Sophara strode out, dressed in elaborate jewelry. Gems gleamed in every color. The fine strands of scales that ran from her scalp like hair glistened in the sunlight.

The projection overhead showed that her vertical-slitted gold eyes were calm, her face impassive. Her tail drifted slowly behind her as she paced up to her opponent.

Anger bubbled up in Lindon as he remembered her spraying Naian Blackflame’s blood across the floor. Just to send a message.

Yerin’s fist tightened on her armrest. “I’ll give this Juvari my own sword and a wagonload of scales if she knocks the dragon out here.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Mercy said wistfully.

But there was a chance, Lindon knew, and Dross agreed.

[Her dream techniques might be the perfect weapons to use against Sophara. Superior strength and madra would never come into play.]

After reviewing records of previous rounds, Lindon had trained against a simulation of Juvari. Once.

Her entire Path was based around mimicking the dream Ruler techniques of the Silent King, the most subtle and insidious of the Dreadgods, so Lindon had thought she might pose a challenge for Dross.

She didn’t. Dross could always hold her influence off long enough for Lindon to cut her in half with dragon’s breath.

But throughout the entire tournament, Sophara had struggled the most during the first round when she had been trapped in an illusion. Clearly, she had no way of quickly or easily breaking free from dream techniques.

The two Underladies faced each other, both outwardly calm.

The arena was plain sand again, but this time clouds of purple fire drifted randomly around the battlefield. Strange shapes and images played within the flames. They reminded Lindon of his own family’s foxfire, but these were made of dream and fire aura rather than dreams and light.

An even playing field for the two competitors.

Juvari clearly meant to take advantage. A white ring hovered over her head, like Samara’s ring back home, and he could see dream aura gathering around her. She was preparing her Ruler technique.

He expected Sophara to do the same, but she stood with hands at her sides, waiting.

Juvari’s technique was complete before the barrier separating the two of them fell. In fact, Lindon and Dross discussed with Yerin and Mercy, and they suspected she might have two Ruler techniques prepared and ready to launch.

Lindon’s hopes rose as he saw that Sophara still had prepared nothing. She only cycled her madra to be ready when the fight began.

Overconfidence. That could be her undoing.

Northstrider dropped the wall between them, and the aura rippled purple as Juvari’s dream techniques formed.

Both of Sophara’s hands rose in front of her, and a flood of liquid golden dragon’s breath obliterated one side of the arena.

It was like half of the sun had been born in an instant. Sophara was only a silhouette, dwarfed by a wall of her own madra.

The thunder was deafening. Scripted wards all around the stands stopped the heat from reaching them in the stands, but Lindon felt the spiritual force of the attack.

“Overlord,” he said aloud.

Mercy slowly shook her head, and her mouth was set in a grim line. “She’s not. She hasn’t advanced.”

“I know.” That only made it more frightening.

She had filled the attack with soulfire, but even accounting for that, the scope and force of the technique were clearly on the level of an Overlord. Though Sophara herself was still an Underlady.

What kind of madra channels did she have to be able to force out an attack like that? And so quickly? Juvari’s dream techniques didn’t have a chance to touch her.

“Victory,” the Ninecloud Soul declared, and only then did the Flowing Flame madra from Sophara taper off.

There was no sign of Juvari. A channel had been scooped out of the arena floor between Sophara and the far wall, the sand melted into streaks of red-hot glass.

Sophara turned and walked calmly back to her waiting room.

Lindon looked over to Yerin, who met his eyes with a bleak look. She shook her head.

He turned to Mercy, who rubbed her temple with madra-clad fingers. “I don’t know,” she said, in answer to his silent question. “We have to win. I just don’t know if we can.”

6

Min Shuei, the Winter Sage, had petitioned Northstrider ceaselessly all week. Every time she could track him down, she requested to be allowed to train Yerin.

He didn’t turn her down. He just ignored her.

She had quickly suspected that he was waiting for all the Uncrowned to be selected before he allowed any Sages to select students, but by that time her stubbornness had set in. If he wouldn’t allow her to persuade him with words, he would have to at least respect her persistence.

So she had followed the Monarch day and night.

When Sophara’s match concluded, finally settling the roster of the eight Uncrowned, then Min Shuei knew Northstrider could have no further excuses.

Indeed, she sensed him in his own guest tower in Ninecloud City, waiting on the highest floor. He had set no barriers to keep her out, and while he hadn’t answered his door yet, he would eventually.

She sat in the guest room outside his study. Since he had moved into the room, he had redecorated in his own style.

The guest room was a plain box painted dark gray. No decorations. By way of furniture, he allowed only three chairs for those he had summoned.

That was all.

She found it suited her image of Northstrider: plain and functional. She tried to imagine him picking out curtains or painting walls and chuckled to herself.

There was one window, but it was so high in the wall that it provided no view from the chairs. She paced the room in laps when Northstrider didn’t call for her immediately, glancing down whenever she passed the window, but the window didn’t take much of her attention.

Until she felt someone approaching.

She knew who it was even without a glimpse. She had expected him; in fact, she had thought he would interfere earlier.

When the window slid open and a man slid up the side of the building, she greeted him with her back to him and a hand on her sword.

“Red Faith,” she said.

He said nothing, so she turned.

The Blood Sage, founder of the Bleeding Phoenix’s cult, looked as though he had no blood in him at all. His skin was as pure white as his hair, which was so long that it reached down to his bare feet.

His black-and-red clothes were tight enough to reveal his skeletal frame, and lines of red paint ran down his cheeks from both eyes like tears. He perched on the windowsill, hunched like a monkey, chewing on his thumbnail and staring at her with unnerving intensity.

She felt nothing but disgust for this creature. At some point in the past, he was supposed to have been an accomplished researcher, pioneering investigation into dreadbeasts and the nature of spirits.

She couldn’t be sure how much of his intellect had survived his Blood Shadow separating from him, but now he was…the kindest word she could think of was “unstable.”

He had given up everything in his pursuits. Even his name.

“What brings you here?” she asked. There was no doubt that his reason was the same as hers.

He chewed more viciously on his nail until he drew blood.

Many Sages without significant family backing went by their title rather than their name. It was the same for her; almost everyone referred to her as the Winter Sage or the Sage of Frozen Blade.