He tossed her the spearhead, but instead of reaching out her hands to catch it, she jerked them back as though afraid. Lines of purple madra lashed out from her, lashing the blade to the ceiling and slowly lowering it down to her eye level like a spider on a line. Clearly, she didn't want to risk having her madra drained away, even if Eithan had been holding it in his bare hands with no apparent problems.
When she saw that her technique had remained intact despite its contact with the weapon, she gingerly plucked it out of the web with two fingers.
The spearhead was about a foot long and a hand wide. She studied it for a moment, and then two long purple spider's legs reached up from beneath her. Her drudge.
The two legs snatched the blade from her, juggling and spinning it between them for a good two minutes before the spider-construct let out a hiss.
Finally, she gave a single nod. “There's enough here to...try. I'll have to break this binding down to its materials to avoid a conflict, and once we have the fragments of this weapon, we can begin merging them with the Shifting Skies limb.” She jabbed a finger at Eithan. “I cannot promise anything, you understand. And you'll be giving up this weapon.”
“I expect to gain a better one,” Eithan said, his gaze on Lindon.
Fisher Gesha gathered up her tray, returning the limbs to her script-sealed box before the madra decayed any further. “I'll need my assistant for this,” she said. “I don't want to muddy this with more aspects than we need, so Fisher madra is not the most suitable. We'll need his pure madra to link it all together, and perhaps Blackflame to break down the extra binding.”
Lindon was eager to begin working, and he started to struggle out of the bed—no matter how weak he felt, this was something to do. Something to focus on besides what he had lost.
Eithan held up a hand, stopping him.
“I apologize, Fisher, but I need a word with him for a moment. Do what you can on your own, for now, and I'll send him to you when he's ready.”
Gesha hesitated, looking between Lindon and the Underlord.
“Don't you give him any trouble, now,” she said firmly, and to Lindon's shock, she wasn't speaking to him. She was looking straight at Eithan.
He raised his eyebrows. “I'll try my best not to.”
“He ought to get some time to rest after a day like this. You hear me? He's not a construct. Even if he were, you couldn't push him every day like you do without ever giving him time to rest.”
“I don't intend to—” Eithan began, but Fisher Gesha interrupted him.
“A whole year I've been here,” she said. Her spider-legs carried her forward, and she actually rapped her knuckles against the Underlord's chest. “A whole year of my life I've given up, and I don't have many of those left, do I? Well, I've always wanted to see the Empire, and so I have. I've tried foods I'd never heard of before, I've worked on Remnants I couldn't imagine, I've met strange people and seen strange sights.”
She reached up as though to smack him in the face, but seemed to remember who she was talking to, and pointed at him instead. “How much of that has he done, hm?”
Lindon started. He hadn't given much thought to what Fisher Gesha had been doing while he was training. He supposed he thought she just...worked all the time.
Like he did.
“He's spent more time underground than a mole. At least he's got Yerin with him, she's a good girl, but she wouldn't rest if someone killed her. You have to slow them down, you hear me? They're not Underlords.” She lowered her hand and sighed. “Not yet.”
Eithan's eyes were wide and his mouth slightly open. After a moment, his smile came back, but this time it was soft. “Honored grandmother, I will take your words to heart. I'm sorry for worrying you.” Then he pressed his fists together into a salute and bowed low.
Gesha cleared her throat and reddened slightly. “Well. So long as you know.”
Before Lindon could gather his thoughts, she'd already scooped up her chest and scurried out the door.
Eithan stared after her, chin in his hands. “You know,” he said, “I don't believe I've paid enough attention to her.”
“I apologize for her,” Lindon said, dipping his head slightly. “I have no complaints about my work over the past year. I know it was done for my benefit.”
“Not entirely for your benefit,” Eithan said. “I was initially hoping that Jai Long would serve as a motivation for you, of course, but the situation evolved as soon as Jai Daishou inserted himself. I was hoping to reap some benefits for the Arelius family, and though I didn't get everything I wanted, I still made some measurable progress. I'll chalk this whole thing up to a win, though we may have indirectly led to the destruction of the entire Empire.”
Lindon was meant to ask about the destruction part of that sentence, he knew. It was bait, set by Eithan, trying to capture Lindon's interest and attention. Normally, it would have worked.
This time, Lindon shrugged his right shoulder, drawing attention to his missing arm. “You could have finished off Jai Daishou immediately.”
Eithan's smile faded. “I could have, yes.”
“You drew it out. You were trying to get him to bring out that crystal ball.”
“The Archstone. It's a—”
Lindon cut him off. “He took my arm.”
Eithan clasped his hands behind his back and studied his disciple. Instead of deflecting or pointing out that technically Jai Long was the one who had removed the arm, which would be typical Eithan tactics, the Underlord simply nodded. “He did. If he hadn't given the order, Jai Long would have left you alone. If I hadn't put him under such pressure, he wouldn't have given the order.”
The admission both made Lindon feel better and much, much worse. It tore open the bandage he'd wrapped around his anger, and he could feel tears welling up in the corners of his eyes.
“Why?” he said. “Why did you have to push him? I just...want to know it was worth it.”
Eithan looked to the ceiling for a moment, considering, then looked back down to Lindon. “What do you know about the Dreadgods?”
“Nothing,” Lindon said. “I don't know that I've ever heard the word. Are they like dreadbeasts?”
“Yes. Yes, they are.” Eithan chewed on his words for a second, as though trying to gather his thoughts. Or trying to decide how much to tell Lindon. “They are...disasters. Four monsters, big enough to blot out the sky, hungry for destruction, and so powerful that the most advanced sacred artists in the world have to join forces to drive them off. Drive them off, you understand. None of the Dreadgods have ever been killed.”
“They're sacred beasts?”
“Corrupted ones. Like the dreadbeasts of the Desolate Wilds, they were warped and twisted by their own powers.”
“Where do they come from?” Lindon asked, caught up in the legend. He briefly wondered if this was another tactic to distract him...but if it was, it was working.
“They're scattered all over the world. They burrow into a secure location and wait for decades...but when they wake up, they're hungry. Fortunately for humanity, no two have woken at the same time in centuries.
“But the last time they did, they destroyed the original Blackflame Empire.”
From Orthos and Eithan, Lindon had heard of the fall of the Blackflame family. But from what he could piece together, even that family had taken over the remains of another, more powerful Empire.
And even that ancient nation had fallen to these Dreadgods.
“The original Empire was ruled by dragons, not men,” Eithan said, with a tone that suggested dragons building an empire was nothing unusual. “As they advanced as a culture, they began to study civilizations even older than theirs. And they stumbled on a...vast, underground complex. It was abandoned even then, and it was so massive and so dangerous that not even the greatest of the dragons could map it fully.”