Bloodline (Cradle Book 9)

by Will Wight

  Eithan let the cloth catch the wind, where it billowed out to display an unbroken stretch of gray. The banner was blank.

  Jai Chen didn’t want to say anything, but Eithan saw the look on her face and sighed. “You didn’t give me time to get it sewn yet, but imagine how amazed you would have been if I did have a banner ready. Pretend that’s what happened.”

  A cry had gone up from those of the Jai clan who had extended their spiritual senses. “Underlord!”

  Ten or fifteen went down to their knees immediately.

  But not most of them.

  Eithan responded to their calls with a cheery smile. “Close enough!”

  “They’re going to recognize you,” Jai Chen said, her voice low.

  Most of the Jai remained standing, and they were not happy. Jai Hara herself spat at the foot of Eithan’s cloud. “We know who you are. There’s only one Arelius Underlord.”

  “That is not actually correct, but I do not represent my family. They make their own decisions.” Some of the standing Jai clan glanced to one another.

  “I embrace my true identity,” Eithan continued. “Personal acolyte to the Sage of Twin Stars himself, and one of the founding members of the Twin Star sect.”

  He strained himself to hold the banner higher, despite the thick wrapping around his hands.

  There was some fierce debate among the dozens of Jai artists in the back, but after a moment of struggle, Jai Hara begrudgingly lowered her head. “We don’t have food to share, but you can rest behind our lines until the Sage comes.”

  As their crowd from Sacred Valley was ushered into the Wilds, Jai Chen whispered to Eithan. “Thank you. We just need a place to recover for a while, and then we won’t impose on your hospitality anymore.”

  Eithan was lying face-down, his banner missing. Either the effort of holding it up had exhausted him, or he hadn’t wanted to stay in such a strange position for any longer.

  Now, however, the Archlord spoke straight into his cushion of dense cloud madra. “Impose? No, I simply ask that you give me a few days to prepare better accommodations than this. I couldn’t let our new sect die out in the cold.”

  Jai Chen didn’t know how to respond. On the one hand, having a sect backing them would solve most of their problems. She yearned to stop running and hiding, to settle down somewhere.

  On the other hand, there was no Twin Star sect.

  “I’m sorry, Archlord, but the sect…I was just—”

  “Making it up? Every organization in history has been made up by someone.”

  “We don’t have—”

  “A headquarters? There has been quite a bit of real estate around here leveled in a recent disaster. You may have heard about it.”

  “My brother—”

  “I’m not just looking for your brother.” His head lolled to one side, and he looked at her with a single blue eye. “From you, Jai Chen, with no pressure from me, I would like to know: if we could provide you with a home, would you want one?”

  She hesitated.

  “No commitment,” he assured her, “and pending your brother’s approval. You could both walk away if and when you wanted.”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “But it’s hard for me to believe it isn’t a trap.”

  She flinched as she said it. He was an Archlord, and she was doubting his given word.

  He let out a breath of relief. “Fantastic! It actually isn’t a trap this time; I just need someone who knows real sacred arts to sort through all these Irons to find some who might actually be worth teaching. It so happens that I have recently come into possession of a plot of flying farmland with plenty of sacred herbs and spirit-fruits to support the development of a small sect. So I appreciate you founding one.”

  Eithan dipped his head in what was probably supposed to be a bow. It was really just him pushing his face deeper into the cloud.

  Despite her misgivings, Jai Chen giggled.

  Northstrider crossed his legs and closed his eyes in midair, catching his breath and slowly recovering his spirit.

  The clouds below him were torn apart, the landscape devastated for miles. An abandoned fortress had been reduced to rubble, there was now a bay where once had been uninterrupted coastline, and one small mountain had been leveled while another one had burst into its place.

  “I’ll have to have my maps re-drawn,” Malice said with a sigh.

  She drifted up next to him out of a cloud of violet essence. Her dissolving armor lit up the sky, but it was nothing compared to the red light that retreated north.

