“Jai Long…？”
Part of her wanted to run up, to ask him what was wrong. But she remembered the construct on her wrist, and she wondered if the technique it had just broken was the same one floating over Jai Long’s head.
Fingerling flew around Jai Chen, and both of them were in clear distress. Jai Chen looked to Kelsa with tears in her eyes. “He…he woke up screaming.”
Kelsa snapped herself out of it. This wasn’t time to wait around.
With one hand, she started untying the knot that held Lindon’s construct to her wrist. With the other, she guided aura of light and dreams.
Kelsa used the Fox Dream. The Ruler technique seized the dream aura around Jai Long and invaded him. It was designed to create distracting illusions, and she was skilled enough to guide those distractions in the directions she wished. Tonight, she didn’t care what she showed him. She just wanted to break the technique that was already on him.
Her technique settled around his head…and broke like rotten thread.
The halo around his head flared brighter. It didn’t seem fully Forged yet, fuzzing and crackling like an unfinished technique.
Kelsa ripped the construct off her wrist the rest of the way and marched up, shoving it against the back of Jai Long’s neck.
Pinkish-purple light flared, traveling through his entire spirit in a moment. His body convulsed, he made a sound of deep pain, and the halo blurred.
Her construct overloaded and crumbled.
Jai Long sagged to the ground, hand still on his spear. The halo seemed to flicker between existence and nonexistence.
His sister fell to her knees. “Jai Long?”
Shakily, he raised his head and looked between her and Kelsa. His teeth flared blue with his one spoken word.
“Run,” Jai Long said.
Jai Chen was paralyzed by confusion, but Kelsa wasn’t.
She seized the younger girl by the collar and hauled her away as the white halo finished Forging around Jai Long’s head.
He stood up, rising to his full height, and pulled his spear back into a ready position.
Then the Underlord attacked.
15
The dream technique from the Silent King washed over Moongrave in a wave before it let up. Lindon let his Hollow Domain drop to catch himself on his Thousand-Mile Cloud.
Three spiritual perceptions passed over the city at the same time, taking stock of their forces. One was Malice’s, passing over everyone like a shadow. The second was Charity’s. Then it was Lindon’s.
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.