by Will Wight
Yerin appreciated the scale involved, but that didn’t change what she needed. “It’s about to trip over a boundary field that’ll make it weaker, if that helps you. The script’s supposed to work better and faster the stronger you are, and it’s got me weaker than a day-old kitten.”
“Is that so?” Malice murmured. “Poor thing. However, I’m afraid that there’s more. Last time, my focus on the Bleeding Phoenix and my subsequent recovery cost my people all over the world. We lost entire cities, alliances shifted, and territory changed hands while my eyes were turned.”
Yerin straightened her back. “Came armed for that. If all the Monarchs are riding in one boat, you can’t sink each other, true? Willing to make this my prize for the tournament.”
The final prize of the tournament had hovered in the back of her mind since she’d won. She and Lindon had spent a while talking about it, and while he was full of ideas, even he wasn’t sure what she should spend it on.
The obvious answer was “power,” but there wasn’t much more power the Monarchs could give her. And what else could they grant her that she couldn’t earn on her own?
Malice put a hand to her lips in a show of surprise. “Are you now? Well, then, how can we waste time?”
She swirled her hand, and darkness swallowed everything but Yerin and Malice. They still stood on a solid surface, but the whole world was blacker than a nightmare.
Yerin found that she could understand what Malice was doing even though her spiritual perception was blacked out. They hadn’t physically moved anywhere; this was just a way of communicating over great distances, like some kind of Monarch-level messenger construct.
She supposed she was sensing Malice’s will through the working, which was a strange feeling. She needed to get used to that.
A call had gone out in many different directions, and while Yerin couldn’t trace most of them, she knew one at least had gone out to Reigan Shen and his faction.
She knew that because the Blood Sage appeared before them almost instantly, the image of a roaring white lion announcing his presence.
The Sage of Red Faith was a tall, skeletal man with white hair all the way down to his knees and red lines tracing down from the corners of his eyes so that it always looked like he was weeping bloody tears. He was hunched forward like a scarecrow about to fall off its post, scanning the darkness.
When he saw Yerin, his eyes lit with a feverish light. He lunged forward, reaching for her, though his image didn’t move through the darkness at all.
“My girl!” he whispered. “Dear, sweet, wise, wonderful girl. You did it, you did it, you did it! Truly, it is the master’s joy to see his apprentice surpass him, but I would have never—”
“You’re not my master,” Yerin said, but he didn’t pause for even an instant to listen.
“—thought that you would proceed from such a great state of instability. Give me your memory, let me see it, and that’s the end. Our work will be complete. You and I will be responsible for the greatest revolution in the sacred arts since Emriss—no, we will be beyond even her; she can help us spread the word, others must know! Give me the dream tablet, make me a tablet, I want to see your memory, I want to taste it.”
“I don’t recall inviting you, Red Faith.” Malice sounded amused rather than disgusted, as Yerin had imagined she would be. “I’m surprised to see Shen trusted you with the authority to speak on his behalf.”
“Shen? We don’t need Shen anymore, don’t you understand?” He was still fixated on Yerin. “You hate Redmoon Hall, I know you do. I’ll tear it down with my own hands. Not a rat will remain alive. I’ll give you their heads, or I’ll deliver them to you alive, or I’ll pay you, I can pay you—”
He kept ranting, waving his hands in demonstration, but he no longer made a sound.
Another woman sighed in relief, though Yerin hadn’t seen her arrive. “Thank you, Malice. Our meetings are never productive with him around.”
Her skin was a human shade of dark brown, but it had the texture of bark. A reminder of her original life as a tree, like her hair, which was made of glowing blue-green vines braided together. She tapped the invisible ground with her staff, which was topped with a diamond shaped like a blooming flower.
Emriss gave Yerin a kindly smile. “He is correct in one respect: there is much to be learned from your advancement. I hope you do indeed share your experiences, though…not necessarily with him.”
Red Faith was biting at his fingernails as though to chew away the restriction of silence.
Yerin dipped her head to Emriss. “Thanks, Monarch. I know he’s a cockroach walking like a man, but he did help me out of a tough spot.”
Red Faith nodded furiously, pointing to Yerin. An indescribable, invisible ripple broke the darkness, and he pushed through Malice’s command for silence.
“Don’t be close-minded! She could share with all of us! This is the way forward! This is—”
His voice vanished again.
“Now, where did he find the authority for that?” Malice asked.
Emriss shook her head. “He is very old, and craftier than he appears. Who can say for certain what tricks he has in his pockets?”
Yerin couldn’t signal the Sage of Red Faith. The two Monarchs could sense everything she did, even in a sealed space like this. Maybe especially here.
But she lingered on his eyes longer than she needed to, hoping he would notice.
He didn’t stop chewing on his fingers, but she thought she saw his intelligence shine through for a moment. He gave her a brief, barely perceptible nod.
That’s a start, she thought.
When the fight for Sacred Valley was over, she had a use for him. Long ago, Eithan had stolen one of this man’s dream tablets for her. He’d given it to Yerin, which had helped her cultivate her Blood Shadow.
He’d gotten it from the labyrinth.
Where he had once performed experiments on the Bleeding Phoenix.
