Eclipse Core (School of Swords and Serpents Book 2)

by Gage Lee

  I held my ground and my cross guard defensive position. My eyes remained focused on the center of Rafael’s chest, which I’d learned was the first part of an opponent’s body to move when it came time for an attack. My breath cycled smoothly and evenly through me, my core filled with jinsei. I was as ready as I’d ever be and had decided to let Rafael make the first move.

  He didn’t disappoint me.

  The Disciple unloaded a flurry of punches that I deflected with my forearms. He transitioned smoothly into a spinning kick accelerated by a burst of jinsei. The air crackled around his heel as it sped toward my left side, so fast it was little more than a sparkling blur.

  As fast as the attack was, my defense was faster. My left arm swept down and out in a powerful circle, catching Rafael by surprise. I pushed the jinsei from my core into my arm at the exact moment of impact, and the burst of sacred energy flung my opponent’s leg away from me.

  Rafael shouted in surprise as his body twisted out of his control. His foot slipped off the ground, and for a moment he was airborne. His shoulder slammed onto the grass, and he curled into a ball to protect himself from the follow-up attack he knew was coming.

  I took a single step and rapped his forehead with my knuckles.

  The ring around us flashed a brilliant blue, and a wall of sparks shot into the air.

  “Point, Jace,” Professor Song shouted.

  Rafael sneered at my offered hand and kicked back up to his feet without my assistance. His aura was clotted with far more anger than shame now, and the dark aspects seemed to fuel him much as the crowd energized me. The Disciple turned his back on me and walked away.

  Professor Song reentered the circle, glanced at each of us, then raised his hand again.

  I didn’t like the look in Rafael’s eyes. Given the chance, he might just try to kill me again in front of everyone.

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  “Ready,” Professor Song said. “Fight!”

  Rafael took a different approach this time. He walked toward me, hands loose at his sides, bobbing his head left and right like an undisciplined street fighter. He thrust his chin forward as if begging me to knock him out. He was on the warpath, and he wanted blood.

  I needed to end this, quickly.

  Without hesitation, I triggered the Borrowed Core technique and connected myself to the maximum number of rats I could control. A single breath filled my aura with beast aspects, and I held them at the ready.

  “Come on, coward,” Rafael snarled. “You think you can take me. Make a move and prove it.”

  “It doesn’t have to be like this,” I told the Disciple. “Whatever you think happened with your sister, you’re wrong.”

  At the mention of his sibling, Rafael’s eyes narrowed to hateful slits. His rage blossomed from his core, clouding his aura with pure hate.

  I chose that moment to make my attack. I stepped up to Rafael and drove a punch straight at the middle of his chest. I boosted it with little jinsei to give it more speed, though I didn’t put anywhere near my full strength into the attack. My goal was to score another point, not hurt Rafael.

  My opponent deflected the blow with his forearm and snapped a kick toward my midsection in return.

  The strike was too fast to block, forcing me to pivot to the side so it could slide past me without scoring a point. Rafael’s extended leg right in front of me was far too tempting a target to pass up. I grabbed his ankle with one hand and his knee with the other. Jinsei poured from my core into my arms and hands as I prepared to snatch Rafael into the air and slam him back to the ground.

  But as soon as my fingers closed around his leg, Rafael unleashed a technique I hadn’t seen before.

  All the anger he’d built up in his aura burst away from him in a powerful shock wave. It ripped my hands away from his body and threw me back toward the edge of the dueling ring. Worse, the furious wave smashed into my core and scattered half the jinsei I’d gathered.

  The maneuver had also severed my connections through the Borrowed Core and sapped my strength. I was stunned and unsteady on my feet, hands wobbling uselessly when I tried to raise them to defend myself. Three shimmering Rafaels approached me, all blurry and indistinct, and I couldn’t tell which one was the real threat.

  And then, suddenly, one of the trio of enemies solidified. Rafael gave me a wide, hungry smile and drove an open-palm strike into the center of my chest.

  Red sparks exploded around the dueling circle.

