by Gage Lee
“Three on one?” I called as I tapped one of the Titans on the shoulder with the edge of my blade. “Two on two is far more honorable.”
Clem looked shocked to see me, but she didn’t yell at me for butting in on her fight, and I counted that as a win. The remaining Titans, confused by my sudden attack, failed to defend themselves, and Clem and I eliminated them with a pair of economical slashes.
“Thanks,” she said. “Watch your back!”
A Resplendent Sun with a surprising number of freckles and a rather plain longsword had tried to sneak up on me. He came to a sudden stop and held his blade in a defensive position as I spun to face him.
“You’re mine,” he said, and spun his sword in a flourish I assumed he thought was intimidating.
“Not today,” I said and poked him in the chest with the tip of my blade. His aura flashed red, and he stormed off in a rage.
“Did you have a good reason to do it?” Clem asked. She backed up against my shoulders, her weapon at the ready, and we rotated in a slow circle as we watched for more foes to attack.
“Yes,” I said. “I didn’t have a lot of choices. I had to do it.”
“That’s good to hear,” Clem said. “My mom thought you got a raw deal, too.”
A warm wave of relief spread through my chest. I’d been so afraid that Clem would hate me forever, that I wouldn’t have any friends at all left at the School. The fact that she and her mother, a trained adjudicator, could at least try to understand why I’d committed the crime was an unexpected gift. After so long without human contact, my eyes burned with unshed tears at the Harks’ surprising empathy.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m glad someone doesn’t think I’m a monster.”
There were only twenty students still in the arena, and those of us that remained were smart enough to team up. Abi and Eric were backed into a corner with their weapons at the ready, while Clem and I remained near the center of the ring, back to back. The other groups were scattered around, weapons ready, watching for the best moment to strike.
While the other teams watched each other, more and more of them had fixated on me. We were about to get swarmed.
We needed to do something. Fast.
“How about these Titans over here?” I nudged Clem and nodded toward possible targets. “The ones with the chains.”
The targets I’d selected had the strangest weapons I’d ever seen. They were long, thin links of jinsei chain with hooked blades mounted on their ends. The fighters were back to back, like we were, and spun their blades in vertical circles at the ends of the chains. Approaching them would be difficult, but their weapons were far clumsier than our swords.
“If you think we can take them,” Clem said, “I’m all for it.”
“Let’s do this,” I said.
Clem spun around to face the same direction I was, and we charged toward the spinning chains. She veered off to my right side, forcing the Titans to focus their attention on one or the other of us. As we triangulated on our enemies, I shifted the cycle of my breathing to pull beast aspects from the rodents still connected to me.
A chain shot toward Clem, and she twisted away from it. The hooked blade swung past her face, then spun away. Her attacker whipped the blade above his head, and it wailed like a banshee.
I pressed my attack the instant the second chainer’s eyes shifted to Clem. I crossed the distance between us in a bounding stride and raised my long-hafted sword over my shoulder with both hands clenched around its hilt. It was a bold move, and one I was sure my opponent would cut down with one slice of his chain.
Sure enough, the sharpened hook slashed at my face and would’ve taken out one of my eyes.
If, that is, I hadn’t planned for it.
A shadow serpent burst from my shoulder and tangled in the chain. The swarm of beast aspects raced down the weapon’s length and slammed into the man’s face. He shouted in surprise, then choked on the stream of blood that gushed from his broken nose. His weapon fell to the arena’s floor, and my serpent untangled itself and reared up over my shoulder, ready to strike.
The Titan fighting Clem, on the other hand, was far from out of the fight. He ducked away from her sword, caught sight of me, and swung his chain at my feet. The second shadow serpent exploded out of my forearm and intercepted the sweeping attack. Lifting stacks of books every day had taught me how to get the most out of the beast aspects that made up my shadow serpents, and when the Titan tried to yank his weapon free, he couldn’t get it to budge.
