Hollow Core

by Gage Lee

  There wasn’t much I could say to that that wouldn’t irritate Hahen further. Instead of running my mouth, I crossed the room and took my seat across the table from him. The workspace was in disarray, and I quickly straightened the supplies and materials so we could begin without further delay.

  “Almost three months you have worked here,” Hahen said, “and your core is no stronger now than it was before. You have learned to separate pure jinsei from pollutants, and I will admit you are quite adept at that, but it is time for you to begin more advanced techniques.”

  Though I wasn’t sure my hollow core was up to the task of anything more advanced than stripping polluted aspects, I nodded to Hahen. He didn’t know about my disability and must’ve thought I was just a slacker who had to be pushed to work.

  I hoped I was ready for whatever he had in mind

  “Tonight, I will teach you to harness aspects from corrupted jinsei and store them for your later use.” Hahen gestured toward the corrupt jinsei between us. It was so polluted with fire aspect that streaks of sluggish orange light flowed through it like magma. “You must hold the aspects within your core and then expel them into a container when the rest of the jinsei has been purified.”

  That seemed dangerous. My weak core could only hang onto pure jinsei for a few seconds, and aspects leaked out of it so quickly I scarcely noticed them before they were gone. Trying to contain a fire aspect in such a flawed vessel would be like juggling knives with one hand tied behind my back. At best, I’d fail, and at worst I’d end up badly injured.

  Hahen shoved the mask toward me. He’d already connected the segmented copper tubes to the full and empty vessels, giving me no time to delay before I got started.

  “Begin,” he commanded.

  It took me a moment to push back the rising tide of panic and get my circular breathing technique under control, but soon enough the laboratory’s foul air flowed through my body. I’d almost gotten use to Hahen’s rank odor, but that just allowed my sense of smell to pick out even more hideous aromas. The laboratory was filled with chemicals that stung my nostrils, and the sheer number of toxic aspects generated by the alchemical processes was enough to nearly choke me.

  And that was all before I put on the mask, which immediately flooded my lungs with jinsei that reeked of brimstone.

  I was surprised by the fire aspect’s lack of heat. There was power there, a raw and chaotic energy that beat against the walls of my core, but it didn’t burn. The aspect also didn’t stay inside me for long, as my flawed core allowed it to slip free and ooze from my pores in beads of oily sweat.

  “No, no, no!” Hahen shouted. “Hold the fire within you. The jinsei is the most valuable when it is cleansed, true, but the aspects are also useful. We can power scrivenings with them, bind them into weapons and armor, and blend them into pills and serums through the sacred alchemical arts. Do not waste any more of them.”

  There was no point in complaining about how hard this was to Hahen. He was only concerned with my results, not my hollow core. There had to be another way for me to succeed at this, despite my flaw.

  Aspects would naturally stick to my aura as I cleansed the jinsei, but my natural breath cycling would purge them almost as quickly as I trapped them. If I could direct the sacred energy away from the aspects in my aura, though, maybe I could hang onto the impurities long enough to harvest them.

  My first attempt was a miserable failure. I held the sparks of fire aspect, but the jinsei also became trapped in my aura. When I released the sacred energy, it carried the corruption out of my aura and the fire aspects burned off in stinking brimstone clouds.

  “What are you even doing?” Hahen barked. “Keep the aspects in your core, Mr. Warin. Listen to my words. You are not wise or clever enough to master advanced techniques without my guidance.”

  Hahen was right about my skill level, or lack of one, but my only choice was to ignore his advice and wing it. His instructions assumed a solid, functioning core, which was something I didn’t have. I had to figure out a way to get through this on my own.

  For my next trick, I pulled a deep breath into my lungs. A surge of jinsei washed into me, along with clotted streams of fire aspect. Some corruption escaped through the gaps in my spirit, but I pulled more and more tainted jinsei into me. The holes in my core weren’t large enough to let all the aspects escape at once, and a few of them rattled around inside me.

