The Archlord followed, and as he was kindling another dragon’s breath, Ziel found the right two runes.
Ziel released the sigil he’d been forging. A new, complex symbol appeared in the Monarch’s ancient script, one green letter in a row of silver.
The entire script flickered green for a second as Ziel’s relatively weak madra clashed with the Rune Queen’s. Then his modification was accepted.
That he could change the script at all was only because of the similarity in their Paths, and that he was making only one small change. His rune slightly tweaked one aspect of the circle itself.
Its size.
The circle expanded in an instant, and it caught the flying Archlord as he released his breath. A bar of black-and-red madra stretched out for ten feet, heading for Ziel.
Now, frozen in mid-air.
But not forever.
Orthos huffed as he jogged up behind Ziel. “Can you do that for all of them?”
Shatterspine Castle screamed around them, and crashes came more and more frequently. Ziel winced. “I don’t think it matters anymore.”
“Oh no.”
“Yeah.”
The castle—or at least this section of it—was falling apart.
A crack opened up in the floor beneath them, and Ziel spotted safety. Beneath them, the pillars around a particular room were scripted with reinforcement runes. Even now, the runes glowed, rejecting the weight of the building above it.
“Down there!” Ziel shouted.
But because an Underlord was too much slower than an Archlord, Orthos still hadn’t processed the sight when Ziel grabbed him and shoved him inside.
Just before the ceiling collapsed, Ziel followed.
13
Yerin sat at the bottom of…she wasn’t sure what to call it. A well? Some kind of deep hole in the ground lined with stones.
At least it was dry.
The Sage of Red Faith had carved scripts in rings from the bottom to the top, muttering obsessively about how these would hide them. But as soon as he’d finished gouging runes into the stone, he’d vanished, so Yerin wasn’t sure how these scripts could do him any good at all.
She knew where he was, but the only thing she had to do was wait for him to come back.
So Yerin spent her time trying to comfort Little Blue.
The spirit trembled in her arms. She wanted to go back into the soulspace, for fear that Red Faith would come back, but she had emerged to comfort Yerin.
It wasn’t necessary, since Yerin wasn’t afraid, but Little Blue was so adorable it was hard to complain.
“You can stay out when he gets here,” Yerin assured her. “I’ll keep you locked-up safe, that’s a promise.”
Little Blue froze with her hand on Yerin’s collar and trembled. She had been just as afraid of Yerin’s Blood Shadow—which had hurt Ruby more than she wanted to admit—but Little Blue had stood up to it when necessary.
The Sage of Red Faith just terrified her.
Yerin supposed that was a sane reaction, but it wasn’t a helpful one. Little Blue was supposed to be getting stronger from this too.
Then again, Yerin wasn’t going to push her too hard.
“They don’t have a knife to your neck,” Yerin assured the spirit. “Strong enough yourself these days, true?”
Little Blue spread her hands out and gave an uncertain warbling whistle.
“Hey now, you can’t compare yourself to Lindon. That’s a tilted scale if there ever was one. You’ve got to keep your eyes on your own Path.”
Blue hung her head in shame and kicked at the ground. Which, from her perspective, was Yerin’s lap. Yerin felt a tingle in her leg as the pure madra passed through.
Yerin sensed someone coming—the scripts only blocked spiritual perception from one direction—and looked up. The Riverseed saw that and froze.
Sure enough, Red Faith was returning with an Archlady in tow. The woman’s spirit felt like blood and poison, and more than that, it felt familiar.
Quietly, Little Blue chimed her concern for Yerin.
“I’m packed so full of backup plans and hidden weapons that if I hop, fifteen swords will fall out,” Yerin assured her. “You can stop worrying about me.”
Little Blue clasped shivering hands together and looked up as though bracing herself to face the Sage, but she flinched back before he even appeared.
Yerin patted her back with two fingers. “Tuck yourself away and hide. You won’t hear a judgment from me.”
Blue hesitated another moment, but when the two members of Redmoon Hall got close enough for her own spiritual sense to pick them up, she melted back into Yerin’s soulspace.