School of Swords and Serpents Boxset: Books 1 - 3 (Hollow Core, Eclipse Core, Chaos Core)

by Gage Lee

  “I think we can do that,” Hagar said. “You don’t have to tell me why you don’t know where your own mother is, Jace, but you will have to tell someone, eventually, if you want her found. If you’re good with that condition, then I’ll do my best to fulfill your request.”

  “Then I’m in,” I said.

  Hagar put her mug down on the counter and pulled my mug out of my hand to set it down next to hers. She wrapped her arms around my waist and pulled me into a tight hug. Her breath was warm against my neck, and the stiff ruff of her Mohawk tickled my nose.

  “You won’t regret this, Jace,” she said. “You’re going to be a hero.”

  The Disciple

  THE REST OF MY FIRST real day back at the School of Swords and Serpents rushed by in a flurry of new classes, new professors, and hurried meals. It seemed that upperclassmen had much busier schedules than we’d had as initiates.

  We met Professor Shan, our Intermediate Scrivenings instructor, after breakfast. She was a short, severe woman from the Thunder’s Children clan who vowed to whip all our crude scrivenings into shape. She clearly favored Clem, who had become well known for her skill in this art last year, and just as clearly thought I was going to be trouble.

  “You’ll have to work harder in my course than you did in Professor Ishigara’s,” she warned me with a stern wag of her finger. “Not even the School’s champion gets a free ride here. Stick with it, though, and your work will far surpass the crude scribblings you were capable of last year.”

  Which admittedly wasn’t a very high bar to get over. Scrivening was easily my weakest subject, and I hadn’t had much time or inclination to practice it while I’d been out cracking skulls during the Five Dragons Challenge.

  That lack of summer study made the first day of Intermediate Scrivening two hours of pure torture. We practiced the same basic forms over and over until my arm felt like it was going to fall off and my hand cramped into a useless claw.

  After Professor Shan dismissed us it was time for Intermediate Alchemy. I’d been looking forward to this class because I was sure it would be a breeze. Professor Ardith introduced himself with a flourish and assured us that even though he came from the Resplendent Sun clan, there’d be no favoritism on his watch. That, of course, was immediately disproved when he grouped all the Suns together as lab partners and then split the rest of us up so no two members of the same clan worked together.

  My friends and I all grimaced as we were split up. Eric headed over to the Suns, who greeted him with enthusiastic slaps on the shoulder as they paired up and took seats on the right side of the big classroom. Clem ended up with a tall, thin Disciple of Jade Flame who offered her a nervous smile as they sat in a pair of seats near the front of the room. Abi paired off with a girl from the Thunder’s Children clan who beamed as she fingered the lapel of his Portal Defense Force uniform.

  I was shocked when my partner turned out to be Rachel Lu. The short girl grinned and threw a weak punch into my shoulder when she plopped down in the chair next to me.

  “Bet you didn’t expect to see me here,” she said.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I thought you were an initiate.”

  “Really?” She frowned at that. “I know I’m short, but I didn’t think I looked that young.”

  “You weren’t here last year,” I countered. “And you fought in the challenge. If you didn’t need to win a spot at the School, why risk fighting me in the tournament?”

  “Well, for starters, I thought I could beat you.” She raised her fists into a mock fighting position. “I was known as a bit of a scrapper back home.”

  I found that hard to believe. She might’ve been ninety pounds dripping wet, and her showing in the arena had not impressed me.

  “If you’re a fighter, I’ll eat my robes,” I said with a shake of my head. “Seriously, what’s your deal?”

  “Okay, you got me.” She laughed. “I was at the Golden Sun Academy. My mom got a promotion and used her raise to transfer me over to the School of Swords and Serpents during the summer. My dad thought it would be a good idea for me to at least try the Five Dragons Challenge so I’d come in with a higher standing. That did not work out.”

  “You lead with your chin,” I said, and jutted mine toward Rachel to show her what I meant. “You also flinch when a punch is coming...”

