Reaper (Cradle Book 10) Page 19

  The snake spasmed, its midsection crushed, and the Netherclaw slashed without resistance.

  All three heads were torn off in one swipe.

  Yerin leaped off the body, sword in hand. The other snake was still alive, and she had to protect the others.

  From midair, she saw the others finish off the first Hydra. The head of Ziel’s hammer, powered by a circle of green runes, slammed it into the floor.

  Yerin let herself land gently. She burned the gore from her sword with blood madra, and nodded in respect to Ziel. “Nice hit.”

  He looked as though he didn’t believe her. At first, she thought that was just him being unfriendly, but Mercy was staring at her too.

  “Yerin,” Mercy said hesitantly, “I think I might head back once we meet up with the others.”

  Yerin forced open her own void key, which seemed to want to stick, and rummaged around until she found one of her few elixirs. This one had been made just for her, as the bottle contained a medicine that specialized in restoring blood and sword madra, but she grimaced as she drank it. It was gritty and tasted like steel and charcoal.

  Yerin wiped her mouth, mostly to buy time to think about her response. “Not a bad idea. It’d be safer inside a dragon’s mouth than down here. But you knew that when you came down.”

  Orthos snorted smoke and nibbled at the dreadbeast’s body. “We thought there would be something we could do.”

  Mercy fiddled with black-gloved fingers. “Dreadbeasts like this…to us, one would be a deadly fight. But for you, they’re not worth mentioning. I’m not sure what we can do other than get in the way.”

  Yerin felt hunger spirits rising around the corpse, and she saw the chance to make a point. She hopped up on top of the dead Hydra and looked down on the others.

  Then she cycled a little madra to her eyes so they would glow red. For effect.

  “We’ve been friends for a long stretch now,” Yerin said. “You think I’d rather be down here alone?” White ghouls began crawling up from the ground, and she released her spiritual pressure.

  Yerin glared at the nearest ghoul. “Mine,” she said. She was no Sage, but she suspected it would get the point.

  Now, there were two possibilities, and either would suit her purpose. Either these mindless techniques would ignore her warning and head for her, in which case she would crush them and show off a bit.

  Or they would go for easier prey.

  The hollow-eyed ghouls slid away from Yerin even as they bubbled up from below, lurching after the others with surprising speed. Yerin cycled her madra to her Steelborn Iron body and braced herself.

  Then she dashed all over the room in a blur of speed. It cost her very little madra; even here, with the hunger aura grinding away her spirit a little at a time, she could keep this up all day.

  She sheathed her sword, and severed limbs of animated hunger madra dissolved to essence.

  “You’ll catch up,” Yerin said confidently. “And until you do…what’s so bad about letting me carry you?”

  Orthos burned so clearly with the resolve to improve himself that Yerin could practically see it. Mercy’s eyes welled up, and even Ziel gripped his hammer a little harder.

  Yerin felt a smile tug at the corner of her mouth. Not only did she have friends along, but she was in a position where she could protect them.

  Ruby would be just as happy as Yerin was.

  Lindon paced outside the chamber, waiting as the storm of deadly blades raged. Eithan had clearly indicated this was the way through, but it seemed this room was designed solely to slow them down.

  When they approached, they had triggered a script that activated constructs all throughout the room. Swords of madra, clouds of corrosive aura, and needles of blood rampaged through the room in a deadly storm.

  Eithan and Lindon could wade through the room untouched, and Lindon had wanted to do that, but Eithan had stopped him.

  They’d already wasted quite a bit of madra, and the only way to get through was for them to spend more. Instead, Eithan suggested they simply wait. The room’s constructs would run out of power before they ran out of time.

  Lindon was impatient. Who knew when the route back would shift?

  “We need to get back,” he insisted. “As far as we know, there might never be a way back again.”

  [That would be unlikely,] Dross said, and Eithan nodded in agreement.

  “There’s obviously some kind of intelligence running this place,” Eithan said, “but it can’t keep us separated forever. There must be certain patterns, or it could lock all intruders in a room and remove the exits.”

  “Apologies, but that’s weak logic to hang all of our lives on.”

  Eithan shrugged. “If I’m wrong, then you burn through the walls. With the Void Icon and Blackflame, it should be possible.”

  Lindon nodded. He wanted to do it now, but that would exhaust him, and he’d be useless for the rest of the trip. Or at least for a while.

  Little Blue whispered comfort to him, and Lindon decided to distract himself with another project.

  “Dross, can you simulate a Soulsmithing project?”

  [Somewhat. My capabilities are not what they were, but as long as we can rely on known information, I should be able to replicate a simple project successfully.]

  Once again, Lindon missed the real Dross.

  At his request, the binding from the Tomb Hydra appeared in front of him, floating in the air. It shone with the pale, spectral green of death madra, and looked roughly like a human heart the size of a head.

  There were several entrances, which resembled broken arteries. Lindon ran pure madra through one, and a weak beam of death emanated from the other end of the binding.

  Curious, he moved his pure madra through the other one. This time, a haze of death madra appeared around the heart. A lethal field that, if it were real, would have eaten away at his lifeline and begun corroding his flesh.

