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

by Gage Lee

  Abi’s voice was low and grave. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me with suspicion, concern, or admiration. He was hard to read, and my paranoia didn’t make it any easier to decipher his thoughts. He could have easily been congratulating a friend on learning something new.

  Or, as a member of the Portal Defense Force, he could have been telling me that he knew I was an Eclipse Warrior and should watch my step.

  “It’s probably because I had to teach myself so many things,” I said. “Being a camper and all, you know how it is.”

  I felt a twinge of shame at using my background to deflect the conversation. Campers made Empyreals very uncomfortable. Most of those who lived in the overcities would just as soon pretend the poor people in the slums beneath them didn’t exist. Rachel said it was because they couldn’t reconcile the fact that they lived in luxury only because most people couldn’t.

  “Oh, no,” Eric said. “Don’t look now.”

  I glanced up instinctively and saw Clem and Rachel headed in our direction. They walked side by side, their trays of half-eaten breakfast balanced on their hands, their faces carefully neutral.

  “We should go,” Abi said.

  “Please don’t,” I pleaded.

  “Hey guys,” Clem said, her voice so pleasant I was sure she was being sarcastic. “Room for two more?”

  “Yeah,” Eric said uncertainly. “Sure.”

  Clem sat across from me, between Eric and Abi.

  Rachel took the seat next to me.

  That division felt a little too much like taking sides for my comfort. I traced aimless lines in the syrup on my plate and waited for the hammer to fall.

  “We were talking,” Rachel said with a nod toward Clem, who shot me a smile so wide and bright I thought she might bite me. “About us.”

  “Us,” I said noncommittally.

  “You know,” Clem said, her grin growing wider by the second. “About your picnic.”

  “Yes,” Rachel confirmed. “Clem’s fine with everything. She says you were just good friends. And I want you to stay good friends.”

  There was a glimmer of pain in Clem’s eyes at the words. Her smile tightened, just a little, almost impossible to notice.

  But I saw it.

  And it hurt.

  “Yes,” Clem confirmed, her smile painfully wide. “We’re all going to be great friends, from now on.”

  Eric and Abi glanced at me with sympathy in their eyes.

  Oh, man. What had I done?

  As it turned out, things weren’t nearly as bad as I’d worried they’d be. Clem and Rachel really did seem to get along. I didn’t catch even a whiff of argument between the two of them after that. Clem never mentioned Rachel during our scrivenings tutorial sessions, which was both a relief and annoying. I was glad Clem hadn’t been hurt by my choice but couldn’t help but wonder why she wasn’t at least a little upset.

  But, as the days of January passed, the last of the tension between Clem and me faded and our group of four grew to five. We ate our meals together, helped each other with our classes, and spent more time goofing off at my cottage than we probably should have.

  The only dark spot on those weeks was that Abi was gone more often than not. The Portal Defense Force kept him and the other students hopping, and more than once he and his fellow cadets all missed class on the same day. When that happened, I was surprised by how many students were working for the PDF.

  It also made me wonder which of my classmates were secretly working for their clans or other, darker, forces. If Rafael, Hagar, and I were all working for our clans, it was very possible that there were other students who’d decided they wanted to be heretics when they grew up. I’d have to bring that up to Hagar.

  Not that I saw much of my handler. She was out of classes far more than she attended, and I wondered how many of the professors and staff the Shadow Phoenix clan had paid off to keep her absences quiet. As days without Hagar turned into weeks, I threw myself into my studies and martial arts practice.

  That, at least, turned out to be a good use of my time.

  Professor Song started us on a new kind of meditation that involved the repetition of modified martial arts forms in a fluid cycle. It was supposed to bring our bodies and minds into closer unity, and I was surprised when it actually worked.

  My Thief’s Shield technique had shown me the key to integrating my serpents, aura, and core. What it hadn’t done, though, was push my core to the next level. I’d been stuck at initiate all year, and the meditation techniques I’d tried seemed to make my dark urges more dangerous and forced me to back off before I lost control.