The dream tablet hadn’t been thorough; it was more of a personal recollection on his understanding of Blood Shadows. She wasn’t clear whether he’d had the entire Phoenix down there, or just pieces of it, or if the labyrinth was just where you went to hide if you wanted to do Dreadgod research.
But it was a firm connection between the Bleeding Phoenix and the labyrinth her master had been exploring before he died.
Now that she was back in Sacred Valley, it was time to track down some answers.
Or almost time. Once the other Dreadgod was taken care of.
While Yerin got the Sage’s attention, another woman had appeared, beneath the shining image of a golden knight. She was dressed in intricate golden armor, but she had her helmet off, revealing messy blonde hair.
Larian of the Eight-Man Empire looked around the circle, stopping to glare at the Blood Sage. “Who invited Red Faith? I won’t speak anywhere he does.”
Red Faith shouted something, but it released no sound.
“…perfect,” Larian finished.
A red dragon head with golden eyes snapped at the darkness, and Northstrider strode out from beneath that emblem. His hair was still trimmed and neat, his facial hair short, and he wore clean clothes. Similar to how he had appeared in the finals of the Uncrowned King tournament.
Yerin had expected him to go back to his homeless wanderer look by now.
“Has the time come for the champion to name her wish?” Northstrider asked.
He gave Yerin a…she couldn’t call it a smile, but it was at least an approving look. “We should all be of one mind. Let her state her desire so that we may grant it in all haste. I, for one, do not wish to take my gaze from the Titan for longer than I must.”
Yerin didn’t know if they were waiting on anyone else—had the Arelius family even been invited? What about the Ninecloud Court?—but she knew an opening when she saw one.
“You’re cutting to the heart of it,” Yerin said. “I want you to keep the Wandering Titan away from where it’s going.
Don’t have to try and kill it, just push it away until we can get people out.”
There was silence around the circle. Malice looked amused.
Northstrider folded black-scaled arms. “There are restrictions on what requests we fulfill and how we fulfill them. If there were not, the winner could wish for one of us as a slave, or for the death of an entire country. One of those restrictions is that we will not satisfy a request that endangers the life of a Monarch or the existence of their faction.”
“Fighting a Dreadgod counts,” Larian said.
“It’s headed into a formation that keeps it tied up tight,” Yerin insisted. “This might be your chance to bury it for good.”
Emriss sighed. “That’s what we thought before.”
She leaned heavily on her flower-topped staff, and an image drifted up into the air ahead of her: a black-striped white tiger with an oversized white halo. It was big as an elephant, and Yerin recognized it from descriptions as the Silent King, though as a Dreadgod it was relatively tiny. It would have looked like a pet next to the Titan.
The only thing huge about it was the army of Remnants, sacred beasts, and blank-eyed sacred artists stretched out over the countryside behind it. And Yerin recognized that countryside.
Sacred Valley. It looked somewhat different—the mountains around it were shaped differently in ways she couldn’t quite put her finger on—but it was clearly the same place.
“The suppression field over the labyrinth will indeed weaken Dreadgods,” Emriss said. “Within minutes. It is designed to do precisely that. However…”
A flame kindled in the distance like an orange star, growing quickly as it approached until a fireball swallowed the entire horizon. It fell on Sacred Valley like the sun was collapsing.
“…it will do the same for us.”
The fireball itself split up into a thousand sparks as it sank closer and closer to Sacred Valley. Flames rained down all over, catching trees alight, but they didn’t even burn most of the sacred artists in the Silent King’s horde. Much less the Dreadgod itself.
All the power had been stolen by the suppression field.
The vision winked out.
“The Silent King is theoretically the most vulnerable of the Dreadgods, yet we were no more successful in damaging it there than anywhere else.” Emriss shook her head. “What we did learn is that the Dreadgods are unable to retrieve their prize, even without our intervention, and will soon forget its location and return to their random wandering. There are other entrances to the labyrinth, and they’ve never been successful in breaching those either.”
Yerin paid close attention to the story, filing it away for later, but none of that solved her problems.
“If I pare it down to the bone,” Yerin said, “you’re saying you won’t help.”
Emriss moved her gaze to the Akura Monarch. “Any evacuation of the native population should fall to Malice.”
Yerin didn’t wait for Malice to respond. “And what if that was my wish? What if I’m asking you to make sure everybody in the land gets a safe place to go?”
“Nah.” The blonde woman in the golden armor scratched vigorously at the back of her neck; uncomfortably so, as though she were trying to rid herself of a flea. “Can’t let you waste your request. Doesn’t look good for us if word gets out that we sent the best young Lady in the world away with a glass of water and a pat on the head, would it?”
Yerin was growing irritated by all these restrictions, so she fired back. “Glass of water’s worth a long stretch more than what I’ve gotten from you so far.”
The woman barked a chuckle, but still seemed more focused on scratching her elusive itch.
“Yerin,” Malice said, “didn’t you mention being uncomfortable in the valley? Why is that, do you think?”
Yerin saw through the tactic immediately. Malice was trying to steer her toward making some different wish.
Every second they wasted here was a second closer to Sacred Valley’s death.
