Infinite Core (School of Swords and Serpents Book 5)

by Gage Lee

  “That’s the best you got?” I taunted it.

  In the meantime, I shot a frantic thought to Consul Reyes. “What’s your path?”

  “I don’t—” Reyes caught herself. “Blood Spider.”

  The instant she said the words, I saw the techniques unfold before me. It was the same path Hagar had walked. I was familiar with its basics. An idea came to me.

  “That is far from my best, child of man,” Xaophis crowed with a voice like an earthquake. “My power comes from the very act of creation. I was the Flame’s trusted ally, and I will guard its design with strength and skill your puny mortal mind cannot fathom.”

  Xaophis had stopped its charge. Now it circled me at a more leisurely pace, enjoying this moment. It wanted me to know why I had to die and how much it would relish my passing. But I had something to throw that monologue right off the rails. If it was supposed to protect the Flame, maybe I could convince it to give me a hand instead of chewing me in half.

  “The Flame sent me you,” I shouted. “Can’t you sense it inside of me?”

  For a moment, the spirit froze. Its faceted obsidian eyes burrowed into me. My core tried to push the flying serpent away, but I suppressed my natural defenses. Let it see all there was.

  “Lies,” Xaophis spat. “There is nothing within you but a pathetic shadow of the Flame’s true power. You may pretend to be more than that amongst mortals, but your deceit cannot sway me.”

  Do something, you good-for-nothing freeloader, I spat at the power inside me.

  It didn’t even have the decency to yawn.

  “Just because you can’t see the truth doesn’t make me a liar,” I said in a desperate bid to save my hide. The jigsaw pieces of my idea were coming together. Just a little longer, and I’d be ready to spring it on the monster. “You hide yourself from mortals. Have you considered the new Flame wants to hide itself from you?”

  “Why would it do such a thing?” Xaophis roared. “I have protected its design for countless millennia. My strength bested the Locust Court. It was my fangs that ripped the heart from the Eldwyr Shadow and their Singing King. Never have I shirked my duty, never have I failed to defend my charge.”

  I had to keep the monster talking to buy some time. I still needed to position the fire aspects, wrap wind around them, maybe add a little stone magic on top of that, then tie it all up neat and tidy.

  “And that’s where you’ve failed,” I said, stalling. My best shot was to lean into the weapon that had brought down Consul Reyes. The truth. “The Design is flawed, Xaophis. The Flame abandoned it and sent me to kindle a new fire. If you stand in my way, you’re opposing the Flame. Surely you can see that.”

  “No,” the spirit murmured. “This cannot be.”

  Doubt shook Xaophis. Its confidence wavered, and it turned away from me for a moment. It didn’t believe me, but it didn’t disbelieve me, either. It probably had a hundred questions to ask.

  “Hey,” I said. “Just let me go. Help me fix the Flame. It’s for the best.”

  Xaophis turned toward me, its eyes afire with sacred energy. In the lull before the storm I sensed on the horizon, I saw that nebulous haze drift from around its head. It fell in a lazy spiral down, down to the charred remnants of the previous Flame.

  “Never,” Xaophis shouted and renewed its charge.

  “It’s your funeral,” I roared so loud the beast’s mechanical nightmare voice was drowned out.

  At the same instant, I unleashed the hybrid technique that I’d stitched together from my allies’ powers. A burning lattice of blood aspects gushed out of my mouth and opened wide to embrace Xaophis. Its sticky strands wrapped around his face, blinding him.

  But blood wasn’t all I’d put into the attack.

  Abi’s defensive technique added crushing weight to the snare. Eric’s fire set it ablaze. Finally, Clem’s power surrounded Xaophis in a vortex of whirling jinsei that held him prisoner.

  Burned scales flaked off the spirit’s form. One of its eyes burst from the pressure the spell put on it. Its horrible death cry was drowned out by the howling tempest.

  “Lend me your strength!” I screamed to my allies, and they flooded me with a tidal wave of sacred energy.

