[You were too slow!] Dross raged. [Reigan Shen has slain the beast!]
It had to have been Reigan Shen, Lindon knew. But there were no signs of battle. He was reluctant to expose the hand he had locked away—in this chamber, it might even bring the Wraith back to life—but he had already figured out how to tap into the authority of the labyrinth.
Focusing on the Void Icon, Lindon extended his awareness into the room nearby. He was looking for a familiar binding, a Forger technique embedded somewhere…
Dross contemptuously pointed it out a moment before Lindon found it himself. The technique that would create a hunger echo.
Without Subject One to wrestle against him, Lindon found this one easy to activate. He still needed Dross to help him sort through the dizzying impressions—the Dreadgod had fed on far too many people—but one presence was clear above all others.
Lindon poured pure madra into the technique. The more he fueled the technique, the more solid the echo would be. Before long, he managed to Forge a black-and-white echo nearby. It was still transparent, but it should be conscious and ready to speak.
It was little more than a ghost, but not just any ghost. This was the manifestation of the Slumbering Wraith itself.
The echo flexed all six of his arms, then looked at his own body that sat next to him. Rage and weariness and longing radiated from him.
“Betrayal is the nature of Monarchs,” the Dreadgod said.
Lindon glanced at the hole in his chest. “Pardon, but it looks like he held up his end of the bargain.”
“No. He was meant to strike the final blow, then leave this place. He violated his oath.” Smoldering black-and-white eyes met Lindon’s. “Clever he was, to find a way to break such a bond. But he will pay a price. There is always a price.”
“He’s still here?” Lindon tried to push further into the labyrinth, to find him, but the weight of the labyrinth’s authority was old and heavy. He could get no more.
“In my last moments, I cast him away, but he will return. Then you will join me in death.”
“Then help me work against him.” This echo would have no control over the labyrinth, but he could still guide Lindon.
“What do you hunger for, young Sage?” Subject One asked, and there was a kind of dark humor in the question. He pointed to Lindon’s arm. “You put my power in your body, so your desire must be great indeed.”
“I am honored that one of your stature would ask about my needs. But I want to grant the wish we share. How do I defeat Reigan Shen?”
Subject One slowly strolled around his own throne. “Yesterday, I tried mindlessly to devour you. But I find that after death, I have control of myself again. At last.”
“Apologies, but I feel that every second is vital.”
“My nightmare is that I have been trapped here only hours, and that it simply feels like an eternity.”
“I hope it is a comfort to know that nightmare is only a dream.”
“Not entirely. Because it means that the destruction I have seen my successors wreak is reality. The countless lives they have destroyed…the great power they have consumed…”
Subject One shuddered, and the white in his eyes flashed, but he re-focused on Lindon. “To foil Reigan Shen, you must know the truth about us. Those you call Dreadgods.”
Lindon sharpened his attention, and even Dross didn’t interrupt. This was the answer they had come here to find. “How do we kill them?”
Papery lips fluttered up into a smile. “I don’t know what the Monarchs have allowed you to know, but it should be no surprise to you to learn that hunger aura isn’t a natural force.”
Lindon nodded, but it was interesting that the conversation had started with hunger aura. Everyone assumed that hunger madra was just a corruption of pure madra that had escaped into the wild long ago.
“It is a corruption of the natural order of Cradle,” he went on. “A manifestation of ambition, of selfish desire. Created by the presence of the Monarchs.” Subject One met Lindon’s eyes and spoke clearly. “The Dreadgods will die only when there are no more Monarchs.”
There was much Lindon wanted to learn here—How was aura created or corrupted? Was there a mechanism that decided which aspects of aura were allowed and which weren’t?—but his time was clearly limited. The white light was steadily fading, and Subject One’s presence grew weaker with every word.
Lindon could put more madra into the technique, but Reigan Shen was growing closer. He couldn’t waste time.
“What’s wrong with the Monarchs?” Lindon asked.
“They are too much for this world. A great weight. Sages like yourself are only half-ascended, which is within the scope of a world like ours. But when your body and your spirit have both grown too great for this world to contain, you must escape to a place that can contain you.”
Dread grew in Lindon’s heart. “Do the Monarchs know this?”
“They must know. It is a fight against the Way to stay in this world at all. And they have stayed not for hours or days, to say farewell to their loved ones, but for centuries.” Subject One bared his teeth. “What do you know of the days before the four great hunger beasts roamed the surface? The four…Dreadgods?”
“Apologies. I’ve never heard of that time.”
“Of course not,” Subject One said heavily. “The Monarchs would control their records. Hunger aura drifted all over the world, and where it moved, all other aura weakened. It corrupted everything; Remnants, natural spirits, sacred beasts. Even humans. Many of them were powerful enough even to threaten Monarchs.”
He took a rattling breath. “We came to this labyrinth as a secure location to perform our research. We were looking for a way to control the hunger aura.”
That was the least surprising thing Lindon had learned so far. Even he had immediately started thinking of all the ways he could use hunger madra the moment he had learned of it, and one hunger spear had allowed an ancestor of the Jai clan to dominate the Desolate Wilds.
“This site was old beyond memory, even to us. We used it as a trap to focus all the hunger aura in the world. Instead of running wild, it would be concentrated here, controlled by ancient seals. We researched fusing hunger bindings into animals, whose power would be suppressed by the great formation.”
He laughed quietly, until Lindon couldn’t tell the difference between laughs and sobs. “We thought we had it under control.”
[He volunteered to take the hunger binding into his own flesh,] Dross said confidently. [The first test subject. Let this be a lesson to you, Lindon: never volunteer.]
The Dreadgod’s cries became laughter again. “The spirit is right.” Lindon stiffened as he realized that Dross hadn’t just been speaking to him, but Subject One didn’t seem to mind.
“I was afraid not to volunteer. You understand the allure of hunger madra, I see. Endless power.” He gave a humorless chuckle. “We were wrong about virtually everything.”
Black-and-white eyes met Lindon’s. “Hunger, you see, is all linked. It is one force, one entity, one…existence. As I spiraled out of control, so did our four greatest subjects. They escaped, contained as they were on the surface…but I was locked here.”