by Will Wight
He took a look at the deadly lance an inch from his skin, the furious eagle rearing to strike behind it. He sensed the bludgeon of wind madra from beneath him, the glimmer of sharp chaos as the halfsilver darts closed from behind.
With a tap of his madra, his sword rang like a bell.
As she advanced through the Highgold stage, Yerin had unlocked more memories that had been ingrained into her master's spirit. Some of them were personal or too short to make anything out of them, but some contained the insights into the Path of the Endless Sword that he'd never been able to share with her. She chewed on these like a cow with a mouthful of grass, meditating on them morning and night.
In this case, the Sword Sage's Endless Sword technique had met every attack at the same time. The eagle's claws, the deadly lance, the halfsilver darts—they were all knocked aside at once as though deflected by invisible swords.
Only the green column of wind madra was unaffected, and the Sage sliced that in half with a wave of madra from one of the six sword-arms on his back.
The rest of the scene faded, leaving Yerin to replay it over in her mind.
The Endless Sword was the Ruler technique for which her whole Path was named. It was the root and branch of her master’s fighting style. But she hadn't even used it in her fight against Bai Rou.
The truth was, hers was a pale shadow of her master's. Her master could use the Endless Sword to cut one page from a closed book. She just hit the aura around her weapon as hard as she could with her madra. It spread out like ripples in a pond, cutting everything in its path, and when it passed through another source of sword aura, that aura burst too. Her master had called it aura resonance, and with enough madra behind it, it could start a cascading reaction that could tear a city to pieces.
But in her case, it didn't pack enough punch. She could only use it effectively against enemies weaker than she was. And what good was a weapon that couldn't be used against real opponents?
She'd focused on other pieces of her Path instead: advancement, her other techniques, physical swordplay. For too long, she had neglected the namesake of her Path. She had hoped that, as she grew in insight and experience, the Endless Sword would begin to make more sense to her.
Now Yerin was out of time. She needed more power...and her Blood Shadow was right there.
If she didn't find a new weapon, she'd be forced to rely on the Shadow every time the battle became tough. It had tormented her for too long; she couldn't lean on it. Frankly, it turned her stomach when she so much as thought about it for too long. If she never had to use it, that would be the real victory.
Which meant she needed to win without it.
In that vision, the Sword Sage had demonstrated the second level of Endless Sword mastery: sword like the wind. Yerin was stuck at the “storm” stage. Her aura exploded out from her weapon in a furious, uncontrolled storm.
But he'd revealed a much greater level of control. His sword-aura was quiet, invisible, and everywhere.
There were three higher levels of mastery.
He'd barely mentioned any of this to her before his death. She'd discovered most of it from the visions he'd left behind in his Remnant, paired with some of her own memories of him in combat. Technically, her skill in the technique wasn't connected to advancement. She could reach Archlord if her Endless Storm still looked like a hurricane. With enough power behind it, it could do damage.
But her madra was already dense enough to cross the barrier to Truegold. A deeper connection to her master's Remnant could give her that last nudge she needed to get there.
She hoped.
From the branches above her, a brown leaf drifted slowly to the ground. With a deep breath, she delicately tapped the sword in her lap with her madra. The dense silver aura around it flared, pushing out into one direction.
She could control that much, at least. Directing it one way or the other was an advancement for her. Now, her goal was to cut that falling leaf in two.
The leaf exploded into shreds. It fell to the ground as a fistful of dust.
After another hour, she gave up, stretching her legs and standing up. “We clear to move on yet?” she asked.
Then she saw that Mercy had begun training of her own.
The Akura girl was hanging upside-down from a limb at the top of a tree. She held a short wooden bow, arrow nocked, and her eyes were closed. Her breathing was even, and though Yerin was close, she couldn't sense the girl's presence at all.
After she had held that position for several minutes, three leaves fell from her tree at once.
Purple eyes snapped open, and she slipped her legs out of the branch.
She fell, arms blurring as she released the first arrow, pulling a second from the air, stringing it, and loosing it. Then a third.
Only then did the first arrow pierce the first leaf, pinning it to the ground several yards away. The second followed suit. The third arrow brushed by its target, sending the leaf spinning in the wind of its wake.
Mercy's head cracked as it hit the ground, and she crumpled.
Yerin folded her arms and waited. Iron bodies could take more punishment than that.
Mercy hissed as she sat up, cradling her head with one hand. “Aaaahhhh ow ow ow.” Through watering eyes, she looked up to Yerin. “When I do it right, I land on my feet.”
“You expect to fight upside-down a lot?”
Mercy examined her bow to make sure it hadn't broken. “Do you not practice Striker techniques this way? Trains accuracy, precision, reaction time...”
“Pain tolerance,” Yerin suggested.
“Only when you miss.” She stood up, brushing herself off. “I had a few more rounds to go, but now you're awake. Dinner?”
“Is the barrier gone?”
One of the factions—Yerin hadn't been able to determine who—had raised up a barrier of blue light that stretched across half the island in front of them. It was hard to see through the tree cover, but if you went far enough forward, you could see nothing but a sapphire wall. She wasn't sure what the barrier formation would do to people inside, but she wasn't curious enough to find out.
