Infinite Core (School of Swords and Serpents Book 5)

by Gage Lee

  For such a little kid, Furendo moved like the wind. He pumped jinsei into his legs and led us through broken-down hallways, around new construction, over a gap in the floor that opened into a cavernous chamber I’d never seen before, and finally into a courtyard.

  The air was thick with the threat of violence, and I couldn’t shake the feeling of dozens of eyes on me. Had Tru already made it back to Shambala? If so, maybe the dragon seers were taking a peek at what I was up to.

  “There he is!” Ferundo shouted. “Kevin Nagineau, member of the Disciples of Jade Flame, I challenge you to a duel.”

  Kevin wasn’t alone. Three of his Disciple pals were with him on the far side of the courtyard, and all four of them summoned their fusion blades.

  “I accept your challenge,” Kevin shouted. “On the condition that my allies duel with me. Pick three more of your clan to face them, and we can begin.”

  Well, that was a surprise. I’d assumed the other clans would avoid conflict with mine unless they held a clear advantage. I sized up Kevin and his friends and made a quick decision on who I wanted to face them.

  “Ricky, Byron, and Lissa,” I said. “You’re with Furendo. Line up based on size and take them down.”

  All three of my clan mates nodded sharply and formed up on Furendo’s flanks. Byron took the sole spot on his right, while Ricky and Lissa went left. The four of them ignited their fusion blades together, and I admired their speed and precision.

  “I accept your challenge,” Furendo called out.

  The Disciples responded with a charge straight at my clan mates. Like Rafael, these fighters favored long, heavy weapons more akin to polearms than swords. The blades were broad and heavy as axes, and their hafts were thick as quarterstaffs. Balls of jinsei sparked at the ends of the long handles, letting them double as maces if needed.

  The Disciples’ weapons were meant for powerful cleaving attacks and sweeping slashes. If my team could avoid the slow, mighty blows, they had a chance.

  But a single impact could be enough to take them out of the fight.

  I held my breath and watched my students. Ricky and Lissa swept wide, peeling two of the attackers off. Ricky, by far the smallest fighter on the field, wielded a long, thin blade similar to a rapier. It was useless as a slashing weapon, and far too light for parrying, but its needle-sharp tip made for quick, deadly thrusts. Lissa’s weapon was a closer match for the Disciples’. It reminded me of a long cleaver. She held it cocked back over her shoulder, no thought for defense, ready to hammer it through anyone who got in her way.

  Furendo and Byron had already engaged their targets. Furendo’s long sword was hefty enough to deflect Kevin’s first brutal attack. In the same move, he drove his knee up into his opponent’s abdomen. That well-timed blow, coupled with the downward momentum of the Disciple’s brutal attack, smashed the wind from Kevin’s lungs. The Disciple fell to his knees, gasping for air, his eyes bulging from their sockets.

  Kevin didn’t defend himself from Furendo’s follow-up strike. The Disciple fell into a forward roll that carried him under my clan member’s finishing move. Though he was still dazed, Kevin was far from out of the fight.

  Byron and his opponent had squared off, both searching for an opening. My clan member feinted at the Disciple, then backpedaled furiously to avoid a counterattack.

  The Disciple’s heavy weapon scythed through the space where Byron had just stood. The weapon’s momentum twisted him hard to the left, leaving him exposed to Byron’s attack.

  My clan member’s blade swept down toward the Disciple’s exposed neck, and for a moment I was sure Byron was about to decapitate the kid. But he twisted his grip at the last second, hammering the flat of his blade across his opponent’s shoulders.

  Xaophis appeared at the exact moment of impact. The spirit’s lithe, serpentine body darted from Byron’s blade and speared through the Disciple’s body. The unexpected assault stunned the young boy, and he collapsed to the ground, his weapon vanishing.

  “I claim the Right of Primacy,” Byron said and brought the tip of his sword down.

  Before my clan member could finish the duel, though, Kevin recovered and hurled a handful of dirt into Byron’s eyes. In the same instant, he pumped jinsei through his body and regained his feet. He exploded away from Furendo, feet churning up clots of earth and grass. With a roar, Kevin plowed into Byron with bone-crunching force. The impact knocked the pair to the ground, and they rolled head over heels across the grass. They lay on the grass, stunned.

