He had to make it count.
In a breath, he reeled his pure madra back to one of his cores. The one that, in his spiritual vision, shone a soft blue-white.
On his next breath, he drew from his other core.
Black fire ran along his madra channels. His eyes warmed as they changed color, and Lindon focused. He couldn't have put much distance between himself and Jai Long, but the Truegold must be still off-balance from the spiritual disruption. Otherwise, the fight would have ended already.
Under Lindon's direction, Blackflame madra slithered like roots to every corner of his body. According to the ancient Enforcer technique, it ran into his skin, penetrated his muscles, and burned his bones. It felt like his body had begun to dissolve from the inside-out, and the heat was uncomfortable.
He ignited the madra, activating the technique.
The Burning Cloak sprung to life around him, the air blazing with a hazy, translucent shell of black-and-red fire.
His madra would run out quickly, with the Cloak active. The Enforcer technique burned his muscles, and his Bloodforged Iron body activated to restore him. The combined effect felt as though his limbs were constantly sizzling, and both the technique and the Iron body required madra.
He couldn't keep this up for long, but he didn't need to. He had an Enforcer technique, and for the moment Jai Long didn't.
Under the power of the Burning Cloak, Lindon kicked off the stone. He exploded with motion, covering the distance between himself and Jai Long in an instant.
There was a long, frozen moment where Lindon's eyes and his opponent's met.
Then Lindon stabbed him.
This was the fourth and final construct he’d been allowed to keep. Made from only a Remnant's claw, with no binding involved, it was what she called a “dead construct.” It had no abilities apart from the properties of the madra it was made of and any script you carved into it.
In the case of this dagger, there was no script. Its structure wasn't solid enough to be carved, and even if it were, the pressure of a script would have torn it apart immediately.
It was black as ink, the length of one of Lindon's hands, and shaped like a long fang. It felt like a waterskin full of worms, stretching in Lindon's fingers, as everything except the tip was soft and pliant. The point was sharp as a spearhead, and it pierced Jai Long's robes at the chest.
With no Enforcer technique to protect him, the Truegold couldn't resist. Blood sprayed from him as his skin broke.
The dagger wasn't strong enough to penetrate any deeper, but that was enough. As it tasted Jai Long's blood, the dagger squirmed eagerly in Lindon's grip, worming its way into the wound and slithering into Jai Long's bloodstream.
Lindon leaped away, then let the Burning Cloak die.
Jai Long grunted, but he didn't scream as Lindon had expected. Instead he stood, gripping his spear, as he fought the foreign madra inside of him.
If Lindon hadn't broken his defense with the Empty Palm first, this would never have worked. The sheer power of Jai Long's spirit wouldn't have allowed the dagger inside.
Now, the Path of Twisted Blood went to work.
Fisher Gesha had determined that the madra was harvested primarily from life, shadow, and blood aura, but it had been twisted even further by the Path's practitioner. The Remnant from which she took the claw had been sliding inside animals' veins and twisting them from the inside out, breaking every bone in their body at once.
She hadn't been able to determine why it did so. Remnants didn't feed on blood or flesh, but on madra, so killing would only be an expenditure of its energy. Nonetheless, that was what every part of its body did, even when separated from the others. This Remnant's guiding purpose was to kill.
The same was true of its claw.
After a moment, Jai Long's arms both twisted backwards. It looked like he was a toy a child had decided to break. His neck slid to the right, despite his obvious effort to fight. His legs were still snared by the grasping brown hands emerging from the swamp, but the rest of his body had begun to contort.
“You…fight…like…a coward…” Jai Long’s words were choked out one at a time, but they emerged tinged with rage from a tightening jaw.
Lindon didn't expect this weapon to actually kill Jai Long. The Remnant had been at the Highgold level, so Jai Long's madra would eventually exert control again.
But he had planned for one of two things to happen: either rendering the opponent helpless would count as a win, or it would give him an opportunity.
Lindon looked to Naru Gwei, but the Skysworn Captain was still watching through the filthy curtain of his matted gray hair, the burn scar around his left eye giving him a sinister cast. He chewed on a leaf and looked completely unconcerned. Not at all as though he were about to stop the match.
Reluctantly, Lindon gathered black fire into a ball between his hands.
The red-streaked black flame built, wild and difficult to control. It stressed his concentration and his spirit to gather, and only a few months ago he would have had to use some pure madra props to execute this technique at all. After practicing during his enforced isolation, he had improved...though a technique that required several seconds to gather would be of limited use in a fight.
“Surrender,” Lindon said, voice strained with the effort of controlling the dragon's breath.
A white light flashed beneath Jai Long's clothes. It was fitful and weak, struggling against the intrusion of the Path of Twisted Blood, but Jai Long's head snapped straight again. He dropped his spear, but pulled both his arms back under control. The brown hands holding his ankles started to dissolve, the Nether-drain Swamp dissolving under white light.
Lindon released the dragon's breath.
He had no grudge against Jai Long. The man was an obstacle, and one he had to pass to continue, but not quite a true enemy. And he would hate to think that he had healed Jai Chen only to kill her brother.
He hadn't asked for this duel. But over the intervening year, one thing had become clear: he was the weaker party. He didn't have the luxury of pulling his punches.
If he didn't come at Jai Long intending to kill, he couldn't win.
The dragon's fire blasted toward Jai Long, not soft and billowing like a cloud, but a tight bar of almost liquid-looking red-and-black flame. It skewed right, and Lindon had an instant to hope that perhaps it would only take off Jai Long's arm, but leave him alive.
Then there came a blinding flash of white.
Jai Long blocked the bar of red and black with a shaft of pure white madra. The spear was almost seven feet long, smooth, and etched with a web of scripts that Lindon could only see because of their bright glow. The spearhead accounted for a foot of its length, flat and white.
The Ancestor's Spear. He'd taken it from nowhere.
Lindon's heart dropped.
How had he gotten it back? Where had he gotten it? Lindon thought Eithan had taken it. Had his own Underlord returned it?
“I think you have a decent chance of winning,” Eithan had told him. “As long as Jai Long is only a Truegold.”
“If he's an Underlord, then surely they won't continue with the duel,” Lindon had said. “It's only remotely fair in the first place because we're both technically Gold.”
“It's true; if Jai Long has truly reached Underlord, he will become my problem. But there is a...third option.”
Jai Long swept his spear through the dragon's breath, splashing tongues of Blackflame onto the stone floor and ceiling. They hissed when the stone dissolved as though under acid.