by Gage Lee
Hagar recovered before me, and her fingers scrabbled across my face, searching for my eyes. I slapped her hand away, and she responded with a sharp punch to my ribs. She’d landed on top of me and had the advantage of leverage and years of training, both of which she put to good use. Her first punch drove jinsei from the channels around my ribs, and her second crashed through the last of my torso’s defenses and splintered half the ribs on the left side of my chest.
I’d underestimated how strong Hagar was. Her core was still half full of jinsei, and her channels glowed like lightning in my spirit sight. Even if I had time to pull jinsei from ten fresh rats, which I didn’t, I still wouldn’t be able to match the warden’s strength.
But I wasn’t going to quit.
My only chance was to get Hagar off me before she shattered the rest of my ribs and turned my organs to jelly. There was still some jinsei left in my legs, and I used that to drive my right knee into her kidneys. The surprise attack knocked the warden down the hall and gave me enough time to scramble to my feet and dig another elixir out of my belt pocket.
I popped the cap off the elixir and drained it in a single gulp. Jinsei poured into my core and I used all of it to reinforce my damaged ribs and the channels that surrounded them. It wasn’t much, but it stabilized my broken bones and dulled the pain.
The sacred energy couldn’t clear the turmoil from my thoughts as easily as it had purged the aches from my body, though. The Shadow Phoenix elders had never spoken to me. No one had ever told me the clan’s goals or what I needed to do to help reach them. Instead, I’d been shunned and tormented by everyone inside and outside my clan. Maybe I had disrupted their schemes by raising my head a little too high above the crowd, but I’d done it to help us all. I didn’t want any of my clan to lose their places at the academy and winning the Core Contest had seemed the surest way to keep us all safe.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I stifled a groan as Hagar dragged herself upright. Her aura was filled with pain aspects that glowered around her like angry thunderclouds. It was also littered with rage aspects, which were doing a great job of keeping her wound up enough to stay in the fight despite the damage she’d suffered. “If the elders had told me what they wanted, we could have come to some sort of compromise. Why did they let it go until they had to send you to kill me?”
Hagar laughed and blood bubbled on her lips. My knee strike had hurt her worse than I’d thought, and I was surprised to find I didn’t care. This was the second time someone had tried to kill me, and they’d keep coming until one of them managed to finish the job. Maybe if I dropped one of them, the rest would have second thoughts about trying to snuff me out.
“It’s too late for that.” Hagar spat blood on the floor and walked toward me. “You’ve put every member of the Shadow Phoenix clan in danger by showing the outsiders that even a weak camper can rise above Empyreals.”
“How is that a bad thing?” I wanted to keep her talking as long as possible because that meant she wasn’t actively trying to kill me. “You should want the other clans to know we’re not pushovers. If we show them we’re strong, they’ll leave us alone.”
“You know nothing. The other clans hate us for what we once were. They only let us live because we’re useful to them.” Hagar wiped the blood from her lips with the back of one hand, then stared at the red stain like she couldn’t believe it was real. “Our survival depends on staying out of sight and mind. As long as we’re complacent tools, the other clans tolerate us. But you’ve showed them we could be so much more. The elders have decided. The only way to undo the damage you’ve caused is if you die and show the rest of the clans that you really are nothing.”
“I didn’t ask to be in this clan.” I’d nearly run out of the boosters I’d stolen from the laboratory that night, but I still needed more power. I reached out and forged connections to rat after rat until I held ten of them bound to my core. I cycled my breathing as quickly as I could, drawing their beast aspects deeply into my aura until I felt a swarm of them crawling around me. “I never meant to hurt anyone.”
“But you did,” Hagar growled through gritted teeth. “We wrapped our strength in the shadows even as we grew strong enough to eclipse so many of our enemies. A few more years, maybe even less, and we could have thrown off their shackles and claimed our rightful place at the top of Empyreal society. But if I let you live, Jace, you’ll ruin all of that.
