Hollow Core

by Gage Lee

  “Oh, wow,” Clem said between bites. “You’re first.”

  I glanced down at my full plate, and my stomach groaned in protest at the realization that I wasn’t going to get to eat any of it.

  “Here.” I stood and faced the person who’d called to me. Their only response was to crook a finger in my direction. They turned and headed back the way they’d come without so much as a glance back to make sure I was following.

  I chased the red robe through the hall, past countless plates loaded with agonizingly delicious food. The walk was a constant assault of delicious smells and savory sights that left me hungry and hollow.

  My guide left the dining area and headed toward the stairs at the end of the entryway. We wound our way up the steps past the watchful eyes of the upperclassmen and then went three floors higher. At the fifth-floor landing, the robe exited the staircase and led me down a narrow passage to a strangely shaped door. The red-lacquered barrier’s top and bottom were both narrow, and the sides angled out and then back in like a coffin.

  “Enter, please,” the sexless voice demanded. A black-clad hand emerged from the sleeves of the red robe and pulled the door open.

  The room past the door was larger than a coffin, but not by much. Its round walls were painted a deep, glossy black that reflected distorted mirror images of me in every direction I looked. The floor was also black but was faintly translucent like frosted glass. I peered up above me, but there was no ceiling as far as I could see.

  “What do I—” The door slammed in my face before I could finish asking the question.

  A long, sticky thread dropped from the darkness above me and landed on my cheek with a moist splat. It stuck there for just a moment, then slid away and dangled in front of me like the world’s longest strand of spaghetti.

  “Do not hide,” a creaky mechanical-sounding voice called from above me.

  “I’m not!” I exclaimed. “I’m just standing here.”

  Something moved in the darkness where the ceiling should have been, and I heard the rattle of old, un-lubricated gears clashing. It was the grinding, crunching sound of a machine about to fail, a noise I’d heard all too often in the labor camp.

  Another thread dropped down toward my upturned face, and I flinched when it struck my forehead. I didn’t dare move as the strand coiled on my face, and I felt something rooting around in my core. No, not something.

  Someone.

  Their attention was intense and unyielding, like a cat digging for a mouse in a garbage heap. It probed at the edges of my core, and a spike of panic that the searcher would find my hollow core caused me to jerk away from the search.

  The thread lost its purchase on my head and slipped down my face to join its long pasta twin.

  “Your core has not even reached the foundation level of training, and yet the veil that hides its true nature is clearly a master’s work,” the voice called out with disgust. “Stop hiding yourself, so I may assay your value to the clans.”

  “I’m not doing anything!” I tried to grab one of the threads and it slipped through my fingers like a bar of soap in the shower. I tried again and again with the same results each time.

  “I must see your core,” the voice creaked. Whatever it was moved closer, and I caught a glint of worn, greasy metal above me. “You must be judged.”

  “Tell me what I need to do!” After coming all this way, I didn’t want to give Grayson a single excuse to banish me from the School. “What do you need to know?”

  “Everything,” it said as if that were the most obvious answer in the world.

  Another thread fell on my shoulder and immediately bounced off my work clothes. More threads came, a blizzard of sticky strands that each clung to me for a moment before falling away. Soon, I found myself standing in a room clogged with hair-fine threads.

  “You are no mere initiate,” the voice clanked. Every syllable sounded like a piston scraping along the inside of a pitted cylinder. The sound grew closer and closer, until I was sure the thing had to be only inches away from me.

  “The strands of fate will not stick to your pattern,” it mused, then unleashed a rattling wheeze of acrid wind into my face.

  The threads parted without warning, and a pair of scrivened goggles appeared inches from my eyes. The eyewear was bolted to a metal dome, which in turn was fastened to the lower half of a woman’s head. Her jaw hung slightly open below the gleaming silver, and I could see springs and levers moving at the back of her throat.

  “What do you want?” I shouted in surprise.