  “Watch your back!” Ricky shouted, drawing my attention back to the smaller fighters on the other side of the courtyard.

  Lissa took her ally’s advice and threw herself forward. She rolled away from the chopping attack from the Disciple who’d flanked her and bounced back up onto the balls of her feet. She charged at the off-balance Disciple before he could recover from his missed attack.

  Lissa’s heavy weapon hammered at the boy’s arm. Though my clan mate used the blunt side of her blade, she struck with wild abandon, filling her muscles with jinsei to empower every attack. The Disciple’s arm gave way with a wet crunch, and his fusion blade disappeared. The broken arm flopped uselessly from the elbow to the wrist, a rubbery sack of meat and broken bone that sent waves of agony pouring through the Disciple’s aura.

  “I yield!” the wounded young man shouted, raising his good hand.

  “I claim the Right of Primacy,” Lissa shouted, pressing the tip of her blade into the back of her foe’s neck. The kneeling Disciple nodded, a weak sob escaping his lips.

  I pumped my fist in victory, though I scowled in the next second. A powerful blow had knocked Ricky off his feet and left a nasty gash from his left shoulder to his right hip. His robes fluttered away from the ugly wound, and blood splashed onto the grass as he fell.

  “No!” Byron shouted. He’d regained his feet before his opponent, and for the moment had no one threatening him.

  He hurled his fusion blade with all his strength. The weapon spun, end over end, ribbons of jinsei trailing behind it in silver spirals. It was a daring, desperate attack that temporarily left Byron defenseless.

  It was also slow and off target.

  The Disciple used his weapon’s heavy handle to smash Byron’s blade away from him. The empowered blade let out a spray of sparks and landed in the grass, where it sputtered and sizzled before vanishing in a burst of jinsei.

  “Nice try,” the Disciple taunted Byron. “Now watch me finish your little friend.”

  But Ricky didn’t want to be finished. He’d resummoned his fusion blade and thrust it at the Disciple’s midsection with both hands, one braced on the bottom of the pommel to give an extra driving force to the piercing assault.

  The Disciple had already begun his downward swing before he saw the incoming attack. He had no time to avoid the strike or summon a technique to lessen its impact.

  Ricky’s blade pierced his opponent just below his solar plexus and skewered clean through his body, its sizzling tip emerging from the skin beside his spine.

  “Urk,” the Disciple said, and tumbled to the side.

  Ricky had the presence of mind to banish his fusion blade before it could do more damage to the boy. His eyes were wide, and splatters of his foe’s blood stained his cheeks. He looked shocked, like a little kid who’d wandered onto a battlefield by mistake.

  “I didn’t mean to—” he began.

  “On your feet!” I shouted.

  There were still two Disciples on the field. The duel wasn’t over until they were all lying on the ground.

  Ricky nodded furiously and scrambled to his feet, one hand clutched to the wound that had nearly split his body diagonally. His fusion blade reappeared in his right hand, and he pressed it to the throat of his fallen opponent. “I claim the Right of Primacy.”

  Kevin Nagineau held his blade out to fend off Furendo. “Byron cheated,” he shouted. “He struck a duelist he wasn’t fighting!”

  “Your man tackled m
e first,” Byron shot back. “I assumed that meant it was a free-for-all.”

  The two remaining Disciples suddenly looked very nervous. Kevin muttered a curse at his ally and shook his head. “Fine. The duel continues.”

  I chuckled and summoned my fusion blade to lean on. Though my weapon was nowhere near as heavy as that favored by the Disciples, the long, broad blade was intimidating. Doubly so because of the black-eyed freak wielding it. “How honorable of you to allow us to continue after your side cheated. Let’s see if you redeem yourself or if my clan gains two more trophies for our wall.”

  Ferundo and Byron closed in on their targets as I spoke. The pair unleashed a blinding flurry of attacks in a furious blur. The air hummed with unleashed jinsei and sparks danced around the combatants as their blades slammed together again and again. Byron’s relentless assault pushed his foe back on one heel, then one knee, and finally hammered the young man’s blade from his hand and left him cowering and defenseless. Byron stomped down on the boy’s back, pinning him to the ground. “I claim the Right of Primacy!”

