Her world narrowed, and that was all she did. She swung her sword at the claw that fell.
[Yerin, you’ve got to run! Yerin!]
Dross’ voice faded away.
All Yerin could hear was the ring of steel on steel.
Ziel was hovering high in the sky, hurling techniques down into the battle from gaps in the Weeping Dragon’s storm, when he felt the Penance arrow miss.
Most of those gaps were created by attacks—madra from Yerin, usually, that broke through the dark clouds in a wave of silver-red.
Ziel had watched the whole battle with the Oracle Sage’s blessing and following Dross’ instructions, keeping the storm or the movement of the Weeping Dragon from killing Orthos, Little Blue, Mercy, or Yerin. His role wasn’t flashy, but he’d slid aside enough glancing blows to know he was making an impact.
[There!] Dross lit up a spot with purple, and Ziel dutifully hurled a script-circle in time to stop a movement from the Dragon from toppling a mountain onto Mercy.
But the Penance arrow had flashed by the Weeping Dragon’s head. Ziel’s heart was ashes.
That had been it. Their last, best chance.
[Grab it!] Dross called. [Ah, not with your hands. That might kill you. Grab it with a script; we don’t want to lose it.]
Ziel Forged a ring of emerald runes that encircled the empty space where the arrow was flying. When Penance tried to pass through, it slowed. And broke the ring.
He Forged another, then another, but that didn’t take his full attention.
He was watching the fight.
The Dragon was infuriated by the attack on its life, shaking the clouds with its roar. It was focused on Yerin now, hammering her with lightning and claws.
She was about to die.
Somewhere behind him, Ziel felt the arrow finally crawl to a stop in one of his script-circles.
Dross, can you show me what to do?
[Well, uh, not exactly. I’m not as powerful as I was in my original body. I’m not a complete copy of myself, more like a smaller one. I can guess!]
Good, Ziel thought. He used a script to toss himself the arrow. Don’t tell me how likely this is to work. Just help me.
[I have tried to talk everyone out of sacrificing their lives today. Why is no one listening to me?]
How many lives is it worth to take down a Dreadgod?
Ziel knew the answer to that.
It was worth at least one.
His core was almost totally empty again, but he squeezed the last madra out. He dropped his Enforcer technique, and his shield. Even his aura control left him, and he began to fall.
Green runes spun around him.
The power of the Penance arrow had already numbed his hand. His hand might have died, but he didn’t care; at least his grip hadn’t loosened.
He had no authority over this weapon. He couldn’t use it himself.
But he had done nothing while the Weeping Dragon killed his friends once. This time, he would do more. He would do something.
Silver runes sprang up around the green ones.
Without his madra, the Grand Oath Array had been burning its own structure to fuel itself. Unless Lindon could repair it, this would be the last use of the Rune Queen’s masterpiece.
All his soulfire, all his madra, all his will went into this one technique.
And in the sky above the clouds, a massive shield appeared. Bigger than when he had first advanced to Sage.
The Shield Icon sang in his heart.
Beneath him, the Weeping Dragon was approaching rapidly as he fell. It looked like he was falling into a vast river of sapphire scales.
With force aura, he pried open his dead fingers and released the white arrow with the gleaming black arrowhead. It fell next to him.
Ziel turned his attention to the rings of script flying around him. He focused them both onto the arrow.
This Dreadgod was the cause of endless suffering. All the pain he’d ever felt in his life, all the lives taken, they found their target.
A lifetime of fury burst from him in one word.
“KILL!” the Shield Sage roared.
For all the people this death would protect, the Shield Icon approved.
Both scripts activated at once.
The Penance arrow shot down, accelerated by a circle of force and time.
The Dreadgod reacted to the hostile intention, but too late. The arrow covered the distance instantly.
Instead of a moving point, it looked like a burning white line connecting earth and heaven.
A line that pierced the Dreadgod down the middle.
Ziel slammed into the Weeping Dragon’s skin, and bones snapped, but his body was sturdy now. He sank fingers into the scales, though sharp edges cut him down to the bone.
“I killed you!” Ziel shouted. “Me!”
[I…I don’t think it can hear you,] Dross pointed out.
The earthquake of the Weeping Dragon’s convulsions tossed Ziel, but they slowed gradually.
The Dreadgod’s life had come to an end.
20
Akura Malice had watched over most of the fight against the Weeping Dragon from far away, but she stepped in eagerly when she felt its defeat. The second the battle ended, her soul oath released her, and she moved.
The Monarch walked out of shadow onto a scene of complete devastation.
Malice was no stranger to Dreadgod battlefields. She had created more than a few of them herself. But the objective of fighting a Dreadgod was usually to minimize its destruction, which often prevented the land from becoming this…nightmare made manifest.
From one end of the sky to the other, the earth looked as though it had been tilled by a cosmic farmer. Mountain ranges were torn down, but new mounds of earth rose in different places. Floods churned and washed down valleys, while lightning snaked around corners to hunt down prey.
The maps would have to be re-drawn, but there wasn’t much of significance in this corner of her northwestern empire. If the battle had strayed further north, she might have lost important fortifications, and south of here was Sacred Valley.
If she had to lose something, this was a small price to pay.
She would have paid far greater. Lindon was on the verge of death.
That was exactly where she wanted him.
If he died, he would pass his power to the other Dreadgods. It pained her that the blow on the Weeping Dragon was lethal; that would be a difficult problem to deal with tomorrow.
But for today, she had a window of time before the Dragon finished dying.
Shadows crept out from beneath her, sliding along the terrain. It was hard to tell how much time she had left before the Dreadgod died—the Void Icon and the Storm Icon had both been used to obscure the future here. Though both workings were fading, she still couldn’t rely on her glimpses of the future, so she had to lean on her experience. In all of history, to her knowledge, the Weeping Dragon had only been killed once.
Malice had to be quick.
Her shadows crept up to Mercy, Orthos, and Little Blue. The lockdown of the Weeping Dragon was fading, so she would be able to transport them away soon.
With those in her keeping, she could control Lindon. But she only needed so many points of leverage.
Malice summoned her bow. The shaft shimmered like crystalline ice, and she Forged an arrow on the string.
She would rather have the Silent King Bow. Truly a unique item made of irreplaceable components. Worthy of Reigan Shen’s collection. But it would be too hard to slip a Dreadgod weapon into the space connected to her shadow without a claim of authority over it. She would have to pick it up herself.
In the instant after she appeared, Malice took aim at Yerin.
Casually, she loosed her arrow.
Yerin was too weakened to resist. She was on the verge of death already, and even the most halfhearted attack from Malice carried echoes of the Bow and Shadow Icons. And if you took Dreadgod and Abidan weapons out of contention, her bow was top-class.