by Gage Lee
The guards downstairs shouted in alarm, and Hagar screamed a warning. It was all just noise to me. A warbling hum surrounded me, and my Eclipse nature bayed like a wolf answering a distant howl. Something tugged at my core, and I had a sudden urge to kneel.
What the hell was going on?
There was a blur at the stairway, and Hagar shouted in surprise. Her red Mohawk vanished, hidden behind a strange blurry smear across my vision. Blood blossomed in the space where my handler had been standing, and she tumbled down the stairs to the cottage’s first floor.
I wanted to rush to Hagar’s side and make sure she wasn’t hurt.
Instead, I stood frozen in place, silent as the grave.
A tall, thin woman with a face as pale as a full moon stepped through the blur that had taken Hagar down. Her hair was as utterly colorless as her face, every strand as smooth and glossy as wet paint. She wore a tight gray T-shirt and matching shorts that hardly covered enough to be decent. She had no shoes, no jewelry, no weapon.
Her fingers dripped red as she stalked across the floor toward me. Her eyes were empty black voids, utterly at odds with the faint warm smile on her lips.
“Come with me, Brother,” she said. “You’re free now.”
The Prisoner
THE WOMAN TILTED HER head from side to side as she approached me, as if I wasn’t at all what she’d expected to see. Her black eyes burrowed into mine and her brows bunched up with concern.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Something about this woman called to me in a way I didn’t understand. My Eclipse nature wasn’t sure whether it wanted to kill her or kiss her. There was something so familiar and yet so completely alien about the woman who’d just killed two, maybe three, people.
“What did you do?” I asked, peering past her at the dead bodies on the floor.
“Come with me.” She extended her bloodstained right hand to me as if it was a foregone conclusion that I’d take it. “We can talk about this away from your captors. They will send more jailers. We should be gone before then.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I barked. I still couldn’t move, but I didn’t want her to know that. “I don’t know you. You killed the members of my clan. You killed my friend.”
The pale woman frowned deeply, and wrinkles blacker than night creased her brow. She took my limp hand, her fingers still warm and sticky with the blood of her victims. She gasped when her skin touched mine.
Something flashed in my skull. A fragment of thought that flickered through my mind so quickly I couldn’t capture it. My core roared, suddenly frantic. I wasn’t sure if it was terrified or furious.
Maybe both.
“Don’t fight it,” she whispered. “You will only hurt yourself.”
“What are you doing to me?” I shouted. “Let go!”
“We’ve waited so long for you.” Her grip tightened around my hand. I couldn’t have pulled free without breaking at least a few fingers. “Come with me and everything will be made clear to you.”
“Who are you?” I asked again.
“Lost,” she said, her voice a faint whisper. “We have returned to take what is owed us. You will have the reward you so richly deserve for the invaluable part you have played.”
The Lost. My mind reeled at that name.
“You’re one of the Eclipse Warriors who ran from the Far Horizon at the end of the Utter War.” Saying it aloud didn’t make it seem any less insane.
“That is one name that they used for us,” she confirmed. “For the ones who escaped their betrayal. It’s a pity for them, really. Now that you’ve shown us the way back, they’ll pay for what they did. They’ll all pay.”
Her fingers tightened around mine as she spoke. Her words took on a hard, brutal edge. I didn’t need any visions to read her intent as clear as day.
Revenge.
“You can’t fight them all,” I said. “Even as strong as you are, you can’t win that battle.”
Her smile widened into a feral snarl.
“We can,” she said. “Because of you. When you realized your birthright, you opened the doorway for us to return. You shone a light into our dark exile, and we followed it to you. But you also did something much more important.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I protested. This was not what I’d wanted. I’d only tried to heal my core.
To become whole.
“Oh, but you did.” She stroked my cheek with her bloody fingers. “And, in doing so, you have gathered our enemies together for us. For the first time since the great war, our foes are all in the same place.”
