by Gage Lee
I’d thought I’d prepared my mind for anything, but that trip shook me to my core. I couldn’t imagine the effect it had on the others.
Because going back in time along the pattern meant reliving my history in a blurred rush. Glimpses of my time studying with Hahen, the touch of Rachel’s hand in mine, the smell of Clem’s hair, the angry face of Tycho Reyes, Grayson watching me bleed out, my mother kneeling before a faceless figure who—there was no time for any of that. The past was gone. All that mattered now was saving the future. I willed the time aspects to propel us toward the heart of the Design, and our pace accelerated. We left our lives far behind and shot past our ancestors, on and on toward the spark that had ignited the Empyrean Flame in the void’s darkness.
The multitude of forking branches and fractal paths simplified as we neared the beginning. The light dimmed as billions of destinies became millions became hundreds of thousands became tens of thousands.
My path slowed, the thread of time running short. The wide, smooth arc of the Design’s center spread out before us as we reached the time before mortals walked the earth and demons stalked the endless gulfs. The yawning emptiness at the Grand Design’s center was much larger than I’d imagined, an endless sea of inky darkness so wide I couldn’t see its opposite edge.
And then we slowed further, rising upward, toward something charred and blackened far above the Design. From our new altitude, the center of the pattern looked like a simple circle surrounded by an endless sea of light.
“What is this?” Clem asked me, her spirit brushing against mine.
She pointed to a small orb. Its surface was charred and blackened, as flames had engulfed it for an eternity.
No, not flames.
The Empyrean Flame.
“The beginning of everything,” I whispered.
It was simultaneously beautiful and horrifying, a reminder of the infinite wonder and majesty of the mortal world and a sign of the end of every long and winding road.
“Now what?” Reyes asked sharply. The trip had rattled her, and her normally short temper was sharpened to a needle’s point. “That thing is still behind us. Weren’t you the one who said this wasn’t a sightseeing trip?”
“You’re right. I got caught up in my own thoughts. This won’t take long,” I said. “I hope. Have your team form a perimeter around mine. I’ll draw jinsei from your cores as I need, but I also need you to defend me until my work is complete.”
Reyes’s face tightened with suspicion. “You’re putting my people in harm’s way while yours are safe. This feels like a trap.”
Eric bowed up, his eyes burning like suns. “He’s saving us,” my friend challenged the Consul. “All of us. The least you can do is give him cover.”
All the Disciples stiffened at the affront to their leader. If this had been any other place, at any other time, there’d have been a fight to the death over her honor. And for just a moment, I thought Reyes was going to kick one off herself.
But she surprised me. Reyes bowed to me, deep and graceful.
“I doubted you before, Elder Warin,” she said. “But my eyes are open now. I see what you have done, and they understand what we must do. I have but one question.”
Tru was right. Sometimes the truth was the best fire to weld an alliance. After all the troubles I’d had with the Reyes family, I’d won over their most powerful member with simple honesty.
The world was full of miracles.
“Ask,” I said, returning the bow, a fraction less deeply. “I’ll do what I can to answer.”
“Did you mean what you said about my choice?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Have you decided?”
She nodded and drifted closer to me. I heard her thoughts as clearly as my own. “Return the sage to us. We need his guidance.”
I’d been afraid of that, but there wasn’t much I could do about her choice. I’d deal with Tycho when the time came. Because I was not about to break my alliance with a lie.
“I’ll do it,” I assured her. “But we need to finish this. Now.”
Xaophis wasn’t close yet, but I felt its presence like a low, eerie vibration through the strands of the Grand Design. It had sensed me traveling back toward the beginning, and it was furious.
“The spirit will be here soon,” I said. “I hope we’ll be gone before it arrives, but if not... be ready to fight.”
The Disciples nodded solemnly to me, and I went to work.
The orichalcum core that I’d created was bound to my thread of fate. Though it was distant in both time and space, it might as well have been sitting on my shoulder. I focused my thoughts on it and looked up at the charred mass above me.
The dark object held a strange gravity. It was all that remained of the previous Empyrean Flame. That was the anchor I needed.
I willed strands between the orichalcum core and the husk. They were slick and difficult to manage, the energy somehow coarser and stiffer than I’d ever experienced before. Each stitch required enormous effort, and I pulled more and more jinsei from the Disciples. Their power rushed into me, but the more of it I drew, the more I needed.
“Stop.” The spirit’s mechanical voice raged through the void. The words tumbled and banged across the Design like a runaway machine.
“I need your help,” I said to my friends.
“Anything,” Clem said, her voice rough with emotion. “Take what you need.”
“Abi, my friend,” I gasped, “I need your stability. You’re the rock I stand on.”
His spirit touched mine, a wordless show of support, and my trembling hands stilled. The stitches were still hard to pull, but my motions were steadier now, more certain.
“Eric, lend me your confidence,” I said. “Show me I know what I’m doing.”
He chuckled and said, “You’re always leaning on me, Warin. You’ve got this, man.”
The good-natured jibe was a jolt of positive energy I desperately needed. So what if Xaophis was racing toward us like a tornado full of razor blades? We’d been through worse than it could dish out. When it was spent and dying, we’d still be standing.
