But as irritating as it was to have potential information denied by petty personal concern, he still had plenty of material to work with. He had brought Yerin in for six sessions of memory recording now, and while some of the information was redundant, there was much to learn even from overlapping accounts.
Mind-spirits buzzed around his head, echoing his own thoughts and keeping him focused, and he had elevated his own consciousness with an elixir.
Thanks to those constructs, he knew that he was approaching a conclusion.
He was also fully aware that he was trying to escape that conclusion.
The Sage of Red Faith tapped into a stored memory, reliving his own relationship with his Blood Shadow. After working in the labyrinth and studying the original nature of the Phoenix, he had withdrawn one of its eggs for his own examination.
He had intentionally created a Blood Shadow and established a symbiotic relationship with it, confident in his willpower. He was more aware than anyone else of the spirit’s mutability; it would take on the traits of whatever it fed upon, and he could think of no better model than himself.
Red Faith had developed the cycling patterns to feed the Shadow his own excess dream aura and blood essence, even pieces of his lifeline. When it needed raw material, he would kill one of his enemies, feeding the choice pieces of them to his Shadow.
For years, he had thought that was his mistake. He should never have supplemented its diet with others, which had corrupted the copy of him he was cultivating.
The Shadow grew more and more unruly over time, unwilling to become the subordinate copy of himself that it was created to be. Even as they grew into a pair and dominated other Sages and Heralds—even challenging Monarchs, at the height of their power—the Shadow became less willing to admit that Red Faith was the host, the original, and it was his will they shared.
Now, the Sage of Red Faith could not escape the clear contrast between his relationship with the Blood Shadow that would become Redmoon and Yerin’s relationship with the Blood Shadow that would become Ruby.
When the time came for him to merge with his Shadow, each had attempted to dominate the other. They tried to take as much as they could with minimal concessions.
Yerin and Ruby, by contrast, had reached the same conclusion at the same time. They had cooperated perfectly, willing to give up control to the other to accomplish a mutual goal.
The Sage’s willpower slipped his restraint. His cocoon of cloud burst, his mind-constructs screamed and broke, and even space began to warp.
He gathered his thoughts and exercised his authority for restoration, healing the damage he had done in an instant. Frustration should not cost him materials.
Even if it meant he had wasted decades, if not centuries.
All this time, he’d been searching for the flaw that caused his copy to fail. Did he raise its level of existence too fast? Did he feed it too much on the thoughts of others, causing their identities to diverge? Did he feed it too much dream aura too early, and it became self-aware before becoming subordinate to him?
In the end, he couldn’t deny the pattern he was seeing. The idea the Blood Icon resonated with, telling him that it contained truth.
He didn’t fail because he created an imperfect copy.
He failed because he created a perfect one.
The Sage of Red Faith had never subordinated himself to the will of others, which he had thought would create an iron will in his Blood Shadow. Instead, it created a Shadow unwilling to work with him.
Anything he wanted, he took, because he was working for a higher goal and could put it to better use. He had expected his Shadow to understand the nobility of that purpose, but instead he created a copy that took what it wanted without any consideration for his ambitions.
Point by point, the facts became clearer until they were inescapable.
The Sage of Red Faith had failed, not because of insufficient preparation or intellect, but because of who he was.
This was the knowledge he had sought for most of his career, and now he had it. With this, he could develop a training method that would result in the more reliable creation of humanoid Blood Shadows. He could very well have achieved a breakthrough the likes of which even Eithan—or rather, Ozmanthus—Arelius never dreamed. When he perfected this process, he would go down in the history of Cradle.
It felt empty.
He felt Yerin in combat somewhere nearby. She was approaching the limit of Redmoon’s patience, and Red Faith had agreed to support her plan primarily because of how much irritation it would cause his Blood Shadow.
Now, he didn’t care much. About any of it.
He strode out of his laboratory and wandered the halls of their cloud fortress, ignoring the greetings of those he passed. He shoved the doors open when he found Redmoon—the Herald wasn’t in his audience hall this time, but in the control room of the cloud fortress itself.