Yerin stood, panting and watching. She had known he would stop it. He was a Sage with his students behind him. Besides, if he had dodged, the technique would only have blasted off into the distance. She wasn’t so far gone that she couldn’t consider her surroundings.

But she was angry enough that she hadn’t been able to think of a better way to express it.

The Blood Sage didn’t look put off, though. He looked delighted.

He held up his bloody hand to her as though it proved something. “You see? You see? Your will is far more developed than an Underlady should be capable of. It’s your Blood Shadow, all your Blood Shadow, and the more of an independent will it develops—”

He stiffened and looked off into the horizon. A frustrated expression spread across his face.

“Your guardian has found me. I have to go fight pointlessly without killing. What a foolish game. Do not waste your potential, Yerin Arelius. Don’t let a childish grudge stand in the way of your making history.”

Yerin nodded. “Rot and die.”

The Blood Sage made a frustrated noise before loping away, leaping into the distance. She still had never seen him use his Blood Shadow. Maybe he was the Blood Shadow.

Her own Shadow began raging, its patience gone. It wanted to be free, to face these opponents, to feed.

Yerin struggled with it, but she didn’t back down or put away her sword. “If you two want your match ahead of time, you can take it now.”

Calan smiled and raised both his hands in surrender while Yan Shoumei shrugged. “The Sage has his interest in you. If we do not end up in the ring together, we are not enemies.”

“We’re not your enemies,” Calan assured her. “Honestly, I’m an admirer. I hope we don’t have to fight.”

Yerin would believe that when the sun rose green. “Dreadgod cults are enemies to anybody with eyes.”

Calan’s expression grew sober, and Shoumei darkened.

“Not everyone has a family to pick up the bill for their training,” she said quietly.

If Shoumei was looking for pity, she was running down the wrong trail. “I’d shed a tear for you, but I saw what Redmoon Emissaries did to the Blackflame Empire.”

“Redmoon or the Phoenix?” Yan Shoumei countered. “And are you responsible for everything the Akura clan has done? What about the Arelius family?”

Calan spoke calmly. “I think you may have a misunderstanding about us. Dreadgod madra gives you a way to improve without spending a fortune. If you want to advance but you were born in a gutter, you don’t have much choice.”

Yerin had chosen to advance her Blood Shadow differently, in a way that required either far more time or far more resources, but the normal way to advance was to steal power from others. That was the original purpose of the Shadow.

She had seen the other Dreadgod cults fight, in the records of the Uncrowned fights. They all had a component of hunger madra, which allowed them an unconventional path to advancement. It tended to produce sacred artists that advanced quickly, but didn’t go too far. And, at least in the case of the Blood Shadows, there was always an element of risk.

“Dress it up however you want,” Yerin said.

“I had a lot of talent, but no money,” Calan went on. “Less talented students kept passing me up because they had parents to buy them resources. Meaning they advanced and made even more, so I got left further behind. Now…”

He ignited his madra, and a dragon’s head of blue-and-gold lightning emerged from his palm, snarling as it did. “Hunting Remnants gives me everything I need. Thanks to the Weeping Dragon, I’m standing with you two. Disciples of a Sage.” He gave a crooked smile. “Imagine that.”

“I am not his disciple,” Yan Shoumei spat, and Yerin felt blood madra rising up inside her.

A lot of blood madra.

Yerin began cycling to defend herself, but Shoumei quickly got her power under control. “Sorry,” she muttered. “But I’m not his disciple. When I win, I won’t need him anymore. Or Redmoon.”

“She protects a city,” Calan said. “They call her their guardian spirit.”

“Shut up.”

Yerin finally accepted that there wasn’t going to be a fight, slamming her sword back into its sheath. She scooped up the demon’s twin swords, unaccountably irritated.

“So you’re both innocent souls who don’t want to kill me or recruit me,” Yerin said. “Okay. So what are you doing here? Not like the Sage needed your help.”

Calan and Shoumei exchanged glances. The Redmoon girl scratched the side of her face and looked down.

“I just wanted to meet you,” Calan said.

“Not everything is a plot,” Yan Shoumei said, and she sounded strangely sympathetic. “It wasn’t too long ago that I saw agents of my enemy everywhere. I thought you worked for him, all of you from the Blackflame Empire, back in Ghostwater.”

“Do you suspect everyone of trying to kill you?” Calan asked.

“They usually are,” Yerin muttered. “And there’s a Monarch-killing weapon on the line.”

He shrugged. “We’re not Monarchs. We can fight to win without being sworn enemies. I see it as a unique opportunity to fight to the death with people you don’t hate.”

Yerin had said almost the exact same thing to Lindon not long ago, and hearing the same sentiment coming from a Dreadgod cultist gave her a strange, unpleasant feeling.

“Don’t have any account against you, but your Sage needs somebody to take his head from his shoulders.” As she understood it, the Sage of Red Faith was the one who encouraged the spreading of Blood Shadows on the wild.

Yan Shoumei gave her a blank look. “Why would I care?”

“My Sage is even worse,” Calan put in.

Yerin thought they might be able to get along after all.

11

Maten Kei stood on her Thousand-Mile Cloud and watched the procession of survivors below her. Her sister was at the other end of the canyon, keeping an eye out from her own cloud.

Back at the Frozen Blade School, they had often been assigned to protecting civilians from stray Remnants or aura-storms or other threats requiring powerful sacred artists, so guarding a few hundred people as they fled to shelter was nothing new.

This crowd hadn’t faced any threat yet, but they had to be evacuated before the Wandering Titan woke. Kei and Teia volunteered for these escort missions whenever their team accepted such assignments. Saving people was more gratifying than slaying dreadbeasts or fighting bandits.

They didn’t care about the points, though their team leader certainly did. He scared Kei a little. She wondered if there was anything he wouldn’t do for points.

A flare of madra from Teia signaled her, and she floated up on her cloud, stretching out her perception. The earth aura was very strong in the land around Sky’s Edge, and this canyon was surrounded by clumps of trees that had been petrified by that aura.

Inside those trees, Kei felt someone waiting in ambush. Where there was one, there would certainly be more.

Though they were officially called “bandits,” these rogue sacred artists weren’t opportunistic thieves so much as they were desperate people who had been displaced by the flood of dreadbeasts. While most had sought shelter with the Akura clan factions, some had been unable or unwilling to for whatever reason. They stole what they could from evacuees and Akura patrols, but they were rarely a threat.