by Gage Lee
“So, that’s the cabin.” Hirani gave us all a broad smile. “If you’re hungry, there’s a spirit in the kitchen who can whip up something for you. Is there anything I can do to help you in the meantime?”
“What can you tell us about the Gauntlet challenges?” Abi asked. “We know there are three of them, and that’s about it.”
“Let’s sit and have tea like civilized beings, and I’ll answer what I can.” Hirani guided us through the kitchen, where she called out an order for tea to the spirit, and into the dining room.
I’d have asked for coffee if I didn’t think it would ratchet my anxiety up even higher than it already was. Tea would have to do.
Once we were all seated, and Hahen had taken up his usual position on the table at my right elbow, Hirani leaned back in her chair and cupped her hands behind her head. She stared up at the ceiling for a moment to collect her thoughts, then dove into answering Abi’s question.
“The exact details of the Empyrean Gauntlet challenges are unknown, because they change every time,” Hirani began. “We do know that there are always three challenges that correspond to the trinity of Empyrean powers: swords, auras, and serpents. Challenges tend toward the martial, though puzzles are also quite popular. Other than that, there’s not much I can tell you. I don’t even know the specifics of the three previous Empyrean Gauntlets, because the contestants are sworn to a geas of silence regarding the challenges.”
“That’s unfortunate.” Clem took a sip of her tea. “No wonder Brand has dodged so many of our questions. No one knows the answers.”
“I wish we could have been more help to you.” Hirani gave Clem a sorrowful smile.
“You can,” I said. It was now or never. “I need you to perform surgery on my core.”
Hirani leaned forward so suddenly I thought she might hit me. Her eyes burned into mine with an intensity I’d never seen in them before. She was so kind and patient it was easy to forget that she was also an incredibly powerful Empyreal who could as easily strike me down as look at me.
“If you thought I could repair your core, why didn’t you ask before now?” Hirani sounded interested rather than angry.
The truth was, I’d hoped Hahen and I could find a solution without involving the elders. The way Ishigara had reacted to my impromptu bit of animal grafting had made me leery of bringing up stitching my core back together with anyone else.
“Because my back is against the wall,” I confessed. “My team is strong thanks to the work we’ve done with Brand and Professor Song. We could be so much stronger, though, if my core wasn’t mangled. I know what I’m asking is dangerous. I’ve tried everything else I could think of, though, and nothing has worked. I’m out of time. Please. I need your help.”
Hirani clasped her hands around her mug of tea and peered into its murky depths. For a moment, her brow furrowed, and her ageless mask slipped. She didn’t seem old, exactly, just worn thin from untold years of stress and hard decisions. She had a long, long life still ahead of her, but the toll the years had demanded so far had been much higher than I’d imagined. She’d seen darker days than any of us and knew that darker ones still lay ahead.
“I want to help you.” Her voice trembled with a thread of vulnerability at odds with her power as an Empyreal elder. “And that’s why I cannot. I’ve tried to do the impossible before, Jace. It did not go well.”
The rest of my team shifted uncomfortably in their seats. I felt the weight of their attention against my wounded core, and it stung like a case of fresh road rash.
“You have to try,” I insisted. “I’ve considered doing it myself...”
“You mustn’t.” Hirani had regained her composure, and her words carried the full weight of her authority. “You’re clever, Jace. Using a soulscript to reverse the delamination seems like a good idea. The slightest mistake, though, could accelerate the delamination. And if the scrivening failed under stress, it could tear your core apart. If you’d only come to Bogotá, maybe...”
Hahen blew out an exasperated sigh.
“Thank you, honored Elder,” the rat spirit said and bowed low. “I’m afraid we have overstepped our bounds here. Perhaps Jace and I should retire to rest before tomorrow’s challenge.”
“Please, stay, venerable Spirit.” The elder’s warm, pleasant demeanor returned in full force. “Jace’s request wasn’t unreasonable, given the information he had. For now, though, drink your tea. You’ll need it to get through what I have planned tonight.”
All of our eyebrows shot up at Hirani’s ominous final sentence.
“You didn’t think I’d bring you all this way and not be ready for a strategy cram session, did you?” Hirani laughed. “The spirit added a little something special to your tea. You won’t need sleep tonight. Let’s find out just what Professor Song and Elder Brand have been teaching you.”
The First
HIRANI HADN’T EXAGGERATED about the tea. It filled us with energy, without the jitters you’d expect from caffeine. I needed to get the recipe for whatever potion Hirani had used. That night, though, we had some serious strategizing to do.
While we didn’t have any specifics about what we’d face in the challenge, we went over our training and focused on how we could help one another. I’d gotten much better at playing support thanks to the team training sessions, though it still didn’t feel right. I was more comfortable on the front lines, dealing with threats the old-fashioned way: with sword and serpents.
That wasn’t an option with my busted core. Instead we reviewed the way that Clem’s Path of the Tempest techniques could redirect foes, while Hagar’s Path of the Blood Spider allowed her to steal their vitality or replenish our own. For straight-ahead striking power we relied on Eric’s Path of the Inferno, and Abi provided crowd control and defense through the Path of the Impenetrable Defense. They relied on me to drain away jinsei and aspects from opponents who got too close, which was about all I could do in my current condition.
