Hollow Core

by Gage Lee

  “Watch out for this one,” Niddhogg whispered. “He’s twice as slick as greasy owl poop. And don’t forget there’s a party and reception this evening for new initiates. Biggest feast of the year. You won’t want to miss it.”

  The dragon uncoiled his tail from around my torso and fluttered away without another word. He vanished up the stairway and out of sight faster than I’d thought possible.

  Tycho reached me and hooked his arm through mine. The elder guided me away from the other students toward a heavy door that had been hidden by the shadows next to the staircase.

  “I see you were assayed early,” the elder said once we were out of earshot of the other students. The hallway beyond the shadowed door was lined with short, polished pedestals of wood topped by wide-brimmed pots that held roses in more vivid hues than I’d known existed. Blue flowers with green vines and black thorns. Red flowers whose petals were shot through with yellow and orange tiger stripes. Black roses bloomed on thornless vines the color of bones. Glowing bees buzzed from one plant to the next, leaving behind trails of jinsei-laden pollen that filled the air with tiny sparkles.

  “I was first, I believe.” A bee buzzed past my nose, and the sparks of jinsei that trailed it faded away to nothing.

  “Yes, I was afraid Grayson would do something like that.” Tycho shook his head and let out a long-suffering sigh. “The headmaster bears quite a grudge against your family. I’m sure it has nothing to do with you personally, but he’s unlikely to let it go while you’re alive. I’ll do my best to shield you from his anger, but I can’t spend all of my time watching over you, as I’m sure you understand.”

  “I appreciate and am honored by whatever steps you deem necessary to take on my behalf.” It was difficult to bow while walking, but I did my best and Tycho nodded appreciatively at my efforts.

  “It would’ve been much easier if you’d been assayed into my clan, but I suppose that would have been too convenient. What’s life without a challenge?” He chuckled at that, and I forced myself to chuckle along with him.

  “Will there be classes today?” I asked. “I haven’t been given a schedule, and I don’t know where I’m supposed to be at any given time. It seems like they’re still very busy with the assay, but—”

  “Oh, no,” Tycho said dismissively. “No classes for you today, or any of the other students. There’s a party this evening, a sort of celebration for all the new initiates and a way for them to meet the upperclassmen in their clans, but you won’t have time for that.”

  I was disappointed to hear that I wouldn’t have time for a party, because I could have really used some relaxation just then.

  “If I don’t have any classes, what will I be busy doing?” I’d already missed breakfast, it didn’t seem like we were headed toward lunch, and I really did not want to miss out on a big feast for dinner.

  “It’s a surprise.” Tycho gave me a sly wink and held a door open for me.

  After we left the hall of roses, we strolled through a small art gallery filled with paintings that floated in midair and adjusted themselves to the proper height and angle for us to view them without pausing. Jinsei throbbed in the picture frames, and I marveled at the work that must’ve gone into the scrivenings that held them aloft. It was an amazing display of talent and control, and yet Tycho hardly seemed to notice.

  He didn’t even bat an eye when we left the gallery and entered an armory filled with powerful weapons and jinsei-hardened suits of armor. The scrivenings that bound jinsei into the artifacts were so dense and glowed so brightly that my eyes hurt if I tried to look at them too closely. The relics that surrounded us held a gravity that demanded respect, and I tried to imagine the sorts of men and women who would’ve wielded them in a battle against the Empyrean Flame’s enemies. They must have been like gods.

  As we walked, I tried to muster the courage to ask Tycho where I could find the school’s library. More than half the reason I’d wanted to come here was to find a way to fix my broken core, and poking around Empyreal books seemed like a good way to achieve that without revealing my secret. But, every time I opened my mouth to ask the question, the sage had something to say.

  “We’re almost there,” Tycho said as he hustled me away from the amazing armory. “I can’t wait for you to see what I have planned for you.”

  Our walk together had been a leap from one marvel to another, and if it kept up like this, I couldn’t imagine the wonders that Tycho would reveal to me. Whatever he had in store for me must have been very, very special.

