[Pull her back!] Dross called. [Lindon! If you die before she's in your spirit, she'll stay out here! Pull her back!]
It was harder than it should have been, but he managed to follow instructions, drawing Little Blue back through his hand and into the center of his soul. She gave him a sad look as she disappeared, and he wondered if he even saw a tear.
Naian looked stunned, paralyzed, staring into the distance as though watching a horrifying battle. He stayed locked in place, gazing through Lindon.
Lindon tried to ask how he was, but only blood sprayed from his lips.
A harsh, disused voice grated from Naian's throat. “You...pulled me...out. How...”
But Lindon couldn't stay awake anymore. He sensed his spirit one more time, where Little Blue was curled up between his cores. Safe.
He could relax.
Dross called something to him as though from a great distance, and he passed out.
~~~
When Lindon came back to himself, he was sitting on a polished stone bench inside a booth that seemed to have grown out of the arena floor. It felt like only an instant had passed.
His body was whole and healthy, his cores full, and his madra channels felt brand-new. Wavedancer sat neatly next to him, sheathed in a thin layer of Forged madra, and his gray turtle shield rested on his knees.
Rather than waking slowly from a deep sleep, he was wide awake. How long was I gone? Lindon asked Dross.
[AAAHHH! Where are we? What happened? How long was I gone?]
I hoped you would tell me.
[We're still sharing senses. If you felt absolute nothingness for a moment and now feel like you just skipped ahead a few minutes in time, then we’ve had the same experience.]
Someone was fighting outside the booth, across a field of ash, but a moment of fear drew his attention inward. He cast his perception through his spirit, finding Little Blue still curled up behind his cores.
She poured into his left hand, waking immediately. When she saw him uninjured, she gave a happy chime, leaping into his chest and trying to throw her arms around him. Soothing madra spread into him, though his spirit was fine. She was whole and healthy, her strength even restored from her efforts healing Naian.
And her actions had worked. Out among the leafless trees, Naian Blackflame was fighting Mercy.
This time, he fought with far more skill than he had shown against Lindon. His sword flashed in complex patterns, striking arrows from the air as he used his free hand to launch dragon's breath that severed a tree in the middle and forced Mercy to jump down.
His expression was serious, his aura restrained. Lindon recognized immediately that he was holding back, trying to avoid overtaxing his spirit and pushing himself over the brink again.
He wasn't healed, just as Orthos had only briefly returned to himself after Little Blue's treatment and the nourishment of Lindon's pure madra. He would need years of rest, and something like the restoration Orthos had received in Ghostwater.
But it was possible now, and that was enough. He had enough control over himself to get help.
[There's every possibility the dragons will seal him again,] Dross warned. [They're not just tying him up for their safety; they're using him as a weapon.]
I'll get to him, Lindon said. He had proven that Naian could be helped. He would find a way to make the rest work out.
Unfortunately for the black dragon team, Naian could not both hold back and fight against Akura Mercy. With Suu in hand and the purple lens over her left eye, Mercy unleashed arrow after arrow at her opponent.
He never managed to close, even with the Burning Cloak; she dodged his every move, tangled him up with Strings of Shadow, and continued shooting. Her arrows seemed to have minds of their own, swerving to hit at the last second, leaving veins of black madra that he had to burn from his spirit.
Finally, he struck her head-on with a bar of dragon's breath...but Mercy strode through it in full amethyst armor, unharmed, walking until his Striker technique ran out. When it did, she already had an arrow nocked and her bow drawn.
She didn't fire it. She waited, the missile seething with shadow madra.
Lindon wasn't the only one who could sense the war inside the Blackflame. He trembled, his head twitching and his tail lashing behind him. His Burning Cloak flickered on and off.
After gathering himself for a long moment, he growled, “I surrender.”
Disappointed jeers rose from the crowd as the Ninecloud Soul announced the result. Some of the unruly spectators within the Eight-Man Empire’s tower threw food or garbage into the arena, but constructs instantly incinerated it all.
Mercy's armor dissolved, and her bow shifted back into a staff. She wiped sweat from her brow with black-clad fingers and bowed to her opponent.
More elegantly than Lindon would have guessed, Naian returned the bow, pressing fists together in a salute. Then he turned to Lindon's booth and bowed a second time.
Naian did not make eye contact with Lindon, clearly still wrestling with himself. Nonetheless, Lindon nodded in return.
Most of what Lindon did in his pursuit of the sacred arts, he did for his own sake. He hadn't done much that he could be truly proud of.
And he still hadn't, he reminded himself. Not yet. Not until Naian was taken from the gold dragons and restored to control of his own body and spirit.
Northstrider appeared in the center of the arena, and his commanding voice announced the Akura team as the victor. The crowd's cheers drowned out all other sound.
Mercy bowed to Northstrider then hurried back through the ash, beaming at Lindon. Behind her, Naian said something to the Monarch. Northstrider's golden eyes surveyed him, and he responded with one word.
Lindon wished he had been close enough to overhear.
Naian glanced back to the Akura booth one more time and then walked away, picking up his own restraints on the way back to his waiting room.
The back wall of the booth slid up, leading back to the Akura waiting room, and Mercy dashed through the front of the booth only a moment later. “It worked!” she cried. “I knew it was going to work and it did!”
Little Blue jumped up and down on Lindon's hand, chattering away, and Mercy exclaimed, “You were so brave! Were you scared?”
They walked back into the waiting room as the Sylvan began to tell the story with half-understood impressions and hand gestures. Dross interjected here and there, asking a question or clarifying a fact.
As the walls continued to slowly fall, Lindon cast one last look behind him.
Across the ashen arena, Naian Blackflame walked into his waiting room, where Sophara was waiting for him.
The gold dragon did not seem furious, as Lindon had expected. Her arms, with their layers of jeweled bracelets and smattering of gold scales, were folded. She tapped her foot impatiently, staring across the arena herself.
Her eyes locked on Lindon's.
Naian bared his teeth, waving his chains as he shouted something at her.
[I don't have a good feeling about this,] Dross said, and Lindon felt the same way. He looked to Northstrider, who still stood impassively as images from the fight were projected over his head.
As the stone wall lowered past Sophara's face, her golden claws flashed once.
Blood splattered out onto the arena, and Naian's body fell.
Lindon shouted and ran forward, but an invisible force kept him from pushing past the descending door. He was no longer permitted in the arena.
The Ninecloud Soul was already talking about the next fight, the Five Sisters of the Iceflower Continent against the Ironheart Legion of Rosegold. Lindon could see the last Blackflame Prince's body sprawled on the ground, his throat torn out, staring across with blank eyes.
The door closed over Sophara's bloody claws.
“Will he come back to life?” Lindon asked, voice trembling. He already knew the answer, and Dross confirmed it.