  That left just Ferundo and Kevin. They circled one another, Ferundo looking for the opening he needed to end the fight, his foe hoping for some way out of a battle that had just become very lopsided.

  “You can always yield,” I offered. “Save yourself a thrashing from Ferundo.”

  “Never,” the Disciple shouted back. “I’ll never bow down before you filthy monsters. I know what you did, Warin. You’re the monster who killed his own mother to take power!”

  Ferundo roared and came in hard. His long sword darted around the heavier blade, opening narrow, ugly cuts along the Disciple’s wrist and forearm. “He’s Elder Warin to you,” Ferundo shouted. “Yield, or be disarmed!”

  “Never!” Kevin wove his weapon through a deadly figure eight, lashing out at Ferundo with its tip and haft, trying desperately to take my clan mate down.

  But Ferundo dodged around his attacks with amazing dexterity. And when the Disciple overextended himself, Ferundo was right there to take advantage of his misstep. The long sword sliced across the back of Kevin’s hand, severing his index and middle fingers.

  The Disciple’s fusion blade fell from his hand and vanished in a cloud of jinsei sparks. He screamed and raised his wounded hand into the air. Blood pumped from the wound for a split second, before his core recognized the trauma and closed off the supply of blood.

  “You’ve crippled me,” Kevin wailed. “I’ll never hold a sword again.”

  “Do you yield?” Ferundo asked in a calm, bored voice, as if he’d seen a thousand severed fingers.

  “Yes,” Kevin hollered. “Help me find my fingers!”

  “You don’t need them,” I said. “Ferundo, Byron—get these useless slugs on their feet. Cut off the sleeves of their robes and blindfold them. Do the same with Michelle. I don’t want them to see where we’re taking them.”

  “My fingers,” Kevin sobbed. “Please, I’m maimed.”

  “You’ll get better,” I assured him, and bent my mind to finding us a path back to the Stacks.

  The Split

  I’D NEVER FELT SO LOST as I did that day. No matter how much effort I put into finding the Stacks, the School refused to obey my mental commands. Not even pumping enough jinsei into my channels to make me practically glow helped. It was as if I had a noose around my neck pulling me inch by inch to the hangman’s gibbet.

  Fine. Someone wanted my attention? Now they had it.

  While my enemies could pull me off course by concentrating on me, that was a two-way street. If I focused my attention on them, their interference would guide me to them like a lighthouse beacon.

  “We’re in for a fight,” I warned my clan mates. “Fusion blades out, defensive techniques up. The instant any of you see a threat, go for it.”

  Ricky’s gulp was audible even from all the way at the tail end of our train of clan mates. “We’re not dueling?”

  I thought of Xaophis rampaging through the School, pushing people into bloodthirsty battles. The threat had grown, it would keep on growing, and our only way to survive was to get ahead of it. If we waited for a formal duel announcement, a spirit-driven maniac might kill one of us. “No challenges. It’s time to fight.”

  My clan mates looked at me with wide eyes and worried faces. They were scared, and I couldn’t blame them. The sounds of duels—clashing fusion blades, shouting students, the meaty crunch of wounds, and the hum of sizzling techniques—flooded the School’s hallways. And while no one was attacking us right that moment, the chaos swirled around us like a hurricane and its eye.

  I’d been so focused on pushing them to win that I hadn’t taken the time to help them process all of this. It would have been so nice for us all to sit down with cookies and hot cocoa to discuss our plans.

  But there was no time for a sip of water, much less a heart-to-heart discussion about the political war that threatened to extinguish us. With few options, I did the best thing I could.

  “We will beat the rest of them,” I said. “Think of this as... I don’t know, a game of dodgeball. We have to eliminate the other teams before they do the same to us. Do you understand?”