  Professor Song’s new meditation style changed that.

  The regimented motions opened a new understanding within me. I suddenly understood how my core worked with my body to harness and direct the sacred energy that was the key to all life. The sweep of my arm wasn’t just muscles and bones moving according to the demands of my mind. It was an extension of the natural flow of jinsei through the universe. When I was in tune with what the jinsei wanted to do, everything was easier, simpler.

  That revelation allowed me to harness more spiritual power without enticing the dark urge to surface. On one crisp Wednesday morning in the middle of February, I found myself so deep in Professor Song’s guided meditation that my core ached with the power it contained. The rest of my class disappeared from my thoughts as I filled my core to its limits.

  And beyond.

  My thoughts exploded out of the meditation. My back arched, and every muscle in my body tensed at once. Jinsei crackled in my aura like a living flame, spearing toward the roof of the dojo in a golden rush. The power carried me with it. I hung, suspended in the air by the forces that had rushed through me during my explosive advancement.

  My core had transcended to adept level.

  As the rush of power subsided and my feet settled to the floor, I took a deep breath and felt a surge of jinsei pass into my core. It was as if I’d spent my whole life up to that point breathing with only one lung.

  A gasp rustled through the students in the dojo. The weight of their attention fell on my aura like tiny hailstones, a pinging rattle that I banished with a thought.

  I only had to glance around the room to see that, except for Professor Song’s, my core was the most powerful one in the dojo. The rest of my class were still initiates, much more powerful than the average person, but nowhere near as powerful as I now was.

  Finally, all the grinding and frustration had paid off. I’d done it.

  “Congratulations are in order, Mr. Warin,” the professor called from his position at the head of the dojo. He strode through the other students, a smile beaming on his face, his eyes lit up with pride as he approached me. “That was an impressively quick advancement for a student.”

  He stopped a few feet away, and I bowed respectfully, my eyes never leaving his.

  “Thank you, revered Professor,” I said. “I’ve been working hard, and your teachings helped me find the right path.”

  “You honor me,” the professor said, returning my bow, his eyes cast to the floor. “It has been my pleasure to instruct a student with such ferocious determination. Perhaps when you have some time, you can show me that technique you used in your duel against Rafael.”

  “It’s not all that impressive,” I said, trying to deflect the conversation. “My time in Mr. Reyes’s lab taught me to gather aspects from the environment quickly. The technique is merely an extension of that.”

  “I see,” the professor said. He thrust his hand forward, and I took it. “Again, congratulations on your advancement to adept. You may find the change disorienting at first. I’ll dismiss you from class early and will let your other professors know not to expect you today. You should return to your quarters, meditate, and rest. Feel free to explore your new abilities, though it’s important you don’t push yourself too hard just yet. Your core is very sensitive after an advancement of this magnitude. A new world has opened to yo
u—be careful not to trip when you cross its threshold.”

  Professor Song shook my hand vigorously and clapped me on the shoulder as the rest of the class burst into applause.

  I let myself bask in their admiration and thanked the Grand Design that everything was finally going my way. Even my duel with Rafael had worked out for the best, because I’d learned a new technique. Clem and Rachel were, if not friends, at least friendly toward one another, and I had a girlfriend for the first time in my life. And the dangerous work I’d done for the elders was getting me closer to finding my mother while I made the world a safer place.

  The advancement was the icing on the cake.

  “Thank you, Professor Song,” I said. “It has been my honor to be your student and learn from your teachings.”

  With that, I left the dojo. I’d grown stronger during my time in the Five Dragons Challenge, my body hardened by the combat training. But that paled in comparison to the strength I’d gained from my advancement. It was as if I’d been a child, and now I was a full-grown man. My strides were smooth and long, my legs carrying me with no effort at all. My robes felt tight against my biceps and across my shoulders, like I’d gained muscle mass.

