by Gage Lee
“I’ll start,” I said, and scooped up a clay flask with a wide bottom and a narrow mouth. I tugged the cork from its mouth and took a quick breath of its contents. “Ice aspects.”
Rachel filled in the first blank on the worksheet we’d found with the flasks.
“My turn.” She lifted a heavy frosted glass beaker and unscrewed its top. “Yuck, smells like garbage.”
“You said you came from the Golden Sun Academy,” I said. “Where is that?”
“New York Undercity,” Rachel said with a shrug. She took another sniff and wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know what this is. Anyway, the Golden Sun was hardly glamorous, but it got me through the basics.”
“They have schools for people who live in the undercities?” The idea boggled my mind. I’d had no idea such a thing existed.
“Seriously?” She shook her head. “You make a lot of assumptions about people, Jace.”
“What?” I didn’t know what she meant. “You said you went to a training school in the undercity.”
“That’s where the school was, not where I’m from,” she said, her voice almost a growl. “Not that there’s anything wrong with being from the undercity. You came from the camps and look how well you turned out. Also, I can’t figure out what this stuff is.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” Her anger had caught me off guard. I took a sniff from her beaker. “That’s rot aspect.”
“Thanks.” Rachel blew out a frustrated sigh. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. It’s not your fault you made the wrong assumption. It’s the whole society. People who weren’t raised as Empyreals think we’re all rich and spend our time lounging around in the overcity while servants feed us ice cream. But some of us work for a living. The assumptions are frustrating.”
That was news to me. Every student I’d met at the school was far wealthier than I’d ever imagined I’d be. I’d thought this was the only school for Empyreals because that’s what I’d been told. Now, I realized how foolish that was. For the students at the School of Swords and Serpents, this was the only academy of sacred arts because none of the others would even be on their radar. My fellow students were the rich kids.
I’d spent my whole life believing there were only two classes of people: Empyreals and everyone else. Now, I was starting to see that the Empyreals were divided into different groups, too. It was an eye-opener.
Rachel and I finished our assignment, and she gave me a quick hug when class was over.
“Thanks for helping me with this stuff.” She grinned. “If you want to see something cool, come to the eastern door of the upperclassmen common area between the last class and dinner.”
“What is it?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“You’ll see,” Rachel said with a wink. She slipped through the crowd of students before I could ask her any more questions.
Abi, Eric, and Clem descended on me and dragged me off lunch.
“Feeling better?” Clem asked after we’d filled our plates and staked our claim on a table.
“Yeah.” That was the truth. Deciding to help the elders had taken a weight off my shoulders, even if I knew it wouldn’t be easy. “I guess I hadn’t realized how all that fighting had taken a toll on me. It’s hard to get used to the idea that not everyone is a competitor out to beat me into the ground.”
“Most of us are,” Eric said and flicked a pea off his fork into my forehead.
At least, he tried to. I snatched it out of the air an inch from my face and flicked it back at him. The green orb bounced off his forehead, leaving a sticky smear of butter above and between his eyes.
“You have to be faster than that,” I said with a grin.
Abi let out a long, low whistle and shook his head. “They’ll make a prizefighter out of you if you’re not careful.”
The rest of lunch went by far too quickly. I’d forgotten how nice it was to just hang out with people who liked one another. There was no pressure while I was with my friends, not even from Abi. His suspicions seemed to have eased off a bit, even if I did catch him watching me from the corner of his eye while we ate.
“I’ll see you guys at dinner,” he said when he’d cleared his plate. “Guard duty.”
He waved as he headed off to his assignment, and the rest of us trudged to our next classes. Clem and Eric split off to their Empyreal Philosophy course, while I made my way to Professor Engel’s Military History course. I’d hoped to learn more about the Locust Warriors, even if only by the gaps the professor skipped over. Engel, on the other hand, seemed much more interested in regaling us with stories of her time serving in the Horizon Expeditionary Squadron after the Utter War.
After two hours of that nonsense, I bolted out of class and headed back to the upperclassman territory. Rachel had piqued my curiosity, and I couldn’t wait to see what surprise she had in store for me. I willed the school to take me to the common area as quickly as possible and was a little surprised when it did exactly that. I was getting better at visualizing where I wanted to go, which seemed to help the school grant my wishes.
Rachel was nowhere in sight, so I decided to do a little exploring before I headed off to meet her.
I picked a hallway at random and found one with a floor of white ceramic tile, while the walls and ceiling were seamless acrylic. Through the transparent walls I saw students working on projects in small alchemical laboratories, fiddling with strange mechanical devices on workbenches, and arguing in front of whiteboards filled with theoretical scrivenings I couldn’t even begin to read. It was nice to know there were so many workshops close at hand, though it seemed most of them were in use at the moment. When I reached the end of that hallway and found nothing new, I turned around and headed back to the common area.
I waved to the other students gathered there, and several of them nodded back. A small cluster of Disciples of the Jade Flame eyeballed me. They seemed more curious than hostile, though their eyes were wary. Clearly word of what happened to their clanmate in Professor Song’s class this morning had spread through the ranks of the upperclassmen.