Holding up two fingers, Yerin addressed the room. “Don’t have time to dance around, so there’s two trails we can take here. One, help me with the Dreadgod, and we’re all squared up. Two, I say you’ve all broken your promise to the Uncrowned. I’m making a wish inside your rules, and you’re turning me down. Monarchs should keep their word.”
Larian gave her a dangerous look, and Northstrider frowned. “Do not take advantage of your station to threaten us,” he said. “You do not understand the scope of what is involved.”
His tone rubbed Yerin the wrong way, but he wasn’t wrong, so she only spoke irritably. “Fine. Make me an offer.”
“I think I will,” Malice said. “We can fix you.”
“Your spirit and body merged, but they’re not balanced yet,” Larian said. She rapped her knuckles on her armor. “We see that from time to time. It can happen with new Heralds, and those who advance too fast. You’re both.”
Emriss picked up smoothly from where the Eight-Man Empire’s representative had left off. “Your condition is unique, and it’s possible that you would have reached equilibrium with enough time. However, being inside the suppression field so soon after your advancement has distorted you further.”
Yerin’s stomach twisted. “Feel fine when I’m not in the valley.”
“Of course. You’re still more than any other Overlord; your limitations will show only in conditions of extreme spiritual stress. Unfortunately, that includes any time you attempt to advance. The most likely scenario is that you spend the rest of your life as an incomplete pseudo-Herald.”
The rest of her life.
It didn’t hit Yerin as hard as she’d thought it would. She had been prepared for something like this when she’d advanced in the first place. At least she would keep the advancement she already had. As long as she stayed alive, there was a chance to find another solution.
And Emriss wouldn’t have brought this up if she didn’t have some kind of cure.
The Sage of Red Faith gestured furiously, and he looked like he was trying to catch Yerin’s attention, but Emriss held up a hand to soothe him.
“As I said, this case is unique. There are possible solutions, and it could be that if you avoid further spiritual stress for long enough, your body will balance itself.”
“Taking care of the Wandering Titan would save me worlds of stress.”
Malice leaned around to peek at Yerin. “Of course…the best solution would be for us to stabilize this fusion for you. It would save you years of suffering and roadblocks.”
“Agreed,” Northstrider said. “It is the one change we can make that will simultaneously grant you great power and improve your day-to-day life.”
Yerin looked from one Monarch to another, and they all seemed to have made up their minds. Even Red Faith was steadily nodding.
With a brief effort, Yerin tapped into the minor Divine Treasure resting in her soul, like a loop around her core. A black ring sprang into being over her head, distinct even from the darkness behind her.
“I’m not cracked in the head,” Yerin said quietly, as her Broken Crown burned in the darkness over her. “You can snap me like an old bone anytime you want. Don’t intend disrespect. But there’s a Dreadgod breathing down my collar right now.”
She met the eyes of all the others one at a time. None looked away. “Came here for help, ‘cause I’m at the end of my road, and fixing me doesn’t fix that. It’s a shiny prize, and I’d chew it over any other day. But today, I’m drowning, and you’re throwing me a bottle of wine.”
She let her Broken Crown vanish. “So you tell me what I’m supposed to make with that.”
Malice’s lips quirked up, and it might be Yerin’s imagination, but she thought the Monarch looked a little impressed. “Would it ease your worry to know that the Wandering Titan has not entered the valley yet? It has settled down to feed, and will remain in place for at least a short while.”
That was more than nothing, but it made Yerin even m
ore eager to get this over with. If the Monarchs weren’t going to help, she had to return and move everybody away. She had some time now, but that didn’t mean she wanted to spend time polishing words.
Northstrider’s face, as usual, was stone. “We are united in recommending that you correct the instability of your spirit, a problem for which there is no quick cure besides rewriting reality itself. If you would prefer us to evacuate this territory before the Wandering Titan arrives, we will do that instead.”
Yerin breathed deeply. She hated feeling like she was cornered like this, and the fact that they had left her with no option other than to do as they wished made her want to refuse out of sheer brick-headed stubbornness.
But that would be stupid.
“This will help me work in Sacred Valley?” she asked.
“The suppression field will affect you no more than your peers,” Emriss confirmed. “You won’t be able to fully express the powers of a Herald until you reach the peak of Archlord no matter what we do, but this will remove the weaknesses and potential problems that might prevent you from getting there.”
“And you’re all telling me to do this?”
“You’d be stupid not to,” Larian said bluntly. “You’ve got time to get anybody you really like to safety, and even if everybody else dies, you’ll be able to save more later.”
The Blood Sage nodded along, which almost made Yerin change her mind.
“Right, then.” She’d hoped to return to Sacred Valley with her chin up, proudly saying that she’d taken care of the Dreadgod. But if she couldn’t do that, at least the suppression field wouldn’t cut so many of her strings anymore.
So there wouldn’t be any confusion, she continued. “As the Uncrowned King—Queen, whatever—I’m wishing for you to fix me up. Do what you can for me.”
And, because she didn’t want to leave too much of a bad impression on the collected Monarchs, she added, “Thank you.”
Though this was the wish they had decided on her behalf, so her gratitude had definite limits.
