by Wight,Will
Before this week, his core had been located in the same place as everyone else’s: just below his navel, at his center of gravity, where people said the soul was located. Now, it was an inch to the right.
And to the left, it had a twin.
Both cores shone in his imagination, stretched like inflated bladders until they looked like the size of his fist. He could withdraw his madra into a core and cycle the other one, if he wanted to, but there was no point: both cores held an equal amount of the same madra. He’d cycled every night for the past five days, even using the parasite ring he’d stolen from the Heaven’s Glory School, and hadn’t gained an ounce of power since eating the Starlotus bud. He’d consumed one half of the flower to solidify his foundation in one core, and the other half went to the other. Now, according to Yerin, both cores had reached their capacity.
So it was time to advance.
“The flower’s madra has settled down,” he reported, eyes still shut. Though the Starlotus madra had gone down smoothly, his cores had still taken a few days to stop swirling like a pair of whirlpools. “They’re calm, they’ve absorbed everything I can give them, and I’m ready.”
His hands trembled on his knees, though he forced them to be still. Now that he was staring it in the face, he wondered if he was ready for Copper. He’d always thought that, by the time he reached this point, he would know more about the sacred arts and would be able to advance with confidence. Most people were following ancient instructions written in their Paths; the only Path he followed was the one he was making up as he went.
But those doubts were nothing next to the bone-deep hunger that gnawed at him. He didn’t just want Copper, he needed it, and his momentary misgivings couldn’t stop him.
And in front of him, he had a teacher more capable than anyone in Sacred Valley: a legendary Gold.
He exhaled carefully, inhaling again in accordance with his Foundation breathing technique. “I’m ready,” he repeated. “What do I do now?”
“Well, you somewhat squeeze it on down. Like you’re wringing water out of your clothes. Then you keep going until you’re done.”
He cracked one eye. “How do I do that?”
She spread her hands. “You somewhat, you know…” She made a fist. “Squeeze it.”
He closed his eyes again and pictured one core being squeezed, as though in the grip of an imaginary hand. Nothing happened.
“That doesn’t seem to have worked,” he said, carefully keeping any accusation from his voice.
“Well, that’s a rusty patch for you, then. You’re in your own boat now.”
He stared at her. “Is that all you can tell me?”
“First time I remember advancing, I was going from Copper to Iron. That puts me at about eight winters old. If I put this together when I was no bigger than a teacup, you ought to have it easy.” She scowled at him. “And don’t give me that look like you’re trying to stab me with your eyeballs, it’s not on my account that I never walked somebody through advancing to Copper before.”
“Forgiveness, I was only concentrating.” That wasn’t entirely true—she was supposed to be the expert. If he knew how to advance, he’d have done it already.
Once again, he closed his eyes and pictured both his cores. Madra looped out of one like web from a spider, and he withdrew it all, drawing his power back into the core. Even with energy as faint as his, he felt it when it was gone; his limbs weakened, his aches intensified, and the cool wind gained just a little more of an edge.
He focused on his core, tightening his awareness on it, and exhaled. Breathing circulated madra, and when he had finally pushed all the air out of his lungs, his spirit stilled. He focused on that one core, shutting out physical sensations, squeezing with all the pressure of his will.
Nothing changed.
He took another breath, and both cores spun lazily once more. This time, he let a little power slide out from the core on the right…but instead of taking it into his madra channels, he held it around the core like a layer of cloud.
It was a simple hunch. He could control the madra freely, as long as it was outside the core. So he used that madra like a fist to clench down on the core itself.
Lindon felt the result as pressure more than pain, as though his heart were gripped in a vice. His first panicked reaction was to give up, take a deep breath, and try again. But if he breathed in, the madra would cycle, and he’d have to start over. So, ignoring the warning pressure, he squeezed harder.
A spike of pain shot through the right side of his stomach, leading to a tingling, freezing cold that danced over his skin. But now, when he visualized both cores, the one on the right seemed a little smaller…and a little brighter.
