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

by Gage Lee

  My martial instincts guided my weapon to the deadliest of threats, and I turned aside a disemboweling stroke followed by a swipe that would have decapitated me. A backhanded parry tore an insectoid arm out of its socket, and a short jab from the fusion blade’s butt punctured an enormous faceted eye before plunging into the thick goo of the brain behind it. My weapon spun around me in a dizzying blur of death and destruction. A dozen of the spirits fell away from me, their bodies leaking reeking, translucent blood.

  And a dozen more sliced at my body in return.

  My skin, hardened by the power of my core, turned aside most of those attacks. But a few overwhelmed my natural defenses and opened ugly wounds along my biceps and thighs. The injuries burned like a thousand bee stings. Blood ran down my arms and legs in thick streams, and jinsei glowed like fireflies in the sluggish crimson. A quick moment of contemplation told me the attacks hadn’t pierced any organs or slashed through arteries. That was good.

  The attacks had, however, sliced through important jinsei channels.

  And that was very, very bad.

  There was no time or space to go on the attack, no lull in the battle to think my way out. My fusion blade darted and slashed in response to the attacks that poured in from every angle. My skill was a deadly shield that severed limbs and crushed torsos. The dead dissolved into foul-smelling goo, slathering the shifting terrain beneath my feet with their essences. But every attack I stopped caused more of the sacred energy to leak from my damaged channels. If I didn’t figure out some way to give myself the space and time to heal my injuries, the Locust Court would whittle me down to nothing.

  My thoughts circled a hole in my memory in search of an answer while my blade rose and fell and swooped around to protect my body from further damage. There was a simple solution to this problem, something that I should have known that would free me from this mess. I’d destroyed the Locust Court once; all I had to do was activate the power of my Eclipse core and—

  Deja vu swept over me. I’d been here before. Not just in the Far Horizon, but this exact same spot, surrounded by the exact same enemies, doing the exact same things. If I triggered my serpents and the Thief’s Shield technique, I could destroy the spirits with little more than a thought. And if I used my newest and most potent power, the Eclipse Transplant, I could fill the auras of the spirits with aspects that would wipe them out. All it would take is a thought on my part. It would be so easy.

  And it would be exactly the wrong thing to do.

  Memories rushed in to fill the holes in my thoughts. Disgust boiled up in my gut at the same time.

  “Enough!” I shouted, pushing jinsei into my words.

  The spirits of the Locust Court vanished at once. The Far Horizon melted away to reveal the cold white walls of the Atlantean Temple of the Grand Design, where I’d been held by the Inquisition for the past three months. My body was no longer standing. I was strapped to an examination table, thick woven adamantine bands across my chest, loops of obsidian chains around my wrists, ankles, and knees. Being so immobilized was maddening.

  It wasn’t nearly as bad as the dark aspects they’d used to trigger the hallucinations, though.

  A heavy, featureless mask covered my entire face. Scrivened seals around its perimeter kept the thing glued tight to my skin. Jinsei poured through a tube in the bottom of the mask, forcing me to breathe it in. Madness, fear, and confusion aspects tainted that sacred energy. They were what had reconstructed that scene from my dark memories of the battle against the Locust Court. This had been another of the Inquisition’s favorite tests.

  I’d failed it.

  Again.

  “This would be a lot easier if you’d cooperate with us, Jace.” Brother Harlan, one of the priests of the Empyrean Flame who’d been charged with testing me, scowled at me. “After all these weeks, still you fight and lie. If you’d only answer my questions, this would all end and you’d be back at school before you knew it.”

  My hands wanted to fly to my face and rip the mask off. The drowning sensation filled me with a blind, animal panic. It was all part of the tricks and torture the priests had visited on me during my stay. They insisted it was all for my own good.

  Liars.

  They wanted to know what made me tick. They wanted to know all about my new Eclipse core.

  And I didn’t want them to know anything about me.