  “Point, Rafael,” Professor Song shouted. He motioned Rafael back, then grabbed my hands and looked into my eyes. “You okay to continue?”

  My vision was still blurry, and my core ached from the lingering effects of Rafael’s technique. I felt like I was standing on the deck of a ship in rough seas, my legs unsteady beneath me. I shook my head and cycled my breath, pulling on the beast aspects and hoping that would steady me. One breath, two, and I nodded.

  “I’m fine,” I said to the professor. “I’m good.”

  “Ready,” Professor Song said, eyeing me warily as I assumed a defensive position. “Fight!”

  It turns out I wasn’t fine. My core was a jumbled mess and my aura was shot through with confusion and exhaustion aspects. Rafael hardly had to try to score a second point with a simple punch to my gut.

  My Eclipse nature was strangely subdued when I needed its aggressive strength the most. The dark urge lay quiet beneath my thoughts like a slumbering alligator. I shook my head and purged as much of the weakness and confusion as I could from my aura. Adding more jinsei to my core helped, but not enough.

  This was bad. If I didn’t recover, soon, I’d lose this duel.

  As we reset our positions and assumed our stances, my thoughts raced to find a solution to this problem. My darker nature was playing possum, for whatever reason, so I’d need something tricky. A thought occurred to me, and I clung to the sneaky tactic that had sprung into my thoughts.

  “Ready,” Professor Song called out once we’d assumed our fighting stances. “Fight!”

  Rafael wanted to finish the duel and claim his victory. He was cocky, and that made him careless.

  He walked toward me, no mind for defense, no techniques ready, the victory already secure in his mind.

  “You’re done,” he said. “The big man, brought low by my hand.”

  Rafael’s overconfidence gave me a tiny window of opportunity, and I took it. I pretended to stumble toward him, as if my legs could barely hold me up. The crowd gasped, sure I’d just lost the match.

  My opponent raised his hands above his head, laced his fingers together, and swung a hammer blow down at my back.

  Blue sparks exploded around the ring, and Rafael gasped and stumbled away from me. The front of his robes had a long, clean slice through them. A single drop of his blood ran down the fusion blade I’d summoned at the last possible second.

  “Point, Jace,” Professor Song said, clearly surprised by my maneuver. “Take a knee, Mr. Warin. I want to make sure Rafael is all right.”

  “No!” Rafael shouted. “I’m fine. He barely scratched me. Let’s finish this.”

  The maneuver had worked, but it had cost me dearly. I’d use the last of the pure jinsei still in my core to summon my blade, and there wasn’t time to refill. I was completely defenseless, now, and my body would only grudgingly and clumsily take orders from my mind. I wasn’t sure there was anything else I could do.

  Unless...

  I settled into a low, defensive crouch. I held my arms tight in front of my chest, hands raised on either side of my face to protect me from a finishing blow. The next point would decide everything, and I wouldn’t go down easily.

  Rafael adopted a neutral stance. He kept his right hand across his torso, protecting himself from a body blow. His left elbow was just above his right fist, that forearm vertical so his hand could protect his face on that side. It was a balanced posture, good for either attack or defense.

  Especially against an opponent he
knew was weakened.

  “Ready,” Professor Song said. “Fight!”

  I didn’t move. My legs were still wobbly, and without jinsei to strengthen them, I didn’t trust myself to take so much as another step. Instead, I cycled my breath through my core to calm myself and center my awareness. I’d struggled with this technique all year, and if it didn’t work now, I’d lose the fight.

  Rafael took his time approaching me. He was wary I’d cut him again and didn’t want to give me the advantage like he had the last time. He balanced on the balls of his feet, head weaving back and forth like a snake sizing up its prey. Jinsei gathered around his hands in dark, shadowy clouds. If his next punch landed, it was really going to hurt.

  My Eclipse nature roused itself at last. It wanted me to devour the jinsei and his core. It wanted blood and death. It hungered, and denying it in my weakened state was so very hard. It promised me an easy win if I let it off the leash. One moment was all it would take. Rafael would pay the ultimate price for his arrogance.

