“What causes it?” Lindon asked. “Which Monarchs?”
“I regret to say I cannot tell, but much is unclear to me. The Monarchs should not need me to petition them in any case. They should know much more about the contents of the labyrinth than I do, and yet they have refused to move. This is one of the answers you should seek in the depths.”
“I will,” Lindon said. “But I’m not going by myself.”
Yerin gave him a decisive nod.
“Numbers are of limited use in the labyrinth. You may…”
Elder Whisper continued speaking, but his words faded to the back of Lindon’s awareness. Something invaded his consciousness—a message, but deeper and softer than words. Impossibly distant.
He felt regret. Apology. Someone urging him to do his best, and to survive at all costs. If he had to interpret the message in words, he would have bet it said “I’m sorry. Hold on.”
He stretched out his spiritual perception, looking for the source of the message, and Yerin noticed. Her spirit sharpened as she prepared herself for battle.
“We about to bleed somebody?”
“No, I…I’m sorry, did you sense something a minute ago?”
“Before you jumped like a dog trying to fly?” She raised an eyebrow. “If there’s anything here, I’m blind to it. And I’m not leaping to fight invisible enemies today, I’ll tell you that. Ask me tomorrow.”
He shook his head. It had only been a vague impression, and it had passed anyway. “Apologies, I think I’m on edge.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
Lindon rolled Suriel’s marble in his fingers again. Somehow, the message had felt like the feelings that radiated from the blue flame. And the comfort that usually came off the transparent orb seemed somehow weaker than usual.
Another sign of his own anxiety, surely. Unless…
There came a thunk as the door on the first floor swung open, interrupting Lindon’s thoughts. A voice echoed up from below.
“Oh no, I missed something!” Eithan cried. “Quickly, repeat your entire conversation before you forget a word!”
Deep in the labyrinth, Reigan Shen withdrew a drudge from a pouch at his belt and set it free. He had cobbled this one together specifically for this mission, and it was made to exist in this low-energy environment.
The construct unfolded from a pocket-sized rectangle of compressed madra into something resembling a mechanical dog, then began to sniff around an ancient laboratory.
The room was large enough to contain a flight of dragons, but was decorated like an expensive study. Lots of polished wood and plush cushions, with empty windows that would probably once have displayed illusionary scenery of the outside.
Around the center of this laboratory were empty cages of scripted glass, which would certainly once have contained experimental subjects. Time-shriveled husks that had once been dreadbeasts remained in some, while others had been broken from the outside. Or from the inside.
The laboratory had long waited in disarray, with desks destroyed, papers scattered, and holes scorched in the walls. There were preservation scripts on everything, but most of them had failed, leaving odd scenarios where one half of a sheet of paper might have been aged and yellowed into illegibility while the other half looked as though it had been scribed that morning.
Papers and scrolls were of limited value to Reigan Shen, though he scooped them all up anyway. He was looking for ways deeper into the labyrinth, so unless he found a map, there wasn’t much here that could help him.
Here and there, his drudge spotted what he was looking for: dream tablets. It brought the treasures back in its teeth, dropping the stones at his feet. Some resembled hand-sized gemstones while others were more like dull slabs the size of his face, but he could see their dream aura as a purplish chaotic haze.
Ordinarily, his spiritual perception would have crashed over this room in a wave, and anything he sought would fly to him on wings of wind aura. But the deeper he went, the more effect the suppression field had on him.
In some ways, the Monarch Reigan Shen was now weaker than if he had never trained in the sacred arts a day in his life.
But he had his own methods.
A gray-white ghost oozed up from the floor in front of him, its arms dragging the ground, its jaw hanging loose. Empty eye sockets sought him, and it groaned in pure hunger.
It resembled a Remnant, but was actually a Striker technique carrying enough will of its own that it acted more like a spirit. An attack from the Devourer itself, the Slumbering Wraith. Subject One.
With his power suppressed, Reigan Shen still might have enough authority to disperse the technique. But power he lost down here would be difficult to regain.
Historically, most of those who had explored this labyrinth had done so by staying inside only a short time. That would be Shen’s preferred approach as well, but every time he left and re-entered the labyrinth, he risked discovery once again.
So he had prepared to stay longer than anyone had since this place sealed itself so long ago. He’d brought tools.
Reigan Shen unclipped another construct from his belt. This one unfolded into a shining orange-yellow launcher that wrapped around his wrist. He pointed it at the ghoul and triggered the binding.
The launcher construct was Herald-level, and thus powerful enough to reduce this huge room to ash and cave in the structure of the surrounding building. After being carried around in the labyrinth for so long, it merely disintegrated the spirit.
With businesslike motions, Shen folded up the launcher again. If the weapon hadn’t remained in a scripted container for so long, it would have faded away already. It was only due to its faultless construction and some binding scripts that it worked at all.
He would have greatly preferred to store his weapons in a void space, but those were difficult to open in this place, so he preserved energy by strapping script-sealed devices all over him.
If everything went according to his plan, he would only have to open up his void space once a month. That would last him more than long enough to reach the bottom.
He would empty this place if it took him a decade. Because in the end, he would do what no one else had ever done, and seize control of the greatest weapons ever created.
The Dreadgods.
All five of them.
After the retreat of the Wandering Titan, the Bleeding Phoenix had retreated north.
Akura Malice had regrouped, gathered her power, and followed.
She met the Bleeding Phoenix as an equal, striking it with her bow like a staff. The blow landed on the Phoenix’s oozing red body, and the Dreadgod shrieked.
The sound carried enough hostility that Malice had to brace herself against it, even as a bloody red dragon burst through the Phoenix’s body. Northstrider’s attack. The Bleeding Phoenix responded with a simple Striker technique—a lance of light from its open beak wider than a river.
To others, the attack would appear large enough to swallow cities, but Malice threw herself in front and blocked it on her shoulder.
The pressure on her amethyst armor increased, straining her spirit, and causing her to push more madra to keep the gemstone structure stable. But she spared Northstrider from having to deal with it, and he had taken the opportunity to appear behind the Dreadgod and tear another chunk out of it with a blow that blasted out the air for miles.