Chapter 16

Cassias walked through the barn, waving to the workers. His team of cleaners was preparing it, shoveling manure and dirty hay, sweeping cobwebs, and building temporary pens for the livestock. The Arelius employees would be staying here, for the time being, unless and until they could reclaim their former territory.

Their homes had been ravaged by bloodspawn.

Cassias passed families where only one parent wore the dark blue outer robe of the Arelius, but the others worked just as hard. He was squeezing forty-two people into this barn, and he might have to find room for even more before this was done. Considering that virtually all of their branches in the south had been closed by the advance of Redmoon Hall and the rise of the Bleeding Phoenix, he was dealing with as many as fifty thousand people either evacuated or displaced. And those were only the ones attached to the Arelius family. The Empire as a whole was in a crisis even if the Phoenix never rose.

He moved out of the back of the barn and looked to the south, where blood-colored light hovered like a permanent sunset.

It had grown. When he had left Stormrock, only a few days ago, the light wasn't visible from this far away. In the worst-case scenario, he might have to pack everyone up again, and find room for them even farther north. He didn't have a way to transport so many people so far, unless Stormrock agreed to help, and he suspected they would be packed to capacity as well.

Well, that wasn't the worst scenario. The Dreadgod might decide to go on a rampage and kill them all, without a Monarch to turn it aside into the eastern wasteland or the uninhabited sea to the west.

If it marched straight north, killing everything in its path and spreading bloodspawn, no evacuation would matter.

He reached the back of the barn and stood beneath a particular tree.

"We don't have to meet in secret, Eithan," he said without looking up. "These are your employees."

Eithan sat with legs dangling over the edge of a branch, staring south. "You don't think this is more exciting? Besides, I don't want to deal with greetings and farewells and all the ceremony."

"You never do," Cassias said, stretching his shoulder. Despite the attentions of the Skysworn, his wounds were still sore, especially when he moved around for too long. "Have you come to help with the evacuation?"

Eithan laughed as though Cassias had made a joke. "I actually received some new information that deserves prompt action. Suffice it to say that this will not be the only disaster of this scale in the coming years. We may be heading for interesting times ahead, little brother!"

"I'm not your brother," Cassias said, his mind racing. First of all, he had to know if Eithan had gotten this information from a reliable source, or if he was relying on his own guesses. Knowing that a disaster was coming could make all the difference.

He said as much, and Eithan nodded along.

"A wise question," Eithan responded. "I cannot reveal my source, but it is...worthy of trust."

"Then we need to suspend normal operations immediately. We should pull back to our strongholds, prepare for sieges...can you convince the Empire that we're in danger, or should we accept censure?"

"Instead of that, we're going to send teams south and west."

Cassias looked up to stare at his Underlord, horrified and disbelieving all at once. The South was a slaughterhouse, and the West was the home of the crumbling Jai clan. "You want me to send families to die."

"Not if you do it right," Eithan responded lightly. "I'm not asking our clansmen to throw their lives away, but these are the places where we are needed. We're equipped to help rescue and repair efforts, as well as to gain information. On Redmoon Hall, the Bleeding Phoenix, and the western labyrinth. That information will soon be very valuable, as will the allies our assistance will earn us."

"It's not worth the risk." Cassias gestured behind him, to the barn that was halfway through its transformation into a shelter. "We'll have enough trouble keeping these people alive if we're not walking straight into the Phoenix's nest. You can't ask them to—"

Eithan dropped to the ground, landing as though he weighed nothing. "I am not asking them to do anything. Put the best face on it, and certainly don't feed anyone to the Dreadgod, but I am commanding them to take a riskier path for greater reward to the family." He clapped Cassias on the shoulder. "Make it so, Cassias."

Cassias' heart boiled. Personally, he was still grateful to Eithan. But as the one-time heir to the Arelius family, he itched at the Underlord's attitude. He would always do things according to his own whims, and would never listen to anyone else.

Now, it fell to Cassias to tell these people that they had to leave their families and head back into danger.

After Eithan left Cassias to his simmering thoughts, Naru Jing returned. She was carrying their three-year-old son in one arm and a basket of firewood in the other, eyeing the sky.

One of her eyes and one of her wings had been replaced with glowing orange Remnant prosthetics, which meant one of her wings could no longer be fully retracted. It stuck out over her left shoulder, folded up.

Both her soft brown eye and her bright false one scanned the sky. "Was Eithan here?" she asked curiously.

Cassias dropped to the ground, leaning his back against the tree, and told her everything that had happened.

