Yushi ran lightning through her sword, prepared to annihilate the Sage. Thousand Eyes was slippery, surviving even a direct strike from the Weeping Dragon, but Cladia had people to protect this time. What she avoided, the Arelius family would have to block.
The Oracle Sage looked at something behind Yushi and nodded.
At the same time, Yushi felt what was happening and spun around. Silver runes flashed around Yerin, and her motions blurred as she moved for Calling Storms.
Her sword passed through his neck.
Lightning exploded against her, and she staggered, but the protection of the Shield Icon was layered on her already-durable Herald’s body.
Yerin and Ziel had turned on the Storm Sage the second that Yushi had tried to retreat. As though they’d heard her call for the Sage to flee.
Or as though they’d been warned.
By an Oracle.
Yushi targeted Ziel with her technique, since he was a fresh Sage running on the last of his willpower. If he were struck directly, he wouldn’t survive.
A sword of pure lightning stabbed at him, but Yerin met it with a Forged crimson claw from her weapon’s binding.
At the same time, something pinged painfully off the back of Yushi’s skull. The Oracle Sage’s attack.
It hurt no more than a pebble, but it infuriated her nonetheless. She glared at Cladia Arelius, who returned a small wave.
“That’s enough,” Yushi finally said. The words had the bitter taste of swallowed pride. “We admit defeat.”
Danger screamed in her spirit, and the world turned gray.
With all her madra, she clashed against Yerin’s sword. The slash was too difficult to dodge, but she found herself strained from meeting it.
Then silver runes flashed behind her, and suddenly the entire world was moving too slowly.
That was when her premonition of danger turned to ice-cold terror.
Ziel was clearly out of madra, but he had still used a working of the Rune Queen’s array to slow Yushi’s time. She gathered willpower to push against it, returning the world to normal, but she couldn’t fully break it and defend against Yerin at the same time.
Every technique she threw, Yerin dodged or weathered. She had the guidance of the Oracle Icon and the protection of the Shield Icon, on top of the strength of a Herald and an attack layered with deadly authority.
The pressure was enough to make Yushi feel as though she was facing down a Monarch.
She burned through every technique she had, including emergency life-saving constructs that were mowed down by Yerin’s blade. Finally, she reached into her void key for her last resort: a high-quality gatestone that would take her immediately to Reigan Shen’s side.
It was missing.
Though Yushi was in the middle of a high-speed aerial fight, she still caught a glimpse of Cladia Arelius striding into view beneath her, casually juggling a gatestone.
How had she gotten it? When had she gotten it? How did the Oracle Icon allow one to steal from a sealed void space?
It didn’t matter. The noose had settled around Yushi’s neck.
“Wait,” she said to Yerin. “Mercy!”
Yerin kicked her into the ground, which detonated beneath her. Spiritual pain radiated from her back as her wings, a Divine Treasure gifted to her by Reigan Shen, snapped from the impact.
Yerin jerked her chin into the distance. “You’re looking for her.”
While Yushi was still thinking of another tactic, Yerin’s blade took off her head.
Ziel watched Yerin kill the Herald, which was a more dramatic sight than he anticipated.
The moment she killed her enemy, the cry of a phoenix echoed through the surrounding aura. Hunger radiated in a pattern that Ziel recognized as similar to Lindon’s Consume technique. And power rushed into Yerin.
She was clearly caught off-guard, because she stiffened in place and her eyes rolled back into her head. This must have been what she was aiming for, but she wouldn’t have any way to brace herself for a Herald’s power suddenly flowing into her.
Ziel forced weary hands to lift his hammer. He had little left, but if he didn’t move, they were all going to be killed by a Herald’s Remnant.
Indeed, Yushi’s Remnant started forming only seconds after her death. It looked beautiful and inhuman, like a vaguely humanoid diamond that crackled with lightning and spread lacy wings.
But it didn’t attack. It was bound with threads of crimson madra, woven around it like chains. In Ziel’s mind, it felt connected to Yerin. Bound to her.
Slowly, it drifted to stand behind Yerin.
She finally came out of her trance, breathing heavily and falling to one knee. “Bleed me,” she panted. “Didn’t want one more whisper of her memories than I needed.” Yerin turned to eye the Remnant behind her. “Guessing you’re the leftovers, are you?”
“I am what you have not absorbed,” the Remnant said, its voice echoing strangely. “You will digest me as you are able, and eventually we will merge.”
Yerin rubbed one ear as though the words were physically painful to hear. “Heard that one more than once.” She looked to Ziel, and then to a writhing headless man on the ground. “What’s the plan with him?”
The Storm Sage’s regeneration had been much slower this time. Deadly authority infected his neck from the Reaper’s slash that Yerin imitated, though Ziel suspected the man’s Divine Treasure would have overcome it already if it hadn’t been exhausted.
A head was gradually growing from the Sage’s neck, and Ziel looked down on him with a stomach full of fury.
Possibilities passed through his mind.
With the Grand Oath Array, he could slow the man’s suffering so that every second stretched into minutes. He could make the Storm Sage beg for what the man himself had done to Ziel.
He spun out that fantasy, hungry for it. But only for a moment.
Then he weighed down the Sage’s chest with his hammer and waited for the man’s head to regenerate.
As soon as it had ears, Ziel spoke. “I want you to know who killed you.” He gripped the hammer tightly and thought of his own years of pain.
Then he listened to the song of the Shield Icon.
“No one else will suffer at your hands.” With that, Ziel lifted his hammer.
He brought it down, but he had no Enforcer technique. Empowered by his strengthened body, the hammer still crashed onto him, but the Storm Sage caught it on both lightning-crackling hands. He lifted himself into the air on streams of aura, grinning a manic blood-stained grin.
He opened his mouth to speak.
Then Yerin cut him in half.
“Nope,” she said. “Not waiting for that.”
16
Lindon returned to consciousness with a war raging inside his spirit.
His body was being torn apart from the inside; if not for his Bloodforged Iron body, he may have suffered irreparable damage. Without Lindon’s will to suppress it, Northstrider’s power thrashed around inside him like a trapped shark.
[I’m…starting…to regret this], Dross said. [He has so…many…memories.]
Lindon pushed himself up to a sitting position on the smooth stone floor of the labyrinth. A battle thundered outside, but he kept his senses contained. He focused entirely on controlling the power within him.
He needed to get rid of Northstrider’s energy, but he didn’t want to waste it.
[If only there were vessels we’d prepared specifically to receive your extra power,] Dross said.
He was referring to Orthos and Little Blue, whose presence would indeed solve this problem of Lindon’s. Split among three people, they could digest Northstrider’s power quickly, and it would dramatically benefit the advancement of the other two.
But Lindon didn’t dwell on the thought. He didn’t even allow himself to think about it too hard. They might feel his emotions through their contracted bond.