Clem darted past me to tag the other Titan. His aura flashed, and he stumbled out of the arena with his hands cradling his bruised face. I finished off his partner, who spat on the floor at my feet before he stormed off.
“Rude,” I called after him.
“Nice trick,” Clem said. “Who taught you to use your serpents like that?”
“Me,” I said honestly. “I haven’t had anything to do but practice since they locked me up.”
“Sounds boring.” Clem grinned. “Looks like we’re down to twelve.”
We’d reached the edge of the platform, which gave us better defensive options. Abi and Eric were off to our left, weapons ready, eager to get back into the fight. I didn’t expect that those two would defend Clem and me, but I was sure they’d blindside anyone who rushed by them on their way to take me out.
Rankings were rankings, after all.
The rest of the fighters had spread out around the edges of the arena to protect their backs. None of them seemed like they were in a hurry to make a move. I know I wasn’t.
“If we get to the end, just tap me out,” I whispered.
“I don’t want you to let me win, jerk,” Clem shot back. “I’ll take those rankings off you fair and square.”
“You think? I’ve got a lot of new tricks.” My shadow serpents swirled around my arms. Show-offs.
“You show me yours,” Clem started, and then yelped in surprise.
A bolt of fire burst up through the space between our tiles and burst above us in a shower of stinging sparks. We threw ourselves away from the unexpected assault and rolled onto our feet. The stone tiles under us began to crumble.
“That’s no good,” I said, and Clem followed me toward the arena’s center.
The arena was coming apart around its edges. A pair of Disciples hadn’t realized what was happening until it was too late and plunged into the fire-aspected jinsei below. Both of the boys shouted in surprise and scrambled out of the damaging field, their gis burning, their eyebrows singed off their faces. They looked like they’d spent too long on the beach, and I imagine they’d have blisters on their cheeks and foreheads before the day was over.
Grayson’s little game was played for keeps.
The smaller arena didn’t give anyone room to maneuver. There were ten of us still in the fight, and I was surprised to see that Deacon was one of them. His weapon, a short scythe studded with spikes along its length, was unwieldy in the tight space. He wouldn’t stand a chance.
I gave him a quick look and a shake of my head to let him know that he wasn’t my target.
Abi and Eric were still in the fight, too. The Titan’s weapon was a double-headed hammer that looked almost as useless in close quarters as Deacon’s fusion scythe. Eric held a long, straight sword with a beveled edge that looked well-balanced for combat at almost any range. The two of them glanced at Clem, then at me, and we all shook our heads. We might come to blows when the rest of our opponents were out, but we weren’t going to stab each other in the back before then.
The rest of the fighters didn’t share our nonaggression pact. One of the Thunder’s Children clan smacked a Disciple of Jade Flame with the edge of his short sword, knocking her out of the fight and almost off the arena. His attack overbalanced him, though, and left him open to Abi’s hammer blow to his side. The initiate yelped and stumbled off the edge of the platform.
And then there were eight.
A Resplendent Sun darted in from my
right side, a long knife clutched in his fist. My shadow serpents uncoiled from around my arms and swatted aside the Sun’s first attack. Undeterred, he came straight at me again. His knife plunged toward my flesh again and again like the needle of a possessed sewing machine. His attacks were charged with blistering amounts of jinsei that would have torn me to pieces if my serpents hadn’t been ready to defend me. My poor shadows were soon tattered remnants that dissolved into jittering puffs of smoke, but I was still alive.
The rest of the initiates stared in shock at the blatant attempt to assassinate me. The Sun hadn’t even pretended he was up to anything else. And he was about to come at me again.
There was still jinsei to pull from the rats I was connected to, but I didn’t have enough time to focus it into my channels for defense. I gambled on the little jinsei left in my arms’ channels and raised my blade into a Gliding Shadow defense.
The next time the knife came at me, I didn’t dodge it. I slammed the edge of my sword into it with all the strength I could muster. My opponent’s weapon shattered into a hundred sparking shards. The jinsei debris shot in every direction like supernatural shrapnel, evaporating as it shrieked through the air.
