The ground erupted beneath their feet.
Gray-white hunger madra lurched upward from the stone, grabbing for ankles. They all reacted at once.
Yerin leaped upward as her sword rang out, shredding the hands. Mercy’s feet were covered to the ankles by greaves of purple crystal, and she spun her bow around her in a blurring circle. Pure madra rushed away from Eithan’s feet, brushing away the hands like water clearing away paint. Ziel simply let them grab his ankles, then Forged a ring of shining green runes around him. A moment later, force crushed the hands against the stone as though gravity had been increased.
Lindon’s attention was taken by the hand, but he still extended the Hollow Domain around him. A sphere of blue-white madra pushed several feet out from his body, dispersing the spirits of hunger madra. Including their true bodies, which waited underground.
Around everyone but Eithan and Lindon, bodies followed the hands. These were skeletal ghouls of hunger madra, their jaws hanging down to their chests. They howled as though trying to inhale their meals as they rose from the stone, lunging for everyone else.
They were still outclassed. This was only a distant projection of Subject One’s anger, a disdainful slap. The deeper they traveled, the more control the imprisoned Dreadgod would have.
Everyone in the room handled the ghouls in a moment, even as Lindon sealed the desiccated hand back into its silver casing.
When the brief battle was over, hunger madra dissolved all over the room. Lindon initially intended to collect this madra to rebuild his arm, but none of this had been properly Forged. These were effectively Striker techniques given mobility and the faint will to feed.
Yerin scuffed her shoe on the stone and spoke scornfully. “Not much security.”
“Recall that they would normally be acting against victims under the effects of the suppression field,” Eithan pointed out. “They would be suppressed as well, but when both sides are down to Jade, losing even a bit of your madra can be deadly. Speaking of which, how are you holding up, Ziel?”
Lindon had noticed the same thing. By letting one of the animated techniques touch him, Ziel had given up part of his power. The ghouls were some version of his own Consume technique, so they would drain more than madra.
Ziel looked disgusted more than weakened. “Lost a little madra, a little soulfire, maybe some blood aura. Feels gross.”
“One brush shouldn’t be too bad,” Lindon said. “But it will add up. If they can move through the walls, we should protect ourselves.”
Glowing script-circles appeared around Ziel’s ankles, and he heaved the hammer onto his shoulder. “Great. Now that we know what we’re up against, let’s pick up the pace.”
Lindon moved his spiritual perception forward, just like everyone else. It wasn’t too far to the next room, and while he couldn’t pierce the walls with his senses, he had no problem feeling the next room.
Lindon nodded.
As one, the entire group vanished.
From the other side of the continent, Malice felt power erupting from the western labyrinth.
She sent messages to her forces arrayed all around the Blackflame Empire. She had people closer than anyone else. She’d be in control of the situation before anyone else could sense it and react.
Not long after, her agents began speaking her name with intention. Their will focused on her, drawing her perception. She couldn’t exactly hear what they were saying to her—she wasn’t an Arelius—but she felt their desire to contact her and a touch of their desperate anxiety.
She abandoned Moongrave.
When she stepped out of the Way a moment later, she was within sight of Sacred Valley.
And what she saw made her livid.
The island of the Silent Servants, with its shining white tree, drifted just outside the eastern mountain. Both shared a white halo of crystallized light madra, though other aspects had been sneaking into the one around Mount Samara.
Beside the northern peak floated the great ship of Redmoon Hall, the pyramid of Abyssal Palace rolled in on flying stones to the west, and a serpentine raincloud held the Stormcallers to the south.
The four cults loomed over Sacred Valley. Many of them still bore marks of their fight with Fury—Abyssal Palace had a huge chunk missing and was listing to one side—but their leaders were still in fighting shape. Malice’s perception was somewhat blunted by scripts inside the Redmoon Hall vessel, but she thought she sensed Red Faith in there as well.
These cults arriving so quickly meant they knew this was going to happen. They knew the suppression field script around the Valley was going to be inverted, meaning they had one of their most advanced sacred artists inside the labyrinth. Maybe Shen himself.
Instead of a desert of aura, Sacred Valley now gushed with power…but so much of it was hunger. Dreadbeasts would be born or empowered every second. The land around the labyrinth was like a slowly erupting volcano.
“I have to thank you,” Malice whispered into the air. The newly refreshed aura carried her words to the cults. “It’s not so often I’m given such a fine excuse.”
She drew her crystalline bow and used its binding to Forge a matching arrow onto the string. Air rippled as the fabric of the world was warped by the power she invested into the arrow, and she let it loose casually in the direction of Abyssal Palace.
See if their Herald could stop that. Even if he did, there were more arrows where that one came from.
An arrow flew from the island of the Silent Servants, striking her own in midair.
The collision of the two missiles created a thunderous detonation of light, which whipped up a hurricane and darkened the sky. Even the island was pushed back.
Malice’s mood soured even further.
“What a wonderful veil you have,” she said, and this time she didn’t enhance her voice with aura at all.
Miles away, a blonde woman in golden armor strode out onto the edge of the Silent Servants’ island. Larian of the Eight-Man Empire rapped her knuckles on her own breastplate. “Wish I could take credit for it, but I’m more about hitting things with sticks from very far away.”
“So you have chosen to side with the beasts, then. Curious. I thought you liked being on the winning team.”
Larian leaned on her bow, which looked to the mortal eye to be made of twisted gray driftwood. “The ‘human versus beasts’ line doesn’t work without the dragon around, you know. It’s not like all of us are human anyway. Besides, you know why we’re doing this.” Her voice sharpened. “The Monarchs are the only ones who benefit from the system the way it is. It’s about time we shake things up.”
Malice itched to beat some sense into this shortsighted Sage, but no one on the Path of the Eightfold Spear traveled alone.
Sure enough, seven other presences removed their veils all around Sacred Valley. The Eight-Man Empire was here in full, surrounding Sacred Valley.
“You think Shen is going to change things?” Malice asked softly. “He will never do anything that costs him power.”
Larian shrugged. “We’re not like the rest of you; we don’t need an ironclad plan before we’ll put one foot in front of the other. Any change is better than none.”
“Beautiful. So noble of you to be involved to change the world, and not for any sordid material motives.”
“Malice, he paid us so much.” Larian staggered under the invisible weight of a fortune, only her bow keeping her upright. “We were going to say no at first, but then he just kept bringing out more and more. I felt bad! I said, ‘Reigan, how are you going to feed your people if you give us all this?’ He didn’t even say anything, he just kept dumping treasures into this big pile.
“Priceless art? Right onto the pile. Gold? Pile. Scales? Weapons? Natural treasures? Pile. By the time he was done, I swear on my heart, it was taller than my head. Best day of my life.”