Reaper (Cradle Book 10) Page 18

  That was true.

  “Ah, four and four!” Eithan said. “We’ve been divided in half. What a…fortuitous coincidence.”

  Lindon thought about the living techniques that had tracked them. He looked to the walls, with the authority on them, which required living intention to maintain.

  Someone was controlling this place. Subject One.

  The Soul Cloak sprung up around him. “Keep up,” he said shortly.

  Then he dashed into the darkness.

  Yerin lowered her weapon as the air still crackled from her Final Sword—or at least, the version of it she could use in here. The stone wall was unscratched.

  This was the downside of blood madra. If it didn’t have blood, she had a harder time cutting it.

  Mercy dropped into a crouch, holding her head. “Okay. Deep breaths. They’ll come back for us.”

  “If they can,” Ziel said. He glanced around to the few remaining exits; instead of being full of uncountable tunnels, the room was now mostly bare.

  Orthos was pacing impatiently back and forth, but he still shot a red-and-black glare at Ziel. “We have nothing to guide us forward. We should wait here.”

  Yerin held Netherclaw loosely in her right hand and glanced around. She had a bad feeling about this.

  The labyrinth wasn’t shifting at random, she was certain. There was a will behind it. And while she had nothing to lean on but her intuition, she felt like it wasn’t watching Lindon at the moment. It was watching them.

  “Stay sharp,” Yerin said. “Swords up.”

  Mercy had her bow drawn and arrow nocked before Yerin finished the first word. Her back was to the group, and she scanned the darkness. “Did you sense something?”

  “The body’s still here.”

  Yerin couldn’t feel any hunger madra coming, but trying to sense hunger down here was blinding. She just knew that something was on its way.

  Ziel started scraping runes in the Tomb Hydra’s blood, which covered much of the floor. Not a bad idea. Might as well build up some defenses, even if they wouldn’t last long.

  Yerin’s spirit screamed a warning, and she activated the Endless Sword.

  Half a dozen hungry ghouls that had been rising from the floor fell apart, but the aura was too weak here. Some living techniques survived, and there were dozens more. They flooded up around the dreadbeast’s body, forcing the sacred artists to fall back.

  As they rose, the ghouls shredded the Hydra. They opened their wide mouths and took chunks out of its meat, devouring madra, aura, and flesh alike.

  “I saw some sword-fish feed in a river once,” Orthos said in solemn tones. “They stripped a bird the size of a house down to its bones in seconds.”

  “Do swordfish live in rivers?” Mercy asked.

  “Not swordfish. Sword-fish. Their teeth are swords.”

  “We should back up,” Ziel pointed out.

  The hunger techniques did their work in seconds, and they did more than just strip the corpse down to bones. Even the bones were devoured, reduced to nothing. Leaving a swarm of pale ghouls made of madra scurrying over the spot where the beast had been, like ants after a feast.

  The others retreated, but Yerin didn’t. She stood only a few strides from the hunger techniques.

  She was feeling weak after that Final Sword, and even the Endless Sword had stretched her since she was using it in such an aura-dry environment. She knew exactly what it meant to spend more power here.

  But something was watching her.

  A silver-red glow shone around her blade as she activated the Flowing Sword. She only had traces of aura to complement the madra, so the technique wasn’t stable. But it was stable enough.

  She struck each ghoul with her madra-clad sword, dispersing them to clouds of madra. It took her less than a second.

  Puffs of death madra, and aura of every kind, leaked into the air as the ghouls died. They had fed, but hadn’t had the chance to return to their source yet. In that way, they were like the bloodspawn of the Bleeding Phoenix.

  She didn’t like that comparison.

  Yerin glared down at the floor. “We’re not backing down.”

  She doubted it could hear her, but it was her actions that should send the message. When she didn’t get a response, she turned back to the others. “Huddle up and get our backs to a wall. If we don’t get hit again soon, I’ll dance a little jig.”