My counterattack broke the other fighters free from their shock, and they burst back into action.
Clem shouted in surprise, and I heard her weapon slam into an incoming attack. Before I could turn to see what was happening with her, the Sun I’d disarmed flung his body into mine. His arm hooked around my neck, and he drove punch after punch into my stomach. He poured jinsei into those attacks, and my core ached from the battering.
I was stunned by the surprise attack. I’d destroyed the Sun’s blade. Unless he was far more advanced than I thought, that attack should have put him down for the count. Unless he had some outside help. Maybe a booster of some kind.
I opened my spirit sight and saw the Sun’s body was filled to overflowing with sacred energy. His channels glowed like a network of lightning under his skin, and his core was a blazing star.
The lances of jinsei that the Sun speared through my core hurt, but they couldn’t do any real damage to my crippled core. His blows did, however, crack my ribs in a dozen places. I couldn’t take much more.
My opponent threw another punch into my bruised ribs, and I drove my left knee up into his stomach. That weakened his grip around my neck, and when I repeated the attack, he stumbled back two steps.
Grayson had sent this young man to kill me.
I was disgusted things had reached this point.
I was horrified that one of the sacred sages would stop at nothing to see me dead.
And I was furious.
I put the last of the jinsei in my channels to use, gaining a burst of lightning speed. I raised my sword and swung the crystalline blade in a home-run swing aimed at the Sun’s right shoulder.
The initiate’s eyes widened in horror as he realized he was about to be cut in two.
Maybe I’d planned to stop the attack before I killed him.
Maybe not.
I never got the chance to find out.
Someone slammed into me from my right side, and I skidded hard toward the edge of the arena. Heat billowed up from the ground below, singeing my face and scorching the hair off my knuckles. I caught myself just before I plunged out of the ring, but only just.
I lashed out at my attacker with a blind back fist, then pivoted to face him.
Abi glared at me over his hammer, eyes narrowed into slits.
“What has become of you?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Whatever they’ve made me.”
Abi drew his hammer back for a strike, but it never landed.
Deacon had sneaked up behind Abi and poked him with the tip of his scythe.
The Titan’s dark face flushed, and he slammed his hammer into the ground. Disgusted, he stomped off toward the stairs.
I took a deep breath and surveyed the battle. There were only four of us left: Clem, Deacon, a Disciple I didn’t recognize, and me.
Deacon must’ve realized our situation at the same instant I had. He drew his scythe back for a strike at my head, and I responded with a kick to his chest. It hadn’t been powered by jinsei, but Deacon hadn’t hardened himself against physical attacks, anyway. His aura flickered with surprise and my senses told me that his core had scarcely any jinsei in it at all. He hadn’t expected to fight. He’d been biding his time to get at me.
As he stumbled backward, he slammed into Clem. She staggered, and the Disciple she was fighting capitalized on that with a swift sweep of her katana aimed at my friend’s throat.
I hurled myself forward and caught the katana in a crude parry with the back edge of my blade. The air filled with a metallic screech as our weapons collided, and I was momentarily blinded by the explosion of jinsei sparks that leaped away from the contact.
An ice-cold spike of pain shot through my abdomen. My aura flashed red, and my legs threatened to give out.
“Hagar warned you.” Deacon ripped his scythe out of my belly. “Give up.”
Clem watched me with sad eyes, her aura just as red as mine. We’d both been eliminated in the same moment. My attempt to save her had cost us both.
I felt like an idiot, but mostly I felt pain. My guts howled, and all I wanted to do was get out of there.
The Disciple stared at me as I limped past, then poked Deacon in the chest with her katana. He hadn’t even tried to defend himself. I should’ve known he wouldn’t win. That had been Hagar’s whole point.
Somewhere between the top of the stairs and the bottom, the world went black, and I fell into a deep, dark hole.