  The combined power of my friends and the Disciples passed through me in a howling rush, like blood jetting from a severed artery. The spell grew stronger and more deadly with every thunderous beat of my heart.

  Xaophis screamed until the web of elemental death strangled it. My sorcery, a combination of so much strength and so many skills, bit into its very essence. It burned for long minutes after it had stopped writhing. The inferno went on and on until we were all exhausted. My core ached from the effort, and my mind felt raw and delirious.

  The spell faded, and the spirit’s charred husk floated through the sticky webs it had summoned. After the endless clangor of its terrifying voice, the silence was a shocking comfort.

  But it sure would have been nice if the stupid webs went away so I could celebrate with my friends. I hung there, half-conscious, thinking about the changes the Flame would make, and how much I resented having to bring Sage Reyes back from the grave I’d so righteously dumped him in.

  Maybe he’d do something stupid after he got back and we could have a rematch. That’d be nice.

  A muffled crunching noise drew my attention. Xaophis’s corpse had bumped into a web. Ashes sloughed from its mutilated form and drifted into the void. It stuck to the glowing strand, cracking open like a charred marshmallow.

  Milky spiritual essence oozed from the blackened shell. A constellation of pale white beads floated around the spirit’s husk, glinting and amorphous. It was strangely beautiful.

  And terrifying.

  “No,” I protested. “No no no.”

  Two of those translucent blobs stuck together. Then three, four, a dozen, a hundred. They stretched and twisted themselves into a long, serpentine form. Mandibles, glistening white and fresh, clacked.

  “Why won’t you die?” I howled.

  I watched helplessly as Xaophis rose from the ashes of the pyre I’d built. It screamed, a horrible, pained wail that ripped through the void in what felt like an endless ululation.

  And then it glared at me, venom dripping from its clacking mouth parts.

  “I am eternal, mortal,” it said, strangely calm. “But you will soon find that.

  “You.”

  “Are.”

  “Not.”

  The Infinite

  XAOPHIS DIDN’T TOY with me this time. It swooped up to where I hung in the web and closed its mandibles on either side of my neck. The enormous blades applied steady pressure to my throat, squeezing the blood vessels by millimeters.

  “How does it feel, liar?” the spirit asked. “To see everything you’ve worked to build crumble to dust before you. To feel the life squeezed from your pathetic body.”

  This close to me, the spirit was nothing but noise and black, gleaming chitin. My spirit sight showed only endless strands of black thread that descended to the Grand Design or arced off to the strange, dead husk at the center of the void.

  And what did it matter? I’d be dead in a few moments, regardless of what I did or didn’t see.

  “Not great,” I admitted. “How’d it feel when I burned you to ash?”

  A strange clicking sound came from somewhere deep in the spirit’s body. It took me a moment to realize it was laughing at me. “It was unpleasant, but I got better.”

  Death didn’t scare me anymore, but it was annoying to come this close to finishing the quest only to be stymied by some tidbit of information I didn’t have. Tru had been right about dealing honestly with Consul Reyes, and she’d been right about letting people help me. But when it got down to the big game, playing well with others hadn’t won me any prizes. I’d bonded with Disciples and borrowed my friends’ powers, and still we couldn’t finish the spirit.

  I’d spend eternity haunting the world’s libraries, trying to figure out what I’d mi
ssed.

  Thanks for nothing, I told the Flame.

  Xaophis squeezed harder, pushing past the limits of my master core. My skin parted before the razor-sharp edges of its mandibles, and my blood flowed, warm and sticky, over my shoulders and down my chest. There was no pain at first, but when it showed up to the party, it came on hard.

  “Savor these last moments, mortal,” Xaophis said in a voice that rattled my bones. “Treasure them when your soul tumbles into the void and an eternity of nothingness embraces you.”

  “I’ll haunt you,” I threatened. “Every minute of every day, I’ll float along behind you and sing ‘The Song that Never Ends.’ You’ll be completely insane in a week. But before we get there, I have one question for you.”

  The pressure on my neck relented slightly, and my master-level core immediately began repairing the damage I’d suffered. “Even on the brink of extinction, your curiosity bests you. Ask, then.”

