomachus had already touched them.
With the authority of the Angler and the ancient artifact combined, they rewrote one property of the weapons: their position in space.
The scythes were not, in fact, in a rack within a secure facility. They were inside a locker that Iri had prepared exactly for this purpose.
In no time at all, it was so. The locker, empty a moment ago, was filled with twelve black scythes.
Just before the Abidan security measures reduced her to a fond memory, Iri mentally slammed her emergency retreat.
Then she and her room vanished.
She drifted in the bright, endless blue of the Way, safe for the moment. Her Presence took over navigation of her vessel, scrambling her direction and taking her to random Iterations one at a time to disrupt the search. When the Spiders were thoroughly confused, she would slip out of their web and back to her fortress at the Crystal Halls. Where these scythes would be the crown jewels of her collection.
Except...they didn't work, did they?
The Scythe of Ozriel was unique, and these were only pale imitations. It would take the greatest craftsman in all the worlds to cobble them together into something resembling the original. Something worthy of display in her Halls.
Iri cracked her knuckles and got to work.
[Synchronization interrupted. Target lost. Continue search?]
[Searching...]
Makiel's Presence guided his own power without need for his conscious intervention. He let it work, hunting down the Angler.
Meanwhile, he closed his eyes. He had never augmented his body the same way the others had—ascension had preserved his physical form, made it so that he never had to worry about the burdens of mortality, but he had never altered the human body that had brought him that far. He had seen no need to.
His skin was dark and wrinkled, his hands calloused, his hair winged with silver. He had often been told that he looked like an old soldier, but he was as timeless as any of the other Judges.
Moments like this made him feel old. Weight settled into his bones, his joints, and his eyes cried out for sleep he no longer needed. It was not a true physical sensation, he knew. Merely a feeling. But it weighed him down nonetheless.
Those scythes were no creations of Ozriel. They were his. Reproductions of the real thing. The true Scythe of the Reaper could erase a world with no waste or corrupted residue, but such power should never rest in the hands of one man. Makiel had done his own research into duplicating the weapon, and he had stored his twelve most promising failures in Haven, where no one could find them or steal them.
No one but the Angler.
He had even looked into fate to see if she could break in, but it had been such a remote possibility that he had discounted it. As soon as the theft was reported, he had begun hunting her down. But this was not the only pressing concern that required his attention, and his experimental scythes were not the greatest threat in the cosmos.
At least, they hadn't been. Until the Phoenix had found a dead world.
Now, they were all on borrowed time.
~~~
Lindon sat on a chair in the center of a dungeon. Contraptions that looked like torture devices lined the walls: a copper lobster claw that crackled with lightning, a black coffin standing upright, a spool of wire with blood-spirits coiling around it, and a host of others. It was hard to see the walls through all the tools that covered the stone.
Though both Akura Charity and Mercy had assured him that he would be safe here, he still worried. If he tried to fight his way free of the Akura clan headquarters, he wouldn't make it ten steps down the hall.
He had seen their guards on the way in.
The lone door opened, and an old man entered. He was bald, with a long, wispy beard and immaculate black-and-white sacred artist's robes. He had the same Goldsign that Mercy did, with hands dipped in tar-like madra up to the elbows. In those gloved hands he carried a book-sized slate.
Lindon rose and pressed his fists together in respect, but the old man did not acknowledge him.
“I am Akura Justice. I am told that the Sage of the Silver Heart has selected you to represent our family in the Uncrowned King tournament.”
Purple eyes looked up from the slate, and Justice released his veil. Suddenly, the pressure of an Archlord's spirit filled the room. Though there was no attack, Lindon felt his eyes water and his breath constrict.
“This is subject to my approval,” Justice said, his voice hard. “I am the First Gatekeeper of the Akura clan, and it is my job to inspect any goods from the outside that are to be in the presence of the head family. I would never contradict the orders of the Sage, but should I find that you are not up to the clan's standards, I will recommend that you be replaced in the tournament and imprisoned for wasting the family's time.”
He slapped the tablet against one black-gloved palm, and the smack echoed throughout the room. “Am I understood?”
If Lindon had felt any hostility in the man's spirit, he would have flinched at the sound of the slap. He felt only ice-cold resolve.
Lindon was certain that Justice meant every word he said. “I understand perfectly, honored Archlord. I thank the Akura clan for their hospitality and the Sage for her high estimation of me, but I too believe that I am unworthy. If I were permitted to return home—”
He cut off as the Archlord's spirit tightened, and this time Lindon sensed anger.
“Your voice should be used only to answer questions. If the Sage and I say you are a prince among men, it is so. If we say you are a worm groveling in the dirt, it is so.”
Fear and frustration warred in Lindon's chest. He was afraid of stepping on the Archlord's temper again and frustrated by his forced induction onto the Akura tournament team. All he wanted was to leave.
But what would he do if he returned? Mercy lived here, and Yerin and Eithan were competing in the Uncrowned King tournament. If he left, he would not. The Blackflame Empire competitors had already been chosen.
“Sit,” Justice commanded, withdrawing his spirit back into a veil.