That seemed unsustainable to Lindon. They had to gain more than they lost or their faction would never grow.
But Malice and Fury had been fighting the dragons for centuries, so they knew the nature of their opponents. There were more factors at play here than he could know.
Mercy gave a third sigh. The deepest and heaviest of them all.
Dross was concerned. [Do you think she’s having breathing problems?]
Even Little Blue scurried up to lay a hand on Mercy’s knee and let out a worried cheep.
“It’s difficult,” Lindon said, “watching and not being able to affect anything.”
Mercy patted Little Blue with one blackened finger. “I had my chance. And I just…” She spread her hands and mimed dropping something.
“We still have Yerin.”
Truthfully, Lindon understood how she felt. He hated leaving his fate in the hands of others. But if it had to be someone, at least it was Yerin.
“That shouldn’t be her responsibility. It’s mine.”
Lindon had intended to lighten the mood, but he couldn’t help but saying, “You made it further than I did. I think I could have beaten Calan Archer or Brother Aekin, but I don’t know if I’d have been any good against anyone else. I could never have beaten you, for instance.”
That should encourage her, but it was also honest. She had fought far beyond her level.
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Did losing hurt you that much?”
“Oh, no, apologies, I didn’t mean to suggest that.”
“Aren’t you the one who fought an Underlord prince as a Truegold?”
Lindon hadn’t meant to make this about him, and he tried to backtrack, but she kept talking.
“I’m surprised to hear you say you could never win against someone, that’s all. If I asked you to punch a hole in the sky, I thought you’d say ‘Apologies, it might take me a few years.’”
Was that how she saw him?
Eithan and Northstrider had both encouraged him to think about himself from the perspective of others, so he probed a bit deeper. “I don’t see it like that. I try to do whatever I can, or whatever I have to, but even I know that sometimes there’s no way to win.”
Mercy released Little Blue and turned to look him in the eye. “Says who?”
The heavens? Lindon thought. Reality? Whoever decides what ‘truth’ is.
That would have been too rude to Mercy, so he didn’t say it aloud.
When he didn’t respond immediately, she continued. “You look different when you’re fired up to win and when you’re not. Did you know that? Usually your face is like this.” She scrunched up her eyebrows and firmed her jaw into an intense stare. “And then when you give up, you look like this.”
Her head drooped down and she used her fingertips to pull her lips into a frown.
Little Blue fell over laughing. It sounded like bells in a high wind.
Lindon couldn’t tell if Mercy was making fun of him or not. “Is that true?”
Dross popped into existence in front of him. [I’d say your face looks more like this.]
His mouth gaped open and his one eye grew huge, so that he looked like a shocked and betrayed child. A one-eyed, purple child.
“Do you think I wanted your best impression? Can’t you show me?”
[I can indeed! Thanks to Sir Northstrider, I now have the recordings from the Uncrowned King tournament.]
He projected an image onto the deck, though he used no light aspect, so Lindon was sure it was only an image in his mind.
It was a frozen image of Lindon in battle, dragon’s breath streaming from his palm, as he fought Naian Blackflame.
“That’s it!” Mercy cried, pointing to the projection. “That’s the face!”
So Dross sent it to her too. Lindon hadn’t asked for that.
The view changed. This time, it was an image of Lindon looking upward as Yerin fell toward him, sword raised. This came from one of the viewing constructs in the arena, so it was somewhat far back, but Lindon could see his own expression.
Dross had shown him this perspective before, and he remembered how weak and conflicted he looked.
Then he saw himself change.
Dross advanced the moment slowly, so Lindon watched as life kindled in his own eyes. There was no specific difference he could point to, but it was like a different person had taken over his body. Like his soul had been brought back from death.
[This next one is a creation of mine, but I think it’s even more accurate than a recording.]
Back in a small room in Moongrave, Lindon faced Charity and begged her to let him return home. The details of this one were fuzzier, slightly different than in Lindon’s memory, but he could see the weakness in his face. Doubt, hesitation; a slump of the shoulders, a flicker in the eyes as he tried to think his way free.
Nothing like the gaze of the man he’d seen before.
Dross released the projection, panting and leaving Lindon to think.
Was this what Eithan had meant about seeing himself as others saw him? Would this lead to his Overlord revelation?
“Gratitude,” Lindon said.
Mercy turned away and leaned both her forearms on the railing. Her hair blew behind her in the wind of their passage. “I can say all that to you, but I’ve thrown up three times since I lost.”
“You have?”
“Three times so far. I start thinking about mistakes I made, and that makes me think about what I should have done, and then it’s a spiral all the way down!”
Despite the subject, she still sounded pleasant.
“You’ve hidden it well,” he said. He wasn’t sure if she would consider that a compliment.
“Hmm…I don’t think I’m really trying to hide it, though. I’m just not letting those feelings decide what I do.”
At the front of the ship, Fury shot up. He went from loudly snoring to standing in a motion so fast that Lindon didn’t catch it.
His hair drifted up, and spiritual pressure weighed on them all as his veil slipped away. A shadow crept over the entire ship.
“Prepare for battle, kids,” Fury said. “They’re already here.”
At that, he kicked off the deck with such force that it sent the cloudship plummeting a hundred feet before it stabilized.
When they had all caught their balance—with Lindon sheltering a trembling Little Blue in his hand—Lindon turned to Eithan. “How long until we arrive?”
“Still four more hours. If you were wondering, I can’t see anything.”
The closer they got to Sky’s Edge, the more Lindon could see in the distance. And the more of the situation Eithan shared with them.
It always looked worse and worse.
Darkness collided with golden light in an explosion that lit up most of the horizon and pushed back entire banks of clouds. Even dozens of miles away, the spiritual sensations buffeted their cloudship.
This was why Heralds never came to open blows.
“They’re both holding back,” Mercy said. “If they weren’t, everyone below them would be dead.”
Eithan shaded his eyes as he peered at the battle. “Ideally, a balanced fight will look like this. The most advanced sacred artists will keep each other in check so that those below them are unaffected. Otherwise, all battles would start with the most advanced fighters annihilating the enemy’s entire force of Golds.”
Lindon supposed that made sense, but the problem was that the two sides were not balanced.
Fury wasn’t exchanging blows with the Abyssal Palace Herald who had been there before, but with Xorrus. The left hand of the Dragon King.
That meant at least two Heralds on one side against Fury, though the leader of Abyssal Palace didn’t seem to be taking part in the battle.
Worse, he was starting to see the hundred or so dragons flying circles around the floating Abyssal Palace fortress.