Pack tactics. Cut off the prey’s escape routes and run it into the ground, until it collapsed from exhaustion and waited to be eaten. A hunt worthy of a lion.
He only had to pull Lindon out.
Lindon found Ziel seated in a cycling position in front of the Paths of Heaven, which was what Dross called the eight rooms filled with illusions of the ancient Abidan.
Seven of the Paths were dormant, their constructs inactive. With no illusions, they were nothing but plain three-sided rooms of white stone.
Only one of the displays was activated: the second one from the left, with the symbol that reminded Lindon strangely of the Wandering Titan. It displayed a pure, shining blue wall, and it radiated authority that suggested an unbreakable shield.
Despite the feeling of protection and security it generated, Lindon still couldn’t regard the display directly for long. Even this replica was too far beyond him. Staring at the real thing long enough to make it had almost made him pass out.
“I’ll reach the peak of Archlord soon,” Ziel said, without turning around. “Thought I’d prepare myself early.”
His worn gray cloak spread out over his shoulders and onto the ground behind him, displaying the symbol that resembled spread wings. The emblem of the Dawnwing Sect.
“You’re close,” Lindon said.
“I’m on the edge of something, but I still need one last step. Like stepping off a cliff.”
Lindon remembered his own first contact with an Icon and nodded. It had taken him new insight into himself to touch the Void Icon, but from everything he had come to learn, it wasn’t about understanding alone.
“It takes action to trigger,” Lindon said. “What Icon is it?”
Ziel deactivated the Paths of Heaven display, and both Lindon and Dross let out a relieved breath. He stood, brushing himself off without looking at Lindon directly. “I’d rather not say.”
Dross stared at him with one wide eye. [What?]
“That’s his decision,” Lindon said to Dross, but he was disappointed too. Did Ziel still not trust them?
Ziel shifted uncomfortably. He glanced to Dross and then back up at the sky. “It’s…embarrassing,” he muttered at last.
[Oh, then you can tell us quietly.]
There was a collection of memories embedded into the labyrinth, and many of them were from Sages. Some, like Malice and Northstrider, had gone on to become Monarchs. Lindon understood something of the general knowledge about Icons. Some were more common, but other Icons had shown up only a few times in history.
Some were considered unique, like Eithan’s Broom Icon. He had even mentioned a Joy Icon, which Lindon had never heard from anyone else.
[If Ziel taps into the Joy Icon, I will give up forever, because the world no longer makes sense.]
Dross didn’t send that message to Ziel, but Lindon still considered what he knew of the other man.
The Hammer Icon was manifested by Soulsmiths as often as people who used hammers in combat, but it tended to have different powers depending on whether it represented creation or battle. That led to great debate over whether there were two different Hammer Icons or whether hammers had greater depth of meaning.
There was no such thing as a Script Icon; Lindon was fairly certain of that. Scripts themselves were made up of many runes that each represented a fragment of meaning, but now that he thought of it, there had to be some Icon that scriptors could manifest.
Maybe the Scribe Icon? Scholars had manifested that throughout history, in the form of a quill or brush or pen over a page.
Ziel could clearly see the thoughts moving behind Lindon’s eyes, because he grumbled under his breath. “If I can’t reach it on my own, I’ll tell you. But I don’t know how I’ll reach it here.”
“You probably won’t,” Lindon agreed.
His understanding of the exact mechanics of Sage advancement was vague—in fact, as far as he’d learned, no one could predict exactly how Icons behaved—but Ziel had to take action to trigger the advancement, and actions he took while locked away in Ghostwind Hall wouldn’t touch the larger world.
Lindon thought of advancing to Sage here as something like trying to reach the ocean while trapped in a fishbowl.
“I’ll need a little longer to reach peak Archlord,” Ziel said. “But since that’s all I can do in here, I’ll figure out—”
Lindon opened his void key and called out three dream tablets.
The first one slapped into Ziel’s palm as Lindon explained what it was. “All the memories about the Rune Queen Emala from the labyrinth, both from her and from her rivals or peers.” A second one flew at Ziel, and he plucked it from the air. “Dross’ analysis of her scripting patterns and our suggestions on how to operate the Grand Oath Array with your Path.”
[We had to speculate wildly,] Dross said. [I’d say probably forty, forty-five percent is us making things up.]
Ziel caught the third tablet.
“That one’s from Northstrider,” Lindon said. “Dross took it from his oracle codex. It contains research on Emala’s powers and insights into the manipulation of time.”
Ziel looked down to the tablets and back up to Lindon. “If you’re teaching me how to use it, does that mean...”
Lindon had been waiting for that.
From his soulspace, he released a Divine Treasure. It resembled a silver moon orbited by rings of intricate silver script.
“I finished it last night. It’s not precisely the same as Emala’s original, but no two Divine Treasures are exactly alike. The core construct is made from Northstrider’s prototype Abidan artifact, which was designed to lock time in stasis. The rest came from a handful of Remnants with minor time aspects and the samples of the Rune Queen’s madra you brought back from Shatterspine Castle.”
Reverently, Ziel took the Grand Oath Array. “You said you could do it, but I still thought…How did you learn to do this?”
“Compressing the time of this pocket world was good practice,” Lindon said. “And, of course, I had Dross’ help. But mostly…”
Lindon extended a pulse of pure madra and activated the fourth Path of Heaven. The illusory cave flickered into visibility, blue-black stone surrounding abstract images that were strange even by the standards of the other ancient Paths. Dull colors swirled and mixed in intricate configurations, forming shapes that reminded Lindon of cycling patterns.
Or scripts.
The symbol over the cavern was a fuzzy humanoid figure, and the whole illusion radiated an authority that was hard for him to identify. Something about it resonated with his Void Icon, like a complementary half, or perhaps an opposite.
For Ziel’s sake, he tried to explain. “These are the principles Northstrider and Emala studied. If I had to name this authority, I would call it ‘existence.’”
Ziel hefted the silver Divine Treasure in his hand, then absorbed it into his soulspace. “I hate how casually you’ve handed me the keys to manipulate existence itself.”
“We have to go at least this far if we want to kill the Weeping Dragon.”
Ziel’s spirit flickered slightly at the reminder, but it was enough to send a ring of dust blasting away from his feet. “Yeah. Right.”
“And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you,” Lindon said quietly, “but we have to assume the Stormcallers will be with it.”
Ziel trembled. His grip tightened on the dream tablets that remained in his left hand until Lindon was afraid he would break them.
“I’m not a match for Calling Storms,” Ziel said at last. “Even if I touch an Icon, that won’t change. He’s a monster.”
“He’s not the only one.” Lindon reached out with force aura and pushed Ziel’s fingers apart so the tablets didn’t shatter in his grip. “You won’t fight alone.”
“Neither will he. He has a Dreadgod.”
Lindon flexed his right hand. “So he does.” His white arm bubbled with hunger. It was practically drooling at the thought of devouring the Weeping Dragon.