Dross didn’t answer, but the Truegolds turned as they felt new spiritual presences behind them.
Jai Long staggered into view, bloody and ragged. He clutched a silver hatchet-shaped head in one hand.
Fingerling attacked his halo, and Jai Long swept out with a palm, but one eye was matted down with blood and his spirit felt strained. He was weak, and Fingerling avoided his strike.
The sight of him squeezed Kelsa’s heart tight. He had been beaten to this point, and it was all her fault. The Dreadgod was targeting her.
If not for Lindon, it would have taken her mind too.
Jai Long tossed The Fleshripper’s steel head aside and lunged for Kelsa. Then a giant stone hand seized his shoulder.
This new puppet-construct resembled gray stone, and it was lit from within by fiery orange lights. It towered over Jai Long and Kelsa by two feet, and it looked like it weighed more than most barns.
Even through the technique that had clouded Jai Long’s mind, he looked up at the construct with what Kelsa would call disbelief. Under different circumstances, she would have laughed at his stunned face.
The stone construct punched Jai Long through the nearest wall.
[There are twelve more Underlord Countermeasures,] Dross said, startling her. [You wondered, didn’t you? Sixteen in total. Meet Bludgeon, The Immolator, and Creeping Death. I named them.]
It was easy to tell which was which.
The stone construct, Bludgeon, stood like a brick wall in front of Jai Long, waiting for him to emerge from the wreckage. Down the street, The Immolator—an orange flame Remnant that also crackled with strange lightning—was juggling enough fireballs to light the sky like sunrise. Creeping Death must be the shadowy cloud that Kelsa could barely perceive except for its shining green eyes.
“I should have been a Soulsmith,” Kelsa muttered.
The battle raged for another moment…then, as though everyone with a white halo had come to the same decision at once, they all retreated.
“Follow him!” Jai Chen cried. She launched a net of pink madra from her hands, which grasped at Jai Long’s halo, but the Underlord ducked away. The constructs were meant to protect Kelsa, so they didn’t follow. They backed up and surrounded her in a ring.
Those thralls of the Silent King who couldn’t retreat were mostly abandoned. Some had lost the rings around their heads.
But others were regrouping on the edge of the street.
As one, they turned their eyes and spiritual perceptions to Jai Chen.
Kelsa ran to protect the younger girl, but Bludgeon stopped her. “Run!” she screamed, straining in vain against the stone hand holding her back.
Jai Chen ran, but dozens of techniques streaked for her. Kelsa’s stomach dropped.
Then Jai Chen stumbled and looked around. “Dross?” she asked.
Bludgeon Forged a wall of earth madra surrounding Jai Chen. The Immolator shot techniques out of the air, and Creeping Death reappeared next to the sacred artists. The shadow passed over them and they dropped down.
Kelsa hoped they were still alive. She didn’t see any Remnants, at least, except from the few that had been killed by the thralls of the Silent King.
Jai Long watched, and Kelsa felt as though she could sense the frustration of the Dreadgod even from so far away.
Jai Chen’s eyes were sparkling as she walked up to Kelsa. “That was amazing! Do you think it’ll give up?”
Kelsa gathered up the aura of dream and light around Jai Long’s head. “Let’s see if we can speed that up.”
With his one open eye, Jai Long looked from Kelsa to Jai Chen as though weighing his options. Kelsa’s Fox Dream technique started eating away at the halo even as Jai Chen’s pink dragon’s breath did the same.
Jai Long shuddered beneath the assault, but he gathered white madra between his palms. He Forged a huge serpent, and the constructs moved in front of Kelsa protectively.
All up and down the street, the conscious Dreadgod thralls used their techniques.
Jai Long threw the snake up in the air…and then it dove straight down.
He stopped cycling his madra and opened his spirit, and Kelsa knew what was about to happen.
She abandoned her Fox Dream to hurl Foxfire at the snake. Fingerling joined her a second before Jai Chen did, chipping away at the Underlord’s technique.
Even when the technique was about to hit him, Jai Long’s eyes didn’t clear.
Kelsa poured everything she had into her Striker technique, and madra chipped away from the snake. Its outline blurred, and it grew weaker. But two Lowgolds giving it their all were not enough to break one technique from an Underlord.