“You have to die for the Shadow Phoenixes to live.”
Hagar launched a trio of throwing stars at me with a flick of her hand. The jinsei-charged blades hummed with demonic glee as they streaked toward me, and their malicious power was so intense I felt it against my aura long before they reached me.
I raised both hands and gathered the beast aspects from my aura. I cycled my breath and the serpents burst to life just in time to absorb the impact from Hagar’s thrown blades. The shurikens shredded the squirming, chattering energy of the beast-aspected serpents of lights I’d summoned, but my defenses also dispersed the deadly attack into a cloud of crimson glitter.
But Hagar wasn’t done with me. She’d charged down the hall after her shurikens, and before the cloud her weapons had left behind dispersed, she hammered my sternum with a simple sidekick.
The jinsei wrapped around my chest kept her kick from killing me outright, but it couldn’t save me from other injuries. My cracked ribs snapped, and I was hurled into the wall behind me so hard my left shoulder blade cracked, and the joint came apart with a wet pop. Pain exploded away from my damaged shoulder, and my left arm hung useless at my side. A wave of numbness spread from my back, and for a moment I was afraid she’d snapped my spine.
Then pain burst through my hips and rocketed up into my skull. I was wounded, and if I didn’t do something, I would die. I dragged more jinsei into my core from the rats connected to me, but they didn’t have enough to give.
I reached out for an eleventh rat, sure my attempt would fail yet again. The jinsei forged a thread of connection to the new rodent, and I fed a desperate flow of jinsei from my cycled breathing into it. I was sure the bond would fray and come apart, leaving me defenseless.
But it didn’t. The connection snapped into focus with an explosive crack that left me reeling. I’d pushed Borrowed Core to a new level, and a new understanding of the technique opened like a book in my mind. Suddenly, I saw the limitations that had held me back and a way to slip around them. My heart soared, and I reached for a twelfth rat. My mind was sluggish from the shock of the new knowledge I’d gained, and it took me the space of a few heartbeats to forge the bond. Jinsei flowed into me.
Hagar’s last attack had done serious damage. I needed a few more seconds to bond with more rats, heal the worst of my injuries, and get back into the fight.
The warden wasn’t going to give me that time.
A shuriken slammed into my chest. Jinsei burst from the piercing wound and roared through my channels with terrifying force. The hostile energy sought my connection to the rats, and I cut the little beasts loose before Hagar could kill them. The effort cost me in pain and injured channels, but I’d survive. The attack would have destroyed the rats, and this was not their fight. My honor wouldn’t let me sacrifice them for my benefit.
I sagged to my knees and dug the last two serums out of my belt. The tiny vials weren’t much, but they could get me back in the fight. I could use the jinsei to escape from Hagar and reach my room. There was enough sacred energy squirreled away in there to heal an entire army. All I needed was a few minutes alone with my stash.
“No more tricks.” Hagar seized my right wrist with both hands and twisted. In the same instant, her technique sucked blood aspects out of me at a terrifying pace. My skin dried and tightened against my bones, and Hagar’s power grew enormously.
The warden’s maneuver flipped me away from the wall and slammed my back onto the floor. My injured spine sent distress signals shooting through my muscles. I spasmed and lost control o
f my body as every nerve short-circuited.
My right hand opened. The crystal vials spilled out of it.
“Where did you get these?” Hagar scooped the tiny objects off the ground.
“I made them,” I gasped. “They’re mine.”
“Are they?” Hagar twisted her hands in opposite directions, and the bones in my wrist shattered. “Where’s the rest of it?”
“There isn’t any.” Hagar’s hateful rage still burned behind her eyes, but there was an insidious curiosity there, too. “This is the last of it.”
“Liar.” Hagar dragged me down the hall toward the door to my room. Every inch of that trip was a blinding agony to me. My back screamed in pain, and my wounded shoulder burned like a bonfire had been lit in the socket.
The warden released me, and my damaged wrist slammed onto the floor with a blinding pulse of pain.