  I closed my eyes and let the jinsei flow through me. I endured the aspects that lodged in my aura and hid my thoughts from the fear and confusion that would have infected them. The technique that had let me breathe life back into the grass on the beach would let me pluck those foul motes out of my aura and shove them into Brother Harlan.

  That would have been the easiest way to ease my pain.

  It would also have showed the inquisitors one of my secrets. I wouldn’t let that happen. Instead, I meditated and pushed the foul jinsei through my core and channels. I took the strength I could from it and hardened my mind against the poison that tried to invade it. The Church could hold my body, but it couldn’t chain my thoughts.

  “Let’s get that mask off you.” Brother Harlan’s sausage-thick fingers were surprisingly dextrous and managed to drain the mask, unfasten its seals, and remove it without pinching my skin. It was a small mercy after what felt like an eternity of these arduous tests. “Isn’t that better?”

  I blinked away the jinsei that still clung to my eyelids and blew out an exasperated sigh. Brother Harlan had been with me every day since I’d been taken by the Inquisition. We’d gone through the cruelty and kindness dance at least a hundred times, and I was sick of it.

  “Let me strap it on you for a while,” I said. “You’ll see how pleasant it is.”

  “Easy.” The priest’s warm eyes turned cold and hard. He didn’t look like a fighter, but his core was the equal of mine. He’d seen action in his days, and still had the skills to make me very sorry if he felt threatened. I could likely beat him in a fight, but only if I used all of my Eclipse core abilities and was willing to kill him. I wasn’t sure we’d reached that dire strait yet. “I’m removing your restraints. Don’t do anything we’ll both regret.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” I snorted. “There’s nowhere for me to go even if I escaped this room.”

  “Finally accepted that, have you?” Harlan unfastened the straps on my legs first, then worked on my wrists. “It’s a shame you only figured that out on your last day here.”

  Those words sucked the air out of my lungs. I choked on my surprise, then laid my head back on the surgical table. It was a trick. It had to be.

  The Church had snatched me off the beach after I’d said goodbye to my friends on the last day of the school year. They hadn’t used a portal to reach me, because that would have set off all the Portal Defense alarms. Instead, they’d rolled up onto the beach in an inflatable boat. Five inquisitorial guards had spilled out of that boat, their weapons trained on my heart. If they’d come with fusion blades, I would have risked a fight with them. But the strange jinsei-powered firearms they cradled were ugly and potent weapons. I doubted I would have survived the encounter if I’d put up a fight. They’d bundled me up on their boat and motored out to meet an impressively armored yacht.

  And I’d been in their custody ever since. They were very curious about the Eclipse core and had spared no expense trying to pry its secrets out of me. I’d held them at bay, but it had cost me. I was exhausted, and my core constantly ached from the strain of keeping my channels filled with jinsei to resist the Church’s tricks and tests.

  “You’re lying,” I said.

  “I’m not,” Harlan said. “The inquisitors have decided it’s best if you return to the School to begin classes for the new year.”

  “People will want to know what happened to me, where I’ve been.” I waited patiently for Harlan to undo the final restraint. If I moved before he did that, he’d leave me chained up longer just to show me who was boss.

  “Don’t worry abo
ut that.” Harlan unfastened the strap from my left wrist. “The Church informed your clan and the School once you were safely on Atlantis. They’re aware that you’ve completed your visit to the island. No one will know what a pill you’ve been or how much of the Church’s time and money you’ve wasted by your refusal to cooperate with us.”

  “A pill? I’ve taken all your tests and answered your questions.” I’d also kept the real secrets they wanted to myself.

  “You and I both know you’ve lied to us.” Brother Harlan released my right wrist. “Fortunately for you, the Empyrean Flame wants you alive and back at the School. The oracles have conveyed this message to your clan and Headmistress Cruzal. There’ll be no questions about your time here, and you’d be wise not to stir up any trouble regarding your vacation with us.”

  The implied threat hung in the air between us, a cleaver’s blade ready to fall on my neck if I stepped out of line. The Inquisition had kidnapped me. They’d held me prisoner and tortured me for three months. They’d broken a dozen laws and turned sacred energy into a foul instrument to try to uncover my secrets.

