by Dante King
“Thank you for leading me here,” I said to Nydarth. “I think we should head home.”
“Oh, no,” she replied. “We still haven’t done what I brought you here for.”
“This wasn’t it?” I asked, bewildered. What more could there be?
“This is a place of fire,” she said. “A place where my power is strong. A place where I can best guide you in combining different elements. You, sweet man, are going to create your own techniques.
Chapter Eighteen
“Sit,” Nydarth instructed. “Let me show you how to combine what you already know to form entirely new attacks.”
My heart raced as I sat in front of the Fire Core again, the Sundered Heart Sword laid across my lap.
I looked at the weapon, the closest I could get to looking Nydarth in the eye. “Can they be whatever I want?”
“If only it was that easy.” Her voice slid straight into my mind. “The techniques you create will depend upon the channels you already have. By combining them, you will create something new.”
“Like when I brought my fire powers together earlier?”
“Think of that as the foundations for what you are about to undertake. Something strong but unsophisticated upon which to build grand palaces of power.
“Of course, real foundations won’t kill you if you overuse them, so it’s not a perfect metaphor. But it will do for now.”
“So, I’ve already combined techniques, but now, I’m to do it more carefully?”
“What you did wasn’t to combine techniques. It was just to pool a great store of power and let it go. What you are about to do is to combine different elements.”
“Wood and fire?”
“Exactly.”
“I wonder if this is why Tolin had me learn wood techniques,” I muttered to myself.
“Who can say what goes through that man’s mind?” Nydarth said, as though I’d been talking to her. “But let us take the opportunity he has created.”
Here was more evidence that Nydarth knew Tolin. Tolin had also reacted strangely when I’d first spoken to him about the “fire-slinging sword.” Beyond Nydarth’s mentions of him, I suspected there was a greater connection between them, given the way that his temple and her sword had come together in my world. But it was a subject for later investigation, so I banked the thought and concentrated on the present.
“How do I do this?” I asked.
“To create ash pathways, you must first have an ash core,” Nydarth said. “You can’t harvest it from the world but must create it inside you by melding together the essences of wood and fire. I have to tell you, there is a reason why not many Augmenters do this. It is not only natural ability that is required, but a certain kind of courage. Reforging Vigor in your heart is a dangerous thing, one that could kill you if it goes wrong. But I’ve seen the boldness of your spirit. You won’t shy away from danger, will you?”
I sighed and closed my eyes. It seemed that whatever I did here, I was placing myself in some sort of danger. But as the saying goes, fortune favors the brave. I’d spent my whole life bucking against the expectations of others—racing through the education system, challenging the assumptions of posh snobs, choosing a career most people would never have considered. Now, I was carving a path for myself through a world I hadn’t even known existed a year before. I wasn’t going to let fear stand in my way.
“Let’s get on with this,” I said. “What should I do?”
“I want you to clear your mind. Focus on your breathing. The sensation of the air moving in and out. How your chest moves to that rhythm. How your spirit flows with your body. Let all thoughts fade away until there is only sensation.”
I let my mind drift, as I had learned in the guild’s meditation classes, becoming mindful of the sensations within my body. The flow of my breath. The gurgling of my stomach. The rhythm of my pulse.
And the Vigor.
“Now, open up to the Vigor inside you, both wood and fire. Can you feel it?”
Fire was the first to draw my attention. It blazed bright within me, the heat of an inferno, restless, constantly in motion, yearning to expand and swallow everything around it. It was hard to sit still with that sensation buzzing in my mind.
Then, I sensed the power of wood. It too was expansive, but spreading slowly, carefully, growing toward stability. It swayed like reeds in the wind and bent to the forces around it but kept its own shape.
“I feel it,” I said. “Both of them.”
“Good. Wood has been with you longer, so draw upon that first. Channel a portion of it into your heart.”
I reached inside with my spirit, drew upon the Vigor, and guided a portion off its familiar path. I worked slowly and steadily as I shifted its channel until it flowed into the very core of my being.
“Now, the fire,” Nydarth whispered. “Draw that in too.”
The fire was easier to direct. It wanted to change, to move, to reach new places and burn up what it found there. It was almost too easy to direct it to the precious, vulnerable center of my spirit. The challenge was to cut it off before there was too much.
The powers of wood and fire swirled around each other. Even without Nydarth guiding me, I knew what I had to do.
I forced them together, as I had forced the Vigor of the fire cores to combine. As they mingled, there was a sudden and overwhelming sensation inside me, like hearing a noise so loud it deafens, or staring at a blindingly bright light. An explosion seemed to go off in my chest, a burst of power rushing to escape, threatening to tear me apart as it went. I brought all my will to bear and forced the power into a single point. My nerves ran raw with pain and I let out a scream that echoed around the cavern.
But I held, and at last, the surge of power subsided.
Where fire and wood had been, there was something else. Something black and cold that radiated its own sort of power. Yielding yet unchanging, solid and yet soft.
“Such a clever young man,” Nydarth said, her voice full of pride. “I knew you had it in you.”
“What is it?” I whispered.
“That is an ash core.”
