Wintersteel Page 36
…when her Blood Shadow surged forward, leaping for them.
Yerin smoothly knelt, placing the rabbit on the floor, before she reached out with her will and seized the Shadow.
The parasite was only half-formed, essentially a mass of blood madra with fingers clawing for the boxes. Yerin froze it in midair, locking it in place.
For a long moment, they went back and forth as they had so many times, each shoving against the other for control. The Shadow had become so strong…and so hungry.
The Winter Sage spoke, and her one word resonated through the entire room. “Return,” she commanded.
The Blood Shadow slithered back into Yerin’s spirit like wire on a spool.
It raged inside her, though Yerin reassured it that she would feed it soon. “Sorry,” she muttered.
The Winter Sage looked both furious and disgusted. “Starve it. You can’t remove it at this point without serious spiritual damage, but you can’t keep feeding it.”
“Was it me that just said the only reason I made it so far was because of this thing?” Yerin pretended to think as she scooped the sleeping rabbit back up. “No, I’m stone-certain that was you.”
“You are the only heir to the Endless Sword. You must stay focused on your Path.”
“You think I’m sweet on this thing? I want it out of me! But I keep it, maybe I win. Maybe. I starve it, I lose.”
“Even if it stops you from becoming the next Sword Sage?”
Yerin was quiet. The rabbit in her arms squirmed.
“Focus is critical in manifesting an Icon. The Blood Shadow is not a reflection of your swordsmanship. It will not help you achieve the Sword Icon, and will only distract you.”
“I don’t want to keep it,” Yerin said. “But I can’t just…lose.”
“Eat up,” the Sage said, and she sounded exhausted. “And do not give a scrap to that parasite.”
8
After Eithan, Yerin, and Mercy left with their respective Sages, Lindon returned to his room and summoned the Ninecloud Soul.
In addition to covering the announcement of the Uncrowned King tournament, the spirit also coordinated every construct in the Ninecloud Court.
When the rainbow light shimmered in front of him, Lindon spoke. “Pardon, but I would like access to the hunting grounds.”
“The Underlord grounds are closed for maintenance tonight, but we have several Truegold locations available.”
They had also received another shipment of hunger madra, which Lindon purchased in the name of the Akura family. The Ninecloud Court had provided him with madra—mostly broken-down bindings taken from dreadbeasts—to maintain his Remnant arm all this time.
As a part of his body, the limb required less maintenance than a normal construct would have. It took most of its sustenance from his pure madra.
But since he didn’t generate hunger madra in his spirit, he did need to supplement it every once in a while. Especially when he strained it to its limits.
As he intended to do tonight.
The Truegold hunting ground to which he was taken in a flying carriage was a stony maze filled with Remnants and hostile spirits of every description. Signs and glowing constructs provided guidance and direction to those who were permitted access.
Some were Soulsmiths who preferred to do their own hunting, but most were here to train. Usually, entrants were charged a fee based on the Remnants they hunted down, but Lindon was permitted certain privileges as an Uncrowned competitor.
He passed a few late-training Truegolds, most of whom bowed when he walked by, but he wasn’t looking for anything in particular. When he first cornered a Remnant without anyone around, he pounced on it.
It was a pink, fluid storm Remnant in a shape that reminded him of a gecko, and it kept repeating a series of buzzes that sounded like the word “grapefruit.”
Lindon didn’t know if it was trying to say something else or if its original body had died with citrus on the brain, but a quick spiritual scan made it clear that this wasn’t one of the few Remnants that had developed a sense of awareness.
His Empty Palm blasted a chunk out of its center, and the rest of its body trembled like a shifting surface of gravel.
While it dispersed, he held out his Remnant arm and asked Dross for help.
With the spirit’s assistance, he replicated the technique Northstrider had used.
The storm gecko exploded.
Lindon wasn’t too surprised.
Under the protection of his madra, not even his clothes were singed, and he moved on to the next Remnant.
He had known he would need to make modifications to Northstrider’s technique. The binding in his arm had been altered by the addition of the Archstone, but it had changed further as he had used and fed it over the last months. As a part of his body, it grew organically.
So while the principles of the original Consume technique would help him, they could only be guidelines. He had to adapt it himself.
He could have drained the Remnant dry of its madra on his first attempt. He had been doing that for years.
But he was trying to take everything.
Without Dross, he suspected this development process would have taken years. As it was, his first three attempts ended in failure, but the third Remnant gave up specks of blood essence, life essence, and that invisible substance that his arm had consumed before.
This time, the Remnant fell into a lifeless pile of limbs before it exploded.
Lindon lost all the power he’d drained. He vented the madra from his arm, and he couldn’t capture the blood and life essence before they dissipated. As for the invisible force, he didn’t know what happened to that.
But by the time his arm and madra channels were so sore that he was forced to stop, Dross had far more information than he’d started with.
Only then, exhausted and with his mind swirling with theories, did Lindon fall asleep.
While he slept, Dross dove into the Arelius technique library looking for information on hunger madra.
In the morning, Lindon asked the Ninecloud Soul for a copy of The Seven Principles of Pure Madra, by the Script Lord.
He had first heard of the book when he read a dream tablet left by its author in Ghostwater. Its ideas had allowed him to create the Soul Cloak, but he had taken only memories and impressions of its contents. He had never read the work itself until he came here and found that the Ninecloud Court had a copy in their library.
After that, he booked time in the tower’s Soulsmith foundry.
The next few days fell into a rhythm, as Lindon brushed up on areas of improvement that he had neglected while competing in the tournament. He spent the bulk of his time on the Consume technique, but when he or Dross needed rest or when he had exhausted his possibilities, he worked on other areas.
Lindon would go to the hunting grounds in the morning and practice Consuming Remnants, spend midday studying theory as he and Dross recovered, then practice Soulsmithing in the evenings.
He returned to an old project that he had never fully abandoned: armor. He’d kept his Skysworn armor and samples of armor from the Seishen Kingdom in his soulspace, and he found several interesting dream tablets in the Ninecloud library from Soulsmiths who specialized in armor. They gave him entirely new avenues to explore.
Between all that and his daily cycling and physical training, he spent the next five days in a constant state of activity.