Reaper (Cradle Book 10) Page 20

  When Ozriel reaped a world, perfectly eliminating it from existence, the Abidan could colonize nine others.

  His work was vital to Abidan expansion, and there were even those who believed him to be the most valuable of the Judges. When an Iteration dies normally, it corrodes, breaking into corrupted fragments that tend to corrupt others and accelerate their own death.

  With Ozriel, that no longer happened. He was the machete the Court of Seven used to beat back the wilderness of chaos, rapidly expanding their holdings.

  More Iterations became habitable than ever before. It was an unprecedented golden age for the influence of the Way, and even Makiel admitted the utility of Ozriel’s Scythe. It was only the man behind the mantle that Makiel didn’t trust.

  Ozriel’s own objections started to grow louder.

  If he weren’t bound by the Eledari Pact, he could have gone in and saved that world. They had known for centuries that this Iteration was going to be corrupted, and he could have cut the cause off at the root.

  That would itself be a deviation from Fate, Makiel argued. In the grand scheme of things, that would lead to an increase in chaos.

  But manageable, Ozriel said. They could keep the deviations under control, which would rarely—if ever—rise to the point of having to destroy an entire world.

  Unfortunately, while both models had their advantages, neither could be proven conclusively. By the very nature of the problem, there was no looking into the future to see how it would play out. So the two beings most skilled in reading Fate continued to argue.

  Meanwhile, Ozriel discovered the restricted records of the Court of Seven regarding the Executor program.

  This should be his solution, he thought. Raise up people from the Iterations, not sworn to the Way, who could interfere without compromising their oaths.

  But from the records, he could see that it had failed. Again and again. Those who fought corruption inevitably became corrupted themselves.

  So Ozriel decided to do some investigation of his own.

  He traveled to Haven, the prison-world of the Abidan, where he used his authority as a Judge to gain access to the Mad King, Daruman. Once the greatest of the Abidan Executors.

  He asked the Mad King what he thought. Why was the Executor program flawed?

  It wasn’t the program, Daruman insisted. It was the Abidan.

  Being sworn to order made the Abidan too inflexible, too bound to their own thoughts. Creativity and flexibility were beyond them, and the second that anyone started pushing at the boundaries of their rules, the offending party would be condemned.

  Ozriel promised change. He wanted to revive the Executor program, but this time, they would be an official division of the Abidan beneath him. They would be unbound to the Eledari Pact, able to intervene in worlds, and personally selected and supervised by him. They would save worlds by eliminating apocalypses at the root.

  He would call them Reapers.

  And if he could get enough support from the Court of Seven to create his own official Division, he would even recruit Daruman. Ozriel was uniquely able to handle Class One Fiends.

  Daruman and Oth’kimeth laughed together.

  Mighty as Ozriel may be, as keen as his eyes were, he would never succeed. The Court of Seven could not be convinced, and they would be against him for this.

  If Ozriel was really dedicated to his ideals, as he claimed to be, he should join the Vroshir. They, at least, saved human lives.

  Ozriel brought his proposal before the Court, and as expected, there was heavy resistance. Only the new, young Suriel would have allowed it—a woman he had known for centuries by this point, as she worked her way up the ranks. And even she had misgivings.

  Ozriel pled his case but was dismissed.

  He accepted that. He had looked into the future and seen that this would not be an easy task. He would try again, and again.

  As long as it took.

  Record complete.

  13

  Yerin cycled her last elixir and focused on the layer of red aura around her. The Hydra blood that had caked her robes and splattered on her skin flowed off, leaving her spotless.

  The same couldn’t be said for Ziel and Mercy. Ziel didn’t look particularly bothered by the dark spots that covered him and his gray cloak, but Mercy looked like a rat that had been partially drowned in mud.

  Orthos had simply burned the blood away, but he was clearly unhappy. He snorted as he looked up at the entrance overhead. “How many is that now?”

  Yerin had been keeping track. “Six. Bleed me like a pig if something’s not spitting them out.”

