Ghostwater

Chapter 9

Lindon stood in front of the gold shelter with no veil, staring up at the highest window. Orange curtains hung limp in the still air.

Seconds after he stepped out of the hall, the dragon’s pair of servants walked out of the front door. Lindon tensed, tracing their movements, but each of the plain-looking men walked in a different direction and took up a post near the edges of the closest stalks. As expected they were there to prevent him from running. Though they felt like Lowgolds, his spiritual perception had trouble reading them. It was like trying to hold a handful of mist.

At the highest window, Ekerinatoth appeared. The dragon-girl glared down at him, golden scales flashing in the light. She had traded out her layers of fanciful colored clothes for something that looked more like a sacred artist’s robe of jade-colored silk. Necklaces still hung on her chest, and she carried a weapon at her side. It looked like a long, thumb-thick needle with a sword’s hilt.

Lindon looked up at her, focusing his perception on her, afraid to miss a single movement. She stood watching him.

Then she fully unveiled her spirit.

To his eyes, nothing changed, but his soul trembled. A faint weight pressed down on him, and she felt like a wildfire raging toward him. The Blackflame madra in him was nothing but a candle before a hearth. She dwarfed him.

Lindon gathered his madra together anyway and ignited the Burning Cloak. Orthos’ words bolstered him: this was just a handicap.

And this time, he wasn’t trying to sneak past her.

He kicked off the ground, launching himself up to her second-story window. Even with the reflexes of a Truegold, she hesitated an instant when she saw him suddenly appear in her face, and ripples of light started running in waves from her feet as she activated her own Enforcer technique.

Lindon’s fist almost caught her, but she twisted enough to avoid the impact. She slammed into her own wall, leaving a web of cracks.

Black dragon’s breath followed from Lindon’s hand an instant later.

She slipped beneath, and the bar of dark fire punched a hole in the wall. He wrenched the technique to the side, following her, the beam carving a long gouge in her shelter. Orange-gold essence drifted up in sparks like the rising dawn.

She flowed up to him, pulling her weapon from her side, but he dropped his dragon’s breath and closed the gap with the Burning Cloak. He knocked her wrist aside with his left hand, and this time his bones didn’t crack. Days and nights of pain, cycling the energy of the sacred fish, had forged his body anew.

Before she brought her weapon to bear, he grabbed her shoulder in his pale right hand and began to consume her madra. She slashed at his Remnant arm with her needle, forcing him to let go, creating a step of distance between them.

Then she thrust a claw forward. Orange light burst from it like a waterfall of blazing heat.

It was far more raw power than he could conjure in an instant. The beam was as wide as his torso, and while it wasn’t as focused or as destructive as Blackflame, its raw power overshadowed anything he could produce.

Lindon held out his white hand. He and Orthos had tested this as much as they could without risking Lindon’s life, and it should work in theory. But there was every chance that the Flowing Flame madra would pass over him like a tide and leave him helpless.

As the Striker technique hit his palm, he triggered the hunger binding.

Unleashed, his arm started devouring the technique. It reached its capacity almost immediately, and orange lines began to stain the limb, searing Lindon’s soul and filling his arm like a sack stuffed to bursting.

But he’d consumed the technique.

Without giving Ekeri an instant to recover, Lindon held his white arm out as though holding a shield. Flowing Flame madra gushed out of his forearm.

It wasn’t as focused as her original technique, and it had lost much of its potency, but she still had to cross her arms and bear it. Liquid fire splashed out of the holes in the house.

Cutting off the technique, Lindon launched himself forward with the power of the Burning Cloak. He hit Ekeri foot-first, stomping her back.

For once, he landed a clean hit. Whether she thought she could endure the blow or just failed to dodge, she took the kick on her crossed arms.

And she blasted back through the wall of her shelter, hitting the sand like a falling star.

Lindon dashed after her while she was still in the air, the corona of the Burning Cloak turning him into a black meteor. He landed in front of her, sending wide, sweeping slashes of dragon’s breath scything into the waving sea-stalks around her.

Stalks toppled, smoldering and smoking, but because of the water aura, none of them burst into flames.

