“Light dawns! Yes, you can stay ahead of your...rude lodger, there...and keep your master’s memories for as long as you like.”
Yerin drifted toward him as though sleepwalking. “Do you have that pill tucked away? No, not unless you've put a veil over it. Where did you leave it?” She looked like she was going to seize him by the collar and start shaking.
He held up a hand. “It has taken me months of hunting, bartering, and begging to secure a half-finished pill, and it has to be completed to your personal specifications. I have the best refiner in the family working on it whenever he's not occupied with other matters, but it will still be many months before it is finished. However, when it is complete...” He folded his hands together respectfully. “...well, I regret that the honored Sage of the Endless Sword will not be there to witness your glory.”
Yerin stalked away, leaning with one hand against the cave wall, breathing heavily. Lindon wished there was something he could say to her, but he was still wondering about her “lodger.”
In spite of himself, he was somewhat disappointed by that. She knew all about Suriel, but she hadn't trusted him enough to tell him her secret. It wasn’t as thought he had any right to know, but would have been nice.
“And for you, Lindon,” Eithan said, interrupting his thoughts. “I've located a Blackflame Truegold’s scales. Pure scales are useful to anyone, as you know, but scales from the Path of Black Flame could save you months of cycling.”
The implications of that were not lost on Lindon, and he dropped to his knees, bowing deeply. “This one cannot express his appreciation, Underlord.”
Eithan waved at him irritably. “None of that. I need you with a straight spine, not a bent one. Stand up.”
Lindon did so, but he still pressed his fists together in a salute.
“The scales are up for auction in three months’ time, after which I will bring them back to you,” Eithan continued. “I will hold it as a reward for completing the third Trial. With the aid of the scales, you could reach the peak of Jade in an instant, and then Orthos could take you to Gold. Lowgold fighting against Truegold...”
He rubbed his chin. “...well, it's not as though it’s never happened. Your Path is suitable, and a heron could technically kill a lion, if it poked the beast's eyes out at exactly the right moment. But, ah, I still wouldn't bet on the heron.”
That dampened Lindon's enthusiasm considerably. Judging from the Underlord’s words, advancing to Lowgold was the best he could hope for, and it still wouldn't change his fate.
“If you can complete the two remaining Trials in six weeks each—much, much faster than this one—you’ll have plenty of time to process those scales! So now that you’re properly motivated: fight, fight, fight!”
Lindon sat staring at nothing for long after Eithan left.
Suddenly the future looked so bleak.
***
Lindon knelt in front of the Striker tablet while Yerin stood over him, listening.
“With the power of the dragons, the Blackflames destroyed their enemies. Their allies feared them, but...” Lindon hesitated in front of a group of four characters stacked together. They seemed to be some sort of idiom, maybe a proverb that had once been common.
After he thought he had it, he continued. “A ruthless enemy is a reliable ally. When their enemies were no more, they had peace.”
And that was the legacy he was inheriting now: a Path of ruthless destruction. It was a sobering thought.
He ran his finger down the tablet, skipping past the madra diagram and the description of the Striker technique—he would need Yerin to help him decipher those anyway. He landed on the words in the center of the stone.
“The dragon destroys,” he said aloud.
The dragon advances.
The dragon destroys.
“Makes you ask what the third stone says,” Yerin said. “The dragon dances, maybe. The dragon naps. The dragon takes a break because he already killed everybody.”
Lindon skipped to the Striker technique. “Fierce…River of…Fierce Flowing Breath. I’m fairly sure that’s what it means. They certainly say 'fierce' twice.”
Yerin folded her arms. “It’s dragon breath.”
She pointed to the pictogram of a man projecting a line of fire from his hands. It was next to a picture of that same technique streaming from a dragon’s open jaws. “Maybe they called it Fiercely Fierce Breath, but everybody knows what comes out of a dragon’s mouth.”
Lindon looked at the loops indicating the madra flow, and at the characters floating over it. “Would you mind teaching me, then?”
She rapped her knuckles against the stone. “I could tell you without reading them. Cycle your madra to the palms of your hands and keep it there. Let it build and build like you've stopped up a river, and when it's just about to burst, push it out.” She shrugged. “My Striker technique starts the same way, except through a sword. And mine has three more steps.”
Lindon looked at his hands, gathering madra into his palms while trying to focus on maintaining his breathing and cycling according to the diagram all at the same time.
Yerin grabbed him by the arm. “Maybe take a step or two back, if you don’t mind. I'm not looking to roast today.”
Lindon bowed in apology, moving ten steps to the right and contemplating the broad, blackened expanse of hardened dirt that was the Striker Trial. He was itching to see what they'd have to face in the Trial itself, but one step at a time; he wouldn't even be able to start without the ability to execute a Striker technique.
He steadied his breath, focusing first on the madra diagram, making sure that his madra was flowing through the right channels. Then, once he had his madra moving in the right direction, he ignored it.
In the last few months, he'd gotten something of a sense for the nature of Blackflame madra. He could move by feel, without relying on convoluted patterns, gathering power in his palms and letting it pool there. He had done something similar with the soldier earlier, pouring raw power into the projection and letting it explode.
He held both hands out toward the empty space. Nothing visible changed, but he could feel the madra building and building, the pressure growing, until his hands felt like they would dissolve from the inside.
In that moment, he gathered the force of his spirit and shoved.
When Lindon had first learned the Burning Cloak, the technique had started thin, weak, and inefficient. He had worked for months to increase its potency, to use its power effectively. He had expected something similar with the Striker technique: this first attempt might produce nothing more than a tiny tongue of flame, but he would build it up to a roaring dragon's breath.
So when the madra burst out of him in a furious, flaming storm of black and red, scorching the air in an explosion that sent him tumbling backwards ten feet and coming to rest in a tangle of limbs, he was...surprised.