  “I would be interested to see that,” Orthos said.

  Ziel frowned into the distance. “You think it will keep sending the spirits after us?”

  “No, but if there’s no way for a giant dreadbeast to stay alive down here, that means it came from somewhere else. They’ll make another one.”

  “There’s no telling how long that will take,” Mercy pointed out. “Maybe it takes days! And this could be the last one; they can’t have bred too many.”

  “If that’s true, you’ll get to see my jig. But…”

  The walls blurred right on cue, once again making Yerin wonder what the controller of the labyrinth could see.

  Now, only one opening remained. On the ceiling.

  And another Tomb Hydra dropped from the ceiling.

  “…I’m not much of a dancer.”

  By the time Eithan shouted for Lindon to stop, Lindon had already slammed to a halt. His instincts had warned him just in time, even before Eithan’s superior detection could keep up.

  But it had been close. A script activated right in front of Lindon’s eyes, sending a line of what looked like black glass sliding up ahead of his nose.

  Destruction madra.

  Eithan gave an exaggerated sigh when he caught up. “I’m not sure that would have been tough enough to break you, but I don’t want to be performing emergency medical aid here in an ancient tomb at the heart of the world.”

  Lindon caught his breath and stilled his beating heart as he examined the script. “Dross, what do you think about this?”

  [I think it’s a good thing you weren’t a little faster. Ha ha.]

  Lindon winced.

  […this is a security measure against intruders. I find it strange that we have not seen more such scripts thus far.]

  “We’ll have to slow down,” Lindon said, but he was excited by the trap’s presence. Eithan noticed.

  “I see you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”

  “The other intruder would have broken this. If we’re the first people here in centuries, there might be something left.”

  And any hint left behind by Ozriel could be a treasure.

  “We don’t want to make our friends wait too long.”

  “Oh, of course not.”

  “But where there’s one trap, there could be others. We should move cautiously.”

  “It’s only wise.”

  Little Blue’s voice rang with her impatience.

  Passing the scripted trap was easy once they knew it was there, and there were indeed more traps afterwards. They were all lethal; Lindon had expected more illusions or clouds, but he was met entirely with razor-sharp blades or focused beams of heat.

  In other words, Lindon and Eithan strolled through.

  “How do constructs stay powered around so much hunger?” Lindon asked. The aura here should feed on anything indiscriminately, not even counting the living hunger techniques that traveled around consuming whatever they found.

  “They’re protected,” Eithan said. “Which is fascinating, since anything from the Arelius founder should predate the introduction of hunger madra to this labyrinth. Did he anticipate this, or was he protecting against other threats? A puzzle for you!”

  “Pardon, but surely your guess would be better than mine.”

  Eithan was quiet for a moment as they both dodged a spray of venomous darts. “Making my own guess would be less than productive. Why don’t you see if you can guess the thoughts of a genius Soulsmith? Might be good for you.”

  That didn’t make much sense to Lindon, but if Eithan wasn’t willing to specu
late, Lindon wasn’t going to make him.

  Especially since they’d made it to the end of the hallway.

  The room was less than Lindon had expected from a secret chamber hidden by a powerful expert at the heart of a deadly labyrinth. It was more like a cramped bedroom than a huge Soulsmith foundry, though there was no bed. There were instead wooden tables crammed against the walls, each carrying piles of…

  Lindon didn’t want to call the objects “random junk,” because there had to be more to them than met the eye. But he saw a pearl necklace tossed carelessly on top of a pile of mismatched silk scarves. A quiver full of arrows leaned against a set of fifteen books with titles Lindon couldn’t read.

  There were eight tables in the room, each with a similar pile. And not one of the objects held any obvious spiritual power…at least, none that remained.

  But there were a few spots of dream madra here and there, and the sources were obvious. Tiny crystals had been tied to each object, and Lindon ran his spiritual sense into one such dream tablet.

