“I’ve felt it myself,” Lindon continued. “You’re working with the memories they left behind as much as anything. But it will respond to what you do, unlike a dream tablet. This should help her work out her own condition.”
Yerin fidgeted, pulling on her lock of red hair. Finally, she asked, “You catch a glimpse of my master in there?”
“Apologies,” Lindon said, in true regret. “I searched, but there are just too many. But I suspect he is there, if we can find him.”
“No, wipe it clean. Shouldn’t have asked.”
Below them, Mercy had frozen. The image of her mother continued attacking, but she looked as though she’d seen something in the distance.
The cycling of her madra reached a crescendo, and the aura in the room swirled around her.
“I am…” she began, “…not my mother.”
The aura didn’t react.
Mercy’s face fell. “I was sure that was it!”
A ghostly arrow passed through her body.
Yerin hopped down into the trench between Mercy and her mother, ignoring Malice’s attacks. “That was mine. Not my master. Wasn’t happy about it.”
“I thought I had it…” Mercy scuffed the ground with the butt of her staff.
“Never said you didn’t.” Yerin leaped over Mercy and landed on her other side, then grabbed the back of Mercy’s head and angled her to look at Malice’s face. “You’re not your mother, okay. Tell me what’s different.”
“I’m not as…ruthless, as she is,” Mercy said, as though admitting something.
Malice sneered at her and loosed another arrow.
“Cut deeper,” Yerin said.
“I don’t have the same drive. She’s willing to do whatever she has to. You know, once she—”
Yerin interrupted. “Deeper.”
“Is this what worked for you? I don’t—”
Yerin shook her. “You talking to me, or you looking at her?”
Mercy slowly quieted and focused on her mother. Lindon felt the interaction of dream and hunger aura, and he suspected Yerin was bathed in it too, but she didn’t react.
The aura trembled, and he rushed over to the panel. The technique was destabilizing, thanks to the imbalance of the aura. He could hold it, but he wouldn’t be able to fend off the labyrinth’s attacks in the rest of the room.
He waved to the two men across the room, but they were still talking. Eithan waved back without looking.
“I like people,” Mercy said. “She’s not kind. She’s…cruel.”
The aura from the natural treasures began to tremble.
“She isn’t just callous,” she continued. “She likes it when her enemies are afraid of her. Malice is the virtue she’s named after; it’s the hatred that drives you to be merciless to those who oppose you.”
There was a resonance in the aura that even Lindon could sense, so Mercy’s spirit must be trembling. She was close.
Now, she was whispering. “I don’t want that. I’ve never wanted that. I want the opposite. I want to be…”
She stopped. Then, she corrected herself. “She’s Malice. I am Mercy.”
Around the room, the natural treasures ignited. Yerin had to release Mercy as the soulfire inside her went up in response.
As Mercy advanced, the labyrinth reacted.
Lindon had expected some kind of reaction from the hunger madra, but the ghouls that clawed their way up from the ground were not simple. And they weren’t alone. Forged webs shot toward Mercy from every direction.
He drove his fist through one of the ghouls, his channels filled with pure madra, but it was harder than he’d expected. It took him two blows to crush the living technique, and then he had to exert real force to pull some webs down.
Either the hunger madra was stronger here, or this attack was particularly fierce.
Eithan and Ziel both were roused, but just like Lindon, neither of them were eager to use more of their madra than they had to. Ziel was swinging his hammer without rings of script around it, and Eithan was just using his scissors.
Yerin was fighting the hardest.
Mercy’s advancement was taking longer than Lindon’s had, most likely because of the aura imbalance here in the labyrinth but possibly because of the interference of the hunger madra. She was helpless as the attention of the whole room was focused on her.
Yerin covered her like a red-and-black blur, her Goldsigns and sword flashing. Both had been Enforced with madra, and she slammed into ghouls and webs alike with the force of a Herald.