by Gage Lee
If the ritual didn’t end soon, that explosion Krieger had warned me about was inevitable. And it would be a lot bigger than any of us had expected.
I studied the writhing energy from within the hypnotic bubble of my cycled breathing. It surprised me to find additional aspects trapped between the layers of metals. They were the twin aspects of friction and resistance, along with threads of crimson heat.
This was the waste Krieger had warned me about. I’d assumed half the gold and copper would transform into waste metals we’d have to dispose of. Instead, they’d turned into deadly aspects that would burn me down to nothing and destroy Ishigara’s sanctum if I didn’t do something with them, now.
I cycled them out of the binding sigil, through my core, and into my aura. It left my mouth tasting of ash and burnt meat when I’d finished, but I’d cleared the waste. All that remained were pure orichalcum aspects.
The swirling cloud of aspects was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It held endless potential, ready to be infused with power few had ever mastered.
Soon, I’d join the ranks of those who’d finished this arduous task.
I wasn’t done yet, though. Now that I’d combined the aspects, I had to manifest the physical orichalcum. That required a new bit of sorcery, which Krieger had explained to me before the process began.
With the aid of my serpents, I quickly outlined a large cube of jinsei. I’d have preferred a sphere so I wouldn’t have to work the orichalcum after I’d forged it, but Krieger had cautioned me against that little stunt. The mental gymnastics required to keep the inner and outer dimensions firmly in my thoughts while pouring the aspects into it and channeling the enormous amount of energy required for manifestation would have been too much. Rather than risk the whole process, I added another step.
With the frame complete, it took only a few moments to wrap the whole supernatural structure with jinsei until it became a gleaming silver mold with a tiny gap left in its top. That’s where I’d funnel the orichalcum.
Satisfied with my work, I stitched a jinsei bridge between the binding sigil and the framework I’d created to contain the orichalcum. Slowly, carefully, I willed the orichalcum to flow through the lines of jinsei into the mold. It wasn’t a complicated bit of sorcery, but it was painfully difficult. Creating matter from raw aspects required a vast amount of energy that had to come from somewhere.
In this case, that somewhere was me.
Jinsei flowed out of my core in an even stream that matched the aspects. The silver sacred energy and orichalcum aspects sizzled and spat as they poured into the framework. My body shook with the effort of controlling the metals, channeling the jinsei, and keeping the framework firmly lodged in my thoughts.
Ishigara had warned me that this kind of work attracted spirits, and she wasn’t a liar. Strange presences gathered in the darkness at the very edge of my awareness. They watched, hungry, desperate for contact, but they didn’t dare to approach me.
Something else was out there, too. A tainted, blighted thing that had been with mortals since time began. It watched, angry at me, furious that I’d taken up the Empyrean Flame’s banner.
But it, too, was barred from the mortal realms. It could watch, and it could hate, but that was the limit of its powers.
Unless I failed, and the Design collapsed. Then...
My rebellious thoughts took longer to bring back in line, this time. The struggle had worn me down. If my attention slipped again, I was doomed.
But it wouldn’t. I had this.
Every second felt like an hour, and the effort was wringing me dry. Finally, after what felt like hours, the last aspect left the binding sigil, flowed out of my aura, and filled the jinsei mold.
Nothing happened.
My spirits sank. Something had gone wrong. I hadn’t used enough jinsei. The cube was too small. I’d lost an aspect.
My thoughts raced, poring over every detail of what I’d done. Something was missing.
What was it?
“Stop!” Byron shouted.
The words held a strange undercurrent, an almost simultaneous echo, as if someone with a much more powerful, much deeper voice had spoken in the same instant. It plucked at my attention, a puzzle that demanded I pick it apart for a solution.
Ishigara and Krieger both responded with shouts, nearly jarring me loose from my deep concentration. Until the orichalcum manifested, the aspects could still break free of my control and be lost forever.
