Dragon Heart

by Kirill Klevanski

  Ramukhan and Tilis looked a little better, but each of them had blood flowing down their faces — a sign of extreme exhaustion and strain on one’s body. Hadjar had only a tenth of his energy reserves left. Even if he used his Call, he still wouldn’t be able to compete with a creature that was at the level of a Spirit Knight.

  The joint attack of the five strong practitioners had barely been able to kill one creature. The element of surprise had also aided them. The second spirit, given its defensive stance, was clearly ready for their attack. Its blue silk clothes were swaying in the wind. The entity relied on this cloth to hold it together. If it disappeared, the spirit would once again become a simple dune.

  “If you have any trump cards left, it’s time to use them,” Hadjar hissed.

  He and Einen looked at each other and silently agreed that it wasn’t the right time to demonstrate the abilities of their Inheritances.

  While the citizens of Underworld City were pondering whether they should part with their artifacts, the spirit didn’t waste any time. It roared, and the sands around it began to move. Columns of sand burst out from its body. Curving, they intertwined around the spirit until it had six arms, each holding a huge saber.

  “Fucking shit!” Hadjar cursed.

  Extending to an incredible degree, the six arms attacked the squad.

  “Calm Wind!” Hadjar shouted.

  To power the stance, he used up all of his remaining energy. The spirit’s sand sabers hovered in the air, momentarily delayed, but Hadjar felt that he couldn’t hold them back for more than a few seconds.

  “It’ll break through soon!”

  “Evening Stars,” Ramukhan breathed out, taking a jade seal out of his pocket.

  The hieroglyphs on it were painted in black and white, and the pattern was so complex that one glance at it made Hadjar’s head spin. The sorcerer whispered something as he held the seal in front of him, then threw it under the spirit’s feet. What came next blew all of Hadjar’s expectations out of the water.

  A yellow lightning bolt shot out from the center of the cracked jade seal. It was as wide as the trunk of a young tree, and as sturdy as a stone wall. The feeling it gave off was that it could be grabbed with one’s bare hands and carried on your shoulder. Given the power roiling within it, the shoulder would have to belong to someone who was far beyond a Spirit Knight.

  The sand creature didn’t even have time to cry out as the monstrous lightning bolt cut it in half. Without creating even the slightest echo, without wasting even an ounce of power, it just struck a single point. The attack was so powerful that no core stone fell to the sand afterward. It had simply evaporated along with the sand spirit itself.

  “What was that?” Hadjar asked, dumbfounded.

  “The Sage’s seal,” Ramukhan explained. “Paris gave us two, and we’ve just used one up. By the Evening Stars, now we only have one Lord level spell left for when we face Sankesh.”

  Lord level? That meant the Sage, the master and mentor of Underworld City, was at the level superior to a Spirit Knight. However, if his memory wasn’t failing him, South Wind had also mentioned something similar to Hadjar before.

  For a while, silence fell over the desert.

  Chapter 385

  “Would it have been better to die instead?” Karissa asked him. “The Sage gave these seals to all of us. Don’t act like you used your own personal spells!”

  Ramukhan didn’t answer and turned away. Damned sorcerer! He most likely also had a personal seal given to him by the Sage. His mother had been right when she’d said that, in the world of cultivation, people sometimes did mean and stupid things to get precious resources.

  “We’ll deal with that later,” Hadjar said. “Einen, can you treat their wounds? I’ll go check how Glen’s doing.”

  “Okay,” the islander said.

  He gently put Karissa down on the sand. Einen took several small bottles out of his bag. Seeing this, Hadjar began to wonder whether his mother’s words had been true.

  While Einen treated Karissa, Tilis, and Ramukhan, who didn’t like being indebted to the stranger, Hadjar went over to Glen. The Baliumian was lying on his back, trembling slightly. There was a gash across his chest, from his left hip to his right shoulder. The ragged edges were several inches deep —it was a miracle that the attack hadn’t damaged his stomach or heart. Alas, his right lung, judging by the warrior’s breathing, had been torn to shreds, which explained all the blood he was coughing up.