Still, my disciple-level core gave me strength and speed far beyond most other Empyreals. I didn’t need to channel jinsei through it to use those blessings, and I intended to put them to use every chance I got.
We chewed over everything we could think of until the morning sun shone through the frost-covered windows to remind us that time was still ticking by. Hirani called an end to the strategy session, encouraged us all to get up and stretch, then hustled off to round up some food for all of us.
“Enjoy your breakfast.” Hirani slipped back into her seat. The kitchen spirits flowed in behind to lay out a fantastic spread. “Take your time. We’ll head back to the School in an hour or so.”
She didn’t have to tell us twice. We dove into the feast of thick-cut slices of peppered bacon, ham steaks, peeled segments of grapefruit, fresh strawberries and sweet cream, seedless pomegranate pearls, and slabs of crusty, fresh-baked bread slathered with sweet honey butter. The food wasn’t only delicious, it restored our energy and filled us with much-needed strength.
Finally, the scrumptious meal came to an end. I devoured a final slice of bacon and considered how strange it was that we were so close to the first leg of the Empyrean Gauntlet. We’d spent weeks training with Professor Song and Elder Brand, and it always felt like we had another day, another week.
And now our time was up. We had to put what we’d learned to the test.
After a long night of chatting, arguing, and trying to figure out how we were going to win this thing, none of us had much to say as Hirani led us to the black arch and through the School to the courtyard.
She stopped at the final set of doors and turned to face us.
“I know there’s a lot of pressure on all of you,” she said. “If it helps, I believe you can do this. You’re the best team any of the schools could field. More importantly, you’re friends. Lean on each other. And don’t be afraid to do whatever it takes to win. Because the other teams won’t hesitate to secure their victory.”
With that cryptic a
nd ominous comment, Elder Hirani flung the doors wide to reveal the courtyard beyond. The space was crammed full of students who stared up at the stage and the competitors who had already gathered on it. The Yzlanti team stood stock-still, rigidly at attention. Their eyes were fixed on the middle distance, and their breaths cycled through their cores in synchronized streams. They were the epitome of teamwork.
The students from the Sacred Monastery of Shambala prowled back and forth across the stage, jeering and brandishing their claws at the crowd in a savage display. Their auras were filled with aspects I’d rarely seen: a reptilian anger, an ancient hunger, and flickering motes of an almost bestial rage that had no business surrounding a creature with two legs. The dragons were furious for some reason and were more than ready to take out their rage on anyone who got in their way.
Before I could take in the other teams, Hirani clapped her hands together and unleashed a jinsei-boosted blast of sound. Trumpeting horns burst across the courtyard in a complex fanfare. Streamers of light burst from the doorway ahead of us and streaked into the air. Everyone gathered for the challenge, contestants and audience members alike, turned toward the thunderous spectacle.
“Go on,” Hirani said. “Show them who the real champions are.”
Hirani was right. These people had come into our school and challenged us. We had to teach them the painful lesson that that was a mistake.
I strode through the doors, and a booming masculine voice announced my arrival.
“Now entering, Jace Warin, hero of Kyoto, last of the Eclipse Warriors, undefeated champion of the School of Swords and Serpents in the Five Dragons Challenge.” Hearing the list of my accomplishments was enough to put a strut in my steps as the crowd parted before me and I marched toward the stage. I kept my eyes locked on the obvious leader of the dragon team, who struggled to hold my black gaze.
Not even her burning rage was a match for the cold hunger of my Eclipse core.
My feet carried me across the courtyard to the red carpet that led up the stage’s steps. Her eyes finally broke away from my dark stare when I mounted the stage, and a new aspect crowded into her aura.
Worry.
That gave me the strength to lift my chin a little higher, hold my spine a little stiffer. If the leader of the Indomitable Dragons of Light was worried about me, then maybe I didn’t need to be quite so worried about her.
I took my position on the stage, to the right of the Shambala team, and turned my eyes on the crowd. The rest of my school’s students watched our team enter with a mixture of awe and pride. There was something different about all of my friends as they marched up the red carpet and their names echoed through the courtyard. They all seemed bigger, more powerful than I remembered. Storm clouds swirled around Clem, and lightning flashed in her eyes. Eric’s flaming fists left tracers of heat behind him, and fire sprites danced through his blond hair. Abi strode calmly down the carpet, an ominous gravity surrounding him. And Hagar, bringing up the rear, looked more fearsome than I’d ever seen her before. Her red hair sparked and spat with motes of jinsei, and her serpents stretched out to touch the ground ahead of her like the bloody legs of a gargantuan spider.
Abi and Clem took my right flank on the stage, while Eric and Hagar took my left. We hadn’t rehearsed this at all and yet managed to come together in perfect unison. We clasped hands and raised our fists overhead.
Fireworks exploded in the air above the courtyard, and our fellow students went wild. They roared and applauded, while my team beamed at them with pride and confidence. We were as ready for this fight as we would ever be, and I couldn’t wait for it to begin.