Hagar pressed her badge against the center of my room’s door, and the wooden barrier popped open.
“Get inside,” she commanded and prodded me with her foot until I crawled across the threshold. She closed the door behind us, then dragged me to my feet by the front of my robes. “What else did you steal?”
“You don’t have to do this,” I said, trying to reason with the warden. “I won’t win any more challenges. I only wanted to stay out of the bottom ten percent. I’ll fly under the radar. I won’t attract any more attention. No one will even know I’m still here. I swear.”
It hurt my pride to beg for my life, but Hagar was about to hurt me a lot more if I didn’t change her mind.
“It’s too late for that.” Hagar tossed me onto my bed, and another burst of agony exploded through my spine. “The other clans are already suspicious of us. If I kill you, they’ll think the Shadow Phoenixes are too caught up in internal competition to be a threat. That’s the only way out of this for the clan.”
“There’s another way,” I gasped.
I finally understood what drove Hagar. The Shadow Phoenixes were running a long con against the other clans. They pretended to be weak while they built up their strength in secret. I’d screwed that up by proving that even a weakling like me could rise to the top of the School. That gave the other clans something to think about. If a camper could win the contest, then a slave clan might still be dangerous.
Looking at it that way, I guess I would’ve been mad at me, too.
“There’s no other way,” Hagar said. “Not for you. Not for me.”
The way she said that last told me that Hagar wasn’t entirely sold on murdering me. It had probably seemed like a good idea to her, but she still had some doubts it would work the way she expected.
“Listen.” I forced myself to sit up, and the pain that radiated from my spine made me regret that decision. “You’re worried the other clans will think my victories mean that the Shadow Phoenixes are dangerous, right?”
“Yes. You’ve attracted a lot of the wrong kind of attention.”
“Then I know how to fix this.” I hobbled off the bed and into the bathroom. I pulled the lid off the back of the toilet and fished out the waxed paper bundle I’d hidden there. My legs threatened to give out, and I had to reach out to forge new bonds to the rats in the walls to steady myself before I could return to the bed. I threw the packet down on the bed next to me.
“What is this?” Hagar asked suspiciously.
“That’s how I’ve gotten this far.” This plan would save the clan and my life at a horrible cost to me. “Look inside.”
Hagar peeled the waxed paper away from the elixirs, serums, and sealed packages of compressed jinsei pills. She started to count the contents, then stopped and shook her head in disbelief.
“This is impossible.” She peered at the stash with her spirit sight. “How did a camper get a fortune’s worth of jinsei?”
“I made it,” I said, honestly.
“You’re a liar,” Hagar said as she lifted one of the serums up to her eye and stared at it. “You can barely hold a drop of jinsei in that pathetic core of yours. There’s no way you could purify all of this. You stole this.”
There was no point in denying her accusation, because we were both right. I’d made it, then I’d stolen it from Tycho. None of that mattered, though.
When the other clans learned about the jinsei Hagar had found, they’d know I’d cheated my way to the top. That would serve the Shadow Phoenixes well, so maybe they’d stop trying to kill me.
Of course, I’d be severely punished for stealing, which would please Grayson to no end. The only person who wouldn’t be happy about any of this would be Tycho, and I didn’t care how he felt.
“Is this all of it?” Hagar demanded.
“No,” I admitted.
We spent the next hour going through my room. I pointed out everywhere I’d hidden jinsei, and Hagar confiscated it. Despite the impressive amount of jinsei we’d gathered, I didn’t see even a flicker of temptation in Hagar’s eyes. The warden didn’t want the jinsei for herself. She wanted me to pay for what I’d done, and she wanted to save her clan. In her own way, her heart was pure.
“I’m going to lock you in here,” she told me as she wrapped the evidence up in my sheet. “When the staff returns tomorrow, they’ll decide what happens to you. By the time this is all over, you may wish I’d killed you.”
The Sentence
THEY CAME FOR ME IN the morning.
