by Gage Lee
“Our first human team hails from the Heron Blade Academy in the heart of the Yzlanti Empire,” the dragon announced. “Known for their wisdom and spirit sight, these challengers will prove wily and unpredictable foes.”
A burst of blue smoke blanketed the stage. It swirled for long moments, then cleared to reveal five students in turquoise robes and cloaks of black feathers. The Heron Blade Academy’s three young men had shaved heads encircled by vivid blue tattoos. The two women with them had long, glossy black hair tied back with brightly colored red and yellow ribbons. All five of the team members looked older than I’d expected. Most of them had to be nearing the end of their time in their schools.
Despite their age, none of the team members had cores above the adept level. They were formidable, but they were still beatable. Their auras held aspects of excitement and anxiety, along with a few bright spots of actual fear. Their fierce expressions couldn’t hide their nervousness.
The competitors summoned their fusion blades and brandished the broad-headed spears. I was surprised to see they all wielded the same type of weapon. Maybe that had something to do with their training. They let out a fierce battle cry, then stood at attention while the rest of us politely applauded.
“I’m surprised to see them here,” Clem shouted over the clapping. “The Yzlanti Empire closed its borders decades ago.”
“They’ve always been close with the Scaled Council,” Hagar shouted back. “And it’s not every day we have to worry about dragons overthrowing the balance of power. I’d have been more surprised if they didn’t send a team.”
That was all news to me. I should have paid closer attention in the History of Empyreal Society course my initiate year. That would have been a lot easier if I hadn’t had one of the five sacred sages leaning on me and another one trying to kill me.
“Our next team of hopefuls comes to us from the renowned Dojo of Opal Radiance.” Another flash of light and smoke accompanied the dragon’s announcement. An all-female team wearing identical white robes embroidered with metallic thread strode through the crowd, hands raised over their heads like rock stars coming on stage to open a show. The threads in their robes gleamed with an inner light, and swirls of colored jinsei darted around their heads like sprites. “Our youngest team is well known for their showmanship and youthful vigor. What they lack in experience they make up for in enthusiasm and rigorous training.”
The dragon didn’t do a very good job of hiding the sarcasm in his voice on that last sentence. The young women on the stage looked like they couldn’t have been much older than initiates. Their cores, though, were adept level just like the Heron Blade Academy’s team. The Dojo’s candidates also looked more confident and self-assured than the first team had. The girls didn’t pose or shout, nor did they brandish their weapons. Instead, they stood confidently, hands clasped in front of them, eyes serene as they took in their surroundings. They were young, but they were also sure of their skills.
Sometimes, as I’d proven, that was enough.
The dragon introduced three more teams in quick succession. First came an impressive all-male squad of bare-chested fighters from the Battle Hall of Atlantis. They were followed by a boisterous squad of men and women from the Jinsei Institute of the Jade Kingdom wielding enormous axes. The final group, students from the Bright Lodge of Frostmir, appeared from a cloud of gray smoke, their heads and faces concealed by enormous helmets that leaked golden fire from the horns curling up from their sides.
There was a lull after the last human team was announced, and Elushinithoc closed his eyes. That seemed to be the signal for the gathered students to start chattering, and I took immediate advantage of it.
“We can take all of them,” I told Clem and Hagar. “I didn’t see anyone above adept level, and the Bright Lodge had three initiates with them.”
“We shouldn’t be thinking like that,” Clem said with a shake of her head. “All the human teams must work together to beat the dragons.”
“If the schools could work together, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place,” Hagar said. “Atlantis hardly ever speaks to the rest of us, and the Yzlanti killed the last emissary anyone sent to treat with them. The Jade Kingdom and Frostmir both think they’re better than the rest of us and won’t dirty their hands by shaking with anyone else.”
“That kind of thinking is why the dragons want to take control,” Clem complained.
Before I could add my two cents to that argument, Elushinithoc roused himself to announce the final team in a voice so loud it left my ears ringing.