  Maybe I had. I’d never known anyone who’d advanced from initiate to adept. There was no telling what sorts of physical changes might accompany such a dramatic shift in mystic ability.

  And that had increased dramatically. I noticed faint swirls of golden light at the corners of my vision as I walked through the halls, and when I focused on them, they snapped into sharper relief. The luminous threads crawled along the walls and floated in the air. The longer I stared at them, the more of them I saw.

  With a start, I understood these were currents of jinsei. The School’s walls were riddled with them, which made sense. The architecture could shift and move because it was built on a base of sacred energy. I’d just never realized how much jinsei was around me at all times. It was overwhelming.

  I was still marveling over this new ability when I reached my quarters. My eyes followed the glowing threads as the door opened, and the inner workings of the mechanism were obvious to my new senses. Sacred energy not only parted the doors, it lubricated the tracks and dampened the sound of their travel. There was so much more to jinsei than I’d ever noticed before.

  If the halls had been brimming with jinsei, my quarters overflowed with the spiritual power. The boundary between the School and the forest path that led to my cottage was surrounded by a rectangle of golden light so bright it was difficult to even look at. It had to be a portal of some kind, stable and fixed in place and filled with energy so it didn’t have to be activated. The amount of time and effort that had gone into creating such a thing boggled my mind.

  There was so much sacred energy in the air, I had to readjust my vision to ignore it. It was difficult at first, and I stumbled more than once when I misjudged where the ground was behind the swirls of power that emanated from it. The trip across the lake’s bridge was nerve-racking, and I was relieved to make it to the cottage’s front door without tumbling over the rail.

  “I need coffee.” I shambled through the sitting room and into the kitchen.

  The advancement had filled me with jinsei, amplified my senses, and left me suddenly wiped out. It wasn’t yet nine in the morning, and already I needed a nap. That wouldn’t do. There were so many new things about my core I wanted to explore. Its capacity to store jinsei. The effect it had on my techniques. What it had done to my body.

  I was pulling the coffee supplies out of a cupboard when a floorboard behind me creaked a warning.

  A rough hand slammed my face into the cupboard. The coffee set fell from my suddenly nerveless fingers and shattered on the floor. A burst of stars exploded across my vision, and a terrifying weakness spread down my spine.

  Fingers closed in my hair and drew my head back, then slammed my skull into the granite counter. With a snarl, my unknown attacker hurled me across the kitchen and into the side of the stainless steel refrigerator.

  A few days ago, even an hour ago, that series of attacks would have killed me. With my new core, though, my body was more resilient and able to withstand the damage. The attack hurt, but my skull was intact, and my nose wasn’t even broken. My rattled senses snapped back into focus, and I pushed jinsei out of my core and into my body’s channels. If the intruder wanted a fight, he was going to get one.

  I bounced away from the refrigerator on the balls of my feet just in time to avoid a brutal punch that smashed a dent into the side of the appliance. I almost hadn’t seen the attack at all, because my foe was wrapped head to toe in a strange field of jinsei that obscured every detail of his form. The humanoid swirl of power jumped away after his missed attack and he threw his arms up to defend himself.

  “Who are you?” I demanded, settling into a ready stance. It was hard to concentrate on the figure in front of me, as if the jinsei surrounding him didn’t want me to see him at all. If I’d still been an initiate, the field might have made him completely invisible.

  My advancement had just saved my life.

  The assailant didn’t waste any words. He lunged forward, throwing punches and kicks in a blistering flurry of raw aggression. Unfortunately for him, the kitchen was cramped, and that limited his range of attacks to easily blocked straight-line strikes.

  I defended myself and cycled my breathing to bring my body, core, and aura into alignment. My opponent had pulled back to evaluate me more closely, and I wondered if he was surprised at the strength of his target. I found myself excited by the fight, ready to test my abilities against a serious opponent. There’d be no pulling punches in this sparring match.