  “And here we are.” Tycho paused for dramatic effect as he rested his hand on an ornate crystal doorknob set into a golden door. Power hummed in the air all around us, and even my hollow core absorbed some of the energy. “Behold!”

  Tycho flung the door open and pushed me through it with a hand on my back.

  We passed through the glorious portal into a shadowed room, and I blinked hard to adjust my eyes to the low light.

  It was harder to adjust my nose to the smells that assaulted it.

  The air was thick and humid, like the inside of a sauna left running in the heat of summer. In seconds, my robes were sticky and clung to my body like an ill-fitting second skin. The combination of the horrible smell and intense temperature made my empty stomach cramp, and I was glad I hadn’t had breakfast. Whatever had been in my belly would’ve been all over the floor.

  “Where are we?” I asked and tried not to inhale the room’s stench as I spoke.

  “The alchemical laboratory of the Disciples of the Jade Flame,” he said with obvious pride. “Where you’ll be working to pay off the debt you owe me for getting you into this fine institution.”

  “Oh,” I said, surprised and dismayed. “So, I’ll come here—”

  “Every day. As soon as you’ve had your dinner.” Tycho gripped my arm firmly and guided me through the stinking laboratory toward a guttering fire in its far side. Dirty wooden tables littered the floor, their surfaces strewn with pots filled with bubbling mixtures, burners that spat stinking flames under stained beakers, and more kinds of churning, reeking equipment than I’d ever imagined.

  “But, what will I do?” I asked. “I don’t have any training in alchemical arts.”

  “It’s not your training I’m interested in, my boy,” Tycho said with glee. “It’s those hands of yours.”

  “My hands?” I really had no idea what Tycho was getting at, and it was harder and harder to think with the room’s oppressive heat pressing in on me from every side.

  “Yes, your hands!” Tycho in a sugary sweet voice that set my teeth on edge. “Not everyone is so fortunate as to have thumbs, you know. Hahen, come here, please.”

  Something ungainly shuffled its way toward us from the back of the laboratory. Pots and pans jangled as the creature shambled in our direction, and a growing sense of unease closed in around me as I felt its aura draw ever nearer. There was something dark and foul in it, a swampy odor that clung to the air and made it oily and sticky as I breathed. The creature’s jinsei aura was overpowering and primal, like a wild beast on the prowl.

  “I hear and obey.” The creature emerged from the shadows dragging its chains behind it.

  The biggest, vilest rat I’d ever encountered shambled over to Tycho and flopped down at the elder’s feet. Its body was swollen, and vivid pink lines of shiny stretch marks were visible through its fur. The beast’s eyes were almost lost in the folds of fat that framed them. Strings of glowing drool leaked from the corners of its mouth, and its nostrils dripped globs of translucent mucus with every breath.

  “This is Hahen,” Tycho said cheerily, as if talking about a prized show dog or purebred horse. “A very old, very trusted beast spirit who has served my house and the Disciples for centuries. As you can see, his body’s best days are behind it. His mind, however, is still quite sharp.”

  Hahen chittered at Tycho’s praise and hauled its bulk up onto a nearby table. The enormous rodent slapped its scabbed hand on the tab
letop, glanced at me, and then cleared its throat with great difficulty.

  “Come. Sit.” When I didn’t move, it banged on the table with its clenched fist. “Sit.”

  “Best do as Hahen says,” Tycho said cheerily. “He has quite a temper, and I’d hate for you to get off on the wrong foot. You’ll be working quite closely together for some time, I imagine.”

  “I don’t understand.” I truly had no idea what I was supposed to do with a rat, even a talking one. “What is it you want me to do?”

  “Whatever Hahen asks of you, my boy.” Tycho patted me on the head with one hand and Hahen with the other. “This noble rat spirit will guide you in your tasks for the day, and when he is satisfied that you have completed your work, you are free to turn in for the night. Now, then, time’s wasting. Let’s get started!”

  “But today is supposed to be a celebration of our initiation,” I protested. “All the students are supposed to get to know one another and attend the party.”

