Fury and hatred boiled up from his heart. This whole scenario had been engineered by Emriss from the start! Who had allowed Lindon to Consume the Silent King? Who had prevented the Monarchs from killing him? Who had pretended to be on their side for centuries while plotting against them?
Reigan opened his mouth to denounce her, but he vomited a mouthful of white-gold sparks instead. From inside his body, his madra was fading to essence. Miara’s blade had passed through his core.
“Oh look,” Emriss said idly. “A split core.”
This time, Reigan Shen spit up blood.
Sha Miara strode over to Reigan, still carrying her Forged blade. “I knew he was going to give me up. He betrayed Tiberian too. I was just using him until the time came.”
Reigan shouted at her in his head. She hadn’t seen a thing. Five seconds ago, she was a panicked mess. Sha Miara was just trying to jump ship, and she was doing it with the subtlety of a drunken ape.
Emriss gave an understanding smile. “I always knew, dear.” She really did lie with every breath. Reigan didn’t know how he hadn’t seen it before. “Now, take that weapon away from him. We don’t want him pulling any last-second tricks.”
Reigan did have one last-second trick left. It might not save him, but he hardly had a choice.
He acted as though he was on the verge of dying, which was no stretch.
Sha Miara lifted her sword again. “I know what to do,” she said. Then she made a mistake anyway. She brought the blade of madra down on him.
Reigan brought up the Wraith Horn. With the little madra he could still control, he forced the construct to activate.
Dreadgod bindings always had several functions. Essentially, they were several bindings that had grown into one another, fusing together. In this case, he was only asking for the crudest application of hunger madra possible.
A basic Consume technique.
It triggered just in time, absorbing Miara’s royal madra and funneling it into himself. Before Emriss could trap him here, he triggered one last portal.
Reigan stumbled through it in time to avoid a storm of lashing roots. The life madra was an inch from tearing his lifeline in half, but he closed the portal just in time.
That had been a desperate move. If Miara had been more careful, if Emriss had been closer, if they hadn’t been distracted by the Dreadgod fight…if not for all of those things, Reigan would already be dead.
Though he wasn’t far from it.
He vomited more essence onto the immaculately tiled floor, clawing at his stomach in pain. He had elixirs that could mend his spirit, he was sure. He just had to hold himself together.
“Be healed,” he commanded himself, though his voice was weaker than he liked.
His madra system sluggishly pulled itself together, but it quickly stopped. He was not the best at restoration, and wounds left by a Monarch were not so easily removed.
The room’s only other occupant strolled up to observe him. Feet of blue storm madra crackled in front of Reigan’s eyes.
“I see you had too big a dose,” Tiberian’s Remnant said gravely. “You see, it’s always best to take small sips when you’re drinking your own medicine.”
“Heal…me!”
Tiberian spread glowing hands. “Even if I had the same connection to Icons I did when I was alive, storms and spears are not known for their healing powers.”
Reigan’s heart was fluttering. He burned soulfire to transform back into his original form to recover some vitality, but even in lion form, there was no strength in his limbs. He toppled onto his side, madra still leaking from his mouth.
“You ever wonder how it came to this?” the Remnant asked. He sat down on a scripted bench and looked up at the ceiling. “We sat idly by for so long that the very heavens descended to clean up our mess.”
Reigan Shen tried to snarl defiance, but he managed only a weak, glowing cough. He hadn’t been idle, he had been building a home. The heavens had only descended to knock it over, like a child kicking an anthill.
Nonetheless, he had no option left but to try again. He could always come back; Ozmanthus had proven that.
He reached out, beyond the world, and tried to touch the Way.
I ascend! he shouted in his mind. But he was losing connection to his powers. His will was fading by the second.
Tiberian stroked a beard that was now hewn from lightning. “I admit, this would not have been my first choice. But I suppose we’re going to get to know each other better from here on out, Shen. Maybe you’ll make a better spirit than you did a man.”
Lion, Reigan tried to insist. I was always a lion.
But when his Remnant rose from his body, it was in the shape of a man.
A man holding a goblet.
[That was Reigan Shen,] Dross reported.
Lindon launched dragon’s breath that the Wandering Titan caught on its shell. With Shen gone, the battle against the Bleeding Phoenix had finally tilted their way.
A fist clenched around his heart. Now, the only thing left was to finish the Dreadgods.
But if they did, the Monarchs would have to ascend.
How long will I have to say good-bye, Dross?
Dross predicted the passage of the Titan’s sword and showed the probable angle of its tail before answering. [If they both die at about the same time…huh. There might be a failure of language here. I can’t figure out a way to say ‘You can’t do it’ that doesn’t break your heart.]
Like a deadly golden star, Wavedancer speared into the Titan and all the way through. The Dreadgod roared.
If they do leave, how long before I’m stable again?
[Eehhh…I don’t…I mean, I can guess, but…we don’t have any precedent. Decades for the Dreadgods to fade on their own with no Monarchs, but they would be trying to hold on to their power as long as possible. You could do it in a year or two, I’d say, but don’t get mad if it takes longer. I have the feeling you’ll get mad.]
A year. Lindon could make it a year.
[Or longer,] Dross reminded him.
Lindon drew Wavedancer back and harassed the Titan with Blackflame. Dross kept up the mental assault.
The fight wasn’t quite over yet. Lindon still had time to think of something else.
[…I almost don’t want to bring it up now, but without Reigan Shen…I do have a solution.]
Lindon wished Dross hadn’t said anything. He wasn’t ready. This had all gone so fast. And not just the battle; suddenly, everything since leaving Sacred Valley for the first time felt like it had passed by in a rush.
His eyes found Yerin, who had been with him since he was an Unsouled. She zipped around the Bleeding Phoenix, her cuts carrying echoes of death itself.
Lindon caught a stray Phoenix technique with an Empty Palm big enough to crush a village. The wave of acidic blood madra was wiped away, but stray drops landed on him. The flesh he lost was replaced in an instant by his Bloodforged Iron body.
It felt like only moments ago he had been in a cave, begging for more drops of sandviper venom.
Lindon lashed out with a bar of Blackflame, now a stream of blazing darkness. It carved a trench into the rocky skin of the Wandering Titan.
The Titan roared louder and struck back, its sword a flickering haze. That sword came to a stop when it struck a wall of solid amethyst.
Mercy, the size of a tower, gave the Titan her full attention. She leveled a black-and-white striped bow sized to fit her, Forging a dark arrow onto its string. Over her head bloomed a white halo and a violet flower.
Lindon remembered her as a Lowgold in the Skysworn, unable to watch her mother do battle with a Dreadgod. Now, her arrows darkened the sky as the Wandering Titan weathered her assault.
The Phoenix lit the coastline red as it faced a silver-and-green blur. Ziel, the man Lindon had known as a Truegold in the heart of Ghostwater, was now a shield holding back the Bleeding Phoenix.