Hollow Core

by Gage Lee

  If I didn’t do something in the next split second, this thing was going to dump a whole world of hurt on me.

  Even as I flung myself toward the right side of the doorway, I knew I couldn’t entirely dodge the spirit beast. I managed to get my upper body out of its path, which saved me from almost certain death.

  My legs, on the other hand, weren’t quite so lucky.

  The creature’s body was the size of a small cow, and its legs were thick as a hippopotamus’s stumpy limbs. The spirit’s front right leg slammed into mine, and it bellowed in rage as its charge knocked me down the hall.

  Fortunately, the creature was moving far too fast to change direction and come after me. Its charge carried it straight into the stone wall opposite the door. The collision buckled the creature’s legs and left it too stunned to even groan, much less attack.

  To my surprise, my leg wasn’t shattered. The blue serpent on my left side had snaked down to take the brunt of the hit, leaving the meat and bone intact, if badly damaged. I’d feel that for the next year or two.

  “Thanks,” I gasped and released the mauled serpent. It came apart in a blue haze of jinsei and beast aspects and vanished without a trace.

  “Might want to join the party, if you can,” Clem shouted to me.

  She and Abi hacked at the spirit from either side of its body. Their fusion swords flashed and sparked with every impact, and the spirit’s jinsei burst into the air in frothy splashes. Despite the deep wounds my friends had carved into its spectral body, the spirit looked like it was regaining its strength.

  “Save some fun for me.” I forged new bonds to the tiny creatures around me and pulled their jinsei into my core in a rush. Before all the sacred energy could spill out of me, I stuffed the channels in my legs with as much of it as I could manage. Then I scrambled to my feet and went after the spirit guardian.

  My fusion sword hadn’t been knocked out of my hand by the spirit’s attack, thankfully, and I put it to good use. I gripped the lower portion of the hilt in both hands to give my blows more leverage and sliced at the spirit’s back with an artless swing.

  To my surprise, the crystalline blade ripped through the creature much more efficiently than Abi’s and Clem’s weapons. The spirit flesh tore and splattered with every stroke of my blade, and the guardian’s back legs faltered.

  That really ticked the big girl off.

  It lashed out at Abi with her front leg. The awkward attack didn’t have the leverage to do any real damage, though it did manage to shove Abi back a few feet. Infuriated, the creature swung its head hard to the opposite side, forcing Clem to break off the attack to parry the horn before it could disembowel her. Unfortunately for the guardian, it didn’t have the room it needed to maneuver and put its superior size and strength to good use. It was trapped between three initiates and our flashing blades, which rose and fell in a sloppy butcher’s dance.

  Finally, a few minutes after we’d opened the door, the beast gave a long, pained bellow and collapsed to the floor. Its body steamed and hissed as the jinsei that gave it form bled off into nothingness. When the sacred energy fog had cleared, the spirit was gone. In its place was a small bulging sack.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Eric asked. He hadn’t been able to do anything other than watch the fight and didn’t look like he’d improved much despite his cycling.

  “Let’s see.” Clem kneeled next to the bag and loosened its drawstrings. White light poured up from its throat. “Tokens. Lots and lots of tokens.”

  Abi and I stood guard while Eric and Clem counted out our haul. I cast a wide net with my little surveillance buddies and was confident they’d warn me if anyone approached our spot. That didn’t keep me from sweating bullets while my friends tallied the treasures. If a large enough force came to take what we’d found, it would all have been for nothing.

  “Congratulations, initiate.” The chipper voice in my head was really getting on my nerves. “Fourteen students have been eliminated from the competition; ninety remain. You are currently ranked ninetieth, and your nearest competitor has ninety-five tokens, seventy-eight more than your total of seventeen tokens.”

  That was very bad. The stronger students were picking off the weaker initiates, furthering their lead and reducing competition at the same time. I’d need a ton of tokens to catch up.