When he'd finished, she'd set the firewood down and was examining him with a steady gaze. "I owe Underlord Eithan the same debt you do," she said at last, "but we can't let gratitude overshadow our duty to the family."

Cassias nodded along. He'd let Eithan overwhelm him, causing him to forget his other options. Although...did he really have any?

"You have to take this to your father," Jing said, spelling out what he already knew.

Sighing, he nodded. The elders of the Arelius family could rein in the Patriarch, if they wanted to.

But would they oppose him after he'd brought down the Jai clan, leaving an opening among the great clans that the Arelius could fill? They might, considering that Lindon had lost his duel to Jai Long, which had cost the family some reputation for no reason.

Cassias knew his father, though. The former Patriarch of the Arelius family had never approved of all the time and resources Eithan spent on his own whims.

Though he felt like he was betraying Eithan, he had to ask his father's approval. For the family's sake, it was the right thing to do.

A screech cut off his thoughts. Glass shattered next to him, but he didn’t hear it. Instead, he stumbled over to his son, clapping his hands over the boy’s ears. Jing had already woven a barrier of wind around them to cut out the deadly sound.

A crimson light shone from behind him, and he didn’t need the horrified look on his wife’s face to understand what had happened. He already knew.

***

The floor tilted and Lindon scrambled to grab onto one of the bolted-down tables as Stormrock accelerated as quickly as possible. The whole city shook, the table in Lindon’s arms shaking as though in an earthquake.

All from the force of a scream that was more than a scream, as though the sound had been given life. It was layered, like a thousand birds shrieking at once, so loudly that he felt a sharp pain in both ears.

A moment later, warm liquid trickled down both sides of his face. His Iron body drew madra to his ears, but there was a moment of blissful silence where he couldn’t hear…he could only hear the cry in the rest of his body.

He didn’t even dare to listen to his spirit, which trembled under a force much greater than the sound.

The Bleeding Phoenix had awakened.

The stench of blood filled the red-tinged air. His heart beat more heavily than usual, as though it were hammering on his ribs, and his veins seemed to boil. He opened his Copper sight—not south, lest he blind himself, but at the room around him—and everything was tinged red. Even the pale green of the wind was tinged with wet red.

Mercy was sitting on the ground, both of her palms stuck to the floor as though nailed there. She squinted south, staring into the bright red light. Her ears had been stoppered up with the same black goo that seemed to coat her hands and staff; her madra, Lindon guessed. Renfei stood on dark platforms of solid cloud that she had generated with her madra, face horrified, and Bai Rou was clinging to his emerald Thousand-Mile Cloud like a drowning man clinging to driftwood. Blood ran from their ears as well. Orthos had let himself fall, slamming the side of his shell into the far wall. His sanity had fled before the Dreadgod, his madra raging up, and it was taking all his self-control to keep from breathing fire in the general direction of the Bleeding Phoenix.

However badly off the rest of them were, whatever changes the Phoenix’s aura was making in their bodies, Yerin was worse.

She lay on the floor, collapsed on her back. The only things keeping her from sliding down the slope were her silver blade-arms, which had been driven into the stone. She shook even worse than the ground around her, her back arching and her eyes rolling up into her head.

Blood spilled from her stomach.

Despite his total lack of any medical ability, Lindon looked for a way to slide over to her before she bled out. At least he could keep pressure on the wound, even if his pack—which he'd kept in the back of the room during the ceremony—had slid to the opposite wall. Little Blue's case must have cracked in the impact, but he couldn't worry about that now. There were bandages in there.

It was only at that point that he realized it wasn't blood. It was a Blood Shadow.

Sparks of gray soulfire hissed from the broken seal over her core. The Shadow reached tendrils out, sliding over her body, questing about, looking for something.

Bai Rou let out a roar when he saw her. Lindon's ears had just healed enough to hear. The Skysworn struggled onto his cloud, kneeling on it and flying over to Yerin.

With one hand, he scooped her up. The Blood Shadow latched onto his arm, but a sheath of liquid yellow madra protected him.

With the other hand, he sprayed a geyser of his madra at the window.

The glass dissolved as though eaten away by acid, and he soared free, dragging Yerin along with him.

For a long, frozen second, Lindon panicked.

Where was he taking her? What was he doing? The Dreadgod's scream had quieted, but Stormrock was still rushing away. Why was Bai Rou flying around?

One thing was clear: he’d taken Yerin. And Lindon had to follow.