He took that breath now, letting the madra cycle through his body and calm his nerves, then he clenched down again. The pain was sharper now, the spasm longer, the cold on his skin lingering. Wind pressed even sharper against him thanks to his sweat, which flooded out as though he’d sprung a leak.
“Yeah, you’ve got ahold of it now,” Yerin said, her excited voice close to his ear. He almost lost his concentration. “Keep ahold of it. I knew a man who stopped midway, and his organs—”
She cut off in a rustle of cloth and a whispering rasp that said she’d stood up and drawn her weapon, and Lindon’s eyes almost opened before he forced them shut again. The core he’d compressed was fluctuating now, beating in an irregular rhythm, and it took all his concentration to wrap another layer of madra around it.
He could feel that she was right, though she’d cut off before the important part. He tried not to listen to her footsteps as she padded around him, facing some danger. If he left his core alone, it would go wild in his body. In the worst case, it could tear him apart from the inside.
He flexed his madra again, and the core reduced in size by another layer. He shivered as icy needles pricked him all over, this time even in the depths of his ears, under his fingernails, in the back of his eyes. He shuddered, but forced his breathing to stay steady. Though he had never followed a Path, he’d practiced his cycling technique for years. His madra didn’t slip.
After the pain in his ears, he heard nothing but a high-pitched whine, though he felt the impact in the ground as something landed next to him. Once again, he focused completely on his core.
If it had been the size of his fist before, now it was only as big as Suriel’s marble, and brighter. The larger core seemed hazier by comparison, less substantial, as though it were half a dream. The Copper core was brighter, more vivid. He hardly had to work at all to visualize it, floating inside him like a star.
Once he’d wrapped it more thoroughly in a tight fist of madra, he squeezed one final time. Yerin’s voice came to him then, though she sounded so distant that he couldn’t make out her words, and he couldn’t be bothered to spare the attention anyway. His whole body stung and tingled, more painfully than before, until each of his muscles twitched. His core was resisting this time, like a nut unwilling to crack, and he had to bend all of his will and all his madra to push.
His core snapped down to a tiny pinprick of light, and he shuddered violently. An icy hand slapped the back of his skull, and he passed out.
He woke only an instant later, or so it seemed to him. The fire flickered with sullen red light, just as it had the last time he’d seen it, and its heat lay on him like an oppressive blanket. He began to move away, only to come to two startling discoveries.
First, as he lay sprawled out on the ground, his injuries should have been torturing him. He’d spent the last four nights snatching only the occasional handful of sleep because of the pain in his back, his ribs, his limbs. All that was gone, replaced with an unsteady weakness, as though he’d slipped into someone else’s body. Despite the occasional cold tingle across his skin, just like the ones he’d sensed while advancing, he felt whole.
Second, there was something wrong with the fire. Spectral red lights drifted around the blaze in an orbit, like flames that had le
ft their candles behind, growing in number at the center of the heat. He had to focus strangely to see the phantom campfire; it felt more like watching his core than something physical, as though he saw with his spirit instead of with his eyes.
Even when he moved his gaze away, the world was awash in color. The ground beneath him ran with veins of bright yellow as far down as he could see, each wriggling slowly like lightning trapped in jelly. He was seeing through the ground itself somehow, which gave him a dizzying impression like he was trapped on the outer membrane of an endless ocean, and he could fall through any second.
The logs in the fire sprouted phantom limbs of green that slowly blackened as they burned, and a furious red current ran beneath his own skin, as though his blood had started to glow.
He tried to sit up, but instead he curled like he’d pulled the wrong string on a puppet. After a few awkward attempts, he finally flopped one arm underneath him and pushed up, muscles trembling. He had to fight his way up to a seated position. He felt as though he’d wrung out each of his muscles like dishrags, but advancing usually left a sacred artist immobilized for a while. He’d recover soon.
