Emriss gave Yerin a kindly smile. “He is correct in one respect: there is much to be learned from your advancement. I hope you do indeed share your experiences, though…not necessarily with him.”

Red Faith was biting at his fingernails as though to chew away the restriction of silence.

Yerin dipped her head to Emriss. “Thanks, Monarch. I know he’s a cockroach walking like a man, but he did help me out of a tough spot.”

Red Faith nodded furiously, pointing to Yerin. An indescribable, invisible ripple broke the darkness, and he pushed through Malice’s command for silence.

“Don’t be close-minded! She could share with all of us! This is the way forward! This is—”

His voice vanished again.

“Now, where did he find the authority for that?” Malice asked.

Emriss shook her head. “He is very old, and craftier than he appears. Who can say for certain what tricks he has in his pockets?”

Yerin couldn’t signal the Sage of Red Faith. The two Monarchs could sense everything she did, even in a sealed space like this. Maybe especially here.

But she lingered on his eyes longer than she needed to, hoping he would notice.

He didn’t stop chewing on his fingers, but she thought she saw his intelligence shine through for a moment. He gave her a brief, barely perceptible nod.

That’s a start, she thought.

When the fight for Sacred Valley was over, she had a use for him. Long ago, Eithan had stolen one of this man’s dream tablets for her. He’d given it to Yerin, which had helped her cultivate her Blood Shadow.

He’d gotten it from the labyrinth.

Where he had once performed experiments on the Bleeding Phoenix.

The dream tablet hadn’t been thorough; it was more of a personal recollection on his understanding of Blood Shadows. She wasn’t clear whether he’d had the entire Phoenix down there, or just pieces of it, or if the labyrinth was just where you went to hide if you wanted to do Dreadgod research.

But it was a firm connection between the Bleeding Phoenix and the labyrinth her master had been exploring before he died.

Now that she was back in Sacred Valley, it was time to track down some answers.

Or almost time. Once the other Dreadgod was taken care of.

While Yerin got the Sage’s attention, another woman had appeared, beneath the shining image of a golden knight. She was dressed in intricate golden armor, but she had her helmet off, revealing messy blonde hair.

Larian of the Eight-Man Empire looked around the circle, stopping to glare at the Blood Sage. “Who invited Red Faith? I won’t speak anywhere he does.”

Red Faith shouted something, but it released no sound.

“…perfect,” Larian finished.

A red dragon head with golden eyes snapped at the darkness, and Northstrider strode out from beneath that emblem. His hair was still trimmed and neat, his facial hair short, and he wore clean clothes. Similar to how he had appeared in the finals of the Uncrowned King tournament.

Yerin had expected him to go back to his homeless wanderer look by now.

“Has the time come for the champion to name her wish?” Northstrider asked.

He gave Yerin a…she couldn’t call it a smile, but it was at least an approving look. “We should all be of one mind. Let her state her desire so that we may grant it in all haste. I, for one, do not wish to take my gaze from the Titan for longer than I must.”

Yerin didn’t know if they were waiting on anyone else—had the Arelius family even been invited? What about the Ninecloud Court?—but she knew an opening when she saw one.

“You’re cutting to the heart of it,” Yerin said. “I want you to keep the Wandering Titan away from where it’s going. Don’t have to try and kill it, just push it away until we can get people out.”

There was silence around the circle. Malice looked amused.

Northstrider folded black-scaled arms. “There are restrictions on what requests we fulfill and how we fulfill them. If there were not, the winner could wish for one of us as a slave, or for the death of an entire country. One of those restrictions is that we will not satisfy a request that endangers the life of a Monarch or the existence of their faction.”

“Fighting a Dreadgod counts,” Larian said.

“It’s headed into a formation that keeps it tied up tight,” Yerin insisted. “This might be your chance to bury it for good.”

Emriss sighed. “That’s what we thought before.”

She leaned heavily on her flower-topped staff, and an image drifted up into the air ahead of her: a black-striped white tiger with an oversized white halo. It was big as an elephant, and Yerin recognized it from descriptions as the Silent King, though as a Dreadgod it was relatively tiny. It would have looked like a pet next to the Titan.

The only thing huge about it was the army of Remnants, sacred beasts, and blank-eyed sacred artists stretched out over the countryside behind it. And Yerin recognized that countryside.

Sacred Valley. It looked somewhat different—the mountains around it were shaped differently in ways she couldn’t quite put her finger on—but it was clearly the same place.

“The suppression field over the labyrinth will indeed weaken Dreadgods,” Emriss said. “Within minutes. It is designed to do precisely that. However…”

A flame kindled in the distance like an orange star, growing quickly as it approached until a fireball swallowed the entire horizon. It fell on Sacred Valley like the sun was collapsing.

“…it will do the same for us.”

The fireball itself split up into a thousand sparks as it sank closer and closer to Sacred Valley. Flames rained down all over, catching trees alight, but they didn’t even burn most of the sacred artists in the Silent King’s horde. Much less the Dreadgod itself.

All the power had been stolen by the suppression field.

The vision winked out.

“The Silent King is theoretically the most vulnerable of the Dreadgods, yet we were no more successful in damaging it there than anywhere else.” Emriss shook her head. “What we did learn is that the Dreadgods are unable to retrieve their prize, even without our intervention, and will soon forget its location and return to their random wandering. There are other entrances to the labyrinth, and they’ve never been successful in breaching those either.”

Yerin paid close attention to the story, filing it away for later, but none of that solved her problems.

“If I pare it down to the bone,” Yerin said, “you’re saying you won’t help.”

Emriss moved her gaze to the Akura Monarch. “Any evacuation of the native population should fall to Malice.”

Yerin didn’t wait for Malice to respond. “And what if that was my wish? What if I’m asking you to make sure everybody in the land gets a safe place to go?”

“Nah.” The blonde woman in the golden armor scratched vigorously at the back of her neck; uncomfortably so, as though she were trying to rid herself of a flea. “Can’t let you waste your request. Doesn’t look good for us if word gets out that we sent the best young Lady in the world away with a glass of water and a pat on the head, would it?”

Yerin was growing irritated by all these restrictions, so she fired back. “Glass of water’s worth a long stretch more than what I’ve gotten from you so far.”