  Professor Ardith cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention and wrote our first assignment on the board. It was a simple aspect identification project, hardly worth my effort. Rachel and I pulled the sealed flasks from under the workbench and arranged them in front of us according to the diagram the professor had drawn on the board.

  “I’ll start,” I said, and scooped up a clay flask with a wide bottom and a narrow mouth. I tugged the cork from its mouth and took a quick breath of its contents. “Ice aspects.”

  Rachel filled in the first blank on the worksheet we’d found with the flasks.

  “My turn.” She lifted a heavy frosted glass beaker and unscrewed its top. “Yuck, smells like garbage.”

  “You said you came from the Golden Sun Academy,” I said. “Where is that?”

  “New York Undercity,” Rachel said with a shrug. She took another sniff and wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know what this is. Anyway, the Golden Sun was hardly glamorous, but it got me through the basics.”

  “They have schools for people who live in the undercities?” The idea boggled my mind. I’d had no idea such a thing existed.

  “Seriously?” She shook her head. “You make a lot of assumptions about people, Jace.”

  “What?” I didn’t know what she meant. “You said you went to a training school in the undercity.”

  “That’s where the school was, not where I’m from,” she said, her voice almost a growl. “Not that there’s anything wrong with being from the undercity. You came from the camps and look how well you turned out. Also, I can’t figure out what this stuff is.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” Her anger had caught me off guard. I took a sniff from her beaker. “That’s rot aspect.”

  “Thanks.” Rachel blew out a frustrated sigh. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. It’s not your fault you made the wrong assumption. It’s the whole society. People who weren’t raised as Empyreals think we’re all rich and spend our time lounging around in the overcity while servants feed us ice cream. But some of us work for a living. The assumptions are frustrating.”

  That was news to me. Every student I’d met at the School was far wealthier than I’d ever imagined I’d be. I’d thought this was the only school for Empyreals because that’s what I’d been told. Now, I realized how foolish that was. For the students at the School of Swords and Serpents, this was the only academy of sacred arts because none of the others would even be on their radar. My fellow students were the rich kids.

  I’d spent my whole life believing there were only two classes of people: Empyreals and everyone else. Now, I was starting to see that the Empyreals were divided into different groups, too. It was an eye-opener.

  Rachel and I finished our assignment, and she gave me a quick hug when class was over.

  “Thanks for helping me with this stuff.” She grinned. “If you want to see something cool, come to the eastern door of the upperclassmen common area between the last class and dinner.”

  “What is it?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “You’ll see,” Rachel said with a wink. She slipped through the crowd of students before I could ask her any more questions.

  Abi, Eric, and Clem descended on me and dragged me off to lunch.

  “Feeling better?” Clem asked after we’d filled our plates and staked our claim on a table.

  “Yeah.” That was the truth. Deciding to help the elders had taken a weight off my shoulders, even if I knew it wouldn’t be easy. “I guess I hadn’t realized how all that fighting had taken a toll on me. It’s hard to get used to the idea that not everyone is a competitor out to beat me into the ground.” />
  “Most of us are,” Eric said and flicked a pea off his fork into my forehead.

  At least, he tried to. I snatched it out of the air an inch from my face and flicked it back at him. The green orb bounced off his forehead, leaving a sticky smear of butter above and between his eyes.

  “You have to be faster than that,” I said with a grin.

  Abi let out a long, low whistle and shook his head. “They’ll make a prizefighter out of you if you’re not careful.”

  The rest of lunch went by far too quickly. I’d forgotten how nice it was to just hang out with people who liked one another. There was no pressure while I was with my friends, not even from Abi. His suspicions seemed to have eased off a bit, even if I did catch him watching me from the corner of his eye while we ate.

  “I’ll see you guys at dinner,” he said when he’d cleared his plate. “Guard duty.”

