by Gage Lee
A few minutes later I located the tower dormitories for the Resplendent Suns, the Thunder’s Children, and the Disciples of Jade Flame. My mental map of the campus was getting better, but those dorms still weren’t what I needed.
Finally, after an hour of intense concentration that left my skin clammy with sweat and my head throbbing like a cracked tooth, I found what I was looking for. I struggled to push a jinsei connection so far from my body. It was a fight for every inch, and by the time I’d forced a thread of sacred energy toward a large female rat, I was exhausted.
The rat fought me for so long, I was sure she’d run me out of endurance before we bonded. Then, when my breath cycling was ragged and my will was all but used up, the bond snapped into focus with a sharp crack. The rat trembled, her whiskers twitched, and she hunkered down and waited for my instructions while I cycled jinsei at a frantic pace to build up our connection and purge the weariness aspect from my aura.
With the connection forged, the strain of extending my jinsei such a long distance all but vanished. I felt like I could manage the bond all day, if necessary. Once our cores were united, no distance could keep them apart.
“All right, girl. Let’s do this.” I urged the rat to leave her hiding space between the walls and venture out into the hallway. She resisted for only a moment, then scurried down to a narrow crack in the baseboard and squeezed herself through it. “Go find him.”
The rat scampered along the edge of the hallway. Her eyesight was terrible, but her nose was remarkably keen. She snuffled traces of people, places, things, and creatures out of the air like a vacuum cleaner. In a few moments, I caught a whiff of who I was looking for.
The rat chased after the scent, a tiny bloodhound on the hunt. She tracked our quarry’s faint trail down one hallway after another, short legs pumping furiously as she raced along the baseboards. Her presence earned squeals and groans from the initiates who spotted her, but the diligent girl ignored them. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her. She had a job to do, and that was the only thing that mattered.
Finally, she found our prey squatting on the floor, his long tail idly thumping the carpet behind him. Without hesitation, my rat charged forward and bit that scaled tail as hard as she could.
Niddhogg squawked with surprise and leaped into the air. His stubby wings flapped to hoist him into the air. He whipped the end of his tail up to look at the tiny nick in its armor, then glared down at the rat with narrowed eyes. “What’s your problem?”
This was the tricky part. The rat didn’t have any way to communicate with the diminutive black dragon, and my theory on how to do it was a long shot. If it failed, I’d have wasted a lot of time I could have spent on something more productive.
I took a deep breath, focused my intent, and extended a thread of jinsei from the rat to Niddhogg.
This time, I didn’t feel the crushing weight of the distance to my target. The jinsei flowed through my connection to the rat and on to the dragon in an almost effortless stream. The thread of milky light wafted past Niddhogg’s nose to tap him right between the eyes.
“I don’t know what you’re doing, and I don’t like it.” Niddhogg swatted at the air in front of his face. His wings carried him to the floor, where he crouched down nose to nose with the rat. “Who’s in there?”
With a final push, I forced the wiggling thread around Niddhogg’s head. I tightened the loop of sacred energy and concentrated on an image of my face with all my might. There was no way for me to speak to Niddhogg, but if he recognized who was behind the attack on his tail that might be enough.
The dragon blinked and sat up on his haunches. He sniffed the air and looked as spooked as if he’d seen a ghost.
“Jace?” Niddhog sat up and crossed his arms over his chest. His nostrils flared as he struggled to catch a scent. “Is it really you?”
I nodded the rat’s head up and down like a puppet.
“Where are you?” the dragon asked.
There was no way for the rat to respond, so I had her scamper away from Niddhogg. After a few feet, she sat down and glanced over her shoulder, then ran a few more feet ahead.
“Yeah, I get it. You want me to follow you.” Niddhogg looked dubious, and I couldn’t blame him. If he’d heard the official story about me, he probably thought I was a thief, liar, cheat, and violent rebel. I wasn’t sure I’d follow me, either. “You’re lucky I’m curious. If this gets me in trouble with the powers that be, I’m going to roast you alive. My breath isn’t very powerful, so it’ll take a long time, too. Lead on.”
