“I don’t usually,” he said defensively. “I don’t waste—”
“I know, I know, shut up. Listen. You had the right instinct. This week, invite her out to do something. Just the two of you.”
She leaned uncomfortably close, looking up at him to make sure she had his full attention. “Not. Training. Nothing that could conceivably lead to advancement in the sacred arts. Do you understand?”
Lindon’s face was hot. This whole conversation was an exercise in agony, but he could easily imagine hearing the same thing from his sister. Or his mother.
His father would tell him that anything other than working was a waste of time…but even he had ended up married.
“I will invite her,” he said. “But her time is so short as it is.”
“Lindon, I promise you—I promise you—that a few hours off will not do Yerin any harm at all.”
Therian Nills was an ordinary man.
He had started as a farmer and the son of farmers, and he still boggled at the twist of fate that had brought him all the way to the Uncrowned King tournament.
He had been born on the Rosegold continent, but far enough away from everything that the great Houses were nothing but distant rumors to him.
Then the Weeping Dragon had brought down the sky.
Therian had lost everything before the Stormcallers found him. They followed the Dreadgod around, capturing its unique madra in themselves and using its divine techniques to steal the madra of others. They sheltered him, taught him, and trained him.
It turned out he had a knack for it, although you wouldn’t know it from looking at him. His Underlord transformation hadn’t changed him much; he still looked like the son of a farmer, tall and gangly with sun-baked skin and hair the color of mud.
His combat training had built an entirely new set of muscles on him, but his appearance still couldn’t be compared to these beautifully carved men and women he was competing against. Most of his competitors looked like they had been sculpted by the heavens themselves.
But over the course of the tournament, his confidence had grown. Thanks to the power of the Weeping Dragon, he had been made as good as they were. He could keep up with any of them.
Most of them.
He sat in his waiting room, unable to control his nerves, bouncing one leg and squeezing his fingers together, as he stared at the stone door as though he could keep it from opening with the force of his gaze.
“I’m just glad it won’t be the Dawnwing,” Therian said for what might have been the fifteenth time.
His sect brother and team member, Calan Archer, darkened. “I don’t know how someone like him is allowed to fight Underlords.”
Therian had been too young and too newly inducted into the Stormcallers to be sent to fight against the Dawnwing Sect, but Calan had been there.
He was older than Therian by almost ten years, and he looked like he belonged in the tournament. He was thick with muscle, his Goldsigns crackling around thick biceps. The scripted rings of blue-gold lightning looked like they were about to burst off. His hair was blond so pale that it was almost white, and he had a scar across one eye socket.
He had seen battle. He belonged in places like this.
So do you, Therian reminded himself.
Calan smacked him on the back of the head. “Focus. Sharpen yourself. You carry the power of the Weeping Dragon with you. The power of the Sage of Calling Storms. If you go no further, you are already in the top sixteen of all Underlords in our generation.”
The encouragement worked. He breathed deeper, his madra cycling more easily, his leg going still.
“And you will go further,” Calan continued. “You were meant to fight Ziel, but they’re changing the matchups, so it won’t be him. Whoever else is out there, our battle plan remains the same. You will leave them in the sand, and you and I will meet again as Uncrowned.”
Calan Archer thought Therian could fight alongside him.
Therian held that golden thought as the door slid open. He called his weapons—a pair of long spears that crawled with smooth yellow light—and focused his madra. The rings around his own arms crackled as the noise from the crowd reached him.
The arena was covered in irregular stone, uneven footing, with fist-sized rocks lying here and there. Lightning swam like snakes overhead, but didn’t dive to the ground.
Across the stadium, he faced a man who appeared to be in his early twenties, with dark and messy hair falling around a pair of short green horns that glowed faintly even in the light.
He wore the expression of a man who had walked a thousand miles and might collapse at any second, only dust and apathy in his eyes. A gray cloak fluttered on his shoulders, and he dragged a massive two-handed warhammer behind him as though he could barely support its weight.
Therian and his opponent saw each other at the same time.
The enemy’s eyes went from utterly dead to alight with rage. The warhammer gradually rose, inch by inch, lifted in one hand until it was propped against his shoulder.
Calan clapped Therian on the back. “No shame in top sixteen.”
“Ziel of the Dawnwing Sect, chosen of Northstrider, you face Therian Nills of the Stormcallers, chosen of Reigan Shen!”
Therian had heard the heavenly messenger’s command. He knew he couldn’t give up.
But he wondered: if he stood still and let Ziel kill him, would his death be painless?
One more look at the burning fury in Ziel’s face, and Therian shuddered.
Probably not.
Therian hefted his spears and prepared to fight for a quick death.
Lindon sat next to Yerin and watched Ziel batter a Dreadgod cultist all the way around the arena.
His techniques on the Path of the Dawn Oath were honestly fascinating. Ziel’s Path was a variation of one that Eithan had offered Lindon long ago, and though he had chosen Blackflame, he had never forgotten his interest in this Path.
It was supposed to be a flexible force Path for Soulsmiths and skilled scriptors, and Lindon could see why. Rings of script appeared in midair, Forged by Ziel in an instant. Glowing green symbols circled his wrists and his ankles, and more green rings appeared beneath him when he jumped and where his hammer landed.
The runes he Forged crackled, jumped, and faded in and out as they lost stability. The damage to Ziel’s spirit was so extensive that Lindon found it incredible the man could practice the sacred arts at all.
He still gave off spiritual pressure more like a Truegold than an Underlord, but Lindon’s research implied he had once been an Archlord. His skills and experience had been enough to carry him this far.
Though watching him toy with his opponent, it was easy to think the power gap ran the other way. Every swing of Ziel’s hammer launched Therian Nills into one of the arena walls or slammed him into the ground.
Sometimes, a green script encircled one of the rocks on the ground and hurled it with great force at Therian, stopping a Stormcaller technique or simply drawing blood.
As a survivor of round two, Ziel must have earned an Archlord weapon, but Lindon didn’t see him use anything but the same hammer he’d used back in Ghostwater.
[Maybe it only looks like the same hammer,] Dross proposed. [It could be a fancy new Archlord weapon made to catch people off-guard.]
Do you think so?
[No.]
Little Blue stood on Lindon’s head to watch. She was surprisingly excited, cheering every time Ziel scored a hit. He would have expected her to be scared, and he wondered what the fight looked like through her eyes.
Yerin nudged him. “Give you two diamonds and a pile of gold if you can tell me how that blood bag made it this far.”