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

by Gage Lee

  The jinsei sloshed in my stomach like a gulp of warm tea. A tingling sensation grew from my center, and slowly, sacred energy dripped into my channels.

  I ignored all the warnings from Ishigara about tampering with my core and went to work.

  It took me several tries to control the slow jinsei. Finally, just when I was sure I’d failed, a thin thread of silver power rose from my channels to obey my command. I’d be able to finish my crazy plan. I cradled the cube against my chest and imagined a thread of sacred energy curving through my crippled core, then around the Machina’s core. One stitch at a time, I pulled the slowly flowing sacred energy out of my channels and used it to bind the monstrous, alien thing to me. One stitch at a time, I merged the Machina with my body.

  A faint echo of my Eclipse nature’s anger flared inside me, furious that it had been banished, and even angrier that I was about to replace it.

  Another stitch, another, another. The slow jinsei in my stomach was nearly gone. That was okay. There’d be enough to finish this. There had to be.

  Another stitch.

  The sounds of combat rang out behind me. Fusion blades hummed and clashed together with pure, crystalline chimes. Someone screamed, someone roared, and pulses of anger and fear aspects flashed through the arena in furious waves.

  Time was up.

  I kept stitching. This was no time to stop. If I could do this, then maybe, just maybe, I could still win.

  And I could use the Empyrean Flame’s reward for something greater than merely healing myself.

  I’d stop the dragons.

  And the heretics.

  And the Inquisition.

  The pieces of a vast puzzle clicked together in my head. Their grooves and notches fell into place and revealed a new picture to me. I stitched again and again until the Machina’s core seeped through its boundaries. The scrivenings that held it in place within the metal cube that housed it came apart like spiderwebs, and a luminous orb emerged from within the wreckage of my mother’s greatest invention. It was pure and white, clean and without flaw.

  It was the most unnatural thing I’d ever seen, and I was about to make it a part of myself.

  “Stop,” Trulissinangoth shouted. “You’ve lost, Jace.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I’m not playing the same game as you anymore.”

  The dragon unleashed a gout of flame in my direction. Its deadly power raced toward me, and I knew when it reached me, I was dead.

  There was only one stitch left.

  I pulled the thread of jinsei tight as golden flames roared over me, and in the split second before I was devoured by the dragon’s attack, I was healed.

  I was hollow no more.

  I was something new.

  Something no one had ever seen.

  New serpents burst from my back to intercept the flames. These were not smooth and sinuous, but mechanical and angular, like the legs of a praying mantis. They extended around me in a protective shell and plucked burning aspects from the dragon’s fire. In a fraction of a second, all those fiery aspects were part of my aura. The jinsei passed harmlessly over me, and I inhaled it into my core.

  “Impossible!” Trulissinangoth threw herself at me. Her fusion blade appeared in her left hand in midair, and she spun it around her wrist so quickly it snapped like a bullwhip.

  Her furious attack was shockingly fast. There was no time for me to summon my own fusion blade, and barely time for me to slide away from Trulissinangoth’s weapon before it could slice through my chest. I was still processing the change in my core. Mounting an offense was out of the question.

  The dragon’s blade was a deadly hurricane around me. The darting tip and slashing length moved with such precision and speed it was all I could do to stay out of its reach. Trulissinangoth’s face twisted into a feral snarl as she focused on the singular task of destroying me.

  It was an astounding display of skill and natural power. And it was exactly what I wanted her to do.

  “So close, and yet so far,” I goaded the dragon. “You’re not even fast enough to catch me when I’m wounded.”

  My risky gambit paid off, and I hoped it wasn’t a terrible mistake.

  She came at me with even greater fury than before. Her brutal assault left me with only a split second to dodge away from her flashing blade and gouts of flame. If I let down my guard for even a moment, she’d run me through. Not even my new core could save me from that.

  “Are you holding back?” I needed the dragon to put everything she had into her attacks. My only hope of finishing this before my wound incapacitated me was for her to go all out.

