More Remnants and dreadbeasts boiled out of the walls as they continued, and Lindon learned about his Iron body.
For one thing, if combat before had been like trying to stay alive in the middle of a panicked nightmare, now he felt as though he were tearing his way through a lightning-fueled dream. His hands moved faster than his thoughts, his weapon a green blur, and keeping up with Yerin's running pace was easier than walking. His hearing was so acute that every breath of air was a note in a symphony, and he spotted movements he would never have noticed before: the tense of muscles in a wolf's shoulder, the flick of a sandviper's tail.
Compared to his previous self, he felt unstoppable. His blood burned in his veins, and madra flowed steadily from his Iron core, his breathing even and measured.
At the same time, he saw the difference between Iron and Gold.
Just when he was feeling like a dragon in human skin, a pale gray Remnant with six arms boiled up from the depths of the tunnel, howling like wind through a forest. It seized his weapon in one hand, his empty arm in another, and both his legs as its head peeled back to reveal a gaping mouth.
Lindon struggled, but he might as well have still been Copper; it looked insubstantial and blurry, like a weak Remnant, but it still had physical strength far beyond his own. Scrabbling from behind told him that there was a dreadbeast coming from the other direction, and Yerin was dealing with two enemies of her own.
Eithan was still whistling with his eyes shut as he dodged four creatures, but Lindon couldn't count on him.
The hands squeezed tighter and tighter until Lindon's breath came too quickly to fuel his cycling technique. He tried everything he could think of until his wrist went numb, and the Sandviper stinger clattered from his hand. Only then did he scream Yerin's name.
She went from a black-and-red blur with a sword of white to utterly still in a moment. Her Goldsign flashed, and Lindon felt an invisible pulse move through him despite his spiritual senses remaining closed.
It was the technique she'd demonstrated before: the Endless Sword. But this time, she didn't hold back.
The Remnant was blasted away from him, shredded into a thousand shapeless pieces and a cloud of dissolving madra. The dreadbeast behind him didn't even get to make a noise before it was reduced to a chunky puddle, and Eithan quick-stepped forward to avoid the chunks of blood that his own enemies had become.
Five or six cuts appeared on Lindon's arms where the Remnant had grabbed him, flaring to life like fires after a lightning strike, but he was staring at Yerin. She took a deep breath, restoring her breathing before she spoke. “Everybody stable?”
Lindon nodded wordlessly and she took off.
He scooped up his weapon, vaguely ashamed of himself. Just because he'd let the power of an Iron body go to his head, he'd forgotten the sheer force of the sacred arts. Of all the weapons in a sacred artist's arsenal, physical strength was among the least. He might be able to compete with Yerin in the force of his grip now, but she could carve him into pieces with her will.
It was a sobering reminder, but it was also somewhat liberating.
He had something to look forward to.
It wasn't much longer before they reached the end of the spiraling staircase, and by now the constant attacks were taking their toll. He hadn't used much madra, having no techniques in his repertoire that would help against monsters, but Yerin was noticeably weakened. They'd both taken wounds, in contrast to Eithan, who continued whistling as though his surroundings didn't affect him at all.
At the end, with the snarling of monsters behind them, they reached a door.
It was a heavy slab of stone, just like the ones before, but this one was carved with an intricate mural. It was divided equally into four sections, each depicting a different sacred beast: a serpentine dragon on a cloud flashing with lightning, a crowned tiger, a stone warrior with the shell of a tortoise, and a blazing phoenix.
Though Yerin moved forward to place her palm against the door, he froze at the sight.
He'd seen this before.
Chapter 17
Yerin removed her hand from the door, readying her sword. “It's some brand of riddle. Script keeps going right on into it, and there's a key buried here somewhere.” The howls of Remnants echoed up the stairs from behind, and the edge of her blade gathered force. “Take a step back.”
“Wait!” Lindon shouted, then coughed politely. “I mean, ah, please wait, if you don't mind. We've seen this before.”
Eithan sat down on a step and began fiddling with his thumbs.
The shrieks from below grew louder, and a Remnant like a giant purple onion squeezed itself out of the wall to Eithan's side. Before it had completely emerged, he kicked it back.
Yerin took a step back and looked at the door. “I do think you’re right. That looks more than a little like the picture in the Ancestor's Tomb.”
“That's a week away on the Thousand-Mile Cloud,” Lindon pointed out.
“Well, that's a head-scratcher,” she said, and then drew her sword back again. The edge of the blade distorted as though a haze of heat had gathered around the weapon, and she took a step forward.
Lindon's instinct for self-preservation kept him from stopping her before she smashed her technique into the door's surface.
It struck with a rush of power that was deafening in the enclosed space of the stairway, ringing in his ears as though someone had struck a bell over his head. Madra and aura flooded forward with her strike until his view of the action warped like he was watching through murky water.
When it cleared, a single chip of stone was spinning on the floor. Otherwise, the door was completely intact.
Lindon would have taken this moment to stop her from damaging the door any further—it was connected to some unknown script, and might bring the entire roof down on their heads if they interrupted the circle, not to mention its connection to Sacred Valley—but he happened to glance behind them.
Dreadbeasts scrambled all over each other as they clawed up the stairs, seeming to blend into a multi-headed mass of corrupted flesh.
Yerin braced her feet against the ground, her Goldsign drew back like a snake preparing to strike, and she gripped her sword in both hands. Colorless sword madra rippled around her until it was like he was looking at her through a cage of razors edge-on. As she gathered power, she focused on the door as though she meant to destroy it with the force of her stare.
Without giving himself too much room to think, he picked up his severed Remnant part and pointed it at the oncoming rush of beasts. His madra flowed down the weapon, trickling toward the binding.
“The big one,” Eithan shouted, but through his ringing ears Lindon heard it as a whisper. The man was standing now, but he was actually leaning his shoulder against one of the wider sections of wall, completely at his ease.
Lindon listened, adjusting his aim to point at the biggest of the dreadbeasts: a warped purple creature like a bear with heavily muscled arms. When he was close enough to see the bloodshot veins in the monster's arms, the dreadbeast hauled itself back on its hind legs. It looked as though it intended to come down on Lindon like an avalanche.
He stepped forward, thrusting the bright green stinger like a spear.
And just as he did, he activated the binding.
He used his weaker core, the Copper one, because it was just barely strong enough to fuel the weapon. The activation drew his core dry, and if that had been his only source of madra, he would have collapsed immediately.
But he pulled on his Iron core instantly, keeping his legs steady even as the binding activated.