He released the table, letting himself slide down the slanted room. He bent his knees as he hit the far wall, his legs Enforced by pure madra, landing between Orthos and his pack.

His right arm betrayed him then, grasping at the air to the south, so he had to open his pack with one hand.

"Orthos," he said, as he dug through his belongings. "I don't know if you can hear me right now, but I have to go after Yerin. If I'm not back soon...please don't kill anyone."

Nothing in his spirit told him if the turtle heard him or not, but he couldn't spare any further thought. He'd found the scripted box that contained one of his most valuable possessions.

His own Thousand-Mile Cloud.

He slung the pack on his back even as he spilled out the cloud, hopping onto it immediately. Unlike the Skysworn's, his was a rusty red, made a vibrant ruby by the light.

With no more hesitation, he poured his madra into the construct, hurtling out the hole in the window after Bai Rou.

Wind tore past him as he flew out of the building, and it took most of his effort to keep up with the flying city. After one frantic look around didn't reveal a huge, armored man on a green cloud, he reluctantly opened his spirit.

He was drowning in blood.

Life, vibrant and powerful, had been spilled here. The power that anchored his soul to his body was in his blood, and it was overwhelming him, choking him.

Strangely, the overpowering sense of the Dreadgod actually made it easier to sense what he was looking for. There was only one spot of power that was hanging in the air instead of cowering in a building, and Lindon headed straight for it.

It was to the south.

The red light was almost blinding, but within it he could see a shape. A monstrous shape.

It was so large as to defy description, swallowing half the sky and stretching into the clouds. Each of its feathers was an oozing, flowing blob, as though it had been made from clumps of crimson gel pushed together. Its beak was curved like a scythe and razor-sharp, and its eyes were shapeless masses of white-hot power.

The Bleeding Phoenix spread its wings like a wound stretching from one horizon to another. Then it opened its beak and cried again.

Lindon sent madra to his ears to protect them, but it didn't save him. That stabbing pain returned, blood dribbling down his ears.

This time, a pair of bloodspawn formed beneath him in midair.

They hadn't sprouted earlier, inside the building, though he wasn't sure if that was due to some scripted protection on the Skysworn fortress or if the influence of the Dreadgod simply hadn't been strong enough yet.

These bloodspawn—made of liquid, but clear as red glass—clawed at him as they fell, splattering against the street below and re-forming.

Even when he went deaf again, Lindon kept his eyes locked on the distant green speck. It had reached the southern end of the city, the part that was trailing deep emerald clouds and tilted downward.

He closed on them as the other cloud began to slow down.

Then Bai Rou released Yerin.

Her Blood Shadow clawed for him as she fell, but he defended himself with yellow madra. Without waiting to see her fall, he turned and started flying his cloud after the city.

Lindon tore after her.

She was falling through natural clouds now, and he pushed his Thousand-Mile Cloud harder than he ever had before. She was too far below him. He wouldn't make it.

For months, he'd been stretching his core using the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel. He had more madra in his core than he could possibly use at one time.

He strained his madra channels, shoving as much out as he could, flooding the construct's core with power. He didn’t need the cloud to last beyond today. Just now. Just one last time.

She was close now, her tattered robes blowing in the wind, her Blood Shadow flailing. He reached out his right hand, trying to grab a fistful of her robes.

His arm betrayed him.

The Blood Shadow reached for the white madra of his arm, seeking it, and his arm flinched away.

Desperate, he tried to push the Thousand-Mile Cloud even harder, but the cloud was already dissipating beneath him. The script at the core had overloaded and warped, and now he was flooding the cloud madra with his own. It would fall apart any second.

Which was only fitting, because they would hit the ground any second.

A searing pain hit him in the shoulder, and he shouted, though even he couldn't hear it. He had only a moment to see what it was: a black arrowhead, sticking out from the front of him.

Then, from the tip of the arrow, burst a net.

It looked like a spider's web made of tar, blasting out from the arrow and swallowing Yerin. It covered her from neck to hips.

The Blood Shadow wrapped around the net immediately, seeping into it, but it remained intact. Yerin's weight pulled at the arrow impaling his shoulder, and he was tugged downward, but he grabbed onto the black web with his left hand and hauled her aboard the cloud.

As he swooped below the trees, he managed to level off their flight. Only then did he see what they were falling into: a broken village, with barely a single building left intact. The ground was dotted with fresh corpses.

And shambling bloodspawn.

The Thousand-Mile Cloud burst apart when they were only five feet from landing, but he'd managed to slow them enough. Yerin slammed into the grass back-first, and Lindon fell onto his hands.