“And, finally, from the Sacred Monastery of Shambala, home of the great dragon sages, seat of the Scaled Council, I present to you, our final team, the Indomitable Dragons of Light!” The dragon’s voice rolled over us like a crashing wave. There was no smoke this time, only a burst of fiery light that filled my vision with dancing blind spots.
When my vision cleared, the dragons who’d brushed past me in the hallway stood on the stage, looking larger-than-life. They all had disciple-level cores and were at least seven feet tall. Their serpentine tails cracked against the stage as they paced back and forth like caged tigers eyeballing their next meals.
Their obvious leader, a female dragon with golden scales and curved horns wrapped in leather cords, glared at the crowd. A dark smile spread across her face and revealed rows of neat black teeth that gleamed like obsidian. Her face could have been human were it not for those teeth and the patches of scales at her temples and cheeks. She looked ready to fight all of us at the same time, and I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t win.
“How are we going to defeat that?” Clem asked.
I didn’t have an answer.
As I watched the dragons parade before us, I wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake.
The Preparation
THE INSTANT THE DRAGON’S presentation had finished, I grabbed Hagar and Clem and dragged them toward the exit. Our training sessions with Brand and Professor Song had prepared us for a lot, but there were still so many things we didn’t know. My team needed a last-minute meeting with the clan elders before the fight to fill in as many of the gaps in our knowledge as possible.
And there was the matter of a certain surgical procedure I wanted Sanrin to perform on me.
“Let’s grab Abi and Eric,” I shouted to Clem over the excited chatter of the other students. “Hagar, reach out to the elders. We have to meet with them before the Gauntlet tomorrow. Preferably somewhere away from here.”
There’d been too many attempts on my life on campus for me to ever feel truly safe there. While this year had been assassin free, so far, the night before the first Empyrean Gauntlet challenge was a perfect time for one to strike. Killing me would ruin the School of Swords and Serpents’ shot at fielding a team. They’d never find a replacement for me in time, and no students had learned to work together as a unit like my friends and me.
“I’ll meet you in the common area in twenty minutes.” Hagar gave Clem and me quick hugs, then vanished into the crowd.
I hoped she’d be able to reach one of the elders. It was short notice, and they’d been awfully busy dealing with the heretics, but winning the Gauntlet was critical, and I couldn’t do it alone.
“There he is.” Clem shouted to be heard over the crowd. “Hey, Eric, over here!”
The Resplendent Sun whipped his head toward Clem’s voice, then nodded and forged a path through the other students toward us. Though he only had an adept’s core, Eric’s martial presence encouraged people to get out of his way. The crowd rippled around him like minnows in a shark’s wake.
“Man, I am pumped,” Eric shouted. “I can’t believe the first challenge is tomorrow. Feel’s like we’ve been waiting forever to crack some dragon skulls.”
“I’ll be happy if my skull isn’t the one that gets cracked.” I was every bit as confident as Eric that my team was strong enough to win the Gauntlet. I wasn’t nearly as confident we’d get out of the challenges unscath
ed. The dragons would play for keeps, and they were all extraordinarily strong and vicious. Fighting one of them would be as dangerous as sticking your hand in a running garbage disposal. “Let’s find Abi and regroup in the dormitory commons. It’s time for a cram session.”
“Abi was probably on duty when they called us to the courtyard,” Eric offered.
My tall friend blazed a trail across the courtyard, past the statue of the blindfolded man leaning on his sword, to the large double doors that led into the School’s administrative wing. Most of the assembly’s crowd had dispersed into the student areas of the School, which let us make good time to the PDF station. We found Abi nervously pacing from one group of initiates to the next, peering closely at flashing red monitors and shouting at his charges over the annoying blare of alarm buzzers.
“Told you this is where he’d be,” Eric said. “Did you even see the announcement, Abi?”