The jinsei mold I’d created shook as my thoughts drifted. I willed myself to concentrate, to bring everything back into sharp, clear focus within my mind. My serpents darted and wove new threads into the mold, struggling to hold the pieces of my jinsei construct together. The square shifted into a misshapen mess, one side bulging, the other threatening to cave in.
“Get off him!” Furendo shouted. “What’s wrong with you!”
The shouts of my clan members infiltrated my thoughts. The smooth coils of jinsei snarled, and aspects threatened to slip through the gaps in the mold.
The whole process was spinning out of control.
I shouted in surprise as gold and copper aspects separated and burst out of the form. A terrific pain ripped through my core as the two elements flew apart and vanished back into the wild.
“What’s going on?” I shouted as I staggered to my feet. Confusion, anger, and concern churned in my thoughts. We’d lost everything. Two weeks of work. All that effort.
Gone up in smoke.
Byron had summoned his fusion blade. His eyes burned with fury, and he struggled against Ishigara’s grasp around one wrist and Krieger’s hold of his weapon hand. Ricky lay on the ground at his feet, eyes wide with fear.
“Byron!” I snapped. My serpent slapped the fusion blade out of his hand. A dark shadow flickered across his eyes, and for the briefest moment I caught sight of the eerie shadows that I’d seen during Christina’s duel. I grabbed the boy by the shoulders and shook him.
“He’s a monster,” Byron said, his voice low and tight with fury. “Can’t you see that?”
The idea that Ricky could harm a fly was utterly ludicrous. Of all the students I’d worked with, he was the kindest, the gentlest.
But there was something strange happening here—spirits that no one else could see flitted through the School in search of hosts. Until I knew exactly what was happening and who I could trust, I couldn’t take anything for granted.
I stepped away from Byron, and Ishigara and Krieger gripped him even tighter. He struggled against them, veins bulging in his forehead, muscled cords standing out against the skin of his neck as he pushed his body to the limit.
I kneeled down next to Ricky and helped him to his feet. “You feeling okay?”
I watched him carefully for any signs of something wrong. But his aura held only confusion, fear, and pain. His core was unblemished, though the ugly, jagged scar were the Machina and his hollow core had been stitched together by my inexpert hands still bothered me.
“I’m fine,” he said. “What’s wrong with Byron?”
That was a good question. I couldn’t see anything in Byron’s aura, either. Whatever had gotten into him, it wasn’t there now.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I really don’t.”
The Rebuilding
KRIEGER, ISHIGARA, and I all studied Byron for tense minutes after he’d calmed down. His outburst had scattered the gold and copper. He’d destroyed all the work we’d put in for the past few weeks.
But he couldn’t tell us why he’d erupted.
“I don’t know,” he said after I dismissed the rest of my clan members. “I saw something in Ricky. It came out of him and went after you, Elder.”
Ishigara and Krieger both looked at me from where they stood behind Byron and gave me short shakes of their head. Whatever Byron had thought he’d seen, neither of them had detected it.
But no one had detected Xaophis during the duel between Mario and Christina. The foul crea
ture had been invisible to everyone but me.
“Okay,” I said wearily. “I need you to go back to the dorm and spend some time in your room. Until we know what set you off, I can’t have you involved in this work.”
Byron opened his mouth to protest, his cheeks flushed with anger. Then he bowed his head to me. “I apologize, Elder. You’re right. I made a terrible mistake today. I won’t let it happen again.”
Ishigara and Krieger waited for Byron to leave the ritual chamber. Then the scrivenings professor pinched the bridge of her nose. “You were so close,” she said. “When you’ve gathered enough materials, we can try again. Next time—”
It was my turn to shake my head. “It will take time to get that many aspects. We’ll talk about next steps when we get there.”
“Very well, Elder Warin,” Ishigara said. “I will do some research. Perhaps I can shed some light on what happened here today.”
“I’ll do the same,” Krieger said. “If you have any ideas, please let us know.”