  A stately woman wears the necklace of pearls as she addresses her army. She raises a hand to direct them, and the scene shifts.

  She comes onto the deck of a cloudship, and rays of golden light form around her hands. The scene shifts again.

  With an icy look on her face, she orders the execution of a sobbing woman who looks just like her. Grief hangs over the scene like a cloud.

  Abruptly, the memory cut off.

  Lindon was shaken. Compared to most of the other tablets he’d viewed, this one was more chaotic and less complete. And it wasn’t entirely clear whose memory it was; it felt almost like a composite of memories from someone else with the noblewoman’s emotions layered over them.

  But it was clear that this woman, whose name he hadn’t caught, had been the owner of the necklace. It had been important to her, Lindon had felt that. She was known for always wearing this necklace, and it had become one of her signatures.

  Lindon quickly relayed what he’d seen to Eithan, who nodded. He looked unsurprised, but he also didn’t seem to be examining the objects himself.

  Then again, he could be scrutinizing everything in the room at once without moving an inch.

  Lindon checked another one, a signet ring bearing the image of a winged ship. This one belonged to a water artist who fought across the seas, attempting to create safe paths for humans through sacred beast territory. He lent this ring to his subordinates, and anyone who carried it could speak for him.

  From the ring, Lindon finally sensed something. It was subtle, but…heavy. Slightly more real than the objects around it.

  It reminded him of a Sage’s command. The word carrying authority felt heavier than the others.

  Now that he knew what to look for, he sharpened his senses and scanned the other objects on the table. Some of their dream tablets had faded with time, and from most of the objects themselves, he felt nothing.

  But a handful gave him a positive feeling, so he separated them into a pile. A quiver of arrows, the ring, a blue silk scarf, and a bronze buckler carved with the image of a chariot in battle.

  Only these four gave him any sense that they could be worth anything, but it was difficult to be certain.

  “Did you find anything?” he asked Eithan.

  Eithan was holding a small dagger, smiling sadly at it as the dream tablet flickered. Its memory must be tragic.

  “My sense for these things is not as developed as yours,” he said.

  “So you know what’s special about these?” Lindon had wondered as much, with Eithan being Eithan.

  “Just as certain people can exert greater force on reality than others, so too can certain objects,” Eithan said quietly. “They are significant because of what, or more commonly whom, they represent.”

  He tossed the dagger back down as though it were worthless. “It seems that this room is where someone, presumably my Patriarch, kept objects that he suspected might become significant. Most of them failed the test.”

  Lindon looked eagerly at the four objects he’d separated. “So these are powerful?”

  “They can be. This is the highest level of Soulsmithing, and it must be approached with care. The price of success can be higher than the price of failure.”

  Little Blue tugged at Lindon’s hair, pointing toward the room’s one exit, but Lindon couldn’t let Eithan’s remark pass.

  “Where did you learn this, Eithan?”

  Eithan looked deeply into Lindon’s eyes, searching for something. Then he pulled out a marble, inside which a hole in the world hung suspended.

  “As I’ve told you, I became the advisor to the Monarch Tiberian Arelius very early in my advancement.”

  Eithan had shared several stories from that time in his life over the last few months, and Lindon had hung onto each one. They felt like glimpses into a mystery.

  “I have always had a…knack for understanding the records of my predecessors. Not just dream tablets, but their writings. There were patterns that I picked up on that very few have ever put together.”

  He thought for a moment, seeming to choose his words carefully. “I believed that I could advance my family, and perhaps the world, by revealing these truths. And one such truth I revealed was this.”

  He held up Ozriel’s marble. “His records were hidden among my family for hundreds of generations, and if you know how to read them, they contained insight applicable to more than Soulsmithing. They locked this away and worshiped it instead of following the path it outlined.

  “Of course, there have been members of my family who have ascended. In the grand scheme of things, it isn’t terribly unusual to ascend beyond this world. But none of them picked up the banner he tried to pass them.

