by Gage Lee
The dragons had already engaged the humanoid constructs that charged toward them with cool, calm efficiency. They’d summoned their fusion blades in the blink of an eye and used them to hack at their enemies. The constructs that got anywhere near the Shambala team were torn apart so quickly it was hard to see which of the dragons struck the killing blow.
My team, on the other hand, had their work cut out for them. Eric’s attacks were clean and precise. His fiery fists punched through the chests of onrushing constructs, shattering their bodies and sending gouts of jinsei splashing into the air.
Abi’s defensive technique drew constructs toward him, and away from Eric’s blind side. His enhanced defenses allowed him to weather his enemy’s blows, while sparing the rest of the team from their attacks.
Hagar’s blood threads burst away from her aura to ensnare targets who evaded Abi’s technique, and Clem used her tempest kicks to unleash wave after wave of jinsei that blasted constructs on her side across the arena.
I strained my senses in a desperate search for anything I could latch onto. The Borrowed Core needed to find a bond soon, before the jinsei in the vessel was exhausted. If that happened, I wouldn’t be able to use the technique for the rest of the challenge, which would prevent me from using any of my other techniques. I needed the Borrowed Core to fuel everything else, but for it to work, I had to find a suitable core.
And then, I realized they were all around me.
I forged a connection to a downed construct. Its broken body couldn’t fight, but the artificial core that had powered it was still there, and it still contained jinsei. My technique latched onto that source of power as easily as it would have a rat’s core. Jinsei flowed back into my talisman, and I instantly ignited the Army of a Thousand Eyes to connect to more constructs. In a handful of breaths, I’d latched onto a dozen of our enemies. The bonds I’d forged with those engineered cores sent jinsei flooding back into the vessels I’d stitched to my channels. The last challenge had taught me that the jinsei and aspects that overflowed those vessels went through those stitches into my channels.
And I controlled those channels.
With an exultant shout, I activated the Thief of Souls vessel and ripped the jinsei out of the constructs I’d bonded. Those still on their feet collapsed into heaps, and I pushed the power I’d stolen back into the vessel of the Army of a Thousand Eyes to reach out to even more constructs. Finally, I triggered the Thief’s Shield vessel, and my aura hummed with vampiric hunger.
I waded into the fight, my eyes burning black, my techniques at full power. The stolen jinsei in my channels hardened my fists into devastating hammers that shattered constructs with every blow. Eric fought right alongside me, laughing as he danced and dodged around our foes, pulverizing their heads with well-aimed open palm strikes.
Abi used his power to keep us from being overwhelmed by sheer numbers, while Clem’s and Hagar’s techniques shoved enemies into the killing ground between Eric and me. Nothing that went into that gap came out the other side whole, and soon the floor was littered with chunks of our shattered enemies.
The last of the dragon constructs charged in from my right side, and I snatched it off the ground with one hand around its wrist. I spun it over my head and threw it into the nearest wall, where it shattered into a dozen sparking pieces.
My medallions were warm against my skin, but they didn’t burn it. They were strong enough to absorb far more jinsei. Finally, something was going my way.
“That’s all of them?” Eric shouted. “I was just getting warmed up.”
“Arrogant,” Trulissinangoth snarled from across the arena. Her team had dealt with their attackers, too. “Anyone can defeat training constructs.”
Despite her words, it was easy to see the dragons had used a huge part of their jinsei to win their fight. If they were pushed again, they might reach their limit. That would leave them weak, nearly defenseless.
My Eclipse nature hungered for their cores.
I forced it back, and drew a deep, cleansing breath. This wasn’t the time.
Soon, though...
“We’re confident,” I said. “As are you. There’s no shame in that. Let’s find the next challenge.”
“It’s already here,” Clem said.
More sets of circles appeared in the air above us. This time, lines glowed between the circles. The black feather was connected to the trident. The ax and wolf’s head were also connected, as were the serpent and the scale.