The trial in Kyoto.
All five of the sacred sages would be there, four of them to judge, one of them to be judged for his crimes. The elders of every clan would be there, too, as witnesses to this dark moment in history.
The Lost couldn’t destroy all of Imperial Society. But, thanks to me, they wouldn’t have to.
They’d cut the head off the Empyrean Flame’s forces in one dire swoop.
“You can’t do this,” I said. “There has to be another way.”
“Don’t fight us,” she pleaded. “We want to bring you into our fold so you may rule the world as one of us. When we finish with those who betrayed us, the rest will fall in line. We will break the clans and shatter the society they have created. We will claim our rightful place as the masters of this world. And then, when we have replenished our numbers, we will finish what we started. We will destroy the Locust Court. We will scourge the worlds beyond the Far. We will ensure that what happened to us never happens to anyone else, ever again. This is the beginning of the end for the old world, and the end of the beginning for a new one.”
My Eclipse nature responded to her words with a horrifying thrill of exultation. That’s what it wanted. To conquer our enemies. To destroy our foes. To crush any who would stand before us. To annihilate any possibility of a threat for all time.
For the first time in my life, I felt like I truly understood another person and they understood me.
And it terrified me.
“You can’t,” I said. “I can’t let you.”
“Enough,” she snarled. “Return with me, now, or be destroyed. The opportunity to sow the seeds of our dominion and reap the harvest of our revenge will not be squandered.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” I dropped my voice to a near whisper. I closed my fingers tighter around hers. “I guess we’re fighting.”
In the split second before the Lost could react, I triggered the Thief’s Shield technique that I’d started to fuel when the Death Weaver struck. Strange aspects I couldn’t identify poured out of her aura and lodged in mine. The raw, wild jinsei in her core transferred to mine in a heady rush, and I pushed the feral sacred energy deep into the channels in my arms and legs.
The Lost triggered an aura technique that pushed back against the Thief’s Shield before I could drain the rest of her strength. My technique sputtered and died, and my enhanced senses showed me she’d erected a powerful defense around her core. If I wanted any more of her jinsei, I’d have to rip that down, first.
Whatever spell the woman had cast over me was shattered into a thousand crystalline shards. My Eclipse nature threw off the enchantment she’d woven around it and screamed for her blood. She’d said she was going to kill me. That was all it took for my dark urge to remember whose team it was on.
I threw a wild, hooking punch that caught the woman in the side of the neck, snapping her head hard to one side. I yanked the hand I was holding toward me and drove my knee up into her abdomen with all the strength I’d stolen from her core. The blow lifted the Lost off her feet and drove the air from her lungs in a single barking yelp.
The pale woman landed hard, then reared back and slammed the top of her skull into my chin and rocked me back onto my heels. She grabbed my thumb with her free hand and wrenched my grip away from her fingers. Her other hand chopped down into the juncture of my neck and shoulder.<
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Pain exploded from the impact, and my left arm went numb as the jangled nerves refused to carry messages from my brain. I twisted to avoid another chop that would’ve taken out my right arm, stomped down hard on the woman’s leading foot, and threw my weight into her chest.
The unexpected maneuver knocked her off balance, and she stumbled to the edge of the bed. Her knees buckled when they smashed into the obstruction, and she collapsed onto the bed. With a surprised shout, she threw her hands up to defend herself from my follow-through attacks.
I followed up with an ax kick that crashed down on the woman’s right thigh. The blow smashed the jinsei from the channels in her stark-white leg, and she howled in pain. With a shout of raw rage, I leaped into the air and channeled jinsei into my right arm and hand. There was no way she’d be able to avoid the amplified attack I drove straight into her core.
The Lost didn’t even try to defend herself.
Jinsei exploded from my fist like a spear at the precise moment my knuckles slammed into the woman’s solar plexus. The blast of spiritual energy shredded the cage the Lost had built around her core, revealing it to the Thief’s Shield.