  “Is this accurate?” Lindon asked.

  [As much as it can be without testing. The intensity of the effect, its response to pure madra, and its activation time are all suppositions on my part.]

  “But this is really several techniques?”

  [Yes.]

  That was intriguing. Potentially revolutionary.

  Bindings were crystallized techniques, meaning they were each one technique. Sometimes Soulsmiths could blend one into the other, but it always created a hybrid technique. It never layered the two techniques on top of one another. If you wanted the techniques to be used together, or in sequence, you had to design your construct to allow it. Usually, that was done with scripts.

  But this dreadbeast had only one binding for several techniques. As though its bindings had all organically fused into one.

  Lindon fueled the third of the four openings, and a Forged set of jaws appeared, its teeth shining green. It snapped down on nothing, and now Lindon finally felt the hunger component of the binding coming to the forefront. This was how the Hydra fed.

  Eithan cleared his throat. “I hate to complain, but it’s pretty boring sitting here watching you hold on to nothing.”

  Lindon remembered that he must look ridiculous, interacting with thin air. “Dross, can you project to Eithan?”

  [I can, but that will cost me valuable madra.]

  Lindon hesitated. He was doubly reluctant to exhaust Dross after what had happened the last time the spirit strained himself.

  “Very well then, leave me out,” Eithan said. “I will infer from your conversation what you have been doing: are you testing out the Hydra’s binding?”

  “It’s amazing. Like four bindings grown into one. I’ve seen dreadbeasts with bindings that had melted into one another, but they never worked well. They always felt like a failure, but this could be the perfected version.”

  He activated the fourth binding, but nothing happened. He sensed it had been reaching out to the surrounding aura, but there was no death aura nearby, so the Ruler technique hadn’t ac
tivated.

  Eithan tapped his fingers together. “Disturbing implications, but that was always one of the strongest theories about the origins of the dreadbeasts. That they were the failures, and the successes were the Dreadgods.”

  Lindon examined the binding, turning it in his hands. “So you’re saying the Dreadgods have a binding like this one.”

  “You’d have to kill one to prove it. But I would say it’s likely.”

  Lindon ran his perception through the room ahead. The constructs were starting to slow down, but he still had time. He could take a closer look at the actual binding. It would help him later, and Dross couldn’t model it accurately unless Lindon studied it.

  Eithan slowly slid into his line of sight. He was massaging his temples with both hands. “Let me see if I can divine your thoughts. You are tempted to examine the actual binding, but you are hesitant to do so, and…what’s this? Please, I know you admire my keen insight, but don’t let those thoughts distract you. Focus.”

  “This might be my only chance at this. I don’t want to waste it.” A mistake Soulsmithing could damage the binding beyond repair. If Dross learned enough to be able to replicate the binding, then that was fine, but he still didn’t want to lose such a valuable material.

  “There should be better facilities somewhere here,” Lindon went on. “I want to see the effect of the location myself. And if the hammer’s as important as you say it is, I want one of those too.”

  Eithan cupped a hand around his ear. “I need to hear you say it. I need to hear you say the words.”

  Lindon was lost.

  “Say, ‘please, Eithan, solve this problem for me.’”

  “It’s not a problem, really. I could examine it now, but I think it’s better to wait until later.”

  “Okay then, say ‘If only I had a place to practice Soulsmithing right here!’”

  “That would be convenient, but I’m not really looking to make a construct.”

  “Please say it.”

  “If only I had a place—”

  “Worry no more, my student! With my incredible foresight, I have solved your problem long ago!”

  With a flourish, Eithan produced a tiny object shaped like an anvil. Lindon could immediately sense that it was a void key, or something similar. Eithan practically forced it into his hand, so Lindon ran his madra through it.

  He had to join his will to it and push through a faint resistance. Either the labyrinth’s suppression of spatial artifacts was increasing, or he was getting tired.

  A moment later, a door opened in midair. It led onto a space that was much stranger than most void keys Lindon had seen.

  A platform of stones hovered in the middle of an endless starry sky. Each of the stars were larger and clearer than usual, shining brightly from every direction. The stones themselves were large wedges that fit together into a circle about the size of a small room. Each wedge held a symbol that—

  Lindon had to look away from the symbols because of a piercing pain in his head. They formed a script, he was sure, but they reminded him more of the runes in Suriel’s eyes. There was meaning there that he couldn’t pierce.

  At the center of the platform of interlocking stones, there was a slab of dull metal. It resembled an altar more than an anvil, or perhaps half of a column. Inside that altar, a blue flame burned, visible through a small window. So perhaps it was more like a stove.

  Lindon drew Suriel’s marble from his pocket and compared. As he’d suspected, the blue fire in his marble was eerily similar to the one blazing within the altar. Except the one here was many times bigger.

  “Lindon, allow me to introduce you to the ultimate Soulsmithing tool: the Soulforge.”

  Lindon reverently held his breath as he walked inside. He felt the world around him change as he stepped inside, in ways more than the physical. Echoes of creation filled the air. This was a place where wonders were born.

