There was no stopping it. Lindon braced himself behind his white arm, straining the hunger binding to its limits, weakening the attack as much as he could.
No matter how much he siphoned its power, he was still swallowed by fire.
He gritted his teeth instead of screaming as fire madra covered him from head to toe. It was like trying to clutch a live coal in his bare fist.
But as quickly as it had begun, it was over, and he hurriedly vented burning madra from his arm. Smoke rose from his charred robes, and he was sure he was missing some hair, but all told he had emerged unscathed.
Yerin had ended up far away, but she was still alive. Mercy had hidden in her tree. Pride was on one knee, bracing himself with a hand, but he had weathered the tide of fire. Eithan...
Eithan was dissolving into white light.
He faded away before Lindon could catch a glimpse of him, but Lindon was shocked. Eithan was the most suited to survive a massive Striker technique. Had he let himself be burned away? Why?
The aura of ghostwater had faded from Sophara, but she still did not waste time. Her golden eyes touched on Lindon, but then they moved to the weakest enemy remaining. The one crouched and panting on the ground.
Pride.
[Shame,] Dross said. [I was hoping he could eat more attacks for us.]
It wasn't the end for someone “killed” in this round, Lindon knew. They would be re-formed in an hour, unharmed. But the competition would get fiercer as the round progressed as fewer crowns appeared.
If Pride was eliminated now, he wouldn't make it.
Lindon leaped forward, gathering pure madra into his Remnant hand. It didn't conduct the Empty Palm as well as his flesh hand, but it was good enough. The newly enhanced version of the technique didn't have to hit Sophara's core dead-on. If he could only slow her down, he and Pride could both survive...
[This is why I should be in charge of your body,] Dross said.
Lindon landed between Sophara and Pride, driving his Empty Palm at her midsection.
She didn't even slow down as her claws tore off Lindon’s head.
~~~
Ziel sat against a tree and waited, hood shading his eyes and hammer leaning against him. He had brought it in his soulspace, but keeping any item inside his fractured spirit was agony, so he let it sit by him.
He knew the Stormcallers were here, and the champion of the Dawnwing Sect would have hunted them down one by one with righteous fury in his heart. It wouldn't matter if he made it to the next round or not, so long as none of them did.
But Ziel wasn't that man any longer. The memory of the Weeping Dragon taking up the sky, its living lightning decimating his students and friends, had played in his mind so many times that it had scraped him raw. Dreadgods couldn't be blamed for the destruction they caused; he might as well shout at a hurricane for daring to flood his house.
It was the Dreadgod cultists that had stoked his rage, as they looted and pillaged in their master's wake.
They had chased down the fleeing Dawnwing sect as rain and thunder poured from the sky. Ziel had stayed behind to hold them off as his junior disciples and students escaped.
It hadn't worked. As it turned out, one of the Weeping Dragon's lightning strikes had caused a landslide that wiped them all out.
So Ziel's duel with the Sage of Calling Storms had been for nothing.
He had lost, of course. Even at the height of his power, he was no Sage. And instead of killing him, the leader of the Stormcaller cult had mutilated him. Cutting apart his spirit and stitching it together...wrong.
Afterward, he had been allowed to live. Forced to live, almost. He was no threat to the Storm Sage, no threat to the Stormcallers without a sect behind him, and certainly no threat to the Weeping Dragon.
He had drifted along like a dead leaf on the wind, formerly one of the proud geniuses of the Iceflower continent. He had fought as a champion of the Eight-Man Empire as an Underlord in the last Uncrowned King tournament. Then, as now, he'd made it to the second round.
This year, he was exactly thirty-five. That was a cruel twist of fate. A few months older, and he wouldn't have been allowed to participate.
He felt twice his age.
Ziel let the first two hours of the round pass him by, his emerald horns resting against the bark of the tree behind him. Crowns fell and moved, some turned white, and no doubt many battles were won and lost.
He watched through half-lidded eyes, staring through the leaves at the sky.
Northstrider had heard of him through the Beast King and had come for him. One of the youngest Archlords ever, an elite among elites, fortuitously reduced to the level of a mere Underlord. The Monarch had declared that Ziel would certainly be allowed to enter.
One of the other factions was bending the rules in a similar fashion, it seemed, and it wasn't as though Ziel could exert any more power than a real Underlord. Far from it. Ziel could pass most spiritual power detectors as a Truegold.
The poison that ravaged his body had undone most of the enhancement soulfire had given him, and holding anything—even soulfire—in his soulspace was like trying to hold a mouthful of needles. He might as well not be an Underlord.
Years of treatment at the hands of the Beast King had countered much of the poison, but he could still only barely be considered an Underlord. If not for his skill and experience, he would never have passed the first round.
Without Northstrider's personal request, he wouldn’t have participated in the tournament. Not even when the Monarch revealed that the Ninecloud Court had methods of restoring his soul. Their royal madra could do miraculous things to spirits. He only had to make it far enough in the tournament to earn a prize from them...and, not coincidentally, to improve Northstrider's reputation.
Ziel still hadn't wanted to do it. What if the Court could restore him to his former power? He had no sect left. There was nothing to fight for. Revenge did not return the dead.
Another golden light descended from the sky over the island. This would be the twenty-fourth, give or take. And it was fairly close.
Ziel groaned like an old man as he pushed himself up on his hammer. He had the body of an eighteen-year-old, but he didn't feel like it.
Slowly, he dragged his weapon through the jungle toward the crown. He had come this far, and it wasn't every day that you received a personal request from a Monarch. He had to at least give it a token effort.
Though he was the only one of the Wastelands team who had made it past the first round. If Northstrider really expected a victory out of them, he should have trained up some better candidates.
The beasts of the jungle moved through the trees around him, but he ignored them, marching onward. He wasn't afraid of them, and even if they somehow did make it past his hammer and tear out his throat, he didn't care.
Evidently they could sense total apathy, because they let him pass.
Ahead of him, the column turned white. He couldn't see much through the thick trees, only the light filtering through the leaves, but he sensed a battle fading away.
He pushed his way past a leaf bigger than his head to see who was wearing the crown. If there were too many people, he would turn around and leave. There were still at least eight crowns left. He hoped he had waited out the most intense fighting, and maybe he could scoop one up unclaimed.
The boy wearing the shining white crown wore a pair of blue armbands Forged from vivid yellow-and-blue lightning.
Stormcaller madra.
Ziel and the boy stared at each other for a long moment. Ziel saw the shining dragon that flew on unnatural stormclouds of madra. Bolts like the ones wrapped around this man’s arms had slithered through doors, hunting victims. Lightning from the Sage's fingertips had wrapped around him, searing his spirit...
Ziel shook himself as something stirred in the ashes of his heart. This didn't matter. The fight wasn't worth it. If he won, this one Stormcaller wouldn't really die. Even if his death was permanent, what of it? It would change nothing.