by TJ Reynolds
It took relying on Greg’s brute strength to tear it free and bend the metal backwards to solve the problem.
The Kai cast another Restoring Tide on the beast and ordered the dragonlings to feast on one of the fallen rondus monsters.
Since the monsters hadn’t been minions in untold years, and because the Earth Core of the dungeon was shivvered, the bodies remained scattered about the room.
Kai retrieved his glaive from the prime’s skull, and then approached the dais.
Glowing in a cup-shaped divot in the stone was the broken core.
It was split into three large fragments.
It was larger than Ross had been when they’d restored him, so Kai guessed this Earth Core might have been near Golden ascension when it was shivvered.
“Don’t worry, friend,” Kai said under his breath. “We’ll fix you right up.”
He removed one of his gauntlet as well as the knife he wore on his belt.
A clean nick later, and his blood wet his palm. Kai pressed his hand into the Earth Core.
Enduring only a minor shock of pain, Kai drained some of his hard-earned Progression into the Earth Core, healing its mind and body.
When the sensation passed, Kai panted over the smooth stone, smiling down at it. Hello there. Everything is going to be okay.
Who… who are you? the Earth Core asked in a frightened tone. And where is my dragon?
Kai sighed.
This part was always the hardest.
He took a deep breath and was, yet again, the one to break the bad news.
Your dragon has perished. I am sorry. As to your first question… My name is Kaius Unterinan, and I am the Fundamental Dragon.
6
Rooftop Revelations
Rhona
Days of fasting and alternating between meditation and practicing with the advanced forms of Path of the Bleeding Tiger had left Rhona delirious.
She’d complained to Jakodi that what they were doing was dangerous.
The old man had chuckled kindly and told her the honest truth. “You are inching closer to a precipice you will not return from. Find your own salvation, Rhona, or lose yourself entirely.”
So, that morning, she’d woken up and promised to once again give it her all.
Jakodi had decided it was time to up the stakes again.
Sitting in the center of the observation roof atop the Sunken Keep, Rhona stared out into the abyss.
The sun was shining, and the view all around her was nothing less than stunning.
The Zargan Mountains climbed up to their snowy peaks behind her, and ran north and south as far as the eye could see.
Down below was the verdant tumult that was southern Hintar. Endless grasslands striated with rivers and dotted with patches of dense forest broke up the terrain.
Yet the only thing that drew Rhona’s eye was the looming chasm.
The darkness was much more inviting than she wanted to admit, and yet her eyes stared ever downward.
When she’d first come up here, Rhona had counted no less than five villages and settlements, visible now from the height of Ban’s improved tower. The Earth Core hadn’t shut up for an hour as he described how challenging it had been to extend the keep upwards so high.
And she was impressed.
Over a hundred feet had been added to the Sunken Keep, though most of it was little more than a spire.
A thirty-foot base concealed three floors where archers could fire away nonstop at invading forces, nothing but thin arrow slits marring the otherwise smooth stone walls.
Atop that the spire began and stretched up higher and higher.
At the very peak, Rhona sat in the center of a square platform. It had been made for Ban’s minions to rest upon, and had no railing or parapets. Just over twenty feet wide, the platform felt dangerous and terrifying.
Is that what Jakodi wanted? Rhona wondered yet again. For me to sit up here for hours, terrified, cold, and alone?
She stood up and walked to stand a foot from the precipice.
The spire’s base stood directly below, and around that, the keep’s bulk spread around her so that if she fell, she would land there instead of tumble away to the chasm floor.
But it was still a hundred-foot fall.
Rhona felt her pulse quicken. She clutched her hands open and closed. Why not? What else could I possibly offer this world? Why shouldn’t I just—
“Jump if you must,” Jakodi said behind her.
Rhona gasped, her arms jerking in surprise. She spun around and saw the old master ascending the final step that led up to the peak.
His constant smile was gone.
And his eyes were cold as chips of stone.
He pointed the way she’d been looking. “Go ahead, young monk. If you are finished walking your path, let us see how far the tiger can fly.”
The woman took a step closer and hung her head in shame. “I wasn’t going to, Jakodi. I just…”
“But you wished to, or at the very least, thought that you did.”
Rhona nodded.
Jakodi met her in the center of the platform. “Listen, Rhona, and listen well. You are very confused. Entering the Gold Mind, especially so young, is a dangerous endeavor. You should have spent years training your will before even attempting it. But what is done is done.”
He repeated himself. “You are confused, Rhona. Time to find out if you truly wish to live in this waking world.”
Rhona opened her mouth to reply, but a force struck her in the stomach before she could do so. Stumbling back, she gasped for breath.
Then she looked down and saw Jakodi’s palm held out before him.
The old man moved in a blur.
Without thinking, Rhona reacted.
She blocked the punches that came so rapidly she couldn’t believe her eyes.
The ancient man fought with such precision and speed it was like she was dreaming, fighting with Hastings again in one of the many nightmares she’d had since the siege.
