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

by Gage Lee

  And how long had it taken me to learn the most essential technique? I wondered if six months would be enough time.

  With only minutes left in the class, Christina’s eyes shot wide and she gasped.

  “I felt it,” she said. “Right here.”

  She touched her fingers to her solar plexus then took another deep breath.

  This time, the jinsei entered the channels from her lungs and swirled through her core. The aspects peeled away and floated into her aura. And then, just like it had happened to me thousands of times, the energy gushed out of her hollow core like water from a bucket with a hole in its bottom.

  I braced myself for Christina’s frustrated outburst. She’d touched the sacred power of the universe, only to have it snatched out of her hands. She had every right to be angry.

  Instead, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and a trembling smile on her lips.

  “It was beautiful.” She could barely whisper the words.

  She reached toward me, then pulled her hand back as if afraid she’d get burned.

  “You see it, now?” I asked.

  She nodded, and tears spilled over her eyelashes. Her spirit senses had come to life, and she’d seen the jinsei flowing through another person for the first time.

  It wouldn’t be long, I knew, before she’d get frustrated and angry at her limitations.

  That was for later. Just then, I let her enjoy what she’d experienced.

  Christina deserved at least a moment of happiness.

  The Team

  WORD ABOUT THE TEAM spread through the student body faster than a mono outbreak through the upperclassmen dorms. While almost no one at the School knew the full story of what happened at Grayson Bishop’s trial last year, most of them had heard rumors that I’d repelled a terrorist attack. That got me more than my fair share of high fives and thumbs-ups on my way to breakfast the next day. The wardens made sure that every member of our team was escorted to the front of the food line, and they had our usual table cleared and ready.

  For once, I felt like a real celebrity. I hadn’t even been treated this well when I’d been the School’s champion.

  The good vibes lasted all the way up until our first class of the day: Combat Mastery. Professor Song met us in the dojo after breakfast, arms crossed over his chest, those normally friendly gray eyes fixed in a stern glare.

  “Where are the rest of the students?” Clem asked.

  “You are my only pupils until the Gauntlet is complete. You have much to learn.” Song gestured to the slightly springy floor in front of him. “Come closer. I’d rather not shout unless I have to.”

  We lined up for our instructor, not exactly at attention, but far from relaxed. Song was one of our favorite instructors. The look on his face, though, was unfamiliar and unnerving. Even when I’d almost sucked the life out of Rafael at our duel the year before, Song hadn’t glared at me like this.

  “Miss Hark,” Song said. “I understand that combat is not your forte. Still, you must learn to contribute on the field of battle. What is your path?”

  Clem stiffened at Song’s assessment. As one of the Thunder’s Children clan, she’d never excelled at combat. Her talents lay in cleverness and a breadth of knowledge few other students could match. I’d selected her for the team because I could trust her and knew she’d be able to figure out puzzles the rest of us couldn’t. She was the brains of the operation. I’d never planned to put her on the front lines of combat.

  Song, clearly, had other ideas.

  “The Path of the Tempest,” she said.

  “And your primary offensive technique?” he asked.

  “Thunder’s Sweep,” Clem said. “My aura defense is the Whirlwind Shield, and I have learned the Lightning Serpents.”

  “Those are all excellent personal protection techniques. Unfortunately, you lack striking power. You will not be able to pressure your opponents with aggression and may become a liability to your team.” Professor Song sighed. “And you, Eric?”

  “Path of the Inferno,” the Resplendent Sun said proudly. “I trained with the Inferno Battle Foundation over the summer. I strike with the Fists of Fire, my defense is the Inferno Field, and I wield the Striking Sun Serpents.”

  Song nodded appreciatively and peered at Eric’s core.

  “Your battle master has taught you excellent techniques. They’ve neglected your core training, though.” Song put a finger on my friend’s solar plexus. “Your jinsei capacity is quite low for an adept. How long ago did you advance?”