“It’s over,” I said as my technique stole her jinsei.
“It is over,” she agreed.
With a start I realized how I’d been tricked. Her core latched onto the channels in my arm and reversed the flow of jinsei. The prey had become the predator.
“You can’t do this,” I shouted.
I’d struggled so hard to get this far. Now, when everything was finally falling into place, she was here to ruin everything. My Eclipse nature raged against the pain as she ruthlessly drained my jinsei. She was too experienced in this art, too powerful for me to save myself.
“I can, and I will,” she said. “You are a pup. A brave, fierce pup, but just a pup. I am a wolf. Only one of us leaves here today.”
My core was powerful enough to slow her leech-like draining, but strength faded from my muscles by the second, and my legs gave out. I slithered off the end of the bed and onto the floor next to Henry’s corpse. My dead weight pulled the Lost down with me.
She hardly noticed when she hit the wooden floor. Her eyes were half-lidded, lost in bliss as she fed on me like a tick on a hound’s throat. A faint smile played across her lips. She was enjoying this, reveling in my final moments.
I tried to summon my spirits, but as fast as I could gather aspects, the Lost consumed them. I raked my fingers across the floor, searching for the fusion blade I’d dropped in the fray. My groping hand found something hard and closed around it.
“No.” The Lost bolted upright, but she was slow to shake off the feeding stupor. For a split second, she was too sluggish to stop me.
I raised Henry’s pistol and rammed it into her chest. I squeezed the trigger and prayed that the safety wasn’t on.
The weapon roared, and the Lost shrieked.
I pulled the trigger, again and again, until it clicked impotently in my fist.
“You could have had the world,” the Lost gasped, blood bubbling on her lips.
Her eyes faded from black to blue, the vivid iris surrounded by bloodshot white. Her mouth fell open.
A final bloody breath escaped the Lost, and her core faded away.
The Revelation
THE LOST’S BODY SEEMED smaller curled up on the floor. It was hard to believe the slight woman had killed my clan’s guards. And yet, the proof was all around me. Henry’s cratered head had leaked a pool of blood that mingled with the Death Weaver’s crimson drool.
Hagar had fallen—
I ran down the stairs and found my friend slumped against the wall at the bottom of the steps. Her eyes were badly bruised and closed tight. A crimson thread spilled from her split lips down the center of her chin, and another red trail oozed from her left ear and down the side of her neck. I dropped to my knees next to Hagar and grabbed her wrist.
“Come on,” I whispered urgently. “You’re tougher than this.”
My fingertips found a pulse. The beats were weak and thready, but it was there. Flickers of jinsei lit up her core with fitful flashes. She wouldn’t last much longer. I scooped Hagar over my shoulder, surprised at how little she weighed.
I ran to the front door, where I found one of the clan guards splattered across the front porch. It looked like someone had dragged a heavy hook through his stomach and unspooled his organs around him. I remembered the Lost’s bloodied fingers, and their sticky touch against my skin.
My footsteps echoed from the wooden bridge, a rapid hammering that sent birds flying from the trees and fish diving deeper beneath the water’s surface. I sprinted down the path and threw my door open. I willed the School to get me to the infirmary in the fastest possible way.
My mind raced as I rushed Hagar to the help she needed. There were so many things I needed to do.
For starters, someone had to warn Kyoto that trouble was coming. The clans and sages would certainly have their own protection, and Kyoto’s regional defense force would definitely have a presence at the trial. But I had no idea how many of the Lost were coming, or what they had planned. A single Eclipse Warrior had gotten the drop on us and carved her way through trained bodyguards like they were nothing.
What if a dozen Lost fighters dropped in on the trial?
What if there were a hundred?
Less than a minute after I’d left my quarters, the School had me in front of a door with a red cross on it. I hammered at the glass and shouted for help. Hagar didn’t have time for me to be polite about this.
