“The Void Sage himself! We keep running into each other, it seems. How would you like to talk?”
Lindon reached into his soulspace. It took a moment to manifest the weapon he held there, due to its sheer spiritual power.
“Rude of you to keep silent, don’t you think? What about your mind-spirit? He’s worth talking to in his own right, I’m sure.”
Dross spun out to hover over Lindon’s head. He squinted at Reigan Shen. [How durable would you say you are? Compared to other Monarchs, I mean. There’s not a good standardized metric, and I’m curious about where you rank. I’m sure Malice is on the high end, thanks to the armor and all.]
Shen arched an eyebrow and sipped from his goblet. “If that’s a threat, it’s a poor—”
The Bow of the Silent King appeared in Lindon’s left hand.
A grand halo appeared over him, far too large for his body. The clouds danced, or at least seemed to, and the world warped around the weapon. Half-formed sounds and images flickered in and out of existence for miles around.
The grip and limbs of the bow were covered by the smooth white hide of the Silent King, drawn tight over its bones. Black stripes remained every few inches, shifting and morphing as though to almost form a picture. The string was invisible until Lindon’s fingers plucked it experimentally, and then it shivered into existence. It trembled strangely, like half a dozen strings of light trying to occupy the same space.
Through his connection to the Void Icon, Lindon could feel the weapon’s authority warping perception, dreams, thoughts. Even the Way, the deeper set of rules beneath reality, was touched by this weapon.
There was no way he could have tested the Bow inside the pocket world. Even with the separation of the Soulforge, constructing this had almost torn the place apart.
He felt its hunger for knowledge, its desire to consume minds and thoughts.
Lindon joined his madra to the bow, and it was almost too overwhelming for him. Fighting his arm and the weapon at the same time was a daunting task; they both whispered at him to give in, to devour everything. It was his right.
He tapped into the binding at the heart of the bow and Forged an arrow.
Lindon had expected it to be pure white, like so much of the Silent King’s madra, but it was more than that. The flawless ivory arrow had a gleaming steel head and black-tipped fletching.
It was detailed and beautiful, a work of art, so that Lindon almost wondered if it had really been Forged from simple madra. His eyes alone couldn’t tell the difference between this and a physical construction.
Four shields of wildly different descriptions had already appeared around Reigan Shen, orbiting him lazily. “So you went with a bow,” Shen called. “Not bad. I thought the stripes might be too much, but they’re tasteful.”
The Monarch kept his tone clean, but Lindon could sense his envy. It tasted of hunger.
Lindon responded by drawing the string back to his cheek. He hadn’t trained as an archer the way Mercy had, but he had used much simpler hunting bows here and there as a child. This would be his first time using a bow in years.
The air trembled under the combination of his own spirit and the power of the Silent King, so Reigan Shen called more and more defenses out of his King’s Key.
Lindon let him.
He wanted a good test.
When Shen paused to evaluate whether his defenses were good enough, Lindon released the Forged arrow.
Ten thousand identical arrows released along with it, Forging out of thin air. Even Lindon would have been hard-pressed to find the real one, especially as each arrow was blurred somehow, difficult to catch with the eye or the spiritual sense, as though the original slid in and out of reality.
They did not arc and fall, like regular arrows, but instead tore through the air like a flock of bats seeking prey. The volley bent and swarmed toward Reigan Shen, hungry for him.
A crystalline wall of Forged madra appeared in front of the arrows, generated by one of Shen’s constructs, but they punched through without losing much momentum. A shield floating in midair was torn to pieces after intercepting a handful, while the rest broke through layer after layer of the Monarch’s protections.
Scripts were overloaded and barriers broke as the furious barrage of arrows slowly dwindled.
[Not too bad,] Dross mused. [In line with my projections. I mean, of course.]
Lindon was relieved. For one Forger technique to push a Monarch this far was impressive, certainly, but he was counting on the Dreadgod weapons to perform at least this well. Otherwise, he had virtually no chance of forcing the Monarchs to ascend.
And, of course, this Monarch had stood there and taken the attack. Reigan Shen dismissed his broken defenses and summoned more, but he wasn’t lounging anymore. His arms were uncrossed and his goblet gone.
His goal was to keep Lindon out of the pocket world for as long as possible, no doubt, but he wouldn’t want to take a beating lying down.
[He’s the perfect target for round two!] Dross declared.
Lindon pulled out a real arrow.
He only had twelve of these, made from the material of the Silent King’s body just as the bow itself was. The arrowhead was the tiger’s gleaming fang, the shaft made from one of its bones.
When he put the arrow to the string, the spiritual force emanating from the weapon redoubled. If Lindon had been inside the protection script, the pressure alone would have killed some of the Golds waiting in the Valley.
Reigan Shen wasn’t blind. A larger portal opened behind him, and he shouted to Lindon. “You won’t find me such an easy target this—”
Lindon released the arrow.
Another illusory volley blackened the sky, though this time, the copies resembled this new arrow instead. Each Forged illusion tore the world as it passed, leaving hairline fractures in space that quickly healed.
The barrage struck almost instantly, like a flash of ten thousand lights.
This time, Reigan Shen didn’t stand still to meet it. While his construct defenses were overwhelmed in a split second, he stepped through a portal into a pocket world. Another portal swallowed most of the arrows.
Except, instead of catching the volley, the portal shattered like glass.
The weight of authority and significance on these arrows was nothing the portal could handle. They attacked the gateway itself, breaking it and continuing uninterrupted.
When they reached the pocket space in which Shen hid, they swarmed in after him like a hive of bees moving faster than mortal sight could track. They could easily burst such a space, but Lindon was sure Shen wouldn’t let that happen.
Sure enough, Lindon heard a lion’s roar and felt a surge of power. When the Monarch emerged, he was red-faced and furious.
He held up the bone arrow. “Thank you for your contribution to my collection! In return, I’ll show you what I have to offer!”
A dozen gold portals opened, and Lindon grew serious. Reigan Shen wasn’t just stalling anymore. There were weapons that could slip past the defensive field of the labyrinth to destroy the people hiding below, and Shen would surely have some.
Lindon called the arrow back.
It vanished from Shen’s hand and reappeared in his own, which caused Shen to react as though struck. He would have expected Lindon to summon the arrow back under his own authority, but Lindon had cheated and used the labyrinth.
He was stretching it to reach all the way out here, but only a little.
Before Shen released his arsenal, Lindon pulled a new type of arrow from his backup void key. Of this type, he only had three. He didn’t yet have the materials to make more.
This time, the wave of pressure the arrow radiated was more like silence than a scream. The sounds and waves of power from Shen’s weapons were instantly suppressed.
When Lindon placed this arrow to the string, the weight on his own spirit doubled yet again. He gritted his teeth and fought with all his willpower, trying to keep his focus.