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

by Gage Lee

“Jace!” Clem shouted. “The ceiling!”

  The alarm in Clem’s voice pulled my attention away from the vivid display on the walls to the stone dome above my head. Demonic faces leered and gibbered from within a storm of shadows that boiled above the arena. That had to be what the dragons and men were marching to fight. I didn’t know what the arena was trying to tell us, or why the challenge hadn’t ended. We’d won and should have been safely back in the School by now.

  Suddenly, the dragons and men froze in place. The flying beasts roared, and the soldiers shouted in dismay.

  And the darkness attacked.

  The Inferno

  THE WILDLY REVOLVING tip of the shadow tornado slammed into the ground between Abi and me, then forked off into whirling dervishes that chased after the rest of my team. The unexpected assault threw us to the ground, and Abi skidded away from me across the dusty stone floor with his arms and legs flailing. Elemental aspects darted and danced through the tornado’s ripping winds and lashed out at me with a blast of fire that caught me in the chest and set my robes ablaze. My friends cried out in alarm and pain, and I knew that they too were under attack.

  I stifled the instinct to run from the flames and rolled over to smother them against the arena’s floor. Another blast of fire splashed across the stone where I’d been only moments before, and yet another sizzled through the air just past my head.

  Apparently, bringing light to the arena had only been the first step of the challenge. Our true mission was destroying the darkness before it killed us all.

  Another burst of fire glanced off my shoulder, and I slapped it out before it could ignite my robes again. I sprang to my feet and raised my hands defensively while I surveyed the battlefield. My arms wouldn’t fare any better than the rest of my body against fire, but I’d rather take a shot to my limbs than my face.

  My teammates attempted to defend themselves against the attacks, but the darkness went after their weak points. Eric struggled to deflect blobs of water that launched out of the tornado with the speed of crossbow bolts. His flaming hands intercepted the bolts with stunning precision, but every successful defense drained more of his strength. Clem had thrown herself into a series of whirlwind kicks that deflected shards of earth aspects with arcs of wind. Unfortunately, the larger stone darts couldn’t be stopped by the wind, and she was dotted with ugly bruises and splashes of blood. Hagar’s bloodweaver techniques were powerful against living creatures. They had no effect on the storm of metal aspects that shredded her webs and shrugged off her attempts to drain away their vitality. A cut across my handler’s forehead bled into her eyes, and she cursed her attackers louder with every passing second. And Abi’s defensive techniques were utterly useless against the wooden roots that had swarmed under his shields and wrapped tightly around his legs.

  I jumped and spun, ducking and darting around the fiery blasts, but I was running out of gas, too. I needed to fill the channels in my arms and legs, to give myself the strength and speed to keep moving until I figured out a way to bring down the tempest. But that meant pulling jinsei in through my core, and the short-term gain wouldn’t be enough to offset the damage that would do.

  A flurry of fireballs sent me leaping back across the arena. I tumbled through the air like an acrobat, twisting and dodging away from the flames. I landed on the very edge of a pit that left me with nowhere else to dodge. I took a solid flaming hit to my left wrist and smothered the hungry fire under my right arm. The attack had chewed through my robes and raised ugly red streaks of blisters across my skin. It had also broken my concentration, and my Borrowed Core technique unraveled, snapping my connection to the Army of a Thousand Eyes.

  I couldn’t keep this up. I had to end this fight.

  Now.

  The tornado somehow sensed that I was at the end of my rope. It didn’t send fire aspects after me, but twisted its tail off the ground and plunged it straight at my chest.

  I stood my ground, praying my timing would be precise enough to keep me from being burned alive. I activated the Thief’s Shield technique at what I hoped was the precise moment the tornado touched my aura.

  It worked.

  My technique slurped the incendiary aspects from the dark storm. But it didn’t funnel them into my aura. The technique had come solely from the vessel, and that’s where the aspects went. The metal talisman grew warm against my chest as the fiery corruption flowed into it. The channels I’d stitched the vessel to filled with an intense itching sensation that quickly escalated into a burning pain.

