“So we’ve got a real fight coming,” Yerin said.
“Only if we go in,” Lindon said, fixing his gaze on Mercy. He tried to make his eyes clear. “I’ve gone through an abandoned laboratory before, and I was alone. Orthos was too injured to help. We have a limited window here, and I want the whole team with us.”
Mercy straightened, and even with Lindon’s compromised vision, he could see her brighten up. “We’re a team?”
“Of course we are,” Yerin said immediately.
“Eithan said he and I would go in alone,” Lindon continued, “but I don’t want to do that. We’ve only got one shot at this, so let’s make it our best one.”
Mercy paced anxiously, tapping her staff on the floor with every other step. “I don’t want to go up against an unknown enemy and the Dreadgods and whatever’s in the labyrinth and probably my mother.”
“That sounds like an adventure!” Eithan said.
Mercy’s voice was grim. “There’s no way this ends well. No way. Even if we get what we’re after and make it out, the Monarchs will punish us. Do we all know that?”
“You’ll have to walk me through how that’s different than now,” Yerin said.
“That was a worthy warning, Mercy!” Eithan declared. “Let us count the cost before we dive headfirst into one of the most dangerous places on the planet.”
Lindon thought longer before he answered. He could easily see the Monarchs taking a closer look at him than he wanted.
Though that was a normal consequence of gaining more power. The higher you climbed, the more eyes were on you.
“I understand,” Lindon said at last.
Mercy clicked her tongue. “Fine, then let’s get going. Maybe if I’m with you, my mother will hesitate before she locks us all inside.”
Or maybe she won’t, Lindon thought. He remembered Malice’s attitude toward Mercy in the Uncrowned King tournament.
But he wasn’t callous enough to say that out loud.
Belatedly, he realized something he’d forgotten. “I should have let Orthos out! He needs to hear this.”
“Can’t he hear every thought that goes through your head?” Yerin asked.
“No, he just gets impressions. He’s not Dross.” Lindon realized something even as he spoke. “…and we need Dross.”
He had waited for the better part of a year. Dross was as stable as he was going to get. Lindon had hoped for Dross to wake on his own—or for Northstrider to contact him—but without those things, there was only one thing he could try.
Without waiting for anyone else, Lindon opened his void key. He summoned a scripted box of stable, Forged dream madra that he had prepared. With his hunger arm mobile now, he didn’t need his goldsteel tongs.
And he had prepared for this operation for a long time.
Eithan’s eyes widened. “Decisive! Best of luck to you.”
“You’re not going to try and fix him here, are you?” Mercy sounded horrified.
Yerin gripped his shoulder, lending him strength. He reached into his own soul and found the slowly spinning purple orb at the base of his skull.
As he had done with his mother months ago, he projected Dross’ internal structure into the air. Purple rings expanded until they spun in midair around them all.
The largest ring was still thinner in one section than anywhere else. Lindon took a deep breath to steady himself, and another. Then he grabbed a loop of dream madra from the chest and, in one motion, fused it to the ring from Dross’ spirit with a lick of soulfire.
The change was immediate.
Purple light flashed through the ring, and then in the smaller rings around that one. It moved through the entirety of Dross’ spirit in a chain reaction, faster and faster. Lindon couldn’t slow down his breath any longer. His heart pounded.
The enlarged loops of dream madra collapsed as Dross returned to Lindon. Something was changing and squirming inside of him, and Lindon couldn’t fully understand what.
Finally, the dream-spirit inside Lindon slowed and stopped spinning. Lindon waited to hear something…but after only a few seconds, he could wait no longer.
“Dross?”
At the sound of that word, power spun out of Lindon’s spirit. A purple blob appeared in midair next to him…but it wasn’t as dark a purple as before. It was pale and washed-out, almost gray.
[Ready to comply,] Dross said in their heads.
Lindon’s heart stopped.
Everyone stared at Dross in shock.