  “I guess the professors really did hide tokens past that door,” Abi interrupted my thoughts. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

  “Honest mistake.” I raised my fist, and he bumped it with his knuckles. “Maybe they didn’t hide it this time. They could have been using this place for final challenges for centuries, right?”

  “That’s possible.”

  “How long has the School been around?”

  “As long as there have been Empyreals.” Abi frowned. “Maybe you’re right. This whole place might just be an elaborate testing ground. These tokens could have been from another challenge. Who knows?”

  “Good point.” We didn’t talk much after that. Abi was still suspicious of me, and I didn’t blame him. The fact that he’d gone this far for me was surprising.

  “A hundred and fifty tokens.” Eric was nearly breathless when he announced our total. “Split three ways—”

  “Four ways. We’re all equal partners in this.”

  “I can’t take any,” Eric protested to me. “You found it. Take my share.”

  My full share would only raise my current ranking one, maybe two, spots. That wasn’t enough to pull me out of the bottom ten percent. My mental map told me there was another, much larger trove, at the end of this tunnel. There were also more guardians or traps that way. If we were all at full strength, we’d have a better chance at claiming that treasure.

  I needed Eric on his feet.

  “No. You take my share.” All three of them tried to interrupt me at once. “Listen. Break the tokens down and use the sacred energy to heal yourself. There’s another, bigger haul not far from here. We’ll get that, and you can pay me back for this share, then.”

  “How do you know that?” Abi’s expression was dark, his eyes suspicious. “This door was sealed until just now.”

  “I learned some things down in the stacks.” I met Abi’s suspicious stare without flinching. These were my abilities, and I’d earned them the hard way. “Several things, actually. I can, I don’t know, connect, I guess, to some creatures.”

  “What creatures?” Abi’s curiosity was piqued, but he still seemed like he wouldn’t have put it past me to consort with demons.

  One of the critters I’d bonded to was nearby. Heck, I was almost as curious as my friends were about what kind of beasts I’d bound in this strange place. With a little nudge, I got my bound critter to ease out of the crack in the wall it had been hidden in.

  “This kind.” I crouched down and scooped the little guy up in my palm.

  It looked sort of like a blue crab. Its back and belly were covered in armored plates, though its legs were more like tentacles than the insectile limbs of a crab. It also lacked pincers, though it did have a bunch more eyestalks than any crab I’d ever seen. Those jutted from under the lip of the shell in every direction to give the little guy a three-sixty view of the world. It let out a nervous, high-pitched little chirp that bounced off the walls around us.

  “What is that thing?” Abi leaned down until his nose was only a few inches away from my little spy’s shell.

  “No idea,” I admitted. “There are a bunch of them around here, though. They can sense jinsei and use echolocation to help them get around.”

  “He’s so cute,” Clem squealed and stroked the back of the blue shell with her index finger. “This guy told you where the tokens are? It must have taken him hours to crawl around until he found them.”

  “He didn’t really crawl.” I couldn’t help but chuckle at the idea of this little guy running around looking for tokens. “I had help from a bunch of them.”

  “How many?” Abi’s suspicion had g
iven way to genuine curiosity, a huge improvement in my opinion.

  “Let’s see.” I shifted my awareness to the connections that spread away from my core in every direction. Even I was surprised at how many bonds I’d managed to forge. The process felt so natural now, I’d scarcely noticed just how far I’d flung my net. “A hundred or so.”

  Clem’s jaw dropped.

  “That’s amazing!” She nudged Eric, who groaned in response. “Maybe I should get locked up for a few months to learn some stuff.”

  “Couldn’t hurt.” Eric winced as he chuckled. “You really think we can afford to use these tokens?”

  “Positive.” I put my little friend back where I’d found him. He didn’t like being so exposed and really didn’t care for all this poking and prodding. “There are a few hundred more tokens not far from where we’re standing.”

  “Let’s go.” Eric groaned, and a fresh trickle of blood ran from his facial wound and down the side of his nose. “Just need a minute.”

