“So much worse,” he mumbled. “So much worse to be small.”
Little Blue gave a sympathetic chime.
Yerin blew the lock of red hair out of her face and looked up. “Sliced that one a little thin, didn’t we?”
“Now that I think of it, staying in the hallway so we didn’t get separated was stupid,” Ziel commented. “We should have just gotten lost.”
“No telling what else we could have run into,” Mercy said.
Lindon let his Hollow Domain drop. In fact, the entrance into the ceiling had closed almost immediately after the wave of death madra had reached them. He called his void key open, once again forcing it open with his will.
He had to push more focus and more madra into it this time. Whether it was the hunger aura or the authority of the labyrinth’s owner suppressing spatial artifacts, it was getting worse.
He stepped inside, rummaged around for a moment, and pulled out a pill and a sealed case of scales. He handed the pill to Yerin. “You used up a lot of madra there. Are you okay?”
She nudged him with her shoulder before popping the pill in her mouth. “Bright and shiny. Just need to fill my glass back up.”
Lindon did not fail to notice that two of her party were covered in fresh bloodstains. He looked to Mercy for confirmation.
“No no, we’re fine. We almost had to deal with a Herald-level Striker technique, but Yerin got us out of there.” She released him and shifted from one foot to the other to check her balance.
“Herald?” Lindon thought immediately about the possibility of Reigan Shen being in the labyrinth, and he looked up at the ceiling despite himself, though the door had already been blocked.
Yerin waved off his concern. “Bigger version of the dead snakes. Just a pile of meat, so not like it’s going to chase us. And we’d feel it coming from a mile off, it’s—”
With a blur, the stone wall on the far end of the chamber fuzzed out of existence. It left a hole into a dark tunnel, which sloped downwards. Lindon’s spirit rang an alarm at the feeling of ancient, overwhelming death that radiated from the tunnel.
Yerin looked and sounded like she’d just bitten into a rotten fruit. “It’s like that. There it is.”
“You and I can handle it, if you’re ready,” Lindon said. “Eithan can come with us. Mercy, can you back us up?”
Mercy frowned at her bow. “I think Suu is getting tired, but I can use the binding once or twice more. That’s a couple more Archlord hits. But it’s not like one Herald, it’s more like…”
“A bunch of Heralds smeared over some toast,” Yerin provided.
That reminded Lindon of the Eight-Man Empire, and he turned to ask Eithan if he knew what that might mean about their enemy.
When he saw Eithan still standing there, an unreadable expression on his face, Lindon realized Eithan hadn’t said a word since they’d entered the room.
It inspired Lindon himself to look around.
There wasn’t much to sense in the room; certainly nothing to draw his spiritual perception. There were a few small dream tablets here and there, but by and large the chamber resembled a once-crowded workshop or storeroom that had been cleared out in a hurry.
Dust covered the floor, along with bits of grit and undefinable scraps of metal. There were scuffs and indentations in the stone where something heavy had been moved, but with the power of these floors, Lindon would be shocked if any amount of weight would have made a dent on their own. Here and there bolts remained in the walls where something had been suspended, but whatever it was had been removed long before.
High up on the far wall, he saw the thing that must have grabbed Eithan’s attention immediately. A giant symbol: a scythe hanging like a crescent moon over the Arelius family crest.
This room had once belonged to the Arelius family Patriarch.
Ozriel.
Lindon was suddenly much more interested in the dream tablets.
Here and there, glittering tablets like cut gemstones were embedded in the wall next to where something must have rested.
Lindon held his hand over one nearby, which hung next to a pale square of wall that looked like it had once held a painting. He slipped his perception into it.
The intricately carved ivory box is ringed in script so dense he can barely make it out with his eyes, and it carries a powerful will to bind. The bones used to make it are irreplaceable, and come from—
Lindon felt a sudden, blinding headache and was kicked out of the memory. He blinked and held onto his head.
This was what it had felt like when he tried to view a memory too advanced for him. But that was a shock. What concepts couldn’t he handle? He thought he could comprehend most Monarch dream tablets now, but evidently not if it trespassed on certain subjects.