...took everything from me, Sedrick Nameless whispered. ...every possible future, gone...
I blinked. The Ylef assassin wasn’t there, but Warcry and the Wrathblade were. The skelebuddies were nothing but bone dust on the floor.
The script tattoo burned like magma sinking into my bone, repairing the damage the necrotizing frost had done. I reached out with shaking hands, and the Wrathblade leapt into my fists. In one smooth move, I resheathed it.
The blade disappeared, and Sedrick Nameless’s whispering stopped.
“How ’bout ya, grav?” Warcry asked, eyeing me.
“Fine. Better than fine.” My insides were still jittering like I’d shotgunned too many Coffee Dranks, but otherwise I felt like I could run all night. “Now that we know how to damage the scripts, I can get to these things’ life points and we can clear this place.”
“That good, yeah?” He sounded skeptical.
“Yeah. We came here to finish this tonight, so why wouldn’t we?”
I checked my next step to make sure I wasn’t going to trigger a fire tile, then headed for the shadowy doorway at the far end of the room.
Everything went black.
Smooth Recovery
I OPENED MY EYES. EVERYTHING was still black. Insane pressure compressed me from every direction, but it didn’t hurt. It was more of an annoyance. Breathing was difficult, but not impossible. I reached out a hand, and my fingers bumped against cool black wood.
I was in the Crucible Casket.
Placing both hands on the lid, I pressed my forehead to the wood.
And then I was kneeling on the canvas floor of my tent.
“Look who decided to wake up,” Warcry sneered. “Mass condensing ain’t as easy as it looks, is it?”
A lantern shined on the turned-over crate I’d been using like a night table. The ginger sat cross-legged against the far wall, leaning back so that the canvas leaned with him, pressing against the tree outside.
My mouth felt like a desert. I sat back on my heels and scrubbed my face.
“How long have I been out?” I rasped.
“Rest of last night and most of today,” Warcry said.
After I cleared my throat, I sounded more normal. “Were you sitting here this whole time, trying to come up with something insulting to say when I woke up?”
He snorted. “Like you wouldn’t’ve been.”
I looked around for a canteen. “Did you put me in the coffin necklace?”
“You were well overcultivated, probably would’ve killed us all, even with the spirals if I didn’t do something.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Warcry shrugged. “Nothing to make a fuss over. It’s already attuned to your Spirit, isn’t it, so all I had to do was open it for you. How many spirals did you end up with, anyways?”
I spotted my canteen next to the tent bag.
“Four just from that room,” I said, grabbing the sloshing container.
“Full spirals?”
I nodded, too busy guzzling water to answer out loud.
Warcry eyed the spot over my Spirit sea like he could see into it. He shook his head.
“That’s too much, grav. You can’t let it get that high again. What we need is to break this down into manageable sections. Figure out what’s a safe amount of killing for you to do, and not go over it.”
I surfaced for air.
“There were twenty-six life points in that room alone,” I said. “I don’t think the skelebuddies are going to thin out before we get to the top.”
While Warcry chewed that over, I polished off the rest of the canteen and did a quick internal assessment. No stiffness or exhaustion, and the only aches and pains I had came from the low burn of the script tattoo and the infected throb of the knife scars. Same as the first time I’d used the coffin, I was ready to go again, refreshed and strong, like a newly charged battery.
On top of that, my Spirit sea wasn’t threatening to bust the seams anymore. The rivers were full, but not flooded. The casket necklace had compacted the spirals into hard little extra-concentrated coils of fast-moving Spirit. The soul contamination from the skelebuddies’ life points had built up, but I triggered Corpse Fire, and with the concentration left over from the Crucible Casket, that oily pollution burnt off in seconds.
“That sword you got,” Warcry said. “Is it a new Spirit ability from all this cultivating?”
I shook my head. “One of the Technols gave it to me after the ambush.”
“You mean you looted it off ’em.”
“No, I mean, I talked to one of the dead guys’ ghosts, and he gave me a Spirit book that taught me how to summon Wrathblade.”
Warcry looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
“Dude, it’s a spectral sword that can take orders and fight on its own,” I said. “Is it that much more of a stretch to say I got it from some dead warriors?”
“It is when these warriors are a bunch of enemies you just demolished, isn’t it? If it was me dead, I’d have hocked a wad in your face and put a proper nasty curse on you, not handed you a present.”
I drummed my fingers on the side of the canteen. Now that he mentioned it, that did kind of put a different spin on Wrathblade’s undisclosed price.
The tent door flapped aside, and Valthorpe ducked in, rubbing his hands together.
“Thought I heard voices in here.” His eyes sparkled under heavy brow ridges. “How are you feeling, Death cultivator? That was one impressive display on the fourth floor. So, when do you boys want to get back to the temple? I know it’s after dark, but with a lantern and those fire tiles you showed me, I hardly think light will be an issue.”
“The grav just woke up from almost killing himself,” Warcry growled.
Valthorpe put up his hands like Don’t shoot. “I didn’t mean to be callous. Of course I’m glad you’re all right, Death cultivator, and I don’t want to push you into anything that could damage your kishotenketsu.”
“It’s okay.” I shook the canteen to make sure I hadn’t missed a drop, then reluctantly set
