Underlord (Cradle Book 6)

by Will Wight

  She looked only a little older than Lindon, and her spirit carried the weight of an Underlord.

  She passed the Blood Shadow without a glance. Though the Shadow struck out with a Goldsign, the woman evaded without a thought, landing on one knee at Kiro's feet.

  “First prince,” she said, “this place is not safe for you. Please leave it to me.”

  He let his helmet vanish, giving Lindon a clear look at his face. He seemed surprised...and he was sweating. Maybe Lindon had pressed him harder than he'd thought. “Meira? Did you—”

  He cut off, conjuring his helmet again, as a silver-and-black blur followed Meira out of the forest. Yerin hurled a wave of razor-edged madra at her prey, but Kiro protected the kneeling woman with his shield.

  Yerin landed, panting. Her hair was in disarray, her Skysworn armor chipped, and her skin was pale. She breathed heavily, her eyes sunken, like she'd been fighting for days. Her appearance reminded him of the time he'd met her, after she had been on the run for weeks.

  But she was still alive. She hadn't been swallowed by the Blood Shadow.

  Lindon struggled to his feet, but he was in no shape to fight. He would have to find a way to distract the other two so they could retreat. But how would they escape from two Underlords?

  “Dross,” Lindon said aloud, “keep calling for help.”

  Neither of them knew if there was anyone in range, but Dross kept trying. They were closer to the Blackflame lines than the Seishen Kingdom, so there should be help coming. If only they could hang on.

  And if the attack wasn’t as broad as he feared it was. Even now, he could hear distant, deafening explosions.

  The gray-haired Underlady peeked over the edge of the shield. “You found the Blackflame? I will take care of him, my lord, don't worry.”

  Yerin glanced over at Lindon.

  Lindon hefted the axe. He still had madra left; his shoulder was already knitting together, and he couldn’t stand still. He walked out from the trees, gathering Blackflame into his left hand and holding his axe in the right.

  [If Lindon fights again,] Dross said to her, [he’ll last…ten seconds? Five seconds. I’m betting five.]

  Yerin turned away from him, holding her sword up to bar his way. “Catch a breath or two. You've had your turn.”

  Lindon stopped. “He’s exaggerating. It isn’t that bad.”

  “Yeah, I’d bet on ten seconds myself.” She tapped the bracer of her armor with one finger. “Caught two scraps of a message. It’s crumbling to pieces out there, but Underlords are heading to bail us out. Just have to hang on.”

  “You can dance a round after you catch a breath or two. Hop in when you feel like I could use a ten-second holiday.” She strode forward, moving more naturally in the Skysworn armor than she ever had before.

  As part of the same motion, Yerin and her Blood Shadow spread out, walking to either side of the Underlords. “You've about drained me dry,” Yerin said, looking across at her opposite. “Now let’s see if you can bury me.”

  Both versions of Yerin raised their swords.

  Meira laughed and brushed her hand to one side in a negligent gesture. Life madra flashed, affecting the aura, and branches twisted unnaturally down to grab at Yerin and her Shadow. Trees bent all the way over to snatch them.

  Then they burst into chips of wood.

  Entire trees exploded under the Endless Sword resonating from two sources, releasing a deafening roar like a million logs chopped at once.

  Yerin dashed in, slashing at Kiro, who met her sword with his.

  Her Blood Shadow lunged at Meira.

  And in the first second, Lindon would have sworn he was watching a fight between four Underlords.

  He had personally felt how strong Kiro's blows were. Without the enhancement of the meat from Ghostwater or his own full-body Enforcer techniques, he would have crumpled under a single strike. But when Yerin's sword clashed with his, the Underlord was the one under pressure.

  Yerin struck more than once in every exchange. As he defended with his shield and inflated his sword to massive size, plunging it down on her, she ducked to one side, slashing grooves into his armor with the invisible claws of the Endless Sword. At the same time, she lashed out with a Striker technique that blasted at his eyes, forcing himself to raise his shield higher. She never stopped. Her every move flowed seamlessly into the next without a blink in between; when he raised his shield, she was already striking at his feet, moving to attack from a different angle, drawing her sword-arms back for a follow-up strike. She was a spinning, flashing whirlwind of destruction.

