with them, but Lindon had heard nothing from him in the day since he’d joined them.
“He’s fine.” Eithan buffed his fingernails on the hem of his pink-and-purple outer robe. “You may have noticed, but I significantly helped his spiritual recovery. It cost me quite a bit, you know. Time. Materials. Expertise. When did I perform this costly task, you ask?”
“Stone-certain we didn’t,” Yerin said.
“To begin this story, we have to go all the way back to Tiberian Arelius’ creation of—” Eithan’s head snapped to the front, where a ship on a deep purple cloud was slowly looping around to join the procession behind them.
Eithan pointed. “That ship! Watch that ship.”
Alerted by his tone, Lindon and Yerin both focused on the cloudship. Yerin extended her perception, which crashed over her target like a storm-tossed wave. He doubted there was any spiritual power that could escape her notice.
By contrast, Lindon’s own perception was a trickling creek. His perception was better-trained than the average Underlord, but it wasn’t necessarily any more powerful.
However, he could sense things she couldn’t.
He did not feel the strong will from the ship that suggested a Sage or Herald was involved. Instead, he felt the faint, flickering willpower of the ordinary Golds crewing the cloudship. Their will was diffuse, unfocused, barely there.
Between Yerin’s overwhelming scan and his own, which could see into a different spectrum, he doubted they missed anything. They still couldn’t sense the physical, only the spiritual, but something that had no power of madra or will wouldn’t be a threat.
“Harder,” Eithan insisted. “Look harder.”
Lindon did, trying to pierce a veil he had missed the first time. Yerin pushed down with her scan so much that the Golds stopped in place, cycling their madra in resistance, spirits filling with fear.
A scan could be uncomfortable, but it wasn’t threatening. But Yerin’s power was an entire dimension higher than a normal Lord’s, much less these Golds.
Only when he was sure there was nothing on the ship did Lindon become certain that Eithan was just distracting them.
“What happened to no secrets?” Lindon asked in a dry tone.
Eithan gave him a white, beaming smile. “A surprise, Lindon. A surprise. I assure you, you’ll be glad I distracted you very soon.”
Yerin started to extend her perception to the rest of their own cloudship, to find whatever Eithan had tried to hide from them, but Eithan leaped in front of her. “Don’t you want your surprise?”
Yerin slowly let her scan fade. “…I do,” she admitted, in a tone of heavy reluctance. “Got a creeping fear you’re about to teach us a lesson.”
“In a sense, can’t you learn a lesson from anything?”
Lindon reached out with his own perception.
“It’s not a lesson!” Eithan hurriedly added. “This is a fun surprise. Just relax, all right? Be casual.”
In Lindon’s mind, Dross began to whistle.
Lindon returned his attention to Charity, who had expanded the Sky’s Edge gate into a broad screen of darkness. He didn’t fully understand the impressions he was getting from his new senses, but the portal felt like it was almost complete.
“We can still make it, right?” Lindon asked.
For the sixth time since Fury’s ascension ceremony the night before.
Eithan patted him on the shoulder. “The Wandering Titan is known for its inevitability. Not its speed.”
Out the front windows, Charity lowered her hands.
Shadows covered the doorway to Sky’s Edge, stretching up through the clouds in a pillar of darkness. It was a miniature version of the column that had taken them from the Blackflame Empire to the Night Wheel Valley.
The portal to Sky’s Edge was complete.
Charity lifted from the cloudship dock, hovering in the air. She reached into another pool of shadow on her left: her void key.
A weapon flew out, slapping into her open hand. It looked like a short one-handed sword with a curving blade, but a closer inspection showed that it was a silver sickle. It buzzed and blurred to both Lindon’s eyes and senses. This weapon operated on many levels, its powers interacting in a complex web that he couldn’t begin to unravel.
Charity gestured to their ship, and Lindon activated a script-circle that lifted some of their protections.
A purple-and-silver owl appeared on the scripted wooden panels in front of Lindon.
Little Blue gave a loud peep and scurried up Lindon’s arm.
“This portal cannot convey the Titan,” Charity’s voice said from the owl. “I will travel through first. If I do not return or contact you in five minutes, this way is closed to you.”
A steel shield drifted out from her void key, and