Shrieks rose in a chorus from all over the habitat. He sensed cold, savage power approaching from every direction as the Silverfang Carp closed on them.

A great roar echoed over the sand as Ekeri’s shelter collapsed. The blocks tumbled to the ground as though they were made out of real stone, a great puff of essence rose into the sky like dust. At last, flames licked up from the wreckage as bits of smashed wooden furniture caught fire. That was one of Lindon’s worries eased.

But she had been waiting too.

The fire aura from around the flame gathered behind him, flames pulling themselves into a river. He sensed it happen, whirling to face the Ruler technique she was conjuring behind his back.

It was like staring down a dragon made of orange flame. He extended his own madra to the aura, contesting her control, but he felt like a child throwing his whole body weight against the arm of a warrior. The snake of fire washed over him, instantly igniting the edges of his clothes. If not for him using fire aura to push the fire away, and the water aura weakening flames, his robes would have burned away entirely.

Still, fighting against her Ruler technique took everything he had. His soul blazed, his Blackflame madra rolling like a whirlpool, and his teeth were gritted as he threw his whole concentration into it. With his right hand, he fumbled at his pocket.

The hand ignored him.

Not now, Lindon begged. Please, not now.

The hand lurched in Ekeri’s direction. Lindon split his attention, and the fire pressed closer, searing his skin. He screamed, but forced his hand to listen to him.

It reached into his pocket and withdrew a sealed vial of baked clay. He broke the seal with his thumb, dumping glowing purple water into his mouth.

Instantly, his concentration sharpened. His vision cleared, and his control over the aura firmed. His training with Orthos had showed them both that reaction speed and focus were both noticeably improved under the effects of the Dream Well.

But his newly enhanced reactions weren’t enough to stop the golden tail from catching him across the chest.

He flew back, tumbling across the sand, trying to scramble to his feet. Fear spiked in his chest.

He only had one chance of winning: keeping Ekeri on the defensive. Orthos had lectured him at length, but it was a principle he’d learned from Yerin. The strength of an offensive Path, like the Path of Black Flame, was its ability to put pressure on the opponent. Without that pressure, he would crumble like a dry leaf.

And now she had him on the back foot.

With the power of the Burning Cloak, he ran, trying to put some distance between them. She followed him as though tied to him with a string, holding out the needle in her hand.

A long string of orange madra extended from the end, and Lindon recognized it for what it was. Not a needle, but a whip. This would be a tool to enhance the whip-like Forger technique she’d used before.

She spun it over her head, and the line of flexible madra spun in all directions, slicing stalks open. The aura around them was mixed with spots of visible red, as fires started to ignite, and the air was beginning to choke with smoke. The screams of the fish grew closer as Lindon ducked and dipped through the stalks and the occasional boulder, trying to increase the gap between them.

A man in white appeared out of nowhere in front of him, sending a kick at his feet.

Lindon leaped over him, driving his fist at the servant’s face, but he ducked his head slightly to one side. Lindon followed up with a kick, but the servant moved back a step.

Lindon’s gut clenched. The man wasn’t trying to fight him, just to tie him up until Ekeri reached him. Though he didn’t want to waste the madra, he gathered black fire in his left palm.

Silver flashed from within the smoke, and a Silverfang Carp came for him with fangs open.

Lindon seized the fangs with his Remnant arm. After feeding on their meat for so long, Lindon could hold it back much more easily than before; even his replacement arm had been strengthened by the power in their flesh. However, it was still massive. As it swam through the air, it pushed him back through the sand.

A burst of pain exploded next to his shoulder blade, and he screamed, hauling the fish with him as he twisted to see what had hit him.

The servant stepped back, bloody knife in hand.

Rage flowed from his Blackflame core. Still gripping the massive Carp, Lindon extended his hand of flesh and fired his dragon’s breath.

Ekeri leaped over her servant at the same time. If she wanted to save him, she would have to land and take his Striker technique, which would give him time to push away the fish. His Bloodforged Iron body had already started to drain madra to heal the wound in his back, so he needed to end this quickly.

But the dragon-girl ignored his technique. The bar of fire punched into the Lowgold’s side, instantly taking a chunk out of his ribs and igniting his clothes. His body bucked, and the wound flashed with green light—he must have had a treasure to preserve his life.

