her opponent away from the labyrinth entrance without fully engaging it, which was perfect. Northstrider stood in reserve, but he would prefer not to engage the Dreadgods himself. It was best to let them rampage for a while, tire themselves out, and then return to their rest.
His oracle codex shouted into his mind: [Warning! Threat approaching!]
It redirected his attention north, to the Phoenix.
Northstrider clenched his fists tight, and before he realized it, he was drifting upward. Abyssal Palace engaged its propulsion constructs and began to flee, but he had no attention to spare for them.
The Phoenix was moving. Fast.
It was heading for the Titan.
With a tight focus of will, Northstrider pushed through the Way. He was swallowed up in blue flows for a moment, taking him to his destination, but he had them spit him back into reality a few miles from his destination.
He needed to be close, but not too close. The Dreadgods had powerful wills, and he would be vulnerable coming out of the portal.
When he emerged again, he was hovering in the clouds over a mountain whose peak had been broken off long ago. It was covered in streams, one in particular forming a river that stretched down into a valley.
He looked to the east, where he heard a searing cry. The Phoenix swooped in, spraying condensed blood madra over the ground. From this distance, he couldn’t tell if it was striking at a target or just expressing its wrath, but its deadly breath scorched the ground for miles.
If the beam of red light had been any aspect other than blood, it would have left the terrain devastated, but blood madra disproportionately affected flesh. Any animal in the path of that Striker technique was now dead.
And Malice was on the other side of the valley.
His codex sped up his thoughts, so it seemed time slowed down. Malice, with her armor the size of the Titan itself, was on the west side of the suppression field. The Titan had just emerged from the field itself, and it too was distracted by the arrival of its brother.
On the east side, the Phoenix was turning toward the valley. Refugees fled beneath it, but they were so weak as to be invisible to the Dreadgod. That didn’t make them safe—on the contrary, they would be torn apart by the bloodspawn, not to mention the collateral damage from the Phoenix itself—but no one down there could attract the attention of a hungry Dreadgod.
Until his oracle codex drew his attention to his own spiritual perception, and he realized who he was feeling down there.
Then his irritation flared into true anger.
The most valuable young sacred artists on the continent were all down there, clustered together. With Dross, a powerful tool deserving of further study. They had deliberately placed themselves in the path of a Dreadgod.
And Malice had allowed this…idiocy.
Including a pseudo-Herald who had merged with her Blood Shadow. The power of the Phoenix itself.
The Dreadgod’s scarlet eye swiveled to focus on a particular cloudship down there, and Northstrider unleashed his spirit.
Malice was going to owe him for this.
Ziel and the Kazan clan reached the base of Mount Samara, and the huge river of people pushing to get out.
It had been hard enough to march across the landscape with it constantly shaking under the footsteps of two giants. The most vulnerable members of the clan, and the families with small children—including the Patriarch’s wife and children—had flown off long before, but the Kazan had no abundance of flying mounts or constructs.
Therefore, they had to make their painful way across a ground that tossed like a sea in storm as the Monarch clashed with the Dreadgod. Each arrow that crashed into the Titan’s skin sounded like a collapsing tower, though Ziel recognized that the Monarch’s might was suppressed by the field around Sacred Valley just like everyone else’s.
Every step the clan took was shrouded in fear, because the very earth could betray them. A tree might fall, crushing someone, or a wagon would be swallowed up by a chasm.
Even Ziel cheered her on. In his own way. He nodded approvingly and grunted once or twice, at least.
He would rather lose someone here and there to accidents than everyone to a Dreadgod. At least in this scenario, when he was quick enough, he could save some.
And Akura Malice was pushing the Titan away. In only a few more steps, it would be drawn away from Sacred Valley entirely.