A fourth punch broke through her guard, slamming into her shoulder.
Jakodi jumped in the air as she gave ground again. He landed one kick to her thigh, bruising the muscle deeply. The other, he planted in her hip.
Rhona backpedaled a few more feet, but chose to roll forward to the side to evade another attack. The edge was close; she could practically feel it.
Still clutching his staff, Jakodi came at her.
Steely-eyed and seemingly furious, her mentor rained blows on Rhona without letting up.
She was a promising monk, and had an Emerald rank ascension.
Yet compared to the Chipped Fang, she was only a cub.
Again and again, Jakodi struck with fist or foot or elbow.
Rhona blocked and deflected the attacks. More than once, she was forced to dive and roll away to avoid toppling over the edge of the platform.
A fury rose in her stomach when the danger of their situation fully dawned on her.
She sped up to her maximum capability, blocked another three punches, and was about to activate Spirit Surge.
With the time-warping ability, not even Jakodi could defeat her.
But the old man fell into a deep squat, falling below her guard, and lashed out with both hands in either direction.
One clutched his staff as it pointed out to the Zargan Mountains to the west.
The other blasted her core, sending Rhona sprawling backward.
She would fall.
She knew it.
So close already to the edge, and the old man had taken her choice away with a single, ruthless attack.
Thoughts flashed through her mind: fears, doubts, and a multitude of emotions she didn’t have time to process.
Then Jakodi spun, taking a step closer at the same time.
A sudden pressure touched the back of her neck.
She teetered on the precipice, wind racing up from the chasm, as Jakodi held her upright with the crook of his staff.
�
�Ask yourself again, Rhona Bloodspar… do you wish to live in this waking world?”
Without hesitation she answered. “Yes! Yes, I do! I want to live!”
Jakodi held her for ten heartbeats until he apparently accepted her answer.
With a jerk of his arm, he pulled Rhona back onto the platform, where she collapsed forward to hands and knees. She crawled forward, arms and legs trembling with fright.
Rhona panted for a time, hating the man and also knowing the value of the gift he’d given her.
Jakodi knelt beside her.
His own breath was ragged, and when she looked into his face, she saw how much the exchange had taken from him.
He was pale, a sheen of sweat marking his freckled brow.
Never before had he seemed so old and frail.
“Do not return until you find yourself, girl. I expect nothing less than complete victory.”
Then he smiled before standing up and tottering toward the stairs.
It took Rhona an hour to recover.
Something about being throttled by her seemingly benign mentor and having a brush with death had made quite an impression on her nerves.
Seated in the center of the platform again, Rhona used the intricate breathing cycle Jakodi had taught her and Kai.
It slowed her heart and steadied her limbs.
Closing her eyes and glancing inwards, she admired the technique’s other benefit.
Her core shone brighter than before. Its burning fire glowed a little hotter each time she breathed in. This in turn restored her energy, and soon she felt ready to continue her mental journey.
Temple of the Pristine Mind was, like the other forms she’d mastered, a mental construction.
In fact, it combined the previous techniques and overlapped them. Attempting to summon Crystal, Iron, and Gold Mind at once challenged Rhona beyond anything else she’d attempted in her life.
But she’d seen the yawning abyss, and she knew it wanted to claim her.
I will conquer this, she told herself firmly. I’ll become the tiger I set out to be years ago. Palben will be proud, and so will Jakodi. Besides, what would Kai do without me?
Strengthening her resolve, Rhona assembled the sheer walls of Crystal Mind first.
This part was easy by now. It allowed her to contain the space within her mind she meant to tame and cultivate.
“The mind is like a garden,” Jakodi had told her on the first day they trained together. “If you cannot become emperor within the confines of your own skull, how will you ever advance along your path?”
She hadn’t known how to answer him, but now she knew intimately how right he’d been.
Crystal Mind completed, Rhona felt the tranquility and the clearness of thought it brought with it.
She breathed a little easier but pushed forward into Iron Mind. Holding onto the first technique, she enclosed the inner portion of her temple within a thick sphere of unyielding iron.
The sphere clanged shut, and it took all of her focus to maintain the thin walls of crystal on the outside.
Safe and protected now, Rhona relaxed yet again.
This was where she’d wanted to stay most days. The clarity and safety the combined techniques offered were simply delightful when compared to the wandering selflessness she experienced in Gold Mind.
At last Rhona resolved to go further.
Gold Mind took a conscious letting go of the self. By doing so, she was given increased foresight, an awareness of her surroundings and the things in her life that were often terrifying.
There was a peacefulness there, too, like the golden motes of afternoon sunlight that fell through a window.
She could float there for an eternity.
Only after defeating Hastings had she discovered just how tempting it was to exist in that peaceful state forever.
It quashed out all sense of desire for the living world, and made her life, and even those she loved, seem empty.
But Jakodi had reminded her that in the deepest recesses of her heart, Rhona still had a will to live.