It wouldn’t be enough. Three more Carp darted over, descending on him.

Then Lindon could no longer pay attention to the Lowgold, because there was a Truegold on top of him.

She whirled her whip at him, and as he struggled to cut off the flow of his dragon’s breath, the glowing orange weapon wrapped around his leg.

It seared like red-hot metal against his skin, and Lindon knew with rock-solid conviction that it was about to tighten and tear his limb away. Instead of cutting off his dragon’s breath, he poured more madra into it, slicing down like a burning executioner’s blade onto her head.

Before she could cut his leg away, she had to raise a hand to defend against the dense bar of Blackflame. With her attention distracted, he kicked the weapon away.

As the whip slid back down his skin, it burned him, and he choked back a scream. He wrenched his leg free, stumbling back.

The Silverfang Carp had truly gathered now, flashing everywhere, so he and Ekeri fought in the middle of a school. The air was so hazy that it looked like they were swimming through smoke. With the Burning Cloak active, he knocked them to one side and the other, leaping and kicking off of a fish that hovered in the air.

He looked down, seeing the sliced and broken sea-stalks smoldering on the sand.

And, as he watched, they burst into open flame.

Until that point, the greatest source of fire aura had been the furniture in the wreckage of Ekeri’s shelter. That generated enough red-hot aura to fuel her Ruler technique.

But the Void Dragon’s Dance also required destruction. The more the fire consumed, the more destruction aura it released along with the heat. Now, there was enough for him to work with.

Extending his spirit, he gathered threads of black and red energy, controlling it with his madra, wrapping it together, coiling it around himself. The air rippled with heat, his skin tingled, and the edges of his robes started to dissolve as though under the effect of invisible flames.

Holding her larger whip in one hand and a Forged whip in the other, Ekeri rushed after him. She leaped, grabbing onto one Carp with her tail and swinging over a second, snapping sacred beast. She kicked off another, slapped the next in two, and came down on him with both whips descending. All the while, fires dimmed nearby as she gathered fire aura to defend herself.

He was almost out of madra. He couldn’t compete with her in endurance, in physical strength, or in technique. The longer this battle went on, the more options he’d lose.

She’d undoubtedly survived more battles than he had. She’d read his Ruler attack the second he started preparing it, gathering up aura to prepare a defense. By the time Lindon played his last card, she’d still have a full hand.

But, as Orthos had taught him, the Path of Black Flame had some good cards.

When the red and black vital aura had been wrapped together in roughly equal measure, Lindon braided it according to the Ruler technique he’d learned almost a year before.

He turned and faced Ekeri’s whips. His left hand flowed with the power necessary to control the Void Dragon’s Dance, so he couldn’t move it, but his Remnant arm reached out and seized a nearby fish. He dragged it in front of him, using its body to shield him from her attack.

Before it hit, he pushed his left arm forward. With it, he pushed out the tightly coiled aura. It wrestled against his madra, trying to spring free, and his arm and spirit trembled.

Golden light sliced the Silverfang Carp in half, and the second whip descended. He raised his right hand to catch it, though it burned his Remnant palm with a piercing pain that shot through his spirit. At the same time, visible only in his Copper sight, a tightly wound disc of red-and-black aura reached Ekeri.

She pushed against the fire aura with her own spirit, and in only a moment she would unravel the technique.

Instead, Lindon clenched his left fist.

And unleashed the Void Dragon’s Dance.

The aura exploded into a cyclone of spinning flame. It stretched from the ground to the ceiling of the dome, and the heat scorched his face. The column of swirling black-and-red fire swallowed Ekeri, then the Carp around her were consumed, followed by those farther away as the technique grew larger and larger.

But this was not just a fire technique. Empowered by destruction aura, the flames devoured material in a blink. What would normally take hours for the fire to burn instead disappeared instantly.

Every Silverfang Carp touched by the flame was consumed in a snap, becoming little more than ash that drifted down. Lindon projected Blackflame madra around himself as the technique expanded, but the Void Dragon’s Dance was over in only a second.