This was the third part of my experiment, and I prayed to the Five Sacred Dragons that I wasn’t wrong about my connection to the rodent.
I gave my faithful rat the order to return to me and held my breath. She had no idea where the stacks were, or even what they were. But the jinsei bond between us let her know me, and that was what she focused on. The rat’s primitive mind didn’t have enough room in it to worry about the building’s changing geometry, the vast distance between us, or even why she was racing along the floor with a dragon on her tail. I’d given her an order, and her mind chose the easiest and most direct way to follow it.
Because her vision was so poor, and I wasn’t familiar with the way the building’s different areas smelled, I wasn’t sure whether she was making any progress. For all I knew, the rat was hopelessly confused and ran further away from me with every passing second. The wait for Niddhog’s arrival was the longest hour of my life.
“Kid?” The black dragon’s voice was muffled through the heavy door of my prison. “You in there?”
I hopped off my cot, hustled over to the door, and leaned against it. I was almost as excited that my experiment had worked as I was to hear Niddhog.
“I’m here. Thanks for coming,” I said. “I wasn’t sure you would.”
“I shouldn’t have.” Niddhogg lowered his voice even further. “They convicted you of some pretty heavy crimes. Did you really do all that?”
“I stole from Tycho.” Admitting to the crime made my face flush, even now. “I needed it. It was the only way I could survive.”
“You must have needed it bad,” the dragon said. “Three million is a lot of jinsei.”
“It was,” I admitted. “But I made at least ten times that amount for Tycho.”
“Wow.” Niddhogg let out a long low whistle. I wished I could have seen that. I didn’t even know dragons could whistle. “Listen, kid, I can’t stay down here for long. No one’s supposed to even think about you, much less talk to you.”
“This won’t take long,” I promised. “You told me a little about the New Moon clan a while back. I need to know more.”
“They’re gone, kid.” Niddhogg sounded exasperated. “Ancient history. There hasn’t been a New Moon clan in a hundred years. Not since the end of the Utter War.”
“I know,” I said. “I want to know why.”
“Because they broke the rules.” I heard the faint thump of Niddhogg’s tail hitting the stone floor as he settled down on his haunches. “The New Moon elders made a deal with the other clans. We’d let them make the Eclipse Warriors to fight off the hungry spirits from the voice, with one condition. As soon the Utter War was over those weapons had to go bye-bye.”
A harpoon of pain shot deep into my mind and dredged up images of pale, hollow men and women staggering out of the black portal. Those people were the weapons the other clans wanted destroyed.
“They killed all those people. After all the good the Eclipse Warriors did, the rest of the clans still wanted them dead. Why?” It was impossible for me to wrap my head around the horrifying waste.
“People fear what they don’t understand, Jace,” Niddhogg whispered. “And no one understood the Eclipse Warriors. The New Moon clan elders swore they could control them, but it sure didn’t seem that way to the rest of us.”
“You were there?” My heart raced at the thought of an eyewitness account of what had happened to the people from the
manual I’d found.
“I’m a dragon, kid, I’ve been around the block a few times.” Niddhogg chuckled, then sighed. “I wasn’t the only one there. All five sages witnessed it. So did most of the current clan elders, I think. Empyreals age slowly after they reach core mastery.”
I heard a tinge of nostalgia in the dragon’s tone as he warmed to the conversation. I held my tongue and let him keep talking. I was afraid if I interrupted him, he’d lose his train of thought and remember how dangerous it was to be down here talking to me.
“Those Eclipse Warriors, they were something else,” the black dragon said. “Five of them could wipe out a whole platoon of hungry spirits. Everyone thought the Utter War was lost before they showed up and turned the tide. If it hadn’t been for those sacred artists, there wouldn’t be a School of Swords and Serpents. There wouldn’t even be an Empyreal society. All of us, artist and camper alike, would’ve been slaves for the Locust Court to chew up and spit out when the mood struck them.”