  Clem and Abi exchanged glances. The Titan nodded.

  “Take as many of the tokens as you need.” She lifted the sack and handed it to Eric. “If Jace is right, we’ll all be set.”

  “I can’t.” Eric pushed the sack toward Abi.

  “You can.” Abi pushed the tokens back to the Resplendent Sun. “Do it.”

  Eric picked up a handful of the tokens and examined them.

  “Thank you.” Eric put two tokens in his mouth and bit down. Light flashed through his cheeks, and he closed his eyes to concentrate. The channels in his head lit up, and the edges of the gash across his face drew closer together. “Ah, yeah. That’s the stuff.”

  “I’m going to do a little scouting. I’ll be back by the time Eric heals up.”

  Before anyone could stop me, I stepped through the door, fusion blade held high. The crystalline blade shed a pale light a few feet around me, which was more than enough to light my path. Any more illumination might draw all the wrong types of attention.

  The narrow passage sloped steeply downward after a few yards. Simple designs appeared on its walls, growing more complex with every step I took. The engravings were ancient, their once-sharp edges crumbled and cracked by centuries of earth tremors and settling. The subjects, however, were still quite clear.

  Warriors clad in heavy armor battled against all manner of sacred beasts. Their enormous swords hewed into the legs of bulls, who towered to the sky. Their arrows punched into the hides of deer, who crushed entire buildings beneath the weight of their hooves. As I walked, the ancient legends of warriors I’d never know rose and fell. The buildings were replaced by rubble, the divine animals by bug-eyed spirits that hid among the ruins. At the very end of the sequence the same warriors reappeared, this time with the outlines of bug spirits inside them.

  Well. That was weird.

  A few yards further along the engravings were gone, and the only marks on the wall were cracks with eroded edges. A few yards past that, the bottom of the ramp came into view.

  I stopped at its base and let out a long, low whistle.

  The room I was about to enter had seven sides, no two the same length or height. The off-kilter chamber made my vision swim for a moment, and I had to brace myself against the wall as a wave of vertigo threatened to knock my legs out from beneath me.

  A tall, empty platform occupied the center of the room. It looked like it should have held a statue, or maybe a shrine. The platform itself was carved from a block of obsidian, and its sides mirrored the odd dimensions and angles of the surrounding walls. The whole place made my stomach churn and my eyes hurt.

  “Congratulations, initiate,” the voice chimed in my head. “You have risen to position eighty of eighty. The next closest competitor has one hundred and twelve tokens, ninety-five more than your current total of seventeen.”

  The news should have depressed me, but the rest of the weird chamber’s contents made me too giddy to care.

  The empty platform was surrounded by mounds of tokens. Someone had left hundreds of the glowing discs stacked around the base of the odd structure. The pile of coins formed a sloped mound that reached almost two feet high and spread out for five feet in every direction.

  The sight filled me with intense relief. My legs went weak, and I eased down to the floor. I put my head between my legs and cycled my breathing.

  I’d done it.

  After everything I’d been through, after Grayson’s attempts to push me out of the School, I’d pulled through.

  I let out an exhilarated whoop, pumped my fists into the air, and pretended my eyes weren’t burning with unshed tears.

  Finally, I’d done it.

  I’d beaten them all.

  I’d won.

  The Trap

  “THAT IS...” CLEM TOOK a deep breath. “That’s all ours?”

  “It can’t be this easy.” Eric looked miles better than he had when I left the team to scout ahead. The gash across his face would scar, and he was missing a tooth or two, but he was standing under his own power and looked more eager than injured. “What’s the catch?”

  “A trap,” I said. “Or more like a hundred traps. Use your spirit sight.”

  After I’d had a mini-breakdown of relief, I’d straightened up and taken a closer look at the chamber. To my normal sight, there was nothing to see other than the platform and the coins. My spirit sight told me a different story.