  “The hard way it is, then,” she choked out around a grinding rasp of clashing gears. “The weaver must see.”

  I tried to back away from her, but there was nowhere for me to go. My shoulders slammed into the polished wall behind me, and the metal monstrosity pinned me there with a pair of metal limbs tipped by barbed pincers. A fistful of threads twitched next to my face, then coiled like striking serpents and invaded my nose and mouth.

  The physical intrusion was painful and unpleasant, but it was nothing compared to the violation of my innermost being. A spectral hand groped at my hollow core, but its spiritual fingernails skidded off its impossibly smooth surface without finding a purchase. The invasive threads slithered out of my body and hung limp and lifeless around me once again.

  “I do not know,” the woman gasped, and a tiny gear popped loose from her throat and bounced off the tip of her tongue. “Slick and smooth and empty. Never have I seen such a thing inside a child.”

  “Put me in the Resplendent Suns,” I begged. “They’ll know what to do with me.”

  “You seek honor, then.” The woman nodded vigorously, and threads bounced around us like a curtain of wriggling snakes. “Yet how could you find honor without a solid core to guide you? No, no, you are no Sun.”

  “That’s not fair!” I tried to push the threads away from me, but they slithered through my fingers and fell back into place. “You already said you don’t know what I am.”

  “Tricky.” The metal dome twisted left, then right, each movement accompanied by muffled ratcheting. “Thunder’s Child?”

  Before I could answer, she coughed out another trickle of tiny gears and shook her head.

  “Out, out!” she shouted. “You disturb the weaving of my tapestry. The headmaster must decide.”

  “No,” I begged. “Please. You have to decide. The headmaster doesn’t even want me here.”

  “Neither does Mama Weaver,” she growled. Threads slapped against my arms and chest, their tips jabbing at my face. I threw my arms up to defend myself and stepped back—through the wall.

  “Oh, my,” Grayson said. “What have you done now, Mr. Warin?”

  I’d left the assay chamber and now stood in a short hallway, a door on either side. Grayson was at the far end of the hallway, perched on an oversized, ornate chair that might as well have been a throne. I glanced over my shoulder at the direction I’d come from, but there was only a frameless mirror affixed directly to the wall behind me.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said. “That thing, whatever it is, didn’t know what to do with me, so it chased me off.”

  “I see.” Grayson stroked the waxed wedge of his beard with the fingers of his left hand as he considered me. His eyes moved up and down my body like he was trying to decide which part of me to eat first. “First you damage the School’s champion with some trick of your core. And now Mama Weaver can’t decide which clan to assign you? There is something wrong with you, boy.”

  I wanted to shout that I was fine, he was the one with the problem. But I didn’t want to antagonize the headmaster, at least not until after he’d assigned me a clan. Instead, I nodded in agreement.

  “There’s always been something,” I said. “Maybe I inherited it from my father.”

  Grayson leaned forward and peered at me as if I were some sort of unusual and smelly creature.

  “You appear to have inherited many things from your father,” the headmaster
said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this is one of them. Perhaps if your mother had trained you properly, your core wouldn’t be so pathetic. You hardly have any aura, and I can see you hold no jinsei within you. You’ll only be a liability to whichever clan is unfortunate enough to receive you.”

  My heart sank. Grayson was one of the Resplendent Suns. If he thought I would drag his clan down, he’d never assign me to join them.

  “I should give you to the Disciples of Jade Flame,” he mused. “This is all Tycho’s fault, anyway. But something tells me that would be playing into his hands, somehow. No, I won’t assign you to Reyes’s people.”

  Grayson said nothing for the space of several heartbeats, and I was afraid to breathe, much less try to influence my fate. I knew that anything I said to the headmaster would get turned against me and only make things worse. All I could do was wait and hope.

