[We could retreat,] another Dross suggests. [Leaving Malice alone. Free to plot against us. Chase us down.]
We have to stop her here, Orthos says gravely.
Mercy says nothing, and in her silence, Yerin hears agreement.
You’ll have to leave your lives to me, Yerin says to them all. Can’t say you’re not throwing them away. You have a problem with that, say so now.
No one else says anything.
Yerin almost votes against herself.
The red Dross claps his tendrils together. [That’s settled. Now, let’s dig through those memories and see how much of a sword artist we can make you in the next five seconds.]
To travel the path to victory that Dross saw, Yerin’s timing would have to be perfect.
She pushed forward.
The Endless Sword formed a cage around Malice. The Monarch crashed through it, as expected, but any impact on her armor would affect her spiritual stability. Yerin followed up with a Rippling Sword that sliced apart the clouds above as Malice dodged, and then Yerin was in range to fight hand-to-hand again.
Yerin’s slashes were a blur even to her own eyes, cutting the air, but Malice could meet every one of them. Her staff turned blows aside, and she could deflect with the backs of her armored hands, her plated shoulders.
Every impact between them sent out a blast of cutting wind. Some of the blows felled trees in the jungle down below.
It wasn’t enough. Yerin’s moves were still too slow, her timing sloppy. She wasn’t used to fighting with this much power.
Everything she’d stolen from the Sage and the Herald, the training and elixirs she’d taken in Ghostwind Hall, and the power she took in every second from her hunger technique—all of it combined into a rushing river pushing Yerin forward faster and faster.
Dross gave her suggestions, but she had to feel it. There was an ideal movement, and she could almost taste it. She had danced to that music before.
The Phoenix Song began to reach a crescendo, taking on a new tone.
Memories flashed through Yerin’s mind, and Dross polished them to fresh clarity. Her master, fighting against three opponents at once. Herself at the Uncrowned King tournament, when she had felt the Sword Icon moving through her. The Winter Sage’s precisely timed attacks. Eithan’s absolute strikes against his enemy in the sky, and the Mad King’s savage technique to defend against them.
More and more memories, including those she’d taken from dream tablets. Yerin had seen sword artists from Lowgold all the way up to Monarch, and each of them had walked their own Path.
They all congealed and began to crystallize.
Like a true sword artist, Yerin learned as she fought.
Yerin started to feel Malice’s attacks before Dross predicted them. Her Goldsigns took off small chips of Akura bloodline armor. Yerin suffered blows here and there herself—a staff cracking into her bones, or a shadow cutting across one of her madra channels—but she couldn’t feel them. She was listening to the music of battle.
A connection slipped into place between her and the world. Overhead, a sword began to reveal itself as though clouds were peeling away.
Yerin stumbled back.
Malice’s attack missed, but only because Yerin shoved herself out of the way at the last second. She wrestled with the power emerging in the sky, trying to disentangle herself from the music, to force her will against the world.
Bleed and bury me, why is it so hard to stop an Icon?
[Is it? Huh. Lindon didn’t seem to have much trouble stopping his arm, though I guess that wasn’t his Icon. Eithan certainly made it look easy.]
Yerin didn’t think that was a fair contest.
Malice saw what was happening and gave a ringing laugh. “What are you doing? Advance! Face me, Monarch to Monarch! Don’t you want to kill me, Yerin?”
Yerin couldn’t advance here.
They were trying to reduce the number of Monarchs in Cradle. She’d be tearing another hole into her own lifeboat.
If she advanced, she might have to ascend while Lindon couldn’t.
Worse, she might have to leave before the Dreadgods were defeated. This might lose them the entire war.
Yerin finally wrestled the Sword Icon down. It vanished.
An arrow crashed into Little Blue like a falling star. It carried her all the way to the jungle, where her landing flattened the surrounding trees.
Yerin’s senses were too sharp for her own good. She saw the arrow, long as a spear, that pinned Little Blue to the ground. The fresh Herald screamed, a sound that equally resembled the discordant screech of a flute and a very human wail of pain. Her hands scrambled to pull out the arrow, but spasms of light and pain flickered through her, and she convulsed in agony.
“Too slow,” Malice said with another laugh.
To Yerin, the world turned colorless and very, very quiet. Even Dross’ voice disappeared, leaving her with a sense of clarity.
Yerin realized something new. She saw a pattern so clear that she was shocked she hadn’t noticed it before.
She remembered the Blood Shadow killing her family, and the sense of isolation and deprivation that came from the loss of everyone she knew. In a dim, distant way, she remembered being that Blood Shadow. Taking those lives.
It had led her to her Underlord revelation: she practiced the sacred arts so that she wouldn’t be alone anymore.
So that people would stop leaving her behind. By dying.
On the Path of the Endless Sword, she had taken many lives. But that Path wasn’t hers, not quite. She wasn’t meant to be a warrior who lived for the next fight, like her master or Fury.
Her Overlord revelation: she was not the Sword Sage.
Yerin wasn’t just the disciple of the Sage of the Endless Sword; she was also Eithan’s apprentice. The student of the Reaper.
She had used Penance, the absolute decree of death, to strike down a Monarch.
She had learned to imitate Ozriel’s sword strike.
And she remembered her Archlord revelation. It wasn’t to fight monsters. Yerin was meant to kill them.
In that silent world, Yerin looked to Malice and saw a monster.
She’d been using her anger at Malice, her disgust, for motivation. But that wasn’t what Eithan felt when he swung his scythe. It wasn’t what she had felt when she’d used Penance.
Yerin chose. She decided who needed to die and made it a reality.
This wasn’t revenge.
It was an execution.
In a world that still seemed frozen, Yerin pulled her sword back almost casually. An image in the sky mimicked her movements. Not a sword.
A vast, black scythe.
“Die,” Yerin ordered. She brought her sword down in a simple overhand chop.
And at Yerin’s command, the Death Icon descended on Akura Malice.
27
Mercy’s attention was ripped away from the dark clone of herself when she felt Little Blue fall.
Between Charity’s owls and Dross’ communication, most of their side were coordinated perfectly. Only with that level of cooperation could they stand up against Malice.
Yerin was the only one left out, operating freely. Dross had seen how she would have to slow herself down to match the rest of them, so she was given free rein. He simply took her actions into account when he guided Mercy and the others, but that perfect web had a hole torn into it when Blue was taken out.
Mercy had time for a moment of stunned horror. She hadn’t even seen the shot coming, and neither had Dross.
Then the world lost all color.
A deadly icon loomed over them in the sky, and a gut-deep fear shook Mercy’s spirit. Even the puppet-construct meant to copy her flinched and looked up.
That dark scythe reminded her of the day the sky had broken.