Above all, the weakness was proof that he’d made it. He was Copper. By all reason, Copper should be the first, unremarkable step on anyone’s journey, but he felt as though he’d been climbing a mountain for his entire life and only now had reached a ledge.
The thought of Copper sparked a memory, and he snapped his head up again, sparkling with excitement. If the biggest advantage of Copper was the ability to cycle vital aura from heaven and earth, that meant…
The bright ghosts of his surroundings had vanished. It was easy to lose sight of them if he wasn’t focusing, as though they only existed when he held his eyes a certain way. As soon as he concentrated, looking beyond, the vivid phantoms returned.
The floating red flames in and around the campfire felt as though they meant heat, like they were symbols written in a language he had just learned how to read. When he realized what he was looking at, his heart leapt in pure joy.
This was fire aura. He’d always wondered what it looked like. This was the power that everyone absorbed and Rulers controlled.
He corrected himself before his thoughts had gone too far: out here, anyone could learn Ruler techniques. It had nothing to do with your birth. Everyone was a Ruler, and a Forger, and so on, but no one was Unsouled. The possibilities were dizzying.
He still didn’t understand some basic mysteries—his family harvested light aura, not fire, but he didn’t know how to spot the two, much less tell them apart—but the fact remained that he could see aura all around him. With training, he could draw the aura into his own madra, changing its nature and adding to its power.
The key to true strength lay all around him; he was awash in an infinite ocean of treasure.
He clawed for his pack, ready to write down his impressions before he forgot them. He pulled out a loosely bound bundle of yellowed papers that had once been nothing more than the technique manual for the Heart of Twin Stars technique. Now it was his instruction manual for the Path of Twin Stars.
As the founder of a Path, he had to make careful notes on every step. If he traveled as far down this Path as Suriel had suggested he could, his Path manuals could guide young sacred artists for generations.
When he’d finished scribbling down his thoughts—about squeezing his core, about how long it had taken him to cycle the Starlotus bud, about the fact that only one of his cores had reached Copper while the other felt the same as before—he realized the rest of the camp was absolutely quiet.
He didn’t hear anything from Yerin.
In his excitement, he’d forgotten the sounds he’d heard while advancing: Yerin drawing her weapon, something landing heavily next to him.
Lindon glanced to the side, where a ragged spike of Forged green madra had been embedded into the dirt. It was longer than his finger, and judging from the noise he’d heard in addition to the shallow crater blasted in the ground, it must have impacted with significant force.
He scrambled to his feet, swaying with dizzy weakness and shivering from the cold. Something had attacked him, and he hadn’t even known. In a moment, he was sure that fact would seize his heart with fear.
For now, he didn’t have time to consider the fact that someone had been inches from killing him before he could react. There was a threat out there somewhere.
And Yerin was gone.
Chapter 2
Yerin’s unwelcome guest shifted around her waist, where she'd wrapped it as a belt and tied it into a great ribbon of a knot. Just as her master had shown her. The Remnant hissed, flickering with blood madra until its sullen red glow threatened to give her away.
It was responding to her anger, which had burned out of her control. She went into most fights cold—battle required focus, as her master had hammered into her, and she rarely had a problem with that. But these sniveling rats had attacked Lindon while he was advancing, showing that they had less honor than a crazed Remnant. Advancing to Copper, no less, which was something like attacking a sleeping baby. If she hadn't deflected that spike of Forged madra in time, she'd be alone now.
She’d walked her Path alone before. She’d shaken with fever in a cave, too weak to boil roots for soup. She’d slept in a dusty mausoleum for three days as a Remnant crouched outside, knowing that no one would save her. She’d marched through the ashes of a place that had once been her home, heading nowhere.
Her master always talked about solitude as though it was some great treasure, some tool that aided in focus and training. That was a pile of rot. He was the strongest sacred artist she’d ever met, but some things he just didn’t understand.