  My attacker switched tactics and summoned a fusion blade in the blink of an eye. It was a strange, spear-like weapon, and the attacker threw a blistering series of thrusts toward me. The jinsei-fueled attacks came fast and furious, forcing me into a defensive stance.

  I kept the fusion blade’s business end from punching holes in my chest and gut with counterstrikes and parries, though my defense cost me numerous cuts across my forearms and the backs of my hands. My Thief’s Shield wasn’t enough to save me here. Even if I stripped the aspects and jinsei out of my opponent, the speed and savagery of his spear thrusts would leave me full of holes.

  Summoning my own fusion blade wouldn’t do me any good in the cramped quarters, either. The long hilt and blade would be useless for defense or offense, just as they had been in Albert’s dinky apartment. Meanwhile, my opponent’s short stabbing weapon was the perfect tool for poking a bunch of holes in an opponent at very short range, very quickly.

  As if he’d read my mind, my blurry attacker executed a series of short, sharp thrusts that backed me against the kitchen wall. With nowhere to go, I slapped the first few attacks aside, took a cut across my forearm, and narrowly avoided losing an eye by jerking my head to the side at the last minute.

  Through it all, I cycled my breathing, drawing in beast aspects from the catfish that swam in the lake around the cottage, the birds that nested in the building’s eaves, and, yes, the rats that cavorted in the fields that surrounded the lake. While my opponent had focused on murdering me, I’d been preparing a riposte.

  In the instant he extended himself to drive his spear’s point through my face, I formed serpents from the beast aspects and struck.

  Each of the glowing tendrils was as thick as my wrist and narrowed to a sharp tip. My first serpent looped around my foe’s fusion blade and spiraled down his arm to stab his bicep. In the same moment, the other serpent speared into his core.

  Or, they would have.

  The jinsei that surrounded my assassin wasn’t just camouflage, it was also powerful defensive armor. My serpents bounced off it with a pair of loud cracks and recoiled as the sacred energy they’d struck lashed out at them with jolts of lightning-aspected jinsei.

  The unexpected retaliation drew a grunt from me, and if I’d been any weaker, it would’ve stunned me into imm
obility.

  Instead it just made me mad.

  My opponent tried to free his weapon from my serpent, with no luck. Rather than continue the fruitless struggle, he let the blade dissipate and came at me again with his hands and feet. This time, the golden energy around him shifted to red and black, powerful destructive aspects from his aura flooding into the sacred power.

  A counterpunch from my left hand drove his right fist into the side of the refrigerator, leaving another dent in the appliance. I trapped his right hand with a sweeping block that pulled it under my left arm and tight against my body. The buzz of his armor’s defenses was annoying, though hardly enough to stop me.

  “Who sent you?” I demanded in the brief space between attacks.

  The assassin wasn’t talking. He tried to headbutt me, and when that missed, he threw a knee at my midsection, grazing my ribs with little effect.

  With one arm trapped, the enemy couldn’t defend himself against my blows. I hooked a series of rapid uppercuts into his abdomen, lifting him off his feet with every strike. He grunted with the impacts, but didn’t fall.

  The damned armor was blunting my offense.

  I unleashed the Thief’s Shield technique and my aura siphoned aspects of fortitude and resilience out of my attacker. It wasn’t the usual rush of power I’d experienced when using the technique against other opponents, though. It was a slow drip of aspects and jinsei. Enough to weaken my opponent. Not enough to drop him.

  My attacker realized the new danger and tried to free himself with a sudden frenzy of activity. His knees bounced off the outsides of my thighs as I raised one leg then the other to fend off his strikes. His free hand clawed toward my face, and I slapped it to the side with a backfist. He gambled on another headbutt, and I stopped it cold with a short, sharp elbow strike across his chin.

  My technique had drained enough power from my attacker’s armor to let that attack through, and the blurred aura that had surrounded him faded. For a moment, I caught a glimpse of gray eyes between layers of black cloth. I reached for the man’s mask, hoping to tear it free and get a good look at him. The elders would want to know who’d tried to kill me.