Dreadgod (Cradle Book 11) (9)

And Yerin couldn’t drown anyway, could she? He could put her closer to the Phoenix that way. But she wouldn’t want to be too close. He still didn’t know how much influence the Dreadgod might have over her.

Lindon intended to head after the Wandering Titan. It was on their continent, after all, and even if it was drifting south, it would likely march for a larger population center soon. He’d fought the Titan before, even if it had been suppressed, so Dross’ predictions should be accurate.

[Carry us to the Silent King!] Dross cried.

Lindon was startled. He knew the least about the Silent King of all the Dreadgods, but perhaps that was a good reason to face him down now.

“Don’t underestimate the tiger,” Ozmanthus said idly. “The King is the most insidious of the four, and he tends to know more than you think.”

Lindon didn’t like the idea that this Dreadgod was self-aware. When they had driven the Titan off before, it was only because the Dreadgod was sleepy, simpleminded, and suppressed. And even that had permanently injured Dross.

“We can go to Everwood,” Lindon allowed. “We need more information on the Silent King, and it sounds like the situation there is urgent.”

[Yeeessss,] Dross hissed. [Give me his sweet, sweet dream madra.]

So that was what Dross was after. Lindon had suspected as much.

He only hoped they weren’t feeding themselves to a monster.





2





Kerani shifted her goggles from her eyes to her forehead and leaned back from the engine. Fire-aspect Remnants burned inside the metallic chamber that was bigger than her entire house; she could see the spirits through the viewports, pursuing their strange Remnant tasks.

Even with heat-dampening scripts, it was a sauna in here. Though not nearly as relaxing as the actual sauna she visited on her occasional holidays.

Without her goggles, she could get an unfiltered look at the engine’s control panel. It seemed fine. She’d welded two metal plates together, and the control script was whole again. She gave it a long eye, making sure the light stayed steady.

When she was certain that the script was functional, she sighed in relief and gathered up her tools. Her personal bound spirit was contained in a tank on her back. Burning Swan was a natural fire spirit she’d raised for years, and she could channel his energies for welding or—theoretically—for combat.

She hadn’t seen any duels since graduating the Academy, and she didn’t expect she ever would again. Her grades in the arena had been adequate at best.

Her supervisor, a pudgy woman named Terkell, slammed the door open in an enthusiastic burst and practically danced down the stairs. She had a massive cloud of gray hair and a pair of smaller spirit-tanks strapped to her forearms instead of a large one on her back.

“Oh, my darling, my favorite, how are you doing this fiiiiiine evening?” Terkell sang. She did a pirouette and finished her spin with a flourish as she reached Kerani.

Kerani smiled in spite of herself. Today, she had planned to duck her supervisor and get home on time for once, but Terkell’s enthusiasm was infectious.

“Not so bad,” Kerani admitted. “Finished sooner than I thought, and we didn’t have any further breaches.”

Terkell gasped in amazement, raising her hands to her lips. “You’re a genius! A savant! Without you, we would be ashes in a crater.”

If Terkell saw someone lace up their boots, she would exclaim that no one had ever tied such a perfect knot. When Kerani had finished her hundredth job with the company, Terkell had commissioned a light-sculpture of the “triumphant moment.” The job had been the inspection of rivets in a sewer runoff pipe, and it had taken fifteen minutes.

Still, Kerani’s cynicism melted before Terkell’s positivity like ice under the sun. “Nothing that bad. Maybe a few burns.”

“Burns!” Terkell fluttered her collar as though overcome by the heat, though she’d only been in the engine room for a few seconds. “There’s nothing worse than the heat. To me, you stave off doom. You’ll have dinner with our family tonight, won’t you? I’ll take no for an answer, but I won’t be happy about it.”

Kerani considered the offer instead of rejecting it out of hand like she usually did. A little money saved was a little closer to the vacation of her dreams. A local travel agency had been promoting a tour of the exotic Ashwind continent, home of the dragons.

She’d always wanted to see the place, and since the tour made use of existing portal networks, they could keep travel time down to only a month’s journey either way.

Any use of portals skyrocketed the price, since those were the workings of a Sage, and of course there was the cost of missing several months of work. But steadily, she inched toward her dream.

She was about to accept Terkell’s offer when Burning Swan whispered in her mind.

Enemy, the spirit whispered.

Burning Swan didn’t speak in actual words, but in complex impressions passed through their bond. Suddenly, the familiar clanks and hisses of the engine room sounded ominous, and the shadows in the corners deepened. Kerani extended her spiritual sense but felt no one other than herself and Terkell.

The supervisor frowned, noticing her distress. “Oh my, what’s wrong? You didn’t forget something, did you? I left my spare wrist-strap here last week, and wouldn’t you know it, that was the very day that my first one broke. I had just bought it, too, and it was a nicer one than I usually…”