Right away, now that he could feel the scope of the opponent, Lindon stopped and began to turn. “We’ll try digging.”
Yerin had her sword and all six sword-arms out. “Better idea: let’s make a deal. Think I can get us good terms.”
Lindon’s heart twisted. She was about to fight. “No! Apologies, I mean, but…without you, we can’t…we can’t win.”
“There’s a lot about you that’s bright and sharp, Lindon.” Yerin smiled, and her red eyes gleamed. “But you think too much.”
Yerin’s entire body flashed white, and he saw another flare of light as she appeared in the center of the huge dreadbeasts.
Lindon still worried for a moment, feeling that overwhelming spiritual pressure, even though it didn’t make sense. The ones who were really in danger here were the dreadbeasts.
He was far away, now, so the chime sounded like a bell ringing softly next to his ear.
As Yerin used the Endless Sword.
Like a thousand invisible soldiers striking at once, blood flew into the air all around the chamber. If the previous scream had felt like an attack, this one rattled Lindon’s bones and shook the entire labyrinth.
The gorilla-like guardian dreadbeasts hurled themselves at her, and the Netherclaw technique began Forging over her head. As the three-clawed red hand wove itself into existence out of red strands of madra, Yerin looked at the surrounding monsters in contempt.
She said something, and though Lindon couldn’t hear it after having sealed off his ears, he understood the meaning behind it.
“Oh, please.”
Her Goldsigns flashed in four directions, and Rippling Swords shot out. In front of her, behind, and to either side.
The shining waves of razor-sharp madra divided the chamber into quarters. Then the Netherclaw technique struck, and Yerin herself launched forward. She darted around for a second, landing delicately near Lindon and blowing her red streak of hair out of her eyes.
The whole room, big enough to house a fleet of cloudships, exploded into gore.
“They have blood in ‘em,” Yerin pointed out. “Well, had. Won’t get far with me that way.”
She was standing in the hallway with the other two, and Lindon felt a formless fury fill the walls. They blurred, and the room vanished. The three found themselves nose-to-nose with a blank rock wall.
But only for a moment. A second later, they were facing another giant chamber, this one empty under an arching dome so high that it might as well have been the sky.
Hundreds of entrances covered every surface so that it resembled the inside of a beehive. And thousands of creatures began pouring in.
Lindon was truly shocked by the chaotic presence of it all. The hunger aura was so thick he thought he could taste it, and there were so many monsters here that he could scarcely separate one from another.
[Finally, a deadly move worthy of my opponent!] Dross cried. [He’s reconfigured the entire labyrinth to focus the dreadbeasts here. It takes a lot to impress me.]
Yerin, however, was less impressed.
She disappeared again and repeated her show from before.
This time, one Endless Sword meant she was standing in the center of a rain of blood and meat. She controlled the thin aura, so not even a drop splattered on her.
The splatter of blood made a roaring waterfall, and this time Lindon could barely see her. But not everything in the chamber had been a dreadbeast; there were spirits as well.
Briefly.
Rippling Sword blasted through the room, Lindon saw a few flashes of white, and a second later Yerin stood next to him again. Perfectly dry.
She was burning through power, just as Ziel had, but Lindon couldn’t help but feel a little awe. How could he compete with that?
Dross made a choking sound. [You can tear a hole in the world! It stinks of false humility in here.]
Yerin leaned casually against the wall with one hand. “Oi, I know you’ve got ears. Give them a road forward, and me a way out, and I’ll leave.”
The anger that radiated from the walls only increased.
“Fine, we’ll take your deal,” Yerin said dismissively. “Keep sending meat to the grinder. Maybe when I run dry of madra, you can make my arm sore.”
The walls blurred again, but this time the stone wall remained in front, trapping them in the hallway.
“Good. Curious to see what happens myself.”
Yerin drew her sword back, and she began cycling the Final Sword. It was an unstable version, but she compensated with raw power.
And then she kept pouring power in.
Lindon initially thought she was bluffing, since the blood aspect of her power now meant that she would do less against stone than against monsters. But as she kept pouring more and more madra into her technique, along with the last of her soulfire, powerful pressure surged off her in waves. He had to take a step back, and Eithan had virtually set up camp at the far end of the hallway.
The air around her was beginning to distort in a way that suggested space was about to crack, and only then did the technique reach its apex.
Before she could unleash it, something in the labyrinth gave in.
A moment later, there were two tunnels. One led directly up, and Lindon could see the entry hall they’d first entered through back in the Ancestor’s Tomb. The other sloped down.
And it was marked with a familiar symbol: the crest of Ozriel.
Yerin jerked her chin at the hall sloping down. “The pair of you head in there, go get your Soulsmith tablet, and I’ll head out. Fair deal. You see a Monarch, you run.”
Lindon removed the Dawn Sky Palace and tossed it to Yerin. “If it tries to trap you, get in there. If the key breaks and you can’t escape, I’ll come back to release you.”
“Sounds like a fast road to getting stuck outside the world,” Yerin said, but she did take it. “Now get moving.”
Lindon hesitated. “Without you—”
Yerin grabbed him with one hand. “Don’t split off from each other,” she warned. “Don’t fight Shen. Take what you can and get out.”
Then she seized Eithan with her other hand and shoved them both down the tunnel.
When they were safely in the hallway, she looked up. “I’ll go see who needs killing.”
She leaped upward, leaving them to walk down.
Two left.
[The fact that you haven’t learned to count me by now proves to me that you are irredeemable and will never amount to anything.]
Only when Lindon had scanned the next room with his perception and was satisfied that Reigan Shen wasn’t lurking within did he move forward. Eithan had already strolled down, hands in his pockets.
Lindon had to stop his expectations before they rose too high. This should be the deepest room Ozriel had left behind in the labyrinth, which meant that it was likely to hold his Soulsmith inheritance.
He hadn’t sensed anything like that in the room, which didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t there. The inheritance could easily be inactive, or sealed, or veiled behind a script, or…
His thoughts crashed to a halt when he entered the room.
The chamber had been raided. Ornate, scripted chests stood open, and Lindon could still feel residual power emanating from inside. Powerful treasures had been hidden there, not long ago.
A nearby projection table had once housed a dream tablet, but it was now broken. No one would view the memory again. A shelf full of labels had once held books and scrolls dating back centuries, if not millennia. Every one of them missing. Some had been sealed away to preserve them, and others had been protected so that their power didn’t disturb visitors.