  It would be Singapore all over again.

  No. I’d rather lose than go through that again.

  There was another way. I felt the technique at the edge of my mind, ready to unlock. It was now or never.

  My serpents uncoiled from my shoulders, a roiling mass of beast, confusion, and exhaustion aspects. The tumbling mixture made a poor weapon or shield, and it was difficult to control. A precise strike was out of the question, and there was no way I’d be able to use the serpents to block Rafael’s jinsei-infused attack.

  That was all right. This technique wasn’t about precision.

  I took a deep breath, focused all my attention on what had to happen next, and waited for Rafael to strike.

  “This is over,” my opponent declared. “You’re done.”

  His fist shrieked toward me, a shadowy trail of dark jinsei behind it. It was a brutal, ferocious attack. If it touched me, I’d end up with broken bones at the very least. With no jinsei to defend myself, it might even land me in the emergency room.

  Professor Song seemed to realize that, too. He shouted wordlessly and rushed back into the ring. There was no way he’d reach us in time, but it was nice that he’d at least tried to save me from the crippling blow.

  My Eclipse nature strained to burst free of my control. It wanted to stop Rafael, no matter the cost. It didn’t care if it revealed itself, or how badly it would hurt my opponent. It wanted to survive.

  But I couldn’t do that. Killing Rafael over a duel of honor wasn’t just monstrous, it was dangerous. Someone would find out what I’d done, what I was, and they’d kill me for it.

  I pulled the serpents tight around me, like a cloak of churning jinsei.

  Rafael saw the shield form and his grin widened. He saw the wispy protection and knew it couldn’t stop his brutal assault. His fist hammered into the thin veil of the serpents.

  Just as I’d hoped.

  When Rafael’s aura passed into the thin layer of serpents that protected my chest, I sprang my trap. I let the tiniest piece of my Eclipse core’s hunger rip through the tenuous connection between us. A dull roar filled my head, and a seismic shift revealed a new level of martial mastery to me. The serpents were no longer separate from my core or aura; all three parts of my sacred arts were joined. The fusion strengthened every part of me, and I saw the end of this fight as clearly as I saw Rafael’s sneering face.

  Something in my core snapped, and a new technique burst into my thoughts: Thief’s Shield.

  For the briefest moment, my aura overlapped with Rafael’s. In that split second, my Eclipse core stripped the aspects from his aura and drained the jinsei from his core. My dark urge wanted to absorb all of the sacred energy from my foe, and it took a shameful effort for me to stop the flow of power. A spike of black pain speared my core when I killed the technique, and I groaned and nearly fell.

  Rafael went to one knee, eyes fluttering, chest hitching as he tried to catch his breath. The shock of losing nearly all of his jinsei and having his aura stripped of the aspects he’d leaned on to fuel his technique had stunned him senseless.

  Professor Song reached us just as I ended the duel with a tap of my boot’s toe against Rafael’s chest.

  “Final point, Jace!” the professor called as blue sparks shot into the air around the ring. Rafael toppled onto his side. “The duel is complete. Jace Warin is the winner.”

  The crowd roared, cheers and boos mingling together in a wave of emotion that tumbled over me. I raised my hands over my head, bolstered by the energy that poured out of the crowd. I reached down to offer Rafael a hand up.

  The woozy Disciple stared at me for a moment, shook his head, and tried to stand on his own.

  “I don’t need help,” he said.

  “Everyone needs help,” I said. “Take my hand.”

  Rafael glanced at my hand, then up to my eyes. Finally, he accepted my offer. I hauled him to his feet and raised his hand into the air with mine.

  I’d won the duel without killing my opponent. I wondered if Rafael knew his prize had been the greater one that day.

  The Hit

  TIME SEEMED TO RUSH by after my duel with Rafael. If I wasn’t in class or eating, I tried to sneak away to channel and focus on advancing my core. That almost never happened, though, because Rachel and Clem had both gotten very good at ambushing me and hauling me off for some one-on-one time.

