Two of her companions vanished immediately, crushing their gatestones as though they had been waiting to leave at any second. The others followed a moment later, though someone else had to scoop up the two injured members.
Larian was the last to leave, frustrated. She hated retreating, but she would hate losing even more.
This was a good cause, she knew. The only cause worth giving their lives for.
As long as they won.
Even on the Rosegold continent, Yerin felt the battle of the Weeping Dragon. Her body ached with the spiritual effort she’d put into her fight already, and energy raged in a chaotic swirl inside of her.
She’d devoured power from the Storm Sage and the Thunder Fairy, and the helpful parts of their spirits now dissolved into hers. The rest, she dragged along.
The Remnants floated behind her, a crackling winged person formed as though grown from diamond and a twisted dragon-man with a grin far too large for its body. The Remnants of a Herald and a Sage.
Yerin wrestled with their wills even now, but they weren’t exactly opposing her. Most of what she felt from them was confusion. The crimson chains that wrapped them slowly fed her power.
Or they would once she had room for more. At the moment, she was capped out.
Between the pain and the burden she was now carrying, she wanted to fall back onto a bed. But somebody was fighting the Weeping Dragon, and it felt too much like Lindon.
Ziel had stowed his Grand Oath Array. Despite all the strengthening elixirs Lindon had fed him, it looked like he would fall over if he couldn’t lean on his hammer.
Mercy was equally tapped out, but they were all dancing to the same tune when it came to their words.
“You can send us back home!” Mercy said encouragingly to the Oracle Sage. “I know you can do it!”
Cladia Arelius looked doubtfully between the three of them. “If I could, I’m not convinced I should. Look at yourselves.”
“Send us,” Ziel said.
“I don’t need to be an oracle to see that you’re all on your last legs.”
“Send us,” he repeated.
“I’m not going to get far talking to him, am I?” the Sage asked, turning to Yerin.
She had turned to the wrong person.
“Send us,” Yerin said.
The Sage of a Thousand Eyes spread her hands like Eithan had when he was feeling especially put-upon. “You’re the only one who can stand on your own feet, and I’m worried most of all about sending you. Do you know what will happen if you lose control of those Remnants?”
“Not planning to.”
Cladia looked into the air for a second, then summoned a globe of light in one hand. “Show them,” she ordered.
Images filled the light. They were hazy images, brief glimpses caught through a keyhole, but they were clear enough.
Yerin’s captured Remnants threw themselves eagerly into the mouth of the Weeping Dragon. The spiritual impact caused her to collapse and her techniques to fade. The Dreadgod’s power swelled, and it turned on Ziel next.
While the view was too rough to tell what happened to everyone specifically, Ziel and Mercy didn’t last long. Then the Dragon turned its full focus onto Lindon.
The Oracle Sage crushed the light in her hand. “That’s the most likely future if you join Lindon in battle now.”
“But not the only future!” Mercy put in brightly.
“People make too much of that. Would you walk into a room if you knew there were only a thirty percent chance it would kill you?”
“Sure,” Ziel said.
“What’s the other seventy?” Yerin asked.
Mercy nodded. “To save someone? Of course!”
The Oracle Sage surveyed the three of them and shrugged. “Yeah, all right. Eithan would have done the same thing. Come on.”
She started to trudge away, but Yerin was suspicious of that. There should be no reason to walk anywhere.
Mercy followed the Sage, but Ziel ground his hammer into the dirt. “Why can’t we do it here?”
Cladia spoke without turning around. “If I take you myself, we won’t get there until tomorrow night. Even if you all helped me, the fastest would be…let’s say four, five hours. And that would leave us all exhausted when we arrived.”
Yerin’s stomach twisted as she imagined Lindon in battle against a Dreadgod alone for four straight hours. She spoke firmly. “Then we don’t have time to waste on talking, true?”
The Oracle Sage waved impatiently. “Just follow me. And walk, by the heavens. Now will be your last chance to rest. Maybe for the rest of your life.”
Impatience gnawed at Yerin, but Eithan had trusted her. And it wasn’t as though she had any motivation to work against them.
Yerin had paid attention to their surroundings only as terrain to fight over. Now she saw the Sage was leading them to a network of ruins. It looked like the foundation of what had once been a town and was now a rocky maze covered in ash.
The Arelius clan had brushed some of that ash away, making their home among the ruins and half-standing walls. Now it was bustling like a market-day as weapons were repaired and wounds were tended to, but they looked as though they hadn’t been here long.
Cladia led them to a staircase that led down into the ground. A heavily wounded Arelius Archlord bowed to Mercy when she passed, and she waved cheerily back.
“For thousands of years, House Arelius had holdings on multiple continents,” the Oracle Sage told them as they walked down into the ground. “I think you’ve heard some of this story before. In order to help secure territory all the way in Ashwind, our ancestors constructed a spatial tunnel between the two. It’s not as advanced as the labyrinth, and it takes quite a bit of energy. Therefore, it only opens itself once every ten years.”
Yerin brightened as a large doorframe came into view. It was large enough to drive a pair of wagons through, supported on either side by a scripted pillar and with the Arelius family crest over the top.
In the center, filling the doorway, blue energy swirled. Since advancing to true Herald, her spiritual sense had become much more sensitive than before, and she could feel detailed fluctuations she couldn’t before.
“If you’re telling me that portal’s ready, I’m calling you a liar,” Yerin said.
Cladia put hands on her hips as she stood beside Yerin. “It is almost time for the portal to open on its own, but not quite. Thus, we’re burning all the natural treasures we can to fill it up. Trick it into opening, so to speak. Normally, that wouldn’t work—it’s not just a matter of fuel capacity—but I’m certain we can override the mechanism with enough authority.”
Yerin punched her own fists against each other. “Let’s cut it open, then.”
“It’s a bit more delicate than that, but certainly, we can try. You have the Remnant of a Sage and a Herald in tow, so we have some leverage.”
“Burn ‘em like split wood. Whatever it takes.”
“Why don’t you try the Storm Sage first? He was quite skilled in spatial transfer when he was alive.”
Yerin mentally urged the mutated dragon-man Remnant forward. It chuckled as it stepped forward, with teeth larger than the rest of its entire head. She pointed at the portal. “Get it open,” Yerin ordered.
The Remnant hissed out a laugh between its teeth, and sparks crackled around its smile. Its spiritual sense washed over the entire doorframe as it took in the device.
Ziel watched it doubtfully. “Is it helping?”
“It’s looking to figure something out, but I can’t be stone-certain it has the brains for that,” Yerin replied.
The Thunder Fairy’s Remnant floated up next to her. “We can hear you,” the spirit said. Its voice was like snapping lightning and rushing wind.
“Can you get the door open?” Yerin asked.
The Fairy Remnant didn’t have a joint to bend at the waist, but it bobbed in a close-enough imitation of a bow. “If this door can be moved, we will move it.”