She wasn’t physically inside the Book, after all. Mercy and Lindon were seated in cycling position in the shadow aura training room, with their minds and spirits projected into this page.
If she cut the connection here, she’d be left with a half-broken page. But the sudden influx of her mother’s willpower had shaken her.
The contents of the room were made with power appropriate to a Lowgold, but the structure of the room itself wasn’t. It was made from a Monarch’s power.
If the Book hadn’t been squeezed down to fit compatibly into Mercy’s spirit, just that taste of Malice’s madra would have burst her from the inside out.
As it was, Mercy felt another person wrestling for control of her spirit. A voiceless, formless force of determination. A will that would conquer rather than surrender.
Akura Malice.
“Hold on,” Lindon said. “There’s more coming.”
Mercy braced herself again.
She cycled the madra that flowed through her, stored the occasional spark of soulfire, and vented excess power by letting techniques fly wildly into the real world. That much was easy in itself, but it was made much harder when she had to do it while also fighting against Malice’s will.
Half-formed memories and spikes of powerful emotion swept over Mercy in a wave. Irritation. Determination. Grief. Resolve.
Protective love for a family. Hatred for those who would threaten that family.
That isn’t so bad, is it? Mercy thought, and she couldn’t tell if it was her own voice or not. Dedicating myself to the family. That’s a good thing!
By the time the last of the room collapsed around her and the first page dissolved, Mercy was panting and sweating. She held on by a hair, enduring the river of foreign thoughts and sorting the spiritual powers.
The operation was over, but her spirit was still a storm of darkness and chaos. Her thoughts were no better, swirling around in circles and hiding her identity.
But she wouldn’t give in. She needed this to defeat her mother. She would not give up, and that resolve resonated both with her own soul and with the foreign will inside her.
Mercy had just decided to settle her spirit, even if it killed her, when she felt a hand on her shoulder.
A moment later, pure madra trickled into her like a soothing rain. The chaos in her soul settled slightly, the pressure on her mind lightened, and even her mother’s willpower stopped hitting so hard.
“Pardon,” Lindon said quietly. “That was a little too much to ask.”
Mercy wanted to sigh in relief, but she needed to finish this before she said anything. Lindon withdrew his hand and his madra, and while he had brought the difficulty down to her level, he hadn’t solved the problem for her.
After another five minutes of wrestling herself, Mercy opened her eyes and shuddered. “Thanks. There were more memories than I expected.”
Lindon stood over her, a silent support, but Dross drifted down to look into her face. [What memories? Not that you need to tell me! Not while Lindon’s around to listen, anyway. I’m very curious. Get out of here, Lindon!]
“Do you know anything about my father?” Mercy asked. She looked to Dross, but she was asking both of them. Lindon had spent a long time researching in Akura territory. He might know more about her than she assumed.
“Very little,” he said. “He isn’t mentioned much in Moongrave. I assumed it was a secret.”
Still seated, she brought up her knees and hugged them to her chest. “There’s not much to know. He was an Overlord that commanded a border fortress in our territory. He caught my mother’s eye, and at first she veiled herself down to his level, though she did tell him who she was before things got too serious.
“She was only with him for about three years. Long enough to have me and Pride. Then she left.”
“Did you…know him?” Lindon asked carefully.
She watched the darkness. “We visited a few times when I was young. I don’t know how much Pride remembers. Uncle Fury liked our father a lot, so you can imagine what he was like. Always fighting somebody.”
[What kind of an unstable person would live like that?] Dross said, and even without looking up, Mercy was sure he was staring at Lindon.
“I was eight when he died,” Mercy continued. “It wasn’t a plot against my mother or anything. Just another battle. My mother never talked to us about it. I thought she didn’t care, and I wondered: ‘What about if I died? Would she care then?’”
Lindon sat down opposite her, though he stayed quiet.
Dross drifted down as well. He opened his mouth to speak, but Lindon grabbed him. The spirit remained silent too.
Mercy didn’t know how to stop the words. “I just saw pieces of her memory. She…enjoyed her time with him. She didn’t want to leave, but she had to. For the family, and all that. When she found out my father died, Uncle Fury and Aunt Charity had to hold her back from blowing up the entire region. I never knew that.”
She tucked her forehead into her knees. “I wish she hadn’t cared.”
Mercy had been on the verge of casting her mother as a cold, unfeeling monster. If that were the truth, it would have been easier. She could hate Malice comfortably.
There was cruelty in her fragmented memories as well. Hatred, disdain, arrogance.
But that wasn’t everything.
“I know the Monarchs aren’t complete monsters,” Lindon said. “But the Dreadgods are.”
She looked to him, and he met her gaze with eyes that shone like white circles in the darkness.
Mercy rearranged herself into a cycling position. There was only one way to get rid of the Dreadgods.
“Page two, please!” she said.
[Your enthusiasm is great, it’s wonderful, I love it, but don’t you think it would be better to tackle this tomorrow? We want you to be in the best condition to—]
“Page two,” Mercy repeated.
“Open,” Lindon commanded. And the two of them slipped into the Book again.
7
Yerin dashed up to Lindon and swung Netherclaw with the full force of her Steelborn Iron body. The body her master had chosen for her, which gave her great capacity for strength even compared to other Heralds.
Lindon swung Wavedancer in his Dreadgod arm. He used it physically instead of controlling it remotely with his madra, and his sword technique was rough.
But the impact of their two clashing blades sent them both flying backwards. The wide cave was unharmed—this was a training room intended to be used by Monarchs—but a lesser arena might have been destroyed.
They landed at the same time, and Lindon brought his sword up in anticipation of another strike.
Instead, Yerin pointed at his arm. “That’s about all I can take. Find me one of those.”
Lindon rubbed the now-unclear point where his flesh became the Dreadgod’s. “I have spares, but you know that probably won’t work.”
She did. He’d worn a weaker arm while advancing, worked his way up, and gotten his spirit used to the hunger. He also had an Icon that connected him to the authority of the arm, two compatible cores, an internal spiritual Enforcer technique, and probably fifty other things that made him uniquely attuned to the arm.
But this was frustrating. Without using his Enforcer techniques, he had matched one of her regular swings. She could probably overpower him if she had to, but that only lasted until he used the Burning Cloak.
Not that a fight against him would rely on hand-to-hand power in the first place.
“You’ll get there yourself!” Lindon encouraged her. “Although…it would probably help if you spent more time with Red Faith…”
She felt her expression curdle like milk. “It was never a summertime dream of mine to work with him when he was alive. Not rosier about it now he’s dead.”