turned to the home himself. The sleeves of his under-robe were too long, so he tore them off. “I will remember this.”
Then he plunged into the flames.
Striker techniques followed him.
13
Yerin wasn’t really sure how her Moonlight Bridge worked.
When Ruby had stolen the Bridge to go to Lindon, she hadn’t given the Bridge any directions, and hadn’t known exactly where Lindon was. She had just willed the Divine Treasure to take her to Lindon, and it had done so.
Did the Bridge scan the whole world, find the person who matched her thoughts, and then take her there? Did it read her mind for some coordinates that even she wasn’t aware of? If she told it to take her to her closest living relative, or to the person who hated her the most, would it be able to do that?
Lindon would have already tested it to find out. Eventually, she would too. If you relied on a weapon you didn’t understand, you might find it turning in your hand.
But when she finally escaped the suppression field of Sacred Valley and willed the Moonlight Bridge to take her to Akura Malice, she was terrified.
What if the destination was off-track again? What if it stranded her far away, then took the full three days to recharge?
As it turned out, there was no need to brace herself. She was washed away in white light, re-forming immediately on the outstretched branch of an enormous tree.
Just the branch was as wide as a road prepared for wagons, and it looked thin as a twig next to the trunk of the tree itself, which stood as tall and wide as one of Ninecloud City’s towers. An icy wind blew leaves big enough to use as tents, and darkness covered the lands beneath her.
Shadow aura.
Akura Malice hovered above Yerin’s tree, close enough that Yerin could have lobbed a pebble and hit the Monarch in the back of the purple silk dress. Spread out before them both was a broad valley, not too unlike Sacred Valley, filled with buildings that looked as though they had been stolen from all over the world. They resembled toys from this distance, but no two were alike.
Except in their condition. If they were toys, the child playing with them had gotten bored and smashed them, poking holes in them or tossing them here and there. Long holes were gouged into the earth, and there was a broad indent in the center of the valley in which several buildings had been crushed. Yerin was uncomfortably certain it was a footprint.
A bow appeared in Malice’s hands, its shaft seemingly made of glacial ice that shimmered like moonbeams. Yerin’s spiritual sense shivered as she felt it, and while she didn’t examine it any closer, she tasted a confusing riot of impressions.
Malice lazily pulled back the string, and an arrow of the same material as the shaft appeared on the bow. She spent a moment taking aim, then loosed the arrow.
In the distance, a flock of silhouettes flapped furiously away. They were far enough away that they looked like a featureless cloud until Yerin focused on them.
That entire cloud dropped to the ground at the same instant Malice released her bowstring. Yerin tightened her gaze, finding her Herald body responding easily.
As she’d suspected, there was an iridescent blue-and-green arrow stuck in the body of each gold dragon.
“I’m so glad you decided to visit,” Malice said warmly, though she didn’t look down. She seemed to be tracking another target. “Would you like a turn?”
Yerin didn’t want to openly express her disgust at the sight of a Monarch taking lesser lives out of petty revenge, and she was in a hurry. “Don’t have so many seconds left that I can spare one.”
“Quite understandable. Would it help you if you knew what they’d done?” She flicked a hand, and tendrils of shadow seized a gold dragon halfway across the valley. Yerin wasn’t even sure how she’d understood where to look; maybe Malice was transmitting her intentions directly.
“He has power roughly equivalent to an Overlord, like yourself only recently, and he led many raids on human towns in the Wasteland. When he did, he would take living trophies. Once, he captured all of a town’s children, then trapped them on a small island with one knife each and told them that the one survivor would be rewarded and released unharmed.”
Yerin’s stomach twisted. “Burn him, then. Monarch, I need your help to stop the Titan.”
“Their desperation and lack of skill amused him,” Malice