He had time only for that glimpse before she stabbed forward, and her Final Sword technique blasted the Herald away.
Light and energy filled the cloud fortress in a roaring river, and Redmoon was launched through the entire center of the ship. When the sword of light faded, Red Faith could see his smoking form through a tunnel of broken walls.
The Herald raised his chin, wiping blood from his lip, and looked at the Sage. While there was a hole in Redmoon’s robes, baring his chest, his body was unharmed.
White light winked out as Yerin took her Moonlight Bridge and fled.
A moment later, the Sage of Red Faith followed.
She had used her Divine Treasure to appear on the ground below, so it took him only an instant to follow.
“Bleed and bury me,” she said, when he arrived. “Not even a scratch.”
Red Faith examined her expression, attempting to read her mind. The Herald would be only moments behind them, but the current problem itched at him. There was only one conclusion he could come to.
“Well done. Without my expertise, research into your unique condition could not continue. One of us alive has no value, but the both of us together—”
“Top of that mountain, go,” she interrupted.
She disappeared again as Redmoon’s perception swept over them and an alarm sounded aboard Redmoon Hall’s cloud fortress.
The Sage kept his perception locked on her, and when he felt her arrive, it was easy to make his way to that location. Her Moonlight Bridge could be tracked in principle, but it was difficult to do so. He had helped design it that way.
They stood on a snow-capped peak a moment later. Icicles strong enough to shred an Iron’s skin blew sideways into the wind, smashing harmlessly on their skin.
Yerin glared at him with her arms crossed. “We had a good pace set, and you had to go on and flip the whole boat!”
“Your ‘boat’ was flipped upon me, but I will have my revenge. You and I will raise up our own followers, and we will annihilate his Redmoon Hall. Red Faith Research Society will be the scourge of the—”
Redmoon flew for them like a scarlet comet, and Red Faith Forged a flock of a thousand birds to strike at him.
Yerin disappeared again, and he followed her.
“Rather drink a tall glass of nails than join a sect like that,” Yerin picked up when he reappeared. They stood in some foothills now, amid a herd of bison-like creatures he thought might have been known as Thunderstep Grazers, but he didn’t have the time to examine the shape of their hooves to tell for sure.
Yerin snapped her fingers in front of his face. “That cow better be hiding the secrets of reaching Monarch.”
“I have invaluable research materials aboard the cloud fortress, not least of which are the dream tablets containing your recollections.”
“I’ll give you new ones!”
“That does not lessen the value of those that exist. Memory is mutable, and multiple dream tablets of the same memory tend to differ signific—”
She seized him by the front of his robes, and he allowed it because she didn’t seem to have any hostile intentions.
“Wake up! I don’t need a lesson, I need a Sage!”
Why did other people assume that theoretical understanding and practical application were mutually exclusive? Just because one understood the theory didn’t mean he was incapable of applying it in practice. He was about to say so when he realized that would prove her point.
He sat down on a sleeping Thunderhoof Grazer and chewed on the tip of his finger, letting the pain sharpen his attention.
Yerin released his robe, but she stared at him in disbelief. “You taking a break now? Your fire’s all burned out? Well, you get all curled-up and cozy, because I’m gone.”
“Redmoon won’t follow us,” he said absently. He continued chewing on his finger as she extended her perception to find he was right. “By the time he opened up a rift behind us or reached us with a technique, we would be gone. If he did catch us, he would outpace everyone else, so he would be fighting the two of us alone.”
Yerin brightened considerably. “That’s a gem and a half. What’ll it take for us to bury him and take over your Hall?”
The Blood Sage examined her and wondered if her sense of humor was as strange to everyone else as it was to him. “It is not as simple as the two of us defeating him in a duel. You are aware of this. A sect as old as Redmoon Hall has many resources at its disposal that cannot be easily equaled, including script formations and construct networks that allow lesser sacred artists—even Golds—to participate against us in some minimal capacity.