Being treated kindly by my professors was a pleasant change of pace. For once, it felt as if they were looking at me as closer to an equal than an abominable freak.
“Thank you for your help,” I said to them both. I bowed, and they returned the gesture. “I couldn’t have gotten this far without you. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to try again.”
But I wasn’t sure when that would be. I left Ishigara’s ritual chamber feeling exhausted and wrung out. With Xaophis loose in the School, attacks could come from anywhere, at any time. Maps had warned me about the threat, but she hadn’t given me the first clue how to defeat it. Until I finished the Flame’s quest, anything could happen. No one was safe. Not my clan, not my friends.
Not me.
That put me in a bad spot. Anyone who helped me with the quest was open to attack. Xaophis could turn anyone who knew my plans against me.
That meant I couldn’t risk asking my clan members or my professors for help in creating the next batch of orichalcum. Any of them could disrupt the ritual again, costing me more weeks of lost time and materials. Until I could figure out a way to ferret out the presence of Xaophis, I didn’t know who to trust.
Days passed while I pondered that problem. I wanted to dive into the library and search for an answer, but there just wasn’t time. When I wasn’t in class, I was with my clan, distilling copper and gold from wastewater. Byron, disappointed that he couldn’t help us any longer, spent more and more of his time alone in his room. I hated to leave him like that, but every minute I spent trying to figure out if Xaophis was still inside him was a minute I wasn’t focused on the quest.
Finishing the Flame’s mission was the only way to keep my clan and friends safe. And safety had become my number one concern. The number of duels in the School’s halls had increased to levels I’d never imagined possible. It seemed like the clang of fusion blades and shouts of sparring students never ended.
Cruzal did what she could to keep students separated from one another because the chaos that tore through the School’s corridors made it difficult for anyone to concentrate on anything other than avoiding challenges or hunting down their next target. Hahen and Niddhogg helped herd my clan members around danger spots while moving from class to class together. I’d taken to bringing them food in the dorm to avoid the dining hall, and they posted guards to keep intruders away.
Fortunately, the professors still maintained order in the classrooms. As long as my clan members were studying, they were safe. It was every other minute of the day that they were in terrible danger.
Which is why the next two weeks passed at a glacial pace. I worked day and night to process more gold and copper aspects from the wastewater and used my clan members only sparingly. If Byron had spread Xaophis to Ricky or any of the rest of them when I wasn’t around, they couldn’t be trusted.
And while I didn’t see any further signs of Xaophis inside my clan, the spirit was always at the edge of my thoughts. I spotted it swirling through the hallways after duels and felt it whenever Byron looked at me. The creature’s influence was spreading, and I didn’t have the first clue how to fight it.
That left me in a terrible mood, and Clem called me on it one night in the Stacks.
“What’s eating you?” Clem asked me after she’d gotten her charges squared away with some additional scrivening homework. “Don’t shut me out.”
“I don’t think I have a choice,” I said. “Xaophis is out there, waiting for a chance to go after my allies or throw a monkey wrench into my plans. I’m worried that even what you guys are doing to help my clan puts you in danger.”
“Kayophiwhat?” Clem asked, her brow furrowed.
It was easy to forget that my friends had their own lives and concerns. While I was running around trying to make orichalcum and preparing to create the new Empyrean Flame, Clem was focused on her schoolwork, how the Right of Primacy would affect her clan, and other things I’d been too busy to ask her about.
Her question made me realize how much becoming an elder had changed my life. Responsibility had eaten away at my time and energy, leaving me with little of either to devote to my friends. Clem deserved better than that.
I made a silent vow to give more of myself to her when this was over.
After I’d made the orichalcum.
And created the Flame.
And beaten Xaophis.
And wrapped up the final leg of the quest, whatever that was.
“I’m sorry,” I said, hoping she understood how many things that apology was meant to cover. “Xaophis is the spirit that Maps warned us about. It’s trying to stop me from completing the quest.”
“Stop us,” Clem insisted. “You’re not in this alone, Jace.”