I worked faster, the threads slipping through my thoughts, catching on my memories, scoring furrows in my spirit like a taut wire through a block of soft cheese. It hurt, and it cost me jinsei, but I kept going.
“What can I give you?” Clem asked.
The sound of her voice gave me everything I needed but didn’t know how to take. A future worth saving, a friend who was always by my side. A world to grow up and old in.
“It’s nearly here,” Reyes called, her voice clear and determined. “Prepare a shield, my Disciples!”
My spirit hands and serpents pulled one strand of jinsei after another through the husk’s heavy body and into the shell. Over and over again, I stitched threads of fate, binding the two things together as if they’d always been one and the same.
Xaophis spewed a thunderous litany of gibberish at us. I didn’t understand any of the words, if there were any, but the intent was clear.
It was going to kill us all.
A final thread of fate sealed the last miniscule gap between the heart of creation and the orichalcum shell. Power vibrated from the connection, a pulse that passed through our spirits with a deep thrum.
But the power of the Flame inside me didn’t move.
“Go,” I pleaded. “You have to move on. We need you!”
But the Flame did not stir.
Unfamiliar voices shouted in pain and confusion. Jinsei flashed in throbbing strobes that lit up my thoughts like a ferocious fireworks display. Xaophis had arrived.
The Disciples had held off the beast’s first attack, but they’d suffered for it. One of their number was down, knocked senseless. The shield they’d raised wobbled and frayed, the jinsei that protected my allies nearly gone.
“They can’t take much more of this, Jace,” Clem pleaded with me. “They need your help.”
My thoughts raced. I’d mad
e the shell according to Maps’ instructions. I’d anchored the core to the very heart of the creation.
So why wouldn’t the Flame help us?
Something was wrong. Given time, I might figure it out. But if I took that time, Xaophis would tear the Disciples apart.
Our only hope of beating that monstrosity was for me to take the lead.
“Fine,” I growled, abandoning the bindings. “I’ll do it the hard way.”
The End
XAOPHIS CONTINUED ITS relentless banging and screeching as it soared through the surrounding void. The spirit seemed to grow by the moment, its sinuous length stretching to encircle the Disciples’ protective perimeter in a band of jutting barbs and shifting spikes.
The Disciples had retreated from the creature’s deadly noose and closed the gap left by their fallen clan member, whom they’d dragged to safety. She lay at my feet, her face a twisted mask of agony, ornate robes torn and scorched until the jinsei defensive scrivenings were shredded into useless snarls of silver thread.
I wanted to kneel and heal the fallen warrior, if only to ease her pain. But the cruel calculus of battle told me that would be a terrible idea. While her injuries weren’t life-threatening, removing them would leave me weakened. And with the ultimate battle against Xaophis looming, any weakness could be the end of me.
As if to remind me of its power, the spirit smashed its head into the Disciples’ sorcerous shield once more. Its enormous mandibles hit the arcs of jinsei with astounding force that shook all of us to our cores. The impact kicked up a spray of sacred energy, momentarily blinding us.
When the glare cleared, I saw the defenses had held, though the hit had taken a terrible toll on the Disciples. Several of them were on their knees, hands raised to maintain their shield. Blood ran from their nostrils and ears, and their eyes were stained red from burst blood vessels. Another hit like that would finish them.
It only took me a moment to come up with a plan. I hoped it was a good one.
“Reyes!” I shouted and floated toward the Consul.
Even powered by jinsei, my voice was barely audible above the spirit’s infernal screeching as it prepared for another attack.
“I hope you’ve got a better plan than what you’ve shown so far,” Reyes shouted back.
“I’m doing what I can,” I shouted. “Just before it hits your shield on its next attack, drop the barrier and scatter. Leave this to me.”
Reyes gave me a dubious look, then nodded. She’d suffered as much as the other Disciples, and one of her pupils was blown wide from the strain. “What about the Flame?” she asked.
“It’s not playing ball,” I said.
Her shoulders sagged, and she set her mouth in a stoic grimace. “Be ready. This thing will come in hard and fast. It smells our weakness.”
“Just give the word,” I said. “I’ll do the rest.”
I returned to my allies, my eyes locked on Xaophis. “The next time that thing comes for us, the three of you need to run.”
Eric scowled at me. “I came here to fight, not take off with my tail between my legs.”
“You’ll get your chance to go to war,” I promised. “But not if this thing kills you. Let me soften it up for your finisher.”
“Don’t make this trip for nothing,” the prizefighter said, his expression grim. “I want that thing’s head for a trophy.
The air crackled with tension as Xaophis reared above us. Abi looked up, his eyes wide with wonder. “Good luck, my friend.”
“Here it comes,” Clem said, her voice eerily calm. “Take him down, Jace.”
I wanted that moment to last forever. Before I could say goodbye to Clem or pop off a smart-aleck comment for Eric and Abi, the spirit roared and prepared its attack.
The monster’s body glowed with lightning storms of jinsei it pulled through the hundreds of black strands dangling from its body. Its connections to the Grand Design had multiplied even since I’d last seen it. That told me its influence was spreading like wildfire, and every one of those dark tendrils represented one more man, woman, or child in thrall to this beast.