“This is just like the first one,” Abi said. “Which circle should we touch?”
I thought fast. If this was the second piece of the challenge, choose your enemy, we had to choose very carefully. The Heron Blade Academy had been the ringleader of the opposing teams, so there’d be no help from them or the Atlantis team they’d allied with.
If I chose Tochi and the Jinsei Institute, I might be able to convince him to fight with us against the dragons. But his team was allied with the Bright Lodge, and their leader had been anything but friendly toward me at the meeting we’d had. Aesgir wouldn’t hesitate to attack me if he got the chance.
Still, Tochi was my best chance at pulling this off. If I chose him, though, Trulissinangoth would insist we take the Herons and Atlantis just out of spite. It was time for some reverse psychology.
“The Heron Blade Academy hates me too much.” I shook my head. “I won’t pick them.”
“Of course,” Trulissinangoth scoffed. “You represent everything they despise. You are an impure abomination. That is why we should pick them.”
“If you pick them, you pick Atlantis,” Clem said. “And if you think humanity’s strongest enclave would side with dragons, you may be more foolish than even I thought.”
“We have a compact with these teams.” The dragon team’s leader shrugged. “You can see they are waiting for us to make the first selection. That is proof they are following the plan, even after your feeble attempts to disrupt it. None of the other teams will betray us.”
“And we didn’t think all these teams would betray every other human, either.” It was my turn to shrug. “Did you ever think the Atlantis leadership only wanted you to believe they were your allies?”
The dragon team suddenly seemed awfully nervous. They looked to their leader for reassurance, and she turned her eyes away from my black stare.
“That’s nonsense,” she started.
“Is it?” Hagar gave her a bloody-toothed smile. “Or are you too arrogant to realize that the leaders of humanity might have played you? Because while they didn’t want Jace to win, those priests don’t want you to win, either.”
Trulissinangoth considered that for a long moment. Hagar’s lie was so convincing I almost believed it myself. The Inquisition were hateful monsters willing to sell out their own kind to the dragons. But that kind of ally could also become an unexpected enemy, and Atlantis was the face of the Inquisition.
“Humans have no honor,” the dragon growled. “So I will choose the school least likely to be involved in any counter schemes. We choose the Bright Lodge of Frostmir.”
“Fine.” I scowled and hoped the dragons didn’t realize they had played into my hands. “We accept.”
The Coopetition
THE ARENA CHANGED AGAIN the instant we selected our enemies. The enormous cylinder unfolded into an equally large hexagon. The gargoyle-like creatures descended from their perches on the walls far above our heads and alighted on six-sided pillars that rose up from the floor to meet them. Each of those pillars bore the school symbols we’d all seen before.
And then hexagonal chunks of the floor fell away and left each of us standing on a separate island of stone. A split second later, those islands drifted apart until we were separated from one another by a dark, bottomless pit.
“This isn’t great,” Eric called out.
“Silence,” Trulissinangoth shouted. “Let your betters determine our next course of action. We will tell you humans what to do when the time is right.
Until then, shut your mouths.”
Eric seethed with anger. Flames burst from his hands. He looked ready to tear the dragon’s head off. If he could have reached her, I’m sure he would have done just that.
I took a closer look at our surroundings and saw that the pillars had moved so the teams were evenly split. Every member of my team was closest to a member of the Shambala team. Scattered like this, it was impossible for us to talk to each other without shouting, and the opposite team would hear any secrets we tried to share like that.
“We have to work together,” I told Trulissinangoth, who was only a few feet away from me. I could have easily jumped onto her pillar. If, that is, there’d been room for both of us to stand on it, which there definitely was not.
“I agree,” the dragon said. Her scowl made it clear she didn’t like the idea. “It’s obviously the Flame’s intent. It wants us to prove that we can cooperate when needed.”
“Brilliant,” I said drily. It had taken her long enough to figure that out.
