Skysworn (Cradle Book 4)

by Will Wight

  She stood on her own now, and despite the blood running down her face, she seemed more like herself now than she had only a moment before. Lindon's missing arm had shaken her out of whatever had taken hold of her.

  He looked to the still-vanishing puddles of blood madra. “Pardon, but have you seen these before?”

  She went still for a moment before giving him a single nod. That lost expression returned. “I’ve seen them. Too much of them, when this showed up,” she said, clapping a hand to her stomach. “I guess it's time to—”

  Then she seemed to realize her belt was missing. She stared down, dumbfounded, and felt around her waist. “Where is it? It can't just...crawl off...” She was starting to breathe quickly, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

  A moment later, her breath returned to normal, but her shoulders slumped. “It's still there. Coiled like a worm in an apple.” Her lips twisted in disgust. “But somebody bottled it up. Eithan?”

  “Eithan.”

  Another explosion in the back of the mountain led to a rising column of smoke. “Let's go. We should be ready to leave when he wins.”

  Another bloodspawn poked its head up the cliff, and Fisher Gesha threw a web of purple light at it. It was jerked down the side of the mountain as though she'd tied a weight to its ankles.

  Carefully, Cassias stepped up to the edge of the cliff and glanced down. Almost instantly, he staggered back.

  “We have to leave. Right now.”

  He marched back toward the entrance into the mountain, though every second or third step he swayed as though he stood on the deck of a ship.

  Yerin and Gesha followed him, but a strange curiosity took hold of Lindon. He walked to the edge and peered down.

  Dozens—perhaps hundreds—of bloodspawn were stuck to the side of the mountain. Some of them looked like gnarled trees, others like clouds of gas, and still others like a mass of jagged crystals. Most of them weren't moving quickly, but they all crept up the side of the mountain.

  But beneath them, covering the hills, was an ocean of writhing red figures. Lindon couldn't begin to guess how many there were. An army.

  He ran back, hurrying after the others. There were so many. So many. And if they fought, new ones would be created every time a human was injured.

  They would be overwhelmed in minutes, dragged down and torn apart by monsters.

  His exhaustion and the mental burden of losing his arm seemed to retreat in the face of a rising tide of panic.

  One of the doors to the sanctuary had been blasted off its hinges. Red-stained sunlight streamed in through a hole in the ceiling.

  A bloodspawn was forming right in front of them, from a tiny splatter on the wall. It was transparent as red glass, and it seemed taller and thinner than the others.

  Cassias drove a spike of silver madra through it, but the bloodspawn didn't seem to mind the hole in its chest. It held its arms wide, trying to catch the Arelius in an embrace.

  Lindon moved up, cycling pure madra.

  His madra channels still pained him whenever he cycled, and he had to improvise a different pattern to use his technique with his left hand. He usually used his right.

  But a second later, he had driven an Empty Palm into the bloodspawn's midsection.

  It popped like a bubble, spraying him with liquid madra. The madra burned slightly, tingling against his skin, but it started to evaporate almost immediately. No one commented; they were all on high alert as they moved through the red-lit halls, heading for the entrance to the complex below.

  So many walls had been blown out by the battles between the two Underlords that Lindon wondered about the sanctuary’s structural integrity. As he watched, a few boulders bigger than his head crumbled from a hole in the ceiling, smashing into the ground.

  The wind, whistling through the walls, now sounded ominous.

  After an agonizing minute or two of navigating through the fractured halls, they finally came upon a door at the end of a hall. Debris was lying against it, holding it closed, but at least they hadn't run into another bloodspawn. Lindon would count that as a success.

  Fisher Gesha lashed lines of purple madra to the debris, hauling them back with her power. With a single palm strike, Cassias shattered a block bigger than he was, though he had to lean against a wall and take a breath afterwards. He looked as though he'd bathed in blood, and his wounds were obvious. More than any of them, he needed to get out of here.