Mercy's eyes widened, and she snapped two blackened fingers. “Oh, that's right! I have news!”
Hurriedly, she scrambled over to their camp. They had spent three days in this place, so it was starting to look a little too permanent for Yerin's liking.
As she looked over the stump they used as a table and the stone-lined firepit they'd dug, the impatient itch returned to her heart.
Lindon could be running from Truegolds, and here she was locked out.
Mercy tripped over a root, landing belly-down in the dirt, but she held the Sage's folded map over her head in triumph. “Got it!” she said into the ground.
A moment later, she was explaining her excitement to Yerin. “I was at the top of the tree, checking on the barrier, and I realized what we thought was a hill was just that mammoth sleeping. And the mountain is farther away than I'd thought.”
Yerin's stomach fell. Every time they'd made a mistake navigating, it had resulted in days' more delay.
“So, we're not here, we're here,” Mercy said, stabbing her finger at a spot on the map.
A spot just below the portal.
“If the wall wasn't there, we could see it from the tree,” Mercy said brightly. “It’s fading away. You can see through it now, and you couldn’t this morning.”
Yerin leaped.
Her Steelborn Iron body drew thirstily on her madra, fueling her flat-footed jump so that she launched herself to the top of the tree. She bent the top of the tree as she landed, but she had no trouble keeping her balance.
The wall of blue light still rolled on the horizon, but if Mercy was right, then it was covering the beach and the edge of the island more than another expanse of forest. When the boundary came down, they would be only a few hours' run away from the portal.
She strained her eyes to try and see if there was some change in the boundary, but
she could tell nothing. She hopped back to the ground, and was surprised to find that Mercy was starting a fire instead of packing up.
“You cracked in the head? Let's go!”
“Dinner first,” Mercy said firmly. “It won't come down any faster just because we're closer.”
Yerin paced like a tiger in a cage. She just wanted to feel like she was making some progress. Even moving an hour closer would mean an hour's less travel time when the light did disappear.
She started to say so, but a deafening, bestial scream covered the island out of nowhere. It was joined by more and more, until it sounded like a choir of raging spirits howling at the heavens. A furious, burning presence lit up her spiritual senses like a flying bonfire.
“It's not the vultures again,” she muttered, opening up her perception. The roars had been deeper than that, and she thought she felt fire. But that sense could be slippery.
Mercy grabbed her staff, which hissed into the sky. Its violet eyes flared. “Not vultures. Dragons.”
As she said so, a golden cloud descended from heaven, bearing a complex of palaces on it. The Thousand-Mile Cloud that had hovered outside the Akura fortress about two weeks before, from which a woman had argued with Old Man Lo.
“What's rustled their scales?” Yerin asked. They were still roaring, and she thought she saw golden flames rising from the Cloud.
Mercy shivered. “I think we should get in the tent.”
A second later, Yerin felt it too: someone's spiritual sense was sweeping the forest. The Cloud was still many miles away; to search them from that distance would take an Underlord at least.
“I'd contend we should,” Yerin allowed with a sigh. She took a last, regretful glance in the other direction. Hiding was the smart thing to do, but she'd rather move closer to the boundary.
After all, it wasn't like the dragons were looking for them. The heavens couldn’t hate her that much.
~~~
“You're just having a little break? Having some time to yourself? That's okay, nothing wrong with that. You've just been through a fight, haven't you? But now you're rested, you're refreshed, you're ready to get yourself up and move on! The road doesn't get any shorter while you wait, as they say.”
It had been five minutes.
Lindon was still sitting cross-legged on the floor, cycling his madra to try and bring power back to his spirit before his Bloodforged Iron body took it all and left him spiritually drained and helpless. Little Blue lay sprawled on top of his head, sleeping, and he held his spine straight to avoid disturbing her.
Now Dross was growing impatient.
“I told you about the Spirit Well, didn't I? I'm pretty sure I did. Well, that's our next stop! No need to waste time trying to restore your madra now, when the Spirit Well will do it with just a sip! Well, I mean, I suppose you should strengthen yourself just a bit. There are quite a few giant, hungry beasts between us and our destination, but uh...it sounds worse than it is.”
Lindon held out a broken necklace with a copper key dangling from the center. It was only the size of a fingernail; too small to unlock anything bigger than a dollhouse. But it was a sacred treasure, he was sure of it.
Using as little madra as he could, he reached his spirit out and activated it. He was confident that this was the device that he'd sensed before, and his curiosity was too ravenous to wait until he had finished stabilizing his soul. If he really did run out of madra, he might not be able to trigger this for hours. And that would be unacceptable.
Fortunately, it didn't take much effort to start. Little more than flipping a switch.
A doorway bloomed in front of him, seven feet tall and about three wide. It led into a closet, hanging there in midair.
The closet was only a few feet deep and mostly empty. A few chairs were stacked in the center, with pillows and blankets stuffed beneath them. Three sealed clay jugs sat in the corner, and based on a quick glimpse of their contents, they seemed to contain water. He was still on his knees, weak and injured...but not too weak or injured to rummage through a closet that he'd summoned out of nowhere. A few scripted bundles were revealed to hold dried meat.
