Reaper(Cradle #10)(18)

Lindon brought out a scripted wooden box and a small pair of goldsteel tongs. “I have the tools in front of me. Your Path made the compatibility issue easy to solve. With your cooperation, we could be done in an hour, and it will be completely painless.”

“Painless?”

Lindon had been away from home too long. He only realized he had made a mistake when he saw the stubborn clench of his father’s jaw.

“You think I’m afraid of a little pain?” Jaran rolled up his sleeve and pointed to a scar that ran the length of his forearm. “This is where a Kazan spearman ran me through, and I didn’t make a sound.” He pulled his collar down and showed a small burn scar. “Acid burn from the Li clan.” He gestured to his leg. “I’m in agony with every step. I know you’ve seen the world now, and you think you know everything, but enduring pain? That’s real experience.”

Lindon’s fist slammed down on the table.

The table didn’t break so much as it disintegrated. A deafening explosion filled the room as splinters sprayed across the floor. Jaran yelped and leaped backwards, toppling over in his chair.

He would have fallen—and with his Iron body, he would have been entirely unharmed—but Lindon caught him with a cushion of wind aura anyway.

Lindon squeezed his fury down, trying not to even think of Blackflame. The prosthetic eyes he had worked on for days now rolled across the floor, motes of essence slowly drifting up from them.

“Do what you want.” He summoned another box out of his void key and shoved it into his father’s chest. “There’s a pill in there that’ll take you to Jade in ten minutes.”

Jaran gripped the box harder. “What was that sound? Did you break something?”

“I can sponsor you through Truegold. That’s as far as you’ll go. I’ll come back when you’ve finished with the pill.”

“Did your sect leader give you this?” Jaran opened the box and smelled the pill inside. “Is this what they used on you?”

“No,” Lindon said. “I found this on an Underlord after I killed him and devoured his spirit. He was planning on throwing it away because it was defective.”

“You want me to take a defective pill?”

“Any pill that only advances you to Jade is a defect. If you don’t want it, throw it away. Now, pardon me, but the Emperor is coming to see me and I have to prepare.”

Outside his house, as Lindon was taking deep breaths to steady his spirit, he was unsurprised to sense his mother approach.

She had a bag over one shoulder, which was filled with Forged toys and tools that must have been the work of Gold Soulsmiths in town. Her brown hair was tied behind her, and for once she wasn’t followed by the floating fish drudge that she had used since he was a child. It must have run out of energy when she used it while shopping.

Wei Shi Seisha came up behind her son, but he turned to greet her before she called out to him. “Apologies,” he said. “I was…catching my breath for a moment.”

“Hmm. It was my understanding that Overlord bodies didn’t have such weaknesses.”

“It’s not a physical weakness so much as a mental one.”

She slipped the bag from her shoulder and leaned it against the wall of the house; lights of every color shone from inside. “Your father can be a demanding opponent.”

Lindon gave her a brief version of the conversation, and she listened without a word until he finished.

“He won’t take that pill now,” she said with certainty. “You’ve wounded his pride. I’ll be impressed if he hasn’t thrown it away already.”

Lindon sighed. “That’s all right. It’s not expensive.”

“Don’t be wasteful. I’ll use it myself, once I’m ready.”

Seisha had decided to correct her study of the Path of the White Fox before she advanced any further, to prevent any possibility of problems later. Technically she was right to do so, Lindon knew, but it wouldn’t matter much so long as she fixed her Path before Lowgold.

“Pardon,” Lindon said, “but one scale from me could hire a refiner to make these pills for the next ten years.”

That might have been an exaggeration, but not by much.

“Oh.” For a moment Seisha wilted, overwhelmed by the scope. Lindon had seen her react that way many times over the last several days, and at last she shook it off and smiled again. “Amazing. I still have much more to learn.”

“Can you talk him into taking the eyes?”

“I’ll do what I can, but he’s…” She hesitated. “If you’re right, then he’s been living a lie his entire life. It’s hard for him. For both of us.”

Lindon thought he understood, but at the same time, he wasn’t sure he did.

When he found out there was more to the world, he had been astonished, but he had also been delighted. He had been glad to learn that the ceiling he’d lived under his entire life was only an illusion.

“I dropped the eyes on the floor, if you could take care of them. I really do have to go prepare. The Emperor’s coming.”

“The Emperor of the…Blackflame Empire? And where is he?”

Lindon pointed to the east.

His mother squinted in that direction. “You can sense him from here?”