of fear. Fear both of him and of the Dreadgod. But most of the clan had no idea who he was, and he couldn’t keep demonstrating his strength to everyone he passed.
Fear of the Titan would have to be enough.
The Heaven’s Glory artists and their Grand Patriarch were bound in scripted chains, struggling from the back of a wagon that Lindon kept a special eye on. He might need to use them as hostages when he reached their school.
But as the day crept along, the golden sky’s shine fading to a duller hue, they finally came up to the foot of Mount Samara. Its ring hadn’t started to form yet, and Lindon could already tell something had changed in Heaven’s Glory.
The normal path up the mountain, with its wide road crawling upward in a series of switchbacks, was packed with people. That much, Lindon had expected.
To the side, however, the Trial of Glorious Ascension was gone. The bright pink haze that had once covered the long staircase was gone, leaving flights upon flights of bare stone steps. Some Remnants still wandered in confusion around the slopes, and a few of the scripts still flickered fitfully with dream madra, but it was mostly clear.
So the Heaven’s Glory School had deactivated their formation to allow people to reach the top faster. Good for them. Eithan must have really taken over.
Which might explain the other difference he’d noticed: the column of smoke drifting up from the school proper.
Lindon rose on his Thousand-Mile Cloud, glancing over the Wei clan to make sure they would follow his instructions—although there wasn’t much chance of the opposite, at this point. They were stuck in a thick tide of fleeing people, so there would be nothing to do but wait to move forward.
He flew toward Heaven’s Glory, keeping his perception extended and scanning for Eithan. He’d expected the Archlord to have taken over one of the Jade Elders’ houses, but he felt nothing from that direction.
In fact, as he gained altitude, he saw that one of those homes was the source of the smoke he’d noticed earlier.
When he didn’t spot Eithan where he expected, he extended the radius of his search, sweeping the Heaven’s Glory School.
Dross cleared his throat. [Don’t be mad at me. It’s a miracle I can see anything with your senses like this.]
What is it?
[There’s a battle.]
Dross dragged Lindon’s attention to the wild territory behind the Heaven’s Glory School, where once Yerin had run from the school’s pursuers. Those slopes were mostly snow and Remnants, with occasional sparse bushes or trees, but Lindon quickly sensed what Dross was talking about: flares of light and heat in his spiritual perception.
A fight.
Lindon flew over, but only when he came closer did he feel Eithan’s presence. Weak. Flickering. Low on madra. Heavily drained.
Dread made his heart pound, and he reached into his void key. Wavedancer flew sluggishly over to him; the aura was just barely thick enough to support a flying sword, but this one was used to richer environments. The artfully crafted weapon lurched like a graceful fish squirming through mud.
That didn’t stop it working as a sword, though. Lindon clutched the weapon in his left hand as constructs took aim at him.
Heaven’s Glory had protected themselves from the air.
An accelerated missile of Forged force madra shot for him, and if Lindon had been any more than a Jade, he would have just let it hit him.
Instead, he slapped it from the air with Wavedancer’s blade. A gust of the Hollow Domain wiped out a Heaven’s Glory Striker technique, and then he’d located all six flying constructs in the area.
He pointed and wiped them out one at a time with dragon’s breath.
When Lindon hovered over Eithan’s location, he stepped off the Cloud and fell through the trees. A few thin branches snapped beneath him on the way down, but as he landed, a pair of sacred artists aimed weapons at him.
One swung a hammer that gathered earth aura as she swung, and the other was simply planning to club him with a brick of brown Forged madra.
If their sacred arts hadn’t clued him in, their massive badges—almost like breastplates—showed him their identity clearly. These were members of the Kazan clan. Had Ziel brought them here?
He slipped aside from the hammer, letting it crash into the trunk of a tree, and the brick he caught in his Remnant hand.
When he held both Iron sacred artists still, he spoke calmly. “Pardon, but I’m only here to help.”