“You should never have come to the throne of creation,” Xaophis bellowed. “You will pay the ultimate price for your foolishness.”
And then it dove toward us like a black comet. Its sinuous body trailed behind the massive head, cracking like a whip in the darkness. Sacred energy flowed into the spirit, saturating every inch of its body, and spikes of silver power rose along its back in a dorsal fin of deadly energy.
Reyes barked her order an instant before the spirit’s massive head reached the barrier. “Scatter!”
The barrier fell, and the Disciples burst away from the perimeter like shooting stars. My friends followed suit, just as I’d asked them to, and I was alone with Xaophis.
The beast plowed through the empty space where the barrier had been only a moment before. It had expected an impact to either stop or slow its plummet. When the defenses fell ahead of it, the creature overshot its mark and tumbled through the void. Unable to arrest its momentum, it spun head over tail, body flailing to stop its flight.
This was my moment. I’d seen how Byron had fought the spirit with the help of his allies. My team was far more powerful than his. This should be the end of Xaophis.
I pulled all the jinsei I could get from my allies through the Borrowed Core and fed the sacred energy into a single burst of power that rocketed me after my target at the speed of a jet fighter. My cycling breaths gathered more jinsei, pure and primal, and I channeled that into my arms and fusion blade. The weapon glowed like a meteor plowing through the atmosphere, brighter and brighter as I closed in on my target.
My explosive flight brought me within striking range, and I rammed the burning blade into the creature’s skull with titanic force. I’d put everything into that attack, and it struck hard and true. The blow hit like a bomb, all the jinsei I’d stored in it exploding down into my foe. A blast of blinding light erupted from the point of impact, and a shock wave flung me away from the beast.
Xaophis screamed in pain, and its body spiraled through the darkness, trailing a milky stream of foul spirit blood. Smoke gushed from the gash I’d torn through the back of its skull. The grievous wound should have been fatal.
But the spirit recovered before I did. Sacred energy flooded into its body from the tendrils attached to its belly, and a nebulous black haze gathered around the wound. In seconds, it surged toward me, healed from the horrific damage I’d inflicted.
No, that was impossible. I’d done everything the Flame needed. I’d teamed up with my most dangerous enemy. And when the chips were down, I’d struck with all the power we could muster.
And it wasn’t enough.
Xaophis, unfazed by the greatest efforts of a master-level sacred artist, a member of the Consul Triad, ten of the most powerful Disciples of Jade Flame, an artist-level Resplendent Flame, and my two powerful friends, slithered through the void. It took its time, seeming no longer to care what I did, a cat toying with its meal.
Because what did the monster have to fear? I’d thrown everything I could muster into that attack, and it had shrugged it off.
“No mortal may interfere in the Grand Design,” Xaophis snarled through the mirror-black scythes of its mandibles. “As its appointed guardian, it will be my pleasure to dispatch you.”
The beast streaked toward me, the tendrils that connected it to the Design yanking it through the void with the inevitability of a wrecking ball.
I studied the juggernaut of doom as it roared toward me, searching for a weakness, for any vulnerability I could exploit to end this fight. There had to be something.
There had to be.
But I didn’t see it and had to streak to the side to avoid instant obliteration. Even with my jinsei-boosted reflexes, the monster had come perilously close to smashing me to ribbons. It thrust spines from its body as it shot by and unleashed a forest of waving tentacles tipped with glistening talons.
Ducking and dodging had earned me some space, but only for the time it took Xaophis to turn and make another charge. I cycled my breathing, desperate to replace the jinsei I’d lost in the fight. When that wasn’t enough, my allies topped me off. It felt wrong to take so much of their sacred energy, but I was out of choices.
As I considered how much of a vampire this made me, another thought occurred to me. There was more that I could borrow from my allies. Maybe it wasn’t their strength I needed, but their skills.
“I’m borrowing your techniques,” I said to my friends through our connection. “Keep your eye on me. This should be fun.”
This had to be the answer. I soared above the void to open some space between Xaophis and me. It took me a few seconds to understand what I needed, and a few seconds more to pull it through my technique. The powers my friends loaned to me were strange, but also familiar. After all, Eric’s sometimes fiery temper, Abi’s stony stoicism, and Clem’s mischievousness had to come from somewhere. It only made sense that their paths influenced their behavior.
“There is nowhere for you to flee,” Xaophis shouted. “This is my domain. It obeys my will alone.”
Strands of blue-white power erupted across the void. They appeared in my path, too close for me to change direction.
I slammed into the strange web, expecting it to shred to pieces. But it absorbed the force of my impact with only the slightest give. When I bounced off that strand, another slammed into my back, and another caught that ricochet and slapped my legs out from under me.
The last web stuck to me like its namesake. Its sticky surface clung to my robes, while sharp spines pierced my spirit and held it like a bear’s jaws. In the blink of an eye, I’d gone from moving near the speed of thought to pinned in place like a bug.
Xaophis had no such difficulty. It glided through the webs like a sea serpent through a kelp jungle. The glowing strands parted at its approach, giving it a clear path to me.
