Hollow Core

by Gage Lee

  The creatures descended on the cheese in a surprisingly orderly frenzy. They pulled the five wedges into ragged halves, and each of my minions had their very own nugget of dairy goodness to devour. While they gorged, I meditated, cycled my breathing, and pushed my technique to bond with an eleventh wee beasty.

  A tendril of jinsei joined my core to a rat hidden in the shadow of a flowering bush, and I fed more sacred energy into it to complete the binding. Unfortunately, the more energy I fed into the connection, the faster it unraveled. The rat, frightened by my botched attempt, bolted out of the courtyard in search of a safe place to hide from the creep who’d poked its core.

  My connection to the first ten rodents disintegrated in the same instant. The creatures, who’d been mild mannered, suddenly devolved into a mass of frenzied beasts. They went after one another with fang and claw and soon scattered in every direction with their prizes clutched in their jaws.

  “Well,” I muttered. My core ached from the exercise and it hurt to breathe. “That didn’t go so well.”

  I still felt like I’d been punched in the gut an hour later, but I persisted in my efforts to reach new steps on my path. Ten rats had been enough for me to survive a fight with an upperclassman. I needed more, a lot more, to face multiple opponents or, heaven forbid, one of the professors.

  And if Tycho or Grayson decided to snuff out my life, I’d need a legion of rodents to survive even a single blow.

  I had seven days, and I planned to put every one of them to use.

  What I didn’t plan on was for the wardens to turn the core strengthening exercises into mini-challenges designed to shove me down in the rankings.

  “Today’s challenge,” Rafael said during the morning exercise of our first real day of vacation, “is to fill your aura with purified jinsei.”

  My hollow core made that an impossible task, and even the Borrowed Core technique of the Pauper’s Dagger path wouldn’t garner me any pure jinsei. The only power I could draw from the rodents was tainted with beast aspects that would get snared in my aura along with whatever jinsei I harvested from them. If I tried to purify that jinsei, most of it would get flushed out of my hollow core.

  Fortunately, I’d come prepared. I had three jinsei serums and five concentrated jinsei pills tucked away in the belt of my robe. It would be hard to fill my aura with purified jinsei, but if I overloaded my core fast enough, I might be able to do it. It wouldn’t be efficient, and I’d waste a whole lot of jinsei in the process, but this was exactly why I’d stolen the purified jinsei from the laboratory. I figured I’d need to eat three of the pills to have enough sacred energy. With my core overloaded, it wouldn’t take more than a few seconds to flood my aura with the excess.

  On the other hand, I didn’t want to finish the challenge too quickly. There was no point in drawing more angry attention by winning—I just couldn’t lose this one.

  “You might as well give up,” Rafael sneered as he examined my aura. He’d been eyeballing all of the initiates in the courtyard to make sure none of us had gotten a head start on the others, and I was the last to earn his scrutiny. “Contests will keep coming, the challenges will only get harder. I don’t know how someone with a core as weak as yours has pulled through so far, but your luck is going to run out. By the time the winter break is over, you’ll be broken.”

  “I hope you are mistaken, honored Warden,” I said with a bland smile plastered across my features. There was nothing to gain by antagonizing Rafael. With no professors around for the rest of the week, that would just be asking for him to try to kill me again.

  “Begin,” Rafael snapped as he turned away from me.

  The other students immediately cycled their breathing. Jinsei gathered in their cores so easily I couldn’t help but feel jealous. If I could do that, I’d be unstoppable.

  The one advantage I had in this challenge was the aspect pollution in the courtyard. Nature and anger aspects flittered through the air, and that was enough to slow the other initiates down. Their faces were screwed up with the effort of cleansing the jinsei in their cores before it reached their aura.

  Rafael watched them with a smug smirk. As an upperclassman, he probably could’ve completed this challenge in a handful of breaths. While he hated me in particular, he had no love for the rest of the other students beneath him, either. He was glad to see the initiates struggle, and happy when several of them gasped and lost the rhythm of their cycled breathing.