  Yerin simply grabbed chunks of stone and hauled them away with her bare hands. Lindon switched to Blackflame and joined her, though the Burning Cloak was better for sudden, abrupt motions than for sustained strength. He ended up kicking stones away, then shattering the door open.

  He was relieved when he saw the steady runelight of the script-circle in the stairway behind the door. It led down, toward the chamber where his pack waited. Once he retrieved Little Blue, his belongings, and his new arm—which was still in the process of being created—they could all leave. Fisher Gesha had some belongings of her own as well, which she couldn't leave behind. She wasn't even carrying her goldsteel hook.

  They started heading down when Eithan crashed through the ceiling behind them.

  A red hook had been driven into his shoulder, and the Redmoon Hall emissary had hauled him down through the ceiling. Longhook was standing behind them, on the ground floor, and none of them had noticed him show up. Now he stood over Eithan's squirming body, holding his chain in two crimson hands.

  Eithan forced his eyes open, though they were hazy with pain, and both of his hands were holding the hook in his shoulder. He craned his eyes back to see Longhook, though from his perspective the emissary must have looked upside-down.

  He revealed a grin of bloodstained teeth. “It's not too late for you to surrender,” he said, pulling the hook from his shoulder with a sick, wet sound. He shuddered as he did so.

  Longhook had a cut along the side of his neck, and his coat had been sliced in a few places. But otherwise, he seemed the same as when he had first appeared.

  Lindon gripped the edge of the doorway, rekindling the Burning Cloak.

  A loud voice in his mind urged him to run down, grab his belongings, and leave. But Blackflame pushed him to action, which is why he kept it surging through him.

  He had to help…without getting destroyed by a single casual backhand from an Underlord.

  He gathered a dark fireball between his palms, focused on Longhook. Fisher Gesha shook her head frantically when she saw what he was doing, but he was staring at his target. Blackflame madra was known for piercing defenses. He had blasted off a Truegold's hand and threatened Jai Long. He could at least distract an Underlord for an instant.

  As long as he didn't draw too much of his attention.

  Eithan flipped up, slamming a foot into Longhook's face, but the emissary dodged and caught Eithan in the ribs with a red fist. The blow launched Eithan five feet in the air, where he twisted and fired a Striker technique down at his opponent.

  A colorless wave washed over the Redmoon Hall emissary, and just a hint of it splashed on Lindon, destabilizing his technique. His ball of Blackflame swelled to twice its size in an instant as his control shook, and it was all he could do to compress it once again before it exploded.

  The fight between Underlords had continued in a long, ear-shattering roar of strikes and counterstrikes, but Eithan was clearly getting the worst of it. If Lindon couldn't do something, he was going to die.

  Then Longhook froze.

  And the world darkened.

  The crimson light streaming in from the holes in the ceiling was cut off, swallowing them in shadow. Lindon looked up, startled, only to see a deep green mass covering the sky. It rolled like distant storm clouds, or the surface of a lake seen from beneath...

  No, those were clouds. A massive bank of green clouds.

  Longhook withdrew his chain, and it slithered back into his sleeve, the hook following. He turned to dash off, but there was another wave of transparent po
wer. He stumbled.

  When it washed over Lindon, his Blackflame technique was snuffed out like a candle. The purple lights connecting Gesha to the rocks vanished, and Cassias and Yerin both sagged to their knees as the Enforcer techniques they used to keep themselves upright failed.

  “So rude, to leave in the middle of a conversation,” Eithan said, though his words were slurred and his smile was still bloodstained.

  Longhook's head swiveled on his neck independent of the rest of his body. His hook peeked out the edges of his sleeve again.

  Then a figure fell from above. It fell through one of the holes in the roof, folding its emerald wings, and landed with an impact that shattered stone.

  Naru Gwei looked up through the veil of his greasy, gray hair, burn scars twisting his face. His old, battered armor was no worse for his hard landing, and his wings folded up impossibly small as they vanished into slots in the back of his armor. He knelt with one hand pressed against the broken stone.

  The other held his massive black sword.