“Assembled teams, prepare.” Elushinithoc’s voice was flat and emotionless, as if he wanted to hide his true feelings. “A blue portal will appear before each team. Your time will start when your team enters its portal.”
The dragon’s words stifled the crowd’s cheers and applause. Silence cloaked the courtyard, and bands of tension surrounded every team on the stage. There was no more grandstanding, no more false bravado. The challenge of our lives was about to begin.
Breathe, I reminded myself.
The portals appeared before us in the space between heartbeats. One moment, I was looking down at the upturned faces of my fellow students. The next, a brilliant blue oval consumed my vision.
Without a second thought, I stepped through the portal.
The Challenge
THE PORTAL DROPPED me in a circular arena roughly thirty yards across. I scanned my surroundings for any clue how to win the challenge. The reward from the Empyrean Flame was the only hope I had of curing my broken core. I couldn’t afford to lose even a single event.
The ground was a smooth expanse of red clay, its surface broken only by a white painted circle, five yards across, at its center. A crimson, fist-sized ball sat on the ground within that hard circle. Three holes, each a yard wide and a yard off the ground, pierced the arena’s wall across from the portal. Those holes were outlined in glowing red circles, and I found a matching set of blue outlined circles behind us. The ceiling, twenty feet overhead, glowed with a stark white light that illuminated every inch of the arena.
“This is the weirdest soccer field I’ve ever seen,” Eric said quietly. “Where’s the other team?”
“I think we’re about to find out,” Hagar said. She was the last one through the portal, and it vanished with a faint electric hiss the instant she had both feet on the clay.
“The Challenge of Swords. Defend your goal. Establish dominance. Three points ends the game.” The announcer’s voice was loud enough to hear, and no louder. It said the words without inflection or emphasis. For such a momentous event, I’d expected to hear a little excitement, not abject boredom.
A scoreboard flashed to life above us. It held a blue zero and a red zero, each surrounded by three white circles.
“No timer on the scoreboard.” Abi shrugged. “I guess we have as long as we need to wrap this up.”
“Just because there isn’t a timer doesn’t mean we aren’t being judged on how quickly we complete the challenge,” I reminded the team. “I’m willing to bet they’ll break ties based on speed. Let’s be quick with this.”
“Here come the bad guys,” Clem said.
Three figures materialized from thin air on the opposite side of the arena. They were tall and thin, with long legs and arms that ended in wide, six-fingered hands. Their torsos were thin cones, and they had no heads or eyes that I saw. Their bodies were faceted, like crystals, and threads of jinsei that held them together and animated their forms glowed inside their torsos.
Four more constructs, these with thicker torsos, shorter legs, and heavier arms than the first trio, formed a second line. Finally, three more broad-bodied crystalline constructs appeared directly in front of each of the holes on the far wall.
They stood motionless, the weight of their attention pushing against my core for long seconds before it passed me by. Judging by the looks on the faces of my teammates, we were all being sized up by the opposition.
“Football.” Abi chuckled. “Or something close to it. Hardly seems like the best way to decide who gets to watch over the Grand Design.”
“There has to be more to the challenge.” I analyzed the opposing constructs closely and found no clues there. They were simple creatures, the scrivenings in their bodies limited to the specific task they’d been created to perform. Unfortunately, at this distance and at my level of skill, I wasn’t sure what that task was.
“If we need to get that ball through one of those holes, it’s going to be a very tight fit,” Clem said.
She was right. The ball in the center of the court was so close to the same size as the holes that I wasn’t sure it would fit. If the purpose of the challenge was to score a goal, we’d have to be up close and personal to do that.
“Look at the hands on their goalies,” Hagar groaned. “They’re the size of pizza paddles.”
“That hardly seems fair. They’r
e only constructs, though.” Eric strode toward the ball at the center of the field, chest puffed out with confidence. “Let’s see if they can keep up with me.”
“I’ll cover our goals.” Abi retreated toward the central hole in the wall on our side, then shrugged. “Not that they’ll get past Eric.”
“I’m on the left flank,” Clem said. “Just in case.”
“Good call,” Hagar said. “I’ve got the right side.”
“I’ll stick in the middle.” We were missing something. The rules seemed simple enough. Maybe too simple.
I couldn’t afford to miss anything. Losing this challenge would put me at risk to lose the whole Gauntlet. And that meant my core was doomed. I had to figure this out.
Eric tried to step across the circular line to grab the ball, only to be stopped dead by an invisible barrier that left him rubbing his nose. He backed up half a step, and the circle at his feet flashed red.
The first row of constructs lined up in a tight arc on their side of the circle. They stretched their long arms out to their sides and bent their knees.
Eric mimicked their posture and glanced over his shoulder to shoot me a devil-may-care grin. He was a born competitor, and he was having the time of his life.
The ring of light turned yellow.
The four constructs in the second row spread out to cover more of the field. They shifted positions often, unsure of what Eric would do. They settled on plugging the gaps in the front arc and crouched down so they could spring in any direction.
The ring turned green.