  “Ah, not you, I’m afraid,” Tycho said as he walked away. “You have a debt to pay, and there is no better time to start paying it than the present.”

  Tycho crossed the room and vanished through its door in the blink of an eye, leaving me alone with the most horrible creature I’d ever imagined.

  “Let us begin,” Hahen said, and placed his slimy paw on the back of my arm.

  Hahen was as patient as I suppose a giant rat could’ve possibly been, and he spent a great deal of time explaining every step of the procedures he wanted me to do. Over his centuries of service to the Disciples, the spirit beast had absorbed an enormous amount of information. But, because he lacked thumbs and his paws had become clumsy in his old age, he needed someone else to act on that information.

  Namely, me.

  “This jinsei is tainted.” Hahen placed a beaker filled with glowing, oily fluid on the table between us. A rainbow of corruption flickered within the fluid’s depths, and I caught a whiff of the rotten-fish stench that wafted from its narrow throat. “You will cleanse it.”

  “I’m sorry, honored spirit.” Hahen’s rank odor mingled with the foul stink to make it difficult for me to even think, much less figure out how to purify the jinsei.

  “Inexperienced.” The rat spirit grunted and fixed me with one beady red eye. “Show me your breathing technique.”

  After a few false starts, I was able to get past the room’s stench to start my circular breathing. Once I’d established the pattern, reflex took over and my breath entered and left me in an endless cycle.

  “Intriguing.” Hahen fished around in the storage bins under the table, then came up with a jade mask connected to a pair of articulated copper tubes.

  The jade was adorned with a spiral scrivening that glowed with the stark green light of a firefly’s tail. One of the copper tubes pierced the mask at the center of its pursed lips, while the other one punctured a nostril.

  Hahen shoved the mask at me.

  “Wear.” He grunted and tapped his nostrils and then his mouth. “One tube in mouth, other in nose.”

  Hahen made another emphatic gesture, and I hurriedly put the mask over my face before he could do it for me.

  The twin tubes seated themselves in position without any work on my part. The metal was cold against my lips and nostril, but it was nowhere near as invasive as Mama Weaver’s threads had been.

  The mask had no strap, but it didn’t need one. As soon as the tubes were in place, the jade sealed itself around the edges of my face and the eyeholes sucked down around my sockets.

  “Keep breathing,” Hahen commanded. He’d attached the tube from my mouth to a cork plug, then seated that into the mouth of an empty flask. The tube from my nostril he dropped into the tainted jinsei before I could react.

  A flood of tainted jinsei poured into my nostril. The dead fish smell flooded my sinuses, and the coagulated jinsei threatened to drown me. I tried to tear the mask off my face before the heavy spiritual energy could kill me, but Hahen slapped my hands away.

  “Breathe!” he commanded.

  Maintaining the circular pattern of my breathing cycle was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. My lungs filled with heavy jinsei, and the clotted foulness sloshed in my core like rotten milk. I’d never experienced anything like it; my core normally shed the impure aspects of jinsei like water off a duck’s back.

  “Breathe,” Hahen said. “This jinsei is potent, condensed from my core. Will take time to purify.”

  That was an understatement. My core ached like my stomach after too much graywater, and my lungs struggled to pump the thickened energy through my system.

  And, yet, bit by bit, my core stripped away the foul corruption from the jinsei, and crystal-clear droplets splashed into the empty flask attached to the mask’s nostril tube. It was exhausting, and it went on for what felt like endless hours. The only way to endure the poison that coursed through my core was to fall back on the meditation techniques my mother had taught me. I stayed in that half-waking state until Hahen’s scabbed hands pulled the mask off my face and he snapped his fingers under my nose.

  “Are we done?” I asked. “I was hoping to visit the library to do some research—”

  “Done?” He laughed and shook his head. “Far from it. And put any thoughts of the School’s library far from your mind, young man. Those doors will only open for you after you have completed your first academic year. Now, take the purified jinsei to that workbench. I’ll prepare the next bottle for you to cleanse.”