Rations, water, furniture, and bedding. Practical things to hold in a magical storage space, except perhaps for the chairs.
Orthos walked around the other side of the portal, speaking with a tone of awe. “A void key! I've only glimpsed them from afar. It's rare for even an Underlord to have such a thing. It contains a private space, accessible only by the one who holds it. Whatever you keep in here, no one can touch it unless they steal the key.”
Lindon wished there was a tear running down his face so that he could wipe it away. “I've never seen anything so beautiful.” Even Little Blue woke up, sitting up on his head and cooing in wonder. He almost wanted to thank Ekeri.
Besides the more mundane objects, there were a few eye-catching treasures shoved into the corners of the closet. A sculpture of a woman in smooth white jade, a mirror of pure gold, a jeweled star, and a teacup that seemed to be made from a paper-thin eggshell.
None of them gave off the slightest aura of power, but Orthos suggested they were valuable enough that they could fund Lindon's entire advancement to the end of Truegold. Assuming they could escape this pocket world and find a buyer.
“The real treasure is that necklace,” Orthos said, and Lindon fervently agreed. “If you were lucky enough to find anyone willing to sell one, that would cost as much as half the Arelius family. Sages are the weakest beings who can create void keys.”
“There was a void key storage room in this habitat,” Dross told them. “Room upon room full of them, each key filled with specialized equipment.”
Lindon seized him.
“…yes, it was the first thing the Heralds looted,” Dross continued, and Lindon’s heart crashed back into his chest.
His spirit and body were both still unstable after his fight, but he wobbled to his feet. “We should leave soon. As soon as we’re prepared.”
As it turned out, their preparation took two days.
The first thing Lindon did, once he could move his arms freely, was to smash the chairs and toss them back into the closet. He didn't need furniture, but as a fire artist, he could always use kindling.
He placed the chest with all of his belongings next to the bundle of kindling, then emptied all the water jars and filled them with water from the Well of Dreams. The well was only a few inches deep now, but that was still far more water than Lindon wanted to leave behind. He filled all twenty-four vials they'd found in the storage room, placed them in their racks, and stored them in the void key as well.
A few of the Silverfang Carp had been killed by his battle with Ekeri without being reduced to ash by the Void Dragon's Dance, so he found their corpses and stripped some meat. Thanks to the fires burning all over the habitat, he was able to roast them without tainting them in the flavor of Blackflame, then wrap the fish steaks up in leaves he cut from the remaining forest of stalks.
Even after two days of preparation, he was reluctant to leave. There was still water in the Dream Well, and plenty of food from the Carp. He and Orthos could cycle easily in the smoldering wasteland they'd made, and the return to regular cycling was helping heal Orthos' spirit.
Dross kept up a steady complaint, but he couldn't go anywhere without Lindon. He wasn't what finally pushed Lindon to leave.
Yerin was out there, somewhere. He had no way of knowing what she was doing, if she was safe, if Bai Rou had attacked or abandoned her. He wondered about her sleeping and waking, and whatever he did, the worry stuck in the back of his mind like a splinter.
But if she knew this place was good for his advancement, she would surely tell him to stay here as long as possible. Little Blue was more urgent.
He was using everything he could spare from his pure core to feed the Sylvan Riverseed, but she was still pale as a winter's sky and he could see straight through her. She spent most of her day sprawled on his shoulder, silent. He
was no expert on spirits, but she couldn't stay here much longer.
Even Orthos, despite his good humor, couldn't fully recover just from cycling. If he could, he would never have gone insane in Serpent's Grave. He needed to move on.
But there was one last reason that shook him enough to push him out of this habitat.
The cracks in space, which once had been the size of Ekeri's body, had now spread to the size of a room. The web of nearly invisible fissures was growing. Dross said it had to do with the decay of the pocket world. Any forced spatial movement would fracture the world's boundaries until the whole thing decayed.
And, as usual, he turned that into an argument for reaching the Spirit Well as soon as possible. This time, Lindon happened to agree.
He tied the tiny copper key to the shadesilk ribbon around his neck, so that it hung behind his gold hammer badge. Opening it one last time, he walked into the closet and pulled Little Blue from his shoulder.
“Wait for me in here,” he said, lowering her to the ground.
She scrambled up his arm, chirping in distress.
“I'll let you out as soon as I can. We're going through dangerous waters; if I lose you, I might not be able to find you again.”
She clung to his forearm and chimed like a bell.
Lindon sat down in the extra-spatial closet, lifting his arm so he could look Little Blue in the eyes. Her pale face was the picture of panic.
“I'll come back for you,” he assured her.
She shook her head.
“You want to come with us?”
Silver bells rang.
“Are you more scared of being locked in here than coming with us?”
Another long, sad note from a flute.
Lindon couldn't blame her. He’d been locked into tight spaces…too many times.
So he walked out and tucked her into his pocket, next to Suriel's marble. “Try not to fall out,” he told her.
She was already playing with the glass ball.
Another wisp of madra shut the door to the closet, and Lindon was ready to leave. He looked over at Orthos, who held Dross in his mouth.