  She held nothing back, throwing herself into the fight as though this battle were her last.

  And her Shadow was her equal.

  Lindon had heard that the Blood Shadows of Redmoon Hall made them worth two sacred artists of their level, but he'd never seen that to be true. Yan Shoumei, the Redmoon Truegold in Ghostwater, had used her Shadow as an extension of her sacred arts, like a cloak or a weapon. He'd never seen her fight all-out, but he couldn't imagine that the Shadow gave her enough of an advantage to count as a true copy of herself. At most, it would give her an edge over other sacred artists at her level.

  Longhook, the Redmoon Underlord, had fought with his Shadow in the form of a weapon as well. Lindon had seen him overpower Eithan with it, but not to the degree that Lindon would have expected from a two-on-one fight.

  But here, for the first time, he caught a glimpse of what the Blood Shadow could be. It fought like a mirror of Yerin focused on a different opponent. It sent silver-and-red crescents flying at Meira, tangling her scythe in sword-bladed arms and invisible clashes from the Endless Sword, cutting her like dozens of invisible knives. They didn't cut the Underlady's skin deeply, but left shallow gouges all over.

  Her dress was still intact, as was the haft of her scythe, but wounds still appeared on her skin. This was the effect of blood madra; it affected flesh more easily than anything else. The Blood Shadow might have trouble cutting a tree, but it would have no trouble slicing through a cow.

  Lindon wasn't sure if the Shadow was weaker than Yerin or if it had a more troubling opponent, because it was pressed on the back foot more often than the real Yerin. Meira pushed it back, shoving it away, keeping it on the defensive. Until it backed into Kiro.

  Then, as though they'd planned it all along, the Blood Shadow spun and refocused on a new target.

  Yerin struck at the same time, sending seven individual slashes of sword madra at Prince Kiro—one from her sword and six from her Goldsigns. Each crackled with aura, until the prince faced a silver storm. He flooded his shield with madra, calling up the gray half-dome in front of him that he'd used to defend against dragon's breath.

  And behind him, the Blood Shadow drove its sword through his back.

  The Underlord stiffened, his shield faltering. The last dregs of Yerin's techniques pushed through the fading wall, lashing him, stripping pieces of his armor from his back. That armor had prevented the Shadow's sword from penetrating all the way, but it still stuck about six inches into the back of his ribs.

  Lindon only caught a glimpse of the wound for an instant before Meira, shrieking, hauled the Blood Shadow back. Her arms were shredded by the Shadow's retaliation, but she ignored her wounds, tossing the spirit one-handed into a nearby tree.

  Her screams turned into sobs as she saw Kiro, and she dropped to her knees.

  Green light flared around her. Roots and grass rose from the ground, weaving together in a wall, shoving Yerin away. The pink flowers in her hair shone, and vibrant green aura engulfed Prince Kiro's wound. A second later, he drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

  Lindon released a bar of dragon's breath.

  This wasn't a game. The two had attacked without warning—attacked sacred artists younger and weaker than they were. Lindon might not have been able to keep up with the fight in his condition, but one technique was enough. He had been waiting for the opening where it might do some good.

&n
bsp; The fire punched through the roots easily enough, and he poured the technique through the barrier, drilling a hole.

  When the Blackflame ended, he looked through the new gap in the wall. He saw only green.

  Leaves of emerald madra spreading from the Underlady's hand had blocked his attack. Their edges danced with soulfire that they greedily absorbed. The black fire should have driven a hole straight through the leaves, but instead, the fire madra was dispersed into essence.

  Hurriedly, Lindon readied another blast.

  The green light around Meira blazed up into a column that stretched into the night sky above her. In an instant, the column bloomed into branches and resolved into the image of a tree; a massive, mythical tree that rose over the rest of the forest.

  Lindon's gut tightened in fear.

  Meira looked at him through the hole, her eyes absolutely empty. “You are all dead,” she said quietly.

