by Gage Lee
Maybe he knew that I was odd enough Clem wouldn’t be able to identify my style. Or maybe it was a trick to humiliate me in front of his fellow Empyreals.
Two hundred oboli against my one and only chance to gain entry to the world’s most impressive academy of mystic and martial arts. I didn’t believe Clem would know the obscure style my mother had taught me, and I didn’t think she’d be able to identify my hollow core from my breathing technique. If I was right, then that two hundred oboli wager was as good as in my pocket. If I took the bet, I could leave the Five Dragons Challenge with twice the money I’d entered with, even if the champion snapped me in half.
But if I was wrong, then I lost everything.
“You first,” I said, stalling for time. “All of you show me your breathing technique, and then I’ll show you mine.”
Abi crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head.
“It is forbidden. My clan does not allow the display of our sacred techniques to outsiders.”
“I’ll do it.” Eric closed his eyes and raised his hands to the level of his solar plexus. He formed a triangle with the tips of his index fingers and thumbs touching and drew in a deep breath.
Because of my hollow core, it was often difficult for me to focus on auras. But Eric’s energy surrounded him like a cloak of flames, and his core glowed like a bowl of molten gold. His jinsei flared ever brighter around him as he inhaled, and when he finally let the breath out it carried dark flecks of corrupted energy that drifted away like ash on the wind. With every breath, his jinsei glowed brighter until his core was full of sacred energy and his aura had shed all but a fraction of its corruption. It was an impressive display, but Eric’s style was painfully obvious to anyone who’d ever studied the jinsei arts.
“Cloak of Fire style.” All three of the other challengers seemed surprised at my knowledge, which annoyed me. Eric was a member of the Resplendent Suns clan, who flaunted their styles and techniques on televised tournaments all over the world. There were very few jinsei artists who wouldn’t immediately recognize that style.
“Well, we have a scholar here.” Clem placed her goblet on the table. “I won’t ask Abi to ding his honor, but I’ve got no problem showing you mine.”
She let her arms fall to her sides and shook the tension from her hands. She stared deeply into my eyes, but I focused on her aura and not her startlingly green gaze. Clem opened her mouth slightly, her lips parted just enough to reveal the tops of her slightly uneven teeth, and drew in a deep, cleansing breath.
Jinsei swirled into Clem’s core like a whirlpool of power. It flowed through her body’s channels and into her aura in a turbulent rush, and the air around her churned into frothy white and blue strokes of power.
She exhaled, and droplets of corrupted jinsei dripped from the tips of her fingers and formed shadowy puddles around her feet. Clem’s aura obscured her face and twisted around her body like a waterspout, a powerful and deceptive shield that I was certain could transform into a deadly weapon in the blink of an eye.
I struggled to recall the name of this sacred art. My mother had explained most of the clans’ styles to me, and I’d seen more than a few of them on TV or at the local arenas. But this was something different, a mysterious force I couldn’t decipher.
“No guesses?” Clem banished her aura and wisps of jinsei drifted off her skin like steam.
I took another drink of my water to buy myself a few more seconds to think and saw the Jade Flame elder swirling the water in his goblet while very pointedly not looking in my direction. He casually pulled the glass toward his body and tapped its round base against his chest.
“Come now,” Clem said. “You can’t be that thirsty.”
“We never get water this clean in the undercity.” My words struck home, and the three Empyreals glanced at one another uneasily. It was one thing to know that a hidden lower class of virtual slaves worked in labor camps so your family could live in relative opulence. It was another thing entirely to be faced with that reality.
That bought me another few moments to gather my thoughts and consider what the elder had showed me. It obviously had something to do with water, and the way he swirled the contents of his goblet reminded me of the rotation of Clem’s aura. We had tornadoes in St. Louis, but they were called hurricanes when they spun up at sea. And he’d touched his chest, but Hurricane Chest didn’t seem like a very poetic name for a style.
No, not his chest.
His heart.
But if the other half of the style’s name was hurricane, then heart didn’t make much sense. Eye would’ve been more accurate in this case, because Clem stood at the calm center of her aura. It had to be something else. I remembered an old show I’d seen about a storm off the coast of Japan, and the name sprang into my mind like a flash of lightning.
“Heart of the Typhoon style.”
The three Empyreals were obviously surprised, and even the elder seemed a bit shocked that I’d put his clues together.
“Impressive.” Clem recovered quickly, but there was a glint in her emerald eyes that told me she wouldn’t underestimate me again. “You’ve seen mine, now show me yours.”
The look on Clem’s face told me I was in too deep to back out now. She wanted this challenge, and if I backed out after correctly guessing her style she had every right to take offense and demand a duel, right then and there.
I was confident I could defeat one Empyreal with the tricks I’d brought with me that day, but I’d never get past two. And if Clem and I fought, her status was so far above mine no one would blink if she tore my arms and legs off and beat me with them in front of the whole arena.
I looked to the elder for assurances that I wasn’t about to step into a trap, but he was suddenly very interested in the contents of his goblet. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, and if I kept staring at him the other challengers would notice.
“Okay,” I said. There was no point in stalling any further. Either this was going to work, or I’d failed.