  “It’s been eight weeks.” Eric thrust his chest out when he answered. He was proud of his combat skills and didn’t like when others picked at his weaknesses. I wasn’t sure what Song hoped to accomplish by irritating everyone.

  “I see,” the professor said. “Spend as much time as possible cycling your breathing. If you can acquire jinsei potions, use those to fuel your core. You must increase your capacity and press for advancement at all times, Eric. The Gauntlet will challenge you in many ways. Unless you expand your core’s jinsei storage, you’ll be exhausted in no time.”

  The professor moved to the next member of my team, Abi. For once, he’d exchanged his PDF uniform for a simple gray gi with the triangular symbol of the Titans of Majestic Stone emblazoned over his heart. He stood stoically while the professor analyzed his core.

  “Let me guess,” Song mused. “Path of the Impenetrable Defense?”

  “Yes, honored Instructor,” Abi responded smartly. “I wield the Armor of Will, Aura of the Guardian, and Boundary of Serpents techniques.”

  “No offensive skills at all? Even Miss Hark has the Thunder’s Sweep.” Professor Song frowned. “Do you seek to bore your enemies to death?”

  “My defenses are more potent than most at my level,” Abi said stiffly. “My duty is to defend those who cannot protect themselves. I am this team’s rock, and I will not break.”

  “No.” Song tapped his chin with one calloused finger. “I don’t think you will. But are you so sure your opponents will break against you?”

  I didn’t like the way this was going. It was nice that Professor Song was devoted to preparing us for what was coming. His methods, though, left something to be desired. in my opinion. The longer the professor stared at Abi the more painfully awkward everyone felt.

  “Path of the Pauper’s Dagger,” I said to draw Song’s attention from my friend. “My techniques are—”

  “I know all about you,” the professor said with a sharp slice of his hand to cut me off. “I also heard that you are badly injured. I appreciate the sacrifice you’re willing to make for all of us. I’m just not so sure it’s the right course of action. For now, you’ll be support for the rest of the team. With your abilities, you can bolster your friends’ weaknesses and enhance their strengths. That may prevent you from further damaging your core.”

  I clenched my jaw to keep it from dropping open. I’d volunteered to lead my team. Song, though, seemed to think I’d be doing that from the rear. I didn’t want to believe he was right.

  I also wasn’t sure he was wrong.

  “Ah, Hagar,” Professor Song said. “I believe you’ve been absent from my classes more than you were ever present. I’m rather surprised to see you here.”

  “I keep a very busy schedule,” Hagar said coolly. “I apologize if you took my absences for a lack of interest. I humbly request your forgiveness, honored Professor.”

  “Your masters have sharpened your tongue to a spear’s point,” our instructor said with a smile. “But I am not one of your marks, Shadow Phoenix. If you’re to be on this team, I expect you here for every minute of my instruction.”

  “I will attend your words with the utmost concentration.” Hagar bowed so low that her Mohawk nearly touched the dojo’s floor. “I follow the Path of the Blood Spider. I strike with the Blood Darts. I am shielded by the Arachnid’s Aura, and the Serpents of Venom bite my foes and shield my allies. I look forward to honing my abilities under your t
utelage.”

  My jaw did drop open at Hagar’s little speech. She was more polished and persuasive a speaker than I’d ever suspected, and I wondered what kind of training the elders had given her in the service of the Shadow Phoenix clan. I’d known she was a handler for operatives in the field, but she sounded more like a spy herself.

  When Song turned away from us to walk back to his position at the front of the dojo, Hagar shot me a wink and mouthed the word, “smooth.”

  She certainly was.

  “Let us begin.” Professor Song clapped his hands sharply, and hidden trapdoors I’d never seen before opened in the floor. Six cages rose from those gaps, scrivened constructs hunkered down within their bars. The instant the bottoms of the cages were even with our feet, the bars vanished, and the artificial warriors leaped to the attack.