All of the nearby fish, the remaining stalks, and the yellow-glowing plants had been completely destroyed in a circle around him. Losing the lights left him in shadow, but he couldn’t feel the attendants anymore either. Everything within a hundred yards had vanished, leaving Lindon in a world of sand and ash.

Except for one other survivor. A dragon could not be so easily burned.

Though he had hoped.

Ekeri was only singed, her clothes damaged and smoking, her scales charred. She knelt on one knee with whips crossed before her, spirit trembling. As the ash cleared, her eyes snapped open. They blazed gold.

He braced his knees to keep from collapsing.

There were only a few scraps of madra left in his Blackflame core, but he released a quick, sloppy dragon’s breath to keep her at bay.

It didn’t help. Enforcer technique rippling around her legs, she flowed around his attack, letting her Forged whip vanish in order to strike with her weapon. He ducked it, but she was clearly prepared for him.

Her tail slipped around behind him, locking him into place. Then her clawed hand struck for his chest.

Lindon was past the scope of his plan. They had practiced for everything they could, but no fight could be fully anticipated. At some point, he had to lean on his experience and training.

He only had enough Blackflame madra for one more technique, so he let it go.

And took the hit.

Her claws pierced his chest around his gold badge. They plunged through his skin, sending blood flowing down his stomach.

The pain tore at his consciousness, but he hadn’t accepted the hit by accident. If she wasn’t this close, so close that he could smell the ash on her skin, he would never have been able to hit her himself.

So he shoved his Empty Palm into her core.

Her Enforcer technique vanished and her whip went dark, reverting to nothing more than a needle-pointed silver hilt. Gold eyes widened, and her reptilian lips parted.

Heat crept back into Lindon’s eyes as he pulled Blackflame for one last time.

The dragon’s breath was only the width of two fingers, but it drilled straight through her heart. Severed, her necklaces fell to the ground, leaving loose pearls and chunks of jade and links of gold chain tumbling over the sand.

Lindon shoved her away, stumbling backwards, trying to conjure up enough madra for a Burning Cloak. He should have gone for her head. Now he had given her enough room to recover. She would be coming for him any second, but he couldn’t scrape any more power together.

A full breath of time passed before he realized she wasn’t coming after him.

Instead, she dropped to her knees, scrambling in the sand for her jewelry. Blood leaked from her lips, and she wheezed as though trying to speak, but she ended up coughing blood over the ground instead.

Lindon limped forward. His right arm wasn’t obeying him, but he had to try something. If he left her alive...

Her hand closed over a tiny jade rectangle. With one last frightened glance at him, she broke it.

The air shattered.

Lindon held his hands up to defend himself from this new attack, but all the weight on his spirit had vanished. Before him, where Ekeri had knelt before, there was an intricate spiderweb of cracks in the air. He swept his spiritual perception through them, but they didn’t feel like madra. They felt like nothing, like they were splintered cracks in existence itself.

He did feel something from beneath the web: one or more of those necklaces was releasing an aura like a Truegold weapon. Though every movement sent agony shooting through his whole body, he slowly knelt and slipped his Remnant hand beneath the cracks, reaching for the necklaces.

If they ended up being dangerous, at least he would only lose the same arm.

The pointed tips of his fingers caught on one string…and passed through. This time, he remembered to send pure madra flowing through the limb before he snagged the necklace, pulling the pile of jewelry free of the web and close to him.

He was eager to inspect them, but ash was still falling around him, and the shrieks of distant Carp were growing closer. He could wait until he was back in the safety of the tunnel.

Lindon limped back, passing piles of gray, pressing his robes to his chest to stop the bleeding. When he reached the rock leading into the tunnel, he could only stare at it blankly.

He’d left Dross inside. He had to wait until they opened the door for him.

With a heavy sigh, he turned to lean his back against the stone, sliding down until he was seated. Somehow, the moment of reaction made his pain so much worse, as though all his injuries were waiting for him to let his guard down before they mobbed him all at once.

That only lasted a breath before the wall behind him vanished and he tumbled backwards.

When the agony cleared and he stopped groaning, he spoke. “I forgot you could see out.”