  This time, there was heat with the fire. It was like breathing in raw capsaicin, and I nearly lost control of it. I choked and lost a few more specks of fire energy, but I still had enough trapped inside my draining core to work with.

  Maybe.

  My mother had taught me to direct flows of jinsei through my body during our early training sessions. My hollow core prevented me from harnessing much of what entered it through my circular breathing technique, but I’d learned to grab enough energy to strengthen myself temporarily or help an injury heal faster. Compared to a true Empyreal, my jinsei channels were weak and underdeveloped, but they were still there.

  Before the rest of the flame aspect could escape from me, I coaxed it into the channels of my left arm. The process was similar to what I’d learned from handling jinsei, but there were some critical differences. The aspect was thick and sluggish, like cold maple syrup. And, unlike jinsei, the fire aspect wasn’t neutral. It had a fierce, primitive personality that rebelled at being told what to do and how to do it.

  “Good, good,” Hahen said. “I see you’ve harnessed some of the aspects.”

  Unfortunately, the flame corruption I’d saved wasn’t compatible with my jinsei channels. The angry aspect twisted and writhed through my left arm, building up heat and pain with every passing second. The fire aspect wanted out, and it wanted out now.

  I’d been hurt before, but nothing like this. I wrestled with the aspect even as I forced more of it into my crowded jinsei channels. I wouldn’t be defeated by such a simple task, and I wouldn’t reveal my weakness to Hahen. The only way through this pain was sheer, bullheaded stubbornness. If I had to endure a fiery agony until every last one of the aspects had been cleansed from the tainted jinsei, then so be it.

  “Mr. Warin?” Hahen asked in an uncertain tone. “What have you done?”

  The mask made it impossible for me to communicate with the beast spirit, though I’m not sure I would’ve been able to speak even if I didn’t have tubes shoved up my nose and into my mouth. It took all my concentration to maintain my focus and hang onto my circular breathing technique. My thoughts were a jumble of chaos and pain, and it was only raw willpower that prevented me from releasing the fire aspect I’d captured.

  Waves of heat distortion rose from my left arm. I smelled smoke, the sweet scent of slow roasted pork, and the hot metal perfume of an open flame. I ignored it all and pumped more flame energy into the channels within my flesh. There wasn’t much of the tainted jinsei still in the vessel. If I could hold on for a few more minutes, I’d be finished.

  But it was so very hot, and I was so tired.

  “No, this is all wrong!” Hahen ripped the mask away from my face and spilled tainted jinsei across the table. He clasped my cheeks in his scabbed hands, then jerked them away as if he’d touched a hot stove. “You stored the aspects in your channels rather than your core? You’ve lost your mind, boy.”

  “Help,” I begged. I was burning from the inside out. My jinsei channels felt like they were filled with magma.

  “You must expel the heat,” Hahen commanded. “Reverse the flow into your core and let it bleed away.”

  The rat spirit’s orders made perfect sense, but I couldn’t follow them. It was easy enough to guide the aspects away from my core, because it was a flawed vessel that naturally let anything within it leak out. But that same flaw made it impossible to reverse the flow from my channels. Try as I might, there was no way to force the fire aspect to do anything other than follow its basic instinct to burn.

  Unfortunately, what it burned wa
s me.

  Hahen studied me with a pained expression on his face.

  “There is something wrong with you, boy,” the rat spirit murmured. “Something terrible. I cannot heal your true wound, but I will not let you die. Tycho would destroy me if I let his prize escape his grasp.”

  The beast grabbed my wounded hand and shoved it into his mouth. Before I could pull away, Hahen’s sharp front teeth sliced through the back of my hand like a pair of razor blades. Blood bubbled out of my flesh and the fire aspect came with it.

  But not enough.

  “If you want to live, you must listen to me.” Hahen’s face was so close to mine I saw droplets of my own scorched blood on his muzzle and whiskers. “Your core is weak, and there is no time to strengthen it before you die. You will have to steal what you need to survive. Concentrate on my aura, see the truth of what I am. Hurry!”