  Xaophis and I weren’t so different. Sure, it had the whole edgy death lord thing going for it, but we were both able to connect our cores to other mortals. No one else that I knew could accomplish that feat. “How do you do it?” I asked. “Bind all those cores to your own, I mean.”

  The spirit let up on my neck. “I am the Grand Design’s guardian. I was forged at the moment of creation. My being is an intrinsic part of the web of fate that binds all mortals. You are all born tied to me. I have but to activate that connection under the right circumstances to make you mine.”

  That was an unnerving and interesting thought. “You and I are bound?”

  Xaophis chuckled and squeezed my neck until the blood flowed once more. “We were until you severed yourself from the Design.”

  The spirit’s words sent a chill racing down my spine. The answer that had eluded me for so long was tantalizingly close. I strained to focus on it, to bring it to the surface of my memories. And when it did, the solution to my problems hit me like a hammer blow.

  The spirit’s powers were part of almost every mortal. It hid itself not by tricking our eyes, but by using its connection to the Grand Design to erase itself from the thoughts and memories of its enemies.

  I could see Xaophis because I wasn’t connected to the Design. The spirit couldn’t trick me like it fooled the others. But once it had infected a new host, it bound that person to its thread of fate and vanished back into the Grand Design. I couldn’t see Xaophis inside Byron or Christina because it controlled them from afar.

  My separation from the Design was my strength.

  And my weakness.

  That’s why the Vision of the Design hadn’t been working. Because the great pattern of destiny had been in flux all this time, as I worked to change it and Xaophis did its best to stop me. Everything was still up in the air, until one of us defeated the other.

  “That’s what the duels were all about?” I asked. “You convinced some elder to get everyone to fight so you could jump from one person to the next. All so you could stop me.”

  Xaophis seemed to have forgotten its previous desire to kill me super dead. It didn’t release me, but it let my wounds heal, and blood stopped running down my chest. Its curiosity weighed on me like a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Your fate once echoed through eternity, Eclipse Warrior. And then you erased yourself. It was like a distant star winking out. I found the easily influenced and used my power to steer them in your direction. You had to be stopped before you destroyed everything.”

  Guilt hung around my neck, but I shrugged it off. I’d cut myself out of the Grand Design because it was necessary. I wasn’t destroying the world, I was saving it. And if this monster thought it could make me feel bad about doing the right thing, it was wrong.

  But while it was talking, I worked. My thoughts raced to Reyes, and Xaophis couldn’t eavesdrop on them. I’m trapped. But I think there’s a way out of this.

  I quickly filled the Consul in on my plan and felt her confirm that she’d spread the word. While Xaophis railed about all the horrible crimes I’d committed, I cycled my breathing and gathered my thoughts. My mind was crystal clear, sharpened by the near-death experience towering above me.

  “You talk too much,” I said. “I guess after an eternity sitting by yourself in the middle of nowhere, you’ve got a lot of words pent up inside you.”

  Xaophis didn’t laugh or howl at me. It increased the pressure on my neck by slow degrees and began eulogizing me. “This will be your final resting place. The very heart of creation, where you dared to tread and paid the ultimate price for your hubris. Your spirit will hang here, in the web that binds all eternity, so that any other traveler foolish enough to set foot in my territory will know to turn back. Your friends and allies—”

  “Would like a word with you,” I interrupted the spirit. “It’s someone else’s turn to talk.”

  “What—” Xaophis began.

  While the spirit had babbled on and on, I’d refilled my core until it was nearly bursting with jinsei. All that sacred energy rushed out of me at the same instant. Raw power flowed through the Borrowed Core and into the Disciples, filling their spirits until they glowed.

  In that moment, I remembered Reyes’s threats and the longstanding hatred she’d harbored for me. For that one second, she could have both killed Xaophis and used the power I’d lent her to destroy me. There would never be a more ripe opportunity for betrayal.

  But she didn’t take it.