He caught a glimpse of the glowing mass of Forged madra at the heart of the cloud construct before it dissipated into essence.

His body flooded with relief, though it was likely premature: they were still caught out in the open, surrounded by bloodspawn, still within the Dreadgod's influence. The sheer size of the creature made it hard to estimate, but they might have been over a hundred miles away. It only felt like it was looming right over them.

Also, he still had an arrow in his shoulder. He couldn't stand up straight or move away from Yerin, because the weight of her body kept the black string between them taut.

His ears healed again in time for him to hear someone land behind him. He turned with horror, part of him expecting to see Bai Rou, but it was Mercy.

She was standing on her staff, which drifted down to the ground. She stumbled as she landed, but smiled as if she'd done a trick. "Sorry for shooting you," she said. "It was the only shot I could get." Black madra unraveled from her ears as she spoke.

Lindon stared at her. "I don't know how I can repay you. I wasn't going to make it, I..." He shook himself. "I can't believe you followed me at all."

"I'm not the only one," she said, turning and pointing to the north.

A smoldering red-and-black meteor plunged to earth. It was a few miles away, but Lindon knew exactly what it was. Or rather, who it was.

He had no idea if Orthos' shell could withstand such an impact, but the turtle would know better than anyone.

Lindon tapped the arrow on his shoulder as some of the bloodspawn oozed closer. "Could you remove this, please? We need to go."

Mercy reached out and touched the arrow, whereupon it melted, along with the web over Yerin. Her Blood Shadow surged up, an excited mass of tendrils seeking food. They leaned toward Lindon’s right arm, which flinched back.

Lindon had expected more pain when the arrow vanished, but all discomfort vanished with the arrow. His skin was untouched.

He found that fascinating, but he held back his curiosity about her madra until later.

"He's your contracted beast, isn't he?" Mercy asked. She spun her staff idly in both hands, eyeing the approaching bloodspawn. They were acting sluggish, perhaps blinded by the Phoenix's influence, but all of them focused on the living humans. "It might be better if we let him come to us."

"I'm not certain he can," Lindon said, feeling the rolling rage in Orthos' core. He was heading quickly for Lindon, but there was no telling how long he could hang on. "When I'm not around, he doesn't always stay...himself."

Mercy's eyes grew sad. "If he loses himself, I will help you find him and bring him back. But I'm afraid none of us will make it if we're out in the open when the fight begins."

Lindon tapped his Blackflame core, feeling the warmth in his eyes and in his spirit, the low-level sizzling pain as his body strained to contain the destructive power. It seemed even wilder today, more difficult to control, as though it fed on the blood aura. His Burning Cloak ignited as he faced down the first of the bloodspawn.

"I've fought these before," he said. "We can’t let them bog us down, but we can force our way through."

Mercy shot a black web from her fingertips, binding three bloodspawn together, then she drove her staff through one of their heads. The headless creature still grasped at her, and she danced backwards, tying up another.

"I don't mean this fight," she said. She nodded south, and her voice grew heavy. "I mean that one."

Lindon wanted to follow her gaze, but he couldn't bear to look upon the Dreadgod again. It was too bright, and reminded him too much of carnage and slaughter. Although letting it hover over him like a weight about to fall may have been worse.

"What is it going to fight? Us?" Lindon couldn't imagine that being much of a contest.

"Not us," Mercy said. "We should get inside."

Carrying Yerin ended up being the hard part, with Mercy dragging her along in a case of webbing, wrapping up the Blood Shadow whenever it struggled free. Lindon was forced to face most of the Bloodspawn himself, and with every one he killed, he regretted his lack of a weapon.

The bloodspawn burned on contact with his fist, and he could only use Striker techniques every few seconds. He took several cuts and some burns just because of how close he had to get, and came very close to death as one of the creatures had burst into thorns when he got close. Mercy managed to haul him out at the last second.

Fortunately, his Remnant arm was only too happy to devour these bloodspawn.

It seized any of the spirits that came too close, gripping them by the throat as though they were made of flesh. The bloodspawn froze when the white claw took them. They trembled, flashed with power, and eventually dissolved into dark, dried flakes. The arm always glowed brighter when it did so, and the sense of hunger radiating from it grew stronger.

It was taking something from the spirits, but he couldn't figure out what. The arm wasn't turning red, and there was no hint of blood madra in his channels. It was either taking something other than madra, or it was processing the power so efficiently that Lindon couldn't sense any waste.

