Dreadgod (Cradle Book 11) (86)

Only the three of them had shrugged the technique off so quickly.

Others had resisted it, but it had taken them all their focus. Still others were wrestling against the Dreadgod’s will even now.

Many had succumbed.

A silver-and-purple owl appeared at Lindon’s side and spoke in Charity’s voice. “No one was sleeping in Moongrave, but you and I are the only ones below Monarch who can resist mental techniques so effectively. We need to break—”

A wash of ice-cold light came from her side of the battlefield, and Lindon looked over to see the Winter Sage cloaked in a hailstorm of razor-sharp ice…and wearing a halo that matched her white hair.

The Archlords he’d defended had joined with one another to go engage the affected Lords and Ladies at their level. Lindon looked below, and he saw Mercy looking up to him in concern.

Lindon shouted loud enough to wake the dead. “Those with a white halo belong to the Silent King. Break the technique if you can, but if you can’t…defend yourselves.”

All over the city, chaos erupted as the subjects of the Silent King fought to defend their ruler. The most deafening explosion came from the battlefield, where Malice had launched a barrage of arrows at the Dreadgod.

A rain of tower-sized crystalline shafts impaled the ground for miles, but the Silent King strode arrogantly between them. When one struck the King, he fizzled to nothing and appeared somewhere else.

It must have been an illusion, but Lindon couldn’t see through it.

[That is a lie even I cannot unravel,] Dross said. [A mirage even I cannot break.]

Lindon’s fears were confirmed. That technique was like the Fox Mirror from the Path of the White Fox—a Forger technique that showed a convincing illusion. Only this one was advanced beyond imagination.

If Dross couldn’t pierce it, they were in great danger.

The void portal the Titan had created remained in place, and great multitudes poured out, all of them crowned in white. Sacred artists, sacred beasts, and Remnants streamed forth in an endless legion.

Some of them were quite advanced, but when Malice fired on them, by all rights they should have been annihilated.

The army unleashed a coordinated volley of defensive techniques like a shield of many colors, and their many wills unified. They joined together behind the will of a Dreadgod.

Malice’s arrow shattered several layers of their patchwork shield, but then it stopped and collapsed to the ground, harming no one.

[If the Silent King had been close enough to lend his will to his minions back in Dreadnought City, we would be dead already,] Dross added unhelpfully.

A veiled and invisible Overlady flew up behind Lindon, but he absently reached out with his right hand and Consumed her halo. The dream madra and fragments of will flowed through his arm and into Dross, who shuddered.

[The eyes of my soul are opening!]

Lindon ignored that and listened to every pounding beat of his heart. He didn’t want to leave Mercy’s group vulnerable, but the Dreadgod had said it was going to keep its promise. That meant his friends and family were in danger.

Or were they?

If the Dreadgod’s objective was to kill them, it shouldn’t have told Lindon anything. But that wasn’t the objective, was it? The creature wanted to sow doubt and discord, and to pressure Lindon and Dross to give themselves over willingly.

He desperately wanted to end the fight, to make the Silent King withdraw its techniques.

But that was exactly what it was looking for. It was trying to get Lindon to throw himself into the tiger’s jaws. Literally.

He had to be smarter than that.

Time slowed for Lindon as Dross enhanced his thoughts, and he ordered his priorities. He needed to close the rift into the Void and cut off the Silent King’s army. Physically, the King was the weakest of the four Dreadgods. It relied on its minions and its powerful techniques.

But those minions would defend the portal to the death, so Lindon needed to force them to split their focus. Which meant putting pressure on the King by getting Malice allies. He needed to help free the Sages.

Though that left Mercy and the others on their own.

Dross, Lindon thought, tell Mercy to hold on. And that I’m sorry.

[That’s my favorite message I’ve ever sent. Should I tell Charity you’re coming?]

Lindon’s right arm blazed with overwhelming, ravenous hunger. It writhed like a bag of snakes, as though every muscle in it had come to life separately.

And the scripted cloth Malice had used to seal the limb finally unraveled.

The desire to steal, to devour, to take everything hit Lindon in a wave. Above and behind him, reality twisted as an Icon tried to manifest, but he wrestled with that authority and kept it under control. As Eithan had done in his battle against Reigan Shen, Lindon stopped an Icon from manifesting.

But his control over the limb was weak at best. Lindon sensed the army of the Silent King, the people of Moongrave, the battling Sages and Heralds, Akura Malice, and even the Dreadgod itself…and he wanted to Consume them all.

The eternally hungry arm of the Slumbering Wraith smelled a feast.





Charity’s Judgment of the Phantom Queen was one of her most prized techniques, since she hadn’t merely inherited it from her Book of the Silver Heart.

The binding belonged to the Book, of course, as did the overly flamboyant name. But the will that brought the silver mist to life in the form of an army of warriors was hers. They were her ideal of the noble soldiers of humanity, fighting to push back the darkness of the wilderness.