  The fire aspect had burned every last hair off my left arm and raised angry red welts from my flesh. My brain stewed in its own juices, and if my internal temperature rose much higher, I’d have a stroke, or worse. It was a titanic struggle to focus on anything other than the pain that threatened to consume me, and I tried and failed three times before I was able to see Hahen’s aura.

  Unlike his physical form, the creature’s spirit was clean and clear. He was the very epitome of a rat, a proud and hearty survivor that was both industrious and clever. His aura’s eyes were clear and bright, and its pink tail thrashed back and forth with surprising vigor.

  “Good, good.” Hahen held onto my face and pressed his forehead against mine. “Now, reach out and find all the auras like mine that you can. Hurry!”

  My brain was nearly poached. My temperature climbed ever higher and wet blisters had formed across the knuckles on my left hand. This seemed like a pointless exercise, and I struggled to tear my face away from Hahen. How would thinking about rats help me? I needed water. Lots of water. Or ice. An ice bath, maybe.

  “Stop struggling,” the rat spirit barked. “You must not die.”

  That word snapped my attention into laser-sharp focus. If I didn’t listen to Hahen, I was dead. If he thought this was my best chance of survival, I couldn’t afford to ignore him.

  I closed my eyes and let my awareness drift and spread out above me. My aura awareness wasn’t as sharp as Hahen’s, but I had enough skill to pick out fuzzy impressions of the jinsei that surrounded everything in the world. The laboratory equipment was surrounded by an aura polluted with toxic aspects that twitched and jittered in place like nervous children. The wooden tables had older, clearer auras, though even they were burdened with the natural corruption that came with age. The gas in the lines connected to the worktable burners buzzed with poison aspects that struggled to become fire aspects. The longer I concentrated, the further my awareness extended, but the pain in my arm told me I didn’t have much time left.

  Finally, I found what I was looking for. Twitching whiskers. Pointed ears, sensitive and sharp. Long, pink tails. Sleek and oily fur. A keen curiosity for strange smells and unusual tastes. Teeth so sharp and strong they could gnaw through solid concrete.

  My breath caught in my throat. The School had always looked so clean and pristine, but the hidden spaces between the walls, floors, and ceilings belonged to the rats.

  “I see them,” I gasped.

  “Beast cores are simple things, little more than raw instinct and primal needs,” Hahen explained. “Given enough time they can become quite complex, as is mine, but they are basic and malleable in the wild. Reach out to one. Then two. Touch as many as you can hold in your thoughts at the same time. And do it quickly, your arm smells like a smoked brisket.”

  When I concentrated on the first rat, it twitched its whiskers and froze in place as if a hawk’s shadow had passed over it. The second rodent stood on its hind legs, curious at my attention. The third rat bristled at the intrusion but didn’t run or fight.

  I reached for a fourth rat, and my first connection wavered. Three was apparently my limit.

  “Very good.” Hahen seemed surprised by my success. “You must never tell anyone what I am about to teach you. Your professors would have me skinned alive if they knew I’d taught a new foundation technique. This is your first step on the path of the Pauper’s Dagger. This style was developed for the weakest among the Empyreals. Unfortunately, your sad excuse for a core puts you firmly in that group. Continue your breathing but imagine that you are drawing breath in through the snouts of the rats.”

  That seemed like a crazy idea, but my soaring internal temperature made it difficult to tell good thoughts from bad. The edges of my vision crawled with worm-like hallucinations, and the smell of my roasted flesh made my stomach ache with hunger.

  I really shouldn’t have skipped dinner.

  My mental image of the rats grew more solid with every cycle of my circular breathing technique. Their smell filled my nostrils. Their soft fur brushed against my skin. Their pointed noses were wet and curious.

  New channels snapped into place between my hollow core and the rodents’ hardy spirits with a startling crack that shook my aura. For a split second, I didn’t feel the ache at the center of my being, but the warm and healthy glow of the beast cores connected to me.

  My circular breathing technique carried jinsei through the newly formed channels into each rat’s core. They squirmed when the unfamiliar sensation of fire aspect entered their bodies. The beast cores adapted to the tainted essences with surprising speed, and motes of sparkling fire filtered into their auras.