  Trulissinangoth responded with a wordless cry and came at me like an avalanche. Her onslaught seemed like it would go on forever, as unstoppable and inexorable as waves battering a beach.

  And, had I not witnessed her training firsthand, I might have given in to despair at the sheer power she brought to bear against me. But I knew the truth, and that gave me strength.

  After what felt like an eternity of dodging and darting out of death’s path, I saw the slightest hint of weakness in my foe. A blazingly fast strike whipped past me like a falling star. The tip of her blade bounced off the stone floor and sent sparks shooting into the air. Her next attack went wide and was ever-so-slightly slower than the one before it. Her chest heaved as she gulped air.

  This was what I’d waited for. The dragon’s jinsei was almost gone. Without it, she wouldn’t be able to stand against me.

  Trulissinangoth knew that, too. She focused her will and drove her weapon at me in a straight-line thrust that flashed like lightning.

  But, as fast as that attack was, I was faster. My serpents clicked and ratcheted into place and deflected the blade before it could touch me. One long, spiked serpent shot forward and pierced the dragon’s hip.

  Trulissinangoth screamed and twisted away, leaving blood hanging in the air between us like a broken thread. She clasped her hand to the wound, and silver sacred energy sealed its clean edges. The pain wouldn’t subside so quickly, though, and she winced with every step.

  “You won’t kill me,” she said. “You can’t.”

  She came at me again, sloppy now that her jinsei was nearly gone. This time my fusion blade was ready for her. It appeared in my hands, clean and clear, like a sliver of perfectly polished quartz. I caught the dragon’s blow easily on the heavy blade and whipped it aside. Her weapon smashed into the stone, and jagged cracks ran up its blade.

  Before Trulissinangoth could recover, I swung again, and my weapon shattered hers into a hundred pieces. The explosion threw us both back, but I landed nimbly on my feet while she collapsed in a heap and skidded across the smooth stone. I shifted my grip on my fusion blade and hurled it at my enemy. It flew straight and true, a spear of pure energy that punched through the meat of her right thigh and pinned it to the ground.

  “You’ll live,” I said. “But you will not win.”

  With that, I turned away from her and stalked through the opening toward the Flame. It grew larger with every step I took. By the time I reached it, the fire was a pillar that rose beyond the limits of my sight. It consumed the horizon and reached out to encircle me.

  “Welcome, champion of the Empyrean Gauntlet,” a thousand voices cried at once. “You are victorious. The Design remains in the hands of men. Now, tell me what you wish.”

  I’d come all this way in the hopes of healing my core. And then, despite everything, I’d healed it myself.

  I didn’t need the Flame’s help with my core anymore.

  I wanted answers.

  There was only one way I would ever get those.

  “Tell me where I can find my mother,” I said.

  The Favor

  THE EMPYREAN FLAME remained silent for far too long. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but its utter lack of attention was definitely not it. I shifted uneasily from foot to foot, fighting off the waves of nauseating pain that radiated from my wounded shoulder. I’d heal, giv
en time. It certainly wasn’t going to be any fun, though.

  Finally, just when I was about to speak up, the Flame guttered and went out, and darkness consumed the cavern.

  “Great,” I grumbled. “I broke it.”

  A chuckle reached me. One voice, then two, a dozen, a hundred. What should have been a faint sound grew so loud I clamped my hands over my ears to block it out. And then, slowly, the voices faded away.

  Tiny lights, like the flames of dozens of candles, sparked to life in the darkness and revealed a figure emerging from the shadows. The shape changed as it came closer. Sometimes short, sometimes tall, thin then fat, young and straight-backed, then stooped with age. I still couldn’t make out any of the details of the figure’s features, and I stepped back and raised my good arm to ward off an attack.

  “I haven’t come to harm you,” a voice said. Or, rather, many voices said. Because the voice changed with every word. Masculine, feminine, old, young. It was strange to hear them, and even stranger that they all came from a single throat. That wasn’t nearly as strange as when I saw the speaker, though.