  The creatures were short and squat humanoids with dark, almost rocky skin covered in complex, glowing patterns. They had heads, but no facial features. Despite their stumpy legs and lack of eyes, they moved straight at us with surprising speed. Before anyone on my team could react, they were nearly in striking range.

  Eric was the first of us to respond. He leaped forward, flames burning around his fists. Rather than punching his enemies, though, Eric landed in a crouch in front of them and drove both hands into the dojo’s floor. Sheets of flame erupted from the point of impact and blasted away from Eric in every direction.

  The two enemies closest to him aborted their charges and threw their arms up to defend themselves. Fire washed over their stony bodies, leaving behind scorch marks but little damage.

  The same couldn’t be said for Eric’s allies.

  The rings of flame blasted across Clem and Abi, who both yelped in surprise and abandoned their defenses to slap at their burning clothing.

  The singed constructs ran around Eric, who was still crouched, to attack Abi. Each of the artificial warriors unleashed a haymaker punch at my friend.

  Distracted by the fact that he was on fire, Abi didn’t defend himself and went down hard. The punches slammed him to the dojo’s floor and knocked the wind out of his lungs. He lay there, gasping, trying to cycle his breath to gather the energy needed for his defensive techniques. Unfortunately, if you can’t breathe, you also can’t cycle. His core had some jinsei in it, just not enough.

  Clem slapped out the fire on her clothing in time to see one of the constructs barreling toward her. She leaped back, nearly collided with Eric, planted one heel firmly on the dojo’s floor, and unleashed a spinning kick at her attacker.

  This was the technique she’d been working on the year before, and it looked like she’d finally mastered it. A blast of wind aspects and jinsei burst away from her kick like an invisible scythe and slammed into the construct an instant before it could punch her. Her Thunder Sweep hurled the foe across the dojo and slammed it into the wall. The construct slid down to the floor, squat legs out in front of it. Almost as soon as it had fallen, though, the creature scrambled back to its feet.

  “Jace!” Hagar shouted.

  I’d been so distracted by the constructs kicking my friends around one side of the dojo I hadn’t noticed a threat approaching from behind me. Hagar had one of the remaining opponents tangled up in sticky Blood Darts, but the other had slipped past her and was on a collision course with me.

  There weren’t enough aspects lodged in my aura to summon my serpents. I’d started cycling my breathing the instant I’d seen the cages rise to the floor and had enough jinsei in my core to start summoning my fusion blade. Unfortunately, my attacker would be on top of me long before the weapon was in my hand.

  My only option was to retreat. My disciple-level core had strengthened my body beyond what I’d dreamed possible in the labor camps. Before the delamination had begun, it would have been no effort at all to leap all the way across the dojo. At that moment, though, I was far from full strength.

  My leap away from the construct was clumsy and ended with me crouched next to Clem. We’d nearly collided when I’d landed, and Clem had only avoided the impact with a quick step away. That put her directly in the path of the enemy she’d knocked across the room, which came at her with both fists flailing in the air.

  Clem shouted in surprise when the construct’s blow knocked her flying past me. She landed hard on her tailbone and skidded along the dojo’s floor with a yelp.

  “Enough,” Professor Song barked.

  The constructs immediately abandoned their attacks and trundled back to the spots on the floor where the bars of their cages had reappeared. By the time I’d helped my friends back to their feet, our enemies were gone.

  The look on Professor Song’s face told me that had gone every bit as poorly as I’d feared.

  “Separately you are strong,” Professor Song said. “Against most foes that is enough. In the Gauntlet, though, you must become a team. As a team, against another team, the five of you are very weak.”

  There was no denying that. In less than thirty seconds, two of us had been downed, and the rest hadn’t managed to take even a single construct out of the fight. I tried to imagine what it would have looked like if we’d faced off against the dragons.

  It would’ve been a massacre.

  And at least part of it was my fault.

  I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t strong enough. I was supposed to support my team, and I hadn’t managed to do that.