  “In the name of the Blackflame Empire, and by the authority of the emperor, you are under arrest,” the old man said. His voice still sounded bored, if not sleepy.

  Longhook hurled his weapon. Not toward Naru Gwei; the hook shattered the far door, breaking the way out to the arena where Lindon and Jai Long had fought. The chain continued, impossibly long, until the end of the weapon hooked one of the columns still standing.

  Without a word, he hauled on his chain, pulling himself down the hall so fast he may as well have been flying.

  Naru Gwei lifted his free hand from the stone, making a gesture as though grabbing something.

  Longhook froze like a bird trapped in mid-flight.

  “I thought I said you were under arrest,” the Skysworn said, rising to his feet.

  The emissary of Redmoon Hall craned his neck with great effort to look back at them. No, not at them.

  He looked straight at Yerin.

  Yerin's head rocked back as she noticed, and she drew in a breath. With a barely perceptible motion, he nodded to her.

  Then he twisted his body, fighting Naru Gwei's Ruler technique, and moved his hands in a strange pattern.

  Red light twisted, and pain stabbed through Lindon's limbs. He fell to the ground, because the weight of his body was too much for the agony in his calves. Even Naru Gwei grunted, flinching back.

  A blood Ruler technique, Lindon was sure of it. He was using the power of blood aura to affect their bodies directly. Normally, it might be too weak to harm an opponent, but the power of blood was so strong it was twisting the light. He had more aura to work with than Naru Gwei possibly could.

  The Skysworn's technique broke, and Longhook shot off again. In an instant, he had vanished beyond the cliff.

  Naru Gwei looked sharply to Eithan, who was struggling to sit up while leaning against the wall, a bleeding hole in his shoulder.

  “He has friends,” Eithan said, his smile twisting. “He's headed straight for them. I can't be sure if they're coming to us, but I'd rather not find out.”

  The Skysworn Captain nodded. With a casual swipe, he destroyed a bloodspawn that was rising from the pool beneath Eithan.

  “Fifteen minutes,” he said. “See to your injuries and gather your things. Then we're leaving.”

  Eithan glanced up at the vast green clouds overhead. “You brought your whole fortress along, did you?”

  “Never thought I'd need it,” he said heavily. “No one should have to plan for a day like this.” Eithan started struggling to his feet, but Naru Gwei scooped him up with one hand. “The rest of them can join us, or they can take their chances with the Bleeding Phoenix's mercy. But you, Arelius, you're coming with me. The Emperor needs us both.”

  ***

  Jai Long spun his spear, driving the white-edged point of his spear through a blood-creature, reducing it to a rush of liquid. After every one he defeated, he glanced back to his sister.

  His instincts urged him to carry her, but he fought back the thought. She could move on her own now.

  Although not by much.

  The rush of unstable madra from Jai Daishou had swollen her core with powers he didn't understand. If not for the Arelius Underlord's assurance that she would be fine, Jai Long would have tried his own hand at first aid. Though he knew so little about healing the spirit that he might well cripple her again.

  She was following behind him, and to the physical eye she looked healthier than ever. Her wide eyes were focused, and she wore lavender sacred artist's robes that had been stained with red liquid madra. She had her hands out as though trying to use a technique.

  And that was where the problem came in.

  Her breath was ragged and heavy, and she was extremely focused on the area between her hands, but she couldn't control her madra.

  A nearby monster exploded into a cloud of red spores, and Jai Long was almost caught off-guard. He spun his spear in a circle, trailing serpents of white madra.

  The spores met the snakes and sizzled like water droplets hitting a hot grill, and the serpents moved of their own volition to devour more of the blood madra.

  They'd run into fourteen of these since they sensed Underlords fighting above them and decided to run. Remnants, perhaps? If so, where had so many of them come from?

  There were a series of tunnels leading down from the chambers inside the mountain to ground level, and they'd hoped to escape the Arelius family while Eithan fought off...whoever it was.

  Eithan Arelius may have promised them safety, but they were still enemies and rivals of the Jai clan. It was best to be on their own.

