“Let’s see what he left,” Mercy said, but Lindon stopped her by speaking.
“We should check with our key first. Prepare yourselves.”
He had to calm his own spirit as he focused on the case he held. Exposing the hand before had been an overwhelming experience, and he was frightened to do it here in the labyrinth.
Yerin’s red-tinted sword-arms spread out behind her, and Mercy shifted Suu into the form of a bow. Ziel opened his void key—which, strangely, seemed to take longer than usual—and withdrew his massive steel hammer. Eithan began playing with his pair of dark fabric scissors.
Orthos cycled Blackflame, and Little Blue punched her left palm.
“Open,” Lindon commanded once again.
The silver metal bloomed like a steel flower, revealing a gruesome, mummified left hand of chalk-white flesh.
Worse was the aura that boiled out. It made Lindon feel like he was starving, like he was empty, lacking in every sense. The air warped, twisting like they were at the center of an invisible whirlpool. Even the walls bent inward.
Everything faded, leaving the hand as the only real thing in the world. It was a fragment of another will, the strongest existence here, the pulsing heart at the center of the labyrinth. Subject One.
Lindon forced his will against the hand, controlling it as he would a construct. But unlike a construct, the hand fought back.
Its fingers squirmed and lunged, trying to escape his grip, and a high-pitched howl echoed through the stone halls. The hand tried to command the labyrinth to take it away, to escape.
But Lindon was in charge.
If it were the full Dreadgod, he would have stood no chance. Over a long-separated hand, though, Lindon’s willpower won out. The fingers went limp as the hand gave up…and then Lindon felt his authority expand.
It wasn’t the same as his relationship with an Icon; it felt more like his bond with his Remnant arm. Like a new part grafted onto his spirit. Except instead of a prosthetic limb, it was a piece of the labyrinth.
He could feel this hallway, and the rooms ahead. He sensed the flows of power, and which way led forward.
“This way,” Lindon said.
Then Subject One’s anger crashed into him, and he staggered. The imprisoned Dreadgod was distant and weakened, but Lindon felt its will. It was furious that someone had dared to usurp its authority…and now it wanted to make them prey.
The ground erupted beneath their feet.
Gray-white hunger madra lurched upward from the stone, grabbing for ankles. They all reacted at once.
Yerin leaped upward as her sword rang out, shredding the hands. Mercy’s feet were covered to the ankles by greaves of purple crystal, and she spun her bow around her in a blurring circle. Pure madra rushed away from Eithan’s feet, brushing away the hands like water clearing away paint. Ziel simply let them grab his ankles, then Forged a ring of shining green runes around him. A moment later, force crushed the hands against the stone as though gravity had been increased.
Lindon’s attention was taken by the hand, but he still extended the Hollow Domain around him. A sphere of blue-white madra pushed several feet out from his body, dispersing the spirits of hunger madra. Including their true bodies, which waited underground.
Around everyone but Eithan and Lindon, bodies followed the hands. These were skeletal ghouls of hunger madra, their jaws hanging down to their chests. They howled as though trying to inhale their meals as they rose from the stone, lunging for everyone else.
They were still outclassed. This was only a distant projection of Subject One’s anger, a disdainful slap. The deeper they traveled, the more control the imprisoned Dreadgod would have.
Everyone in the room handled the ghouls in a moment, even as Lindon sealed the desiccated hand back into its silver casing.
When the brief battle was over, hunger madra dissolved all over the room. Lindon initially intended to collect this madra to rebuild his arm, but none of this had been properly Forged. These were effectively Striker techniques given mobility and the faint will to feed.
Yerin scuffed her shoe on the stone and spoke scornfully. “Not much security.”
“Recall that they would normally be acting against victims under the effects of the suppression field,” Eithan pointed out. “They would be suppressed as well, but when both sides are down to Jade, losing even a bit of your madra can be deadly. Speaking of which, how are you holding up, Ziel?”
Lindon had noticed the same thing. By letting one of the animated techniques touch him, Ziel had given up part of his power. The ghouls were some version of his own Consume technique, so they would drain more than madra.
Ziel looked disgusted more than weakened. “Lost a little madra, a little soulfire, maybe some blood aura. Feels gross.”
“One brush shouldn’t be too bad,” Lindon said. “But it will add up. If they can move through the walls, we should protect ourselves.”
Glowing script-circles appeared around Ziel’s ankles, and he heaved the hammer onto his shoulder. “Great. Now that we know what we’re up against, let’s pick up the pace.”
Lindon moved his spiritual perception forward, just like everyone else. It wasn’t too far to the next room, and while he couldn’t pierce the walls with his senses, he had no problem feeling the next room.
Lindon nodded.
As one, the entire group vanished.
From the other side of the continent, Malice felt power erupting from the western labyrinth.
She sent messages to her forces arrayed all around the Blackflame Empire. She had people closer than anyone else. She’d be in control of the situation before anyone else could sense it and react.
Not long after, her agents began speaking her name with intention. Their will focused on her, drawing her perception. She couldn’t exactly hear what they were saying to her—she wasn’t an Arelius—but she felt their desire to contact her and a touch of their desperate anxiety.
She abandoned Moongrave.
When she stepped out of the Way a moment later, she was within sight of Sacred Valley.
And what she saw made her livid.
The island of the Silent Servants, with its shining white tree, drifted just outside the eastern mountain. Both shared a white halo of crystallized light madra, though other aspects had been sneaking into the one around Mount Samara.
Beside the northern peak floated the great ship of Redmoon Hall, the pyramid of Abyssal Palace rolled in on flying stones to the west, and a serpentine raincloud held the Stormcallers to the south.
The four cults loomed over Sacred Valley. Many of them still bore marks of their fight with Fury—Abyssal Palace had a huge chunk missing and was listing to one side—but their leaders were still in fighting shape. Malice’s perception was somewhat blunted by scripts inside the Redmoon Hall vessel, but she thought she sensed Red Faith in there as well.
These cults arriving so quickly meant they knew this was going to happen. They knew the suppression field script around the Valley was going to be inverted, meaning they had one of their most advanced sacred artists inside the labyrinth. Maybe Shen himself.
Instead of a desert of aura, Sacred Valley now gushed with power…but so much of it was hunger. Dreadbeasts would be born or empowered every second. The land around the labyrinth was like a slowly erupting volcano.
“I have to thank you,” Malice whispered into the air. The newly refreshed aura carried her words to the cults. “It’s not so often I’m given such a fine excuse.”