by Gage Lee
“Excellent work, class,” Krieger said. “It took some of you longer than I expected, but you all succeeded. I’ll see you again on Wednesday.”
Wednesday? The heck was he talking about? Class had just started. How could it be over?
I blew out my candle, and the jinsei shields that protected the outside world from our runaway sorcery collapsed.
Clem and Eric met me just outside my workspace, relief obvious on their faces. “You didn’t burn yourself to a crisp,” she said.
“I figured it out,” I said, unable to suppress a grin so wide my cheeks ached. “It wasn’t easy, but I can cast spells without starting the apocalypse.”
“That is an improvement,” Eric said. “How many times did you guys light your candle?”
“I only managed ten,” Clem said. “The first one took forever, though.”
“Showoff,” I grumbled. “It took me the whole period to light it once.”
“That’s awesome,” Abi said as he rolled up to us. “Look what I can do.”
With a grin, Abi snapped the fingers of his left hand, and a spark of flame jumped into the air, circled around his head once, then landed on his upturned thumb.
“Now that is showing off,” Clem said with a snort. “You’re a quick learner.”
Abi chuckled and shook his head. “Not that quick,” he said. “My mom’s great at sorcery. She showed me a bunch of tricks last time I was home.”
“That sounds like cheating to me,” Eric said with a grin. “Still awesome.”
“Maybe you can help forge the orichalcum with that,” I said. “So far I know we need gold and copper, but none of the books I’ve read say anything about how to combine them.”
“That’s an idea,” Abi said. He launched another ball of fire into the air, which caught Professor Krieger’s eye.
Krieger, who’d seen Abi’s display, ambled over to us as the other students left the classroom. As if to demonstrate his own mastery, he set a small ball of aspects racing around his wrist like a bracelet of burning elementals chasing each other.
“That’s an impressive bit of work there, Abi,” Krieger said. “Will you be in my advanced class next year?”
“I hope so,” Abi replied with his usual smile. “It depends on how the rest of this year goes I’d imagine.”
With that, he shot a quick smirk at me, and I stifled a laugh. Abi was right. A lot of things would depend on how the rest of this year went.
Before Krieger took off, I decided to take a gamble.
“Professor. Krieger,” I said, “I have a quick question for you.”
“Of course, Jace,” Krieger said, and Clem cleared her throat.
“It’s, ah, actually Elder Warin now,” I said to Krieger. “The Triad Consul promoted me over the break.”
Krieger, taken aback by the news that one of his students now officially outranked him, straightened his back and banished the chain of aspects that encircled his wrist. “My apologies, Elder,” he said, and bowed low to me.
I returned the bow, a few hairs shallower than what he’d given to me, to show my respect for someone of a lesser rank. I still wasn’t entirely clear on how all this worked, but I figured it was better to be too respectful rather than not respectful enough to one of my professors.
Especially since I was about to ask Krieger for a favor.
“I’ve been doing some research,” I blatantly lied, “about orichalcum. I was wondering how difficult it was to make.”
The professor scratched his chin and considered my question for a few moments. “It requires a sizeable amount of alchemically pure gold and copper, in roughly equal measure. Unfortunately, the transformation will destroy half of each element.”
My quick estimate of the amount of gold and copper required to create a one-yard diameter shell of orichalcum was a lot of both. Fortunately, money was a problem I could solve with my clan. It would take some time, but we could gather the materials while also paying off our debt to Cruzal. And fending off duelists from the other clans. And working on advancement. And training.
The list of things we had to do was long, but I was sure we could handle it.
“If that’s all that’s required, why is there so little orichalcum in use?” I asked. “Everything I’ve read about it claims the metal is very useful.”
Krieger raised a finger and put on his lecturing voice.
“While orichalcum is a fantastic metal for storing and amplifying jinsei, there are some downsides to its use that make it undesirable to many sacred artists. For starters, orichalcum is spiritually and alchemically unstable.” We all stared blankly at the professor, who took that as his cue to continue our enlightenment. “In other words, making the metal requires an investment of jinsei. And whoever makes the orichalcum won’t regain the sacred energy as long as the orichalcum exists.”
It was my turn to scratch my chin as I considered what he said. Binding jinsei into scrivenings was something I understood. But scrivenings didn’t hold on to the jinsei used in their creation. You’d have to juice them with more to activate their properties.
According to Krieger, orichalcum was different. Any jinsei that went into its creation became a permanent part of the metal. That made it more powerful.
It also made it far more dangerous to mess around with.
“Whoever makes the orichalcum is bound to it then,” I said with far more confidence than I felt. “Forever.”
The professor nodded solemnly. “This is why it’s so rarely forged. If it falls into the wrong hands, the metal can be used—”
“To do something very nasty to its maker,” Clem finished. “I see. You’d have to be crazy, or insanely powerful, to work with the stuff.”
“That’s right,” Krieger said. “The last great orichalcum workers walked the earth during the age of legends. And even they treated the sacred metal with a great deal of respect and no little fear.”
A twinge of annoyance and guilt spiked my heart. How much had the orichalcum key I’d tossed into the Umbral Forge been worth?
Far, far too much.
