“Didn’t train today,” said the man with the chicken leg. “And I wouldn’t mind putting you back in your—”
Sha Siris grabbed a fistful of the man’s hair and hauled him to his feet. “I told you, you’re tired.”
Amazingly, the man still looked baffled. “What about our food?”
“Leave it.”
When he had finally pushed his guests away, Sha Siris ordered the servants to bring whatever the Uncrowned wanted, insisted that the room would be available whenever Lindon and Yerin decided to return, and used a movement technique to disappear down the stairs.
Lindon was impressed with his speed.
“Sobered up fast, didn’t he?” Yerin noted as she sat down and started helping herself to the leftovers.
The servers were already replacing the partially eaten dishes with new ones, but Lindon grabbed one of the remaining dumplings. The Iron Heart had increased his appetite, and at the moment he felt like he could finish off everything on the table.
“Apologies. I was unprepared.”
Yerin stabbed some meat and raised it to her mouth. “You didn’t plan for a baby Sha to throw himself on our swords?” She bit off a chunk and chewed. “Shame his friends had eyes. I think we could have gotten him in the ring ourselves.”
He pictured the drunken Sha Underlord facing them in a dueling arena only to recognize them when the fight began, and he laughed.
Yerin joined him, and the conversation flowed smoothly from there.
There was only one thorn stuck in Lindon’s thoughts.
They had recognized Lindon, but it was Yerin they had really respected. Siris’ guests had spoken of the Uncrowned in hushed tones, and he had invited the Uncrowned back whenever she wanted.
Lindon had fought well, but in the end, he wasn’t Uncrowned.
He focused on the story Yerin was telling. She was getting into it, tracing lines of Forged sword madra in the air by way of illustration, and Lindon kept his mind in the present.
He wasn’t here to moan over what he’d lost.
But to enjoy what he had.
Lindon, Yerin, and Mercy sat together to watch the next fight of the Uncrowned tournament: Yan Shoumei of Redmoon Hall against Blacksword of Redmoon Hall.
No matter who won, Reigan Shen was getting a representative among the Uncrowned.
Now that most of the core Akura members were gone, Mercy could join the ordinary audience of the Akura faction. Everyone else with purple eyes had surreptitiously slipped out of their seats in a circle surrounding Mercy, but she didn’t seem to notice.
In a red arena filled with stalagmites that oozed blood, the two members of Redmoon Hall flitted around each other.
Yan Shoumei, the ghostly girl that Lindon had faced in Ghostwater, looked like a pale specter with long black hair that hung down into her face. When the match began, she had audibly complained to Northstrider when she saw that he had pitted her against someone from her own sect.
Lindon understood how she felt.
The Monarch had paid her no more attention than a boulder.
Her opponent, Blacksword, was a strapping man wielding a huge, two-handed blade. Unlike what Lindon had expected from his name, his sword was bright red, sheathed in his Blood Shadow. When he attacked, the Shadow whipped out and added reach and force.
He chased after Yan Shoumei, a lash of blood smashing through a stalagmite.
With every step, ripples of light appeared beneath Blacksword’s feet, allowing him to run in midair. His shoes had been gifted to him as one of his prizes, allowing him maneuverability that Shoumei couldn’t match.
Lindon had researched him, as he had all the remaining competitors, and had expected this to be a short match. Yan Shoumei had always been one of the fighters expected to reach the top eight, but not Blacksword.
“I owe him an apology,” Lindon said, as they watched him carve a canyon into the floor with an attack that Shoumei barely escaped.
“That’s true and a half. Juggling a Blood Shadow and two bindings and your own techniques isn’t simple as I make it look.”
Lindon had heard it said that Blood Shadows counted as a second sacred artist in battle, but he had never seen that to be true. Yerin came the closest, and her Blood Shadow still didn’t quite match up to her.
But when Blacksword swung his blade, his Blood Shadow lashed out, his own Striker technique followed in a beam, and a rain of jagged Forged madra fell like daggers. All the while, he kept dancing on points of light.
Little Blue gave a gasp like a whispering breeze and leaned forward on Lindon’s shoulder.
Yan Shoumei’s breathing was rough, and her spirit was growing disordered. Her Blood Shadow hung around her like a cloak, as he’d seen it in Ghostwater, but it now surged and boiled as she moved. It looked as though something within it was trying to escape.
Mercy cupped her chin in one hand. “She can’t get close enough to take a bite out of him. I’ve watched all her records, and she’s terrifying up close, but he figured out a way around her. Good for him!”
[I have a model ready for Blacksword whenever you would like to take a look,] Dross said. [We had information on him from the previous rounds, but we didn’t really see what he was capable of until now, so now I have a solid model. Pretty solid.]
What is pretty solid?
[It’s an absolute work of art that should be studied by future generations as the apex of all predictive models.]
He must have been sending that into Mercy and Yerin’s minds as well, because they both looked to Lindon with varying degrees of amusement.
So he decided to respond out loud. Northstrider already knew about Dross, so overt secrecy was unnecessary. “How would Yerin do against him?”
[You know, they have very similar powers, I don’t know if you noticed. It would be close, but Yerin would win. Unless she showed the extra spike of power she showed at the end of your fight, and then it would be easy.]
Yerin frowned. “I’d beat him without it, though.”
[Oh yes, of course.]
“Then I don’t need it, true?”
[I can’t speak to that. I can’t comprehend the nature of Sage powers yet, but I doubt you would have beaten Lindon without them. You remember, when you tapped into that power to kill Lindon. I mean beat him.]
She mulled over that.
They hadn’t talked about Yerin’s burgeoning Sage senses since their match. Yerin stewed in silence for a while, and he couldn’t tell if she was upset or just trying to recall the sensation.
“I don’t even know much about Sages yet,” Mercy said. “You’re supposed to focus on traditional advancement until Archlord. But they say Lords can do miraculous things when under stress. Sages are the ones who learn to control those miracles.”
Lindon had done some research of his own into that topic. There were plenty of works in the Ninecloud records speculating about a Sage’s power, but all the ones written or recorded by Sages themselves did not discuss the nature of their abilities.
The dream tablets that depicted Sages using these “miraculous abilities” were beyond his ability to read. That, or they recorded only gaps where that power should go, as had been the case in his stolen memory of Northstrider.
But he was certain he and Dross would figure it out, given time.
Yerin grunted, but she didn’t say anything.
Down in the arena, the match was almost over. Yan Shoumei had thrown out Ruler techniques to get Blacksword to come down, had stretched her Blood Shadow as far as it would apparently go, and had tried hitting him with Striker techniques.
Every time, he had thoroughly crushed her with a barrage of his own power, but he was clearly running low on madra. After using so many techniques in a row, Lindon would still have madra left, but his channels would be strained to their limits.