The next exit I chose was narrow and low-ceilinged. Lightstones along the baseboards provided the only illumination, and even that glow was dim. Locked doors pierced the hallway’s walls at regular intervals. When I finally found one that opened, I peered inside to find a tall, rectangular room lined with bookshelves. A small desk occupied the center of the miniature library.
I made a mental note to come back here when I had more time. I was sure the School had purged all mentions of Eclipse Warriors from the books in this chamber, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t find something else of use. I closed the door quietly and returned to the common area.
It was an hour or so before dinner by that point, and I decided it was time to meet Rachel. I headed down the eastern hallway, which soon transformed into a twisting stone corridor with veins of lichen crawling along its walls. The air there was damp, and the stone floor soon gave way to dirt. A few steps after that, I stood on a wide pathway that wound its way through hills capped by flowering trees the likes of which I’d never seen.
The air was alive with buzzing aspect sprites, their prismatic wings throwing out fiery sparks, tiny forks of lightning, miniature blizzards, and even sprays of light and darkness. The creatures seemed to have no interest in me and fluttered away as I approached.
“Rachel?” I called out.
“Over here!” she shouted back. Her voice came from the path ahead of me. I followed the trail and wondered if there’d be another cottage, or something else interesting at its end. At the very least, a nature walk would calm my nerves and help ease my core. My Eclipse nature seemed to be soothed by the great outdoors. I’d have to remember that the next time I was feeling pent up.
By the time I reached the hills, the terrain had already begun to change. The air was cooler and crisper, and the number of aspect sprites had grown considerably. They gathered in thick clouds above my head, chittering in a language I didn’t
understand. The dark urge grumbled at their presence, and I felt the familiar ache of its hunger. It wanted to devour the tiny sprites.
“Not now,” I whispered to it.
It retreated into the darkness at the bottom of my thoughts, and I let out a sigh of relief. No one would miss a few sprites out of the dozens I’d already seen, but I wouldn’t know how to live with myself if I let my core eat them.
“This way!” Rachel’s voice came from ahead of me.
Past the hills, the ground grew rocky, and the path angled sharply upward along the flank of a towering mountain. I glanced back, and the hills were right where I’d left them. That was odd, because I certainly hadn’t seen this mountain from the other side of them. I didn’t know how that was possible, considering the great stony face rose thousands of feet above me and should have been easily visible as soon as I’d stepped onto the path.
The school was a weird, weird place.
Rachel’s laughter spurred me on, and I chased it up the mountain path. The world shifted around me as I made my way along the path, the mountain rising and then falling away to be replaced by a rocky beach strewn with pumice stones the size of my head, before that, too, was replaced by a rolling plain haunted by fireflies bigger than my clenched fist.
A forest came next, and I drifted through the trees like a ghost, Rachel’s giggles luring me deeper into the woods. I lost myself in the pursuit, happy to have something, anything, to distract me from all the worries and stress that swirled around me. Rachel didn’t have any expectations from me. She’d given me a great gift bringing me to this place and giving me something pleasant to think about.
The forest path was blissfully, completely peaceful.
Too peaceful. Where had all the aspect sprites gone?
Something hurtled through the trees behind me. I’d been so lost in the beauty of the place even my Eclipse nature was caught by surprise. My attacker collided with me and knocked me off balance. I took a staggering step back, braced myself with a jolt of jinsei through my legs and back, and then turned the tables on my attacker.
I grabbed my attacker by the neck and belt of their robe, yanked them away from my body, and twisted hard at the hips to throw them onto the ground. My Borrowed Core technique lashed out and tore aspects from the creatures of the forest, and my serpents seized them from my aura and burst from my core. The Eclipse nature’s black rage bubbled up from the darkest part of my mind, ready to slaughter whoever had been stupid enough to attack me. There would be no mercy, no second chances for this fool.
My assailant hit the ground with a pained grunt and curled into a fetal position. They wrapped their arms around their head and kept their chin down to their knees to ward off my retaliation. They were slender, dressed in the robes of Thunder’s Children, a skinny black braid curled in the dirt behind their head like a question mark.
“Jace!” My attacker shouted in a pained voice that blasted a cold shock up my spine.
Rachel.
The urge boiled in my core, far too powerful for me to resist. There was no time, and I had no strength to prevent my Eclipse nature from lashing out. Something had to break.
The best I could hope was to decide what that something was.
My serpents swept through the forest behind me and ripped through swarms of aspect sprites. The tiny creatures popped out of existence as my Eclipse core sucked away the jinsei and aspects they’d held in their tiny bodies. One moment, they’d been happily flitting through the trees. The next, they simply ceased to be.
Experience had taught me that my Eclipse nature was sated in the moment immediately after it had fed. I took advantage of that to force it back into its cage and push the darkness from my eyes. The combination of fresh jinsei and terror that I’d hurt Rachel was more than enough to give me the upper hand over the darkness.
For the moment.
“Are you okay?” My voice shook with adrenaline and fear. I offered Rachel my hand and helped her to her feet. I brushed the dirt off the shoulders of her robes and stepped back to give her some space.