  “Yes,” Hahen whispered. “Congratulations, you have learned the Borrowed Core technique. Now, if you want to live to enjoy your new technique, push the fire aspects out of your channels and into the cores of your new friends.”

  My agonized flesh begged me to let every last fire aspect gush out of me and into the rats, but I let only a trickle escape from me. My new friends were so small I worried they wouldn’t be able to hold all the corruption I’d packed into my abused system. I didn’t know what would happen if their cores overflowed, but I imagined it would be pretty ugly.

  The rodents squealed with discomfort when their cores reached their limits, and I held back the rest of the fire aspects still trapped in my arm. Wisps of smoke rose from my forearm and sparks danced on the end of my fingertips. The flame energy wanted out, and it didn’t care how badly it damaged me to make its escape.

  “You must rid yourself of this taint,” Hahen pleaded. “You don’t have much time left before the fire burns your arm to charcoal.”

  It would’ve been easy to unleash the last of the power inside me and let it take its anger out on the rats.

  But there was no honor in that path. I was the one who’d overstepped my bounds. Killing anything, even a lowly rat, for my mistake would be one more stain on my family’s badly tarnished honor. I’d worked so hard to reach the academy and repair the honor my father had nearly destroyed. I couldn’t follow a dishonorable path now.

  A bolt of pain zigzagged up my arm. A fist of agony clenched around my chest. The fire aspects had overwhelmed my system. It wouldn’t be much longer, seconds, maybe, until my heart failed and my brain cooked down to a gray jelly.

  The rats gasped in unison as their primitive cores processed the jinsei I’d fed to them. They tried to expel the aggressive power, but I held the tainted energy within their cores. I hadn’t gone through all this pain and suffering to let the aspects escape from me. After a few moments, the rodents relaxed and didn’t show any side effects from the power I’d locked inside them. I let out a sigh of relief.

  With a pained grunt, I released my hold on the last of the incendiary power still trapped in my arm. The rats twitched and hunkered down against the furious energy, but their cores held it with room to spare. My tiny friends seemed confused by the experience, but none the worse for wear.

  The agony in my arm subsided, though the burns I’d already suffered gave me more than enough pain to deal with. My circular breathing technique
helped some, but even the steady flow of purified jinsei I pushed into the damaged channels in my arm couldn’t overcome the damage the fire aspects had inflicted.

  “What a mess.” Hahen’s attention settled on my aura as he examined my wounds. “Healing this may be beyond even my abilities. And you lost the fire aspects, too? This is terrible, Mr. Warin.”

  “I didn’t lose anything,” I hissed through gritted teeth. The motes of fire still churned in the cores of the rats, who didn’t seem bothered by them in the slightest.

  “That’s some good news, at least,” the rat spirit grumbled. “The next step is to expel them from your core and into the empty containment vessel.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Breathe them out, just like you breathed them in.” Hahen pushed the mask back into place over my face. The cold jade sealed in place with a hungry hiss, and the foul stink of corrupted jinsei assaulted me.

  My circular breathing technique was so ingrained in me that it kicked in by pure reflex the instant the mask closed over my face. The fouled energy flowed into my nostrils and on to the rat cores, while the fire energy the rodents held inside them came to me as they exhaled. It was challenging to manage the flow of jinsei into and the energetic aspects out of the rats, but it was a far simpler process than learning my specialized breathing technique had been.

  One fire aspect after another spurted from my nostril, thick as flu mucus, and slid down the tube to the empty vessel in front of me. The glowing specks bounced around inside the crystal vessel like popping corn in a microwave. Sparks jumped off the tiny red orbs and rattled against the container’s sides in a dazzling miniature fireworks display.

  I held the connection to the rat cores for another hour as I finished processing the last of the tainted jinsei in the vessel attached to my mask. The rats seemed to almost enjoy the process by the time I’d completed my task, and I thanked them for their help before I released our connection.