  Clem insisted I practice my scrivening with her or help her with her martial arts. Rachel wanted to hike in the wilderness connected to the school or cook fancy desserts in the cottage’s kitchen.

  I definitely enjoyed my time with both of them, but it was all getting exhausting. While it was nice to be the center of attention, it was also nerve-racking. Anything I said to one of the girls would eventually get back to the other, making all our conversations fraught with potential peril for me.

  That’s why I was almost glad when the holiday break arrived. I could use the time alone to recharge my social batteries and prepare for the last half of the year.

  For the next month, I read the Manual of the New Moon, searched for Hahen, ate with the staff who’d stayed behind for the holiday, and generally enjoyed the peace and quiet. It was a good month that came to an abrupt halt when an unexpected booming echoed through the cottage on the last day of the break. Someone had come to see me.

  “Hey, stranger,” Hagar said when I opened the door. “Guess what time it is.”

  “Let me guess,” I said, closing the door behind her. “Another job?”

  “Could be,” Hagar agreed as we headed down the path to the cottage. “What I do know, though, is that the elders want to see you.”

  “Really?” I asked, suddenly excited. I’d finally get to ask them about my mom directly. “When?”

  “Now,” a familiar voice said from behind me.

  Elders Sanrin, Hirani, and Claude were all standing in my kitchen. They wore identical dark cloaks with deep hoods and seemed amused by my surprise.

  “How did you get in here?” First the transport, now the elders. It looked like my secret hideout wasn’t very secret or secure anymore.

  “This place is proof against most,” Sanrin said, “but not against the likes of us. How are you doing, Jace?”

  Sanrin and Hirani came into the sitting room to greet me, while Claude busied himself going through my cabinets and cupboards.

  “I’m all right,” I said. “Pretty good, actually. Though I wanted to talk to you about—”

  “I’m making coffee,” Claude called from the kitchen. “How do you all take it?”

  “Black,” Hagar called.

  “A spot of cream,” Sanrin said.

  “None for me,” Hirani called, “stuff makes me jittery.”

  “Black, too,” I called. “Anyway, what I was saying was—”

  “We have a very important job for you, Jace.” Hirani took my hands. The cloak hid her hair, but it couldn’t conceal the stunning beauty of her face. Her eyes fla
shed even in shadow, and the touch of her fingers against mine made my breath catch in my throat. “It is not, however, a very pleasant one.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “We’ve discovered how the attacks are coordinated,” Sanrin said with a frown. “The heretics have an informant inside the Empyreal security apparatus. We need you to silence him.”

  I felt sick to my stomach. They wanted me to assassinate another Empyreal?

  “Don’t misunderstand us,” Hirani said quickly. “We don’t want him liquidated. He is still useful to us, and will be even more useful if you can convince him that working as our agent will be much safer and healthier than working for the heretics. We’d like you to deliver that message to him. Forcefully.”

  And that was how I found myself sitting in a very expensive apartment, shrouded in a creepy-looking black cloak that masked my face in a veil of shadows. The elders had assured me that this would prevent anyone from physically identifying me, and my veiled core would protect me spiritually. I had no connection to Hagar this time because my handler was concerned that surveillance gear near the target’s location would intercept it.

  For the first time, I was all alone on a mission.

  My target was a middle-aged desk jockey named Albert Hughes. The elders had teleported me across the world to his apartment in the Paris overcity, and I’d been waiting there for him to return ever since. Albert must’ve been a workaholic, because it was almost eight o’clock in the evening when I heard his key in the door’s lock. The three hours I’d spent waiting for him hadn’t improved my mood.

  I waited for the portly man to close and lock his door behind him, then strode out of the shadows to greet him.

  “Mr. Hughes?” I asked.

  The poor guy almost bolted out of his skin. He spun to face me and slammed his back against the door. The chain rattled next to his head, and his eyes shot left and right like a mouse trying to escape from a hawk.