Despite the risks and the worry, though, there was only one question I had for Krieger.
“Could you show me how to make it?” I asked.
As much as I disliked the idea of creating a big chunk of supernatural metal that my enemies could use to drop a spell on my head, we were out of options. Maybe that was what the forge had meant when it told me the price I had to pay to complete the first leg of the Flame’s quest.
“That’s not a good idea, Jace,” Krieger said. “It opens you to malign influences. I thought I made that clear. I don’t think I could endanger my student’s life for—”
I blew out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t suppose you’d consider it a favor for a clan elder?”
Pulling rank on Krieger wasn’t a very nice thing to do, but I was out of options. There were too many other responsibilities hanging over my head for me to leave this thread dangling if I could snip it.
Krieger frowned, clearly unhappy at the position I’d put him in. “If I did this favor for a clan elder, and something happened to that elder, then there are those who might hold me responsible.”
I waved my hand as if to disperse his worry. “In front of these witnesses, I declare that the Shadow Phoenix clan does not hold you responsible for any mishaps arising from teaching its elder how to make orichalcum,” I said. “Now will you do it?”
Krieger considered it, then nodded. “I will, but we’ll need some help. I understand the sorcery part of it, but there’s a scrivening element required to complete the forging.”
I felt a ball of ice form in my stomach. I had a bad feeling about this, but had to know who else he wanted to involve. “Who do we need?”
“I’ll be happy to teach you how to make the orichalcum,” Krieger said. “But only if you agree to allow Professor Ishigara to assist us.”
The Gold
WORKING WITH ISHIGARA didn’t strike me as the smartest th
ing I could do. She and I weren’t exactly enemies, but she was a Disciple. If the professor reported back to her clan leadership on my orichalcum experiment, they would litter my path with roadblocks. And that’s if she’d even work with me. If she was anywhere near as angry as Theodosia, Ishigara might just attack me on the spot. And, even if she didn’t oppose my experiment, I’d owe her a favor when it was all said and done.
Being in debt to the clan who had me as number one on their hit list seemed counterproductive, at the very least.
“We’ll figure it out without her,” Clem insisted when we discussed it after class. “Krieger gave us enough to go on.”
And so we spent as much time as possible poring over musty tomes related to jinsei sorcery and scrivening while dodging Librarian Tanoki. My assignment to the scholars hadn’t ended, and it irritated him that I spent more time shirking my duties than helping with the library renovations. No one was positive whether teachers could boss around an elder, so I was mostly left to my own devices.
I felt bad, but only a little. The Tanoki I’d known had been replaced by a wizened old grouch who was no longer my secret ally. Whoever had been in the driver’s seat during the first half of the year, and I strongly suspected it was Maps, had left his body for greener pastures. As much help as the new, or I guess it was old, occupant needed with his tasks, I had bigger fish to fry. Chaos had descended on the world in the Flame’s absence, and if I didn’t fix things, the madness would only get worse.
Clem and I found some information, but it was all cryptic and couched in mythological terms. I found it hard to believe that ancient miracle workers had used legions of oxen to push gold and copper together to form orichalcum. And that was the most mundane method we found in our research.
While my friends slept, I went to work gathering the gold and copper we’d need when the time came to create the shell. After some calculations, I determined we’d need somewhere in the neighborhood of forty thousand ounces of gold and twenty thousand ounces of copper to put together the shell. That accounted for the loss of half of both metals that Krieger had warned us about.
While that amount of metal would cost a princely sum, I couldn’t even buy the stuff. It all had to be alchemically pure, without even a trace of other elements or aspects bound up in its aura. That increased the cost to stratospheric levels. Even worse, buying that much of anything from an alchemist would make waves. Someone, like the Disciples, would find out I was up to something and try to stop me.
Which meant I’d have to make it the hard way.
Armed with sealed wastewater containers I’d stolen from an alchemical laboratory no one had used in the past fifty years, I carted corrupted jinsei from the waste disposal system back to the Stacks. On top of all my other duties, I transferred a dozen of the five-gallon containers to the Stacks every night. I didn’t know how many we’d need, but it was far better to be safe than sorry.
Over the past couple of weeks, my clan members had made walls out of the books in the Stacks. We now had a dojo, a study area with chairs and small desks we’d scavenged, small, cell-like chambers for individuals to practice their cycling, and a makeshift distillation laboratory. It was nothing compared to Tycho’s hidden facility, but I hadn’t been able to find that place in a very long time.
Along with the buckets of contaminated waste, I added liberated filtration masks and containment vials to our stash. It was amazing what you could find in the School of Swords and Serpents if you poked around in the abandoned areas. I’d even dragged in cots to create a dormitory area that would accommodate every member of the clan if needed. That was probably overkill, but not any more so than the larder of jerky and jinsei-preserved fruit I’d hidden away in another corner of the Stacks. With everything that was going on, I’d decided it was impossible to be too careful.
I spent every day running interference for my students to keep them out of duels and help them avoid challenges. Hahen and Niddhogg were lifesavers there. Without the two of them scouting our routes, it would have been a lot harder to keep my kids safe.
At the end of the third week of the semester, after my friends had finished tutoring my clan members, I put my young charges to work.