She reached into a pocket of her robe, resting fingers on a disk of heavy gold. They wore badges in Sacred Valley, and her master had commissioned it for her in line with local customs, but she had no reason to wear it out here. No reason to keep it, either, except that her master had left it for her.
Yerin wasn't overly attached to Wei Shi Lindon; she'd only known him for a few days, and part of her still expected him to be playing some sort of twisty trick on her. She'd spent no small amount of time wondering if she should kill him and remove the danger.
But having Lindon around gave her someone to talk to, someone to help her with her bandages, someone to help keep the bloody memories and the acid-edged grief at bay. Plus, he kept a bunch of convenient odds and ends in that pack of his. And he was under her protection—like a helpless baby squirrel she’d adopted in the woods.
These cowards, whoever they were, had tried to leave her alone again. Unforgivable.
She knelt at the foot of a tree, watching Lindon stumble around next to the fire. She’d deflected the first attack aimed at him, but their ambushers hadn’t tried a second. That meant they were creeping around, looking for a better angle. For an edge.
She didn't know how many of them there were—more than one, she was certain, or they wouldn't have attacked at all—but they would be trying to wrap her up in a circle.
So one of them would be walking around the wall-sized boulders that functioned as a windbreak for Yerin's camp. She gave them a slow count of a hundred, giving them plenty of time to move. The whole time, she kept her breath measured and her madra in a ready grip; if they launched another attack at Lindon, she'd deflect it with sword resonance. But no attack came.
At the count of ninety-nine, she felt something in her spirit: a brief whisper of corrosive, oily presence right where she'd expected it. Behind the largest boulder.
Madra flooded her legs as she kicked off, reaching the boulder in a blink. Her master's sword, a straight-edged plane of Forged white madra, hummed eagerly in her grip. Her guest hissed and twisted around her waist, sensing blood.
The woman behind the boulder looked even worse than Yerin had after weeks in the wilderness. She was only a few hungry days away from being a skeleton, her dark hair muddy and matted. A leather necklace of teeth hung dow
n over dirty hide clothes that looked a size too big for her, like she'd dressed herself by robbing corpses. Her eyes widened as she saw Yerin, and she brought a shortbow up and pulled the string.
As the woman’s arm straightened, she revealed a monster of green light clinging to her arm—some cross between a snake and a centipede, a tiny Remnant parasite sunk into the woman’s limb. A Goldsign. So she was Lowgold, just like Yerin. No more easy battles, now that she’d left Sacred Valley behind.
A Forged green arrow materialized on the string even as the woman pulled it back, but the battle was over as soon as Yerin had drawn her sword.
Sword aura gathered around basically anything with an edge, so in her spiritual sight, Yerin’s blade shone with a silver halo. She cycled madra according to the Flowing Sword technique, Enforcing the weapon like it was part of her own body.
A low hum, so deep that it was felt rather than heard, passed through the metal. Vital aura responded to the resonance, clustering around the weapon, so the silver glow grew brighter and brighter.
The blade of Yerin’s master passed through bow and woman both, its madra infinitely sharp and cold, like a blade chipped from a glacier. The dirty woman's jaw dropped to her chest as she saw her bow break, and she had a second to look up like a startled rabbit. Then she recognized the pool of blood seeping from her stomach, and one hand reached up in disbelief.
Yerin snatched the green arrow from the air as it fell from the broken bow, jamming it into the woman's arm as she ran past. She’d bet her soul against a rat’s tail that the woman used venomous madra. Those Paths always had ways to resist their own poison, but added to the blood loss and stomach wound...she'd die, but not so soon that Yerin had to deal with her Remnant.
She released the Flowing Sword technique, and the silver glow of the sword aura dimmed.
While the woman shrieked like a dying horse, Yerin passed like a flitting shadow from boulder to trees. The scream should beat her allies out of the bush, maybe make them stutter for a second—