“There are sixty pillars,” Clem called out. “And the sides facing us only show the symbols for our teams.”
“She’s right,” the dragon team’s leader said. “I’m not sure what it means, though.”
“I’ve got an idea.” I downed another one of my potions and drew more aspects into my aura. That strengthened my serpents enough to keep them around for several minutes longer. Hopefully that would be enough time.
I sent a serpent out to the nearest pillar with the symbol for my team. The instant my serpent touched it, the coiled serpent blazed a brilliant red.
Nothing else happened.
“Teamwork,” I said to Trulissinangoth. “Touch your school’s symbol with a serpent.”
The dragon leader glared at me, then grudgingly nodded. Her serpent, a brilliant golden band of light covered in a rippling, scaled pattern, zipped away from her aura and its tip touched the nearest fiery scale.
The platforms she and I were on glided forward until we were a quarter of the way across the arena.
As soon as our platforms stopped moving, though, the pillars we’d touched vanished, leaving the gargoyles hovering in midair on patches of shimmering jinsei. There was something scrivened on the bottoms of their feet, but I was too far away to read it. I’d figure it out later.
“Looks easy enough,” Eric said. “My turn.”
He sent his serpent out to touch the symbol for our team, and the dragon next to him did the same. The pair of them glided forward, their pillars disappeared, and the gargoyles stayed right where they were.
“This feels too easy,” Trulissinangoth said. “There has to be more to this challenge.”
“One step at a time,” I responded. “Let’s not go looking for trouble.”
“Very optimistic, abomination,” she said. She gestured to one of her team. “You and the rooster girl, go.”
“Rooster girl?” Hagar sniffed. “I’m at least as old as you are. And my hair’s glorious.”
“Go, girl,” the dragon said dismissively.
“Kicking your butt is going to be so much fun,” Hagar shouted as her blood serpent lashed out at the nearest pillar, igniting the coiled serpent symbol at the same instant that her dragon partner touched the fiery scale. They also glided forward, and Clem and the last dragon did the same without being told.
An ominous grinding noise filled the arena, and an enormous door opened across the chasm. An intense flame roared on the other side of the door, and the floor that surrounded it was covered in complex scrivenings.
The Empyrean Flame.
The grinding stopped, and a metallic clang rang out behind us. I glanced over my shoulder and saw another door, identical to the first, with the Flame burning brightly behind it.
Ten new platforms shot up out of the darkness between us and the far door, each of them holding a single figure. Tochi and his team were paired with Aesigr and members of the Bright Lodge. The goals were clear—we had to get past them to reach the Flame, and they had to do the same. Whoever got there first was the big winner.
I kept my fingers crossed that I’d pushed Trulissinangoth to choose the right foes.
Aesigr wanted to become a dragon slayer so badly that he might be convinced to risk the Church’s scheme for a shot at killing one of the Shambala team members. And if I convinced Tochi to work with us, we could be strong enough to end the dragon team.
“This is where it ends for you,” Trulissinangoth growled. “The other humans will help destroy you.”
“You can’t get across without my team,” I told her.
The pillars with our symbols suddenly rotated. The sides now facing us were blank.
“What do we do?” Tochi shouted. His eyes were fixed on the dragon team’s leader, and doubts closed around my heart like a fist. If he was taking orders from Trulissinangoth, we were doomed.
“Touch your school’s symbol with your serpents,” Trulissinangoth shouted. “That will move you forward.”
Our opposing teams did exactly that. Their platforms slid forward two at a time, and within a few seconds they were all lined up in front of us, a quarter of the way across the arena from their side, and the pillars had rotated to show them the blanks sides.
A quick bit of mental math showed me the flaw in what we’d all been doing. There were only sixty pillars, and we’d just gone through twenty of them to move both sides of this contest less than a quarter of the way to their goal. If we kept up with that strategy, no one would reach the opposite side.
Not everyone could cross the chasm.
And maybe that was the Empyrean Flame’s final lesson. Leaders had to make hard choices.
