Lindon extended his perception to try and get a sense of Pride, but it was hard to read him. It was as though Lindon’s spiritual senses slid away.
[A property of shadow madra, I'm sure,] Dross said.
That would make it harder to react to anything Pride did, and more difficult to read his techniques. Pay close attention, Lindon said to Dross.
He could drop it here. Let Mercy take care of her brother.
But this was his opportunity to leave. If he could show Charity that he wasn’t the right choice for the competition, she would send him home. Mercy would make sure nothing terrible happened to him.
If he played this correctly, he might be able to learn something too.
He would have to make the fight convincing, so he pulled Blackflame madra from his core. With the Path of Black Flame filling him, holding back became twice as hard. He didn’t want to take a loss. He wanted to teach Pride a lesson.
The Burning Cloak sprung up around Lindon, a flame of black and red surrounding his body, and the dragon advanced.
Lindon rushed forward, slamming his white Remnant fist over Mercy's staff and into Pride. The short Underlord caught the blow on his forearm, but the force still launched him down the entire hall and out the open doors.
He landed on his feet, but Lindon had followed him with another punch.
Shadow burst like smoke where Pride had stood, and he disappeared again, Lindon's fist passing through immaterial darkness. He turned, expecting Pride behind him, but something slammed into his ankles. Pride had gone low, sweeping Lindon's legs out from under him, and Lindon pitched onto his back.
As he hit the ground, the air rushing from his lungs, Lindon hurled a dragon's breath upward. Pride would have followed up with a new attack, ready to hit him while he was down.
Sure enough, Pride had followed him, and a beam of black-and-red madra caught him full in the chest.
Lindon cut off the technique immediately, for fear of drilling a hole in Mercy's brother, but Pride was unharmed. Gray haze covered his skin, and the Blackflame madra had simply washed over him.
He drove his fist down onto Lindon, and an orb of shadow madra exploded from the hit, this time into Lindon's stomach.
Lindon's spirit screamed in pain, and so did he.
His consciousness blurred away for longer than it had before. This time, when he came to, he found Pride glaring contemptuously at him from fifteen feet away.
Mercy stood over him, veil lifted, her staff in the form of a bow.
“...test yourself against me,” Mercy was saying, with more anger in her voice than Lindon had ever heard. “If you're too much of a coward for that, then go cry to Mother.”
Pride looked to the side, past his sister. “Uncle Fury, do you want this representing the Akura family?”
A man walked into Lindon's view, laughing sheepishly, as though he felt guilty about something and was trying to laugh it off. He wore a loose black sacred artist's robe, but only one layer, with a bare chest revealed beneath. He looked to be perhaps thirty-five or forty, with hair made of living shadow. It rose and drifted and shifted like sea-grass in the currents. Unlike the others present, his eyes were bright red.
“Hmmm, I don't know.” Fury’s voice was bright, reminding Lindon more of Mercy than of anyone else he'd met in the family. “He looked pretty weak, but you did attack him before he was ready.”
“Talk to Aunt Charity,” Pride insisted. “He doesn't deserve her nomination.”
Lindon’s hope rose as his Blackflame madra faded away. Akura Fury evidently had the power to decide the competitors for the Uncrowned King team. He could send Lindon home.
“Eeehhhh...I taught Charity myself, when she was a girl. She's always had good eyes.”
Lindon pushed himself to his feet. The ache in his body was dull, but the pain in his spirit was sharp.
With effort, he pushed his fists together to salute the man he suspected was a Herald.
“Forgiveness, but I was not raised with the training of the Akura clan. I do not see how I could be worthy to compete beside Mercy or Pride.”
Pride’s head jerked back as though Lindon had struck him, but Mercy sighed. She knew what he was doing.
Akura Fury turned red eyes to him and gave him a pitying look, hands in his pockets. “I don't see much in him either, but Charity knows him better than I do. But hey, there’s still a slot left! I'll have my selection fights in a few months, and then you can show me what you've got.”
Pride gestured angrily to Lindon. “Haven't I already?”
“I’m afraid I’m not his opponent,” Lindon said, as though it were a painful admission.
[Orthos would have ruined your ruse by now,] Dross said. [‘Grr, a dragon doesn’t pretend to be weak. Throw fire at him!’ It’s a good thing I’m here to help.]
Fury let out another embarrassed laugh, but spread his hands. “Sorry, boys! It's not up to me.”
Pride glared again, mostly at Lindon, but sparing some for Mercy as well. Finally, he bowed to Fury and stomped away.
Lindon searched his mind for a new line of attack. The rest of the young Lords and Ladies were still watching, and if he presented himself as too weak, they might really try to kill him.
Fury scratched the back of his head. “He's pretty mad. Even more than usual.”
Mercy's bow shifted back to a staff, and she leaned on it. “It's my fault. I'll go talk to him.”
“Nah. It's training time!”
Mercy ran to hide behind Lindon, which put him in the awkward position of standing between a Herald and his niece. “Sorry, Uncle Fury, but I have to get Lindon settled in. And I really should speak with Pride. Just give me a few minutes, and then I'll be ready.”
“Or better yet,” Lindon said hastily, “you could send me home! Wouldn’t that solve everything?”
Red eyes moved to the rest of the crowd, and Fury jabbed a finger at Lindon. “Someone take care of him, okay?” Then he grabbed Mercy around the waist, picking her up with one arm. “Now, training!”
Mercy protested, but Fury had already leaped.
Through the clouds.
Lindon and the others stared up to where they had vanished, but they never came down.
Leaving Lindon weak and lost, surrounded by hostile strangers.
His hopes of leaving came crashing down around him, but he might have won another small consolation. Did you get it? he asked silently.
[That’s a lot of pressure when you put it that way, you know that? If Pride’s Path is the same as Mercy’s, he should only have four techniques available, and he used four. So I have a reasonable model, but not what I’d call a perfect one.]
Lindon looked through the hole in the crowd where Pride had left. That’s good enough to start.
~~~
One of the young Underladies finally agreed to lead Lindon to a guest room where he could recover from his wounds. She said nothing as they leaped over black ponds filled with glowing white fish, trees that scraped at the sky, trying to grab them, and statues with amethysts for eyes. They jumped from one tall, black building to another, and she showed no consideration for his wounds.
Lindon had fought for his life while in worse condition than this, though even the Soul Cloak felt painful running through his strained madra channels. As a Truegold, he would have had to exhaust himself to keep up with her and may have injured his madra channels doing so. But his Underlord body picked up the slack, and he followed her to their destination.