Shut up.
Dozens of tendrils erupted from all around her as a Fiend reached into the Way to grab her. It was quite powerful, having been left as a sentry to hold her back.
But Suriel had no time to waste. She cut her way through, counting every second.
She might already be too late.
Back in Vesper, Ozriel pointed at the Mad King with his conjured black sword. “I thought you’d fight harder to stop her.”
“Suriel would eventually be replaced,” Daruman responded. “How will they replace you?”
Ozriel didn’t have his Presence with him, but he could see the potential outcomes well enough. His odds of walking out of here were…small.
Still, he gave the Mad King a brilliant smile. “I have some ideas on that myself.”
Then a thousand lines of light streaked out from Tal’gullour, a barrage that instantly shattered the central planet of Vesper and raced for Ozriel.
And he began his final battle.
1
The sky inside Lindon’s repurposed pocket world was overcast by slowly swirling clouds of various colors. While the heart of the space had been stolen from Reigan Shen, much of its material had come from the Ninecloud Court, and their influence was clear in the churning rainbow vapor that shone brightly overhead.
The wind that stirred those clouds only began when Lindon stepped inside. While empty, the time in the pocket space had been slowed to a crawl. Almost frozen. It would have been too much of a waste to spend their limited time while no one was here to benefit.
With Lindon’s appearance, time moved forward again.
Upon entering the space, Lindon first checked its spatial stability by extending his senses. The Void Icon told him that he was boarding a small vessel drifting in the middle of a sea of nonexistence, as though they’d stepped off a dock and onto a boat, but everything seemed stable.
It felt like it would hold, and in the meantime, they would pass weeks in a matter of hours. That level of time acceleration would strain the pocket world, and was an inefficient use of the materials, but economy didn’t concern Lindon much.
It was worth burning a fortune for speed. It wasn’t Lindon’s fortune anyway.
Only once he was sure their shelter wouldn’t capsize into the Void did Lindon turn his attention to the layout of the space itself. Beneath the sky of slowly mixing colors floated a rough island of pale stone maybe a mile across.
It reminded Lindon of the slabs of marble from which Reigan Shen had once built his Monarch platform at the Uncrowned King tournament. Which made sense, as he had stolen this island from Shen. Tunnels wound through the stone, containing several facilities and aura training rooms that Lindon dismissed after a single scan.
His would be better.
Yerin entered the pocket world at virtually the same time he did. She glanced into his arms, where Lindon held Mercy’s unconscious body.
Since leaving the Akura clan, he hadn’t let her out of his sight.
Orthos, Ziel, and Little Blue were supposed to follow only a fraction of a second later, but the world on their side looked almost frozen now that time was speeding up. They were all crammed into the hallway of Windfall, ready to enter as soon as they could.
They spilled through a few moments later, Orthos grumbling as he had to turn sideways and slide himself through the doorway. Lindon and Yerin had already walked away.
Yerin chewed on her lip and her worried eyes stayed on Mercy. “She’s all shredded up.”
[No, don’t worry!] Dross encouraged her. [It’s just severe structural damage to the madra channels. She’ll be fine in a few years.]
“But we have a plan,” Lindon added. He activated the Soulforge, and a gateway appeared within the pocket world. It looked out onto another space, a rune-carved platform floating over a starry void. A dull silver altar sat in the middle of the platform, bright blue flames flickering merrily at its heart.
Lindon’s void key strained under the pressure from the artifacts he’d stolen from the Monarchs. He floated them out in sealed containers, and the Soulforge trembled under the weight of their significance.
Fortunately, the Soulforge kept that power isolated from the rest of the space.
“The Monarchs had to work together to stabilize your spirit so you didn’t have to face any consequences from advancing early,” Lindon said to Yerin. He carefully floated Mercy over using wind aura, then rested her on the surface of the anvil at the heart of the Soulforge. “We’re going to borrow their authority to do the same thing here.”
[Technically not the same thing. And they didn’t need all the Monarchs, just enough to cover a wide enough variety of authority. Which is good, because items don’t hold authority as well as people do, and we were planning to save these for advancement—]
Lindon was about to interrupt, but Dross cut himself off.
[—I know you’re about to stop me, so I’ll just go ahead and stop myself.]
Yerin nodded to the items floating out of the various sealed containers under Lindon’s aura control. “Wasn’t that the point to all the looting we did? Have to fake our own half-price Monarch commands.”
“We can only bend the rules so many times,” Lindon said. “What we use to heal her now, we can’t use to advance her later.”
Yerin folded her arms. “Let’s get to bending.”
“Of course.”
Lindon summoned the Monarch artifacts to himself. He slipped on a signet ring belonging to Reigan Shen, lifted a scepter belonging to an ancient Monarch whose name had been lost to time, and replaced his outer robe with a shoddy one that Northstrider had owned for years.
Also, from his soulspace, he brought a single blue-green leaf with an eye in the center.
The authority embedded in the objects had a specific purpose. The power struggled against Lindon as he tried to focus it, to bend it to his will.
Reigan Shen’s represented his wealth and his command over space, while Northstrider’s authority was much more physical. The scepter shone with the purity of a wandering monk, a sacred artist who gave up all worldly causes.
Lindon not only had to wrangle all that authority to one purpose but had to link it to his own authority. He found the Void Icon and focused his attention, trying to restore Mercy’s condition to before. To use Void authority for such a task, he had to think of it as reducing her wounds to nothing. To negate the specific events that had left her that way.
Though he was already wrestling with too much power, he needed more. Healing her wasn’t enough; he had to rebuild her foundation. He clasped Suriel’s marble in his left hand. It didn’t lend him any power, but its restorative aura could guide him.
Yerin eyed him up and down. “You look like a vagrant wanderer trying to dress up rich.”
[Don’t worry,] Dross said. [I won’t let it go to his head.]
A crown settled on Lindon’s brow. It was the legacy of another ancient Monarch, and this one Lindon hadn’t stolen; he’d found it in the labyrinth.
Lindon’s mind and spirit trembled as he tried to juggle all the authority, but his voice was clear as he commanded Mercy: “Be whole.”
The result wasn’t as simple as Lindon had hoped.
Each source of authority tried to restore Mercy in a different way. Unlike a living person, the items were inflexible and bound to a specific purpose. They fought one another and resisted Lindon.
But his command touched something deeper, something that ran beneath reality. A force that reminded him of Suriel, and of the chambers at the very bottom of reality. That distant force echoed.
A spark of blue light flickered through Mercy, and Lindon fell to his knees.
He felt like he’d tumbled down a waterfall in less than a second. This was the force that held reality in place, the power that he’d only heard whispers of: The Way Between Worlds. The power of pure order.