“They were heroes.” My heart soared and my mind filled with more images of brave fighters clad in jinsei armor holding off a horde of spirits. I didn’t know where the visions came from, and I didn’t care. I could be like those warriors.
If I could figure out how.
“For a while,” Niddhogg said. “But when the war’s over, no one likes to have a bunch of loaded guns lying around. They were fighters, and without an enemy, they got restless. They were too dangerous without a war to keep them busy. Something had to be done.”
I felt a spark of anger ignite deep inside me. That was the problem with Empyreals. They used people until there was nothing left. They wanted slaves, not allies. And if those slaves got a little too uppity for their own good, well, then the Empyreals would just... poof.
No more problems.
“They killed them.” A new piece of information dislodged itself from my jumbled memories of the book. Eclipse Warriors chained to posts. Their eyes filled with worry, their minds with terror. And then...
Fire.
“The New Moon clans insisted their fighters were safe. They were working on a plan to help stabilize them. Then the Warriors got wind that the other clans wanted them gone. Suddenly, those superpowered fighters had an enemy to fight. They went nuts. Killed the elders of the Thunder’s Children clan, blew up the Resplendent Suns’ soul forges.” Niddhogg’s voice swarmed with fear and awe aspects. “So, yeah. The five sacred sages begged the dragons for help. They killed them all.”
“What about the rest of the New Moon clan?”
“They tried to hide some Eclipse Warriors from the dragons.” Niddhogg let out a sad sigh. “It didn’t end well.”
My heart ached. Those people had saved the world. They’d sacrificed themselves for the greater good, and their only reward had been death at the hands of the people they’d saved. An entire clan had been wiped out to make the rest of society feel a little better about themselves. Everything I’d been taught about the Empyreals—their honor, their nobility, the righteousness of their justice—had been a horrific lie.
“I know, it sounds terrible,” Niddhogg agreed. “Those were different times, kid. But some good came of it. The dragons formed a new clan out of the ashes of the Eclipse Warrior rebellion. A few of the New Moon elders were spared to start the new Shadow Phoenix clan. We gave them a strong base of new initiates in their first generation.”
“A solid base of slaves, you mean,” I said. “I know the Shadow Phoenixes are only given the weakest and most worthless new initiates. They should have just killed the New Moon elders and been done with it. It would’ve been kinder.”
“That’s not the way the Empyrean Flame wanted it done,” Niddhogg said in grave tones. “The Immortal Sun mandated that there must always be five clans to protect creation from the void.”
“It never said how strong those clans had to be, though.” I laughed bitterly. “The other clans followed the Empyrean’s orders, but in the process they made themselves a whole new caste of people to spit on and abuse.”
“Isn’t that better than being dead?” Niddhogg asked.
I thought about that question and decided that, no, it wasn’t. Living with another man’s boot on your neck wasn’t really living. I vowed that I wouldn’t stay a member of the Shadow Phoenix clan forever. I’d find a way out, even if it killed me.
“What did they do with the original New Moon elders?” I asked. If they were still out there, maybe they could show me the way.
“They weren’t killed,” Niddhogg said. “They were exiled to the Far Horizon portal. It’s their duty to watch the void for signs of another invasion. As far as I know, they’re still out there at the edge of the mortal realm, waiting for an enemy they hope never comes.”
Something told me that’s not all those elders were doing.
“Thanks, Niddhogg.” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands. “One more question. What would happen if the clans found an Eclipse Warrior today?”
“For starters, that’s impossible.” Niddhogg snorted. “All the Eclipse Warriors were destroyed. The ritual to create them from empties was wiped out, too. But let’s say one hid from the dragons for all this time. Eclipse Warriors became monsters, Jace. As soon as one poked a nose back into Empyreal society, the weight of the clans would fall on it like a bag of hammers. We’d have to kill it. No questions asked.”