“We can’t all get across,” I said quietly to Trulissinangoth.
“I didn’t come all this way to sacrifice my team,” the dragon team’s leader snarled.
“We don’t have a choice,” I said. “The two of us have to use all the remaining pillars to reach the other side.”
“Yes,” Trulissinangoth muttered. “I see that. I also see that we’ll have to pass through the opposing teams to reach our goal. How do you think that’s going to work?”
“You’re the one who keeps spoiling for a fight. Here’s your chance.” I raised my voice so the rest of our team could hear me. “Everyone, hold still. Don’t touch any of the pillars.”
My team looked quizzically at me, but Clem gave me a long, slow nod. She understood what was about to happen, and she didn’t like it. She also understood we had no other options.
Trulissinangoth and I stretched our serpents out to reach the symbols farthest from us. We glided ahead, then touched another set of pillars, and another. Each additional movement we made was shorter than the last, but we were making progress. By the time we’d gone through five sets of pillars, we were nearly within range of the enemy teams.
Things were about to get serious.
Tochi and Aesgir had watched us make progress across and had decided on a different tactic for their team. They barked orders in languages I didn’t understand, and two pairs of fighters from their teams glided forward.
Directly into my path.
“I hope you’re as tough as you think you are,” I told Trulissinangoth.
“Tougher than you can imagine,” she said, laughing. “No one can stop me from my goal.”
There were only three sets of pillars left within our reach. We picked those farthest away, and my pillar slid into range of a member of the Bright Lodge.
He howled and drove his fusion blade, a long spear with a broad head, at my chest. The strike was powered by jinsei that burned bright in his channels, and his aim was true. Though he only had an adept-level core, the fighter had natural advantages of size and strength.
The blow was too powerful for me to deflect without getting knocked off my pillar. And there was no room on the tiny stone platform for me to dodge. The best I could do was twist my body to one side and trust that the jinsei in my own channels, fed by a steady trickle of
power from the serum I’d ingested, would be enough to save me.
The blade’s head scraped across my ribs, opening a shallow cut through my skin. The Bright Lodge warrior hadn’t expected that maneuver, and he was overcommitted to the attack. His weapon’s momentum twisted his body sharply, and he threw his arms out to balance himself before he could plunge to his doom.
On my right side, Trulissinangoth defended herself with a series of expert blocks that deflected the enormous ax wielded by a young woman from the Jinsei Institute. The dragon had summoned her fusion blade, and the two warriors’ attacks came nonstop as they struggled to break through one another’s defenses.
And then Trulissinangoth switched tactics. Her hand shot out and grabbed the haft of the woman’s ax. Before the human could wrench her weapon away, the dragon lashed out with an open palm strike that slammed into her chest. The blow shattered the woman’s sternum and ribs, and blood spurted from her open mouth.
Stunned, the adept tumbled into the darkness below.
For a long, shocked moment, no one moved.
Tochi cried out in rage. He and his team triggered the symbols with their serpents, eager to avenge the death of their comrade.
But the Bright Lodge members didn’t join him. Without his allies’ aid, Tochi’s platform wouldn’t move.
“She killed her,” Tochi shouted at Aesgir. “That was never in our agreement. We were promised safety!”
“She should not have gotten in my way,” Trulissinangoth shouted back.
My opponent took advantage of my distraction and struck again. This time, he activated a technique that transformed his blade into a blurred outline that darted and dipped toward me with unexpected and unpredictable speed and trajectory. I blocked a flurry of attacks, only to realize I’d walked into a trap. Every defense depleted my stamina and strength.
The next time the spear came in, I didn’t block the attack. I caught the bladed head in both hands. The Bright Lodge competitor was strong, but he was unprepared for this maneuver, and his spear gave me leverage. With a shout, I turned in place and yanked him off his platform. We spun in a drunken circle, and momentum carried me around to face Trulissinangoth.