  “With Tiberian, I thought we had a chance. And then, against my advice, he approached…the other Monarch on the continent.”

  Lindon’s stomach dropped. “You’re not saying his name.”

  Eithan looked into the darkness. “No. No, I’m not.”

  “There are only a few people who could navigate the labyrinth besides us.”

  “And perhaps now we are trapped in here with a Monarch. Or…perhaps he is trapped here with us.”

  12

  Yerin sent a wave of razor-sharp madra at the Tomb Hydra while it was still falling from the hole in the ceiling.

  Ziel conjured a barrier of force around himself, lifting his hammer. Mercy had already released a barrage of arrows, and Orthos breathed out a bar of black dragon’s breath that was now bigger than his entire head.

  The concentrated wave of death madra wiped out most of their attacks in an instant.

  Only Yerin’s Rippling Sword was dense enough to cut through the Hydra’s madra, and it half-severed the creature’s rightmost head.

  But she had to dash to the side and intercept the rest of the death madra, diverting enough of the deadly energy with her sword to protect the others. Or at least Orthos and Mercy. She suspected Ziel would be fine.

  The remaining madra from the Striker technique washed over the semi-transparent barrier generated by Ziel’s script, and then the Tomb Hydra landed with an impact that shook the entire room. Both heads, with their shining green eyes, lunged at Yerin.

  Which was how she wanted it.

  She extended her sword-arms and planted her feet, focusing her will. She would not be moved.

  The teeth of the first head crashed around her, and her sword-arms caught them. She flexed, forcing the jaws apart.

  The second head simply rammed into her from the other side, surrounded by a ring of death madra that would burn away her lifeline. She met that with her sword, which shone with her own madra.

  By all rights, the impact alone should have torn her to shreds, or pulverized her insides. But instead of popping like a swatted mosquito, she stood her ground.

  The Hydra heads reacted like they’d run into a rock. The first head’s teeth began to crack, and the second head slammed into her sword and then lurched b
ack, dazed.

  Yerin may not have advanced to Archlord yet, but she hadn’t spent the last months sitting on her hands.

  Her will was steel.

  She slashed down with her Goldsigns and up with Netherclaw. Blood sprayed both the floor and the ceiling.

  The Tomb Hydra retreated, hissing furiously, but only one of its heads remained alive. It was dragging the other two along as dead weight. Even that remaining head was torn half-off, revealing bone and a few glowing veins of raw madra.

  Yerin understood she wasn’t getting back the madra she’d spent here, especially if she didn’t meet up with Lindon soon. She had a few elixirs remaining, but she never carried most of them. Why would she? Lindon carried enough supplies to start a business as a refiner and a Soulsmith both.

  But she was still feeling sunny about her odds. Whatever it cost the labyrinth to make or summon or breed these huge dreadbeasts, they couldn’t be free either.

  Her mood cracked like an egg when she saw the walls blur again, and a huge tunnel opened up on their left. A second massive Tomb Hydra slithered out, hauling death.

  Now fear crept up on her. Not for herself, but for the others. If only one person made it out of here, it was likely to be her.

  Three mouths opened, shining with death madra, and Yerin stopped holding back.

  Her Moonlight Bridge wrapped her in white light, carrying her to her destination: on top of the Tomb Hydra.

  Madra awakened Netherclaw, and it summoned the Forger technique for which it had been named. A massive beast claw formed over her head, constructed strand by strand from bloody madra. It carried her power alongside its own, and the Archlord technique cut down at the Tomb Hydra.

  It twisted in place, clashing with its power against her sword, but Yerin wasn’t waiting around. As soon as she’d used the binding in the sword, she spun and slammed her fist down on the Hydra’s scales with all her strength.

  All her strength.

  The chamber rang louder than it had when the monster hit the ground. The force of her punch pulverized bones and twisted space. Air tore away from her like a hurricane, and tiny cracks crawled out across the ground in a web.