At the same instant, lightning snaked out from the Dreadgod and fed on him in turn.
Lindon was the one to break it off. He couldn’t tell who had gotten more from that exchange, but his spirit ached. Now that his madra channels ran through his physical body, that was even more painful than it had been.
Claws flashed again, and he kicked off with the Burning Cloak to intercept before Orthos was hit. Every attack the Weeping Dragon made, Lindon was there to block.
But that was all he could do.
[We can definitely keep this up! He will, eventually, kill us at this pace. And I am just as tired as I was before. But we will live for at least a few more glorious minutes!]
Orthos and Little Blue were too weak.
Even with their advancement, it was the best a new Sage and Herald could do just to survive on a Dreadgod battlefield. There were only two factors that allowed them to participate in the fight.
First, Dross was commanding them. He’d tell them where to position and when to strike, and thus, the trio fought with perfect coordination.
Second, they could pull power from Lindon.
Little Blue’s techniques were magnified by Lindon’s madra, now that she could withstand that much power, and Orthos shot dragon’s breath that had a touch of the Void and Dragon Icons. Without their bond to him, they would have had to use all their powers to flee.
But Lindon’s cores were deep. Not endless. And he could only channel so much madra at one time.
[They’re helping a little,] Dross said. [Enough to keep them here. But time is not on our side.]
In every exchange with the Weeping Dragon, Lindon came up short.
Powerful in madra and authority Lindon might have been, but the Weeping Dragon’s body was measured in miles. Every physical blow cost too much for Lindon to defend, and he had to pump his techniques with all the power he could scrape up to match the Dragon.
The Void Icon whispered around him, clouding his future, as Emriss had taught him. He couldn’t sense the future well, but this was like veiling himself in Fate.
He couldn’t sense it, but Dross could.
[It’s not working. He’s not changing what he does. I don’t think he’s reading our future at all; I think he’s just hitting us with brute force. To be fair, it’s working.]
Though, if the Dragon really wasn’t manipulating or predicting them, they should be able to create an opening.
Lindon weakened the Dreadgod’s blow with an Empty Palm before catching the gigantic claw with the strength of the Soul Cloak. But he was still sent flying through the storm, with the miles-long sapphire Dragon swimming after him.
Storm aura tore at him, ripping away his flight, hammering him with lightning bolts. He took the hits and slashed back with dragon’s breath, striking the Weeping Dragon across the belly. That wasn’t a decisive injury on the Dreadgod, but it at least scored a flinch and a roar of pain.
Lindon crashed down onto its head with a heavy blow worthy of Northstrider, and the Weeping Dragon cracked the land open with its tail and sent storm madra shooting up Lindon’s feet until he had to leap off.
While Lindon was carrying the most weight, Orthos and Little Blue were still working hard. The Dreadgod noticed, twisting to them.
That was an opening.
Lindon withdrew the Silent King Bow, which erupted into a white ring over his head. The Weeping Dragon reacted instantly, flashing back toward Lindon, but he already had a Penance arrow nocked.
Weakened as he was, just pulling the string back took everything Lindon had. Every muscle in his body strained, and he focused his entire being on the arrow.
But this was the shot.
He loosed the arrow, aiming for the Dragon’s eye.
The Dreadgod ducked and tried to scurry out of the way, but Penance was not a simple arrow. It sought its prey.
While the arrow didn’t land where Lindon intended, it did not miss.
The deadly missile pierced the Weeping Dragon in the side of the neck and emerged from the other side almost immediately. Blood sprayed across the landscape in a waterfall, and the Dreadgod let out a scream.
The entire storm flashed with lightning at the sound.
Little Blue, Orthos, and even Dross shuddered in place. They froze for an instant, spirits instinctively shrinking away from the willpower and authority in the dragon’s roar. Only Lindon remained focused.
His vision blurred and his spirit burned, but he summoned the arrow back. He needed one more attack like that. If he could just force out one more…
The Penance arrow vanished from where it had landed.
But it didn’t reappear in Lindon’s hand.
“No!” the Weeping Dragon commanded. Its voice rang with thunder.
If he were at his peak, Lindon thought he could have contested that working. He had greater authority over the arrow as the Soulsmith who had assembled it and the apprentice of the Soulsmith who had created the arrowhead in the first place.
But he’d faced down Monarchs without rest all day. It was all he could do to keep the Silent King Bow from overwhelming his mind and spirit.
Therefore, the Weeping Dragon’s command tore the arrow away in mid-transit.
Inside a miniature storm, the black-and-white arrow appeared in the center of the Dreadgod’s claw. It was so small that it was barely visible against the Weeping Dragon’s vast limb, like a single grain of sand in a man’s palm.
The Dragon crushed the arrow, and Lindon felt its true destruction.
Two left.
Little Blue and Orthos struck the Dragon as it was focused on the arrow, so an Empty Palm and a massive dragon’s breath both landed on the Dreadgod’s seemingly endless length.
Both attacks landed. Lindon could feel them. But the Weeping Dragon’s will still crashed down on Lindon, victorious and arrogant, looking down on him.
Dross didn’t say anything, but he layered a prediction on the future. At this rate, they were stalling until their deaths. The Dragon would grind them down, and he wouldn’t let them flee through space.
If all four of them stuck together, they would last longer. Maybe long enough for reinforcements to arrive. The only advantage they had was that the Weeping Dragon wouldn’t cooperate with their enemies; if Reigan Shen or Malice showed up, it would become a three-way battle.
If no one came in time, they would all die.
Lindon could send Orthos and Little Blue away, but if they left, he and Dross wouldn’t last long.
[If we’re going to send them away, it’s got to be fast. We have a window that is sliiiiiding closed.]
I thought we could do it, Lindon thought.
He wasn’t talking about sending Orthos and Little Blue away, but he didn’t need to clarify. Dross could read his mind.
Lindon meant the pocket world. Their plan. “When we come out of here, the Dragon will run from us.” He’d thought they could do it.
So arrogant.
[We always knew it was arrogant, didn’t we? We decided to bet on each other. True, that’s not looking like it was a great bet, but at least we advanced quicker than anyone expected! Let us die knowing that we will be remembered in the history books. After our tragic, gruesome deaths.]
Orthos was knocked down into a nearby canyon, but it was a glancing blow. He’d be fine.
Little Blue was pursued through the sky by a swarm of lightning-dragons, wiping them out a handful at a time.
Lindon was separated, Consuming a Striker technique from the Dragon and sending it back. Even without Dross’ predictions, he could see the rest of the fight playing out. He could feel himself being backed into a corner.
The Dragon could feel it too. Lindon could taste it in the Dreadgod’s thoughts when he used Consume. The Weeping Dragon was enjoying this. It was letting off steam.
They all sensed the new powers at the same time.
Lindon’s spiritual sense lashed out to the east together with the Dragon’s. Their battle had carried them all over the western Blackflame Empire, but these new presences were coming from the direction of Blackflame City.