School of Swords and Serpents Boxset: Books 1 - 3 (Hollow Core, Eclipse Core, Chaos Core)

by Gage Lee

  I didn’t stop. My control over my Eclipse nature felt weak and uncertain as the stress inside me mounted. Denying the urge had felt like tearing my core in half. I wasn’t sure I could do it again so soon. I needed space.

  I didn’t want to kill anyone else.

  The Offer

  MY CORE THRASHED AND churned within me as I stormed out of the dojo. It urged me to go back, to make sure my fallen foe wouldn’t rise again. To the Eclipse Warrior, winning wasn’t enough. Any foe who still lived could be a threat again in the future.

  I was beginning to realize why the other clans had been so terrified of people like me. Every time I slipped up, someone got hurt.

  “Jace!” Clem called as she raced up behind me.

  “I need to be alone,” I said. “Please.”

  Clem ran ahead of me, then turned around and planted her feet in my path.

  “Jace, what happened?” she asked. “It was over so fast.”

  Eric and Abi caught up to us and flanked Clem. Eric looked confused and upset, while Abi just looked angry.

  “He activated a technique,” I said. “Two days ago, I was fighting in the Five Dragons Challenge against contenders who didn’t follow rules like half-strength. When I saw that attack coming at me, I overreacted.”

  “You saw him activate a technique and reacted before it could hit you?” Eric asked. “No wonder you won all those fights. All I saw was a flash of light and then Kyle was on the ground.”

  “I think that’s all any of us saw.” Abi eyed me with open concern. “Will he be all right?”

  “He’ll be fine,” I said defensively. “I used my serpent to deflect the jinsei from his technique. It stunned him, but he’ll recover. Won’t even have a bruise.”

  That explanation was mostly the truth. I’d done a lot of reading on the road and had learned there were several techniques that could temporarily disrupt jinsei. That had been a relief, because it made it easier to hide what I was really doing.

  I hated lying to my friends, but no one could know the truth. I’d be dead before dawn if it came out that I was an Eclipse Warrior.

  “You’ve grown very strong since I last saw you, my friend,” Abi said with a rueful chuckle. He seemed to have accepted my explanation. “I’ll be careful not to surprise you when we are sparring. I’d hate for you to take me down like that.”

  “It won’t happen again,” I said, too quickly. It couldn’t happen again. “I guess I’m still not wound all the way down from the challenge. Would you guys mind if I took a little time alone? I need to meditate, clear my head. I’ll catch up with you at breakfast if that’s all right.”

  The three exchanged concerned glances, then gave me slow nods.

  “Sure,” Clem said. “Take however long you need. While we were all enjoying our summer, you were fighting contenders all over the world. Sorry, I should have been more considerate.”

  She blushed a pink that almost matched her hair and threw her arms around my neck. She squeezed me tight, and the hug caught me by surprise almost as much as Kyle’s technique had.

  At least my core didn’t respond to the surprise as a threat. That was a big relief.

  “We’ll see you at breakfast, man,” Eric said as Clem released me and stepped back. “Take it easy.”

  He offered his fist for me to bump, and I brushed my knuckles against his. Abi extended his hand, too, fingers open for a firm shake.

  “I feel your turmoil,” he said as our hands clasped. “If you need to talk, you know where to find me.”

  He held the shake a few seconds longer than was comfortable, then let go with a sharp nod of his head.

  “Thanks for understanding, guys,” I said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  We all headed off in different directions, my friends dispersing along with the rest of the students, who were clearly glad to have some of their early morning free after I’d disrupted the class.

  I caught more than a few curious glances tossed in my direction and ignored them. Let them wonder about what really happened. It might make all of them think twice before taking a shot at me to prove they were tougher than the champ.

  I headed back to my room, where I could be sure I wouldn’t be disturbed. I threw out connections from the Borrowed Core to the School’s rats as I walked. Some of them recognized me and were eager to help. Others were from new litters, small and spry, curious, but cautious.

  I passed the same message to all of them: find Hahen.

  The rats scampered off to do my bidding and spread the word to their friends. Hopefully, the entire School’s population of rodents would soon be searching for my old mentor.

  On a whim, I changed course and headed for Tycho’s laboratory. I focused my thoughts on my goal and fell into a light meditation in an attempt to mimic Eric’s earlier speedy travel through the building’s shifting structure.

  I made good progress at first. The school returned me to the main hall in record time, and I slipped into the shadowed corner where Tycho’s hidden doorway had been.

  Had being the operative word.

  The wall there was now completely solid, and a tall vase took up most of the corner. It was as if there’d never been a door there.

  I scratched my head, shrugged, and checked in with the rats. They were searching, but it would take them a while. For all their speed and agility, their legs were still only a couple of inches long and the School was enormous. It might take them days to search the School, and that was if they didn’t get distracted and forget what I’d sent them to do.

  “Maybe he’s down in the stacks,” I muttered to myself. I’d spent weeks locked up there with dusty books and rats, with only Hahen to keep me company. I focused my thoughts on that destination and willed the shifting architecture to guide me there.

