The army unleashed a coordinated volley of defensive techniques like a shield of many colors, and their many wills unified. They joined together behind the will of a Dreadgod.
Malice’s arrow shattered several layers of their patchwork shield, but then it stopped and collapsed to the ground, harming no one.
[If the Silent King had been close enough to lend his will to his minions back in Dreadnought City, we would be dead already,] Dross added unhelpfully.
A veiled and invisible Overlady flew up behind Lindon, but he absently reached out with his right hand and Consumed her halo. The dream madra and fragments of will flowed through his arm and into Dross, who shuddered.
[The eyes of my soul are opening!]
Lindon ignored that and listened to every pounding beat of his heart. He didn’t want to leave Mercy’s group vulnerable, but the Dreadgod had said it was going to keep its promise. That meant his friends and family were in danger.
Or were they?
If the Dreadgod’s objective was to kill them, it shouldn’t have told Lindon anything. But that wasn’t the objective, was it? The creature wanted to sow doubt and discord, and to pressure Lindon and Dross to give themselves over willingly.
He desperately wanted to end the fight, to make the Silent King withdraw its techniques.
But that was exactly what it was looking for. It was trying to get Lindon to throw himself into the tiger’s jaws. Literally.
He had to be smarter than that.
Time slowed for Lindon as Dross enhanced his thoughts, and he ordered his priorities. He needed to close the rift into the Void and cut off the Silent King’s army. Physically, the King was the weakest of the four Dreadgods. It relied on its minions and its powerful techniques.
But those minions would defend the portal to the death, so Lindon needed to force them to split their focus. Which meant putting pressure on the King by getting Malice allies. He needed to help free the Sages.
Though that left Mercy and the others on their own.
Dross, Lindon thought, tell Mercy to hold on. And that I’m sorry.
[That’s my favorite message I’ve ever sent. Should I tell Charity you’re coming?]
Lindon’s right arm blazed with overwhelming, ravenous hunger. It writhed like a bag of snakes, as though every muscle in it had come to life separately.
And the scripted cloth Malice had used to seal the limb finally unraveled.
The desire to steal, to devour, to take everything hit Lindon in a wave. Above and behind him, reality twisted as an Icon tried to manifest, but he wrestled with that authority and kept it under control. As Eithan had done in his battle against Reigan Shen, Lindon stopped an Icon from manifesting.
But his control over the limb was weak at best. Lindon sensed the army of the Silent King, the people of Moongrave, the battling Sages and Heralds, Akura Malice, and even the Dreadgod itself…and he wanted to Consume them all.
The eternally hungry arm of the Slumbering Wraith smelled a feast.
Charity’s Judgment of the Phantom Queen was one of her most prized techniques, since she hadn’t merely inherited it from her Book of the Silver Heart.
The binding belonged to the Book, of course, as did the overly flamboyant name. But the will that brought the silver mist to life in the form of an army of warriors was hers. They were her ideal of the noble soldiers of humanity, fighting to push back the darkness of the wilderness.
Now, her soldiers of silver mist were tearing themselves apart in a field of razor snowflakes.
Min Shuei, the Winter Sage, sent another sharp edge of ice-cold sword madra at Charity, who struck the technique down with her silver sickle. Soulsever was not ideal for combat against one of the Sword Sages; it was meant for killing, not for disrupting techniques.
Charity staggered back from the impact. She missed her shield.
Her specialty was not in this sort of physical combat, but in battles mental and spiritual. Right now, no less than three of her non-physical attacks ate away at the Silent King’s control over the Sage of the Frozen Blade. Her Nightmare Grasp seized Min Shuei’s head in the grip of a shadowy hand; the soldiers formed from the Judgment of the Phantom Queen sliced at the halo and battered at the Sage’s icy techniques, and their entire battle took place inside Charity’s domain of shadows and nightmares: the Dream of Darkness.
In theory, this should have been plenty to shred any mental technique, even one cast by a Dreadgod. But the Silent King must be actively reinforcing his technique on the Winter Sage, and her own spiritual defense must be greater than Charity had ever known, because the woman waded through misty soldiers slashing at her soul and fixed Charity with a gaze of pure hatred.