The construct pushed against the script keeping it locked inside, and the script flared. Harmony reinforced it with his madra again.

The Blackflames had corrupted this Eye somehow, maybe fusing it with a Remnant or the memories of one of their dead sacred artists. He knelt and held it up, hoping the tree would accept it anyway.

But before he could open his mouth to ask, his spirit whispered a warning. Instinctively, he looked up to the ceiling.

A dark, furious sun had dawned above and behind him. It was like feeling a dragon's birth.

The aura was only Truegold, but it carried such fury and destruction that his spirit trembled. It surprised him; he hadn't thought any Truegold could be a threat.

“Did you feel that? Is that Lindon? I tell you what, let's wait for him. I'm sure we could talk this—”

A cage drifted down from the tree, and Harmony shoved the Eye inside.

The construct shut up as though choked off. The cage started to rise, but it froze only a few feet up.

The branch trembled, and the gem shone purple. The ring of script inside glowed as the spirit pushed its way out, and suddenly Harmony could actually see it emerging from the crack in the sapphire.

It spoke as though through gritted teeth. “...not going to...stay...here...”

The tree's light shone brighter.

When it did, the cage continued to move. The spirit was drawn back inside the gem with a yelp, and the cage settled into place.

The jewel shone purple for another few seconds, and then its light dimmed.

The spirit was finally, blessedly, quiet.

~~~

Lindon held up his hand of flesh, and the madra of a Truegold Blackflame burned the dreadbeast's blood away.

He'd done some quick surgery on a few of the monsters in the garden, extracting the twisted corkscrew bindings in their body. They were hunger madra, the same as his arm, and he'd been able to patch up the hole in his skeletal limb.

It was still scarred, and you could tell where the different sources of madra butted up against one another, but it worked. That was all that mattered.

And he was Truegold.

With Orthos' power running through him, and the water from the Spirit Well to guide it, he was filled with a sense of strength he'd never felt before. Orthos told him that it was always best to spend a few days practicing and cycling after advancement in order to get used to his new power. He'd heard such advice before, and generally agreed.

But not only were they out of time, something felt different about Truegold. He felt complete, as though he were a bowl that had been completely filled.

He suspected that was partially overconfidence, but it was partially that he was approaching the limit of his Blackflame core. When he reached the end of Truegold, he would have advanced as far as he could normally.

After that, he'd have to reforge his body and spirit in soulfire.

Even minutes after advancing, he was looking forward to the next step.

Lindon opened his void key, the closet doorway appearing in the air. This time, when he pulled Little Blue off his shoulder, he handed her a pure scale.

His pure core was still Highgold, but that was higher-grade than he'd ever fed her before. She smiled at him before tilting her head back and swallowing the coin whole. Her blue body rippled for a moment until she let out a drifting hiss of satisfaction.

He reached into the void storage, placing her inside. She squeaked, just as she had last time, clambering up his arm.

Now, he met her eyes. “I can't take you with me this time,” he said.

Little Blue let out a sad note.

“I know. But we have to bring Dross back. You remember Dross?”

She whistled.

“I'm going to have to fight for him, and I'm afraid I can't look after you at the same time. You understand?”

She frowned for a moment, but then turned and walked to the edge of his fingers. She was six inches tall now, and he actually felt her weight as she leaped off like a diver, landing lightly on the edge of a jar filled with Dream Well water.

Little Blue sat down on the jar and gave him an impatient peep.

“I'll be back as soon as I can,” he said, and closed the void key.

Outside, Orthos gave the hatch a sideways glance. “This is not wise. I've changed my mind. The courage of a dragon is valuable, but it must be balanced by the wisdom of a dragon.”

Reaching into his pocket, Lindon withdrew the gatestone. The chalky ball shimmered in the light as though it were made of crushed blue glass. “Then you'll be relieved to know that I have decided to use the gatestone.”

Orthos brightened. “Really?”

“Yes.” Lindon lobbed the stone so that it landed a few feet away from the hatch. Before Orthos could ask what he was doing, Lindon extended a finger. A quick beam of dragon's breath struck the gatestone dead center.

The device let out a blue orb big enough to swallow a person, then disappeared. The stone was unharmed, a man-sized web of cracks hovering in the air.

Orthos rounded on him in a fury. “What have you done?”

“The scripts around the Spirit Well were disabled, and I thought about why. The cracks must have sliced through the runes and interrupted the script.” Lindon pointed to the ground, where many of the silk-thin cracks ran into the stone. “Even if that's not what happened before, I'm fairly certain it would work that way now. Look.”

He extended a palm, and a much thicker bar of dragon's breath punched through the hatch.

There was no flaring script to defend it. This time, it blasted through the metal, and Lindon moved it from one side to the other to obliterate the hatch. The edges of the tunnel now glowed white-hot, but there wasn't as much melting metal as he'd expected. That would be the destruction aspect of Blackflame at work.

He walked over to the edge and prepared to hop in. Orthos peered over the edge.

“That's a long way down,” he said.

“Look at it this way: the entrance is plenty big enough. You'll fit just fine.”

“What if it gets narrower as you fall? My shell is not meant for tight spaces.”

Lindon looked down into the darkness, swept it with his spiritual perception, and then took a deep breath. “I'll let you know,” he said as he jumped.

There was a rush of air and darkness, then he hit the ground. Even without an Enforcer technique active, he absorbed the impact lightly: the benefit of the meat from the Silverfangs and Diamondscales.

He would probably look back on this month in Ghostwater as one of the most profitable of his life...assuming they made it out.

“Nothing down here,” Lindon called up. “You can jump.”

“Are you certain?” Orthos shouted back.

“I'm going to start exploring. If you don't think you can join me, you can leave it to me, and I'll let you know what I find.”

A moment later, a dull red meteor crashed into the ground as Orthos hit shell-first. He swung from side to side to right himself, marching over to Lindon.

“A dragon doesn't hesitate.”

Orthos had hesitated for quite a long time, but Lindon said, “I'm glad for that. I think we should head this way.”

The room at the bottom of the shaft was nothing more than an open space with three dark tunnels leading in different directions. Since advancing to Truegold, Lindon's spiritual senses had immediately expanded, so he headed through the entrance where he most clearly sensed Harmony's shadow madra.