When the third Penance arrow struck at him from behind, that was when Reigan realized he was going to die.
Every shield, barrier, script, and scrap of armor he could summon leaped out of his many vaults and onto his body.
The blue plates of absolute Abidan protection shivered under the weight of triple execution…and then they cracked. The metal strapped to his wrist, the platinum Titan artifact, tore in half like cloth.
“Protect!” Northstrider commanded.
“Stop!” Malice ordered.
“Save me!” Reigan Shen cried.
When the arrows passed through the Abidan defenses, the other layers were obliterated in an instant. One arrow lost momentum, but the second rushed at him like a river of pure destruction. Malice threw an arm in front of it and her armor was annihilated to reveal her bare arm, but that arrow ran out of strength as well.
Shen was looking up in terror at the black arrowhead plunging down from overhead, flinching back behind crossed arms…but it too froze a hair from his skin.
Northstrider had caught it.
The human Monarch coughed up blood and tried to crush the arrow in his fist. “This…weapon…”
Even with the authority of the Strength Icon, Northstrider couldn’t break it.
All three arrows vanished, but the world was darker. Literally, as illusory cloned arrows blacked out the sun.
Reigan Shen knew the other Monarchs acted solely for their own protection. If they thought they could win without Reigan’s help, they would have watched him die with glee in their hearts. On another day, they would have helped Lindon.
But relying on their assistance still burned his pride, so now it was his turn.
Reigan Shen released his madra, and a golden light surrounded the three Monarchs for a mile in all directions. “Mine,” he said, as he joined his authority to the King’s Domain.
The copied arrows crashed down on his Domain. They tore parts of it away, drilled down into the golden light, and even tickled his mind with distant mental attacks. But every arrow was shunted to the side, landing nowhere near the Monarchs.
Or the collection of Sages and Archlords that had emerged from the pillar of shadow beneath them.
“Do that sooner,” Northstrider said coldly.
Reigan’s head was splitting with the effort of using such high-level commands so soon after one another, not to mention the strain of maintaining powerful weapons, but he kept control of himself and snorted. “As though you’ve used everything you’re capable of.”
Malice had re-formed the amethyst plating around her arm. “I’m afraid the boy hasn’t either.”
Lindon must have been far more exhausted than Reigan himself, but he didn’t look it, and the bow in his hand warped Reigan’s spiritual perception.
He was only a Sage.
The Silent King’s halo over his head had grown, and it was starting to fill in with a subtly spinning darkness. The Void Icon. It matched his eyes: harsh white circles in pools of merciless black.
Two figures had joined Lindon, and they were eerily familiar. Echoes in gray-white of a young woman with a bow and a scruffy young man with scales covering his fists. Younger Malice and Northstrider.
The real Malice ran a hand down her bow, considering. “Is he paying the price to maintain them, or is it the labyrinth?”
“It has to be the labyrinth,” Northstrider said. “If he was doing it himself, he could have kept the defensive scripts up.”
Malice gave an irritated hiss. “Then we can’t fight him here.”
Reigan Shen looked into the sky, fury boiling up from his heart. “Enough. Scorch the earth.”
He willed himself to move as high as he could, reappearing an instant later. The world stretched out beneath him even as the breath left his lungs. He hung now in the stillness of the stars, above the sky, until Sacred Valley itself was but a smudge far below.
Reigan opened two portals to his left and right, forming a third technique between his hands.
Each of the gates he opened revealed one of his singular vaults, where he kept the most unique and deadly treasures. One was a room of cold, bare gray, where scripted halfsilver chains restrained a spear.
Fashioned from the soul of a Monarch and the rarest of materials, the spear looked to be made of weathered sandstone, but its every sharp edge shone like molten steel.
Blighted Sky, a weapon created by two Sages of Steel Dragon’s Mountain to do battle with ancient Monarchs. Over time, its legend and power had only grown, and it was responsible for the creation of a desert on the Iceflower continent.
One of his rarest treasures.
The other vault contained another one-of-a-kind Monarch weapon, and one that Reigan was more personally attached to. Tiberian Arelius’ Remnant on a leash.
The man was sculpted from blue-and-gold lightning, and he lounged on a seat, Forged chin in one hand. His collar flashed as he looked up at the opening portal.
“You want me to kill some more of my family members, Shen?” Tiberian asked. Air was rushing out of the vault in a sparkling rush, a cold breeze as the wind vented into vacuum, but Reigan responded in a transmission of dream aura.
Yes, he said. An adopted one. There.
He indicated the location with a thought.
Tiberian grimaced, but he raised a hand that crackled with power.
Don’t hold back, Reigan added.
The Remnant lowered its hand and considered for a moment. Then three colored balls of lightning crackled around his body, growing more powerful with every passing instant. One was blue, one gold, and one a molten, green-tinged white.
Tiberian’s greatest technique, his True Storm Hammer. It would be enough to annihilate Sacred Valley and anyone standing against it, unless Lindon spent his whole power defending or activated the great defensive script.
But Reigan didn’t watch Tiberian finish the technique. He began his own most powerful art.
Opening portals onto spatially sealed treasures was not the only use of the Path of the King’s Key, like so many thought. It was simply the most efficient one.
Most threats, he could handle with his vast collection of weaponry. For some purposes, he controlled the battlefield with his King’s Domain.
For those last, stubborn targets, Reigan needed to get his own hands dirty. No target could perfectly defend against this technique. Not even Tiberian himself.
With his madra and his authority, Reigan gripped the fabric of space. He tore and crumpled it until it resembled a golden-edged shattered ball.
This was any king’s last resort: the Decree of Execution.
Any one of these three techniques should be plenty to destroy not only Lindon, but a significant chunk of the surrounding territory. Malice would be displeased with him, but she knew what he was doing. It would be upon her to contain the destruction.
If she even could. With these three techniques layered together, they would produce an effect that was—
Tiberian released his True Storm Hammer.
“Not yet!” Reigan tried to shout, but the air was gone. He roared in silence.
As a mountain-thick pillar of lightning cracked down to earth, the storm Remnant looked up to Reigan in evident surprise. He tapped one ear and shrugged.
Reigan snarled, though Tiberian wouldn’t hear that either, and released his Decree of Execution. It flashed down, almost as fast as the lightning, leaving trails of splintered space behind it as it fell.
Only then could he trigger the Striker binding inside the spear, Blighted Sky. A wide spread of smoldering orange spikes rained down, each hungry to spread destruction.
The three techniques weren’t synced up as well as Reigan had hoped, but he was still satisfied with the initial result. A giant column of three-colored lightning, chased afterward by a gold-highlighted warp in space, and followed by a broad waterfall of burning light.