He would question it later. For now, he was simply glad of it. Without its help, he would have been overwhelmed in an instant. He had to get too close to his opponents, and these enemies could burst into suicide attacks. Mercy couldn't always cover him, and his dragon's breath took too long to muster.

Yerin would tell him his training was lacking. He needed a way to deal with a mass of opponents, when he couldn't approach to arm's length. A reliable Striker technique and a weapon would go a long way.

In his opinion, it was preparation he lacked. He needed to stop plunging headfirst into situations where he had no reliable information.

Although, in this case, it wasn't as though he had another choice.

They fought their way to a building that may have been an inn. Its windows were broken out, but Mercy found a door to the cellar. They pushed inside, and she webbed up the edges of the door. Lindon pulled out a knife from his pouch and scratched a quick Remnant-repelling script into the door's wooden surface. He didn't think bloodspawn were exactly Remnants, but they were composed of madra, and that should be similar enough. He hoped.

When they finally came to a stop in the cellar, surrounded by sealed jars and sacks, his breath came so fast that he had almost released his cycling technique. Sweat drenched him, and he heaved in air. Mercy was in the same state, leaning on her staff as though it were the only thing keeping her upright.

At last, Lindon had a moment to check on Yerin.

He didn't need to be a healer to tell she wasn't doing well.

Beneath the layers of black web covering her, she still bucked, limbs thrashing. He slipped a mass of folded-up bandages between her teeth to stop her from biting her tongue, but he wasn't sure that he would be in time.

The Blood Shadow wrapped her like a second robe. He didn't know anything about it, but that couldn't be good.

He pulled Little Blue out of his pack—her container had indeed cracked, but only slightly, and not enough to spill any of the water within. She saw the Blood Shadow and flinched, letting out a piping scream. Then she ran from Yerin, tucking herself back inside his backpack.

He hadn't expected her to help anyway. Her power washed madra channels clean, she didn't expel parasites, otherwise Eithan could have used Little Blue to free Yerin from the Blood Shadow months ago.

Bloodspawn slammed against the door, and the circle flared. It wouldn't hold against them for long. Every time the circle expended power, it would push against the material of the door, until eventually the wood broke and snapped, the circle deforming. Scripts engraved in metal or stone lasted longer, but they weren't appropriate for all aspects of madra. Also, they often took more power to operate.

He switched to his pure core, reluctant to touch the parasite, but he had to try.

Gathering power, he slammed an Empty Palm into Yerin's core. He felt the pure madra penetrate, disrupting the flow of power through Yerin's body. She bucked again, but the Blood Shadow didn't seem to mind.

It wasn't anchored in Yerin's core, but around it. He could feel that now, though the haze of the Bleeding Phoenix still hung in the aura around him.

He couldn't shake it loose. His Sylvan Riverseed couldn't cleanse it.

There was one more thing he could try.

The closer he got, the more the Shadow reached for his arm. His skeletal white hand, which had fed on the bloodspawn, was too frightened of this parasite to get close.

Lindon wished he had a drudge. It could help detect and measure the interactions of madra, so he wouldn't have to rely on feelings and guesswork. Instead, he had to rely on blind experimentation.

There was some relationship between the Blood Shadow and the material of his arm. It almost made sense: the Bleeding Phoenix was awakened by the power hidden in the same labyrinth where he'd found the Ancestor's Spear and the binding of hunger madra.

It seemed as though this piece of the Phoenix's power wanted to feed on his arm, rather than the other way around. But the binding in his arm was supposed to devour madra.

It was possible that he could tear it free.

There were risks. First, he didn't know what the Shadow wanted with his arm. It was possible that he was feeding it exactly what it needed to grow strong enough to consume Yerin completely.

Second, he had used the arm for less than a week. It still wasn't bound to him completely. He couldn't even control its motion all the time, and he was supposed to wait for three to five more weeks before he activated the binding.

Third, there was the danger to him. He didn't want to pull a mass of self-aware blood madra into his core...but at least he had one to spare. It was better than leaving it free to control Yerin.

But that was if it went into his core at all. It wasn't in Yerin's. If it attached itself to his spirit, or embedded itself inside his arm, he wouldn't be any better off than Yerin was. Less so, considering her years of experience.

Another bloodspawn slammed on the door, and the circle flared again. Mercy stood below the door, staff in both hands, ready to protect them.

It was time for Lindon to do his part.

He placed his palm on the bloody surface of the parasite, then triggered the binding.