  And they were going to get away with it.

  The urge to show them who they’d crossed kindled in my thoughts. I could beat Brother Harlan. I could beat anyone they sent against me. I’d break them against my Thief’s Shield, leech the jinsei from their cores, and leave them empty on the floor.

  Of course, if I tried anything like that, I’d never make it off the island, but maybe that was okay. Maybe the important thing was that the Inquisition would think twice before they snatched another kid.

  I smothered the fiery dreams of rebellion before they could inspire me to act on them. Killing a bunch of inquisitors wouldn’t make them think twice about anything. They’d decide that Eclipse Warriors were all monsters and deserved to die. They’d find out about Rachel and the outreach program, and those kids, who’d never had a chance to grow into their powers or know even a second of life without being hollow, would end up on Atlantis.

  No. It was better to play along. I’d done it this long. I could do it for a few more hours if that’s what it took to leave Atlantis behind.

  “I didn’t lie,” I lied, smoothly and easily. I’d gotten good at it now that it was a survival technique. “I did the best I could. I’m sorry it wasn’t enough for you.”

  Brother Harlan stepped back from me and took up a spot next to the room’s only exit. He motioned for me to come to him, and then raised a hand when I was a few feet away. Just out of arm’s reach for a normal kid.

  Good. I wanted him to think I was a stronger-than-average but still relatively normal kid. That was my story, and I was sticking to it.

  “It would be so much easier if I could believe you.” Harlan sighed and pressed a button next to the door. It opened, impossibly smooth and utterly silent. “Step into the hall. We have a little trip to take, and then we’ll get you back to the School.”

  Harlan thought making me take the lead would keep him safe. I hid my smile and did as he asked.

  Just a little longer, and I’d be free.

  “Walk straight down the hall, until I give you another direction,” Harlan said from behind me.

  The hallway was not the drab hall that we’d used to reach the testing lab. The previous passage had been all chipped linoleum, nausea-inducing green paint, and a dropped ceiling spotted with tea-colored water stains. The stinks of mildew and antiseptic had warred in my nose in that hallway.

  This new corridor smelled faintly of the cloying incense favored by the Inquisition. The wooden floor planks were covered in tiger-stripe patterns, and the luxurious material had been cut and inlaid to form intricate representations of the Empyrean Flame. The walls were smooth and seamless, the color of well-worn ivory. A warm, golden light poured from floating discs near the ceiling and made the whole place look like it had been dipped in honey. Intricate scrivenings spiraled along the ceiling. They held so much jinsei I felt it even twenty feet below them.

  “Keep walking,” Harlan said. “You can gawk at the splendor of the Empyrean Flame while moving your feet.”

  I couldn’t help but gawk. It wasn’t the glory of the Flame that I saw, though. It was the incredible waste. Only a handful of Empyreals would ever see this place. What sense did it make to waste so much money on housing the priests when there were so many worthier causes? Those thoughts sparked the fires in my head again, and I had to abandon them. I bit back my questions and cycled my breathing, forcing myself to remain calm.

  “On your left,” Brother Harlan called out.

  Sure enough, a door opened next to me, and I stepped through it.

  The room I entered was even more over the top than the corridor I’d left. The same wood covered the floor, though the patterns were more intricate here. The ceiling was lower, but the scrivenings were so thick on the walls they hummed with jinsei currents. A small table that looked like it had been fashioned from a single piece of wood sat at the center of the room, a stack of papers neatly aligned on its surface. Two chairs, one high-backed and overstuffed, the other little more than a stool, faced each other across the table.

  “Take a seat,” Harlan said.

  “Sure.” I headed toward the bigger chair.

  “Not that one,” Harlan snapped, his voice suddenly cold and hard as a thrown stone.

  “I thought I was a guest.” I shot Harlan a snarky grin over my shoulder, shrugged, then perched on the stool.

  The look in Harlan’s eyes as he took the seat across from me made it abundantly clear he’d be happy to see me gone. The feeling was mutual.

