Yerin drummed her fingers on the hilt of her sword, Netherclaw. Lindon could see an idea dawning on her face.
“Could be I was going too easy about this. Now I think of it, he is an Emperor. Shouldn’t we welcome him ourselves?”
“Well well well, that’s what I like to hear.” Eithan snapped his book shut and made it vanish, then drained the rest of his glass. He snapped his sleeves in the air. “You’re absolutely right, Yerin. In many cultures it would be considered rude to host an Emperor without a welcoming ceremony of our own.”
Eithan and Yerin began cycling their madra.
Lindon’s gut tightened. “Wait a minute. This is going to look like we’re trying to outdo him. Or scare him off.”
He was also concerned that a display of their overwhelming madra might come across as an attack.
“Don’t worry, I know Naru Huan well. He will appreciate this.”
Something in Eithan’s tone made Lindon look closer at his face. “Will he really?”
“The word ‘appreciate’ can have so many definitions, don’t you think?”
Wei Shi Jaran shaded his new eyes as he watched the flying ships approach from the east. Only long years of practice allowed him to keep up his stoic front.
He could see again. Even the pattern on the bark of a tree was fascinating to him now, and this display…he couldn’t believe he had almost missed half the sky changing colors, like a dozen different flavors of sunset.
He almost regretted not taking his son up on the offer of new eyes immediately. Almost. But in the end, he had been right to avoid the risk.
Whatever advancement Lindon had achieved, he was still an amateur. Jaran had been reluctant enough to allow his own wife to attach the Remnant’s eyes to his, and he had only allowed that because advancing to Jade would fix any problems the eyes caused.
Not that he had noticed any problems so far. Lindon, it seemed, had been right that these Remnant eyes worked roughly the same as human ones. They glowed a soft white-pink and didn’t look natural, but Jaran had never cared what others thought about his appearance.
All in all, he had been correct to wait. He was glad to have eyes now, but his son was too impatient. Endurance and fortitude were the way. Lindon would learn that when he realized he’d ruined his own future advancement with his impatience.
Ribbons of green wind madra spiraled around the entire fleet of these foreigners, and Jaran leaned on his cane to get closer to his wife’s ear. “The Blackflame Empire, you said?”
She nodded absently. Her drudge bristled with sensors, and she checked some flashing scripts on its back, writing down some readings. Analyzing the patterns of the madra used for the display, no doubt.
“That’s supposed to be the Emperor and his entourage. Seeing this, I can believe it.”
“And how big is this Blackflame Empire?”
“Very,” Seisha said quietly.
Jaran didn’t give any external sign of how much that thought disturbed him. He wasn’t stupid. He had picked up Orthos’ stories, and heard others talking since leaving Sacred Valley. Even if you took out the parts that were obviously exaggeration, the Empire dwarfed Sacred Valley and the surrounding lands many times over.
“How advanced is he?” Jaran asked.
“Overlord.”
He frowned. “Overlord. That’s…”
“Yes, like Lindon,” she said, in a long-suffering tone that put him on edge. “I told you.”
“Can’t be that impressive,” he grumbled. Lindon was an Overlord, and he wasn’t even twenty yet. Either this Blackflame Emperor was only a child, or Lindon’s advancement was inflated.
Probably the second one. There was no way to advance…what was it, six stages? Six stages or so in only three or four years, without harming your own spirit. He had seen young warriors push up to Jade too quickly, before they were ready, and they were always weaker than their peers.
Suddenly a thousand golden stars burst from a cloud over their heads, and Jaran looked straight up in shock. A large, dark blue cloud hung over them, and he hadn’t given it much notice. It seemed everyone outside the Valley used Thousand-Mile Clouds for transportation, and there was nothing to attract his attention to this one compared to the Emperor’s fleet.
Nothing except, now, the golden stars that burst out and flew around the cloud in a complex web. It shone like a firework that never ended, like one of the festival displays that required all the Wei clan’s Jades to coordinate, and that was only the beginning.
Red light burst from the top of the cloud in a column that stretched toward the sky, a flash of crimson that outshone even the Empire’s celebration. After a few seconds, the vibrant beam burst, and a shower of crimson lights fell like needles down to the earth below.
Jaran’s body felt great pressure, as though this technique pushed on his muscles directly. He may not have been a Jade, but his hand still clenched on his cane as he sensed this attack.
The needles burst into harmless essence at once before they struck the treetops, red sparks fading into the sky.
A low whistle came from Seisha’s drudge, and she stared around her in shock. “That level of control…”
“They must have scripted it,” Jaran said, but without certainty. If Seisha was impressed, she had reason to be.
“That was controlled directly,” Seisha said. “And it was one person.”
Jaran stared at her, looking for signs of a joke. That technique had covered the sky and dwarfed the entire spectacle coming from the Blackflame Empire, and theirs was clearly the work of many sacred artists.
But she wasn’t joking, and there was more.
Above the Thousand-Mile Cloud, more clouds began to whirl in the air. These were clouds of dark flame.
Kelsa had described Orthos to him, and Jaran had heard about his son’s Path. But it was something else to see a hurricane of black fire swirling overhead, a burning vortex. Stinging hot wind blew down on him, though he couldn’t guess how many miles away the fire really was.
The golden stars that had been spinning around the cloud fortress were now joined by stars of dense blue-white energy. Dark balls of flame fell from the spiral overhead, and they danced with crimson sparks that shone somehow silver.
The colors of madra wove a complex pattern with one another, and then rushed out toward the Emperor’s fleet.
From the way the music faltered, Jaran felt the hesitation of the sacred artists aboard the incoming cloudships. If he had been standing aboard one himself, he would have assumed he was about to be bombarded by a volley of Striker techniques.
But these stars spun around, encircling the fleet, forming a sort of tunnel. After slowing slightly, the cloudships passed through, accepting the invitation.
“How many were responsible for that?” Jaran asked.
“Three,” Seisha said after consulting her drudge. “But there were four types of madra. I think the gold light was from a construct.”
“Were they all Overlords?”
“One of them was Lindon.”
Jaran grunted and shifted his weight off his wounded leg. He understood the truth that Lindon had been forcibly advanced, but he couldn’t help but think it was a waste. What could someone else have accomplished with those same resources?