  Whoever this was couldn’t hold their shape for more than a split second. An elderly woman watched me with quiet eyes, an older man with a stern visage stared down at me, a child of six gazed up at me with open admiration, and on and on the changes went.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “And what happened to the Flame?”

  “It’s the same question no matter how you ask it,” the shifting creature said. “I was the Flame. I am the Flame. But I will not be the Flame.”

  The figure gestured dismissively with one hand, and a pair of chairs appeared from the void. One of them was a high-backed throne with plush cushions on its seat and back and armrests carved into eagles. The other was a much simpler affair, wooden and rickety, with legs that were bowed and splintered from overuse.

  “Pick a chair,” the Flame said. “Any chair.”

  This was obviously a test, and one that was too easy to pass. The Flame wanted its guardians to be loyal and honorable. I headed toward the splintered chair, knowing it would show my humility and willingness to lower myself before a greater power.

  It turned out to be a surprisingly comfortable chair. I settled into it as if it had been made for me. In fact—

  “That wasn’t the chair for you.” The Flame chuckled from the rickety chair. Somehow, it had seated me on the throne. “It was a nice try, though, Jace. You and I both know you aren’t good at bending the knee. Even, perhaps, when you should.”

  “I’d never have made it this far if I did.” That was the most honest thing I’d said in what felt like weeks. I had never meekly accepted my place in the Grand Design. I’d gotten here only by bucking authority and forging my own path through a hostile world.

  I could pretend to be humble and dutiful if needed. But that’s all it was. Pretend.

  “That’s your strength,” the Flame said. “You question the way things are. You wonder what the future could be. That’s why you won this Gauntlet. And, it’s why you’ll do so well with the one favor I have to ask of you.”

  It was hard to believe that I was sitting with the Empyrean Flame discussing the future. It was even harder to believe that it was going to ask me for a favor. It was far more powerful than I’d ever be. What could it need from me?

  Besides, I’d won the Gauntlet. This was my chance to get my wish fulfilled, not the other way around.

  “We’ll get to that,” the Flame said. “I promise you. And to the favor I must ask of you. But, first, tell me how you feel about the inquisitors.”

  “They’re liars,” I said without hesitation. “They made a deal with the dragons to betray humanity.”

  “It didn’t work out very well, though.” The Flame’s laugh was eerie and unnerving. It started from a young girl’s throat and ended in a middle-aged man’s mouth. “Betting against you hasn’t been a smart idea for anyone, has it? No, you don’t need to answer that. Just as I don’t need you to tell me that my priests are no longer interested in the plans I laid out so long ago.

  “I don’t blame them. I gave mortals a road map that would carry them through the entire existence of this world. I never considered that, maybe, they didn’t like what I’d planned for them.”

  “Were we coming to the end?” I asked. As much as I was concerned about my mother and the heretics, you didn’t get a chance to sit down with the greatest power in the world very often. If I hadn’t asked questions, I would’ve gone crazy with curiosity.

  “All things end, Jace,” the Flame said with surprising weariness. “The sacred energy flows through the pattern, it guides the course of men and women and children and dragons and monsters and demons. It twists and turns through the ages, and with every new event, it loses some of its spark. The world is a vast machine—that’s the easiest way to think of it. Jinsei is its fuel. And, eventually, the fuel runs out. The motor seizes up. The machine rusts away.”

  “It doesn’t have to,” I said. “Machines can be repaired, refueled. It’s a choice to let them fall apart. And something tells me this is your decision, not ours.”

  The Empyrean Flame let out an old woman’s cackle and waggled a pudgy baby’s index finger at me.

  “You have been listening in your classes. You’re right. I could put more jinsei into the world’s tank. We could replace the broken bits. But this machine needs more than that, Jace. It needs a firm hand on the wheel to keep it moving in the right direction. If there’s no hand to steer it, the machine will careen off the road. No one wants that.”