  Every time they killed one, hunger spirits devoured it. They were repurposing the energy, she was sure.

  She had tried to stop them as much as possible, but the hunger spirits were endless, and her power wasn’t.

  The others were all tired, and she was still carrying the bulk of each battle. But her perception was warning her about what was lurking up above. It felt like the Tomb Hydras, but much deeper. Bigger. It felt like a mother, giving birth to each of the dreadbeasts that fell down.

  She hoped that wasn’t it.

  “I’m going up,” she said reluctantly.

  Mercy threw out a hand like she thought Yerin was going to dash away immediately. “No, wait! We agreed we’d stay here!”

  “They’re going to grind us like grain in a mill. We stay here, and Lindon will know exactly where to find our bodies.”

  It was hard to sense anything here, since her perception couldn’t penetrate the walls and everything was soaked in hunger madra, but she had still expected to sense Eithan or Lindon by now. Something had delayed them.

  Ziel sighed. “You think it’s going to slowly kill us. So you want to dive in all at once. You want it to quickly kill us?”

  “Not us. I’m going myself.” Yerin didn’t want to say it out loud, but she felt like she could keep fighting even once her madra was gone. She would be ground down eventually too, but even if she was left with nothing more than her sword and the strength of her body, she could probably keep fighting for days.

  If they kept fighting, Eithan and Lindon would find three bodies and Yerin. And that wasn’t acceptable. If Orthos and Mercy died, it would be after Yerin.

  Ziel…he was mostly a mystery to her. Maybe he could survive without her help.

  “So if we get separated, you’re leaving us here?” Orthos asked. He took a casual bite out of the Hydra’s meat.

  “Guess so,” she said, but her grip shifted on her sword. That was the only reason she hadn’t dashed up the corridor in the ceiling already. If the labyrinth shifted again and sealed her off, she wasn’t confident in blasting her way back down.

  And what if more of these Hydras started funneling into the chamber while she was locked away in some broom closet?

  Mercy chewed on her lip and looked up, and next to her, Ziel let out another heavy breath.

  “We don’t have much choice,” he allowed.

  “Can you take a look and then come back?” Mercy asked.

  Yerin eyed the opening in the ceiling. There hadn’t been another Tomb Hydra yet, but she could feel power gathering above them.

  She had been keeping an eye on how the labyrinth shifted, though. It seemed like the tunnels closed off at the entrances, not in the middle, or they would have been crushed to paste the first time an entrance shifted while they were still in the hallway.

  “Better to move quick than wait to die,” Yerin muttered. She sheathed her sword and spread her arms wide. “Come here, everybody. Family hug.”

  Ziel walked over to her, still dull-eyed as ever. Even Orthos hopped from the ground to land on her shoulder. Mercy’s eyes sparkled as she joined, wrapping everyone in an eager hug of her own.

  “I never thought I’d hear you say those words!”

  Yerin was a little thrown off at how easily everyone had joined her. “I’m about to carry you.”

  “I know,” Mercy said, squeezing Ziel
with one arm and Yerin with the other. “It’s still nice.”

  Yerin held on to everyone and leaped.

  She had expected to have to walk the others through her plan, but since they seemed to be sharper than she’d expected, she didn’t say anything.

  The second they cleared the inner entrance to the tunnel in the ceiling, Mercy spread out a web of Strings of Shadow and Ziel Forged a hovering circle of green runes. They landed on this Forged platform, and Yerin released everyone.

  Mercy gave Ziel and Yerin each one more squeeze before she released. Then she patted Orthos on the head.

  The aura above them was growing stronger, and though the tunnel was long—long enough that Yerin wondered if it extended aboveground—she could see the glow of death madra above her.

  “Seal yourselves off when I’m gone,” Yerin ordered.

  Ziel had already started Forging runes over their heads.

  Yerin wasn’t sure how the platform of madra beneath her feet would hold up to a full-powered jump, so she hopped onto the wall and then bounced between the inside of the tunnels as she made her way up.

