even for him, it was difficult to separate what had come from the Titan and what from Lindon’s own mind.
Still, a few themes were clear. One was that the Titan had detected its goal here. The one meal it needed. The source of hunger madra.
When it had arrived and felt nothing more of the sort, the Dreadgod had assumed it wasn’t here. Like a dog chasing after a stick, only to never find it.
But Lindon had more than a few reasons to suspect the Dreadgod’s prize was still here. Just locked away. Buried.
Besides, Lindon’s arm had been strained and cracked by absorbing so much of the Titan’s power. He needed more weapons of hunger madra if he wanted to rebuild it. And improve it. Scavenging from dreadbeasts wouldn’t hold him forever.
He had to pick his way across a field of debris as he crossed the room; evidently some people had used the Tomb as shelter during the Dreadgod’s attack. As it had been before, the inside of the Ancestor’s Tomb was just a wide-open space lined with pillars.
At the end of the room stood an ornate door, sealed shut. The entrance was undamaged by the previous collapse of the building, which didn’t surprise him. If it was part of the labyrinth below, it had to be made of stronger stuff.
Lindon had been reaching out for the door already, silence filling his mind where Dross’ chatter belonged, but he stopped as he noticed something.
The door had no mechanism to open it and no clear script-circle, which meant he would have to use his authority to open it, but that wasn’t what had seized his attention. It was a trace of someone else’s authority over to the side of the hall, a little to the side of the door.
An indentation in space. Like an invisible bump.
Lindon’s alarm went up immediately. Someone had torn space here, and if it wasn’t him…
He should call for help in case there was something deadly on the other side. Dross could have done that.
The spirit wasn’t gone. Not quite. He drifted in Lindon’s soul, right around the base of his skull as usual, but Lindon didn’t see details. His eye, his boneless arms. Instead, Dross felt like a loose cloud of dream madra. Like a two-dimensional copy of his former self.
Eithan insisted that it was possible to bring Dross back, but Lindon understood the nature of spirits. If Dross returned, there was no guarantee that he’d be himself anymore.
Lindon shook himself free. Dross wasn’t here, but some of his passive enhancements to Lindon’s mind remained.
He focused on the bump in space. It didn’t feel like a tunnel to him, or a trap. It felt like a sealed void key more than a tunnel somewhere else in the world.
Though he supposed there could be anything inside the void key.
He stretched out a tongue of Blackflame, infusing it with his authority and using it to slice through space. It was much easier than when he had tried the same thing with only his will; when he commanded the world to “Open,” he cut through the barrier separating the spaces almost without resistance.
As soon as a doorway in midair unfurled, opening onto a huge room cluttered with various objects, he noticed two things more than any others: the art and the swords.
This room actually had walls, and on those walls hung brightly colored tapestries, long black-and-white landscapes painted on scrolls, framed portraits, even decorative lights and constructs of slithering color that were clearly designed only for decoration.
Between the paintings were swords. Some were elaborate and ancient, shining with power, while others were dull, pitted, or rusty. Some were just hilts, their madra blades having faded away to essence, and still others had Forged blades that were perfectly preserved.
A scripted cauldron sat cold in the corner, next to buckets, boxes, bags, and bundles of herbs, spirit-fruits, pills, and elixirs. Next to it was a rack of sacred artist’s robes, all black, many of them nicked and cut.
Lindon’s stomach twisted.
He noticed the second rack, filled with more black robes, all of them shredded as though by errant sword-slices.
And the rack of cycling swords next to them, all radiating sharp aura.
This had to be the Sword Sage’s private storage space. It was the only thing that made sense.
But that was impossible.
“It can’t be his,” Lindon said aloud. “It’s too old. The world would have healed up the entrance by now, and I would never have found it.”