A small contingent of white-clad figures flew out of the temporary blue star. Bolts of energy and missiles streaked up from the city below, pinging off eggshell armor.
The Silverlord raised her dagger toward them, and Lindon ordered his flying swords forward to intercept what he was sure was an attack.
Instead, she held up her dagger in front of her face to block a punch.
The Abidan appeared with no warning, his fist sending out ripples of darkness from its impact against the dagger. There was the stylized symbol of a wolf’s head on the breast of his armor, and he wore no helmet—most of the Abidan had their heads bare.
His hair drifted up, twisting like living shadow, and excitement gleamed in his red eyes.
The Silverlord was forced back by his blow, though she didn’t seem to be otherwise injured or incapacitated. She flew back further, spreading her hands, and a torrent of black-feathered birds spilled from each palm.
The ravens, or maybe crows, did not attack. Instead, they spread out for miles, slowly spilling to cover the sky.
Meanwhile, the Abidan had turned his face away from his opponent to regard Lindon.
“You finally made it!” Akura Fury said happily.
[It’s amazing how relieving a familiar face can be,] Dross observed. [Especially when he’s saving us.]
Lindon’s heart had indeed eased on catching sight of Fury, though they probably had some awkward conversations in their future involving the man’s mother.
“Gratitude. Do you have a plan for that?”
The formation of birds around them was almost complete, but that wasn’t what Lindon was most concerned about. Instead, it was the swirl in the sky overhead.
Something was twisting the space. Something from outside the world.
Whoever or whatever was doing that, Lindon suspected it was the sort of being that Silverlords called for backup.
“I do have a plan,” Fury said reluctantly, “but it involves not fighting that thing at all.”
The other Abidan were maintaining the portal out despite increased resistance from the city below. One of them shouted Fury’s name.
“I prefer that,” Lindon said.
Fury gave a longing glance toward the twist in the sky, but finally sighed and flew toward the portal.
“How did you find me?” Lindon asked, as they prepared to enter the Way.
Fury nodded to the glass marble. “Suriel can find that anywhere in any world.”
“Are we heading to Suriel?” Lindon asked. His heart lifted.
“Not quite, no. Eithan sent me.” Fury gave Lindon a sidelong glance. “What’s the story there, by the way?”
As they passed through the gateway and into another world, Lindon tried to find the right words to answer.
36
The trip to the world that Fury called Sanctum didn’t take long, but it felt endless, as Lindon was buffeted by the flows of the Way surrounding him at every turn. His stomach twisted, not from the unfamiliar sensation, but from anticipation.
He hadn’t seen Yerin or the others in almost two years. The Abidan assured him that it had mostly been the same amount of time up here, but mostly didn’t reassure him. How long had it been? What had they done without him? What had he missed?
Fury held him by the elbow in his white-gauntleted hand, preventing him from getting lost between universes, but Fury also wouldn’t stop talking.
Mostly about how strong everyone was.
“Most of the Abidan that aren’t Wolves?” He tapped the wolf’s head on his breastplate. “Not worth your time. Make sure they’re at least two-star Wolves if you want a challenge. Silverlords aren’t bad, but they’re all different. Good for variety, but you never know when one will be a challenge or not.”
Fury sighed. “None of the Judges will fight me. Not even Eithan. He says I need to get stronger before I challenge him!” Despite his disappointment, Lindon thought the man looked excited.
“How do I compare?” Lindon asked, mostly to keep his mind off the upcoming reunion.
Fury’s hair drifted up to a point and his eyes glowed red. “Is that a challenge? You think we have time? Yeah, they’ll wait! We can stop before we get there, and they’ll never—Aw, we’re here.”
Lindon was relieved when they spilled out of the Way before he could correct Fury’s misunderstanding.
They drifted above a planet with oceans as blue as Cradle’s, but its land masses were only green in carefully placed patches. Instead, the continents were covered in silver and gold.
Traffic flew in lanes running in and out of the atmosphere, some vanishing into massive rings that flashed blue whenever they took another traveler into the Way.
Another Abidan drifted up to Lindon and nodded to Fury. “Sir, we need to deliver him directly to the Eighth Division.”
Fury made a sound of disappointment. “Fine. Let’s go. It’s the floating junk heap over there.”
There was no wind aura to hold onto, so Lindon felt a bit like he was running on invisible ground, but he still managed to will himself forward. Fury whistled. “Hey, look at you getting the hang of things! We’ll be fighting in no time!”
Lindon flew toward the ugly chunk of scrap metal floating like a miniature moon over the planet of Sanctum. “I can’t imagine Eithan has been living there for long.”
He sensed a protective field surrounding the two of them, projected by Fury, which was allowing them to speak in the absence of air. Not to mention breathe.
Now that he felt the song of the Hammer Icon, Lindon suspected he would soon be able to do something similar.
“He’s already cleaned it up a lot,” Fury said. “I’m sure by this time next year it will look like a golden hairbrush.”
Apparently finding out that Eithan was a celestial executioner still hadn’t fixed Fury’s opinion of him.
Lindon stretched out his spiritual sense, but he couldn’t feel anything at all, as though the place isolated its contents completely. “Are they inside?”
“Yeah, they’re waiting. You’ll get better at adapting your spiritual sense over time, but the Grave makes perception hard for anyone.”
“The Grave? Like Serpent’s Grave? And Moongrave?”
“Eithan named it. Probably for a dumber reason than that. Come to think of it, he might have named Serpent’s Grave too.”
Lindon was startled to realize that very well may have been true.
The Grave was even larger than it had seemed from the outside, until Lindon suspected it could hold several cities. Small vessels landed and departed from docks all over.
He and Fury landed on one such dock, and Lindon was about to ask Dross to send a message when a dark blur slammed into him with enough force that the entire dock shook.
Lindon was unshaken. He caught Yerin and lifted her before she could drop back to the ground.
“Too long!” she shouted.
She wore black armor now, but otherwise she hadn’t changed a bit. Red hair fell into her eyes, which swam with tears.
“Too long,” Lindon agreed softly.
He kissed her, and he lost track of time. He felt like he had been carrying a mountain on his back for years, and only once he put it down did he realize how heavy it had always been.
An insistent hand poked his shoulder, and he shook it off.
The poke came again.
Lindon finally looked up to see Little Blue scowling at him. She stood at human height again, and she pointed to Yerin.
As soon as Lindon straightened up, Blue tackled Yerin.
Orthos, as a turtle, ambled up behind them while Blue and Yerin talked over one another. Both of them spoke in a half-comprehensible garbled mess that they each somehow understood.
Lindon looked down to Orthos. “When did you change back?”
“Heralds can change all they want,” Orthos said, giving Blue a jealous look. “But I felt it was worth the soulfire. This is how they know me.”
Little Blue grabbed Orthos by the neck and hauled him over to embrace the others. Dross drifted closer, waving an arm. [Hello! I’m back too!]