“Of course.” Abi forced a strained smile. He was clearly stressed out by the chaos. “Every time Elushinithoc pops onto the School’s grounds, he sets off all of our perimeter alarms. The initiates have to scramble to verify there’s no real threat, then shut down the alarms before a whole squadron of guardians show up looking for trouble. It’s infuriating. Give me a minute.”
Abi snapped his fingers, barked a command at a team of initiates, then hurried off to look at another set of monitors. He was a flurry of efficient activity, and I was proud to see my friend doing such important work with such skill and dedication.
“When do you have time to study?” Clem asked Abi when he rejoined us after the last alarm was silenced. “It seems like the PDF has you jumping from one emergency to another instead of focusing on your classwork.”
“They keep me busy,” Abi said with a chuckle. “I have an hour of training before breakfast, an hour of portal duty after last class and before dinner, and three hours of duty after dinner. That leaves me some time to study at night. This apprenticeship hasn’t done much for my social life, but I’m in no danger of flunking out of school.”
For the first time I wondered if I’d made a mistake dragging Abi into the Gauntlet. He was an amazing friend and his defensive techniques would be a huge help in the competition. Being on the team had added hours of training to his week, though, when he could have spent that time studying or socializing.
Of course, if the Portal Defense Force didn’t extract almost a full-time job’s worth of free labor out of him, he’d have a lot more time to enjoy being a student, too. It hardly seemed fair that the apprenticeship demanded so much from the students. I was reminded far too much of the time I’d spent working for Tycho my first year.
“When can you get out of here?” I pushed my thoughts about Abi’s job situation aside. It wasn’t my business. “The challenge is tomorrow, and I’m calling a strategy meeting.”
“I’m waiting for the all clear from my commanding officer. I’ll be free to go after that.” Abi checked something on the console to his left. “Should be less than an hour. Where should we meet?”
“The dormitory commons,” I said. “Bring whatever you’ll need for an overnight stay.”
“Where are we going?” Abi asked.
“Somewhere safe,” I said. “I hope.”
Clem, Eric, and I split up to grab what we needed from our rooms. I packed my formal School champion’s robes, which I planned to wear at the competition tomorrow, my quantic computer, and my share of the jinsei vials and aspect bottles the hollow initiates had crafted during our classes. With my damaged core, I’d need any edge I could scrounge up.
Hagar was perched on the arm of a chair in the dormitory commons when I arrived. She was an island of solitude amongst the chattering clusters of other students. Her stern expression and the anxiety aspects clinging to her aura had convinced everyone to give her a wide berth.
“Hirani’s coming.” She forced a smile as she said the words. It never reached her eyes. “It sounds like the other elders are tied up with bigger problems.”
The heretics were on the move, again. That was the only thing that would occupy Sanrin, Brand, and Claude. I wondered if my mother knew that I was preparing for a challenge that could shape the course of history. Maybe she did and had done something to distract the elders when I needed them most.
I desperately needed to find her to make sense of my life. There had to be a reason she was with the heretics. A reason why she’d hurt me so badly.
Before I could hunt down my mother, though, I had to repair my core. And to do that, I had to win the challenges of the Empyrean Gauntlet. I pushed all other thoughts aside, and a new idea bubbled up to the surface.
“Can you find out where the Shambala team trains?” I asked Hagar. “It could help us win if we saw them in action.”
“And what makes you think I have that kind of information?” Hagar asked coyly.
“Because you know everything,” I said with a grin. “And, if you don’t know something, you know how to find out.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Hagar said quietly. “Let’s not talk about it in front of the others. I’d rather they not know what I’m up to when I’m not at school.”
I nodded and glanced over my shoulder. Clem and Eric were on their way across the common area, packs slung over their shoulders. They both wore the wide, easy smiles of kids headed off to a particularly exciting theme park.
“This is going to be awesome,” Eric practically shouted. “They’ll never know what hit them.”
“Eric’s right.” Clem ruffled Eric’s hair, then raised her hand for a high five from me. “As long as we stick to our training and work together, this is in the bag.”