My door burst open, and Hagar charged in with four other wardens behind her. Without a word, the wardens grabbed my wrists and ankles and dragged me out of bed. Before I could even think of reacting, they had me facedown on the floor with my hands behind my back and someone’s foot between my shoulder blades. The manhandling reignited all the aches and pains from the beating I’d taken the night before and forced a groan out of me.
“Jace Warin,” Hagar said in a voice as cold as naked steel, “you have been charged and will be judged before a tribunal. If you attempt to resist this lawful apprehension, we are authorized to use the full extent of our powers to restrain you.”
In other words, if I gave them an excuse, they’d stomp my guts out. I decided not to give them an excuse.
Hagar snapped manacles around my wrists. The instant the restraints closed I felt a strange sensation creep through me. I’d never experienced anything like it and never want to again. It was as if someone had shoved a balloon inside my core and slowly inflated it.
If my core hadn’t been hollow, the manacles would have forced every drop of jinsei out of it. I imagined that would be a very unpleasant experience.
For once, I was glad I’d been born with a leaky soul.
The wardens yanked me to my feet, and my injured shoulder sent a groan-inducing flare of pain into my skull. I’d been up most of the night borrowing jinsei from the rodents in the walls and using it to heal my injuries, but I was far from healthy. If I had an uninterrupted week, I could probably repair all the damage Hagar had done to me, but I doubted that luxury was in my future.
In fact, I’d be lucky if I had a future at all.
My legs, at least, still agreed to support my weight and worked more or less as intended. Hagar herded me out of the room with well-placed shoves on my left shoulder that sent me staggering ahead of the tight formation of wardens behind us. Her rough handling filled my aura with pain sparks that I couldn’t even begin to clear even with my circular breathing technique.
Hagar pushed me out of the dormitory tower and guided me down a flight of stairs that led to a wide hall I’d never seen before. What I could see of the floor was a checkerboard of black and white marble squares, each a yard on a side, but most of the floor was covered by the feet of my fellow students. It looked like every initiate and upperclassman had been gathered into this hall to watch me march down the black carpet that ran from the base of the stairs to a set of iron double doors at its far end. Every eye was fixated on me, and the weight of their disapproval pummeled my aura with cruel blows.
“Jace Warin,” Hagar intoned, her vo
ice amplified by a steady stream of jinsei that carried it to every student’s ears. “You stand accused of theft of jinsei, attacking a warden in the course of her duties, cheating on your challenges, and veiling your core against a justified assay. You will be judged by a tribunal of your elders.”
I hadn’t expected Hagar to call out my suspected wrongdoing, and I really hadn’t expected her to do it in front of my classmates. As each of my crimes was announced, the faces below me turned colder and harder. By the time I reached the bottom of the stairs I couldn’t look at any of the other students. They’d all heard I was no good, and their eyes burned against my aura with disgust that the rumors had finally been proved true.
But, try as I might, I couldn’t avoid every eye in the place.
Clementine caught my gaze and held it. She looked sad and confused, but she also looked defiant and angry. I wanted to explain to her what had happened, but the more I thought about the words I’d use, the more I realized they were inadequate.
I had stolen the jinsei. Sure, I had my reasons. Without the boosters, I never would’ve made it this far through the academy’s rigorous training. I needed the sacred energy to fake my way through every course save Alchemy, I’d needed it to protect myself from attacks from my fellow students, and I’d especially needed it to restore my battered spirits after long nights locked away in the laboratory with Hahen.
But, at the end of the day, I was still a thief.
I couldn’t bear to look at Clem any longer. I focused my eyes on the floor and pretended I hadn’t seen her. I felt sick and weak. I wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and die.
“They all know now,” Hagar whispered behind me. A thread of jinsei carried the words from her lips directly to my ears so there was no chance I’d miss them. “Your tiny little group of friends, or should I say former friends, know the truth about you. I don’t know what the tribunal will do to you, but I do know that you’re finished here. No one will have anything to do with you after today.”