“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 went on. “He was true to his word, in the end. He patched up the winner’s wounds, gave the boy food and water and a powerful sacred instrument, and released him. I was thinking I might do something similar. Poetic justice, I suppose.”

Malice drifted down to stand on the branch beside Yerin. “I could tell him I’ll release him if he defeats you in a duel, how about that? Or we could gather up some survivors, seal off their sacred arts, and make them scratch and claw each other until we spare the victor. What do you think?”

“Don’t want a turn of any game he’d play. If he deserves killing, kill him. Don’t play toys with him. But there’s a Dreadgod—”

“He does deserve it,” Malice said. The shadow-arms reached up and swallowed the golden speck whole; Yerin could sense nothing of him anymore, and she couldn’t be sure if Malice had erased the dragon or transported him somewhere else for capture.

“I respect your position,” the Monarch went on. “The rule of humanity is civilization, and civilizations are based on laws. We should not lower ourselves to our base instincts, or we are no better than they.”

Malice gave a cold smile. “And while I agree up to a point, there is something to be said for…proportional response.”

Yerin surveyed the ravaged valley. “Looks to me like you’ve got your response.”

“It is yet far from proportional.” But Malice warmed once again as she faced Yerin. “But they can wait. They are bare of defense before me…thanks to you.” She took Yerin’s hand in both of hers. “How can I bless your life, Yerin?”

You could start by opening your ears, Yerin thought.

But the sudden change in attitude threw her off. She had expected a positive reception—she had killed Malice’s biggest enemy, after all—but this was a little much.

Yerin met purple eyes that glistened in the picture of motherly affection. “What can you do about the Wandering Titan?”

“Oh my, you do think the world of me, don’t you?” Malice brushed a strand of hair away from Yerin’s eye. “You’re close enough to a Herald now; you should have a more realistic view of a Monarch’s limitations. I was able to keep the Bleeding Phoenix away from certain areas for a few days, but even so, I was not able to drive it off completely. And it had awakened early; it was not fighting at full strength. There’s an argument to be made that it would have destroyed less property in total had I not matched it in battle.”

Yerin appreciated the scale involved, but that didn’t change what she needed. “It’s about to trip over a boundary field that’ll make it weaker, if that helps you. The script’s supposed to work better and faster the stronger you are, and it’s got me weaker than a day-old kitten.”

“Is that so?” Malice murmured. “Poor thing. However, I’m afraid that there’s more. Last time, my focus on the Bleeding Phoenix and my subsequent recovery cost my people all over the world. We lost entire cities, alliances shifted, and territory changed hands while my eyes were turned.”

Yerin straightened her back. “Came armed for that. If all the Monarchs are riding in one boat, you can’t sink each other, true? Willing to make this my prize for the tournament.”

The final prize of the tournament had hovered in the back of her mind since she’d won. She and Lindon had spent a while talking about it, and while he was full of ideas, even he wasn’t sure what she should spend it on.

The obvious answer was “power,” but there wasn’t much more power the Monarchs could give her. And what else could they grant her that she couldn’t earn on her own?

Malice put a hand to her lips in a show of surprise. “Are you now? Well, then, how can we waste time?”

She swirled her hand, and darkness swallowed everything but Yerin and Malice. They still stood on a solid surface, but the whole world was blacker than a nightmare.

Yerin found that she could understand what Malice was doing even though her spiritual perception was blacked out. They hadn’t physically moved anywhere; this was just a way of communicating over great distances, like some kind of Monarch-level messenger construct.

She supposed she was sensing Malice’s will through the working, which was a strange feeling. She needed to get used to that.

A call had gone out in many different directions, and while Yerin couldn’t trace most of them, she knew one at least had gone out to Reigan Shen and his faction.

She knew that because the Blood Sage appeared before them almost instantly, the image of a roaring white lion announcing his presence.

The Sage of Red Faith was a tall, skeletal man with white hair all the way down to his knees and red lines tracing down from the corners of his eyes so that it always looked like he was weeping bloody tears. He was hunched forward like a scarecrow about to fall off its post, scanning the darkness.

When he saw Yerin, his eyes lit with a feverish light. He lunged forward, reaching for her, though his image didn’t move through the darkness at all.

“My girl!” he whispered. “Dear, sweet, wise, wonderful girl. You did it, you did it, you did it! Truly, it is the master’s joy to see his apprentice surpass him, but I would have never—”

“You’re not my master,” Yerin said, but he didn’t pause for even an instant to listen.

“—thought that you would proceed from such a great state of instability. Give me your memory, let me see it, and that’s the end. Our work will be complete. You and I will be responsible for the greatest revolution in the sacred arts since Emriss—no, we will be beyond even her; she can help us spread the word, others must know! Give me the dream tablet, make me a tablet, I want to see your memory, I want to taste it.”

“I don’t recall inviting you, Red Faith.” Malice sounded amused rather than disgusted, as Yerin had imagined she would be. “I’m surprised to see Shen trusted you with the authority to speak on his behalf.”

“Shen? We don’t need Shen anymore, don’t you understand?” He was still fixated on Yerin. “You hate Redmoon Hall, I know you do. I’ll tear it down with my own hands. Not a rat will remain alive. I’ll give you their heads, or I’ll deliver them to you alive, or I’ll pay you, I can pay you—”

He kept ranting, waving his hands in demonstration, but he no longer made a sound.

Another woman sighed in relief, though Yerin hadn’t seen her arrive. “Thank you, Malice. Our meetings are never productive with him around.”

Her skin was a human shade of dark brown, but it had the texture of bark. A reminder of her original life as a tree, like her hair, which was made of glowing blue-green vines braided together. She tapped the invisible ground with her staff, which was topped with a diamond shaped like a blooming flower.