  “Teach us where we’re doing wrong,” I said to Professor Song. “Show us how five can become one, honored Professor.”

  We all five bowed low to Song, and he returned the show of respect. He hadn’t been trying to needle us with his earlier assessment of our skills. He’d wanted us to see that we weren’t ready for this fight. Now that that had been demonstrated in painful detail, we were ready to be taught.

  “Let us begin,” Professor Song said with a tight smile. “I will make warriors of you yet.”

  The professor worked us hard. He pushed us to find our limits and then surpass them. That first class was painful and humiliating, but it taught us just how far we had to go before we’d be ready to face off against worthy opponents.

  It was going to be a long, hard road to the Gauntlet. I couldn’t rely on my core’s abilities to see me through that journey. I needed to get smarter, faster, more clever than I’d ever been. I made plans even as Song instructed us.

  I’d need jinsei, and plenty of it. But even purified sacred energy wouldn’t be enough for what I had in mind.

  By the time that first class was over, however, I had a plan. It relied heavily on the hollows, Hahen, and help from my clan. If it worked, I wouldn’t need to repair my core to beat the challenge.

  If it failed, though, we might not have any chance of winning this at all.

  The Graft

  THE GOOD NEWS WAS THAT I recovered, physically, from the first round of delamination. My muscles felt flabby for a few days after my attack, and it was hard for me to catch my breath after I’d climbed a flight of stairs. But a good couple of weeks of training in the Combat Mastery class under Professor Song had gone a long way toward restoring my strength and endurance. My disciple-level core, damaged as it was, still gave me remarkable reserves of resilience that helped me bounce back.

  The bad news was that I’d gone back several giant steps where jinsei mastery was concerned. The Army of a Thousand Eyes had become the Army of a Pair of Eyes, while the Borrowed Core and Thief’s Shield techniques took far too long to activate to be useful in combat. I could still summon my serpents if I had enough aspects stored in my aura, and they were still strong enough to make useful weapons. My fusion blade, on the other hand, was difficult and time-consuming to summon because it took me so long to cycle enough jinsei to empower it.

  With preparation, I was still a competent threat to most enemies.

  If I was ambushed, though, I’d be virtually defenseless.

  Given the events of the past year, that wasn’t comforting. There could still be assassins out there holding
bullets or blades with my names scrivened on them. If one of them showed up when I wasn’t prepared, my chances of survival were way too low for comfort.

  While my elders assured me they were keeping a close eye out for danger, that didn’t put my mind at ease. The last attack had killed my entire security detail, and Hagar was almost killed along with them.

  Despite all that, I settled into the School routine. Combat Mastery with Professor Song every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. Alchemical Artistry with Professor Ankagor after lunch on the same days. Soul Scrivening with Professor Ishigara on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, with academics in the afternoons on those days. Even Empyreals had to learn their ABCs and 123s.

  I kept expecting the assessments to disrupt my schedule, but that hadn’t happened. While observers skulked around the school, watching us and taking notes, new tests didn’t materialize. Rumor had it that the School was worried the stress of the Gauntlet would skew the results of the assessments, but no one had directly told those of us being assessed anything.

  Several times each week, on a schedule that only Headmistress Cruzal understood, I worked with the hollow initiates. Christina was far and away the most accomplished when it came to cycling, though her attitude hadn’t improved the slightest bit since she’d arrived at the School. She was certain everyone was out to take advantage of her. Maybe she was right. Cruzal wouldn’t stop referring to the hollows as investments, even when it clearly aggravated me.

  In fact, that was probably why Cruzal kept at it. She’d put me on her naughty list after the dustup in her office, and it didn’t look like she would erase my name anytime soon.

  That was why I kept my training with the hollows very secretive. It was one of the few times she wouldn’t poke her nose in, because she knew I’d stop training them if she interfered. In those quiet times, and with Hahen’s help, I’d shown my students how to extract aspects from jinsei. It reminded me of the ordeal that Tycho Reyes had put me through, with one key difference.