Underlord (Cradle #6)(104)

Lindon turned to Yerin, whose eyes met his. Her Goldsigns were extended, and she had a white-knuckled grip on her sword. She stared at him, silently begging him to say something.

His mind churned, searching vainly for a way out. “Honored Sage, I apologize, but surely I cannot perform up to the Akura’s standards,” he said.

“Not yet,” Charity said. “Training begins now.”

Shadows swirled around his feet, and he could no longer move them. He began to sink into the darkness.

He looked up to see Yerin staring at him helplessly, her eight arms hanging limply at her sides. What was she supposed to do?

He raised a hand to her. “Apologies,” he said.

Then the darkness closed around him.





Epilogue





Suriel dashed through the Way. The Abidan were under attack all across their border worlds, from Sectors Ninety through Ninety-Nine. Sector One Hundred had already been lost, and the others were soon to follow.

The Vroshir couldn’t maintain an attack of this scale for long, but the Abidan were likely to give out first. They were simply spread too thin.

She was not the only Judge to have flown straight from emergency to emergency for months; Gadrael and Razael had not stayed in one Iteration longer than it took to win a battle.

Wherever a Judge went, victory followed. But they could not be everywhere, and they were the only three Judges that could be spared.

Now, she hurried to Iteration 943. It was another nameless border world with a small, primitive population, but Sector Ninety-Four had not been able to evacuate it in time. She would probably have to revert an entire Iteration again, which strained both her mantle and the world’s connection to the Way. A handful of lower Abidan were defending it, so it should last until she arrived.

In the middle of endless blue, Suriel slammed to a halt.

It was as though a wall had appeared in front of her before she could slow down. She felt the impact in her mind, and for a moment she floated in pain, aimless and disoriented.

When her vision returned, she stared ahead, at the flow of the Way that would have led into Iteration 943.

Instead of a smooth sapphire passage, she stared into a ragged black gash. It was fuzzy at the edges, as though the Way had been severed completely. The World had been cut off.

[No barrier detected,] her Presence told her. So it hadn’t been sealed away.

She pushed into the dark hole, which was as difficult as digging bare-handed through packed earth; without the Way to lead into the Iteration, there was no easy path for her to follow.

But she managed it, determined to rescue any surviving fragments of 943.

She found nothing. She floated in endless emptiness, the pure void. Even the distant swirls of color that she usually saw in the void, wild fragments of broken worlds, were so distant that she couldn’t see them. This was a pure lack of existence.

It frightened her more than anything she’d seen in years.

[Warning: the Way has begun to repair itself. Recommend immediate return.]

She could survive in the void, but not forever. It would begin to corrupt her, breaking down the influence of the Way, turning her into an incomprehensible Fiend. At that point, if she didn’t find an Iteration or a fragment to latch onto, the void would continue to break her down until she no longer existed.

She stepped back into the Way, the endless power of order comforting her, but she still shivered internally at what she’d just seen.

Iteration 943 had been erased.

“What could do that?” she asked her Presence.

[Request denied,] her Presence said. Without her permission, the ghostly doll formed in front of her, looking at her with its featureless face. The construct couldn’t truly disobey her, but it could act independently when it needed to.

This time, it sensed that she was looking away from an uncomfortable truth, and it met her with a gaze that had no eyes. [You already know.]

There was only one weapon that could erase a world so thoroughly.

The Reaper’s Scythe.

~~~

Yerin sat with her forehead on the table next to a bowl of soup. All around her were the sounds of celebration and the smells of expensive food.

It was the Emperor’s celebratory feast. She sat at the head table, in a place of honor.

One of her sword-arms dangled in her soup.

The seat next to her was empty, the old Underlord next to her having risen to go speak to someone else, or to relieve himself, or to die in the corner as far as she cared.

Someone else sat down. Someone in a shimmering pink outer robe.

Eithan’s hand patted her on the back. “I’ve never been good at consolations, but do cheer up. You’ll see him again at the tournament!”

“He’s gone,” Yerin muttered into the table. “He took Dross and Little Blue with him. Mercy’s gone. Even Orthos is gone. Everyone I talk to is gone.”

Eithan cleared his throat.

She turned to glare at him without lifting her head.

He cleared his throat again.

“You got a chicken bone in there?” she asked. She raised the Goldsign out of her soup, its tip glistening. “You want me to get it out for you?”

He leaned closer to her. “Did you hear? Akura Charity announced our team.”

Yerin sat bolt upright, Eithan dodging a blade to the face. She grabbed his collar. “When?”