  Except Jai Chen had been stumbling after her brother, attempting to control her madra, for far too long now.

  “Don't force it,” he reminded her. She could strain her madra channels and cause greater spiritual damage than she'd struggled with in the first place. “I can get us out of here.”

  But he was less and less sure of that.

  The red light that flooded the world made him shiver. This wasn't the work of a mere Underlord; perhaps a foreign Overlord, or a Sage, or some ancient weapon. No matter what it was, he had to escape it.

  They rounded a corner, and six more creatures raised their featureless heads to fix on the living humans.

  Jai Long evened out his breath, focusing on his cycling technique as he spun his spear. His core was dimming, running dry, but he'd seen early on that he couldn't spare his effort. These monsters favored suicide attacks, exploding into a mass of whatever power had been used to create them. They were easy to destroy individually, but if he were to miss even one of them, more could swarm him in seconds.

  And, as they'd learned, more could be born from even a single drop of spilled blood. He was fighting against a tide, and running out of power.

  But he would use what he had.

  He stepped forward, gathering up his madra for a technique.

  Then the red light receded before a bright tide. He spun his spear around, looking for the creature that had gotten behind him, only to see his sister holding a dragon by its tail.

  A serpentine dragon roared, surging from the space between her hands. It was like one of his snakes, only far more detailed: he could see a pair of whiskers on its face and scales on its body. It was tinged pink, like the light of dawn, and it raged into the bloody creatures with a majestic cry.

  They were splattered across the floor with the sheer momentum of its charge.

  Awed, Jai Long extended his spiritual perception. The substance of this creature felt like nothing he'd ever seen before. It was something like his own madra, corrupted by that Remnant long ago, which explained life in a creature that wasn't a Remnant. But at the same time, it was also...refined, in a way he couldn't describe. Like Jai Long's power had been boiled down, purified, perfected, and then strengthened. And there were elements that reminded him of a storm.

  It was a confusing, overwhelming mass of impressions, and he couldn't make sense of them befo
re the dragon burst in a massive flash of essence, dissolving almost instantly.

  “I did it,” Jai Chen said, her smile broad.

  Then she collapsed.

  Jai Long hurried over to her, checking her spirit. Her madra channels were strained and dim, and her core was almost exhausted, but there was no further damage. He let out a breath of relief and threw her over his shoulder.

  There was still a long way to go before he escaped.

  When he sensed someone behind him, he whirled, readying his spear in one hand.

  It was Wei Shi Lindon.

  He didn't have the black-and-red eyes he'd used for most of their fight, but his gaze still smoldered with anger. Although that could be Jai Long's imagination; he didn't know Lindon well, but the young man apologized too much to be the angry type. He just looked like he was spoiling for a fight, with his rough face, tall build, and broad shoulders.

  Now, he wore his large canvas pack on his shoulders, and he was holding out another, smaller pack in one hand.

  The only hand he had left.

  “Forgiveness, but we don't have much time,” he said, holding out the small pack. “The Skysworn have arrived. They've offered to take us from here, and it's not safe to stay. I think you may have noticed.”

  Jai Long ignored the offering. “We will make it on our own.”

  Lindon didn't withdraw the pack. “I assumed so, but there are hundreds of bloodspawn at ground level. There's another way.”

  Slowly, Jai Long reached out with the tip of his spear and hooked the strap of the pack. He was still wary of some sort of trick. “Where?”

  Now that his hand was free, Lindon pointed down a stone hallway that ramped gently back up. “That tunnel is connected to a bridge that leads to another mountain. That one isn't surrounded by bloodspawn.”

  “Have you told the Skysworn about us?” Jai Long asked, still searching for a trap. Wei Shi Lindon was full of tricks, and not to be trusted. The Skysworn would be hunting down anyone connected to Jai Daishou, and this could all be a plot to lead Jai Long and Jai Chen into capture.

  “They're not looking for you,” Lindon said. “They have bigger problems. But no, of course I have not told them.”