Reaper(Cradle #10)(57)

And then he wrestled it to a stop, because the hand was trying to pull him in two directions at once. It sprang to his left, but when he approached the tunnel on his left, it would suddenly lunge to the opening on his right.

It repeated that several times until some hungry ghouls clawed their way through the stone, and the others eradicated them. He had to tuck the hand away so it didn’t keep calling hostile attention.

“It looks like we have a choice,” Lindon said.

On the left, the tunnel was marked with a hammer. The Forger symbol from the Sacred Valley badges. On the right, it bore the scythe symbol. The crest of the Arelius founder. Of Ozriel.

The map had given him the layout, and a sense into the structure and pattern of the labyrinth itself, but very little into what the rooms contained. That was what the symbols were for, and given the choice between an ordinary Soulsmith room and one left behind by Ozriel, the conclusion was clear.

“Easy decision,” Lindon said as he led the way into the tunnel. Eithan followed him immediately, but Yerin was stopped by a thrown hand from Ziel.

“Hang on,” he said. “The script is diff—”

The tunnel entrance vanished.

Leaving Lindon and Eithan locked inside.

The scripted lights on the ceiling still cast dim illumination over them, but Lindon added to it with his black dragon’s breath. It did absolutely nothing, which he had expected.

He could sense the authority hanging over this whole place. It was inviolable.

Lindon drew up his will and prepared to challenge that.

Eithan rested a hand on his shoulder, but he wasn’t watching Lindon. He was looking up and around him, tracing his bloodline power. “I can’t see through the walls here,” he said, “but there’s a way around. They’ll stay in place. We can loop around and find them.”

“Hurry,” Lindon said, setting off down the tunnel. “I don’t like our odds in here with just us.”

Little Blue burbled a reminder in his ear.

“I was counting you,” he protested.

[You weren’t counting me,] Dross said.

That was true.

“Ah, four and four!” Eithan said. “We’ve been divided in half. What a…fortuitous coincidence.”

Lindon thought about the living techniques that had tracked them. He looked to the walls, with the authority on them, which required living intention to maintain.

Someone was controlling this place. Subject One.

The Soul Cloak sprung up around him. “Keep up,” he said shortly.

Then he dashed into the darkness.





Yerin lowered her weapon as the air still crackled from her Final Sword—or at least, the version of it she could use in here. The stone wall was unscratched.

This was the downside of blood madra. If it didn’t have blood, she had a harder time cutting it.

Mercy dropped into a crouch, holding her head. “Okay. Deep breaths. They’ll come back for us.”

“If they can,” Ziel said. He glanced around to the few remaining exits; instead of being full of uncountable tunnels, the room was now mostly bare.

Orthos was pacing impatiently back and forth, but he still shot a red-and-black glare at Ziel. “We have nothing to guide us forward. We should wait here.”

Yerin held Netherclaw loosely in her right hand and glanced around. She had a bad feeling about this.

The labyrinth wasn’t shifting at random, she was certain. There was a will behind it. And while she had nothing to lean on but her intuition, she felt like it wasn’t watching Lindon at the moment. It was watching them.

“Stay sharp,” Yerin said. “Swords up.”

Mercy had her bow drawn and arrow nocked before Yerin finished the first word. Her back was to the group, and she scanned the darkness. “Did you sense something?”

“The body’s still here.”

Yerin couldn’t feel any hunger madra coming, but trying to sense hunger down here was blinding. She just knew that something was on its way.

Ziel started scraping runes in the Tomb Hydra’s blood, which covered much of the floor. Not a bad idea. Might as well build up some defenses, even if they wouldn’t last long.

Yerin’s spirit screamed a warning, and she activated the Endless Sword.

Half a dozen hungry ghouls that had been rising from the floor fell apart, but the aura was too weak here. Some living techniques survived, and there were dozens more. They flooded up around the dreadbeast’s body, forcing the sacred artists to fall back.

As they rose, the ghouls shredded the Hydra. They opened their wide mouths and took chunks out of its meat, devouring madra, aura, and flesh alike.

“I saw some swordfish feed in a river once,” Orthos said in solemn tones. “They stripped a bird the size of a house down to its bones in seconds.”

“Do swordfish live in rivers?” Mercy asked.

“Not swordfish. Swordfish. Their teeth are swords.”

“We should back up,” Ziel pointed out.

The hunger techniques did their work in seconds, and they did more than just strip the corpse down to bones. Even the bones were devoured, reduced to nothing. Leaving a swarm of pale ghouls made of madra scurrying over the spot where the beast had been, like ants after a feast.

The others retreated, but Yerin didn’t. She stood only a few strides from the hunger techniques.