half-brother.
He spun around, walking forward with both hands laced behind his neck. People to either side had to duck his outstretched elbows, but most of the attendees here were advanced sacred artists. They managed.
“Thought we ought to talk about you before I’m out of here. The three stars of the clan are down to two, now. I suspect we’ll end up stronger than ever in the long run, now that the snake isn’t around anymore, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have a weak point for a couple years.”
Mercy straightened as she walked. “I’m ready to accept my responsibility.”
“…yeah, I thought so. The family will expect a lot from you when I’m gone. They want you to fulfill your duty to the family, and they all have their own ideas for what that looks like.”
This was strange. Uncle Fury was known for shirking any duty he could if it didn’t involve advancement or combat.
“It’s all a trap,” he continued. “Don’t get caught in it.”
That sounded a lot more like Fury.
“At some point, you have to start leading.” He grinned down on her and ruffled her hair. “Good luck.”
She had thought of many things to say, but in the end, only one mattered: “Good-bye, Uncle Fury.”
He threw his long arms around her in a hug, and she buried herself in his chest.
For a moment. Then he swept back into the party, leaving her to collect herself.
It was another hour before Fury was ready to depart. Mercy stuck with Lindon and Yerin as much as she could, helping to fend off those who wanted a moment alone with the stars of the Uncrowned King tournament.
Finally, after a long exchange with Charity that no one else could hear, Uncle Fury raised his voice.
“Looks like it’s time to go!”
The words boomed through the enclosed basement. One of the less-advanced servants fell to his knees.
“I think I’m supposed to talk about how I’m sad to be leaving you all behind, but I really can’t wait to go,” he continued. “If you’ve got what it takes, catch up.” He looked to someone at the front of the crowd and winked.
Mercy couldn’t see, but she was certain he was looking at his daughter, the Sage.
“Anyway, that’s enough from me. Later, everybody!”
And that was the end of a fairly typical Akura Fury speech.
As soon as the last word was out of his mouth, the room began to…stretch. It wasn’t anything Mercy could put a name to precisely, but it looked as though the room was being pulled like taffy until it stretched into a long hallway.
The end of the basement, where Fury and those accompanying him stood in a large group, was now much longer than it had been before. It looked like a mirage, a trick of the eye, but she felt no madra gathered there.
Only something else.
An absence of madra, maybe. Fury was at the center of it, pushing—or perhaps pulling—on something deeper than vital aura. Something she didn’t have the senses or the experience to name.
A blue light sparked in front of his outstretched hands.
It swelled as he concentrated, expanding to a ball that hovered in front of him. Unlike madra, this blue substance didn’t look like it was made of light, but rather like a patchwork of every shade of blue that existed. It looked almost material, but it couldn’t have been physical, and her eye couldn’t exactly trace its edges or layers.
The blue ball expanded into a circle big enough to fill the basement from floor to ceiling…and then it was no longer a ball, but a circular doorway, the blue stretching on infinitely in the distance.
Mercy thought that whatever technique Uncle Fury was using had been completed, but he braced his hands as though getting a grip on empty air.
Then he pushed.
The blue power snapped into a wide ring. A ring that led into another world.
In the distance, silver towers stretched into the sky. Boxes of rough metal the size of buildings floated in the air, and the sky was surrounded by bars of impossible size, as though the entire world had been caught in a cage.
Immediately in front of the portal, it was a different story. They looked out onto an empty plaza of white stone, crystals the size of a human body hovering a few feet over the ground and shining blue.
Two figures flanked the portal on either side, each dressed in seamless eggshell-white armor. Abidan, like the one who had hijacked the Uncrowned King tournament. They stood under banners