Dross drifted out of his gem, a cloud of shifting purple gears and swimming violet lights. “I don’t see Ekeri,” he said, bobbing around the entrance. “And I see the earth has been burned and salted. Who saved you?”

“No one,” Lindon said. He was still lying on his back, so when Orthos stepped up and looked down at him, he saw the turtle’s smile upside-down.

“I won,” Lindon told him, and the truth of it seeped into him like warm honey.

Orthos’ laugh started as a distant chuckle and grew to a massive, merry rumble that shook the floor. “By the time we get out of here, the Skysworn will be asking your permission to speak.”

Sopharanatoth, dragon of the gold bloodline, sipped winter-wine from a silver chalice. The wine had weak spiritual properties, but its chill was a pleasant contrast to the heat that usually flowed through her veins. And it was a thousand high-grade scales per bottle, so it was appropriate for her position.

Supervising the entrance of Ghostwater was the most luxurious assignment an Underlord could receive. Especially when the primary portal had been destroyed. She and her retinue reclined in a silk tent planted on a Thousand-Mile Cloud ten thousand feet above the portal, scanning the portal every once in a while with their spirits. The destruction of the other exit had made her job easy; now they barely even bothered to sweep the exit once a day. When Sophara’s little sister emerged, she would use her gatestone to leave. Which meant she would appear right here, so there was really no need to keep watch at all.

The other gold dragons, Truegolds all, lounged on beds of cloud madra all around the tent, reading books, consulting dream tablets, or snacking on flaming crickets from a cage. As Truegolds, they looked as much like dragons as like humans, but Sophara’s soulfire set her apart. Her face was almost entirely human, but for her eyes and the patches of scales on her cheeks. Scales had fallen away elsewhere on her body as well, leaving patches of skin on her arms and legs.

She looked forward to reaching Overlord, when she would have hair, but she found the strands of loose scales tumbling down her shoulders a pleasing approximation.

Some other bloodlines valued their natural forms most highly, and refused to transform even once they had the soulfire to do so. While the power of the dragon form was useful, golds had a more refined aesthetic sense than their brethren. They shared the tastes of Seshethkunaaz, Monarch of Dragons, who had lived for centuries in human form. And there was no denying that madra moved more smoothly through a human body.

Sophara had emptied her chalice and was trying to decide if she wanted another when she felt a crack in her spiritual perception.

In the same instant, a smoking, bleeding golden body tumbled out of nowhere onto her priceless woven rug.

She had kindled a Striker technique before she recognized her little sister. Hurriedly dismissing her madra, she dropped to her knees, pulling Ekeri into her arms.

The Truegold girl stared blankly at the ceiling of the tent, blood staining her lips. A weak cough sent more blood oozing from the scorched wound in her chest.

“Healing!” Sophara commanded, her voice trembling. The other Truegolds shot away to obey, running out for elixirs or reaching into their personal void keys for life-saving constructs.

When her perception delved into her sister’s body, her hope shattered. The girl’s lifeline was unraveling, green dissipating into aura, and her spirit had already started to congeal. Her Remnant was beginning to form.

Ekeri met her sister’s eyes. “I failed,” she said. She coughed up another mouthful of blood and started again. “I failed him. I’m sorry.”

An instant later, she was gone.

A golden serpent slithered away from her body, and Sophara stepped away, eyes closed, tears streaming down her cheeks. She couldn’t look at her own sister’s Remnant.

She heard the Truegolds guiding the spirit away. They would use the Remnant to raise up another student, in honor of her sister, or else they would send it to the Soulsmiths to form it into a guardian treasure for their family, so Ekeri could add to the glory of the bloodline forever.

Or a weapon, to be used against the one who had killed her.

Sophara snapped her eyes open, staring at the wound on her sister’s chest. It was black and molten, burned so hot that there was very little blood. On someone other than a dragon, it might not have left any blood at all.

The aura around the wound was black and red, braided together in a recognizable pattern.

Black dragons.

Not even with their bloodline all but eradicated, their authority forgotten, their descendants scattered, would the black dragons leave them alone. Sophara threw back her head, pouring all her rage and her hate into her voice.

When she roared, it was the roar of a dragon. And all the golds roared with her.