Shen didn’t linger. He dashed out of the room, pitting his willpower against reality to push him faster, faster than his body could normally handle. Even the air swept around him, guided by his soulfire control.
Hunger madra focused on him. He was spending too much power in the labyrinth, but he had no choice.
The clock had begun to tick.
One of the elders of the Holy Wind school dipped her hand into Greatfather’s Tears to take a drink. The water level had fallen after the attack of the Titan, but over the last few days, it had risen again. But it was no longer as crystal-clear as before.
An instant after tasting the water, she spat it out. The Greatfather’s Tears had been corrupted. This coppery tang was unmistakable; it was blood.
She drew herself up, shouting in fury for the guards. If their most sacred place had been defiled with violence, then her entire school had failed in its duty. There might even be a body at the bottom of the spring.
She marched away, furious, as bit by bit the water darkened further.
The door slamming open interrupted Lindon’s meal, though both he and Yerin had sensed Eithan coming from a mile away.
They both looked to him in equal irritation. They had specifically taken time away from training and anyone else but each other, and booked an entire restaurant. Lindon had even gone to see a barber on Eithan’s desperate pleading.
Yerin’s sword-arms stretched out, but she deliberately pulled them back in. “You had a chance to keep your skin in one piece, and you left it at home.”
“It happened again!”
Lindon exchanged a look with Yerin. It had been weeks since Eithan had felt his first premonition of danger, and both had kept their eyes out. But neither had sensed anything like what Eithan had described.
They still took it seriously.
Yerin frowned and her perception rushed out of the restaurant in a river. She might have a chance of reaching all the way to Sacred Valley, if that was indeed where the problem had come from, but she still wouldn’t be able to push past the suppression field.
Lindon reached out to the Void Icon. He still spoke as he did. “This is bad timing, Eithan.”
“It could have been worse!” Eithan pointed out. “Believe it or not, I do know when people can be interrupted and when they can’t.”
Lindon’s cheeks heated, and he focused on his spiritual sense to avoid meeting Eithan’s eye. Again, he felt no foreign authority in the area. There was no influence that reminded him of the Void Icon, nor any powerful wills working against them.
Yerin’s ruby eyes snapped open. “Not a sniff or a hair. I’d be red-hot if I thought you were just poking at us, Eithan, but I don’t think you are. You’ve got me shaking.”
Lindon had a similar feeling. The longer this went without passing as one of Eithan’s jokes, the more disturbed he became.
Eithan scratched furiously at the side of his head, disturbing his short hair. “It’s something, but…if only I could…maybe if I fly…”
He mumbled to himself as he left, leaving Lindon and Yerin staring at the door in shock.
“He didn’t even try to pull up a chair,” Lindon said.
Yerin leaned over to look out the window. She didn’t watch the street, looking instead to the sky.
“What are you looking for?”
“Just checking to be sure the moon’s still there. The longer he does this, the bigger the problem’s gonna be.” She fell back into her chair and speared a chunk of eel.
She looked at it, then replaced it without eating it.
“Maybe we should take a cloudship out west,” Lindon suggested. “I do think he sensed something.”
“That’s why I’m shaking.”
The shattered remains of Mount Venture still vomited up yellow light. It was fainter than it had been, the Core having been fed upon by the Titan, but it would work for Shen’s purposes.
There was no guardian spirit in this chamber, which was filled with jagged blades of golden stone. Most likely, one had formed here, but the Wandering Titan had annihilated it without even noticing.
Another palm-sized silver flask came off his belt, and he absorbed the Titan Core. The yellow light vanished.
It had been flickering off and on since the Dreadgod had consumed most of its power, so Shen could only hope this would go unnoticed for a while.
He pushed himself. Faster.
Lindon found Eithan standing on the edge of Windfall’s cloudbase, looking west.
“Strange feeling?” Lindon asked.
Eithan’s clothes were rumpled, and he had worn the same thing for three days straight. Given that Eithan normally changed at least twice a day, Lindon thought he might be on the verge of death.
“Every time I turn around,” Eithan responded. “If I didn’t know better, I would say it was just…nerves. Anxiety. Overactive imagination.”
“So what is it?”
Eithan threw out his hands in frustration. “You think I know and I’m holding out on you?”
“Apologies if I’m overstepping, but…what would Tiberian Arelius’ advisor say?”
Eithan closed his mouth. He brought his arms around and crossed them, thinking. To Lindon’s discomfort, he found traces of someone he didn’t recognize in Eithan’s expression. Just flickers, like the shadow of another person passing through the man.
“There are three possibilities,” Eithan responded eventually, and all playfulness was gone from his tone. “One, there is a problem with me. A working of will or authority that I cannot detect, which is compromising my senses. Two, I could be sensing authority at work. If I’m close to Sage—especially the Oracle Icon, which I was once considered a prime candidate to manifest—then I could be picking up hints of another Sage or Monarch’s working. It could be a working you are too inexperienced to recognize, or something too far away from the realm of the Void Icon.”
Lindon didn’t take offense at the slight to his abilities. It was a reasonable possibility. He only listened.
“Three…” The businesslike Eithan hesitated, and Lindon saw the usual man again. Although an uncertain one.
“…you’re going to laugh.”
“I usually don’t.”
“That’s true. It’s of great concern to me. The third possibility is…fate.”
Lindon didn’t feel like laughing. In fact, he sought out the warmth of Suriel’s marble for comfort.
She had spoken of fate. Reading it, changing it, altering its flow.
“Fate, or destiny, or the will of the heavens…it’s a real force. Dream artists contact it once in a while, and some Monarchs are more attuned to it than others. As an Archlord with no dream abilities, I should have no ability to see it. So that’s a distant third possibility.”
Lindon didn’t think it sounded distant. If he were to bet based on this conversation, he would put his chips on fate.
But that would be a bet he’d be happy to lose.
“Pardon, but I hope the problem is with you,” Lindon said.
“I would be delighted.”
When Reigan Shen placed the Titan Core in the north where it belonged, the mountain the locals called Yoma erupted in stone spires.