My only hope was that my breathing technique was so unusual that Clem had never even heard of it, much less seen it in action. My mother had adapted it from a very old, seldom-taught style that channeled jinsei through the practitioner’s core without storing it for later use. It was a complicated and difficult style that allowed me to cleanse my aura of impurities and corruption, but it was useless for cultivating my core’s strength.
I filled my lungs with a deep breath that harvested the jinsei from the air that surrounded us. Bits of Clem’s watery style collided with energetic sparks from Eric’s fire style, and it all tumbled into my core in a chaotic mess. Before I’d even begun to exhale, though, the elemental aspects that the other challengers had infected the jinsei with were stripped away and drained out of my pores like beads of sweat.
The clarified jinsei in my core picked up crystallized clots of corruption from my aura and leaked out of my mouth in a slow and steady stream. My breath became a circular stream, flowing into my lungs and back out again in an endless loop. It had taken me years to perfect the technique, and now when I fell into the cycle, it was impossible to tell whether I was inhaling or exhaling at any given moment.
I stopped after a few seconds and tried to hide the smile that crept across my lips when I saw the confused look on Clem’s face. My technique wasn’t as powerful as the Empyreals’, but it was obscure and unusual enough that they had no idea what I’d actually done. I felt a spark of hope flare in my chest as I realized that the champion wouldn’t have any more idea what to expect from me than my fellow challengers had.
And, it looked like I’d just won two hundred oboli.
“It’s time.” The elder rose from his seat in the corner and stalked across the room to the refreshments table. “Jason Warin, your lot has been pulled.”
“But I—”
Before Clem could pay up on her lost bet, the elder seized my shoulder and steered me away from the other challengers.
“She lost, s
he owes me two hundred oboli,” I protested.
“I’ll pay you at the school!” Clem called after me, and her confidence that I would pass the challenge lifted my spirits. If an Empyreal thought I had a chance, then maybe I did.
“Perhaps,” the elder of the Jade Flame whispered into my ear as we passed through a veil of darkness at the end of an archway. “Or perhaps not.”
The Challenge
THE CROWD ROARED WITH a single voice as I made my way up the steps to the ring at the center of the arena. They didn’t shout for me as much as at me, and I knew they didn’t care whether I won or lost. They’d come for the violence, and they didn’t care who fed their craving.
The champion nodded to me as I entered the ring, and I returned the gesture emphatically. It was always wise to honor an opponent, especially one who could punch a hole straight through your core.
The announcer gestured for the two of us to join him at the center of the arena. I was surprised to find the dragons were warm beneath my feet. Their bodies had a solidity I hadn’t expected, and the texture of their scales imprinted itself against my soles. The spirits of the challenge were restless and eager to feed on the jinsei we were about to spill. The dragons wanted the fight to start.
I wholeheartedly agreed with them. The anticipation of this moment had scraped my nerves raw, and the longer I waited for the fight to start, the harder it would be for me to focus on what I needed to do. This was my one and only chance to earn a spot in the School.
To repair my family’s shattered honor.
To maybe, somehow, heal the wound that weakened my core.
The announcer shouted my name, but he might as well have been speaking a foreign language for all the attention I paid to him. His words stirred up the crowd, and they howled for the violence to begin. The champion raised his hands as his name pushed the spectators to even greater heights of frenzy.
Through it all, I breathed a circle of jinsei through my core and hoped I knew what I was doing. I had a small bag of tricks for this fight, and if everything went exactly right, I could defeat the champion. I’d rehearsed this moment in my mind, over and over, for what felt like an eternity. My muscles were primed, and the precise series of movements required had been imprinted in their memory over countless hours of exhausting repetition.
I could win this fight. I just had to stick to the plan.
Light surged through the fourth dragon and its spirit rose to join the others that surrounded us in a whirlwind of furious color.
The champion’s aura scorched the surrounding air, but the real threat was the energy he’d gathered into his core. An enormous concentration of fire-aspect jinsei filled the center of Hank’s body like an out-of-control bonfire. He followed the Spear of Magma style, a combat art so renowned for its power that it was banned in many competitive circles. Unrestrained, the power the champion had gathered could burn out an enemy’s core with a flood of flame jinsei.
This close, Hank’s power battered me with a solid wall of heat. It was like standing in front of a raging fire that wanted to add me to the fuel in its belly.
My mind wanted to run from that power, but I stared deep into Hank’s core and embraced the power there. He was strong, and I was a weak, but there was a part of me that no one else could understand. That was my only chance to survive.
To win.
Light flowed under the soles of my feet like warm honey. Jinsei energy tingled through my legs and swirled through my hollow core before it carried the last dregs of corruption out of my shapeless aura. I was as pure and clear as I’d ever been, and in a handful of heartbeats I would know whether that was enough.
Hank and I locked gazes and readied ourselves. We didn’t need to see the color ignite the final dragon, because we felt it. The champion’s eyes narrowed as he tried to decipher my technique, and faint twitches of concern tugged down the corners of his mouth.
The School of Swords and Serpents had prepared their champion for every conceivable challenge he might face.