  Sitting down beside him, Hadjar took Glen’s wrist and closed his eyes, listening to the rhythm of the Baliumian’s heart and sensing the currents of his energy. Back when Dogar had taught him the basics of healing, Hadjar hadn’t really understood all the confusing talk about ‘the currents of power and energy’, but everything was now clear and even simple for him to gauge.

  In the World River, Glen’s body looked like a terrifying tangle of energy currents. Even the thinnest threads formed an intricate pattern that Hadjar didn’t dare to try and comprehend. If he tried to understand this complicated pattern, his mind would simply dissolve into it. Instead, Hadjar singled out the largest threads, which looked more like rivers. These were Glen’s meridians. Most of them looked normal, but there were a few in his chest area that were damaged. They were no longer properly circulating the energy in his body, which meant that his entire energy system had dimmed and become lifeless. There was a presence of death about him. Unless he did something, Glen would die soon. Hadjar didn’t like the Baliumian, but he’d just seen that even five of them weren’t strong enough to survive in this region on their own.

  Remembering the Moon Army’s officer’s instructions, Hadjar wished his neural network wasn’t still rebooting. There were a lot of scrolls and books from the Imperial library and ‘The Black Gates’ sect in its memory banks. The knowledge was fairly basic, but Hadjar would’ve been glad to have even that much.

  He drank a potion with his eyes closed. Wincing at the unsettling taste, Hadjar felt the energy of the World River flowing into his own body much more quickly. This potion was called the ‘River’s Connection Enhancer’, and it had cost Hadjar a quarter of an Imperial coin in the Underworld City Auction House…

  “If you live, you’ll owe me,” Hadjar grumbled.

  Using his own energy, he ‘touched’ the torn meridians in Glen’s body. As he made contact, he sensed a sharp discord between their currents of power. Hadjar’s energy was like the wind, free and unbridled, while the Baliumian’s own power was calm, bright, and hot.

  Suppressing an instinctive urge to recoil, Hadjar followed the instructions he could remember. He imagined picking up a needle. A blue thread appeared inside his mind, created from the energy that had separated from his core. With it, Hadjar, using Glen’s and his own energies, began to ‘sew up’ the torn meridians. They defied him, trying to tear away and spread out, but, bit by bit, inch by inch, they returned to their original state. For Hadjar, such delicate work was real torture. Oblivious to the outside world, he continued his work.

  “I didn’t know your friend had talents outside his connection to the Sword Spirit.” Karissa’s voice trembled as she sipped her broth, shivering under the blanket.

  Einen looked at his friend. Hadjar had been sitting next to Glen for four hours now, holding the wounded man’s wrist. There were waves of energy emanating from Hadjar, and blue sparks occasionally flickered across Glen’s wound. It gradually closed up, his breathing steadying. Moreover, thirty minutes ago, the Baliumian had stopped bleeding, though he was still very pale.

  “Why don’t you give him some of that medicine?” Tilis asked accusingly.

  “It wouldn’t make a difference.” Einen shrugged.

  The stars were already illuminating the desert. They weren’t like the stars in the outside world, appearing far more bright and colorful, as if a merchant had thrown all their jewels down on a counter and then shone a torch on them.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If Hadjar
doesn’t succeed and restore his meridians, no medicine will help Glen. Not the ones I have with me, anyway.”

  Einen turned to Ramukhan. The sorcerer had the sack Paris had given him. It was full of artifacts, talismans, and elixirs the head of the Research Chamber had provided for their journey. Who knew how many of them Ramukhan had decided to keep for himself.

  “Let’s wait and see what happens,” the sorcerer replied to his unspoken question, and calmly continued to drink Einen’s medicine.

  At the moment, Hadjar was desperately struggling to repair Glen’s meridians. Finally, they reconnected. Hadjar’s work looked very rough to anyone watching: there were plainly visible, lingering tears everywhere, which would certainly affect the speed of Glen’s recovery. But when the choice was either life or death, such nuances really were insignificant.