  Before Xaophis could finish its question, Reyes and her Disciples plunged toward it like a swarm of meteors. Fusion blades tore into the spirit’s body, ripping great chunks away from it to expose the milky spirit stuff within.

  No matter how much power I wielded, I couldn’t permanently damage Xaophis because I wasn’t part of the Grand Design. But my power, in the hands of the Disciples, who were bound by the Design, could destroy it.

  Reyes and her crew hacked at the beast like lumberjacks bringing down a redwood. I fed them jinsei and lent them the strength of my core to heal themselves from the wounds they suffered and protect them from Xaophis’s mighty attacks.

  The pain was horrific, but I didn’t care. It was worth the price I’d pay to end this.

  Clem found me while the battle raged. Tears ran down her cheeks as she floated closer. She reached out for me, but I warned her away.

  “These are kind of sticky,” I said. “I think when the big boy dies they’ll go with it. Until then, you’ll have to steer clear.”

  She nodded, and Eric and Abi joined her.

  “You look terrible,” Eric said.

  “Saving the world does that to you,” I said, and winced. One of the Disciples had taken a hard shot to the spine, and I’d absorbed the damage. Good thing I had these handy webs to keep me upright.

  Abi looked over his shoulder at the raging battle. “It’s not saved yet.”

  “I figured I’d let you knock it out,” I said. “Ready to earn some glory?”

  The Disciples had Xaophis reeling. It whirled this way and that, desperately seeking an escape. Its panic filled the air with aspects I shrugged off. It was good for this monster to know how it had made others feel when it closed in for the kill.

  I hoped that memory would stick with it for a very long time.

  “You don’t want us to kill it?” Eric asked.

  “Nope,” I said. “Break it down and bring it to me. Big ugly still has a job to do.”

  Clem hesitated for a moment after Eric and Abi headed for their target. She looked at me with wide, wondering eyes and asked, “Why couldn’t you take it down, but they can?”

  “I didn’t understand what Tru meant,” I said. “Or Eric. They both told me I’d need allies. I thought that meant people to back me up while I did all the hard work.”

  “That’s not what allies are,” Clem said cautiously. “Or friends.”

  “I get it,” I said. “Xaophis was built to protect the Grand Design from outsiders. Nothing disconnected from that ancient pattern could harm it. At least not permane
ntly. But with my power, the Disciples...”

  “And us,” she said. “I’ll be right back. I’ve got to get my licks in.”

  Xaophis never had a chance after that. I pitied the creature at the end. It hadn’t been created to understand the complex nature of reality. It was a simple creature that knew only to destroy all threats to its charge.

  But it had given me an important clue why I hadn’t been able to fuse the Flame’s power to the new shell. The anchor wasn’t the husk at the heart of the void.

  Xaophis was the anchor. They were two halves of the same whole.

  That’s why the spirit hadn’t recognized the power in me. It had never seen it so weak, so incomplete, because it hadn’t existed until the Empyrean Flame burst to life.

  The Disciples and my friends hauled the defeated beast to me. Its eyes glared with dark fury it was powerless to act on. Its body was grievously wounded, and even with all the jinsei fueling it, those horrible injuries would take a very long time to heal.

  “It’s over,” I said. “Release your prisoners, return to your true purpose.”

  The spirit tried to lift its head in defiance, but was too weak. “I will never surrender to you,” it said.

  “I know,” I answered, “but I had to give you that chance.”

  There was no point in discussing anything with the spirit. It was blind to the new reality and bound to a truth that had died a year ago. Without another word, I began the dark alchemy to create a new Flame.

  As with the gold and copper, the power within me and Xaophis were too difficult to control as it was. With painstaking jinsei stitches, I bound the power to my thread of fate. I worked like a machine, blotting out everything but my work. It was a slow and delicate process, and several times I had to recreate a stitch after the spirit’s angry thrashing tore it loose.

  But that was okay, I had nothing but time.

  The others watched me in silence, supporting me with jinsei and soft, soothing words. Their support kept me going through the long hours of soul scrivening. The more time that passed, the less certain I became of where I ended and my two patients began.