  He waved as he headed off to his assignment, and the rest of us trudged to our next classes. Clem and Eric split off to their Empyreal Philosophy course, while I made my way to Professor Engel’s Military History course. I’d hoped to learn more about the Locust Warriors, even if only by the gaps the professor skipped over. Engel, on the other hand, seemed much more interested in regaling us with stories of her time serving in the Horizon Expeditionary Squadron after the Utter War.

  After two hours of that nonsense, I bolted out of class and headed back to the upperclassman territory. Rachel had piqued my curiosity, and I couldn’t wait to see what surprise she had in store for me. I willed the School to take me to the common area as quickly as possible and was a little surprised when it did exactly that. I was getting better at visualizing where I wanted to go, which seemed to help the School grant my wishes.

  Rachel was nowhere in sight, so I decided to do a little exploring before I headed off to meet her.

  I picked a hallway at random and found one with a floor of white ceramic tile, while the walls and ceiling were seamless acrylic. Through the transparent walls I saw students working on projects in small alchemical laboratories, fiddling with strange mechanical devices on workbenches, and arguing in front of whiteboards filled with theoretical scrivenings I couldn’t even begin to read. It was nice to know there were so many workshops close at hand, though it seemed most of them were in use at the moment. When I reached the end of that hallway and found nothing new, I turned around and headed back to the common area.

  I waved to the other students gathered there, and several of them nodded back. A small cluster of Disciples of the Jade Flame eyeballed me. They seemed more curious than hostile, though their eyes were wary. Clearly word of what happened to their clanmate in Professor Song’s class this morning had spread through the ranks of the upperclassmen.

  The next exit I chose was narrow and low-ceilinged. Lightstones along the baseboards provided the only illumination, and even that glow was dim. Locked doors pierced the hallway’s walls at regular intervals. When I finally found one that opened, I peered inside to find a tall, rectangular room lined with bookshelves. A small desk occupied the center of the miniature library.

  I made a mental note to come back here when I had more time. I was sure the School had purged all mentions of Eclipse Warriors from the books in this chamber, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t find something else of use. I closed the door quietly and returned to the common area.

  It was an hour or so before dinner by that point, and I decided it was time to meet Rachel. I headed down the eastern hallway, which soon transformed into a twisting stone corridor with veins of lichen crawling along its walls. The air there was damp, and the stone floor gave way to dirt after a few yards. Not many steps after that, I stood on a wide pathway that wound its way through hills capped by flowering trees the likes of which I’d never seen.

  The air was alive with buzzing aspect sprites, their prismatic wings throwing out fiery sparks, tiny forks of lightning, miniature blizzards, and even sprays of light and darkness. The creatures seemed to have no interest in me and fluttered away as I approached.

  “Rachel?” I called out.

  “Over here!” she shouted back. Her voice came from the path ahead of me. I followed the trail and wondered if there’d be another cottage, or something else interesting at its end. At the very least, a nature walk would calm my nerves and help ease my core. My Eclipse nature seemed to be soothed by the great outdoors. I’d have to remember that the next time I was feeling pent up.

  By the time I reached the hills, the terrain had already begun to change. The air was cooler and crisper, and the number of aspect sprites had grown considerably. They gathered in thick clouds above my head, chittering in a language I didn’t understand. The dark urge grumbled at their presence, and I felt the familiar ache of its hunger. It wanted to devour the tiny sprites.

  “Not now,” I whispered to it.

  It retreated into the darkness at the bottom of my thoughts, and I let out a sigh of relief. No one would miss a few sprites out of the dozens I’d already seen, but I wouldn’t know how to live with myself if I let my core eat them.

  “This way!” Rachel’s voice came from ahead of me.

  Past the hills, the ground grew rocky, and the path angled sharply upward along the flank of a towering mountain. I glanced back, and the hills were right where I’d left them. That was odd, because I certainly hadn’t seen this mountain from the other side of them. I didn’t know how that was possible, considering the great stony face rose thousands of feet above me and should have been easily visible as soon as I’d stepped onto the path.

