Dreadgod (Cradle Book 11) (105)

Northstrider’s oracle codex spun out the possibility, and he saw it. He nodded. Malice’s lips twisted in distaste, but she nodded too.

The others weren’t so quick. Larian raised a hand. “Let me see if I understand our options. We kill this kid, and Ozmanthus returns from beyond to kill us all. Or we make the kid’s life a nightmare of misery, then he advances, and then he returns from beyond to kill us all.”

“Then let us do nothing,” Reigan Shen said. “Let us remain static and separated, focused on our own pursuits, until Lindon drives us from this world and ruins everything we’ve built. Or he fails in the process of doing so and breaks what he is attempting to save. Are those possibilities more palatable to you?”

“Sounds to me like we’re stuck between a snake and a tall cliff,” Larian said. “Or, I guess more appropriately, caught between one Dreadgod and another.”

“No, we are not!” Shen snarled. “If we continue bickering with each other, this boy will become a knife to our necks. But if we act together, he is a human boy carrying a weapon too big for him.”

Shen reached into a case at his pocket and pulled out a binding: a curled shell of white madra. It hadn’t truly been replicated into this space, so Northstrider didn’t sense anything from it, but he knew what it was.

The core binding of Subject One.

Reigan Shen’s trump card.

“We can win,” the lion continued. “But we move decisively, and together. We leave no possibility of failure. Are we agreed?”

Northstrider was the first to nod.

One after the other, the others all indicated their agreement. Except one.

Emriss had been frowning into the middle distance, clearly troubled, but she finally spoke up. “There is one factor we haven’t considered yet. The Dreadgods are self-aware, for the moment. What will they do now that another of their kind has been slain? Will they take vengeance, or will they see Lindon as a replacement for their brother until the Silent King is reborn?”

“All the more reason to be rid of him,” Shen said. Then he vanished. Sha Miara followed him. The others followed until Northstrider was left with Emriss and Larian, who appeared to be stretching.

“You made a mistake today,” he said to Emriss. “I won’t forget that.”

“I don’t forget anything,” she said sadly.

Then he vanished.





The second Northstrider left, Emriss turned to Larian. The archer of the Eight-Man Empire shed her persona almost immediately, leaping up and looking to Emriss with sharp eyes.

“So,” Larian said. “An opportunity.”





Ziel groaned as he slumped against a piece of wreckage in Shatterspine Castle.

The body of the Archlord, Helethshan, let off a stench as it began to rot. The dragon’s Remnant was trapped in Ziel’s void key, but he desperately wished he had room to get rid of the rotting flesh too. If only he could move.

Ziel’s breathing was shallow. It was hard to find a part of his body that didn’t hurt, and most of his right side was covered in burns. His cores were so empty that, if he weren’t an Archlord, he wouldn’t be able to lift his own weight.

Not that he wanted to do that even now. He leaned against cool stone and wished to never move again.

Orthos was in better shape than him, comparatively, since Ziel had done the bulk of the fighting. The turtle snored like an earthquake next to him, such that even the pebbles on the ground shook and jumped.

The whole sealed cavern was lit with light both smoky red and dim silver. Ziel looked up at the source.

A primarily red Remnant, layered with black and rippling with scarlet-and-obsidian flames, stared back at him. It was solid enough to look almost as physical as Ziel himself did, and its spiritual presence dominated the space even through the huge silver runes that floated around it.

It was, of course, Noroloth the Herald. Or at least his Remnant.

Instead of looking like a natural black dragon, this was something like an exaggerated copy of one. Its head was three times the width of the rest of its body, with a thick underbite no black dragon ever had, and its tail dissolved to smoke.

Their battle had crashed into his chamber, and if they had accidentally broken the script sealing him, Ziel would be dead.

“Release me!” the Remnant demanded. It had surely shouted at a volume to shake the entire room, but Ziel heard it as though from the other end of a miles-long hallway.

Ziel took a drink from a watered-down healing elixir and winced as life aura stung his injuries. He and Orthos were buried under the entire Shatterspine Castle, and the problem now was digging their way out.

He could probably do it, even while protecting Orthos, once he had recovered. But the project was trickier than it looked. There were plenty of half-formed scripts in the wreckage, many of which used madra compatible with his own Path, and there was no telling how many of them he’d activate by accident on his way out. Or what they’d do.

If he messed up, the Herald Remnant would be released.

And then there was the mundane concern of shifting too much weight at once. He could lift a lot with raw spiritual strength, but enough force applied at the correct angle would still break his shield and hit him like a Dreadgod.

“Don’t ignore me!” Noroloth’s spirit shouted again.