I couldn’t fault the logic of the label. After all, what else would you get when fire and wood met if not ash? But it felt right as well. To say that the core felt dead would have been misleading, as any core pulsed with an energy as vital and urgent as a human heart. But there was something deadening about this ash core, a smothering darkness into which other energy could become lost.
“Now, I need to forge a pathway, right?” I asked. “Will the core guide me to do that?”
“The core will help, and so will I.”
There was something different about Nydarth’s voice. After so long hearing it in my head, it took me a moment to realize that it was coming from behind me.
I turned to see her standing there in the flesh, smiling at me. She was every bit as beautiful as in my dreams, with her long purple-black hair and her teasing smile. Unlike in my dreams, she was dressed, but her clothes left little to the imagination. The front of her robe was split down to the belly and held together with cords down the sides, while her skirts were split up to the thigh. The whole ensemble was perfectly designed to draw attention to her silky smooth skin and killer curves.
“How are you here?” I asked.
She smiled. “You returned my spirit back to my place of power when you brought the sword here. Now that I am returning freely, instead of a captive in this place, I have more freedom to use my magic as I see fit.”
“Why didn’t you come sooner? Like maybe to help me against the hounds?”
“I cannot be here for long. Maybe one day, you will increase my power so that I can remain in this plane of existence for as long as I wish. You are the key to my strength, Ethan.” She licked her lips and ran a finger down my chest. “Fun and useful.”
Everything I’d seen of her before had come in the form of hot and heavy dreams. I was reminded of those memories as she stood in front of me, hips
tilted to one side as she looked me up and down. But if there was a time for such thoughts, this really wasn’t it.
“Useful how?” I forced myself to pay attention to my surroundings and what had come before.
“This is where your first ash pathway should be,” Nydarth said.
She bunched the fingers of one hand together and pressed them against the center of my chest. Her fingers splayed out as the tips drew slender pathways in a sunburst.
I closed my eyes and felt for that pathway. The ash core stirred within me while the Vigor swirled like a black cloud of cold dust. But it couldn’t find its way out along the channels Nydarth had drawn.
“It’s not working,” I said.
“That’s because you haven’t mastered the power yet,” Nydarth replied. “Did you really think it would be so easy?”
“No, I didn’t assume it would be. But tell me what I should do. How do I make it work?”
I'd hunted fire cores and wood cores, faced all sorts of monsters, and combined powers that threatened to tear me apart. I was prepared for whatever I needed to do now.
“So courageous.” She stroked my cheek and gave me a mocking smile. “And maybe a little stupid.”
I smirked. “Is getting me angry part of your tactic? Because you'll have to do better.”
Nydarth rolled her eyes and continued. “As with other paths, you must master the spirits in combat. I suppose that won't be too difficult for you.”
“I guess I’m going to find out.”
I sat back down, hands curled in my lap, and closed my eyes. I let my focus sink into the ash as its energy swirled up in a cloud to meet me. For a while, all was darkness, swirling shapes in black and deep shades of gray. Then, the cloud fell around my feet in a soft drift, and I found myself standing in another world.
I was in a forest, but not the green, vibrant woodland where I had fought the wood spirit. This forest was on fire, flames roaring from the treetops, trunks blackened and split. The floor was covered with ash, and the sky swirled with smoke. The sun was blotted out, leaving the flames to light the place with a menacing glow.
A pair of figures stepped out of the smoke—a spirit of fire and one of wood. Blazing flames seethed and writhed across the first figure’s body, stark contrast to the motionless ridges of its companion’s bark skin.
“Two against one?” I called out. “Can’t you beat me any other way?”
The two spirits showed no sign of understanding, just walked closer. The wood spirit raised its arms into a combat stance, one foot back for stability. But the fire spirit was ahead of it as it charged me with fists swinging.
I stepped aside a moment before the fire spirit’s wild charge would have hit me. As it passed, I kicked it in the side. The fire spirit staggered, and I leaped in before I hammered it with my fists.
The fire creature stumbled and raised its arms to defend itself. I kicked it in the side, but it grabbed my leg and threw me backward. As I skittered along the ground, a heavy blow crashed into the middle of my back, and I almost went flying into the arms of the fire spirit. It grabbed at my neck, but I ducked clear and turned the movement into a diving roll that brought me out from between the two spirits and back up to my feet a short distance away, covered in ash but otherwise unharmed.
Both spirits advanced on me, and I paid close attention to them both. Punches and kicks flew at me in swift succession, the roles of a moment before reversed. Now, I was the one in retreat as I frantically blocked, unable to shift onto the offensive.
My retreat took me out of the clearing and in among the burning trees. Flakes of pale ash fell like snow all around, but the drifts I walked through weren’t cold or wet. It was like an inverted, nightmare version of a Christmas scene, the only gifts those of pain.
Rough bark rubbed my back as I hit a tree. My opponents were still advancing, and neither showed any sign of tiring. I couldn’t deal with both at once, but maybe I could find a way to take one at a time.
The wood spirit swung a punch at my head, but I ducked and it hit the tree instead. The creature’s fist buried itself in the wood with a splintering crack as I darted around the side of the tree.
