When she slashed them to pieces, she braced herself. She thought she knew what to expect, having watched Lindon Consume more than his share of Remnants, dreadbeasts, and living sacred artists.
Instead, the places where she’d cut the Remnants turned red. Silver-red light burst from the wounds like chains, wrapping them all over and binding them in place.
Suddenly, Yerin could feel them. They were connected to her, resonating with the hunger madra technique that flowed through her. Physical and mental strength flowed into her, as well as pieces of lifeline—only trickles, considering that they were Underlords and Remnants, but better than nothing—and Yerin was hit by a handful of faint memories and a splash of weak willpower.
Breaking that willpower was easier than wrestling an earthworm, but Yerin felt confusion dilute her desire to kill. She hadn’t gotten any madra.
And the Remnants were still there.
The chains of her madra had pulled them back together, stitching them into the forms they had before she tore them up. They were weaker than before, having lost much of their strength to Yerin, and they looked like a couple of puppet-constructs bound together crudely with her madra.
She could feel them.
Experimentally, she ordered them, “Hop up and down.”
They started to do it. Awkwardly, in the case of the blue lobster, which splashed every time it hit the ground.
Yerin stared. “Dross, give me the ten-word story of what I just did.”
Dross materialized next to her, looking faint. The original had left this limited copy weeks ago, from her perspective at least, and it was running out of power.
[First, let me remind you that you’re the one who helped design the technique, and the original version of me has much greater—]
“Ten words, Dross.”
One of the Remnants crumbled to nothing. She got an even smaller burst of energy, but most of its madra started to dissolve to essence.
Dross squinted his single eye as though counting words. [You take what you can, and the rest is captured.]
Yerin let her technique fade, thinking. She had based this on the Phoenix madra’s ability to create bloodspawn, but she had been picturing something different. She’d imagined draining power from the people she stabbed like they were bloodspawn delivering power to the Phoenix.
Red Faith had seized on that concept and added his own designs to it, but it was still rare for a technique to work so differently to the user’s imagination. As Yerin herself had once taught Lindon, the intentions behind a technique were one of the most important parts.
Dross floated up in front of her. [Would you like ten more words?]
“Nah, I’m stable. You can take a rest. And thanks.” Now that she had an idea of how the technique was supposed to work, it would only get better from here. She could actually practice.
The second Remnant fell to pieces.
[Oh! You thanked me! That feels good, you should do that more often.]
She frowned at him. “I know how to thank people.”
[You didn’t thank Eithan when he went up to the heavens,] Dross pointed out.
Yerin considered and tossed aside several responses. Her instinct was to hit back, but Lindon was gone, and everyone was working harder than they ever had. She needed someone to really talk to.
“Didn’t know what to say, did I?” she muttered at last. “Gone over that in my head a thousand and one times. Got a whole pack of things I could have said, should have said.”
Dross’ eye widened, and he stared at her from an inch in front of her nose.
“…You trying to see into my brain?”
[That’s more than I’ve heard you open up to anyone but Lindon. This Phoenix Song technique has warped your thoughts. Not to be rude, but you should keep using it.]
Yerin took a step back herself, since Dross didn’t seem like he was going to. “Phoenix Song?”
[Makes sense, right? You sound all musical while you’re using it, like your skin is singing. Hm. I don’t like that description, for some reason.]
“Phoenix Song.” She ran it through her head and nodded. “I like it.”
[Are you sure? I could call the others! It’s been a while since we’ve voted on a name.]
“No, that’s all locked up. Thanks.”
Dross threw up his tendrils. [Twice! I’ve been thanked twice! My original won’t even believe my memories.]
For a few more hours, Yerin practiced the Phoenix Song. As she’d expected, it was much easier to control once she had the proper mental image, but she needed to try it on real opponents. Weak Remnants didn’t give her much benefit and only lasted for a snap before they crumbled to pieces.
Then she went about the routine she’d followed daily, while Lindon was gone: checking on the others.
Ziel was, as usual, sitting in front of the Paths of Heaven. He was seated in a cycling position on the ground, his green horns glowing and eyes shut, but he wasn’t cycling. The fourth display was lit, the one that swirled with unreadable letters.
She found it the most confusing one, but Ziel said it helped him steer his Grand Oath Array.
A loop of Forged silver runes spun around him, so complicated they made her eyes hurt just looking at them. More symbols hovered in the air above him, though they were only arranged in a circle by the loosest definition. Those runes flipped, shifted, and transported between one another like a Sage was juggling them through space.
Yerin entered quietly and waited until she was sure he sensed her presence before she spoke. “You ready for today’s test?”
“I don’t need to test it so often,” Ziel responded without opening his eyes. “But yes.”
She’d brought a fruit for exactly this purpose, which had been grown in a small garden sustained by life aura. It resembled a pink-skinned apple, and she took a bite from it before she tossed it into the center of the network of spinning silver runes.
It froze in the middle like an invisible hand had caught the apple, but there were no flows of vital aura around it. Ziel’s eyebrows wrinkled as he concentrated, and the fruit began to rot in seconds. It had just turned into mush when the script flickered, and the half-rotten mass of apple hit the ground with a splat.
Ziel gave a heavy sigh. “It’s supposed to stay there until it’s dust.”
“That’s a stretch more than you could do yesterday,” Yerin pointed out. “And with you not being a Sage. That calls for cheers if you ask me.”
Yerin thought she wouldn’t get much more than a sigh out of him, or maybe a glum comment, but Ziel opened his eyes and gave her a firm nod.
“Almost,” he said. “I am getting used to it. Soon, I think, I’ll have something to really be proud of.”
That was worth a smile, Yerin thought. “Now you sound like a Sage.”
“The Monarch who invented this technique was killed by the Dreadgods,” Ziel went on, “so obviously I’ll still have further to go.”
Yerin’s smile withered. “If you were happy about something, you think it might kill you?”
“I am happy,” Ziel said. He sounded confused, so Yerin turned away from him and activated one of the Paths of Heaven that didn’t hurt her head so bad.
The last one.
Ziel flinched as the dark cave appeared, its darkness somehow thicker and deeper even than Mercy’s shadow cycling room.
“I don’t know how you even get close to that,” he said.
Yerin walked up to the darkness, standing at the twilight edge. Absolute silence came from within, and she was certain that a single touch would mean her death.
The sensation was comforting, somehow. Not the thought of dying; Yerin meant to live forever. The familiar feeling.
On the verge of death was how she’d lived her life.
She had meditated here, by the cave Eithan had created thousands of years ago, while trying to learn his sword strike. She continued because something in the silence spoke to her. In a way, it harmonized with her Phoenix Song technique.