  I groaned inwardly at the thought of another bottle and struggled to hide my disappointment about the library. I wasn’t sure I’d last another hour in this laboratory, much less a whole year. My lungs felt like I’d just swum a few miles through a cesspool. Doing that again would kill me, I just knew it.

  There was no point in complaining about my duty, though, so I carried the bottle of pure jinsei over to the workbench. It was almost full, but it felt lighter than a feather. Without aspects to tie it to the realm of mortals, jinsei was a weightless energy filled with endless potential. This amount of pure spiritual power would have been worth a fortune in the undercity, but Hahen didn’t even watch me as I deposited it on the workbench.

  The wooden surface was covered with pill casings and serum vials with scrivening-sealed caps. My pulse quickened at the sight of the materials, and I glanced nervously over my shoulder to make sure Hahen wasn’t watching me.

  The rat spirit rattled away in the depths of the laboratory. If I couldn’t see him, surely he couldn’t see me.

  Before I could change my mind, I grabbed a serum vial and flipped its top open with my thumbnail. My hands shook as I contemplated an unthinkable crime.

  Jinsei was sacred. Stealing it from an Empyreal wasn’t just a crime, it was blasphemy. What I was about to do was theft of the highest order. If I did this and anyone ever found out, I’d be lucky if Tycho only expelled me from the School of Swords and Serpents. He’d be well within his rights to execute me out of hand.

  But if I were going to survive here, I needed an edge. My training would require me to expend jinsei my core couldn’t hold. It wouldn’t take my professors long to discover my hollow core, and I knew they’d send me away as a hopeless waste of time.

  Unless I got the jinsei I needed from somewhere else.

  Hahen was still nowhere to be seen.

  The jinsei poured out of the flash and into the serum vial without a sound. It flowed into the crystalline vessel like warm honey. The vial filled in a handful of seconds, and its lid closed with an almost silent hiss. Red light traced the length of the scrivenings like a spark chasing a fuse, and the jinsei was sealed in place.

  “Come!” Hahen barked.

  I jumped and almost dropped the vial in my panic. I slipped it behind the plain belt that held my robes closed and returned to the rat spirit.

  For the next several hours, I waited for Hahen to discover what I’d done and call for Tycho to punish me.

  But the be
stial spirit never discovered my crime. We filled two more flasks before I was so exhausted I could hardly keep my eyes open. Disgusted by my lack of endurance, Hahen dismissed me.

  “Go, weakling.” Hahen snorted and waved me off. “Return tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, honored spirit.” I bowed low and prayed that the three vials of stolen jinsei wouldn’t fall out of my belt. “You have taught me much today, and I look forward to learning more tomorrow.”

  “You have learned nothing.” Hahen slid off his stool, chains clanking behind him as he disappeared deeper into the laboratory. “You’ll likely never learn anything. But at least you can breathe.”

  It took me most of an hour to find my way back to the tower of the Shadow Phoenixes. I tried to concentrate on the tapestries that had hung in the halls, and when that failed I latched onto my memory of Niddhogg. I’d spent enough time with the little dragon to develop a firm mental image of him, and that seemed to work better to guide me back where I belonged. I passed a grandfather clock on my way, and its single chime froze me in my tracks.

  It had to have been close to noon by the time Tycho had left me in the laboratory. I’d been there much longer than an hour. Was it really one in the morning?

  With a groan, I finally pushed through a pair of double doors emblazoned with the blurred image of an enormous black bird. This had to be it. I just needed to find my room and hide the serums I’d stolen, and I’d be free to pass out until morning.

  The instant my foot crossed the threshold into the tower of the Shadow Phoenixes, an alarm blared.

  An upperclassman, her eyes wide and her red hair in wild disarray, burst through a closed door to my right and grabbed me by the arm. She stared at me for a moment, and then her eyes fixed on my belt.

  “You fool!” She shouted to be heard over the blaring alarm. Other students emerged from their rooms, eyes bleary with sleep, mouths twisted into disapproving frowns. “What have you done?”

  The Contest