Markuth lifted the bag that had been in his left hand since he'd descended, upending it over the stage. A pair of heads fell out, leaving a trail of blood as they rolled on the pale stone. He tossed the empty sack aside, but Lindon's gaze was fixed.
One of the heads belonged to a man he'd never seen before. He didn’t care about that. He was focused on the other head, the second head, the one whose features were veiled in long hair. Long brown hair.
His body shivered uncontrollably, madra racing through his veins in a pattern unrestrained by any cycling technique.
He knew who that head belonged to. He didn't need to see the face. He knew.
The world took on a feeling of unreality, as though he'd been struck by Kelsa's Empty Palm. It was too absurd. Just this morning he'd been preparing to fight a bunch of children and now...now Golds were descending from the sky? His mother was dead?
It was stupid, that was what it was. Idiotic and ridiculous. The world didn't work like this; the world made sense. Only dreams operated without rules or reason, and even his insane dreams of singing flowers and dancing clouds held more logic than this.
Jades began to gather at one end of the stage, old men and women from Kazan and Wei gathering together, mingling under both banners. They argued fiercely, none daring to walk up onstage, but they did gather. In ones and twos they hurried together, banding together to fight and die with pride.
Not all the Jades joined them. Some stayed in the stands, on their knees.
Markuth laughed, shaking droplets of blood from his fingers. “Is this it, then? Don't hold back, come up. I won't begin until you are ready.”
Hatred boiled up in Lindon, and he found himself wishing he could join the Jade elders. Even a Gold wasn't immortal. In fact...
The idea illuminated his soul like a sunrise. Li Markuth might be even more dependent on his madra than an ordinary person. If the legends were true, Gold bodies were partially made of madra, like a Remnant's.
What would an Empty Palm do against such a being?
Lindon would die landing that blow, but that wasn't worth consideration. He'd grown up with stories of mythical heroes who were killed trading strikes with a blood rival. If he succeeded here, he would live on forever in the myths of the Wei clan. It would be a good death. An honorable death. The death of a sacred artist.
If even the Empty Palm wasn't enough, Lindon had one more card to play. The hornet Remnants were still sealed in their jar beneath the stage, waiting for him to release them. If they could distract the Gold for even a breath, even the fragment of an instant, Lindon's life would be well spent.
The sense of unreality crashed in on Lindon once again, shattering his beautiful delusion. What was he thinking? Here he was, Wei Shi Lindon the Unsouled, considering throwing his life away in a battle against a Gold. It was a bad joke, or the fanciful poem of someone with too much ego. He couldn’t do anything. He would only die, with no plan or purpose whatsoever.
He stared at the Li Clan monster, and his hopeful idea died. The truth settled on him like the fall of night: there was nothing he could do. No reason to try. He was too weak.
Li Markuth spread his arms and his wings, and the sky darkened even further, until night fell over Sacred Valley. The whole arena shook as he called on the vital aura of the world, the four White Fox pillars crumbling to rubble. Only Markuth shone in the darkness, his body outlined by white power. “The world is wide outside your narrow Paths,” he said, even as the crowd of Jades prepared their techniques. “Let me guide you.”
The Jade elders of the Wei and Kazan clans walked onstage in a solemn procession, summoning foxfire or Forging bright red blades. They spread out in front of Markuth, some forty or fifty of them, and from their faces Lindon knew they were each prepared to die.
And in that moment, Lindon decided to die with them.
Maybe he was too weak, and his death would accomplish nothing. But it was better to bet on the tiny chance that he was wrong than to wait for death without even trying.
When Lindon stood up, Markuth didn't so much as move his eyes. It was as though anyone less than Jade didn't even exist to him. When the first ranks of Wei elders moved toward him with madra readied, the Grand Patriarch condensed wind and shadow around each of his fists.
Lindon crept in front of him, still unnoticed. He didn't even glance down, paying Lindon no more attention than he did the stones beneath his feet. The sky overhead flashed white.
And Lindon, ignored by the Grand Patriarch, landed an Empty Palm on Markuth's core.
It was as though he’d splashed water on a boulder.
Even legends never suggested that a Foundation-stage child could harm a Gold. It was like a fly attacking a tiger…no, attacking a mountain. If everyone at the Foundation stage in all of Sacred Valley joined hands and pooled their madra, they couldn’t do so much as ruffle the clothes of the Grand Patriarch of the Li Clan. Lindon should have known better.
He should have remembered his place.
His force vanished uselessly, and Markuth backhanded him in the midsection. Even in the end, he didn’t give Lindon a single glance.
The casual slap of a Gold struck hard enough to knock him backwards off the stage, but somehow it didn’t hurt. He landed in the dirt, but the air had already vanished from his lungs. His mouth flapped open, trying to grab a breath, but it was as though the air had disappeared.
He tried to sit up, but nothing happened. He remained on his back, his head shaking from side to side. Lindon strained his eyes, looking down, to see how bad his injuries were.
I’m still dreaming, he realized, when he didn’t see his legs. That was the only explanation. He’d been a fool to consider any of it real. Golds didn’t descend from the sky, the Patriarch couldn’t bow, his mother didn’t die for no reason, and his legs were supposed to be at the end of his body.
It was comforting to know that he was dreaming. Soon he would wake up, and then everything would make sense again. In fact, he could feel exhaustion pressing down on him like a blanket. Maybe that was what waking up felt like, in a dream.
His head flopped to the left, and he caught a glimpse of his father and sister. Kneeling, like the rest. Kelsa’s eyes were fixed on his, glistening with tears, her face pale. Why was she so sad? This was just a dream, she shouldn’t worry so much.
Jaran wasn’t looking at him at all, but was fixed on the battle between Markuth and the Jades. He had to admit that hurt, even if it wasn’t real.
He let his eyes slide shut to hide the sight of his kneeling father. When he woke up, everything would be all right again.
That was Lindon’s last thought before he died.
Chapter 11
With the assistance of her Presence, Suriel watched her target location from a thousand kilometers away. The fated arrival point was an empty stretch of forest in the territory of a local clan, one marked by images of a white five-tailed fox. [The Wei clan,] her Presence informed her, spooling out lines of explanatory text in her vision. She willed the explanations away, scanning the area.
There was some sort of festival nearby, where children from various clans engaged in combat games. She watched the matches idly for a while, waiting for the spatial violation destined to occur nearby.
One boy in particular caught her attention—tall, broad-shouldered, with a wooden badge and a rough face. He was the oldest of the group, and he won as easily as someone of his size should defeat younger children. The crowd treated him with disdain, but he seemed to carry himself with pride, as though pushing nine-year-olds out of bounds was an achievement.