Shadowbound

by Gage Lee

  But I knew more than how to throw kicks and punches. I infused blades of ghostlight into my arm and leg meridians to increase my strength and speed and rushed forward with my arms spread wide. It was a reckless, ridiculous charge that left me open to every kind of nasty counterattack.

  And my opponent did everything in her power to take advantage of that. Xin’s left fist rocketed toward my solar plexus, one knuckle extended for a precision strike that would blast the air out of my lungs and send me to my knees.

  I caught the attack with my right hand and clamped my fingers around her wrist. My left hand shot forward and grabbed Xin by the belt. With an explosive shout I wrenched my opponent off the ground and raised her over my head. I brought her down hard and fast, raising my knee at the same time. The energy I’d gained from the ghostlight in my arms and legs gave me the power to snap her spine right in half.

  Baylo and Xin shouted in alarm.

  At the last possible second, I lowered my leg and gently eased Xin to the ground. When she tensed to bolt back to her feet, I pressed a finger against her forehead and held her in place.

  “Don’t make me finish you,” I said with a grin. “Good match.”

  “Fine,” Xin grumbled. “You win.”

  “Geez, bro,” Biz rasped from the garden’s entryway. “Don’t kill your girlfriend.”

  Xin rolled out from under my finger, bounced up, and rushed to my sister with a squeal of delight. She scooped Biz up in a bear hug. The blue fuzzball on my sister’s shoulders screeched in alarm.

  “Easy,” Biz said. “My shoulder’s a wreck. Reesa says I won’t be at full strength again for a couple of days.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Xin said, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. She lowered my sister to the ground. “I didn’t think.”

  “It’s fine.” Biz straightened the new shirt she’d gotten from somewhere, and the blue fuzzball raised a fist at Xin.

  I crossed the garden and gave Biz a careful hug. I pressed my forehead against hers and ruffled her hair.

  “Don’t scare me like that again,” I said. “Nice shirt, by the way.”

  “Don’t almost get shot by scrats again,” she fired back. “I didn’t want to throw myself in front of the bolt for you.”

  “What are you—” I started, stunned by the idea that I’d gotten Biz hurt. She wasn’t supposed to protect me. That was my job.

  “I’m kidding.” She punched me in the shoulder. “I mean, I’m totally fast enough to have taken a bullet for you, but that’s not what happened. I just never saw it coming. Come on, stop being such a sourpuss. I need some food. And I had this shirt on when I woke up. Pretty swanky, if I do say so myself.”

  The shirt was nice, if a little big for my sister. The material was heavy, like a karate gi, and parallel lines of embroidered symbols ran down the front.

  “You look great,” I said. “And I’m glad you’re all right.”

  Biz was quiet while she ate. She didn’t even bother teasing Xin. I watched my normally chatty and sarcastic sister silently wash down bite after bite of her bland sandwich with room temperature water until I couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” Biz tore off a hunk of her sandwich and handed it up to the fuzzball on her shoulder. “Not really, anyway.”

  “That’s nice and vague,” I groused. “Seriously, spill it.”

  Biz put off the inevitable with another bite, and delayed even further with a long, noisy gulp from her glass. Finally, she pushed her plate back, laced her fingers in front of her, and rested them on the table.

  “I’m not all right,” she said. “The sutras couldn’t neutralize the poison.”

  Xin’s eyes flicked warily between me and my sister.

  “I’m gonna go,” she said uneasily and pushed her chair back. “See you later.”

  “She’s nicer than I thought she’d be,” Biz mused with a surprising lack of sarcasm.

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “Not about Xin, the poison.”

  “They’re not sure exactly how to get rid of it,” Biz said. “The sutras will keep it from getting any worse, as long as I keep feeding them ghostlight. A blade or two every hour, depending on how vicious the poison is feeling, I guess.”

  “You’re sitting out the next ghostlight run,” I said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Don’t do this,” Biz said. “I can’t sit here on my thumbs. Not while the rest of you are putting your necks on the line. It’s not right, Kai.”