  The School was a weird, weird place.

  Rachel’s laughter spurred me on, and I chased it up the mountain path. The world shifted around me as I made my way along the path, the mountain rising and then falling away to be replaced by a rocky beach strewn with pumice stones the size of my head, before that, too, was replaced by a rolling plain haunted by fireflies bigger than my clenched fist.

  A forest came next, and I drifted through the trees like a ghost, Rachel’s giggles luring me deeper into the woods. I lost myself in the pursuit, happy to have something, anything, to distract me from all the worries and stress that swirled around me. Rachel didn’t have any expectations from me. She’d given me a great gift bringing me to this place and giving me something pleasant to think about.

  The forest path was blissfully, completely peaceful.

  Too peaceful. Where had all the aspect sprites gone?

  Something hurtled through the trees behind me. I’d been so lost in the beauty of the place even my Eclipse nature was caught by surprise. My attacker collided with me and knocked me off balance. I took a staggering step back, braced myself with a jolt of jinsei through my legs and back, and then turned the tables on my attacker.

  I grabbed my attacker by the neck and belt of their robe, yanked them away from my body, and twisted hard at the hips to throw them onto the ground. My Borrowed Core technique lashed out and tore aspects from the creatures of the forest, and my serpents seized them from my aura and burst from my core. The Eclipse nature’s black rage bubbled up from the darkest part of my mind, ready to slaughter whoever had been stupid enough to attack me. There would be no mercy, no second chances for this fool.

  My assailant hit the ground with a pained grunt and curled into a fetal position. They wrapped their arms around their head and kept their chin down to their knees to ward off my retaliation. They were slender, dressed in the robes of Thunder’s Children, a skinny black braid curled in the dirt behind their head like a question mark.

  “Jace!” My attacker shouted in a panicked voice that blasted a cold shock up my spine.

  Rachel.

  The urge boiled in my core, far too powerful for me to resist. There was no time, and I had no strength to prevent my Eclipse nature from lashing out. Something had to break.

  The best I could hope was to decide what that something was.

  My serpents swept through the forest behind me and ripped through swarms of aspect spr
ites. The tiny creatures popped out of existence as my Eclipse core sucked away the jinsei and aspects they’d held in their tiny bodies. One moment, they’d been happily flitting through the trees. The next, they simply ceased to be.

  Experience had taught me that my Eclipse nature was sated in the moment immediately after it had fed. I took advantage of that to force it back into its cage and push the darkness from my eyes. The combination of fresh jinsei and terror that I’d hurt Rachel was more than enough to give me the upper hand over the darkness.

  For the moment.

  “Are you okay?” My voice shook with adrenaline and fear. I offered Rachel my hand and helped her to her feet. I brushed the dirt off the shoulders of her robes and stepped back to give her some space.

  “I’m fine, I think,” she said. “You’re a lot faster than I expected.”

  “You should’ve known better.” I tried to force some humor into my voice, to hide the fact that I’d almost killed her. I wasn’t sure she bought it. “I did trounce you in the challenge.”

  “You did not trounce me,” she said with mock indignation. She smoothed her sky-blue robes and shook the fallen leaves from her hair. “Thanks for not killing me just now.”

  Rachel’s words stung more than a little. I tried to brush them off, but the look on her face told me I wasn’t exactly successful.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “There was an incident this morning. Kind of the same thing that happened here. Still not out of that competitor mindset, I guess. I keep lashing out when I don’t mean to.”

  Rachel’s hands flew to her mouth, and she pressed her fingertips to her lips. After a few moments, she shook her head and continued.

  “That was dumb of me,” she said. “I was only playing, but I should’ve thought about what that would be like for you.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, trying to console her. I felt terrible about what I’d done, and I felt even worse that she was blaming herself. “It was totally my fault. People can’t be walking on eggshells around me all the time. I’ve got to get it together.”