“What in the world?” someone called from inside. Shuffling footsteps hurried to the door, and a burly nurse with an angry expression ripped it open. For a moment, she stared at me, confused and upset. Then she saw Hagar over my shoulder, and her demeanor changed to a cool, professional calm. “Inside. Now.”
I hustled Hagar over to the examination table in the middle of the room and laid her down on the strip of paper that ran down its center.
“What happened?” the nurse asked. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I confirmed. “This blood’s not mine. She fell down the stairs and hit the wall.”
“Have a seat over there,” the nurse said. “I’ll see to her.”
“I can’t stay,” I said.
“I have to fill out a report,” the nurse called out as she started her examination, but I was already gone. I didn’t have time for paperwork.
I didn’t have time for anything.
The instant I left the infirmary I raced to the administrative office. Someone could call Kyoto. They could warn the courthouse an attack was coming. And then...
And then what?
No one would believe me, for starters. They’d probably think it was some prank or some protest trick to stir up trouble around the trial. If I was lucky, the administration would ignore me. If I was unlucky, I’d wind up in a holding cell until the disaster hit.
Then they’d haul me up on charges for knowing about the attack.
I froze in the hallway, a terrible plan rising through my confusion.
I didn’t care how risky it was. I had to do something. No matter what happened, Kyoto would know something serious was happening. It was worth the risk.
I fixed my destination in mind and raced through the School. The halls warped and bent around me faster and faster to keep up with my sprint. Five minutes later, I burst through an intersection, took a hard left, and almost crashed into Abi.
“I need to use the portal.” I grabbed my friend by the shoulders. “I have to get to Kyoto.”
Abi stiffened under my hands. His eyes scanned my face, and his lips pursed into a narrow line across his face.
“Are you insane?” he asked. “I’m part of the Portal Defense Force. I’m here to defend the network against people using it without authorization.”
“Abi, listen to me.” I held his gaze. “Something very bad is about to happen in Kyoto. I’m the only one who can stop it.
”
Abi brushed my hands from his shoulders. “What is going on? We can call my commander. You’re a student, not a superhero. We will let the professionals handle the trouble, whatever it is.”
This was exactly why I hadn’t gone to the administration.
“Abi, please,” I begged. “You have to trust me. People will die if I don’t get to Kyoto.”
“My friend,” Abi said, his eyes flitting nervously from side to side as if looking for backup that wasn’t coming, “don’t try to force my hand on this. I have a sworn duty.”
“Abi,” I urged, “Eclipse Warriors will attack Kyoto. They’ll kill Grayson and the other sages at his trial. That’s the truth. Do you think your captain will believe that?”
My friend’s eyes narrowed with skepticism. He let out a frustrated breath, crossed his arms over his chest, and shook his head.
“There are no more Eclipse Warriors,” Abi said. “They all died out during the war. Why do you believe this madness?”
My stomach tightened into a painful knot. Abi had swallowed the official Empyreal story hook, line, and sinker. He believed the Eclipse Warriors were long gone. Everyone did.
“Because one of them tried to kill me.” I raised my bloody fingers to the stain on my cheek. “Hagar’s in the infirmary. There are dead guards in my quarters. I know what’s happening because the Eclipse Warrior told me before I killed her.”
It was Abi’s turn to grab my shoulders. He held onto me, tight, and leaned forward until our faces were only inches apart. His eyes were wide and bright against his dark skin.
“There is something wrong with you, Jace,” he said. “I’ve known it since our first day back at school. Whatever it is has eaten you up inside. You have to stop this before you get hurt or you hurt someone else. Now, go. Come back to me when you have the truth on your lips. Not before.”
I didn’t have many good options here. Abi was no match for me in a fight, even if I didn’t have my Eclipse Warrior abilities. My adept core was a whole level above his initiate core, so it would be like fighting a child, with the bonus that I might accidentally kill my friend if I lost control of my Eclipse nature.