  I hated arguing with my sister. We’d supported each other for years, and our fights tore both our hearts out. Neither of us needed that. But Biz had to see the sense in what I was saying.

  “The sutras are barely able to hold the scrat poison at bay,” I said. “If you go out there and get into a fight, you could run out of ghostlight when you need it most. What happens if the poison surges while your core is empty?”

  Biz angrily bit off another chunk of her sandwich. She chewed noisily and glared at me. The golden fire was back around her eyes, and flickers of ghostlight danced across her fingertips.

  “You suck,” she said at last. The burning aura faded from her eyes and hands. “Fine, I’ll stay here and train with Baylo until we get this figured out. I want to be ready when those monsters show up again. They’ll regret this.”

  “I know they will,” I said. “But, for now, let me worry about getting the ore. You focus on getting well.”

  Now, more than ever, I wanted to go back home. I suspected the poison would neutralize itself when we left the splinter. After all, we didn’t have ghostlight back on Earth. Or scrats.

  Still, I wasn’t sure that was a risk I could afford to take. The last thing we needed was to leave the Academy only to discover Biz was still poisoned. I needed something more certain.

  I didn’t know much about poison, but I did know that antivenin for snakebites was made from venom. If I found a sample of the poison the scrats had used on Biz, maybe Reesa could create an antidote. A plan started coming together around that thought. We could scout out scrat encampments. A big enough group would have more of the venom, I was sure of that.

  But I really could have done without the cold breath of a premonition on my neck when I thought of it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  YLOR WASTED NO TIME letting me know he was in a bad mood at that night’s meeting with the Tribunal.

  “If I had a chapel, or even a classroom, I could actually teach the drem something,” he said. “Without one, all I can do is assign cleaning duties and minor clerical functions. They get bored, forget what they were supposed to do, and then make a worse mess than we had when they started.”

  “I don’t have any blades to spare for a classroom,” I explained. “Right now, the most important thing you can do is find us more ghostlight deposits. We need as many new targets as possible because I’m worried the scrats will grow brains and keep an eye on the ones we already mined. Speaking of which, can you explain why we only got a thousand blades from the last batch of ore? I expected five times that much, at least.”

  “While you did return with a significant weight,” the eldwyr said in a lecturing voice, “much of what you found was corrupted by the shadowstream. This can happen if scrats try to mine a deposit. Their foulness taints the ore and opens channels into the shadows. Corrupted ore will damage the refinery if we try to refine it. Worse, it could corrupt all of the ghostlight in our storage vessel. Fortunately, I caught the issue before anyone tossed a befouled piece into the refinery.”

  That was fantastic. I’d thought our only problem was finding enough ore to harvest and fighting off the scrats. Now we had a whole new problem on our hands.

  “Is there any way for you to tell which deposits are tainted before we start mining?” I asked. I tried to keep my voice calm, but it was hard. I was beyond irritated at how much ghostlight the scrats had cost us.

  “Unfortunately, my scrying will only revea
l the approximate location and density of the ghostlight,” Ylor said. “Of course, if I had a more powerful focusing chamber, or even an enchanted glass...”

  My glare silenced the eldwyr. I hoped he got the point that asking me for more upgrades would get him a smack upside the head. I already missed Biz at the meeting and briefly considered having Monitor go get her out of bed so she could ride herd on the Tribunal. Fortunately for my sister, rest was too important while she was poisoned.

  “Could I identify the corruption before we start mining?” I asked. “I don’t want to waste time and endanger the students mining a bad deposit.”

  “It is very rare for an entire seam to be corrupted.” Ylor shrugged. “If we had a few weeks, I could teach you to sort good ore from bad while in the field. But, at the moment, that does not seem like a feasible course of action.”

  Ylor was right, no matter how much I hated to admit it. It would be nice to leave the useless ore in the field rather than carry it back from our mining expeditions, but we didn’t have time for me to learn that trick. I pushed my palms against my eyes until lights danced behind them, and let out an annoyed sigh. Being in charge of this mess was driving me nuts.