  “Though I do not believe you’ve told us the entire truth, our time together has finished. Pay close attention. What I’m about to tell you is the official story the Inquisition will put forth about your time here and what happened in Kyoto,” Brother Harlan said sternly. “You will not disagree with our statement, and you will not speak ill of your time as our guest.”

  “Fine,” I said. “When do classes start?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “Well, in about twelve hours. We will provide you with a serum to adjust your sleep schedule to the time difference. You don’t want to be portal-lagged your first day back in class.”

  “Thank you,” I said. That was more than I’d expected. “What will we tell the world about what’s happened?”

  “We’ve spoken with the Portal Defense Force and investigated the site where the gateway to the Locust Court was closed. We’ve also heard from the Kyoto security teams that tried to stop you on your approach to the courtroom. You’ll be happy to know they won’t press charges and will issue a formal apology for the misunderstanding. The Tribunal also agrees that your actions were heroic and motivated by a sincere desire to do the right thing for Empyreal society.”

  “Thank you, honored inquisitor,” I said with true gratitude.

  I’d broken a lot of laws to stop the attack by the Lost and their Locust Court allies. I’d convinced my friends to break laws, too, starting with Abi misappropriating a portal station to send me to Kyoto. Then I’d gotten into a scrape with the local police, who had no reason to believe I wasn’t a heretic terrorist sent to disrupt the trial of Sage Grayson Bishop. In the end, I’d prevented the invasion and saved a bunch of very important people from being slaughtered by the hungry spirits.

  Until Brother Harlan had given me the news, though, I’d had no idea if the authorities had branded me an outlaw. For all I knew, the government had been furiously filing charges against me despite how many lives I’d saved.

  I’d been very worried that my time in the Temple was the lead-up to more serious prison time. If that happened, I’d never find my mother.

  I’d never learn why she’d done this to me, or what the heretics were really up to.

  “Finally, we will tell anyone who asks, if anyone asks, that you were well-behaved and helped us in our investigation as much as you were able.” Harlan said that last with a disgusted frown. “Though we both know that is a p
ure fabrication. You’ve stymied our efforts to catalog your core at every turn, and even our jinsei analyses have been foiled by your refusal to fully stress your core during our studies. You are unique, Jace. Your core doesn’t even correspond to the engrams we possess of true Eclipse Warriors. That has disturbed the senior inquisitors. They have raised some concerns and placed conditions on your release.”

  “Fine.” It was far from fine, but there was no fighting Harlan. His orders had come down from the highest levels of the Church. He was a messenger boy. Nothing more. “Let’s hear the conditions.”

  “Very good.” The inquisitor adjusted his red robes as if they’d become uncomfortably tight around his neck. “First, you will be under the direct supervision of Headmistress Cruzal. She will watch for any signs of danger, and you will report any changes in your physical, spiritual, or mental state.”

  “Fine.” I was used to being watched, and Cruzal wasn’t the worst person in the world to have on my case. “If I have a sudden urge to go on a rampage, I’ll be sure to let the headmistress know.”

  “And this is why you will be watched closely, Jace.” Harlan sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Talk like that worries people.”

  “Good,” I said dismissively. My patience was fraying. The urge to do something rash was building in me. I was a terrible prisoner. “What else?”

  “Second, we need you to inform Headmistress Cruzal of any threats to the Grand Design that you uncover.” Harlan’s eyes bored into mine as he spoke. He was hiding something. It would make all this a lot easier if I knew what he knew about me and what he just suspected.

  “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘threats to the Grand Design.’” That, of course, was a blatant lie.

  Brother Harlan’s eyes narrowed as he studied my aura. Most people could only see obvious aspects—elements, toxins, surface emotions like fear and anxiety—in the auras of others. The inquisitors, though, had long ago mastered techniques that allowed them to detect more subtle aspects.

  Like dishonesty.

  That turned the inquisitors into Empyreal lie detectors when they questioned almost anyone.