  “It’s a fight for our lives,” Byron said. Sweat dripped from his brow, and his eyes had the hollow, vacant look of someone who’s seen far too much. His voice, though, was strong, and he used it to rally the others. “Our clan has been used, beaten up, and betrayed by the others. I don’t know what Elder Warin has in store for us, but I do know that he will not go down without a fight. He’s done the right thing, even if it wasn’t easy, for as long as I’ve known him. Do what he says, and at least we’ll have a chance to get through this.”

  Byron had been isolated from the clan since he’d attacked Ricky. He knew I didn’t trust him. The other students knew that, too. Maybe that’s why his motivational speech hit them so hard. Whatever the reason, Byron stirred the other clan members to action. Their blades crackled to life and their techniques hummed with jinsei.

  “Shadow Phoenixes,” I said, pride filling my heart, “let’s show these fools who they’re messing with.”

  The School’s walls rippled and flowed around me like water as it forged a path to the objects of my attention. With the slightest bit of concentration, I willed the School to bring us in behind our enemies. I rounded a corner, my fusion blade at the ready, Thief’s Shield active, my serpents raised above my head like scorpion stingers prepared to strike. The familiar darkness of my Eclipse nature stirred from its slumber like a bear waking from winter’s hibernation. It was hungry and ready to take out its anger on anyone who crossed my path.

  Like the fools ahead of me. Their cores glowed hot, an artist and a pair of disciples. Not that it mattered. I’d take the strongest one with my shield, then hack the others down with my serpents and sword. They’d never see it coming.

  “Jace!” Clem shouted. “Finally.”

  I’d been so keyed up to fight that it took me a moment to realize what had happened. When the truth hit me, I slapped my hand against my forehead in shock. “You three were blocking me?”

  Abi, Eric, and Clem all nodded vigorously. Clem even offered me a smile, though that did little to temper my bad mood.

  “You shouldn’t have done this,” I said. And then to my clan mates, “Weapons down. Doesn’t look like we’re having a fight after all.”

  That was why my opponents had been able to prevent me from reaching the Stacks so easily. My friends and I were bound by experience, affection, and friendship that defied death and destruction. We’d been to the literal ends of the earth and back together. The pull of their attention had been beyond my ability to fight, because I didn’t want to fight it.

  “I’m sorry,” Clem said, stepping forward to put a hand on my cheek. “We heard what happened outside Ishigara’s class. We wanted to help you.”

  My frustration reached new peaks. I loved my friends dearly, but anything they did to help me would hurt them. If their clans thou
ght they were in league with me, there was no telling the punishments they’d suffer.

  “I have to go,” I said. “If I don’t end this—”

  “We have to hide,” Clem interrupted. “If we can’t get orders from our clan, then we won’t have to pick sides.”

  “No,” I said. “The only way to save yourselves is to stay as far away from me as you possibly can. I appreciate all you’ve done, but we have to split up. If your clans figure out you’re with me, they’ll turn you against me. And if you refuse, then you’ll be exiled.”

  Tears spilled down Clem’s checks. Abi looked away from me, his face ashen. Only Eric would look me in the eye, his gaze clear and confident. “Jace is right,” he said, his voice heavy with sorrow. “There’s nothing more for us to do here.”

  Clem whirled on the prizefighter, her fists clenched. “I won’t leave my friend to be torn apart by his enemies. After all we’ve been through, I can’t let that happen.”

  Jinsei crackled around Clem’s hands. She looked ready to fight anyone, even Eric. I realized that Xaophis didn’t have to infect my friends to turn us against one another. The chaos it had sown through the School had accomplished that.

  “Listen to me,” I said, my voice grave. “You’ve done more for me than I could ever ask. But I can’t let you sacrifice yourself for me, Clem.”

  “Maybe you don’t get to make that choice for me,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “It’s my life.”

  The sounds of battle were drawing near. A high-pitched squeal of pain tore down the hallway, the sound of another student learning a cold truth about life. You couldn’t win every duel.

  I needed Clem to get that message. Because it was obvious to me whose power had kept me from the Stacks. Her emotions were running high, and my connection to her was stronger than to anyone else in the world. Clem’s passion could hold me in place. Her desire to save me might just doom us all.

  “You have to let me go, Clem,” I pleaded. “I’m close to the end. But I have to walk the rest of this path with just my clan.”