  Then she raised something in her fist: a loose blue stone that looked like a gritty ball of sand. A gatestone.

  She crushed it, and in a flash of blue, she vanished.

  The wall of roots fell when she disappeared, which allowed Lindon to see that Kiro had gone too. That was a pity; he had hoped to kill one of them. Now they would return.

  [Here’s some good news,] Dross said. [If they do come back, I have a combat solution prepared for Prince Kiro. One hundred percent ready to go! It wasn’t too complicated, as these things go. I have a partial prediction for the one called Meira as well, though if you could spare some more Dream Well water, then I'd really knock your feet off.]

  Lindon walked out, looking from Yerin to her Blood Shadow. “Gratitude,” he said, though his feelings were more complicated than that. He was grateful, but...he had also thought he'd caught up to Yerin enough to fight beside her. He felt useless.

  “I've never seen you fight like that,” he said. “You were...”

  He trailed off as Yerin's eyes rolled up in her head and she collapsed.

  He was there in an instant, catching her in his arms. Her master's sword fell from limp fingers. Her breathing was rough, her skin pale and cold. She weighed practically nothing.

  Before he could ask Mercy to grab Yerin's sword, the Blood Shadow appeared next to him. It looked into his eyes, and it was like he could see a spark of the real Yerin in them. It was unnerving.

  He dipped his head to her. He wasn't exactly sure how to address the parasitic spirit living inside Yerin, but it was best to be polite.

  “Thank you for your help,” he said.

  The Blood Shadow smiled again, gave him a wink, and then crumpled. It coiled into a rope of red light and slithered back into Yerin's spirit.

  Had it really winked at him?

  It wasn’t the time to worry about that. Yerin was in danger.

  He looked back at Mercy, who had picked up Harmony's axe and Yerin’s sword, putting them into her own void key. He couldn’t unravel her expression, except that she looked pained.

