“The insect stung me!” Orthos said, gnashing his jaws. The Sylvan trembled against Lindon’s scalp. He swept his perception through her and confirmed what he’d suspected: the tiny spirit was exhausted.

Orthos’ madra already flowed more smoothly, even weak as it was, and his madra channels didn’t pain him as badly as before. It looked as though it had calmed his soul without diluting his madra, and allowed his channels to repair themselves.

The damage would have returned in days, if he hadn’t shared his power with Lindon. Combined with their contract, the Sylvan’s attention might be able to—over time—make some real improvement in the turtle’s soul.

“You should feel a little better at least,” Lindon said, knowing he did.

“I have survived three hundred winters and the fall of the Blackflames,” Orthos grumbled. “I would have survived this.”

On his behalf, Lindon patted the Sylvan on the head with one finger.

Lindon extended his perception, and it unspooled much more easily than before, his perception floating over the mountain. He caught a trail of sensations that felt like Yerin, as though her voice still echoed behind her, but not her.

“While you were out there…”

Orthos finished the thought. “I felt her in battle on the main peak. Not now, but her spirit is likely weak.” Laughter rumbled out of his chest like aftershocks. “There is another familiar soul in that direction as well.”

Lindon let his perception float, and he sensed exactly what the turtle meant: Eithan was no longer bothering to veil his power, and the full force of an Underlord shone like a signal-fire only a short distance away.

As Orthos insisted he could walk, Lindon slid his pack on and headed in that direction. Where Eithan was, and where they’d last seen Yerin.

The Sylvan Riverseed rode on his head.

Chapter 20

Jai Daishou was living a nightmare.

He and his Truegold elders launched their Striker attacks together, streams of white light that should have pierced the enemy from seven different angles.

Then, to his eyes and senses both, Eithan vanished.

One moment he was standing there on the other side of a distorted aura barrier, holding a broom in his hands, and the next…

…the next an elder’s skull was crushed like an eggshell outside the boundary formation. His body toppled as Eithan stood over him, broom bloodstained. Jai Daishou reacted before any of the elders could, blasting a Star Lance in Eithan’s direction, but he slipped back into the formation like a fish into water.

That was impossible. The boundary stopped everything physical from passing. Pushing through it like that was like pushing through a burning wall. Even if his body was so monstrously strong that he could do it, the formation should have crumbled. Only madra could pass.

Eithan’s upper body popped out of a different side of the bubble, seizing another elder and dragging him back inside. There came a crunch and a scream, and a spray of blood was stopped by the aura.

Only one possibility made sense: he could be covering his body in a shell of madra to pass through the formation. But it would be easier to Forge a human-sized ball and roll through: the amount of power it would take to slip in and out while covering every inch of his body would beggar even an Underlord. Jai Daishou himself might have been able to do it once, if he could control his madra precisely enough, but he wouldn’t be fit to fight on the other end.

Either this was a trick, or an illusion, or Eithan had madra reserves that the Jai Patriarch could only describe as monstrous. Maybe he had stolen a ward key, somehow.

Jai Daishou ordered his remaining four men back, adjusting his tactics. If Eithan was using speed and mobility against them, he could compete with raw power.

He had no use for this mountainside anyway.

His spear thrummed with power, a fan of Forged spears hovering in the air above him. Each weapon held the full power of his madra and blazed with sword aura; they would hit like bombs, and even if they missed by three feet, the aura alone could peel meat from bone.

But that wasn’t enough. He tapped into the soulfire he’d stockpiled over the past decades, channeling the faded flames into each spear. The power sunk into them until the air around them shook.

These were seven deadly attacks capable of drilling through steel plate, spread out to cover every angle of escape. Each technique launched with a split-second difference in timing, to cover any openings and preventing the enemy from grasping the timing.

Eithan would meet a wall of unstoppable spears, burning heat, and slashing blades. He may as well have been nailed to a board.

The cliff shone with white light like a dawning star, invisible gouges appeared in the dirt from the force of his sword aura, and his spiritual sense trembled with the power of his seven spears. Jai Daishou used this technique to level fortress walls, not to kill individual enemies.

This was the culmination of all the individual spear arts passed down among the Jai for generations. Jai Daishou called it the Fall of Seven Stars.

He thrust his spear forward, unleashing a stream of deadly white madra and six Forged missiles that screamed as they blasted through the air. The pale, deadly lights washed over the cliffside like a shining wave, the air between each light churning with sword aura that chewed up pebbles and spat dust.

Utter devastation scoured the cliff, shredding the boundary flags and dispersing the formation, churning the fallen bodies of the two elders into bloody mist. The technique plowed through stone and soil, and when the cloud of dust cleared, the entire half of the outcropping where Eithan once stood was completely gone. A chunk had been gouged out of the mountain, and a chunk of night sky replaced what had been rock a moment before.

Jai Daishou took a deep breath of satisfaction and let his madra begin to cycle. He had strained his spirit too much for this, but at least—

His spirit shouted at him, and he spun, leaping in the air and readying the Ancestor’s Spear in both hands.

With his broom, Eithan had swept a Truegold’s ankles out from under him. While the old man was still in the air, the broom’s handle crashed down on his back.

There was a crack as the man’s spine snapped.

The wooden broom stayed intact.

Eithan hadn’t escaped the Fall of Seven Stars unscathed: blood trickled down into one eye, which was stuck closed, there was a bloody slash across his left shoulder, and his fine blue robe was half-shredded. But he had escaped, and that was frightening enough.

Jai Daishou shouted to draw Eithan’s attention, and to give his three remaining elders time to run. He whipped Stellar Spear madra in a line—the Star Lance was the simplest Striker technique possible, but also the fastest. No matter how quickly Eithan could move, he couldn’t dodge this. It was practically instantaneous.

A technique of this degree couldn’t kill an Underlord, but it could pin him down, keep him from chasing the remaining Truegolds and butchering them one by one.

Eithan raised his hand like a man blocking out the light of the sun.

And when the Stellar Spear madra came within a foot of his hand, the madra dispersed. It dissolved. It vanished, as though the Underlord were simply wiping out his technique.

Jai Daishou landed, his metal hair flogging his back like chains, and began channeling Flowing Starlight. He needed to devote everything he had to speed if he wanted to keep up.