Furendo shouted from the sparring section. I bolted to my feet and used jinsei to rush to the sparring area at superhuman speed. Eric was already there when I arrived. He’d separated Furendo from Hazel, who bounced on the balls of her feet with a grin on her face.
“We’re good,” Eric said with his usual cocky grin. “I just showed them a new trick and Hazel used it to knock this guy down.”
My friend tousled Furendo’s hair and turned his attention back to the sparring partners. It was good to see him putting his skills and knowledge to use outside the ring. Eric was turning out to be an excellent teacher.
“What can I do?” Clem asked. “I promised you I’d help with anything you needed.”
I thought about it for a few moments, but every time I came up with something for her to do, I discarded it almost as quickly. She couldn’t separate gold and copper from the waste materials. She couldn’t see Xaophis, and I couldn’t have her watch over my clan members without attracting unwanted attention from her clan. The Thunder’s Children weren’t heavy into clan politics, but that could change at any time. The Right was pushing everyone to the edge.
“What you’re doing here, helping them study, teaching them,” I said, “that’s as much as I can ask of you.”
“You can’t do this by yourself,” Clem insisted.
“She’s right.” Abi rolled up to us, his chair’s wheels making a faint hiss across the stone floor. His usually friendly face bore a stern frown. “You’re a powerful sacred artist, Jace. Probably one of the strongest to ever live. But you’re still just one man.”
The weight of my friends’ disapproval was a heavy burden on my shoulders. They’d been by my side for most of my time here at the School of Swords and Serpents. But as much as I wanted to trust them, I couldn’t. For their safety, and my own.
“This isn’t how I want to do this,” I said, walking back toward the distillation lab. My clan members didn’t need to hear this conversation. “But if you could see what I’ve seen, you’d understand why I can’t drag any of you further into this mess.”
Eric arrived with Niddhogg in tow. The Resplendent Sun leaned against the wall of books at the laboratory’s entrance and fixed me with his fiery glare. “We’re in this together.
The Empyrean Flame gave the quest to you, but it took all of us to finish the first leg. You don’t get to decide you’re a lone wolf, Jace.”
The way Eric emphasized that last word made it clear that he didn’t care if I was an elder. First and foremost, I was Jace, the kid he’d befriended when almost no one else would. His sparring partner.
And the man who’d stolen his destiny to save the world.
There was no getting around any of that. But it changed nothing.
“I’ve hurt you all,” I said, looking my friends in the eyes one at a time. “I know that. And this quest has taken something from all of you. You’ve sacrificed to get us to this point. But what you’re asking could end your lives. That’s not a price I’ll ask you to pay.”
Clem crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re not asking us. We’re telling you.”
“We all are,” Hahen added as he drifted through a stack of books and took a seat on the table. “The Flame’s quest is a heavy load. You’ll need many hands to lift it.”
“And what if Xaophis gets to one of you?” My voice sounded harsh, even to my ears, but I couldn’t help it. They didn’t understand the risk. “That’s one more enemy that can stab me in the back.”
Eric bristled. “And four more who stand ready to defend you. It can’t get us all, Jace. No matter how good it is, we’ll beat it.”
“What about Tru?” I shot back. “If I decide the dragons can’t be trusted, will you tell her what we’re up to?”
“That’s not fair,” Eric started, but I cut him off.
“I know,” I said with exasperation. “That’s the whole point. None of this is fair. Our enemy is ruthless and cunning. Xaophis will use every trick it can think of to stop us. There’s no way to tell who he’s gotten to until it’s too late. For all I know, one of you could be infested right now.”
“It’s really that insidious?” Abi asked. “It could be in one of us and you wouldn’t know?”
“It may be even worse than that,” I said with a sigh. “It could be in you and you wouldn’t know. When Byron flipped out and attacked Ricky during the ritual, he couldn’t tell us why he’d done it. He still doesn’t know. And I won’t tell him until I have a cure.”