  The Bleeding Phoenix, flying into the Trackless Sea.

  Not fleeing.

  [Behavioral deviation detected in the Bleeding Phoenix,] his oracle reported. [It acts according to unknown purpose.]

  Northstrider didn’t need the reminder. They both knew they hadn’t driven it off; it was flying somewhere with intention.

  “Do you think it’s feeding to regain its power?” Malice asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oooh, I know how much you love that.” She was smirking, he was sure, but she had always valued useless conversation. He continued cycling, seeing to his spirit, categorizing how much strength the battle with the Phoenix had cost him and how long it would take to recover.

  “He did this,” Malice said at last.

  “Yes.”

  It would be no mystery among the Monarchs who was responsible for the strange actions of the Phoenix. Only one among them even claimed to have any influence over the Dreadgods.

  “He has gone too far,” she said, and now he could feel her cold anger bleeding out into the world around her. “He’s toying with forces that could be the ruin of all of us. What could he possibly expect to gain from this?”

  Northstrider opened his eyes. “I will know soon.”

  Wearing more veils than he ever had in his life, Reigan Shen shoved his way through collapsed houses and upturned trees. He was still in his human body, and he was both sweating and breathing heavily.

  He felt as weak as an Iron. It was like wearing a suit so tight that it had burrowed into his skin.

  Even so, he wasn’t doing the work himself. He may be a sacred beast, but he wasn’t an animal.

  Jade-level constructs pushed beams aside, dispersed soil, and lifted boulders so he could pass. More scoured the area, clearing the entrance.

  It had taken him hours to reach this point, and finally the starting point was within reach. The last chunk of masonry rolled away, revealing a towering stone door. It was carved with the image of a gaunt, sunken human with many grasping hands, its eyes hollow and mouth open unnaturally wide.

  This was Subject One, at least as he had appeared long ago. A Dreadgod, though few knew that. The man who had become warped by hunger aura. The origin of their bloodline.

  Shen’s willpower was veiled, but still powerful. He commanded the door to open, and it obeyed.

  With great ceremony and a hissing release of power, the Nethergate swung open.

  Inside, a wood-paneled hallway was lit with flickering scripts. Finally, Reigan Shen had gained the wish he’d dreamed of ever since Tiberian’s death: entrance to the western labyrinth.

  Only the shallowest layer, to be certain. The bulk of the work was still left to be done, and the depths of the labyrinth would surely be locked down tight. Fortunately, he had the key.

  Reigan Shen strode into the tunnel, on his way to retrieve his new weapon.

  Epilogue

  With his Remnant arm in a scripted sling, Lindon faced the Ancestor’s Tomb. It had come through the Wandering Titan’s attack more or less intact.

  Part of its roof had caved in, one pillar was cracked, and it was covered with debris like a small town had dumped its garbage all over it.

  But Heaven’s Glory must have done their job well when they rebuilt it, because the Tomb still stood.

  There were no security measures left around it, all of them having been destroyed either by the trembling earth or roaring
winds, so he walked through the front doors of the Tomb easily.

  Once he stood inside the open temple-like room, he faced down the sealed door at the other end. A mural of the four Dreadgods covered the entrance.

  Lindon had learned many things from the Wandering Titan’s memories. Too many things, he would say; it was impossible to process all the impressions, instincts, and thoughts. Dross had been going through them, but even for him, it was difficult to separate what had come from the Titan and what from Lindon’s own mind.

  Still, a few themes were clear. One was that the Titan had detected its goal here. The one meal it needed. The source of hunger madra.

  When it had arrived and felt nothing more of the sort, the Dreadgod had assumed it wasn’t here. Like a dog chasing after a stick, only to never find it.

  But Lindon had more than a few reasons to suspect the Dreadgod’s prize was still here. Just locked away. Buried.

