Dreadgod (Cradle Book 11) (73)

Black fire streaked down on him in a dark rain, and he caught most of it on his shield. Then he Forged scripts to launch him away.

Red-streaked black madra erupted out of the hole in the wall, and Ziel’s spirit screamed danger. He turned and blocked the attack with his shield, even activating the shield’s binding to project a huge wall of Forged madra in front of him.

The dragon’s breath had been refined in Archlord soulfire, and the technique melted his Forged wall like a bonfire melted ice, but even that was long enough.

The script around Ziel’s torso finished Forging, and he launched himself down the hall like a thrown spear.

If Orthos weren’t here, Ziel could fight. He and the dragon had been somewhat evenly matched before, and while the other Lord-level dragons could potentially tip the scales, Ziel still might be able to win.

With Orthos, he had too much of a vulnerability. He couldn’t be sure the dragons would threaten Orthos for an advantage against Ziel—though he’d bet his hammer they would—but even if they didn’t, the battle itself would put Orthos in danger.

So they had to run.

The problem was, the dragons knew this place better than they did.

Ziel caught up to Orthos in a moment, and he stopped his own momentum with a quick ring of script. He pointed into a hallway, to where he heard louder music in his soul. “That way!”

Orthos didn’t question him, for which he was grateful. The turtle ignited the Burning Cloak and ran.

Not fast enough, of course.

Even that brief stop was enough for Helethshan to catch up to them, and the hallway filled with roaring flames.

These had been conjured with aura. Real fire, augmented by destruction aura so it could threaten even Ziel. Fortunately, scripts were great at blocking the effects of aura.

A circle warding against fire specifically took Ziel a moment of concentration, but when he Forged it around him, it pushed the blaze away.

Sparks landed on his cloak and went out almost immediately. He wasn’t concerned about it. If his cloak could be damaged by that little, it wouldn’t have lasted all this time.

But the fire was just a distraction, and a moment later Helethshan arrived. He slashed down with his foreclaws, powered by the volatile movement of his own Burning Cloak.

The Stone Anchor held Ziel down, and he struck at the claws with his hammer.

Explosive force quenched the fire, but Helethshan kept Ziel on the defensive with a barrage of Striker techniques. He blocked some with his shield, some with his hammer, and slipped aside from others.

When the dragon Archlord hit him with his claws again, Ziel was prepared for it.

He angled his shield, catching the blow and releasing his Stone Anchor at the same time. The hit launched him through the hallway, where he supplemented the speed of his flight with scripts.

Orthos was waiting for him at the end of the hall. Next to a shining arc of silver runes that had emerged from the wall.

Ziel frantically gestured as he flew, but Orthos only figured out what he meant and ran to the side at the last second.

Frantically, Ziel’s eyes moved over the script as he landed and skidded to a halt. He had studied enough of these scripts now to understand their structure, even if he didn’t understand all the principles involved. He needed to find a particular sequence.

The Archlord followed, and as he was kindling another dragon’s breath, Ziel found the right two runes.

Ziel released the sigil he’d been forging. A new, complex symbol appeared in the Monarch’s ancient script, one green letter in a row of silver.

The entire script flickered green for a second as Ziel’s relatively weak madra clashed with the Rune Queen’s. Then his modification was accepted.

That he could change the script at all was only because of the similarity in their Paths, and that he was making only one small change. His rune slightly tweaked one aspect of the circle itself.

Its size.

The circle expanded in an instant, and it caught the flying Archlord as he released his breath. A bar of black-and-red madra stretched out for ten feet, heading for Ziel.

Now, frozen in mid-air.

But not forever.

Orthos huffed as he jogged up behind Ziel. “Can you do that for all of them?”

Shatterspine Castle screamed around them, and crashes came more and more frequently. Ziel winced. “I don’t think it matters anymore.”

“Oh no.”

“Yeah.”

The castle—or at least this section of it—was falling apart.

A crack opened up in the floor beneath them, and Ziel spotted safety. Beneath them, the pillars around a particular room were scripted with reinforcement runes. Even now, the runes glowed, rejecting the weight of the building above it.

“Down there!” Ziel shouted.

But because an Underlord was too much slower than an Archlord, Orthos still hadn’t processed the sight when Ziel grabbed him and shoved him inside.

Just before the ceiling collapsed, Ziel followed.





13





Yerin sat at the bottom of…she wasn’t sure what to call it. A well? Some kind of deep hole in the ground lined with stones.

At least it was dry.

The Sage of Red Faith had carved scripts in rings from the bottom to the top, muttering obsessively about how these would hide them. But as soon as he’d finished gouging runes into the stone, he’d vanished, so Yerin wasn’t sure how these scripts could do him any good at all.