The Chamber
DEACON HAD PUT HIS very best effort into killing me, but he’d come up short. The scythe had ripped through my abdominal muscles just below my solar plexus and missed my spine by less than an inch. The weapon had sliced through a lot of other important stuff in my belly, though, and the infirmary staff had pumped me full of jinsei and healing pills to keep me out of the grave. I guess even Grayson knew it would look pretty bad if a student died in the School’s hospital.
They say I spent a week on my deathbed, passing in and out of consciousness, monitored constantly by jinsei healers who channeled enough sacred energy through me to power a small city for several days. In the end, I was left with a pair of nasty scars on my belly and back, but no other permanent injuries. I did, however, feel as if I’d been dropped from a plane onto a very sharp stick, and was restricted to light duty for the rest of the year.
That meant I didn’t have to go to the alchemical laboratory. For the first time in months, I was allowed to rest at night. Those extra hours of sleep felt like heaven, even if they were in the stacks.
“Malingerer,” Hahen accused me on the day I made it back to the stacks from the hospital. I still had bandages over the wounds and could barely walk. “This was all a very elaborate scheme to avoid working with me. I see what you’re up to.”
“Sure,” I said. “I lost the Grand Melee, nearly had my guts ripped out by a member of my own clan, and spent a week in a coma just to avoid your stinky breath.”
“It doesn’t stink,” Hahen insisted. “You can’t even smell it. I’m a spirit.”
“You can’t smell it. I can,” I teased. Despite my injuries, I felt better back with Hahen than I had under the care of the medical staff. He, at least, didn’t treat me like I was a piece of glass that could shatter at any moment. “Trust me.”
Hahen opened his mouth as if to protest, then stopped and regained his composure.
“Really though,” he said. “It doesn’t stink.”
“Whatever.” I settled onto my cot and tried to find a sitting position that didn’t make my injuries ache. “It’s probably for the best. You wouldn’t want my pain and injury aspects clouding up the jinsei in your laboratory.”
Hahen examined my wound with his spirit sight. He stared at my stomach for so long I started to feel self-conscious, then shrugg
ed and scratched the whiskery hairs on his chin.
“You’ll live. Your core doesn’t look any worse than it did when you left, though it certainly doesn’t look any better, either.”
“Did you put on weight while I was gone?” I groaned and shifted my position, then gave up trying to make myself more comfortable. Everything hurt, no matter what I did.
“You are a cruel student, Jace,” Hahen grumped. “If you can’t work in the laboratory, I’ll leave you to rest. I’ll be back in the morning to continue your studies.”
“Lightly,” I said. “The nurses don’t want me to strain myself.”
“Simple breathing exercises are enough to exhaust you.” Hahen grumped and then patted my knee. “I’m glad they didn’t kill you, Jace. There is much work left to be done, and I did not wish to do it on my own.”
“You’re a real sweetheart.” I lay down. That didn’t feel any better. “I’m going to take a nap. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I didn’t sleep for very long. The medical staff had decided I didn’t need any more painkillers, though my body heartily disagreed with that assessment. The jinsei healing techniques had stitched the worst of my wounds back together and returned my organs to a functional state, but there was still a lot of work going on inside me, and all of it hurt.
No matter how exhausted I was, I couldn’t sleep for more than an hour or two before the pain dragged me back awake.
The best escape was to keep busy. As long as my mind was occupied, I could ignore my body. Fortunately, I had a giant stack of books to organize and an army of rats I could enlist to help. I couldn’t work as hard as I had before I’d been stabbed through the gut, but I was still able to make good progress every night. Even Hahen was impressed by the amount of organization I accomplished, though he was careful not to praise me too highly.
“You pretend to get tired every day, but it looks like you work all night on this project,” Hahen said. “Is your education so unimportant?”
“It’s not that,” I said. “I can’t sleep. But I can’t concentrate very well, either. Organizing the books is easy and mindless. It helps me avoid the pain.”
