Razael’s armor flowed back together, Durandiel’s injury reversed until she had never been wounded at all, and the broken planet drifted back together.
The Mad King met Suriel’s eyes as he drifted backwards into the Void, and though millions of kilometers separated them, she could hear the laughter of Oth’kimeth, the Fiend, echoing in her soul.
As the portal winked shut, his blazing red eye never left hers.
[Without first removing Fathom, he will struggle to completely destroy any other worlds in this Sector,] Suriel’s Presence reported, as though that would soothe her. [His removal from the battlefield will ensure our victory, and it is possible that we will win and escape long enough to preserve fragments of any destroyed world.]
Fragments. The pieces of a world that drifted through the Void after an Iteration had been destroyed.
Unless it had been completely culled by the Reaper’s Scythe. In which case no fragments remained at all.
What are the odds that he will change his target?
Her Presence was silent, and Suriel knew why. The Mad King’s target wouldn’t change. There were more strategically valuable worlds in range, like Asylum. With the state of the cosmos as it was, he could strike even at Suriel’s homeworld in Sector Twenty-three.
But he wouldn’t. He wanted a victory that was as symbolic as it was strategic, to conquer the Abidan of the past as well as the present. He would send a message by destroying the home of Ozriel, the birthplace of the Abidan, and the place that produced more Abidan-qualified ascendants than any other.
He was going to destroy Cradle, and Suriel was too late to stop him.
Lindon walked onto a chamber that shone with gray-white light that pulsed like a heart. It was another one of those massive rooms filled with flesh, where the truly enormous dreadbeasts had fused into one mass.
Faded off-white meat filled the entire chamber, spilling over the floor and spiraling up pillars. So far, so expected. But there were no other dreadbeasts here, no children or guardians.
The entire room was focused on one figure in the center. One skeletal, desiccated, six-armed man.
He sat half-melted into a growth that resembled a throne, and he leaned on the armrest with one elbow. His skin was dry and papery, and he had no muscle at all. All six of his hands were intact, but some were a slightly different shade than the others, leading Lindon to wonder if one of those was the hand he now held in a script-sealed container.
The man was dead.
Glassy eyes met Lindon’s. Largely black, with white irises, they had no life within them. And Lindon could feel the power radiating off the figure slowly dissipating, like the last wisps of smoke from a dead fire.
In the center of his chest, where the heart should be, was only a gaping hole.
[You were too slow!] Dross raged. [Reigan Shen has slain the beast!]
It had to have been Reigan Shen, Lindon knew. But there were no signs of battle. He was reluctant to expose the hand he had locked away—in this chamber, it might even bring the Wraith back to life—but he had already figured out how to tap into the authority of the labyrinth.
Focusing on the Void Icon, Lindon extended his awareness into the room nearby. He was looking for a familiar binding, a Forger technique embedded somewhere…
Dross contemptuously pointed it out a moment before Lindon found it himself. The technique that would create a hunger echo.
Without Subject One to wrestle against him, Lindon found this one easy to activate. He still needed Dross to help him sort through the dizzying impressions—the Dreadgod had fed on far too many people—but one presence was clear above all others.
Lindon poured pure madra into the technique. The more he fueled the technique, the more solid the echo would be. Before long, he managed to Forge a black-and-white echo nearby. It was still transparent, but it should be conscious and ready to speak.
It was little more than a ghost, but not just any ghost. This was the manifestation of the Slumbering Wraith itself.
The echo flexed all six of his arms, then looked at his own body that sat next to him. Rage and weariness and longing radiated from him.
“Betrayal is the nature of Monarchs,” the Dreadgod said.
Lindon glanced at the hole in his chest. “Pardon, but it looks like he held up his end of the bargain.”
“No. He was meant to strike the final blow, then leave this place. He violated his oath.” Smoldering black-and-white eyes met Lindon’s. “Clever he was, to find a way to break such a bond. But he will pay a price. There is always a price.”
“He’s still here?” Lindon tried to push further into the labyrinth, to find him, but the weight of the labyrinth’s authority was old and heavy. He could get no more.