Until they were ready, he didn’t plan to pressure them. He was here to carry them, not the other way around.
The best we can do is to cycle this as quickly as possible and vent the rest, Lindon responded. We’ve held onto it too long.
Dross made a dismissive sound. They were doing that already, but they were too late to help with the battle against the Weeping Dragon.
Nothing to do but buckle down.
Lindon’s spiritual sense locked onto his cores, and he lost himself in absolute focus.
When he felt Lindon’s eyes close, Orthos opened his own.
He raised himself to all fours, power cycling through him. “He needs us,” Orthos rumbled.
Little Blue gave a quiet, piping whistle.
She was hovering in midair, the ends of her dress and hair fluttering in a nonexistent wind. Little Blue was a paler shade of blue than usual, but she looked as solid as a human.
And was much taller.
To them, it had been a week since Ziel and Mercy had left.
Archlord natural treasures dissolved behind Orthos. Most of them had turned to soulfire that burned in his spirit at that very moment.
Little Blue, likewise, had finished the course Lindon had left for her.
They stood together, a pair of Archlords.
They had reached the end of their training regimen. Ideally, they would then sit and cycle for a few more days to stabilize their spirits and grow used to their new powers. But Lindon needed them.
Of course, they still had to figure a way out.
Orthos tried to signal Lindon, but he had cut himself off so that they wouldn’t do exactly what they were planning on doing.
That only made Orthos more resolved.
Yerin and Ziel had escaped by cutting through the Way, but Orthos and Little Blue couldn’t do that. They could perhaps force open the original entrance to the pocket world with sheer willpower, but that would be much easier from the outside than the inside.
There was only one option left: the network of defensive constructs that had surrounded the pocket world’s entrance.
Orthos strode to the control room. “I’ll try to signal someone. Grab the tank.”
Little Blue whistled and gave a wave as a salute, then scurried off to grab Lindon’s secret project. As Orthos was still figuring out which of the scripts were operational and which outside constructs remained functional, Blue scurried back with a tank several sizes bigger than her body held over her head. Five purple orbs drifted in fluid within.
He settled down and tried to send a message. He just had to hope someone on the other side was listening.
Sweat ran down Larian’s face. Well, most of it was sweat. Some was blood.
She couldn’t stay a Monarch all the time. Others of the Empire needed to borrow the power of the group when they were hitting the Weeping Dragon, or when they had to take a hit that would have killed them otherwise.
Eventually, Del’rek would lend her the restoration authority to fix her injuries. Like her twisted spine, her strained madra channels, and her missing eye.
But they had to survive first.
More than her injuries, she was focused on the Silent King Bow. Metaphysically speaking, it was heavy. Most of the damage to her spirit had come from her own use of the bow.
Her opinion of Lindon slid upwards. How did he manage to use the weapon as long as he had?
Nonetheless, it was their most effective weapon against the Dragon. She wrapped her spirit around the Bow, focusing her willpower and pulling back the string.
Lindon may have the muscle to use the weapon, but he wasn’t a Bow Sage. She could do things with arrows that he couldn’t imagine.
As long as her soul didn’t break.
The Weeping Dragon turned to her the moment he felt the Bow in use, and she Forged a white arrow onto the string. It blasted toward him, and the Dreadgod gave that missile the full force of his attention.
Good thing, too.
The arrow disappeared before it was struck by lightning, twisted around a massive claw, pressured the Dragon’s thoughts, and landed where the Dragon was fated to be.
When the arrowhead sank in, the Dragon writhed. Its roar threatened to burst her eardrums, and she could feel its thoughts trembling before the mental power of the Silent King.
Larian coughed up a mouthful of blood, and the Bow fell from nerveless fingers.
Dropping her weapon in battle. That was embarrassing.
She wanted to pick it up, but her body wouldn’t listen. The time had come for her exit; she wasn’t much more than a liability to the others in this condition.
But as she called a cloud to pick her up, she noticed something. A half-broken construct projecting a few fuzzy characters into the air.
“Pocket world,” they said. “Trapped.”
No matter how weak she was, Larian’s perception was sharp. Now that she was looking for it, she spotted the warped scar in space that represented the collapsed entrance to a pocket world.
Ordinarily, she could open it in a second.
This time, she called her comrade.
Kharrus, Herald of the Nine-Hands, had already been flying toward her on a cloud. He was quiet but even-tempered, reliable, and he radiated a desire to be out of here.
She indicated the warp, in the ocean far to the north. “Trapped in there. Could be Arelius’ apprentices.”
He didn’t ask any further questions, he just pulled back his axe and loaded it with his will. With one slash, he tore the world open right in front of him.
Then he dashed back into the fight, deflecting a volley of living lightning before it could crash down on Larian. He left a cloud behind him, for her.
A portal opened into a swirl of blue, and two people walked out. But not ones Larian recognized.
The Archlord man had weathered, tar-black skin and gray hair. He wore dark leather that looked as though it had been made from dragon hide, with bits of armor strapped to it.
The Archlady had navy hair the color of the deep ocean and skin like a summer sky. She carried a tank of something under one arm. Something that felt spiritually powerful.
Larian would have asked what a couple of Archlords were doing inside a pocket world that had been constructed by the Void Sage, but she recognized their eyes and the feel of their madra.
The Lord’s were black with circles of bright red while the Lady’s were blue with circles of white. Larian had seen eyes like that before.
She jerked a thumb in the direction of the largest gate into the labyrinth, the one etched with a stylized depiction of the Slumbering Wraith. “He’s in there.”
“We know,” the man said in a deep, rumbling voice. “Thank you for your help.”
The woman dipped her head in agreement. “Mm-hmm!”
Lightning fell from the skies like rain, and both newcomers ignited full-body Enforcer techniques. They sprang up like fire from each of them, the woman’s a smooth, blue-white flame while the man’s was a rough black-and-red blaze.
The two nodded to her, then dashed off. Larian had to hope they could survive in a Dreadgod’s presence long enough to reach Lindon.
Because there wasn’t much else she could do to help.
Lindon still wrestled with his spirit when he heard Dross give a delighted gasp. [Yay, you brought my project! And also, I’m glad to see you. Of course. That goes without saying, which is why I didn’t say it.]
Lindon withdrew from his cycling trance to see Orthos. He’d already felt the turtle standing in front of him, which was why he was taken aback to see a man.
Orthos was human, with the same wrinkled black skin as before but a head full of gray hair. It was strange to see age on him as a person; Lindon had always known Orthos was old, but it wasn’t as though he was used to telling young turtles apart from old ones. Gray hair and wrinkles on a human form had far more impact.