Except for a boy with a broken core and nothing to lose.
The final dragon erupted in a blaze of crimson light.
Hank hurtled toward me, his aura trailing behind him like a comet’s tail. His core was a blinding ball of white-hot power, and his fists were surrounded by powerful serpents that transformed them into twin fireballs at the ends of his arms. Sparks leaked from his eyes as the power at his center pushed against his control.
Jinsei cycled through my core in an endless loop. In the space between heartbeats, I found an impossible silence. For one endless moment, nothing in the universe existed save for my infinite breath and the champion’s brutal power. A cold, clear calm settled over me.
I’d prepared as well as I could.
My arms fell to my sides. I was defenseless.
It was time to find out whether I’d live or die.
In the split second before the champion’s left fist slammed into my body, he unleashed a burning spiral of flame-aspected jinsei into my core. The inferno of soul energy jumped between us with the speed of electricity arcing to close a circuit. The power was terrifying in its intensity, but I felt no heat from the fire aspects that tainted it. As fast as Hank poured his power into me, my hollow core stripped away those aspects and left behind only pure jinsei.
And that power left my body as part of the endless cycle of my circular breathing technique.
Hank’s plan had prepared him to push jinsei into his foe until their core shattered and they were left defenseless for his follow-up attack on their channels. But my core was hollow and couldn’t be overfilled. Hank poured every bit of his core’s stored jinsei into me, and most of it flowed through me and bled out of my damaged core and into my aura without effect.
The power that filled my core seemed to slow time to a crawl, and my thoughts latched onto the exact steps I needed to follow to survive the second half of this split second. I funneled Hank’s purified jinsei out of my core and into the channels that encircled my torso. The sacred energy hardened the skin over my stomach into an iron-hard shield. The internal channels that surrounded my organs and bones swelled with energy and stiffened into a cage I prayed would protect me.
Hank’s powerful blow slammed into my solar plexus. The attack should have crushed my lower ribs and shattered my sternum. The power of his attack was so great it should have crushed my stomach and pulped my aorta.
Instead, Hank’s clenched fist stopped as if he’d punched the side of a battleship. The jinsei that protected me was burned off by the attack and burst from my aura in a spray of ephemeral sparks.
The crowd’s raucous cries cut off instantly. They’d expected to see my body hurled across the ring by that attack. No one had anticipated the attack would leave me unmoved and the champion would stumble back with his wounded hand cradled against his chest. Blood leaked from between Hank’s fingers and his face was a tight mask of agony. Thousands of mouths held in breaths as they all waited for what would come next.
It was time for my surprise.
Before Hank could recover from the shock and pain from his wounded hand, I closed the distance between us with a gliding side-step advance called Sliding Shadow. This was the first step in the Dancing Child style my mother had taught me. It was meant to narrow my profile and make it more difficult for my opponent to focus his attacks on me. The maneuver was weak and never used by those with solid cores who had far more effective and powerful styles available to them.
For me, though, it was the only style I could use. I shifted my feet and swiveled so my right shoulder faced Hank. With my left arm shielded from the champion’s view, my fingers darted into the side pocket of my ratty cargo pants to retrieve my ace in the hole.
The champion sensed that my core was empty, and there wasn’t any jinsei left in my channels to power an attack. He didn’t even try to push jinsei into his aura to defend himself, instead focusing every shred of energy his breathing technique could gather into a serpent of lig
ht around his left fist. Hank was confident that I couldn’t harm him without jinsei in my core, and his counterattack would destroy me. With a smirk, he raised one flame-wreathed hand and curled his fingers at me.
“Come, then, camper,” he snarled. “Let’s see if you’ll be so lucky the second time.”
Before the last syllable of his insult could die away, I switched from the Gliding Shadow stance into the Darting Minnow charge and shot across the ring’s smooth boards at a dead run. I opened my right hand and straightened my fingers into a Stunning Slap form and unleashed a sweeping blow at Hank’s left ear. The attack was clean and quick, and if I’d been on the street, my opponent would have been down before he knew what had hit him.
But the Empyreal was far faster and stronger than any street fighter. His empowered left hand crashed into my right wrist with a powerful block that sent a painful shock up my arm. The deflection pushed me out of line and forced my body to spin hard to the right.
It was a perfect response, but it left Hank with no good hand in position to defend his torso and gave me extra acceleration as I threw my weight into a wild Tantrum Flail strike. The uncontrolled blow looked so desperate and weak that Hank didn’t even try to raise his wounded hand to defend against it. To his eyes, it must have looked no more dangerous than a fly about to land on him.
My clenched fist landed in Hank’s solar plexus, and the jinsei crystal hidden within it shattered. The explosion of raw soul energy added weight and power to the aura around my hand, and the attack landed with sledgehammer force.
With no jinsei in his channels or his aura, Hank had no way to cushion the blow. His ribs splintered like dry kindling and his sternum cracked into a dozen pieces. The jinsei unleashed by my attack pierced his jinsei channels and speared through his body to detonate against his spine. Every nerve in the champion’s body was jolted, and his body froze in place.
“Impossible.” Hank’s eyes, wide with disbelief, stared off into the distance.