  It took me less time than I’d expected to reach the older part of the School and the barred door that I’d once been trapped behind. My control over the path the School chose for me was growing stronger.

  Unfortunately, my control over the dark urge within me was still tenuous at best.

  It reacted to the sight of the prison door with a flurry of furious activity. It lashed connections to the rats beyond the door, then used their beast aspects to rip the bar from its brackets. It smashed the old wood to splinters against the stone before I regained control.

  The outburst left me so shaken I had to lean against the heavy door to catch my breath. My hand shook, and beads of oily sweat oozed from my forehead and back. Old fears and dark memories clawed their way up from the dark spaces at the back of my thoughts, and it took me long minutes before I was able to steel myself enough to open that door.

  The barrier opened easily despite its size to reveal—

  Nothing.

  The stacks of books that I’d dutifully organized into neat categories were gone, as if they’d never been there at all. The black spots I’d used to open the subterranean chamber where I’d found the Manual of the New Moon were gone, too. Even the strange hole in the floor was nowhere to be seen.

  I summoned an orb of jinsei to serve as a lantern as I entered the chamber for a closer look. My feet stirred up clouds of dust from the thick layer that covered the floor, filling the air with shimmering particles that made me sneeze and cough. It was as if someone had replaced the stacks I’d spent so many weeks in with an identical, but very empty, chamber that had not been disturbed for decades.

  Finally, after minutes of searching and wheezing on dust, I found something. Small footprints near the part of the room where my cot had once been. No, not footprints.

  Pawprints. Two of them with a small round spot cleared next to them, as if a stick or a cane had rested there.

  Hahen had been here.

  “Hey!” I called out. “Anyone here?”

  The only answer was the echo of my voice. There was no one here and no way to tell how long ago my former mentor had been around.

  The last time I’d seen the rat spirit, he’d seemed distant a
nd worried about the choices that lay ahead of me. Then he hadn’t brought me my meals on the last day of school.

  I’d spent the entire summer worrying that something happened to him, or that he’d gotten disgusted by the fact that I’d embraced the Eclipse core and abandoned our friendship. The idea that I might never see him again stung, and I quickly pushed it aside and headed for my room.

  Other upperclassmen waved and nodded in my direction, and I did my best to be polite in return. I’d spent my whole first year at the School with my head down, trying to avoid fights and stay out of the way of the people who hated me. Now that everyone was friendly, I was having a rough time adjusting.

  Rather than risk an awkward conversation, I nodded to everyone who waved at me, and hustled back to my room.

  Where Hagar was waiting.

  “I’ve never been in the champion’s quarters before,” she said. “Want to give me a tour?”

  Hagar had literally tried to kill me last year. Now, she acted like we’d been lifelong friends. This would take some getting used to.

  “Sure,” I said cautiously. She was, after all, a warden and one of my clan’s respected students. The least I could do was be polite, despite the growing urge from my Eclipse nature to make her pay for the pain she’d caused me last year. “Let me get the door, honored Warden.”

  The engraved barriers slid out of the way at a touch from my hand. Hagar gave out an appreciative little gasp.

  “You first,” she said. “I don’t want to get zapped.”

  “Good point,” I said with a chuckle. I still had no idea what kind of defenses protected this place, but I was willing to bet they were impressive.

  The warden followed me into my private territory, and I led the way to the cottage. Our conversation was light and breezy, like we’d never fought before. It was jarring, and I had to keep checking myself because I really wanted to blurt out questions like, “You do remember trying to kill me?”

  “This place is great,” she said. “I knew the champion got something special, but I never imagined it was so awesome. I wonder if it’s the same for all of you.”

  “No idea,” I said. “Hank never said anything about this to me.”

  After a quick tour of the cottage, I busied myself with the coffee set in the kitchen while Hagar leaned against the doorway and watched.

  “Where’d you learn to do that?” she asked.

  “I made coffee for my mom, all the time,” I said. “Back in the camp.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “It’s easy to forget where you came from, champ. Things are sure a lot different for you now, aren’t they?”

  “In so many ways.” I dumped beans into the grinder and pressed the power button. The clatter of the conical burrs drowned out any hopes of conversation for the next few seconds. Finally, the last of the coffee grounds emptied into the receptacle in the grinder’s base, and I gave it a quick tap to make sure none of the vines would cling to its lip when I removed it. That would be a hell of a mess.

  “About our fight.” Hagar finally decided to poke the elephant in the room while I dumped the grounds into the French press and put the water on to boil. “It wasn’t personal.”

  “It felt personal,” I said, not quite ready to let her off the hook so easily. “You would have killed me.”

  “It was a job,” Hagar insisted. “Like the one the elders offered to you.”

  “A job,” I said. “Lots of people have done horrible things for a job. That doesn’t make it all right.”

  “I know,” Hagar said. She raked her fingers through her crimson Mohawk. “I want you to know I’m sorry about what happened. It turns out you were right, and we were all wrong. Even the elders admitted that.”