  When he finished with the meridians, Hadjar started healing the nodes — the gates through which the energy from the World River came in. During the time when the meridians had stopped circulating energy through Glen’s body, these nodes had begun to slowly crystallize the energy accumulated inside them. This phenomenon gave Hadjar certain ideas that he would’ve used if he’d had a few hundred thousand practitioners at Glen’s level and no honor, willing to become stronger by any means. Just like the Patriarch of ‘The Black Gates’ sect.

  Imagining the needle-thread changing into a small hammer, Hadjar slowly and methodically crushed the energy crystals, clearing up the nodes. This took a lot less time and soon came to an end.

  Hadjar opened his eyes and looked at his handiwork. Glen’s wound had healed, turning into a hideous scar. His pulse was almost steady, and his breathing had calmed. The frozen red crust on his lips and cheeks indicated that blood was no longer flowing out of his mouth. His injured lung was probably still in bad shape, but his Technique for Strengthening the Body was working.

  “Help me,” Einen said, appearing nearby.

  Together, they lifted Glen’s head slightly and poured a potion into his mouth.

  “How long will he need to recover?” Ramukhan asked as he approached.

  “By morning, he’ll be back on his feet,” Hadjar replied, “but as for fighting... I don’t think he’ll be able to help us in battle anytime soon.”

  “Then he’ll have to try his luck with the traps.”

  The sorcerer said this with great confidence, as if he were certain that they would encounter various traps in the near future.

  “I don’t think you have the right to make such a decision.”

  Upon hearing Hadjar’s words, Ramukhan’s face flushed slightly, and his eyes flashed evilly.

  “I don’t think you can do anything about it,” the sorcerer replied smugly. He nodded at the blue amulets on their arms. This was yet another example of how the assurance that they weren’t slaves was a blatant lie. Well, they weren’t slaves when things were going well, but as soon as they disagreed or something dangerous came up...

  Ramukhan quieted down and returned to the fire.

  Hadjar took the stone he’d snatched up in the battle against the sand spirit out of his pocket. Maybe the others had forgotten about it, or maybe they hadn’t noticed him grab it, but no one had reminded Hadjar to share the spoils with them.

  “What’s that?” Einen asked him.

  “I was just about to ask you the same question.”

  Chapter 386

  Einen took the stone and placed it in his palm, then froze. He meditated for a minute or so, peering at it through the World River. It was hard to tell what exactly he was doing.

  “Hand me the Energy Stone, please,” the islander said suddenly.

  Hadjar untied the strings of the wallet where he kept little Serra’s gift and the fairy’s tears. He placed the artifact in Einen’s other palm. The islander peered at it for a while as well, and then laid both stones down on the sand.

  “Do these look similar to you?” He asked.

  Hadjar thought about it for a moment, then slapped his forehead and peered at them through the World River. Just as he’d suspected, the stones looked almost identical when he did so. The only difference was that the stone given to him by little Serra contained ten times more energy than the one he’d extracted from the spirit.

  Hadjar was now certain of two things: first, he knew where to get a much-needed resource in the future. If cores formed inside beasts, then Energy Stones formed in spirits. It was rather logical.

  The youngsters of the Empire were probably taught such things at an early age, but to the rest of the world, such knowledge was quite valuable. Admittedly, people in Lidus wouldn’t need to know about Energy Stones and where to get them because they’d need to fight a creature at the Spirit Knight level to acquire them.

  The second thing: Serra’s gift was even more potent than he’d thought.

  “I guess,” Einen continued, “that these kinds of stones must form in spirits far above the Lord level.”

  “Above the Lord level,” Hadjar repeated, shaking his head. “I don’t even know the name of the first level above the Lord level. And I don’t really want to imagine how powerful a creature that produces this sort of stone is.”

  “I doubt that little Serra gave this to you... for no reason.”

  “It was a gift,” Hadjar said.

  “You know what I mean, barbarian.”