“That’s the spirit.” Abi had arrived from the opposite direction as the other two and gave us all a quick wave. For the first time, I realized just how exhausted he looked. His eyes were sunken, and his skin had taken on a grayish cast. Stress from his work with the PDF, plus all that was going on with the tournament, was weighing on him. “I got away earlier than I’d thought. Everyone ready?”
“Let’s get out of here.” Hagar stood, shouldered her bag, and headed for the eastern hallway.
Hahen appeared out of the shadows in the hall and offered me a brief bow before scrambling up my robes to my shoulder. His long tail coiled loosely around my throat, and he rested his elbow on top of my head.
“Thought I’d tag along,” the spirit said. “I’m surprised you didn’t invite me to come with you. Another brain, especially one as wise and experienced as mine, could be very useful.”
My ears and cheeks burned with embarrassment. I should have invited the rat spirit along, not only for his knowledge, but because he was my friend. That fact slipped my mind far too often, and it pained me that it had happened again.
“My apologies, honored Spirit.” I didn’t want to dislodge my friend with a bow, but I did bob my head to show my humility. “I shouldn’t have left you out.”
“No worries,” the rat said. “Just don’t let it happen again.”
My team followed Hagar through the heavy double doors at the end of the hallway and into an ancient forest. Bars of silver moonlight speared through the canopy and illuminated a twisting path between massive tree trunks. Winged creatures with luminous purple bulbs for tails flittered through the branches while a chorus of crickets serenaded us with a strange melody that almost sounded like humans singing. The smells of cedar and wildflowers tinged the air. It was clean and crisp, and I enjoyed every breath I took.
“Where are we?” I hadn’t seen anything like this when I’d come through those doors with Rachel last year.
“Somewhere secret.” Hagar shot me a wink. “If you’re nice to me, maybe I’ll show you how to get here on your own. We need to get a move on, though. Hirani’s waiting for us, and you know how the elders feel about their precious time.”
Empyreals as powerful as the elders of my clan could live for hundreds of years before the signs of aging appeared and for centuries longer afte
r that. Despite their longevity, those Empyreals still always seemed to be in a hurry, as if the more years they had, the more work they gave themselves.
Or, maybe, they knew something the rest of us didn’t.
We hustled past trees filled with golden birds who sang with women’s voices, clearings where tiny people danced around enormous mushrooms, and a congregation of serpents coiled around the base of a massive stone covered in the most complex scrivenings I’d ever seen. We glimpsed other things so strange I couldn’t make any sense of them. The forest and its inhabitants were both strangely beautiful and deeply unnerving.
“There you are.” Hirani clapped her hands and gestured toward an obsidian archway ahead of us. “Right through here. Quickly, no time for sightseeing.”
The archway led us into a cozy log cabin complete with a roaring fireplace stacked high with thick logs and a winter wonderland outside its window. The lodge’s rustic appearance was at odds with the sheer number of scrivened objects that glowed from the shelves on its walls. There was serious power here, and its presence draped around my core like a warm cloak. The cabin’s contents belonged in a museum or a vault, not here.
“This place is something else,” I said.
“I was about to apologize for the rough accommodations.” Hirani spread her arms to indicate our surroundings. “This is our little retreat from the world. It will give you all peace and quiet to rest and prepare yourselves for tomorrow. It’s unfortunate that the other elders couldn’t join us. Things are complicated at the moment. Let me give you the grand tour.”
Hirani walked us through the cabin, which was much larger than I’d first thought. There were seven bedrooms with attached bathrooms upstairs and four more in a stone-lined basement that looked as secure as a bunker. The ground floor held a kitchen, dining room, pantry, sitting room, game room, three more bathrooms, a study, and an alchemical laboratory almost as well stocked as Tycho’s had been. I was fairly certain I spotted a portal key in that lab, though Hirani didn’t mention it and I didn’t want to irritate her by asking a question that might compromise our security. The elders were stingy with their secrets, and if she hadn’t told me about it, she had her reasons.