  [Oh, I think I caught a bit of that message she mentioned,] Dross announced. [Blackflame Underlords are on their way! Two or three minutes, I’d say. They’re gathering us up for the…oh. For the general retreat.]

  ~~~

  The Seishen Kingdom's attack had come out of nowhere.

  The Blackflame Empire wasn't entirely caught unprepared. Most of the Skysworn were acting as scouts, so they had taken the brunt of the attack, with some of their individual squads folding back to warn the major clans. The Empire had engaged their major defenses: boundary fields that created walls of wind, huge launcher constructs that could destroy even Underlords at a distance, and the Blackflame Underlords themselves.

  But the suddenness of the assault had done its damage. No one had expected the Seishen Kingdom to launch an all-out attack at all, just to skirmish over resources. They hadn’t thought the Akura Sage would allow it.

  The Empire's border in the Night Wheel Valley had collapsed, the Kingdom’s forces pushing through. Blackflame defenses crumbled, and the shadow aura made it difficult to coordinate an organized retreat.

  Cassias stood on a Thousand-Mile Cloud, spreading his awareness around him. Now that he was a Truegold, his spiritual sense and his bloodline powers had both expanded, leaving him feeling like he had eyes in the sky for miles. The deep shadow aura restricted him as well, but it was still a difference of night and day compared to his Highgold senses.

  He caught glimpses, not full pictures, but he could piece them together. If there was a bright side, it was that the Blackflame losses were relatively small—the Seishen Kingdom would be afraid to push the Sage too far. They were pushing forward to gain territory, not to kill.

  Though lives were still lost.

  The Emperor had sounded a retreat soon after their outer defenses failed. Now, it was a mad scramble to get back through the portal.

  But Cassias was far from there. He had been left where the fighting was hottest. And the more desperate the battle, the more restraint began to slip.

  His wife, Naru Jing, hovered next to him. Her right wing glistened emerald green—the Goldsign of the Path of Grasping Sky. The other was an almost skeletal orange-yellow, built out of madra, a prosthetic replacement created by Soulsmiths. Her left eye was the same color, taken from the same Remnant. She waved a hand, and her wind madra cut a volley of Enforced arrows from the sky.

  She had been powerful before, as the top-ranked Highgold in the Empire. Now, the two of them had taken the opportunity to train in a place where the aura was richer than ever before. He doubted they were the top two ranked among Truegolds—there were some real monsters among the Truegolds of the Blackflame Empire—but he suspected they would be in the top two or three hundred. If the heavens were kind, they might even break through to Underlord before the end of this contest.

  But with that power had come extra authority, and with the authority, duty.

  Cassias relayed the situation he'd seen to Jing, who informed her father via courier. Her father was a significant figure in the Naru clan, and had taken to directing their defenses.

  This hilltop, the headquarters of the Naru clan on this side of the shadowy portal, was the last site of fierce fighting. The Emperor and the Underlords were fighting elsewhere, and while they would likely return, the winged members of the Naru clan were being pushed back. Their losses were still manageable, but they had no one to match the enemy's Underlord: a woman with long, burning hair who shouted loud threats as she burned her way through the forest.

  Cassias was singlehandedly doing the work of twenty scouts, and might have been the only reason they were able to maneuver around the fiery Underlady. Wherever she was headed, they gave ground, reinforcing their lines elsewhere. No matter how much stronger she was, she couldn't be everywhere.

  The Naru clan could outpace her, falling back through the air, but it would mean leaving their servants and workers undefended. Servants like the Arelius family.

  A fireball streaked like a comet through the air, and it took all of Naru Jing's attention to disperse it. Through his bloodline ability, Cassias saw the Underlady's fix on him, drawing a spear of burning madra from thin air. He pulled his awareness back.

  “Time to leave,” he said. He ordered his Thousand-Mile Cloud to plummet downward, pulling out a caged purple butterfly as he did so. He whispered a quick message to it, informing the Naru clan that he was repositioning. He wouldn’t last long with an Underlord-level sacred artist targeting him.

  He regretted the full retreat. Though he trusted the Emperor’s judgment, every day they stayed in this aura-rich environment was a fortune to their sacred artists. If they stayed here long enough, he might even reach Underlord himself.

  He was focused on delivering his message when his wife tackled him.

  The cloud he had been standing on exploded, the focus of not just the Underlady but her contingent of Truegolds. They fell, Jing's wings straining to hold them, her artificial eye blazing with effort.

  Then, suddenly
, Cassias landed.

  It confused him, because he was sure they had not come close to the ground yet. And the landing felt as soft as if he had landed on a pile of pillows. He looked down and saw the emerald green cloud that had appeared beneath him.

  Then he looked up, to the Skysworn armor. And the man wearing it.

  Eithan shook his head, closing his eyes as though he couldn't bear to watch. “Shame. It's such a shame that I am duty-bound to the scouting mission the Skysworn have given me. I can't possibly help you.”

  Cassias sagged back in relief, leaning into his wife's arms. She let out a long breath.

  “If only I were the Patriarch, my spot would be here beside you, but alas I was ousted from my rightful position...”

  Cassias raised the purple butterfly, using a brief flicker of madra to scramble the message from before. Instead, he spoke a new message clearly into it: “Re-form the lines. Rescue has arrived.”

  Eithan opened one eye. “No, no, I couldn't possibly help you. How could I ever—”

  Cassias opened the cage, and the butterfly construct flew off.

  “...they have an Underlady,” Eithan pointed out. “She looks dangerous.”

  Naru Jing waved to her courier. “The fight is over!” she shouted. “Tell my father to regroup and prepare to transport wounded.”

  “Am I being ignored?” Eithan asked.

  “Now you know how it feels,” Cassias muttered.

  “It would be more fun if you sobbed out your apology and begged me for my assistance.”

  “Don't you have some work to do?”

  Eithan's mouth quirked into a familiar smile. A spark returned to his eyes.

  “Well then. I suppose I do.”

  Chapter 11

  Outside the walls of Blackflame City, hundreds of medical tents had been set in long rows. The Lowgold injured shared huge tents with dozens of people, the Highgolds and members of important families had tents with only a few others, and the Truegolds and children of large clans were allowed into the hospitals within the over-crowded capital city.