“Gather around,” I called, then waited for the students to arrive at the central area of the Stacks. “Today, we’re making gold.”
An excited murmur rippled through the students. Byron seemed disappointed, but I’d anticipated that and had a solution to raise his spirits.
“I’ve got a special job for you,” I said to him. “Everybody follow me.”
The youngest member of my clan hustled to get ahead of Christina to walk by my side. “What can I do for you, honored Elder?” he asked enthusiastically.
“The rest of your clan mates will be out of commission during this process,” I explained to him. “They won’t be able to monitor their progress. I need you to monitor everyone. Efficiency is the most important part of this project, and it’s entirely your responsibility.”
Byron’s chest swelled as I explained his duties to him. By the time everyone had gathered in the distillation laboratory, he was beaming with pride. It was the happiest I’d seen the kid all year.
“What is all of that?” Christina asked, her finger pointing at the collection of filtration masks, containment vials, feed tubes, and wastewater containers I’d stockpiled in the distillation laboratory.
The masks were sinister-looking devices, and my experience with them had not been pleasant. Hahen had once strapped a mask very much like these on me and force-fed me jinsei for weeks. That had been at Tycho’s orders and earned the sage a ton of purified jinsei and an untimely death. I’d made some modifications to these devices that I hoped would keep my students from rising up to kill me.
“These are filtration masks,” I explained. “You strap it on, fill this reservoir with tainted jinsei, then cycle your breathing. The two tubes that run out of the bottom of the mask feed purified jinsei into one container and liberated aspects into another.”
I demonstrated how the mask fit on their faces, then helped each one strap in. “Byron will keep your reservoirs filled, but it’s up to you to cycle as much of the jinsei from it as you can.”
“What’s he going to fill the reservoirs with?” Ricky asked nervously.
“This,” I said, tapping the lid of a wastewater container. “It will smell terrible but it won’t kill you. It’s surprising how fast you get used to the stink.”
“Which aspects are we keeping?” Hazel asked.
I’d trained all of them how to purify jinsei during their first stay at the School as part of Cruzal’s fundraising plan. Though I’d healed their cores with Machina, they still had the ability to quickly and easily remove aspects from the sacred energy. Most of the crud in the wastewater containers was useless, but there was one very important aspect we needed.
“Gold,” I said.
While an excited murmur ran through the circle of students sitting in the distillation laboratory, I popped open a small threaded vent on the container’s top and screwed on the spigot attached to the vessel’s side by a length of black cord. “Once I’m strapped in, fill my vessel first, Byron.”
To show the kids I wasn’t making them do all the dirty work themselves, I strapped the final mask onto my face and took a seat.
Memories rushed back the instant I sealed the mask over my face. Claustrophobia reared up from the dark cellar of my nightmares. I’d fought demonic monstrosities on Earth, battled hungry spirits on the Far Horizon, and stabbed my own mother to death. All of those had been scary, sure.
But none of them could match the sheer terror and helplessness I felt with that mask over my face. Still, as freaked out as I was by those dark memories, I wouldn’t let them control me. Deep, cycling breaths purged the anxiety and fear from my aura, and confidence replaced them. I wasn’t a kid in Tycho’s lab. I was the elder of this clan, and I would guide my members to victory over all our enemies.
Eve
n those inside my head.
The only one of my clan members who couldn’t filter the jinsei efficiently still took pride in his duty. He filled my containment vessel nearly to the top. Satisfied with his work, he moved on to Christina, then Fernando, then Ricky, and on around the circle of clan members gathered in the distillation lab.
“I’ll monitor everyone closely,” Byron said, bowing deeply to me. “Thank you so much for giving me this critical task.”
Before I started my cycling, I put a hand on Byron’s shoulder and looked him in the eye. Though he’d always be a Shadow Phoenix, the young man wasn’t like the rest of us. He was born whole, his core undamaged. He’d never know what it felt like to be shunned by others, to be hated for an accident of your birth. But Byron was different from the members of his clan, and I knew that pain all too well. These times were trying for all of us, and it was critical that we all work together and treat one another as a family. If we didn’t, the other clans would pick us off one by one.
“You’ve done well,” I said. “Thank you for your help in this most important of missions. I will always be grateful for the role you played in our time of need.”
Byron bowed deeply to me, then backed away to show his ultimate respect.
It was time to get to work.
The toxic sludge was every bit as foul as I’d remembered. It filled my nostrils with the scent of rotten onions and burnt hair. Gruesome flavors of decaying meat, poisonous metals, and curdled milk coated my taste buds. I struggled to believe I’d downed gallons of this stuff every day for more months than I cared to count.
It was easier this time, though, not just because I was stronger, but also because this was for me. I believed in my cause, and I’d do just about anything to succeed in the Flame’s quest and get the world back on course.
My clan members handled the distasteful task well. A few of them grimaced when they began their cycling, but they put on stoic expressions and continued breathing the foul gunk in.
When Byron approached to refill my filtration vessel for the fourth time, I raised a hand to stop him. I carefully removed my mask and motioned for him to come in close enough for me to whisper to him. “Have you refilled any of the others?”