“I’m not as…ruthless, as she is,” Mercy said, as though admitting something.
Malice sneered at her and loosed another arrow.
“Cut deeper,” Yerin said.
“I don’t have the same drive. She’s willing to do whatever she has to. You know, once she—”
Yerin interrupted. “Deeper.”
“Is this what worked for you? I don’t—”
Yerin shook her. “You talking to me, or you looking at her?”
Mercy slowly quieted and focused on her mother. Lindon felt the interaction of dream and hunger aura, and he suspected Yerin was bathed in it too, but she didn’t react.
The aura trembled, and he rushed over to the panel. The technique was destabilizing, thanks to the imbalance of the aura. He could hold it, but he wouldn’t be able to fend off the labyrinth’s attacks in the rest of the room.
He waved to the two men across the room, but they were still talking. Eithan waved back without looking.
“I like people,” Mercy said. “She’s not kind. She’s…cruel.”
The aura from the natural treasures began to tremble.
“She isn’t just callous,” she continued. “She likes it when her enemies are afraid of her. Malice is the virtue she’s named after; it’s the hatred that drives you to be merciless to those who oppose you.”
There was a resonance in the aura that even Lindon could sense, so Mercy’s spirit must be trembling. She was close.
Now, she was whispering. “I don’t want that. I’ve never wanted that. I want the opposite. I want to be…”
She stopped. Then, she corrected herself. “She’s Malice. I am Mercy.”
Around the room, the natural treasures ignited. Yerin had to release Mercy as the soulfire inside her went up in response.
As Mercy advanced, the labyrinth reacted.
Lindon had expected some kind of reaction from the hunger madra, but the ghouls that clawed their way up from the ground were not simple. And they weren’t alone. Forged webs shot toward Mercy from every direction.
He drove his fist through one of the ghouls, his channels filled with pure madra, but it was harder than he’d expected. It took him two blows to crush the living technique, and then he had to exert real force to pull some webs down.
Either the hunger madra was stronger here, or this attack was particularly fierce.
Eithan and Ziel both were roused, but just like Lindon, neither of them were eager to use more of their madra than they had to. Ziel was swinging his hammer without rings of script around it, and Eithan was just using his scissors.
Yerin was fighting the hardest.
Mercy’s advancement was taking longer than Lindon’s had, most likely because of the aura imbalance here in the labyrinth but possibly because of the interference of the hunger madra. She was helpless as the attention of the whole room was focused on her.
Yerin covered her like a red-and-black blur, her Goldsigns and sword flashing. Both had been Enforced with madra, and she slammed into ghouls and webs alike with the force of a Herald.
Lindon couldn’t help but worry. They were running low on elixirs, and while Yerin might not need her madra as much as the rest of them given the strength of her physical body, she would still be in trouble if she ran out.
He could afford to spend more than she could, so he covered Yerin with Blackflame. The webs burned relatively easily, though he had to focus on his will to pierce some of the larger ghouls.
Yerin slowed down, and after not too long, the Book of Eternal Night materialized over Mercy. The Divine Treasure shone as a thick violet tome, and as Lindon watched, it slowly flipped its thick, glassy pages until it rested on the fifth.
Then it faded back into Mercy, and she awoke with a gasp.
As an Overlady.
Her clothes and weapons were unharmed, but Lindon could feel her spiritual pressure. Unfortunately, the transformation had consumed much of her soulfire.
But it would be worth the increase in her strength.
“Whew!” Mercy examined her black-gloved hands. “You know, I didn’t think it would make much of a difference, since I’ve used the fifth page so much already. But it feels good!”
Yerin looked to her amid a rising tide of white sparks: the essence of all the hunger madra she’d destroyed. “Glad you’re feeling all fresh and shiny new.”
Mercy watched the echo of her mother, which was tracking her with an arrow. She pressed her fists together and saluted the image of Malice.
Malice eyed Mercy with disdain, but she lowered her bow. Then she saluted back.
Her image vanished, and power stopped flowing through the scripts all around the room. Lindon ran his perception through them to make sure nothing had broken, but it seemed like the echo of Malice had cut off the process on her own.
He could activate it again, but…
Around the room, the entrances blurred. Now, there was only one exit from the room.
Lindon pulled out the silver case that contained the hand of Subject One, and eyed the single tunnel. He extended his senses down the hall and sensed nothing, but he prepared to unlock the case.
Eithan stopped him. He had an odd look on his face. “Save the effort, I think. I can see where we’re going.”
Ziel rested against his hammer. “And where is that?”
“Deeper,” Eithan said grimly. “Subject One couldn’t keep us out any longer…so it’s drawing us closer.”
Lindon didn’t like the sound of that.
18
A white snake wrapped around the point of Jai Long’s spear, and he shattered the shield of his Truegold opponent with one final thrust.
Without the shield to stop him, his spear skewered her into the ground.
He stood panting and bleeding, one eye gummed shut with blood. His mask was torn and ragged. The two remaining Highgolds and remaining Lowgold of the enemy squad cut and ran.
“Remnant!” he called, but there was no need.
Fingerling sprayed destructive pink light over the slate-gray Remnant that started pulling its way out of the enemy Truegold. Kelsa was there in a moment, Foxfire in each hand, which burned Remnants better than it did the living.
He had to help out with a strike or two—the Remnant had come from a Truegold, after all—but they collapsed the Remnant to chunks before it could hit them.
The allied Soulsmiths would be disappointed. They paid a premium for Truegold dead matter, and Kelsa was already wrapping some of the intact bits in scripted cloth, to preserve it for sale. But Jai Long had concerns about their immediate survival.
He signaled his squad to fall back. No losses today—one Highgold and two Lowgolds had died and been replaced under his command already.
The fighting among the Golds wasn’t merciless. They were fighting for territory, not extermination. But that didn’t mean it was safe.
And he wasn’t even sure how it was going.
Granted, their forces were creeping closer and closer to Mount Samara, through the foothills and lesser mountains between the Desolate Wilds and Sacred Valley. But the real battle was being fought overhead.
Thunder and lightning cracked the sky as Underlords clashed in flight. One was a burly, bearded man from the Cloud Hammer sect—his weapon and raincloud Goldsign gave him away. That was the Underlord from the Blackflame Empire.