  “And no one wants to die, either.” It was hard to stay seated, not just because I was restless and my shoulder ached, but because I didn’t like where this conversation was headed. Putting me in the throne and then talking about a hand on the wheel had implications I didn’t want to explore. “Let’s assume the car keeps running. How do we keep it from crashing?”

  “You have two choices, I suppose,” the Flame said. “A skillful driver can keep the car on even the most treacherous of roads. As long as there’s fuel in the tank, it will keep going. But, as we’ve seen, skilled drivers still get fatigued. They lose focus. Their eyes drift closed. And then”—the Flame clapped hands gnarled with arthritis, and a thunderous boom erupted around us—“disaster.”

  That was a good point. No matter who was in charge, eventually someone would make a mistake and run the whole world off the rails. That’s how we’d gotten into this mess.

  “We could switch drivers,” I said. “Set up a schedule. Take turns. You drive until you get tired or you start missing turns, then someone else takes over. Seems simple enough.”

  “Does it?” The Flame’s voice was suddenly sharp and biting. “I think we’ve seen how that works. No one willingly lets go of the wheel once it’s in their hands. That leads to death and war, and we’ll just wind up here again.”

  The Flame sat back in the rickety chair. Its legs cracked and bowed as he took on mass and grew taller. Then she shook her head and smoothed her skirts with the palms of a young woman’s hands with long red nails. By the time her fingers reached her knees, his fingers were as big around as sausages, the knuckles creased with old scars.

  “It’s wearisome, Jace. And I’m already so very, very tired. Which is why I must ask you a favor.”

  “I’m not doing it,” I said suddenly. My shoulder hurt worse than it had before. The edges of my wound itched as the jinsei in my body struggled to stitch it back together. I needed to get help soon, or I’d end up with a serious mess on my hands. But I wasn’t about to take on whatever responsibility the Flame wanted to dump on me.

  “You don’t even know what I plan to ask.” The Flame laughed. “I like you. You’re confident, maybe a little too confident. But I don’t want you to rule the world, Jace.”

  Well, that was a relief. I tried to imagine how my friends would’ve thought of me if the Flame made me Emperor of the World.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re right, h
onored—”

  I had no idea how to address a creature of this power. Or if it even was a creature. The Flame had always been described to me as a sort of universal intelligence, something that just was. You didn’t give it an honorific, because its name was the highest praise in the universe.

  “Don’t worry about any of that,” the Flame said. “Listen, you’re far too young to steer the machine. That’s clear. And no one will listen to you if you start pointing fingers and telling other people to take the wheel. No offense, but you’re a kid. A brave, resourceful kid, nearly a man grown. But, still, a kid.

  “And that’s why there is something else you can do for me.”

  The Flame looked toward the ceiling. My eyes followed hers and saw an enormous dome of complex scrivenings. Lines joined arcs, knotworks of delicate filigree bound one cluster to another. I tried to focus on one piece of it at a time, but even the smallest details were so complex it was impossible for my brain to absorb them. What I could understand, though, were the dark blots that spread out across the Grand Design. I watched in horror as jinsei poured into those ruptured areas and spiraled away into the darkness.

  “If we can’t replace the driver, and the machine itself is kept in good shape, then it’s the road that must be at fault.” The Flame let out a wistful sigh.

  “How do we fix it?” I asked.

  “We don’t.” The Flame chuckled through a trio of voices. “The Grand Design was designed to be traveled in a specific direction. We start on one end, we drive through all of the little forks and tunnels, we take one turn or another, and then we keep on going until we reach the other end. Unfortunately, some of the drivers have taken us all off course. We’re in uncharted territory now, and here be dragons.”

  I forced myself to get up off the throne and walk. My arm hurt too much to sit any longer, and my thoughts were racing so quickly my body needed to move to keep up with them. I paced back and forth between our chairs, brow furrowed, eyes on the ground so I wouldn’t have to look at the Flame’s shifting shape.

  “If we don’t fix, then who will?” I didn’t want to know the answer to that question, but I had to ask.