  He paced around the anvil at the center, examining the stones, the flame, even the stars in the distance. “How does it work?” he asked.

  Eithan beamed. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  Lindon still couldn’t examine the huge paving-stones beneath his feet too closely, because the single rune carved on each of them was too overwhelming, but it was clear that the script-circle was focused on the anvil at the center.

  And the anvil, if that’s what it was, was clearly the focus of all the creative energies in this space. In a mundane forge, you would heat up metal in the flame to make it malleable enough to shape, but that didn’t have much relevance to Soulsmithing.

  He approached the center and felt the energy gathered above the altar-like anvil. There was little to see, but the air felt invisibly focused there, charged, as though waiting for something.

  “I think anything you put there is…altered. Enhanced, maybe.” He knelt to look at the blue fire. “This fuels the effect somehow. I assume you have to burn something here? Soulfire?”

  Eithan was about to answer, but Lindon cut him off as an idea occurred to him. “No…wait.” He pulled out the pearl necklace he had found earlier.

  From Eithan’s proud smile, Lindon already knew he was right, but he tossed the necklace in anyway. The physical form of the necklace burned to ash in an instant, which dissolved to nothing with a hiss. But the flames strengthened.

  Just to test it out, he tossed in some junk with no authority whatsoever. It burned up, but the flame didn’t change.

  Lindon moved to his feet, full of confidence. “It takes objects with embedded authority and burns them, focusing it on whatever you’re making above the altar.”

  Eithan applauded. “Very good! We say objects with invested authority or willpower are significant, but the terminology changes from place to place, so it’s not important. You’re so right it brings a tear to my eye.”

  “But what does it do to the Soulsmithing?”

  “In traditional Soulsmithing, Archlord artifacts are effectively the peak. There is no higher form of soulfire than that which Archlords produce, and spirits are usually raised past that stage artificially. Beings stronger than Archlords don’t often die and leave Remnants, you see.

  “Even if you were fortunate enough to get a Herald or Monarch’s Remnant, or to raise a Remnant to be equivalent to a Herald, you would still be tempering it in Archlord soulfire. It would be only marginally better than an actual Archlord weapon.”

  Eithan swept his arms around the Soulforge. “If you really want to perform Soulsmithing on a higher level, you need a way to imbue the authority and willpower of a greater existence into the item. That requires tools and locations on a superior tier of existence, which are few and far between. If you wanted to forge a Monarch a sword, for instance, you would want to do it on a battlefield in which Monarchs died, of which there are surpassingly few.

  “This was a fairly ingenious solution, I will admit. A portable location that can increase the level of existence of projects worked here, allowing the manipulation of more advanced forces. It’s not quite as good as if you crafted a device in a significant location that suited the project, but it has the advantage of being universally compatible and mobile.”

  Lindon wanted to rub his cheek all over the anvil. He could see exactly how much of an advantage this would be.

  But Eithan had used a word that caught his attention. “Did you have a hand in the creation of this Soulforge, Eithan?”

  The Archlord sighed. “Sadly not. This was Reigan Shen’s design and creation, and he was only willing to part with it because he is capable of building another one. Though it will be expensive, even for him.”

  Something visibly occurred to Eithan, and he asked, “Why did you ask if I made it?”

  “You called it ingenious.”

  Eithan staggered back, clapping a finger to his chest as though wounded. “I do not like what you’re implying, my beloved disciple.”

  “So this was part of Reigan Shen’s bribe?” Lindon looked around the space, jealou
sy worming his way through his heart. “Why didn’t you show me this before? Are you even a Soulsmith?”

  “It’s rare to find a sacred artist who hasn’t at least dabbled in Soulsmithing,” Eithan protested. “And it so happens that I have been using this facility to prepare the materials for the Pure Storm Baptism that Ziel has enjoyed. I intended to pass this on to you when you were ready, and now that we have been interacting with objects of some significance…”

  He left the sentence hanging suggestively, and Lindon was so excited by the space that he was willing to let it pass that Eithan had kept another secret from them. “Does this mean you can make anything—wait just a second, did you say you were passing it on to me?”

  “Very soon. Ziel could still use one more treatment, I’d say, but it’s best that you start practicing before you inherit this from me.”

  “Can we use this to fix Dross?”

  Eithan cleared his throat. “If it could, I would have revealed it to you earlier. I’m sorry. But you will find a solution for Dross, I’m certain!”

  Lindon was overwhelmed. He blinked back tears. “It’s too much,” Lindon said, though he would already fight a Dreadgod with half a paintbrush over the Soulforge. “You’ve given me so much already.”

  Eithan cocked his head as though he didn’t understand. “I consider the things I’ve given you to be the best investments I’ve ever made.”

  Lindon straightened up and pressed his fists together, bowing over them in a sincere salute. “Gratitude, master.”

  “You know, you never call me that.” Eithan ushered Lindon out of the Soulforge, though Lindon kept shooting longing glances backwards. “It’s probably for the best. I don’t want status to go to my head.”

  “I’m not sure I can pay back an investment like this.”

  “Oh, you can start paying me back once we’re out of Cradle. My investments are long-term.”

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