So she enveloped herself in Gold Mind and clutched onto the idea that she needed to advance at all costs. Rhona held it in bloodied fists for the first time, refusing to relinquish her purpose.
As she did so, Rhona completed the final few tasks Jakodi had told her she must do.
They were startlingly simply in nature.
She made an altar, square in shape and large enough to fill the space between her Iron Mind sphere.
Atop the altar, Rhona etched the shape of her mandala. It was as lovely and unique as ever, curving lines that wound this way and that.
This was the shape of her core, the shape her spirit had taken on when enduring the Emerald ascension.
At last, Rhona drummed up her will, her aspirations, and the faces and habits of those she cared for. She thought of Ban’s excessive courtesy, Kai’s eagerness to please and to gain strength. She thought of her mother’s patience and even the few moments her father had let his charisma shine brighter than the shadows that engulfed him.
Compressing these sensations into a sphere, Rhona condensed every reason she had to live on into one tiny mote of golden light.
For the first time, she completed the step.
Before she could become overwhelmed, Rhona finished the ritual.
She imagined the flame burning in her core lighting the mote on fire. It didn’t burn up, but rather started to smoke.
Her senses were inundated with the smells, textures, and even tastes of the food and drink she loved best. Overwhelming emotions wracked Rhona’s mind and body, and she realized she was weeping. She could feel the tears spilling down her cheeks, cooled by the incessant wind above the tower.
She worried for the briefest instant that she might drop the technique she’d just accomplished.
Then she realized it was no longer a threat.
Rhona relinquished her vise-like grip and simply existed. Crystalline walls filtered out anything she did not want to consider, all distractions.
A sphere of iron guarded her mind, soul, and core.
The alter had been placed, and her mandala burned bright and clear.
And atop it, suffusing everything within her, was the incense of sentiments that made up who she was and all she wanted to become.
This last especially allowed her to accept her role as part of creation. She could exist in the golden realm of selflessness at the same time as being Rhona Bloodspar, the Brintoshi girl with the fiery hair.
I am everything.
I am nothing.
And I am just plain old me.
Her revelation suffused her with infinite satisfaction, but somewhere in this world, something else noticed her transcendence.
A force, an entity she’d only ever encountered once came to her.
Rhona felt a presence above the tower, and then her mind went dark.
She shifted through time and space.
Suddenly a girl of fifteen, Rhona practiced with a sword in the backyard of her old house. She wielded a wooden sword gifted to her by a captain of the local guard.
She would sign up for the army soon and was completely focused on mastering the blade before she left.
The pounding of a door sounded behind her, and Rhona spun to see her father stomping toward her.
“I told you it’s pointless!” he growled. “Women only ever become second-rate soldiers! Give it up, Rhona!”
She saw the ruddy stains on his cheeks, knew him to be in his cups already. But Rhona for once ignored the fear that coiled around her heart.
For the first time, she defied him.
“You’re wrong, da. I’ll be an elite someday, and then you’ll have to respect me. I’ll do it no matter what!”
Her shouts only stirred his ire, and he reached out to clutch her.
Rhona ducked past him and ran off into the fields, her wooden sword still held tightly in her grip.
The world shifted again, and Rhona found h
erself looking into her father’s bewildered eyes.
The night I said goodbye to him for the last time, she realized.
He stooped before her, injured by her precise attacks, his mind barely capable of comprehending how she’d bested him with only her hands.
She watched as if from afar as he screamed at her.
Her mother’s disapproval still burned as much as ever.
But when Rhona shifted again, she saw how those two moments had not only been inevitable but necessary.
Hastings stalked toward her, his eyes filled with the same loathing she’d grown up with her whole life.
Darkness knows no distinction, she thought. Evil is evil is evil.
With the knowledge she’d gained from mastering her own darkness, Rhona plucked out the fabric of Hasting’s core, killing him with little more than a thought.
The presence giving Rhona these visions pulsed with power, and suddenly she knew she was seeing something that might have been.
This was a thread of the future she’d severed by defeating the heartless man.
Rhona floated above a burning city. Elegant spires and large manses burned, their collective smoke forming a vast column in the sky. Men and women screamed all around, and hundreds of bodies were piled in a disorderly mess.
Rhona saw thousands more stacked before the city walls, their gleaming armor painted crimson. So many had died, and yet only the colors of the Hintari army were visible.
Then she witnessed the shining man standing in the middle of it all.
It was Hastings, ascended to near-godhood after absorbing countless foes through his terrible gauntlet.
She had stopped all of this.
Once more, Rhona moved in time.
When she did so, Rhona was staring out over rank upon rank of a massive army. This one was composed of all three kingdoms, and above, wheeling about in the sky, flew five dragons.
One was great, many-colored and terrible to look upon.
The other four were smaller, but their cores burned bright and powerful. Cobalt, gold, alabaster, and emerald, the dragons were strong enough to fight a small army on their own.