  While the warden was distracted by his ugly glee, I fished three pills from the small pocket I’d fashioned in my belt. They were heavy with potential, and the dark skins of their shells were warm to the touch. I clutched them in my left hand and waited for my chance.

  “I have it!” Abi cried from across the courtyard. His aura flared around him in a pure white corona.

  Rafael took his time walking across the courtyard, and Abi struggled to hold so much jinsei in his aura. The upperclassman waited until beads of sweat rolled down Abi’s dark face before he nodded his head.

  “We have our first success,” he said with a feigned yawn. “It looks like our second, third, and fourth, as well.”

  Rafael nodded to each of the students who had completed the challenge. He stared at me and my empty aura, and I smiled back. Let him think I was weak. Let him think I was about to fail. His disappointment would be reward enough.

  A Disciple of Jade Flame cried out as she lost control of her aura. Jinsei gushed toward the sky in an out-of-control torrent that lit up the courtyard with a prismatic spray of light.

  With everyone distracted, I quickly consumed the pills in my hand. The stolen jinsei flooded into me in a cleansing wave. Most of the sacred energy sloshed quickly through the gap in my hollow core, but there was still enough left behind for me to manipulate. With an exaggerated groan, I pushed the jinsei into my aura.

  “Here,” I called out through gritted teeth. The jinsei had filled my aura completely, and it was hard to even think, much less speak, while it swirled around me. The sacred energy had left my core feeling bruised and battered, and my aura had stretched to uncomfortable new limits to contain so much of the power.

  Rafael was so shocked by my sudden success that he couldn’t hide his surprise. He stomped across the courtyard toward me, his eyes burning with barely suppressed fury.

  “What trick is this?” he snapped. “Two seconds ago your core was empty, and it’s empty now. Where did all of this jinsei come from?”

  “Clean living, honored sir.” I bowed to hide how much effort it cost me to hang onto the potent jinsei. “I have always been good at purifying jinsei. It’s one of my few strengths.”

  The sacred energy was seconds from escaping my control, and then I’d be in deep trouble. Rafael would watch me until the challenge was over. There wouldn’t be another chance to take any more pills.

  “I will figure you out,” Rafael growled. “Your challenge is completed. Get out of my sight.”

  The jinsei rushed out of my aura in a gust that rattled the leaves of the trees overhead and left crystalline sparks of power dancing on the eaves. I didn’t try to hide the sudden weakness that washed over me and staggered out of the exercise yard with my head low and my legs wobbling. Let them think that I was weak. If they kept underestimating me, I’d keep right on winning.

  And that’s what happened. Every day, sometimes twice a day, the wardens would unveil some new challenge to whittle away at my rankings. I met every challenge with hidden stores of jinsei and powered through them in the middle of the pack. I didn’t win any of tests that week and didn’t lose any either.

  Every night I worked myself half to death in the laboratory under Hahen’s guidance. I stole as many pills, elixirs, and serums as I could get away with, and my stash continued to grow even as I burned through an astonishing number of boosters every day.

  It was an exhausting routine that quickly wore me down to a nub. I was more tired than I’d ever been. I had to lean on the borrowed cores of the rats
who nested above my room to cleanse the exhaustion aspects from my core, and it wasn’t long before even that was barely enough to keep me on my feet.

  But, I was beating them. I could hang on for myself. I could win for my mother.

  And then, in the blink of an eye, Hagar destroyed me.

  The Raid

  EVERYTHING FELL APART on the last night of winter break.

  I’d just finished an arduous session with Hahen that had netted me a fistful of jinsei pills and a core that felt like I’d been kicked by a mule and all his donkey friends. I’d returned to the dormitory tower well after midnight and was ready to snatch a few hours of sleep before classes began again, when Hagar stepped out of the shadows and stopped me.

  “It’s after curfew.” She bit off each of the words with a sharp click of her teeth. Her eyes flashed with wild fury, and her hands twitched at her sides like leashed attack dogs. “Where have you been?”

  Hagar’s warden badge glinted in the cold light of the moon leaking through the hall’s windows.

  “You know where I’ve been.” I was too tired to go through this song and dance with Hagar. “I’ve been working for Tycho Reyes. If you’ve got a problem with that, take it up with him.”