  The outer edges of the room were dotted with brilliant dots of jinsei the size of my fist. Each of those dots was connected to at least two others by lines of sacred energy so polluted with death and destruction aspects their light glowed sickly purplish black. The powerful beams crisscrossed the rooms at different heights, with never more than a few feet between them. There wasn’t even room for a small dog to pass between them, much less a teenaged jinsei artist.

  “Eric used all those tokens to get back on his feet.” Abi’s voice was rough with aggravation. “And we’ll never get across the room to those coins with so much death in the way.”

  “Have a little faith, man.” It was time to show my friends what I could do.

  My circular breathing swept away the two-strand connections I’d forged to the little crab creatures. I was pretty sure what I was about to do wouldn’t hurt them, but I was not going to risk harming them. This was my problem. If I screwed up, no one else needed to get hurt.

  “Step back,” I said to my friends. “I need a little space to work.”

  “Jace, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Clem said.

  “Too late.” I shoved my hand directly into the path of the first beam. I’d never tried to cycle jinsei through my hand, but I’d decided to risk my hand rather than stuff my face into the light and breathe it in.

  The power peeled a strip of skin from my palm, then flooded into my channels. The pain was immense, and my skull throbbed with the beginning of a terrible headache. I held onto my breathing technique, focused on the flow of jinsei in my palm, and drew it into my core.

  It wasn’t at all like breathing, and that was all right. I suddenly understood that jinsei artists only used breathing as a metaphor to help them focus on the flow of sacred energy through their body. I didn’t have to breathe it, I just had to get it inside me.

  I’d shed more aspects than I could count working for Hahen. But none of them could hold a candle to the aspects in that trap.

  Sacred energy filled my core in the blink of an eye. The potent stream of tainted jinsei stretched my core to its breaking point, and I struggled to do something, anything with the power before it ruptured my soul into a thousand tattered fragments.

  I pushed it into my legs, wrapped it around my torso, and pushed it into the channels that held my skull like a cage. The jinsei was so rich it stretched my body to its limits before my hollow core started to let it leak out.

  “Jace?” Clem’s voice broke through the storm of jinsei that flowed through me. “What can we do?”

  “Stay back!” I warned
her. My body vibrated as the powerful forces roared through me. I didn’t know what would happen if anyone touched me, and I didn’t want to find out.

  “Wow,” Eric whispered. “Your aura looks like a tornado.”

  The black death and purple destruction aspects I’d cleaned out of the tainted energy looked more like a bruise to me, but I wasn’t going to argue with the Resplendent Sun. The power churning around me was the most devastating combination I’d ever seen. I had no idea what would happen when it came time for me to purge it.

  “I think it’s working.” Abi pointed past me. “The beams seem purer, somehow.”

  “Good.” I forced the words through my gritted teeth. I’d put myself in the path of a jinsei circuit, hoping my hollow core would filter out all the dangerous aspects. Now it was time to see if I could open a gap for everyone to walk through.

  The jinsei beam I’d intercepted had been aimed at a spot on the wall just to my left. For my next trick, I needed to channel the line of sacred energy through my body and into that spot. If it worked, I wouldn’t only be pulling dangerous aspects out of the trap, I’d also be putting clean, pure jinsei back into it.

  It was a struggle to keep my circular breathing up, but the alternative was a sudden and painful death. The small number of fire aspects that had gotten into my channels when I’d started work in the laboratory had almost cooked me alive. The far greater number of death and destruction aspects would probably just blast me apart if I lost control of the fire hose of power.

  With that pleasant thought on my mind, I stretched my hand out and slapped my palm against the dark spot on the wall. I concentrated on the course of my channels, in through the right hand, out through the left.

  Power gushed through me and burst from my left hand. The skin of my palm gave way with a wet tearing sensation. A blizzard of jinsei sparks exploded into the air, and my knees threatened to buckle and dump me onto my face. It was like standing in the center of a thunderstorm with a lightning rod in each hand.

  “Jace!” Clem shouted.