Mercy’s face heated up. “That’s not your—”
“You think I mean affection?” Malice snapped. “I mean control.” The entire dark world focused to a point, as though a spotlight had illuminated Malice. Her eyes shone. “I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty: your friends have grown too powerful to remain free. I will shower them in glory and power…
“…but they will be mine.”
Lindon sat on the hill next to Yerin, comparing notes as the sun set. They had all asked him for the story of fighting Reigan Shen, and he had gone over every blow in detail. With Dross’ help.
Now he had made it to the part where he’d claimed the throne of the labyrinth. “There was still a deeper layer,” he said. “An older one. I thought I was done then, until I pulled out…”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew Suriel’s marble. There came a general murmur of appreciation as they saw the blue candle glow.
“Without this, I don’t know that I would have been able to claim the labyrinth. It might have cast me out…or even devoured me.”
“You would probably have still been granted partial authority,” Ziel put in. “At least enough to operate the scripts.” The others looked at him, and he shrugged. “Or maybe you would have died.”
“Anyway, it recognized me because of this,” Lindon went on. “I think they…” He trailed off, staring at the glass ball.
So did everyone else.
“What happened to it?” Orthos asked.
“Shake it,” Yerin suggested.
Ziel leaned closer, and Eithan paled.
The flame inside the glass ball had shrunk. Now it was almost nothing but an azure spark.
“I’ve never seen it like this before,” Lindon said. Apprehension crawled into his heart. “I think something might be wrong with it.”
The flame trembled, like it was straining to grow brighter.
And then the light of Suriel’s marble winked out.
25
Iteration 110: Cradle
After the rise of the Dreadgods, Emriss Silentborn had never expected that she would feel something even more frightening on the same day.
Her body, that of a blue-green tree big enough to brush the sky, trembled at what she felt approaching their world. Each of her leaves, each set with a functioning eye, shook as they stared into spectrums no human could see.
Something was coming. And it shook their world like the footsteps of a Dreadgod shaking a tiny pond.
For miles around, aura of all aspects jerked and trembled. It was a disturbing, chaotic dance, and it only got worse.
Emriss looked into the future, and she saw nothing.
Malice staggered in shock.
Her own World of Night technique activated without her consent, and it was as though she’d gone blind, plunged into a black domain.
Only a moment before, she would have seen the shapes of the Dreadgods looming over her in the World of Night, an imminent threat. She had already been gathering her forces and making her plans, ready to fight a second Dread War.
Now those silhouettes crumbled, shattering like statues obliterated by an invisible hammer. Without them surrounding her, she looked into the distance, at the other possible futures that always lingered around her.
One by one, they were smashed to pieces. Disappearing.
She dismissed the technique, and the world returned. It was no less disturbing. Something behind the air quivered, like lightning about to strike.
Even Mercy was affected. Tears still streaked her cheeks, but her earlier defiance was forgotten. She looked in every direction, Eclipse ready in her hands, looking for the attacker.
“Mother, what…what’s happening?”
Tears rose in Malice’s eyes. Her heart broke.
And she wondered what she had been so concerned about a moment before. The feelings of her daughter had counted for nothing next to the value of the future.
But now, there was no future.
She walked forward and gathered Mercy to her chest, wishing only that she had time to find her other children. Where was Pride? Was Fury all right? Or had this disaster consumed him as well?
She should have left Fury with a better good-bye. Their last conversation had been a fight. He had wanted her to leave—wanted all the Monarchs to leave. She’d refused, as she always had. And always would.
“I’m so sorry, Mercy. I don’t know what I was thinking. It only matters that you’re safe.”
Mercy’s arms tightened, but she leaned back to look into Malice’s face. She was so young. “Mother, I’m scared,” she said, as she had never said when she was a child.
The Monarch stroked her youngest daughter’s head. “Sssshhhh. It’s nothing to worry about,” Malice lied. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
The Bleeding Phoenix gave a keening cry and fled like a chicken desperate to avoid the axe.
Northstrider was watching the Dreadgod from far away, but he cut off the vision as he felt the same thing the Phoenix had. Doom, like a thunderbolt to the soul.
The Way itself was trembling, and he tried to step beyond the world, but found he couldn’t. It was as though there was nothing beyond Cradle at all.
His oracle codex screamed, the surface of the glossy black orb flickering with texts, and he seized it in one hand.
“What is happening?” he demanded.
The codex was incoherent. It repeated only one phrase, over and over:
[A destroyer has come.]
Reigan Shen grabbed the Sage of Calling Storms and shook him, but the man only stared uncomprehendingly at the sky.
“What are they doing? Are the Abidan coming for us? ANSWER ME!”
His roar was enough to kill lesser sacred artists, but the Sage looked like he had seen every nightmare at once come to life.
Reigan Shen had no skill at reading Fate. He had devices that did as much for him, and now they were screaming all around him. He could barely hear himself think over the sirens, alarms, and blaring screams of his divination tools.
When he tried to figure out why, he couldn’t get them to do anything but display the same message: A destroyer has come.
Among his subordinates, Calling Storms was supposed to be the best at divining the future, but now that Reigan Shen needed him, the man was useless.
The Sage could only scream.
Lindon was frozen in terror.
“Lindon, what happened?” Yerin demanded. “Who’s doing this?”
Her eyes trembled, and she looked to him for explanation, but what he was feeling from the Void Icon was too overwhelming.
There was only one phrase that fit what he was seeing now. “It’s the end of the world.”
“What do you mean?” Tears leaked into her eyes and her voice, and she grabbed the front of his robes. “Is it an attack? Is this…is this the Dreadgods, or…or a Monarch?”
Her voice shook, and rather than shaking him, she sagged powerlessly against his robes.
Lindon ran his hand down her hair. “The stars,” he said. When she looked to him for explanation, he pointed up.
One by one, the stars were winking out.