I drew the fire spirit after me while the wood one struggled to free its hand The fire spirit was close behind, too close for me to ever get away. But that was fine. I was counting on that closeness.
After 30 yards, I stopped and spun on the spot. My leg flashed out in a high kick, and the spirit was coming on too fast to fully stop. It failed to slow its pace, and its momentum carried it forward—straight into my high kick. My foot slammed into its head and sent it flying into another tree. The trunk exploded into a cloud of embers, and the rest of the tree toppled over like it had just been hit with a woodcutter’s axe. Ash sprayed across the air as the branches crashed to the forest floor.
I raced after the fire spirit and arrived just as it came to stand. Before it could raise its fists in a fighting stance, I lunged forward and grabbed hold of its shoulders. I ignored the pain of the fire against my hands and flipped it over my head. My opponent dropped onto a boulder, and I immediately gripped its head in both hands. Intense heat seared my palms as I held onto the spirit’s head and slammed it over and over again against the boulder. There was no art to it, no finesse or technique, just sheer brute force built up over months of Rutmonlir’s rigorous training. At last, the spirit went limp, and I left its barely recognizable skull behind.
I turned, not a moment too soon. Only a few feet away, the wood spirit swung a jagged chunk of tree like a baseball bat. I leaped back, but it still clipped me in the arm and threw me off-balance. My foot slipped on the loose ash, and I landed hard on my back.
The wood spirit loomed over me and lifted its improvised weapon high.
If it had eyes, then it had a weak spot, so I grabbed a fistful of ash and flung it in the spirit’s face. It took a step back and rubbed at its eyes, and that gave me all the opening I needed. I sprang to my feet and snatched the chunk of wood from its hand. I raised it high and drove it down, stabbing like a blade instead of swinging like a baseball bat. The plank’s jagged end plunged into the spirit’s chest. It shuddered, screeched, and fell. Sap bubbled out around the wound as I stood over my conquest.
The two spirits lay next to each other in the dust. I’d won.
“Yes!” I punched the air in celebration.
But something was wrong. The spirit world wasn’t vanishing around me. I hadn’t returned to what now passed for my reality. A hot wind still swept through my hair and left a burnt taste in my mouth. A blackened tree creaked and fell, but the fires blazed on.
I looked around. What more was needed? What had I missed?
Movement made me look down. The bodies of the spirits flowed together across the floor before they flickered and merged into one. Fire blazed across wood, then died, leaving a black, dusty form.
The ash spirit rose and faced me.
“Another one?” A normal reaction might have been disappointment, but I was smiling. I wasn’t going to complain at the unfairness of it all. I hadn’t come here for fairness, I’d come here for power. This world was only ever going to give me what I could earn, and the price I paid had never been cheap.
I raised my fists, slid my foot back, and took a deep breath. Even in the spirit world, my muscles ached and bruised flesh throbbed. The relentless efforts of the preceding hours had taken me from training in a dojo to fighting a near-Herculean challenge, taking on every challenger the Ember Cavern and spirit world could throw at me.
I had never felt more alive.
The ash spirit had no face that I could see, no fingers or toes. It was like a stick figure made human sized, a blank space with no thought or emotion, no expression to read its intentions.
If I couldn’t try to predict my opponent’s moves, I would have to focus on my own.
I swung high with my left fist, a feint that made the spirit lean back while my right fist drove hard into its body. I put all the force
I could into that blow, hoping to finish the fight quickly. The ash gave way beneath my touch, and my fist sank into the spirit’s body. The force of the attack faded away the deeper I went, and I felt my fist come out the other side. Suddenly, the spirit’s ash body hardened, and my arm was stuck, submerged in its torso.
The spirit slammed its elbow onto my head, and stars crossed my vision. Its stomach loosened, and my arm started to slip free, but before I could pull it out, the ash spirit grabbed me by the shoulders and flung me through the air. I crashed into a tree, and flaming debris shook loose from its branches. Fragments of fire rained down around me before they turned to black powder on the ground.
I groaned, pushed myself up onto my knees, and brushed off cinders from my robes. The spirit approached with the slow, unstoppable speed of an advancing forest fire. I used a tree for support and stood to face it again.
This time, I went for many blows instead of a big one. My fists and feet flew as I struck to the right and left. Sometimes, I slipped through the spirit’s guard, and other times, my attacks were blocked by its arms. Every hit felt the same as that first one, ash-flesh giving way beneath me, all force lost as it absorbed the strike. I was careful to pull my hands free quickly whenever a fist plunged into its ashen body so that the spirit couldn’t ensnare my limbs as it’d done before.
I saw the next attack coming and ducked clear as a night-black fist swung at my head. It hit the tree behind me and created a spray of charred bark and flying embers.
I clearly couldn’t beat the ash spirit through sheer strength, nor could I use my Augmentation abilities since my Vigor channels were closed off in this world. The conflagration around me had already helped me kill the two other spirits, but I doubted a creature who could shift the molecules on its body would die from head trauma or impalement.
As I blocked the creature’s strikes, I raced for some means of stopping it. My energy was quickly running out, and I could only dodge and counter its blows for a little longer.