Then an owl flew up between them.
“Peace,” Charity said.
Lindon found his mind under attack. Dross dismantled the technique as he fought against Charity’s authority, but it distracted him long enough for the Sage herself to appear.
She was icy and furious, her hair bound up with a silver cloth, and a strangely vibrating sickle in her right hand. “I expected better from you,” she said.
Not far away, Yerin was forced to break off her attack against Malice as the combined attacks of the Moongrave Archlords focused on her. Even the skull-shaped launcher turrets on the walls lit violet, turning to aim at Yerin.
Lindon met the eyes of the Sage of the Silver Heart. “You should be on our side, Charity.”
“You’re fighting my grandmother.”
“I’m fighting to kill the Dreadgods.” Lindon flexed his right hand.
Charity’s cold mask slipped. “I can’t let you continue fighting over the city.”
“Then give us Mercy.”
“We can’t allow a hostage—”
Lindon’s temper flared, and the Burning Cloak burst involuntarily around him. “You think I’m taking Mercy hostage?”
Charity’s mask slipped further.
Mercy caught up to them again. “Let me go with them, Aunt Charity. The Dreadgods are headed for Lindon. We can deal with them, and then…talk to Mother.”
Before Charity could respond, Dross warned Lindon of an imminent spatial transport. Lindon dashed for Mercy.
Charity’s sickle swept out toward him, and he was forced to dodge.
He suspected she had only attacked out of defensive instinct, but it was still enough to move him aside. Malice, without her armor, landed a hand on Mercy.
Then a ball of shadow wrapped around Mercy, and she disappeared. Malice tossed a small black ball, no bigger than Suriel’s marble, in her hand. Lindon sensed what it was: a barrier of shadow madra containing the pocket space that had swallowed Mercy.
“That’s enough of that,” she said. “Are you going to surrender now, or…？”
Half a dozen Archlords surrounded them, along with sixteen Dreadgod-caliber turrets, Malice, and the Sage of the Silver Heart.
Yerin appeared in a flash of white light at Lindon’s side. She stuck one finger in her ear. “Old age do something to your hearing? Told you when we’d leave.”
“Yes, you did,” Malice agreed. “In pieces.”
Dross, Lindon thought.
Dream madra flowed out, forming illusory clones of them in an imitation of the Silent King’s technique.
Silver warriors clashed against the clones as Charity’s technique pushed against Dross, but Lindon was finished holding back.
He kicked out with force aura against the air, flying forward with his Burning Cloak. His fist smacked into Charity’s armor, and she blasted into the distance.
Malice spun her staff at his face, but it caught Netherclaw instead.
Rippling Swords blasted out from Yerin’s sword-arms toward the Archlords surrounding them at the same time as Lindon released a sweeping dragon’s breath empowered by the Void Icon.
Yerin used her Moonlight Bridge to evade a Striker technique that came within a whisker’s breadth of slicing a building in half, and Malice followed again. This time, Dross showed Lindon the destination and Lindon followed her.
“Move,” Lindon commanded.
He intended to take him and Malice far outside the city, but she interrupted the working. As soon as they re-emerged, they crashed into the inside of Moongrave’s walls.
Yerin appeared in midair sending a kick down on Malice. The Monarch caught it in one armored hand, but then Lindon struck at her middle with an Empty Palm.
He was forced to abort the technique and dodge a violet blast from a nearby turret, but the power from Yerin’s kick had cracked the stone wall beneath them. Yerin slammed her sword down. Malice spread the impact out with force aura, but no matter how far she dispersed it, that much more of the wall only crumpled.
Lindon moved them again, and again he wrestled wills with Malice.
They emerged in the center of one of the mountains that had been torn in half by the battle with the Silent King. Malice forced Yerin back with an eruption of shadow madra, but Lindon was there with his Empty Palm.
His Forged blue-white handprint was larger than his whole body.
She met the attack with her own palm strike, Forged of shadow madra, as launchers from the city sighted them again. Bolts of crackling violet madra scraped new trenches in the already-ruined landscape, and some of the Archlords targeted them with Striker or Ruler techniques.