  While it was nice that Hagar and the rest of the clan no longer blamed me for everything that had ever gone wrong, it was hard to shake the anger at what had happened. My Eclipse nature wanted them to all pay for hurting me. It wanted to smash the coffeepot into Hagar’s face and—I took a deep breath and shoved those dark thoughts aside. It hurt to deny the urge, but it was the right thing to do. Hagar and the elders had gone after me because they wanted to protect Empyreal society, not to hurt me in particular. Revenge would gain me nothing, while cooperating with them might help a lot of people.

  Not to mention my mind.

  “Okay,” I said. “I accept your apology. Is that the only reason you came to see me?”

  “I also wanted to be sure you were okay,” Hagar said. “Word spread fast about what happened in Professor Song’s dojo.”

  “I’m fine.” I didn’t want to talk about that. “Anything else?”

  “I wanted to discuss the elders’ offer,” Hagar said. “Before you made your decision.”

  “I don’t even really know what the job is.” I checked the temperature on the gooseneck kettle and saw there were still a few minutes left before the coffee would be ready. “I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to tell you.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything,” Hagar said. She opened and closed the cabinets until she found a couple of mugs, then came over to rest against the counter next to me. “I’ve been working with the elders since I was an initiate. They knew there was something going on at the School, they just didn’t know what. I kept an eye on things for them, did a little snooping.”

  “And assassinations?” I said with a grin I hoped would take some of the sting out of my pointed question.

  “Just you,” she said, her cheeks glowing red.

  I never thought I’d see Hagar blush.

  “And this is what, your fourth year?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” she said. “I spent almost four years looking for heretics, and you found them in one.”

  “They found me,” I corrected her. “If Grayson hadn’t come after me so hard, I probably would’ve never figured out what was going on.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, why did he hate you so much?”

  “My mother and father knew him before I was born,” I said. “Honestly, that’s all I know about it.”

  I didn’t feel the need to tell Hagar about my family’s disgraced past, the fact that my father had been exiled before his death. That was personal, and I still didn’t completely trust the warden.

  “Family stuff,” she said with a sigh. “I know how that goes. My parents were both Resplendent Suns. They weren’t very happy when Mama Weaver made me a Shadow Phoenix.”

  I’d never considered the fact that Hagar might not have been born a Shadow Phoenix. The Resplendent Suns were the exact opposite of my clan—proud and noble, well-respected and treated like royalty pretty much everywhere they went. To have a kid ripped out of that sort of privilege and dumped into the lowliest group of misfits in Empyreal society had to have stung.

  “It’s not like you had a choice,” I said.

  “Well, sort of.” Hagar frowned. “I could have—”

  The kettle’s shrill whistle interrupted her. She stepped back to give me space to pull it off the stove top and pour the water into the French press.

  “You’re right that I didn’t get to pick my clan, no one does. But, if I’d been a little more like my parents and maybe less nosy and skeptical about everything, who knows where I might’ve ended up.” She handed me a mug, and I filled it with coffee. I handed it back, and she gave me the empty one, which I also filled.

  “There’s cream in the refrigerator, and I saw some sugar with the rest of the coffee gear.” I put the kettle on a cold burner. “If you want anything in your coffee, that is.”

  “Black is fine,” Hagar said with a wink. “It matches our robes.”

  “True,” I said and took a sip of some truly excellent coffee. I’d gotten used to having the finer things on the challenge tour, but I had to admit that this brew was something special. I’d have to find out where the beans came from and make some for my mom. Whenever I found her again.

  “Anyway,” Hagar said in a sudden rush, “I just wanted you
to know that working with the elders is important. There’s a lot of bad people out there who aren’t what they seem on the surface. The Empyrean Flame has a lot more enemies than you might think.”

  “How is that even possible?” I asked, suddenly skeptical. “The Flame is the source of all our power. Why would anybody endanger that?”

  “Because some fools believe the Empyrean Flame is blocking our true source of power,” Hagar confided. “And, because the Flame didn’t do a great job of protecting us during the Utter War. If it hadn’t been for...”

  She left the half-finished thought between us, and I didn’t pick it up. Most Empyreals knew nothing about the Eclipse Warriors, or at least pretended they didn’t. I guess when you blow up an entire clan, it’s easier for everyone to pretend that it never happened than to own up to what felt like a dangerously dishonorable act.

  I hid my thinking face behind another drink from my oversized mug. Working for the elders would be a giant pain, I knew that. I’d be running all over the place, constantly exhausted, struggling to keep up in my classes.

  I’d also be protecting everyone from threats they didn’t know existed. I’d be doing good work.

  And, maybe, working so closely with the elders I might learn something that would help me control my core and keep everyone safe. Maybe they’d even be inclined to do me a favor if I joined the team.

  “They need you, Jace,” Hagar said. “They won’t tell me why, but the elders think you’re our best hope at finding the next big problem before it blows up in our faces like the thing with Grayson.”

  “I’ll do it.” I realized I wanted to be a good guy, use my powers to do the right thing. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t get something out of it for myself. “On one condition.”

  “I can’t promise you anything, but I’ll tell the elders what you want,” Hagar said.

  “I want to find my mother,” I said. “I want her taken care of.”

  “That’s all?” Hagar asked, her tone vaguely suspicious.

  “Yes.” There was nothing else that mattered as much to me.