  Besides, Lindon’s arm had been strained and cracked by absorbing so much of the Titan’s power. He needed more weapons of hunger madra if he wanted to rebuild it. And improve it. Scavenging from dreadbeasts wouldn’t hold him forever.

  He had to pick his way across a field of debris as he crossed the room; evidently some people had used the Tomb as shelter during the Dreadgod’s attack. As it had been before, the inside of the Ancestor’s Tomb was just a wide-open space lined with pillars.

  At the end of the room stood an ornate door, sealed shut. The entrance was undamaged by the previous collapse of the building, which didn’t surprise him. If it was part of the labyrinth below, it had to be made of stronger stuff.

  Lindon had been reaching out for the door already, silence filling his mind where Dross’ chatter belonged, but he stopped as he noticed something.

  The door had no mechanism to open it and no clear script-circle, which meant he would have to use his authority to open it, but that wasn’t what had seized his attention. It was a trace of someone else’s authority over to the side of the hall, a little to the side of the door.

  An indentation in space. Like an invisible bump.

  Lindon’s alarm went up immediately. Someone had torn space here, and if it wasn’t him…

  He should call for help in case there was something deadly on the other side. Dross could have done that.

  The spirit wasn’t gone. Not quite. He drifted in Lindon’s soul, right around the base of his skull as usual, but Lindon didn’t see details. His eye, his boneless arms. Instead, Dross felt like a loose cloud of dream madra. Like a two-dimensional copy of his former self.

  Eithan insisted that it was possible to bring Dross back, but Lindon understood the nature of spirits. If Dross returned, there was no guarantee that he’d be himself anymore.

  Lindon shook himself free. Dross wasn’t here, but some of his passive enhancements to Lindon’s mind remained.

  He focused on the bump in space. It didn’t feel like a tunnel to him, or a trap. It felt like a sealed void key more than a tunnel somewhere else in the world.

  Though he supposed there could be anything inside the void key.

  He stretched out a tongue of Blackflame, infusing it with his authority and using it to slice through space. It was much easier than when he had tried the same thing with only his will; when he commanded the world to “Open,” he cut through the barrier separating the spaces almost without resistance.

  As soon as a doorway in midair unfurled, opening onto a huge room cluttered with various objects, he noticed two things more than any others: the art and the swords.

  This room actually had walls, and on those walls hung brightly colored tapestries, long black-and-white landscapes painted on scrolls, framed portraits, even decorative lights and constructs of slithering color that were clearly designed only for decoration.

  Between the paintings were swords. Some were elaborate and ancient, shining with power, while others were dull, pitted, or rusty. Some were just hilts, their madra blades having faded away to essence, and still others had Forged blades that were perfectly preserved.

  A scripted cauldron sat cold in the corner, next to buckets, boxes, bags, and bundles of herbs, spirit-fruits, pills, and elixirs. Next to it was a rack of sacred artist’s robes, all black, many of them nicked and cut.

  Lindon’s stomach twisted.

  He noticed the second rack, filled with more black robes, all of them shredded as though by errant sword-slices.

  And the rack of cycling swords next to them, all radiating sharp aura.

  This had to be the Sword Sage’s private storage space. It was the only thing that made sense.

  But that was impossible.

  “It can’t be his,” Lindon said aloud. “It’s too old. The world would have healed up the entrance by now, and I would never have found it.”

  When no one responded, Lindon turned slightly over his shoulder.

  “I’m talking to you.”

  An onyx statue of a curled-up panther sat next to the entrance, where there had been nothing a moment before. To be fair, the illusion was convincing, even to Lindon. But he had senses the inhabitants of Sacred Valley couldn’t fool.

  That, and Lindon had felt the Path of the White Fox following him before he opened the portal.

  The onyx panther uncurled itself, its tail spreading out into five copies. The tails flexed out as the cat stretched, opening its jaws wide in a yawn, and as it did so it grew taller. Its snout extended, and its smooth surface melted to gray and then to a coat of white fur.

  “You have traveled far down your Path, child,” Elder Whisper murmured.