  I’d made a terrible miscalculation.

  The medallion could hold enough jinsei to activate the Thief’s Shield technique. But its aura was weak, and without the Army of a Thousand Eyes and my connection to the rats’ auras to diffuse the tornado’s power, the vessel was failing. I didn’t know what would happen when it finally cracked, and I didn’t want to find out.

  Ishigara had warned us that removing the stitches from our channels would take time. Unfortunately, I only had seconds to remove the vessel.

  Brute force it was.

  The stitched object scorched my palm and fingertips as I ripped it away from my skin. The threads of jinsei that had bound it to my channels tattered and snapped, and the scrivenings on the medallion sparked and cracked. Fire aspects melted through the metal surface to destroy my engraving. I flung the metal disc away from me, and it melted into slag before it hit the arena’s floor.

  The danger was far from over, though. Eric was on his knees, his hands crossed above his head to ward off crashing waves of water aspects. Hagar held metal aspects away from her throat with her bloody hands.

  I had to end this.

  I cycled jinsei through my core.

  The sacred energy hit me like a prizefighter’s uppercut to the solar plexus. I gasped against the pain and held onto the power I so desperately needed to save myself and my friends. With an agonized roar, I triggered the Thief’s Shield technique again, charging into the burning vortex.

  Elemental aspects flowed through my core and into my aura, surrounding me in a burning corona. My core screamed as if it were filled with acid, but I held on to the technique to drain even more aspects and jinsei from the tornado. The fire vanished from the darkness in seconds. A storm of metal came next, followed by water, earth, and finally the wood that threatened to pull Abi apart.

  The darkness recoiled from my touch, and the forked tongues that had extended toward my friends retreated until they were once again part of its wildly spinning body. The vortex churned the air into a roiling black maw centered above my head. The primal aspects that filled my aura obscured the dire threat but did nothing to muffle its screaming as it dropped on me like an avalanche of nightmares.

  “Jace!” Clem screamed, and then I was gone.

  The world broke apart in chaotic streams of sacred energy and tattered aspects. The endless black stripped my aura bare and drained the jinsei from my breaking core. The tornado pinned my arms to my sides with bands of pure force and carried my struggling form far beyond the arena’s boundaries. The air grew thin and foul. Every breath filled my nostrils with the stink of burning metal and left my lungs aching for more oxygen.

  Despite the lack of clean air, I clung to consciousness. As long as I was awake, I had a chance, even if a slim one, to fight.

  I couldn’t give that up.

  After what felt like an eternity, the nightmare tornado spat me out. I bounced across a glossy black plain like a rock skipped across a lake’s still surface. Every impact jarred me to the bone and rattled my brain in my skull. I couldn’t tell the difference between the ebony sky and the surface beneath me as I tumbled. My hands scrabbled at the impossibly smooth ground, but even my disciple-level core didn’t give me the strength I needed to stop myself.

  And then a giant stomped on my chest with a heavy boot and pinned me to the ground. The creature towered over me, its face lost in the shadows of its crimson cowl. The pressure on my ribs increased, as if the giant had
shifted its weight to squash me like a bug. Then, it nodded its head and walked away.

  I scrambled to my feet before the tornado could send me sliding again or another monster showed up to put an end to my torment. Pain radiated from my body’s countless contusions and other minor wounds, and I ignored them all. The agony in my core, though, wasn’t so easy to deny. Every breath became a tortured gasp, and every touch of jinsei against my center was a splash of acid.

  “You’ve really done it now,” I groaned.

  “Jace Warin?” A familiar voice called from behind me, and I hobbled around to face it.

  The dragon who’d spoken to me before the challenge stood a few feet away. Blood streaked her face, and her robes were tattered. The skin that peeked through the torn fabric was crisscrossed by deep scratches, and she held one arm across her abdomen. She looked every bit as terrible as I felt.

  “Yeah.” I held both hands up, palms toward her. “Truce. I don’t think either one of us is in any condition for a fight.”

