The Blood Sage’s Remnant was working on a way to integrate the madra of the Bleeding Phoenix inside Yerin into a hunger technique on a level with Lindon’s Consume. To do that, he needed her cooperation.
She’d just rather do almost anything else.
Lindon gazed at her, quiet. Someone else would probably think he was trying to intimidate her, or maybe bore a hole through her with his eyes, but she could tell he was thinking hard about something.
Sure enough, he crept up to her, his voice low and gentle. “I did bring something else for you. I was going to wait for the right time to give it to you, but since you’re looking for an alternative…Just forgive me if it’s too surprising, all right?”
Hearing him talk like that, she couldn’t help but raise her expectations a little. And her heart rate sped up too, with him getting closer and talking all quiet about a gift.
She couldn’t imagine what it would be, which was making her nervous. If it was something to improve her sacred arts, he wouldn’t talk so soft about it.
He reached into his pocket—not a void key—and pulled out a small box wrapped in scripted bandages.
When he began unwrapping it, she swallowed hard. “Hold a minute, wait…what…what is this, Lindon?”
“Something that should motivate you,” he said, and she could see that he was excited about this. Nervous, too, which only ramped up her own nerves.
The bandages fell away, revealing a small box.
Yerin held up a hand. “Oi, wait, wait, wait. Not stone-certain I’m as happy about surprises now as I was two minutes ago.”
Lindon opened the box.
Inside was…a pulsing, gray-white bulb of living madra that looked like a diseased organ.
It was surrounded by five or six other constructs of various colors, all smooth and metallic and forming a cage. Altogether, it resembled a failing heart being kept alive by a set of life-support constructs.
That’s about what it felt like to her spiritual senses too.
Yerin wasn’t sure what her expectations had been, but they came crashing down. She jabbed a finger at the mess in the box. “What’s that?”
“I’ll activate it in just a minute. It’s a binding I took from the labyrinth, though it was very difficult to get it to work outside. I suspect it won’t last very long, but it should encourage you.”
He was still talking around the point, but he obviously thought she’d like it. She took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’ll give it a peek, but you’ve got to know that when you start talking soft about a gift, and how it’s going to raise my spirits, I’m not picturing a shiny new construct.”
“What were you picturing?” he asked curiously.
‘Jewelry’ was the answer, but that was so unsuited to Yerin that she couldn’t make it come out of her mouth. She didn’t even like jewelry, it was just…the thing you were supposed to give at times like this. The thought behind it was more than just practicality.
She wanted something that was meant for her as a person, not her as a sacred artist. Something romantic.
Although she had an even harder time saying the word “romantic” than she did the word “jewelry,” so she ignored the question and nodded to the construct.
“So what’s it do?”
“It’s the Sword Sage’s echo,” he said.
For some reason, she hadn’t expected him to answer so clearly. Her gaze snapped up from the construct to his face.
“True?”
He gave her a sheepish smile. “Like I said, I was going to ease you into it. Dross and I found him before we left, but I wanted a little more time to see if I could stabilize the binding further. He won’t be as strong or as fully formed as he would be if we were back in the labyrinth, but it remembered him well. As he was when he explored it.”
“Ah. Uh. Huh.” She took a deep breath. Her heart rate had picked up again. “Thanks for not popping him up on me with no warning.”
“I remembered how you reacted to his void space. I didn’t want you to stab me.”
“Like you’d be bothered by a little stab,” Yerin said. She’d meant it to come across as dry, but it sounded fond instead. She wrapped one arm around him but took the construct’s box in the other hand.
Lindon leaned into her, but he was clearly itching to snatch the construct back. “Pardon, but I am the only one who can activate that. It’s very delicate, and incompatible madra will disrupt the balance almost immediately.”
She didn’t have any intention of activating it herself, so she squeezed him to acknowledge the words but didn’t give it back. “Can we give it a test swing right now?”
“Of course!” He hesitated, then leaned down to look into her face. “Do you like it? I was worried you might be…upset.”
“No, this is a winning blow from you. You’ve got me.”
He beamed, but her attention was still drawn back down to the construct.
Now she was getting a chance to see her master’s ghost. She had to be prepared. Netherclaw was sheathed at her hip; she wasn’t sure she should draw it. Her master would recognize that it wasn’t his.
This was too soon. Maybe she should wait, collect her thoughts some more.
“Waiting won’t get me any sharper,” Yerin muttered to herself.
Lindon held out the hunger binding in his right hand. It was surrounded by constructs keeping it stable, and his spiritual attention was on that, though his eyes were searching Yerin’s face. “Are you sure you want to do this now?”
“Spent long enough bracing myself, haven’t I?” Yerin didn’t really feel she was ready. She wished this was like a fight, which started whether you were ready or not. Now she had to decide when it started, which was like deciding her own execution.
She didn’t want to draw it out any further, but she had to ask one more thing. “Will he…know me?”
“This is very advanced, but it’s still a recording construct. I’m projecting a pattern of his memories, with gaps filled in by the labyrinth. He’ll remember you as you were, he might even recognize you, but he won’t learn anything new or recall anything that happened from a previous projection. We’ve only seen one exception to that.”
She looked at him in curiosity before she figured out the question on her own. “Eithan,” she said.
“Eithan. I don’t know if his echo is better at tapping into the labyrinth’s other memories or if he’s only pretending to learn things.”
“Put my bet on ‘both.’ Anyway, good news for me that this is just a recording. If you could bring back the dead, you’d twist my brain in knots.” She drew herself up. “That’s enough dragging from me. Start it up.”
“Here we go, then. Three, two…one.”
Even after the countdown, he fed his madra into the binding gently. Pure madra swirled up through his spirit and filtered through his Dreadgod arm, bearing a hint of hunger. Must have been harder than activating it with pure madra alone; hunger only wanted to take.
“Come forth,” Lindon commanded.
The empty air trembled as his working took hold, and misty gray-white light swirled into the figure of a man, tracing him from the feet upward.
He wore ragged robes like her own. They would be black, though projected as these were from hunger madra, they merely looked like a darker shade of gray. A sword hung from his left hip. He wasn’t tall and imposing, and his shoulders weren’t terribly broad—he had shorter limbs than most people would say was ideal for a swordsman, and he was wiry instead of muscular.
Then his face formed, and Yerin had to manually slow her breathing.
He had sleepy eyes and unkempt hair, though he stayed clean-shaven. He constantly wore the slight, wry smile of a man who saw something sarcastically funny in the world.
He looked her up and down, and Yerin’s spirit froze in fear. This was the moment she had most dreaded, the one that had made her drag her feet in summoning him. Would he recognize her? It had been a long time, after all. What if he did recognize her, but disapproved?