  “Okay, thanks for the information, Ylor,” I said. “Please update my map with the new deposits you’ve found. I don’t think we’ll be able to spare any ghostlight to open a chapel for you yet, but if we find some salt in the ruins, can you sanctify it?”

  “I can,” Ylor said. “But there is still the matter of the guardian we lured down there. Unless someone can defeat it, sanctifying that chapel will not be possible.”

  “That’s not a you problem,” I said. “That’s a me problem. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for any salt on the next trip. Reesa, you’re next up.”

  The worm woman straightened when I called her name. She opened her sutra case with ink-stained fingers to reveal a dozen carefully rolled red ribbons stained with black symbols.

  “My students have created several new healing sutras,” she explained. “These are cotton, so not as effective as the silks. My students can carry them in the field for you. If someone gets hurt, these will get them back on their feet so they can return to the Academy. I hope this will prove helpful to you.”

  Ylor sniffed at the scribe’s contribution. He was obviously itching to tell me just how much better he could do than Reesa if he only had his precious chapel. Maybe that was true, maybe not. I didn’t really like the idea of summoning and binding spirits, especially after my encounter with the yaoguai. We definitely didn’t need a bunch of monsters popping up inside the Academy while we had enemies outside ready to break down the doors. The strategy games I’d played had taught me that fighting a battle on two fronts was asking for disaster.

  “Thanks, Reesa,” I said. “Do you think you could come up with an antidote to Biz’s poison if I get you a sample of whatever they shot her with?”

  The worm woman considered the question for a moment, her fingers steepled beneath her chin. I noticed she’d actually combed her scraggly hair and even used a pair of pins to hold it back from her face. She was still splattered with ink, but at least she was trying to take care of herself. Maybe having students had given her purpose as well as confidence.

  “Yes,” she said at last, “I believe that would be helpful. But I cannot promise you the vile substance can be cured. The scrats are horrible creatures, and they traffic with demons and worse. With the Fell Lord organizing them, there’s no telling what they used to poison your poor sister.”

  That was less than encouraging, but about what I expected. There was nothing certain about this place, and every time I gained an inch someone tried to steal back a mile.

  “I have some ideas for sutras that might help us beat the scrats and their boss.” I explained them to Reesa, who nodded along with my description of what I needed her to inscribe for me.

  “That is definitely possible, though the effect will be very temporary, and each sutra will only affect a single target at a time,” she said. “I will get my students working on it right away.”

  “Thank you.” I nodded my head to the worm woman. “Baylo, what’s going on with you?”

  “I’ll be moving training into the new combat arts classroom you opened,” the emerald warrior said. “That’ll get those kids whipped into shape. Even if I turned them all into combat monsters, though, there’s another problem we need to address.”

  “Of course there is,” I groaned. “What do you need?”

  “Weapons,” Baylo said. “Armor would be nice, too. The scrats have hexcasters and ghostblades. All we’ve got are fists and feet. That works fine, for now. I don’t like our odds when the Fell Lord shows up with his full army.”

  The warrior made excellent points, and they all irked me. Every time I thought I could focus on the important task of fixing the gate, something else came along to steal my time and ghostlight ore. I turned my mind to the upgrades to see how much it would cost to get us an armory.

  >>>The armory is a significant upgrade that requires five hundred blades to activate. It comes equipped with a selection of arms and armor suitable to supply a unit of thirty fighters.<<<

  Five hundred blades was a big investment. It would greatly improve the safety of our adventures outside the Academy, though. If Biz had been wearing armor yesterday, she might not be poisoned today.

  “I know it won’t be cheap,” Baylo said. “But if you complete this task for me, you’ll have the gratitude of the Band of the Shadow Fist.”

  >>>A new bonded task, “A Promise of Steel,” is now available.

  Rewards for this task include two Akashik network interface upgrade credits, two reference points, and a faction increase with the Band of the Shadow Fist.