  “Agreed.” Her pronunciation was strange, as if every word had extra syllables. “I have no idea where we are.”

  “Same.” Satisfied she wouldn’t try to claw my throat out, I turned in a slow circle to look for anything that might shed some light on what had happened to us. The obsidian ground was uninterrupted for miles in every direction, and the dark sky didn’t hold even a single star. The only thing, other than the dragon, that I could see was the lone figure of the giant, who had nearly vanished over the horizon. “That guy’s going somewhere. Might as well see where it is.”

  That conversation left me gasping for air, and my unlikely companion struggled for breath, too. The painfully dry and thin air reeked of burned metal, and it was cold in my nose and lungs. Wherever this place was, it wasn’t built for humans. Or dragons, apparently.

  “Agreed.” She shivered and hugged herself against the cold air. “I am Trulissinangoth.”

  “Nice to meet you. Here, take this.” I ripped a wide strip from the bottom of my robe and tossed the scorched black material to her. “It’s not much, but it’ll help keep the chill off.”

  “Thank you.” Trulissinangoth snatched the long scrap out of the air and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  We headed after the giant without another word. We didn’t have the breath to spare for conversation, though dozens of questions whirled through my thoughts. There was so much I wanted to ask Trulissinangoth, and I was sure she felt the same. We came from very different worlds and had both been thrust into an age-old conflict that I, at least, didn’t want or understand. When we got out of here, I promised myself, she and I would have a nice, long talk.

  If we got out of here.

  We walked in silence until the giant’s form became a hazy shadow. Every time I blinked, I was afraid that he’d move out of sight, leaving us alone on a featureless plain of endless night.

  “There,” the dragon gasped. “Do you see the light?”

  “No.” Her eyes must have been much sharper than mine.

  “This way.” Her strides grew longer and her pace quickened. Trulissinangoth’s reserves of energy surprised me, and I struggled to keep up with her.

  If she wanted to ditch me on the obsidian field, this was her chance. My channels were drained of jinsei, and even the thought of pulling in more sacred energy filled my core with a ball of spiky pain. I’d have to gut this out with willpower and sheer stubbornness.

  The ground rose beneath our feet, and the giant finally vanished as it crested the ridge we were walking toward. The light had grown bright enough for me to see. Its silvery radiance fell from the sky, and I chased it up to the top of the slope, where the dragon had stopped.

  “This is impossible,” Trulissinangoth whispered. Her clawed fingers made a strange sign in the air before her and a fearful hiss escaped her. “We must be dead.”

  I was inclined to agree with her.

  We stood on the edge of a ridge that surrounded an enormous circle etched into the glossy black ground hundreds of feet below us. Miles-long scrivenings filled that circle with patterns so complex I couldn’t begin to decipher their elegant sweeps and maddening curves. A silver fire blazed at the heart of the scrivenings, its light the beacon that we’d followed all this way. My eyes watered and my heart skipped a beat at the scene before us.

  Trulissinangoth was right. This couldn’t be real. It wasn’t possible.

  The giant marched across the circle toward the fire, and an enormous dragon stomped across the plain from the opposite direction. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of a Locust Court spirit the size of a skyscraper that skittered toward the flame between the giant and the dragon. A fourth creature, its body an amorphous collection of slime atop far too many tentacles, approached the flame, as well, and its enormous hourglass pupils narrowed to slits as it reached the edge of the inferno.

  The four beings reached into the fire in perfect unison. They raised brands of silver flame over their heads, then turned and walked back the way they’d come. At regular intervals, they lowered their torches to the pattern beneath their feet, and the intricate scrivenings burned and warped around the fire. Holes appeared in the design, their edges charred and frayed, and a red void showed through the dark ground.

  The senseless destruction filled me with a despair so intense it brought tears to my eyes. The pain in my heart was far greater than the agony in my core. I couldn’t take another second of it. A sob escaped me, and I turned away from the fires that spread to fill the crater.

  I collapsed, and the stone floor of the arena rose up to meet me.