  When Einen used the inoffensive term ‘barbarian’, it was clear that he was very annoyed. However, his annoyance was understandable. The situation was quite stressful and frightening, after all. They’d fallen through the bottom of a lake and landed in this strange region. They didn’t know whether they’d passed through a portal or ended up in a world inside their world. Or maybe it was an incredibly huge cave. Then they’d fought against two monsters that could’ve destroyed Lidus or Balium...

  And now they’d learned that Serra had given Hadjar an Energy Stone of immense power. It wasn’t surprising that the head of the Auction House of Underworld City hadn’t been able to name its price. He most likely hadn’t been able to determine how valuable a resource it was.

  “Maybe she gave you the key to Mage City,” Einen suggested hopefully.

  Hadjar mulled that over for a moment. How easy things would be if that were true.

  “I don’t think so,” Hadjar sighed. “Given everything we’ve learned, we can be certain that she’s the Key. She’s not a human being, not a living thing at all, but a mage-created golem.”

  “I wonder why they didn’t make her strong enough to handle the likes of Sankesh.”

  “We can try to figure out the motives of the extinct civilization later,” Hadjar grinned.

  He agreed with Sankesh on one thing: if Mage City had been obliterated, it had deserved such a fate. If they’d really been as unique and omnipotent as the legends claimed, then marauders wouldn’t have been looking for the entrance to their city right now.

  “You’re right, my friend, let’s cross that bridge when we get to it.” Einen rolled up his blanket and put it under his head. Hugging his staff, he breathed calmly. “At the moment, we just know that we have an artifact that’s probably connected to Mage City somehow.”

  The islander soon fell asleep. At their level of power, sleep was rarely needed, and in most cases, it could be replaced by deep meditation. However, when the need arose, a practitioner instinctively fell into a deep slumber. It probably wasn’t necessary at all after one advanced to the Heaven Soldier level, or after they reached the Spirit Knight level, surely. Hadjar had heard people say that Lords could go months without food or water and remain in seclusion for decades.

  Hadjar cracked his aching neck and glanced at Karissa and Tilis. He wasn’t interested in either of them, but the fact that he hadn’t been with a woman in… By the Evening Stars, it’s been far too long!

  Parodying Nero’s tone in his head, Hadjar promised himself that, as soon as he got out of the desert, he would visit a brothel right away to soothe his soul, nerves, and sate his natural sexual ne
eds. Smiling after he made the decision, Hadjar was about to follow his friend’s example, but as he lay down on the sand, he turned and the Patriarch’s ring pressed against his chest.

  Pulling out the leather strap from underneath his clothes, Hadjar looked around. No one seemed to be watching him. It was unlikely that anyone but Einen would’ve been able to identify the ring anyway. It was too valuable by the standards of this land. Even in the Imperial capital, spatial rings weren’t exactly common, let alone in the Sea of Sand. Deep in thought, he sniffed.

  A few years ago, Serra’s homeland had seemed to him like a huge world filled with strong cultivators and great danger. Now he looked down on this place. Then again, he’d earned the right to do so, as Hadjar was now able to fight on equal terms with Heaven Soldiers at the lower stages of the level.

  If he were to face the Patriarch of ‘The Black Gates’ sect now, he wouldn’t need the neural network to defeat the maniac. Perhaps he could even defeat him with less than ten attacks. Using the Call, he wouldn’t need more than three.

  Steeling his resolve with such thoughts, he looked at the ring. The World River appeared before his eyes, and a complex pattern made up of threads of energy appeared. A year and a half ago, just a glimpse of it had given Hadjar a terrible headache, and he’d nearly lost his mind. Now, even though he had a headache, he could withstand the pressure of the pattern on his mind. After his impromptu practice using Glen, whose energy patterns had looked hundreds of times more complex than the ring’s, Hadjar decided to take a risk.

  It was considered impossible to re-bind such an artifact if you weren’t a Heaven Soldier, but Hadjar had gotten used to proving that everything was possible if a person tried hard enough.