From the outside, Ziel’s techniques fell like hundreds of hammers, shaking the Dreadgod. Mercy’s arrows stabbed into the mind and the spirit, carrying heavy shadows. Orthos and Little Blue drew liberally from Lindon’s cores, and the Eight-Man Empire…well, Lindon was too deep in the Phoenix to sense which Paths were theirs, but they felt like they were using power of all aspects.
Lindon had to do his part.
He slammed an Empty Palm into the liquid flesh around him. Then again. And again.
The Titan was on the verge of dying. Even with the Phoenix trying to slice him out of itself, he could feel it. Lindon tried to push deeper, for the concentrated ball of power he could sense inside. The Phoenix’s core binding.
He wouldn’t make it. He and Dross were giving it everything they had, and—with their support from the outside—they would kill the Phoenix in another minute or two. But that was a minute or two they didn’t have.
Silver light intruded on the red, and Yerin stumbled into the wound Lindon had managed to carve into the Phoenix.
Yerin shuddered. “Tell you true, this is the last place I ever wanted to be.”
She drew back all her sword-arms, and the overwhelming red color faded.
Lindon opened his mouth to speak, but he looked down at himself. The Slumbering Wraith’s flesh grew out of him everywhere.
He couldn’t think of anything to say that summed up everything he felt, so he tucked it all into one word.
“Apologies,” Lindon said.
Yerin had tears in her eyes, but her smile was brilliant. “I’ll tell Eithan to save you a seat.” Then she turned back to the Dreadgod who had ruined half her life. “Now let’s get this bird to die.”
The Void Icon resonated the same tone as the Death Icon, and Lindon joined his will to hers. “Die!”
Their technique tore apart the Phoenix from the inside out.
Two Dreadgods died at the same time.
Leaving only one.
Most of the Phoenix’s body sloughed away, revealing a starless night sky. Lindon looked up into it. “I don’t feel too bad,” he said. “What’s happening, Dross?”
[It’s morning, Lindon,] Dross said.
It took him a moment to realize what that meant. All the Dreadgods warped the sky above them. Even him.
He turned to Yerin, feeling his body changing.
But she faded too. All he saw was darkness, as though the sky had swallowed him up.
Lindon heard only silence for a while. He couldn’t even hear his own thoughts. He drifted, alone, in an endless void.
Eventually, he heard Dross. [He’s sleeping,] Dross said.
Who is? Lindon asked. He heard that thought, at least, echoing in the silence. Dross didn’t answer him.
[Not long. Get him to the labyrinth. He’ll be fine, as long as there are no Monarchs on Cradle. …I said, no Monarchs. Get going! Shoo! The sooner you’re gone, the sooner he’ll—yes, I’ll tell him. Okay. You can’t really stab me, you know. Oh, you can? Then I really will tell him. I was lying before.]
Even in a state where he felt distant from his own thoughts, Lindon could tell what was happening. Dross was telling the others what to do with him.
He looked down at himself, but he couldn’t see his own body.
There was only one thing he could see: a small blue candle-flame locked inside a transparent ball of glass. A marble. It floated in the darkness, where it would be if he were holding it in his left hand.
As it always had, the steady flame calmed him. He watched it, drifting in his own mind.
Lindon had no idea how much time passed before he woke up.
When he did, he sat upright. There were sheets tangled around his waist, but the mattress was soft as a cloud. Purple trees blew on the breeze outside the window of a simple, but richly furnished room. He smelled fresh timber, and he felt…bandages. His entire body was covered in bandages.
Lindon wasn’t in the labyrinth, though he could feel it nearby. That was virtually all he could sense. His spiritual perception was sealed, locked down as though he were still an Iron. He felt Dross, sleeping inside his spirit, and his connection to the labyrinth.
As well as two more connections.
He tried to move his right arm and found that he couldn’t. It was not only bandaged completely, so not a bit of flesh remained exposed, but had been bound in so many scripted halfsilver rings that it looked like he was wearing one armored sleeve.
Lindon felt someone approaching just before his door was rudely pushed open. Orthos, in his weathered, gray-haired human form, carried a tray packed with food. Trunks floated on wind aura behind him.
“You’re up,” Orthos rumbled. “Good. Tell her to transform back so she can help.”
Little Blue was curled up on the tray, six inches high again, and she peeped her indignation.
Orthos blew a mouthful of smoke at her. “I did tell you, and you didn’t listen to me. If you were tall again, you’d have to work.”
Little Blue nodded cheerily.
They weren’t reacting like Lindon had expected. “How long was I out?”
Orthos set the tray down. “That depends on how much you remember. We had this same conversation earlier this morning.”
“Ah.”
“And several days before that.”
“How long in total?”
“About three weeks.” Orthos picked up a bun, made as though to hand it to Lindon, then changed his mind and bit into it himself. “We were all very concerned the first few times. Dross told us it wasn’t anything to worry about, so we worried more. You’re supposed to be up for good now, this time, so eat something.” Orthos crunched into a crab leg.
Lindon looked out the window. “Did everyone…make it?”
“If they’d stuck around any longer, you wouldn’t have. But yes, I saw them off myself. They went into that blue river that takes you to the heavens. Left all sorts of messages for you, but it’s Dross’ job to give them to you.”
“How long do I have to wait?” Lindon asked.
“We’ll find out together,” Orthos said.
30
Yerin’s ascension didn’t go as smoothly as Fury’s had.
It wasn’t so hard to cut a hole in the Way. In fact, she thought she’d done it easier than Fury. One slash of her Goldsign and she cut deeper than space, into whatever lay beyond.
But, at first, she didn’t see another world.
The swirling blue edges of the portal she’d cut led onto a deep darkness that brought to mind a very strange night sky. Inside the black fabric were something like stars of every color, though they buzzed and twitched like living insects.
“Do we go in?” Mercy asked uncertainly.
Ziel took a step back. “I’m not going in there.”
Yerin agreed with Ziel. This felt wrong to her, like absence and chaos. Then again, Lindon had felt like that ever since his connection to the Void Icon. Maybe this only felt wrong because she wasn’t used to it.
She started to move forward, but the blue edges of the portal surged. Blue light flickered between her and the empty world beyond, a film stretching across the portal entrance. The view fuzzed like a dream-aura illusion, and then she could see another world.
This one seemed right. It resembled the same place Fury had entered—there was a cage across the sky, a courtyard nearby with shining pillars, and several banners bearing the animated image of a fox.
A helmeted figure in white armor hovered over them, and when he saw them, he beckoned frantically. “Hurry! Do it n—”
Abruptly, the view of the other world snapped back to the chaotic void.
Sweat beaded on Yerin’s forehead. Even now, she could feel Lindon struggling with the hunger in his spirit. “Bleed me if I’m staying here another second.”