  All the time, she had her spiritual perception extended. She regretted it almost immediately.

  Whatever was in the chamber above her felt nauseating. Like the Bleeding Phoenix, it had a sense of hunger, corruption, and death. It felt like a ravenous pile of corpses, somehow brought to hideous life.

  Her stomach twisted, but she ran her madra through her sword. If she had to end up retreating from the labyrinth, ridding the world of a creature like this would have made her trip worthwhile.

  The higher she got, the more the sensation churned her gut, but she braced herself.

  She still wasn’t prepared when she cleared the upper entrance.

  Eyes—glowing with the pale green of death madra—glared at her from every direction. The entire chamber was a mass of disgusting flesh, endless, as far as her spirit could sense. Motion stirred in the distance, and she spotted another Tomb Hydra emerging from a slick bulbous sac.

  It wasn’t the only thing in here. Dreadbeasts had half-merged into the flesh, melted, as this thing fed.

  And its spiritual presence…

  It wasn’t a Dreadgod. It didn’t have the endless sensation of the Phoenix or the Titan, though its corruption was equal.

  She would call it a Herald, but it felt more like half a dozen Heralds stitched together and smeared across the chamber. Its spiritual pressure crashed over her, and she found it hard to take a breath as every eye in the room focused on her.

  Tendrils of flesh snaked across the entrance to block off her retreat, but Yerin wasn’t about to let it get its way.

  This thing might have been a highly advanced dreadbeast, but it was full of blood.

  The Final Sword was difficult to use in the labyrinth normally, because it required aura, and the aura here was all being consumed by hunger. But there was enough blood aura inside this massive body that she wove it together quickly.

  She couldn’t launch the technique down, or she’d risk killing her friends. So she held on to her shining sword as she fell toward the tendrils of dead, animated flesh.

  Then she twisted sideways, unleashing the beam of concentrated silver-red energy horizontally. It scraped the monster away from the entrance and sliced through its huge body, releasing a huge roar that shook her bones as much as her ears.

  She continued falling down as the air filled with death madra.

  Yerin forced out madra and soulfire, but the hostile will was as strong as her own. It eroded everything she did, and she realized the wave of green madra was going to overtake the others.

  She launched a Rippling Sword at the green-and-black barrier Ziel and Mercy had made below her.

  It cracked on contact, which was enough for her. She landed sword-first, piercing her way through.

  In the instant she crashed into their platform, Yerin saw Orthos, Ziel, and Mercy all staring at her in astonishment. If they hadn’t sensed her coming, they would have met her with a barrage of techniques.

  But none of them could move as fast as she did. With all the strength she could muster, she slammed a foot down on the Forged madra below.

  The explosion of death above her was still coming, and gravity was too slow.

  She seized Mercy and Ziel by the front of their robes, scooped Orthos up with her Goldsign, and pulled them down. Yerin twisted in the air, kicking off against the wall and shooting down.

  She was sure she was going to make it. The malicious presence of the roomful of flesh was weaker now, and clearly it couldn’t follow her. Once they endured this technique, they would be safe.

  Then she felt another will barge in. The intelligence that ran all throughout the walls.

  A ravenous, desperate will.

  Below her, the entrance blurred as the labyrinth shifted again.

  Lindon and Eithan passed through the trap-filled chamber after the constructs had exhausted themselves. The air was still blistering with the aftermath of all the madra, but it was simple to protect themselves from that.

  Little Blue gave a long, whining note of complaint, but she wasn’t in any danger.

  “They’re still ahead?” Lindon asked. It had taken quite a while for the constructs to exhaust themselves, after all.

  “The labyrinth still hasn’t shifted yet, which suggests it should very soon.” Eithan frowned, running his fingers along the wall as he ran. “I will admit, it is strange,” he allowed. “The labyrinth doesn’t seem to be working against us. I would have expected—”

  They were in the hallway as the labyrinth shifted.

