“Unfortunately, the closer we get to the end, the greater the danger. I’m worried that—”
Emriss froze in the middle of her words. She gazed off into the distance, and Lindon could feel subtle shifting in the mechanics of the world. It was like hearing the strings of an instrument plucked in the distance.
The Monarch summoned her diamond-headed staff and slammed it into the ground. “I understand now why Shen helped to seal me away. He wanted to stop me from seeing this.”
Lindon was going to ask what, but her hand shot up and gripped him by the forehead like a claw.
That would have been more threatening to him a few weeks before.
“See,” Emriss commanded him.
Lindon allowed the working, and his vision was rushed away to elsewhere on the planet. There, he saw Reigan Shen.
And the Bleeding Phoenix.
Reigan Shen carried the Horn of the Slumbering Wraith in one hand, though its exposed presence warped the air around him and twisted ordinary animals into lesser dreadbeasts as he passed.
The world had already been twisted worse.
The sky was pure red, and there wasn’t a living thing in the range of his spiritual sense that hadn’t already been touched by the Bleeding Phoenix. Its eggs had merged with trees, animals, sacred beasts, and humans. Bloodspawn roamed in packs, hunting resistance, but most prey delivered itself to the Phoenix willingly.
The Dreadgod wasn’t difficult to find.
The sun burned red overhead as Reigan Shen approached. He’d transported himself close to this point, but the Phoenix controlled all space in its immediate vicinity.
A shape towered like a mountain over him, but it wasn’t the Phoenix’s body. It was a twisting, writhing mass of red that pulsed and flickered with every aspect of madra. Together, it formed the shape of one titanic egg.
The Phoenix had formed itself into a much, much smaller body. It even looked like a human woman, a motherly figure with bright red hair and beautiful scarlet wings spread out behind her. With his eyes, Reigan couldn’t see any hint of her previous form. The wings didn’t look like they were formed from liquid, but from perfectly real feathers.
Only in his transcendent senses did he feel the distorted space around her, like a spiritual disease. She warped the natural order just by sitting there.
She sat at a table that had been meticulously set up in the middle of a field, set with a white tablecloth and silverware that looked suspiciously as though they had been taken from Reigan Shen’s own collection.
The Phoenix sliced through a slab of roasted meat with her knife, then placed a bite into her mouth. She closed her eyes as she chewed with evident pleasure.
A giant bloodspawn leaned over her, shading her from the sun.
Reigan was doing everything he could not to turn and run from this place. The Bleeding Phoenix acting human was as terrifying as anything he’d ever seen. Not only was it disturbing enough to see that it could put on such a performance, but why would it do so?
He’d communicated his intention to it already, so he’d expected a cordial meeting—more civilized than their last, anyway, at which time he had thought the Phoenix was going to eat him.
“It hasn’t been long since we’ve met like this, Reigan,” the Phoenix called to him. Her voice was melodic and musical.
Reigan bowed slightly. “I’m honored you remember.”
“As clouded as my thoughts were, I wasn’t asleep. There’s nothing wrong with my memory.” The Phoenix took another bite. “In fact, I remember your objective. Weren’t you going to control us?”
Reigan had prepared himself for this, and he kept himself quiet, but he felt as though his flesh was trying to pull itself free and run away without him.
He held up the Wraith Horn. “I could have sounded this at any time. Are you confident you could resist its control?”
“I’m confident I could take it from you now, if I wanted to.”
“Are you sure?”
This was the most frightening bluff of Reigan Shen’s life.
It tended to get overshadowed by Lindon’s meteoric rise and his inheritance of the labyrinth, but Reigan Shen also had great authority over the core binding of the Slumbering Wraith. He had been the one to explore the labyrinth, he was the one to extract the binding, and he was responsible for crafting it into its current form.
In theory, the Wraith Horn should be capable of commanding the Dreadgods. Now, they shouldn’t be able to defy him. All of his research, predictions, and calculations confirmed it. Even Ozmanthus Arelius’ Soulsmith inheritance told him the Horn should work, at least for a while.
But it was hard to rely on theory. They were far past the established facts of the sacred arts.
If he was wrong, he was about to get his very own Blood Shadow.
Reigan braced himself for the Phoenix to attack him, but she didn’t even seem tempted. She closed one eye as though to see him better, taking another bite of her meat.
Then she picked up a goblet, swirled some wine in his direction, and upended it into her mouth.
That had to be intentional.
As though she were reading his mind, she gestured with the empty goblet. “It’s annoying when someone’s swirling wine while you’re talking, isn’t it?”
“All part of my cultivated image.” Though she hadn’t confirmed that the Horn had power over her, he did relax a little bit. He could be reasonably confident that she wouldn’t have let him get so close if he didn’t have some leverage.
A Blood Shadow in the form of a sacred artist stepped up to refill the Phoenix’s wine.
The Dreadgod folded her hands on the table and looked up at him. “So what is it that you want from me?”
“You saw the stars disappear.”
At that, the Phoenix did flinch.
That was a good sign. Reigan pushed on. “We’re on the same team now. If the adopted son of the Destroyer succeeds in his goals, he will be rid of us. You will fade into nothing, and all my time in this world will be wasted. Who can match him if not for you?”
She chewed on the edge of her knife as she considered, and Reigan heard the shriek of the metal warping under her teeth. After a moment, she leaned over to a boulder sitting in the middle of the plain to her right.
“What do you think?” she asked.
The boulder disappeared.
In its place was a swirling gold-edged portal. Reigan shivered at the sight; she had hidden that spatial warp even from him. That was a level of skill in the sacred arts that he had very much hoped she hadn’t attained.
And she had veiled the spiritual pressure of the being on the portal’s other side.
The Wandering Titan stared through the portal with one colossal eye. Its voice vibrated through aura, drifting through as though the boulder spoke.
“We don’t need him.”
Reigan’s spirit chilled.
The Phoenix pointed the tip of her deformed knife at him. “He has a point. While we have control of ourselves, we can set up Monarchs of our own. I suspect we can even solve this problem of having to go back to sleep.”
“Lindon will not let you be,” Reigan insisted. “We can always ascend, but he needs you to die.”
“Not as badly as he thinks he does.” Leisurely, the Bleeding Phoenix stood from her chair. She stretched red wings behind her and smiled at him. “We’ll take that up with our brother.”
This was the worst possible turn of events.
Reigan Shen clutched the Wraith Horn. “He is not your brother.”
“Didn’t you all give him a name yourself? The Empty Ghost.”
The vision broke up as Emriss’ hand moved away from Lindon’s head.
“That’s all we can watch,” she said, but she didn’t need to explain.
“I felt it.”
The Phoenix had established further control over the space after speaking his name. It was difficult to say whether she was aware of Emriss watching her meeting or if she was simply exerting her authority over Reigan Shen, but to continue spying on them would have required wrestling wills with the Bleeding Phoenix.