“I’m fine, I think,” she said. “You’re a lot faster than I expected.”
“You should’ve known better.” I tried to force some humor into my voice, to hide the fact that I’d almost killed her. I wasn’t sure she bought it. “I did trounce you in the challenge.”
“You did not trounce me,” she said with mock indignation. She smoothed her sky-blue robes and shook the fallen leaves from her hair. “Thanks for not killing me just now.”
Rachel’s words stung more than a little. I tried to brush them off, but the look on her face told me I wasn’t exactly successful.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “There was an incident this morning. Kind of the same thing that happened here. Still not out of that competitor mindset, I guess. I keep lashing out when I don’t mean to.”
Rachel’s hands flew to her mouth, and she pressed her fingertips to her lips. After a few moments, she shook her head and continued.
“That was dumb of me,” she said. “I was only playing, but I should’ve thought about what that would be like for you.”
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to console her. I felt terrible about what I’d done, and I felt even worse that she was blaming herself. “It was totally my fault. People can’t be walking on eggshells around me all the time. I’ve got to get it together.”
“Let’s walk a little before dinner.” Rachel smiled, a warm and welcoming expression that made me feel even worse. I’d been seconds from killing her. I was a monster. “That helps me think, sometimes.”
“Sure,” I said. And it did sound like a good idea.
We walked in silence for a while after that, until my stomach started to grumble, and I steered us back toward the rest of the school.
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” I said. “Earlier today, I mean. In class.”
“Hurt my...” Rachel laughed. She leaned up and kissed me on the cheek. “You didn’t hurt my feelings, Jace. I shouldn’t have gotten upset when you assumed I wasn’t an Empyreal. You don’t have the background to know all the weird stuff that goes on in our society, and I shouldn’t have snapped at you. But...”
Rachel stopped and let her words trail off. She looked up into my eyes and took my right hand in both of hers. She chewed on the inside of her lower lip, wrestling with the words she wanted to say.
Water aspect sprites flitted past us, misting our faces with tiny droplets of dew from their wings. Rachel laughed and the tension of the moment vanished.
“Don’t take everything the Empyreals tell you at face value, Jace.” She paused, then stood up on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek again. Her lips were warm and damp from the aspect dew. “There are people with a vested interest in keeping things just the way they are. Just... be careful who you believe.”
With that, Rachel released my hands and took off down the path.
“Dinnertime,” she called over her shoulder, then disappeared around a bend in the forest.
I wrestled with what she’d told me for moments longer, unsure of what to make of the spunky girl, who was so much more than she’d first appeared.
The Path
I SPENT THE REST OF that day and all the next on pins and needles. After she’d promised to take my decision back to the elders of the Shadow Phoenix clan, Hagar seemed to have vanished from the school. I’d knocked on her door so often her neighbor finally promised to tell Hagar I was looking for her if I’d go away.
That was easier said than done. I had no idea if Hagar had taken my message back to our clan elders or been sidetracked by some other mission. I was going nuts waiting on their response.
My promised meeting with Professor Song also had my nerves tied in a knot. He’d made it clear he wanted to talk to me, privately, after what had happened the day before. But he hadn’t brought it up in our daily martial arts classes. I kept waiting for a tap on my shoulder that would summon me to his of
fice for a sure-to-be-awkward heart-to-heart, but it never happened.
Rachel Lu was almost as elusive as Hagar. I spotted her here and there in the school, and we waved as we passed, but there was no time to talk and we didn’t share any courses outside of Alchemy. I wanted, no, I needed to talk to her again. Our two brief conversations had filled my head with confusing thoughts, and everything I thought I knew about Empyreal Society had been topsy-turvy ever since. I had huge gaps in my knowledge and was sure she could help me fill them.
Plus, she was nice. And she smelled good. Like mint and something sweet...
“Oboli for your thoughts?” Clem asked as she caught up to me on the way to our early morning martial arts class. “Must be something serious judging by the thunderheads on your forehead.”
“You know me,” I said with a chuckle. “Lots of stuff to think about.”
“Don’t strain anything,” Eric said as he threw a fake punch into my shoulder. “You’re not a bookworm like Clem.”
“I’m not a bookworm,” my pink-haired friend snapped back. Then she grinned. “Okay, I am.”
We all chuckled at that, and Clem winked at Eric to show him there were no hard feelings. We entered the dojo together, still laughing.
Kyle stopped chatting with the small group of classmates around him the instant he saw me enter the dojo. He raised one hand to wave me over, and watched me intently as I headed in his direction.
My stomach tightened into a knotted fist, and my core reared like a cobra about to strike. Kyle was the only one who could have possibly known what I’d really done to him. If he hadn’t been too rattled by all the strength leaving his body, he might have noticed me drain the aspects out of his technique and the jinsei from his core. If he had, there’d be questions.
My core grumbled inside me, urging me to finish what I’d started and put the Disciple in the ground. Its logic was sound; if I’d killed Kyle, he wouldn’t be around to tell people what I’d done.