[Look at that bright, refreshing light. Doesn’t it just lift your spirits?]

This hurts, you know.

[Healing is often painful.]

When the darkness retreated, Dross pulled away the illusion of bright light. Though it had never had anything to do with his eyes, Lindon had to blink rapidly to recover his sight.

Heat and smoke choked the air, and Lindon manipulated wind aura to keep his eyes and mouth clear.

“The Firestone Roads,” Charity announced. Glowing rocks that shone with the rippling orange of flame were arranged into paths leading away from them, but half of the paths rose into the air and vanished into dark plumes of smoke.

A crimson deer whose antlers were aflame looked at Lindon and snorted. “Dragons,” the stag said distinctly, and then galloped away on hooves that trailed ash.

Beside the roads of ember-bright stones rose a scripted spire like a lighthouse. Fire aura was drawn there, and a blazing signal-fire shone from the top.

“Pardon,” Lindon said, “but this isn’t our destination, is it?” Were they planning on walking from here?

Charity reached into a shadowy void key and pulled out a chair, on which she sat. Its wooden legs began smoldering until she waved a hand and the smoke vanished. “With you along, I cannot travel as quickly as I would otherwise. It will take us until evening to arrive, though it will be morning in Sky’s Edge. While we’re here, you may cycle the abundant fire aura or explore, as it suits you.”

The fire aura was powerful, but there was very little destruction to go along with it, as nothing he could see was being consumed by the flame. He elected to explore, pulling Little Blue out so she could see too.

They found a boiling river filled with white-hot fish, a family of those fiery stags attending what seemed to be a cultural history lecture, and a ten-foot-tall ash creature that recognized Lindon from the Uncrowned King tournament.

Charity appeared in front of Lindon after he’d finished recording his voice into a construct for the ash monster. “Time to leave.”

Lindon and his two spirits bid the creature farewell.

Their next stop was a web-city of sacred spiders that found Dross fascinating, and then an ancient forest glade full of Sylvan Riverseeds. Little Blue spent over an hour playing with her kind, though she was the only one with any detail or real intelligence as far as Lindon could tell.

After that, they crossed the ocean, where Charity told them to be careful. The inhabitants of the ocean were largely hostile to the Akura clan, she said.

They first landed in a bustling city where every building was on a separate platform raised high over the ocean’s surface. The platforms were connected by bridges that swayed in the wind, as a violent storm tossed waves and threw out forks of lightning.

They spent most of their time sitting in a restaurant, watching massive shapes roll in the water beneath them…and the clouds above them.

While idle, Charity usually pulled out a book and began to read, and Lindon didn’t want to interrupt. But now that they were sharing a table, he waited for her to glance up from the page before he asked her a question.

“Pardon if this seems rude, but I have often wondered: are you the only Sage in the Akura family?”

“The only direct descendant.” She returned her eyes to the page.

“And your father is the only Herald?”

She nodded, but thus far this was common knowledge about the Akura clan. They had many allies among the Heralds and Sages, but Charity and Fury were the only ones in the family.

“If you don’t mind me asking…why?”

If their family could raise a Herald and a Sage as well as a Monarch, why couldn’t they do it again?

“There is a balance. It would be…dangerous…to have too many individuals of a certain level at one time. So when an Archlord shows signs of advancement, if we believe it would disrupt that balance, we encourage them to ascend.”

She flipped a page, and her tone became dry. “The heavens have never turned us down.”

Lindon still felt like he was missing something. “Apologies, but do you mean you’re trying to stay in balance with the other Monarch factions?”

“These are not matters for an Underlord. When you reach Archlord, you will discover certain truths for yourself.”

And that was the end of that conversation.

Two stops later, Charity told Lindon to prepare for the cold. “While the weather in Sky’s Edge is no threat to an Underlord, we are arriving at a location of powerful ice aura, so dress accordingly. If you didn’t think to pack for the cold, you’ll have to—”

Lindon pulled a heavy coat and winter boots from his void key.

They emerged from darkness into a frigid gale of blowing ice.

Lindon slapped a few chunks from the air before Charity’s aura control took over and deflected the hand-sized flying blades.

They stood on a smooth, wide surface, like a polished ball a hundred feet in the air. The sun still hadn’t risen over a range of white-capped peaks to the east, so the entire world was painted in shades of gray.

To the west stretched the ocean they’d just crossed, and at their feet was a town made of thick wooden logs.

The town had been destroyed.

Houses were burned, smashed, or torn apart. Pillars of smoke and dust rose into the sky, and the streets seethed with shadowy creatures. If Lindon was to open his aura sight, he was sure that he would see the power of destruction hanging over Sky’s Edge like a dark cloud.

But he didn’t open it. He knew better.

One massive hand of dark stone rested across the shore of Sky’s Edge, palm-down and fingers spread. Several houses were crushed under each finger.

An arm stretched back into the ocean, leading to a bulky shadow beneath the waves and a dome of rough stone that rose from the water like an island.

The shell of the Wandering Titan.

He found himself thinking of Orthos.

In a way, the turtle felt closer now than he had in almost a year. As though Lindon could sense him nearby if he stretched out his spiritual perception.

But that was just Lindon’s imagination.

The Titan was often depicted as a turtle that walked like a man, and now Lindon could see why. While its shell had become a hill rising from the water, its hand was five-fingered and clearly shaped like a human’s.

The Dreadgod had reached up to the land with one arm. Its palm sank into the ground, cracks spreading from its fingers and stretching throughout the town.

He couldn’t wrap his mind around the size. He had seen the Bleeding Phoenix take up an entire horizon, and the Titan was on the same scale, like a piece of the landscape rather than something that could rise to its feet at any moment.

“The Dreadgod still has not fully awakened,” Charity told him. “It crawled slowly across the ocean floor, toward the labyrinth that gave it birth, until it made it to these shores. Our oracles predict that this will be its last stop before it awakens in six to eight weeks, by which time we must have evacuated the surrounding lands.”

“No one’s going to stop it?” Lindon asked, surprised. Malice had stopped the Bleeding Phoenix by herself the last time. Surely another Monarch could do something similar.

Charity turned to him, purple eyes impassive. “Monarchs, Heralds, and Sages are the only ones capable of doing anything to a Dreadgod, and among them only a Monarch could match one for any period of time. They would then be weakened for a rival.”