  “So have you, I see. And you have kept that to yourself.”

  He did not hide the tone of accusation in his voice.

  Elder Whisper prowled around Lindon. “I did not deceive anyone. At first, we taught our descendants to focus on one technique at a time as an adaptation to the suppression field. But memory fades so quickly, and time is the greatest liar of all.”

  “If you had the power to open this space, you could have helped us fight the Dreadgod.”

  “To face one of the four beasts with illusions is to face down a lion with a spider’s web.”

  Elder Whisper kept an illusion of himself standing still and talking as his real form crept out beneath a cloak of invisibility.

  Lindon traced the invisible one with his eyes. “That’s how we beat it.”

  “When you lose what you fought to defend, and your opponent leaves you alive out of mercy, is that victory?” Elder Whisper sighed and let his illusions drop. “Perhaps it is. In any case, any victory against one of them is temporary. That is why I preserved this place.”

  Lindon swept his gaze over the isolated space. “Why didn’t you take what you needed and leave it closed?”

  “While I can visit Heaven’s Glory unseen whenever I wish, it would be quite another matter if I were to drag a trunk behind me in my teeth. And the ability to open these spaces is quite separate from the power to create one of my own. In that, you have me outmatched.

  “Sages avoid these lands. The last one to visit, the man who left this space, was asking forbidden questions. Which is the best way to find forbidden answers.”

  A purple-and-white flame kindled over a cylinder tucked away in the corner.

  It was about as high and broad as Lindon’s waist, and made of dull bronze metal. Scripts wrapped around the cylinder, and it took Lindon a moment to analyze them.

  When he activated the scripts in the correct sequence, the cylinder fell away, revealing a tall rectangular box beneath. This one, he had to cut through with Blackflame.

  Finally, a cube about the size of his head rested in the third layer. It throbbed and pulsed, and Lindon recognized the taste of the madra inside.

  As he recognized the symbol on the top: the moon crest of the Arelius clan.

  “The Sage brought this to our lands,” Elder Whisper continued, “a tool granted to him by a Monarch. A key to the prison at the depths of the labyrinth. But he was
not capable of delving deeply enough.”

  Lindon’s will was enough to open the box. It wasn’t made to keep people out so much as to keep something in.

  If it was what Lindon suspected, he needed to be fast.

  The box opened to reveal a shriveled, mummified, chalk-white left hand.

  Appetites Lindon had absorbed from the Wandering Titan burned to life, and he longed to consume the hand whole, to tear it apart with his teeth and let it satisfy his stomach and his soul.

  He slammed the box shut again. “We can’t open this,” Lindon said firmly. “It will drag the Titan straight back.”

  Elder Whisper sat on his haunches, tails waving smoothly behind him. “Wei Shi Lindon. Would you like to know how to kill the Dreadgods?”

  THE END

  Cradle: Volume Nine

  Bloodline

  Bloopers

  Lindon braced himself. Here they were, ready to return to Sacred Valley. The time had come.

  Nothing between him and his family except a Dreadgod.

  [Could be worse!] Dross pointed out. [There could be two Dreadgods.]

  Eithan leaned over to whisper in Lindon’s ear. “That, children, is what we call foreshadowing.”

  Lindon felt Eithan’s presence before the door to the second floor swung open, and Yerin was already yelling. “Not a candle’s chance in a rainstorm.”

  Eithan folded his arms and looked at her curiously. “I’ve always wondered. How many of those do you have?”

  “Not a pig’s chance in a butcher shop,” Yerin said. “Not a star’s chance in daylight. Not a sheep’s chance in a tiger den. Not a snowflake’s chance in summer. Not a Copper’s chance.”

  “A Copper’s chance in what?” Lindon asked.

  “Copper doesn’t have much of a chance anywhere.”

  Eithan stroked his chin. “Do you make these up on the spot, or do you have an extraordinary memory for folksy idioms?”