  “Very well.” A smile spread across Grayson’s lips, and I knew I was in deep trouble. “I’ll make this easy. There’s only one clan that has no use for honor, one group who squanders their jinsei in useless pursuits while avoiding the more sacred arts. You’re a Shadow Phoenix, Mr. Warin. For the moment.”

  He flicked his fingers in my direction, and my work clothes unraveled into a cloud of loose threads around me. The raw materials wove themselves into a tight-fitting black robe that hugged my throat so closely I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to swallow. The sleeves came down to just past my wrists, and the hem flowed around my feet like a puddle of black ink.

  The robes were nicer than any clothes I’d ever worn and fit me like a glove. But the slick black material also felt like a stain on my honor. From what Clem had told me, the Shadow Phoenix clan was held in low regard by other Empyreals. How would I ever restore my family’s honor when I was shackled to a group who ignored the entire concept?

  I wanted to scream, tear the robe off, and demand that the headmaster choose again.

  But the smug smile on Grayson’s face told me that no amount of complaints would change things in the slightest. The best I could do was put a brave face on this horrible turn of events and get on with the business of becoming the greatest jinsei artist possible. If I could heal my core and prove my worth, then maybe I could convince another clan to take me on.

  “Thank you,” I choked out. “I am sure your decision is the wisest one.”

  “Oh, it is,” Grayson said. “I’m watching you, Mr. Warin. You’re here as a guest of the Disciples, so I can’t expel you without cause. But I will find a cause, boy. And when I do, you are finished.”

  The hall faded away with the echoes of Grayson’s words, leaving me surrounded by swirling gray fog.

  The Job

  WAITING FOR SOMEONE to come rescue me seemed like a losing plan, so I picked a direction and walked through the fog. Fortunately, the floor was straight and smooth, and nothing unseen tripped me. After a few minutes of walking, the fog cleared to reveal a wide hall paneled with dark wood. Tapestries lined the hallway, each one featuring an enormous black bird surrounded by other creatures or humans, but what caught my eye was the hunched creature on the floor ahead of me.

  Its black-scaled body was curled over something, and its long tail whipped the floor behind it with aggressive swipes. Its attention was absorbed by whatever it held beneath its long claws.

  “Hey, little buddy,” I called, not wanting to surprise the creature. I doubted the staff would let anything dangerous roam the halls, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

  The creature jumped straight into the air, spun twice at the height of it leap, and landed on all fours facing me. Bloody shreds of meat dangled from its fanged jaws, and bits and pieces of its meal had scattered in every direction when it jumped.

  “You trying to give me a heart attack?” Now that the thing was looking at me, it was obvious what it was: a cat-sized dragon. It even had a pair of stubby wings that jutted from its front shoulders. “Didn’t your mother teach you not to sneak up on a feasting dragon?”

  “My apologies,” I said, doing my best to hide my surprise at the dragon’s speech. “I’m a new student here, and I’m not sure where I’m supposed to be.”

  “You’re definitely not supposed to be here,” the dragon said. “You should be with the other students, either waiting to be assayed or getting your class assignments.”

  “I’ve already been measured.” I gestured at my uncomfortable robes. “I was assigned to the Shadow Phoenix clan. And I’m here because this is where the headmaster left me.”

  The tiny dragon flapped its improbably small wings and flew toward me with all the grace of a drunken bumblebee. Its tail dragged on the carpet behind it like a rudder trying to hold a listing ship on course.

  “I’m Niddhogg.” The dragon extended a talon when it reached me. Careful to avoid the claws, I gripped the dragon’s fingers and gave them a firm shake. “I’m the guardian of the Shadow Phoenix tower. That’s where you are, if you haven’t already guessed that much. I don’t know why the headmaster left you here, but let’s see if we can get you sorted before you miss a class.”

  “I would be honored if you were to direct me where I need to be.” I still couldn’t believe I was talking to an actual dragon and struggled to maintain my manners and composure as it eyeballed me suspiciously.