  Far ahead of them, the doorway that led onto a chamber filled with flashing machines closed. Lindon felt the overwhelming sensation of space being twisted, though the hallway didn’t change.

  He suddenly realized why void keys were so difficult to use here. Whatever had authority over the labyrinth was using spatial transmission to move all the chambers around. The usual relationship to space had shifted.

  The entrance reappeared in a moment, and while they were still running down the hall, Lindon realized they were about to head upwards.

  Someone was falling toward them.

  It was Yerin…and she was dragging Ziel and Mercy along with her. Lindon felt Orthos’ presence, and the turtle was terrified.

  Behind them, a massive wave of death madra followed.

  Lindon and Eithan dashed into the next room, and his brain twisted as he ran horizontally up, and what had a moment before been a vertical wall shifted to become the floor.

  Yerin shot toward the ground—toward Lindon and Eithan—and in the split second it took her to reach the floor, the death madra following her would billow out and begin to fill the room.

  Lindon thought Eithan would act before him, but to his surprise, Eithan had frozen up the moment they entered the room. He must have seen something through his bloodline power.

  So Lindon was the first to act. His eyes cooled as they turned crystal blue, a reflection of Little Blue’s, and he projected pure, cleansing madra in all directions.

  The death madra poured into his Hollow Domain and wasn’t wiped out immediately. It faded as it poured in, like salt poured into a bucket of water.

  Yerin landed easily next to Lindon, the durability of a Herald meaning she had no need of a full-body Enforcer technique. He would be far more worried about Mercy and Ziel, who hadn’t had an easy trip.

  Then again, Ziel had his body thrice-forged in soulfire. He bounced on Yerin’s shoulder and then slid off, unfazed by the trip. Mercy staggered as she moved to her feet, grabbing Lindon for support.

  Orthos had stiffened up, and Lindon was certain that if his black, pebbly skin could go pale, it would have. The sensation he radiated through their bond was pure shocked terror.

  “So much worse,” he mumbled. “So much worse to be small.”

  Little Blue gave a sympathetic chime.

  Yerin blew the lock of red hair out of her face and l
ooked up. “Sliced that one a little thin, didn’t we?”

  “Now that I think of it, staying in the hallway so we didn’t get separated was stupid,” Ziel commented. “We should have just gotten lost.”

  “No telling what else we could have run into,” Mercy said.

  Lindon let his Hollow Domain drop. In fact, the entrance into the ceiling had closed almost immediately after the wave of death madra had reached them. He called his void key open, once again forcing it open with his will.

  He had to push more focus and more madra into it this time. Whether it was the hunger aura or the authority of the labyrinth’s owner suppressing spatial artifacts, it was getting worse.

  He stepped inside, rummaged around for a moment, and pulled out a pill and a sealed case of scales. He handed the pill to Yerin. “You used up a lot of madra there. Are you okay?”

  She nudged him with her shoulder before popping the pill in her mouth. “Bright and shiny. Just need to fill my glass back up.”

  Lindon did not fail to notice that two of her party were covered in fresh bloodstains. He looked to Mercy for confirmation.

  “No no, we’re fine. We almost had to deal with a Herald-level Striker technique, but Yerin got us out of there.” She released him and shifted from one foot to the other to check her balance.

  “Herald?” Lindon thought immediately about the possibility of Reigan Shen being in the labyrinth, and he looked up at the ceiling despite himself, though the door had already been blocked.

  Yerin waved off his concern. “Bigger version of the dead snakes. Just a pile of meat, so not like it’s going to chase us. And we’d feel it coming from a mile off, it’s—”

  With a blur, the stone wall on the far end of the chamber fuzzed out of existence. It left a hole into a dark tunnel, which sloped downwards. Lindon’s spirit rang an alarm at the feeling of ancient, overwhelming death that radiated from the tunnel.

  Yerin looked and sounded like she’d just bitten into a rotten fruit. “It’s like that. There it is.”

  “You and I can handle it, if you’re ready,” Lindon said. “Eithan can come with us. Mercy, can you back us up?”