  The Recovery

  “I DON’T THINK HE’S dead.” Niddhogg’s rough voice was accompanied by a painful pinch on my cheek. “Look, he winced. He’s totally alive.”

  “I’m not,” I groaned. “I’m totally dead.”

  “You will be if you ever scare me like that again.” The pain in Clem’s voice convinced me to open my eyes.

  She sat next to the bed, her own eyes wide and searching. Her lower lip trembled as she reached out to take my hand in her shaky fingers. A single tear leaked from her left eye and ran down her cheek.

  “I’m okay.” My creaky voice made the words sound unbelievable even to my ears. “I think.”

  “You are not.” Hirani’s words were sharp as a dagger. “You’ve hurt yourself quite badly. I hope it was worth the price you’ve paid.”

  “Did everyone survive the challenge?” I asked Clem.

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “Where did we place in the rankings?” I was nervous that we’d come in last. After coming in third during the first challenge, our team couldn’t afford that.”

  “We beat the dragons.” Clem smiled. “We were first place, overall. The dragons came in second, Yzlanti was third, and the Dojo of Opal radiance came in dead last.”

  “Then it was worth it.” I let out a sigh and sank back into the pillows. “Where am I?”

  “The School’s staff infirmary.” Hahen appeared at the foot of my bed and lashed my sheet-covered soles with his tail. “Where foolish boys go after they’ve nearly killed themselves.”

  “It’s not that bad.” A quick examination of my pained core showed me that the delamination had accelerated more quickly than I’d expected, but my body was fine. “I’ll survive.”

  Hirani clutched the arms of her chair and used them to hoist herself onto her feet. She made it halfway to standing, then froze in place when her shaking knees threatened to betray her. A few deep breaths later, she’d steadied herself and managed to stand unassisted. She crossed the dimly lit room to my bed, every step revealing shocking new details.

  The right side of her face was covered in bandages, and blood had seeped through the white gauze to form ugly red patches. A scabbed wound ran from the corner of her mouth, down her chin, and under the collar of her robes. Her lustrous black hair was streaked with thick strands of stark white, and the pinky and ring finger of her left hand were gone
below the first knuckle. Her breath was harsh and labored by the time she reached my bed, as if the simple walk had taken a herculean effort.

  “I’ll survive, too.” Her sarcastic grin was pulled down on one side by her wound.

  “What happened?” The rude question slipped out of me before I could stop it.

  “You know.” She twitched her eyes, the only part of her that still looked how I’d remembered, toward Clem to let me know that wasn’t a conversation we’d have in mixed company. “Your foolish gamble won the battle, Jace. You completed all three of the challenge’s goals and saved your friends. At a truly horrible cost.”

  “I don’t need my core healed to win the last challenge.” I pulled up the sleeve of my left arm to show Hirani the medallion I’d stitched to my channels. “This discipline lets me use my techniques. I didn’t lose sight of the war, honored Elder. I made a calculated sacrifice to save the rest of my team. I can’t finish the challenge without them.”

  Clem squeezed my hand tighter and bit her lower lip. She turned her eyes away from me, and a faint sob shook her shoulders.

  “They didn’t get out of there unscathed, Jace,” Hirani said quietly. “They’ll heal, given time.”

  “How much time?” An urge to throw off my sheets and go find my friends flared inside me. “Where are they?”

  “Stop.” Hirani pressed her fingertips against my shoulder until the tension ran out of my body and I lay back against the pillows. “The best thing you can do for them is to focus on getting better. The best doctors we have will tend to their wounds. They will be fine.”

  “She’s right,” Clem said. “We all got out of there light, compared to you. Cuts, bruises, some burns. Nothing that won’t heal.”

  “Get some rest,” I said to Clem. She was clearly exhausted.

  “I’ll stay.” Her downcast eyes were surrounded by rings of dark shadow. She had to have been by my bedside for the whole night, at least.

  “You need to sleep,” I said with a smile. “Go on. I’ll see you later.”