  “I’d be honored if you’d get out of my face,” the dragon grumbled as it lurched past me. It led me down the hallway, through a maze of twisty passages all alike, and down a staircase that spiraled around a wide atrium. The building seemed to obey no logical architectural design, and its passageways defied laws of physics. Hallways shifted and merged even as we walked through them, and more than once we started descending a staircase only to end up on a floor above where we’d started. I had no idea how I’d ever find my way around this place.

  “How do you know where you’re going?” I asked the dragon.

  “Use your noggin.” Niddhogg turned to look at me and flew backwards a few paces, tapping the side of its long skull with one curved talon. “You have to think about where you want to be before you can get there.”

  “It’s magic?” I asked.

  “It’s part of the jinsei arts,” the dragon corrected me. “There hasn’t been real magic in the world for generations. We can still push energy around, but the true artistry, creating something from nothing, that magic is gone. Maybe forever.”

  That line of questioning seemed to depress Niddhogg, so I quickly switched to a different topic.

  “How long have you been the guardian here?” We passed through a narrow hallway that had dozens of small cages affixed to its ceiling. Tiny lights of all different colors rattled around inside the containers and made high-pitched whining noises as we passed beneath them.

  “Too long,” Niddhogg replied. “You know what it’s like keeping an eye on human brats century after century? Exhausting.”

  “I would imagine. Thank you for your patience and indulgence.” I sketched a bow to the dragon, and it snorted and flew off ahead of me.

  “You must’ve been the first to be assayed,” Niddhogg said. “Who’d you piss off to end up in the Shadow Phoenixes?”

  “The headmaster,” I admitted. If I couldn’t trust the guardian of my own clan with at least some of my secrets, who could I trust?

  “Figures.” Niddhogg grunted. “They only send us the rejects.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Because the system’s rigged, kid,” Niddhogg explained. He suddenly switched direction and flew toward a door on the far side of the room we’d entered. “Over here, almost forgot where we were going. Anyway, yeah, we’re kind of the new kids on the block, and the other clans don’t want to play nice with us. If they starve the Shadow Phoenixes for students, we’ll never grow any larger or more powerful, and that’s just the way those assholes in the Resplendent Suns like it.”

  “Hardly seems fair,” I said. “Or honorable.”

  “You know how they say we don’t care about honor?�
�� Niddhogg landed on my shoulder, and his tail curled around my back and under my left arm. He weighed more than I’d expected from the look of him, and the sudden weight on my shoulder almost tipped me over. “That’s because we see the world how it really is. It’s easy to be honorable and just when you’re on top of the pile with everyone else under your feet. It’s a lot harder when you’re on the bottom of the heap getting stomped.”

  That was certainly true. Everyone was taught, from a very early age, that honor and duty were the cornerstones of our society. If everyone behaved as they were expected to, and no one caused any trouble, then the Empyreals were free to protect us and our lives would go on as they always had. It was only when troublemakers rocked the boat that the Empyreal leaders had to divert their attention to squashing rebellion and hungry spirits found their way into our world and raised havoc.

  But honor and duty didn’t fill your stomach, and without money or station sometimes the moral lines got a little fuzzy and out of focus.

  “Through there.” Niddhogg pointed at a white doorway with the barbed tip of his tail, and I followed his directions.

  We emerged from a quiet hallway into the School’s main entryway. Any hopes I’d had of catching breakfast were dashed when I saw that someone had cleared away the buffet. All that remained in the entryway was a crowd of students impatiently waiting their turn to be assayed. I searched in vain for Clem or her friends, but couldn’t find them anywhere.

  “My dear Niddhogg.” Tycho’s voice cut through the chatter of the students. The Jade Flame elder glided across the floor with an effortless grace to greet us before we could wander into the crowd. “Thank you for bringing Mr. Warin to me. I’ve been looking for him all morning.”

  “Sure,” the dragon said. “It has been my honor to escort this fine initiate. I release him into your care.