  This task has a time limit of three days.

  Failure to complete the task prior to the deadline will result in the loss of faction rating with the Band of the Shadow Fist.

  Do you wish to accept this bonded task?<<<

  While the Band certainly sounded impressive when the fighter said its name, Baylo was the only member of that illustrious company that I’d seen. But this was something that needed to be done anyway. Racking up an easy win on a task from Baylo was just an added bonus.

  “I accept your task,” I said. “You’ll have your armory after our next mining expedition.”

  Ylor’s jaw fell open, and he raised a finger to lecture me.

  “Nope,” I said. “The safety of the students has to be a priority over your chapel, Ylor. If I can keep our people from getting shot up by the scrats, we can get more ore, faster.”

  “Very well,” Ylor grumbled. “But I hope you will remember to prioritize my needs after we have stabilized the Academy.”

  I stifled a frown. If Ylor thought I was hanging around a second longer than necessary, he was nuts. My plan was to get enough ghostlight ore to repair the gate, then Biz and I were out of here. Whatever happened after that was on the Tribunal. I’d already done way more than I’d ever expected.

  “I did my best to clean out your church,” I said to the eldwyr. “It’s not my fault there was a spirit living in it. It’s also not my problem that you don’t have enough sanctified salt for me to take another stab at it. Now there’s a guardian living down there. When you’ve figured out how to correct those problems, you let me know and I’ll see about cleaning the basement out. I haven’t succeeded in completing that task, but I haven’t failed, either.”

  Baylo cleared her throat and drummed her fingers on the arms of her chair. “I’ve got one last bit of bad news.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Let’s try to go fifteen minutes without someone adding a new problem to the list.”

  Baylo chuckled and pushed back from the table. She gestured for me to follow her over to the shuttered window and eased the slat up to reveal a narrow slice of the outside world.

  “Some students I’m training are taking shifts in the watchtower,” she said. “A couple of hours ago they spotted some sc
rats on that building across the street there. They’ve only seen a few scrats, but I saw hexcasters and some other gear I didn’t recognize when I took a look. My guess is they’re scouts keeping an eye on us for the boss.”

  That did not sound good at all. If there were scouts this close to the Academy, there could be larger forces nearby, too.

  “Or they’re setting up an ambush on the miners,” I suggested. “They wait for us to go out, gather up the ore, then hit us and steal it all when we come back.”

  The emerald warrior leaned back to give me an appraising look. She nodded slowly, and the golden rings around her irises grew brighter.

  “You’re as devious as they are.” Baylo let the shutter’s slat drop. “Whatever they’re up to definitely makes things more complicated for us.”

  That was a huge understatement. The only real advantage we had over the Fell Lord and his army of scrats was our ability to gather ghostlight ore and use it to upgrade the Academy. If his campers locked that down, Inphyr could take his sweet time getting his ducks in a row before he attacked, and we’d be helpless to do anything about it.

  Baylo and I kicked around plans to deal with the scrats with the rest of the Tribunal for the next couple of hours. She wanted to go over and kick the crap out of the bad guys. Ylor thought that was a terrible idea. As long as we knew about the scrats we had an advantage over them. A direct attack would almost certainly draw other scrats to our position. The Fell Lord hadn’t besieged the Academy yet. We didn’t want to push him into that tactic if we could avoid it. The arguments went on until we were all exhausted and frustrated, and I ended the meeting in the hopes we’d have fresher eyes and sharper minds the next day.

  After the meeting broke up, I wandered the halls alone. I wanted to soak up as much of the place as I could before we left. It was important to remember what had happened here. The things I’d done had changed me in ways I didn’t completely understand. I hoped I could hang onto what I’d learned when we went back to Earth. I also crossed my fingers that Biz would hang onto the strength she’d gained here and hoped even harder she’d beaten the disease for good. While I pondered whether our cores would come with us when we went home, my subconscious chewed on the problem of the scout team across the street.