  “My problem is with you.” She took a step toward me, and sparks of rage aspect flickered to life in her aura. “Everyone has a problem with you.”

  Hagar had slipped into a breathing technique I wasn’t familiar with. She inhaled between each word, but only exhaled on every other word. The lights in her aura grew brighter by the moment, until firefly sparks danced in her red hair.

  “I’m tired.” I didn’t want to fight with Hagar. I didn’t want to fight with anyone. I wanted to sleep. “If you would allow me to pass, honored Warden, I will trouble you no more.”

  “It’s too late for that. You should have listened when I told you that the Shadow Phoenixes can’t win the Core Contest.” She closed the distance between us in the blink of an eye and jabbed me in the chest with the tip of her left index finger. “You’ve irritated the clan elders. They’ve ordered me to make sure you can’t annoy them any further.”

  The warden’s hand recoiled, and a thin red thread of wavering light left my chest and followed her finger. My pulse thudded in my ears and an ice pick of pain jabbed through my sternum. A wave of weakness washed over me, and I fell back on my breathing technique to calm myself and prepare for the fight the warden had started.

  Hagar’s aura gained a new light. My spirit sight identified it as a blood aspect.

  No, not a blood aspect.

  My blood aspect.

  The warden had robbed me of a fraction of my vital life essence with a single touch. Her full-on attack might drain me as dry as a vampire’s bite.

  “I never intended to irritate anyone, especially not our clan elders.” I shifted my feet and turned my body into the Gliding Shadow stance to give Hagar a smaller target. My hands wanted to rise into a defensive posture, but I forced them to stay at my sides. If I didn’t attack, maybe I could defuse the situation before we came to blows. “I sought only to better myself. To bring honor to my family and my clan.”

  “Your clan doesn’t want or need honor,” Hagar spat. “You only care about yourself.”

  The warden circled to my left, and I turned to keep her in sight. I had no idea what fighting style she’d studied or which technique she’d used to drain my blood, and I certainly didn’t want her to have a free shot at my back.

  “I don’t understand, honored Warden,” I said. “I only wanted to earn rankings for all of us. If the Shadow Phoenixes are in the bottom at the end of the contest, we’ll lose members. That doesn’t help the clan.”

  “You know nothing of the clan.” Hagar’s eyes burrowed through my aura to reach my core. The weight of her senses on me was like a sticky mask pressed against my face. “Our clan is not meant for glory. We survive by staying in the shadows and avoiding attention. If the other clans think we’re a threat to them, in any way, they’ll wipe us out. That is why the elders want your head.”

  Hagar darted to her right, then switched direction on the ball of her lead foot and lunged in the opposite direction. She struck at my torso with both hands, fingers extended like knife blades.

  There was no time for me to raise my hands to block her strikes, and I hadn’t had time to ingest one of my boosters to harden my channels. Without the proper defense, my only chance was to jump back from Hagar’s attack.

  The tips of the warden’s fingers grazed my robes and raked through my aura with an unsettling screech. She’d barely missed and was already moving into position for a follow-up.

  I switched to the Darting Minnow stance and sprinted away from Hagar before she could strike at me again.

  I snatched four jinsei pills from the secret pocket in my belt and crammed them into my mouth. The sacred energy burst into my core and I immediately flushed as much of it as I could into my arms, legs, torso, and head. If I had to fight Hagar, I wanted to do it with my body as hardened as possible against her blood-draining technique.

  But I’d much rather retreat to my room and hope the door could hold the warden at bay. I was exhausted and had no illusions about my ability to stand toe-to-toe with an enraged warden who could drain my blood with a touch. The jinsei in my legs gave me a boost of speed. My room was only a few yards ahead.

  A jinsei-fueled leap carried Hagar over my head. Her feet struck the wall above my door with a wet splatter, and she stuck there like an unearthly spider.

  “You can’t run from me,” Hagar said, her expression twisting between fury and sorrow. “Just let me finish this!”