The Jump
AFTER NIDDHOGG LEFT, I felt more alone than ever before. There was a whole world outside the stacks, a bustling, vibrant place filled with people going about their lives, getting stronger, learning new techniques.
Pushing me down the rankings.
The longer I was alone, the more convinced I became that my only hope of surviving lay in the glossy black pages of the Manual of the New Moon. I forced myself to try to read more of the silver script it contained and trudged through another page before a blinding headache wore me down and I had to set it aside.
The Eclipse Warriors were made from empties, just like Niddhogg had mentioned. As near as I could tell, those were people whose cores were without aspect and who had some sort of flaw that made it difficult for them to harness jinsei on their own.
People like me.
But, as encouraging as that was, it wasn’t enough. The two pages I’d struggled through didn’t tell me how the Eclipse Warriors were made. There was something about breathing the dead, which made no sense to me at all. Without the process, I was no better off than I had been before I even knew about the warriors. I tried again and again to get deeper into the manual, but it was no use. The silver script defied me no matter how hard I pushed, and by the end of the day I felt like my brain was bleeding.
There was a gap in my knowledge that prevented me from understanding any more of that book, and I didn’t know how to fill it. It was frustrating and exhausting. I placed the manual on the short stack of tomes next to my cot, dimmed the jinsei light, and fell into a troubled sleep.
My head still ached when I dragged myself out of my cot some time later, and my stomach had added its grumbling to the mix. I reached out to a rat beyond the stacks, forged a bond to it, and frowned. The sun was well up into the sky. Hahen should have arrived with a bowl of tasteless oatmeal and a disapproving frown hours ago.
He’d never missed a day, not even weekends, for as long as I’d been locked up in the stacks.
Something was wrong.
I sent the rat deeper into the building. It picked up the usual smells of students, aspects, and even the lingering aroma of bacon and sausage that told me breakfast hadn’t ended too long ago. What it didn’t find were any students, wardens, or staff. I sent it toward the strongest scents, hoping it would trace them to someone.
It didn’t.
The only other time the halls had been this empty was when Hagar had paraded me down to the tribunal for judgment. If everyone was gone now, I’d miscounted the days I’d spent in confinement and classes were out, or...
/> Everyone was at the final challenge.
I had to get out of the stacks.
I stormed over to the heavy door that had kept me locked in this godforsaken mess, lashing connections to fifteen rats as I went. Endless hours of practice with Borrowed Core let me forge those bonds in the space of three heartbeats. I wasn’t sure what I’d use their jinsei to do, but I’d rather have it than not.
The door was a Frankenstein’s monster of thick iron plates welded together and reinforced with bolted-on slats. The bar on the other side was two inches thick, six inches high, eight feet wide, and held in place by a pair of brackets that a powerful jinsei artist had fused with the stone wall.
Breaking through the door or shattering the bar were both out of the question.
The top, sides, and bottom of the door were all nearly flush with the stone wall that surrounded it. There was scarcely enough room to slide a sheet of thin paper through those gaps, much less anything else. The longer I studied that door, the less likely it seemed I’d get it to budge.
“Giving up isn’t an option.” I sat cross-legged in front of the door and cycled my breathing. Beast aspects flooded into my core in the blink of an eye, and I summoned my shadow serpents. They swarmed to life and chittered in my ear with eager voices. “Let’s see how strong you really are.”
The serpents oozed through the narrow spaces on either side of the door. I guided them under and around the thick iron bar that held me captive until my shadowy minions held it firmly in their coils. The metal was cold and dead against my spirit senses and felt impossibly heavy.
“Impossible’s for quitters.” It was time to get to work.
I imagined my serpents as an irresistible force and urged them upward with all the power my will could muster.
I’d gotten more efficient at putting the serpents’ beast aspects to work, until I could lift a dozen books in each tentacle without strain. They were strong enough to rip the weapon out of another initiate’s hand.