  The warden sprang off the wall and somersaulted into the air. Her leap carried her to the ceiling, where she kicked off the dark timbers and plunged down toward me. She landed knife-hand strikes on either side of my neck. The powerful surprise attack drove me to my knees and would have killed me if my channels hadn’t been hardened with stolen jinsei. Hagar rolled with the momentum of her attack and landed solidly on the floor behind me.

  Sparks of pain danced through my aura as the jinsei that had defended me boiled away from the channels between my shoulders and the top of my head. If Hagar landed another clean shot on my neck, I was a dead man.

  “I won’t give up, Hagar.” I forced myself back to my feet and turned toward my surprised foe. She’d expected that attack to do me in, and a flicker of uncertainty crossed her features when she realized I wasn’t even wounded. “I never intended to harm the clan, but I won’t allow the clan to harm me, either.”

  “You’re nothing,” Hagar said. “The elders will no longer tolerate your foolishness. You had a chance to live, and you squandered it.”

  I expected the warden to throw herself into another attack and raised my hands to defend myself.

  Instead, Hagar pressed her palms together in front of her solar plexus and raised her right foot until its sole was level with her left knee. She took two quick, sharp inhales, then exhaled and thrust her hands at my solar plexus.

  Slender threads of crimson light shot through the air between us and streaked toward my core. A disturbing chattering sound, like the clacking of hundreds of tiny teeth, followed the serpentine strands. The strands split, then split again, each one becoming two, then four, before blooming into dozens of thirsty serpents.

  My thoughts raced in a desperate search for a defense against Hagar’s unexpected technique. There were too many threads to block, they were too fast for me to dodge, and there was no way my body had been hardened enough to stop the threads from draining every last drop of blood out of my body.

  No, not my blood. My blood aspects. Those strands weren’t aimed at my body, they sought the jinsei that most initiates held in their cores.

  Jinsei I didn’t have.

  I snatched a pair of elixirs from my belt and hurled them to either side of the hallway. The jinsei boosters shattered where they struck the wooden walls, and blossoms of light erupted from the impact
points.

  The threads took the bait I’d thrown out. They veered away from me and struck the much more intense purified jinsei splattered across the walls. Each crimson strand slammed into the wall and drank up all the jinsei it could hold, then faded away.

  “More tricks!” Hagar screamed. “Give up, Warin. You were dead before you were born. Let me end this.”

  Deacon, the only other member of our clan not out on holiday break, opened the door to see what all the commotion was.His sleepy eyes darted back and forth between Hagar and me for a split second before he slammed the door.

  “I don’t quit.”

  In the few moments of confusion after I’d disrupted Hagar’s attack, I’d forged connections to ten rats and pulled their jinsei deep into my channels. There was no time to fill my arms and legs to capacity, but I had enough for a surprise attack.

  Hagar’s eyes widened in shock as I hurled myself down the hallway toward her. The jinsei in my legs’ channels burned like jet fuel, and I reached her far faster than she’d expected. I threw my momentum behind a Tantrum Flail that crashed into Hagar’s jaw with the force of a wrecking ball.

  The powerful strike shattered a handful of Hagar’s teeth and hurled her into the wall. Blood drooled from between her split lips, and the ugly purple shadow of a nasty bruise blossomed along her jawline. Despite the damage, the warden was far from down.

  With a groan, Hagar forced her sagging eyelids open. She braced her hands on the wall she’d landed against and cycled her breathing in a quick, panting pattern. Jinsei flowed into her body with surprising swiftness, and she pushed it out into the channels of her damaged flesh to begin the healing process.

  “You think you’re strong?” The warden leaned back against the wall and clenched her fists until her knuckles crackled. “True strength isn’t in your fist. It’s in the shadows, hidden where your enemies never think to look. The same shadows you’ve been shining a spotlight into since the day you showed up here.”

  Hagar exploded off the wall. Crimson threads burst from her shoulders and stuck to the ceiling like spiderwebs. They dragged her into the air, then detached from their anchors and whipped down to the ground on either side of me. Hagar’s body slammed into my chest like a cannonball, and we pinballed down the hall from one wall to the other until we crashed into a closed door at the far end.