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

by Gage Lee

  “How long have you been spying on my class?” I forced the words through gritted teeth. The illusion of freedom I’d enjoyed since I’d left the Temple in Atlantis had shattered.

  “Did you really think we’d release you back to the School without some precautions in place?” Rhône shook his head. “You have much to learn, Mr. Warin. You’re powerful, but you are also wounded. You’re strong, but you’re not yet wise.”

  The inquisitor snapped his fingers, and the slate disappeared from my hands. He crossed the hallway and towered above me, the dark void of shadows inside his hood bearing down on me like a hungry mouth. My core twitched as he examined it, and I pushed back against his gaze hard enough that he froze in place for a moment.

  “Leave my students alone,” I warned. “They deserve a chance.”

  “And they’ll have one,” Rhône said. “That’s what I’ve come here to discuss with you. There’ve been changes in the Temple since you’ve been gone. The convergence is shifting. We believe it’s because of the Gauntlet.”

  “I won’t quit,” I started, and Rhône talked over me.

  “You will continue to compete in the Gauntlet,” the inquisitor said. “You will also continue to teach the initiates in that classroom. Those who manage to heal their core before the end of the year will remain under your tutelage.”

  “What happens to the others?” I pulled myself up to my full height and hoped the power of my core shone through my words. He needed to know who he was dealing with.

  “Those who fail will accompany me to Atlantis,” the inquisitor said.

  His words rocked me back on my heels. I tried to imagine Christina, angry and terrified of a world she didn’t understand, locked away in the Temple. The constant questioning and the endless tests would break her. She’d never be whole if she went to Atlantis.

  None of them would.

  “Why?” I asked. “Given time, they can all be healed. We need more Eclipse Warriors. Another threat is coming. You know that.”

  “Mr. Warin,” Rhône said smugly, “you know better than to suggest we need more of your kind. We are aware of your condition. There’s no guarantee the same won’t happen to those you train. You may heal their cores, but what if it’s only temporary? No, the Temple would like a more immediate return on our investment.”

  “I won’t let you take them,” I swore. “You know what happened in Kyoto. If the Lost couldn’t defeat me, what chance do you think a bunch of monks will have?”

  The shadows that surrounded Rhône’s face faded away to reveal the stern features of a man that had led a dangerous and painful life. Scars crisscrossed his cheeks, and an eyepatch covered his left eye socket. The right side of his mouth was pulled up into an ugly sneer by a wormy pink scar that crawled from his lip back to his temple. His unscarred skin was covered in a network of wrinkles and pockets of gray stubble that made him look far more than simply old. His unwavering stare was cold and deadly.

  “I’ve seen things you can’t even imagine, boy,” the inquisitor said. “You have until the end of the year. Save those you can. The rest are mine.”

  My stomach tightened into a painful knot, and my knuckles cracked as my fists clenched. Anger and frustration boiled inside me, a toxic brew that poisoned my thoughts. An old glimmer of my Eclipse nature clawed its way to the surface. It wanted me to strike out at the man in front of me. He had more experience, but he wasn’t strong. My serpents would rip the aspects from his aura, and my pure fusion blade would—

  No. None of that would happen. Starting a war with the Church wouldn’t solve this problem. The only answer was to teach my students everything I could and hope they found a path that would lead them to heal their cores.

  “Never come to my class again.” My voice was as cold and hard as the stone that surrounded us.

  “Very well.” The Rhône bowed to me, then crossed his arms at his waist and backed away. “You won’t see me again until the end of the school year.

  “But I’ll be watching you.

  “Always.”

  The War

  TIME SLOWED TO A CRAWL after Inquisitor Rhône’s surprise visit to my classroom. I kept expecting him to reappear at any moment, his scarred face peering at me through a veil of shadows. It was a constant struggle to hide my worry from the hollows. Adding stress to their already confusing lives wouldn’t help any of us. The best I could do was to remain calm, train them to the best of my ability, and urge them to push themselves harder and further than they’d thought possible.

  They could heal their cores. But they had to find their own paths. If I pushed them to become Eclipse Warriors, they might share my fate. I promised myself I’d do everything I could to help them avoid falling into that trap.

  Unless we ran out of time. I wouldn’t let Atlantis have them.

  Hagar didn’t return before winter break. I checked her room several times a day, hoping that she’d return with news from our clan elders. But, when she didn’t materialize, I knew I was on my own. If I wanted answers, I’d have to go and get them.

  I rose bright and early on the first day of winter break and rounded up the hollows from the initiates dormitory. We shared breakfast together, then headed down to our secluded classroom, where I gave each of the students another vial of jinsei from our supplies.

  “You can do whatever you want with the first vial I gave you. This one is for your training,” I told them. “Drink a little and hold it in your core for as long as you can. I want you to understand what it feels like to have pure jinsei inside you. After lunch, Hahen will come down with more tainted sacred energy for you to purify, and you can use what you purify from that to keep practicing and strengthening your core. We need a large supply of it to help you all advance.”

  “How can we advance without healing our cores?” Christina asked.

  “Everyone said it was impossible for me to survive here,” I said with a shrug. “Look how that turned out. Do your best. That’s all anyone can ask. You’ll find it’s usually enough.”

  The students didn’t seem to agree with me on that, and I didn’t have time to argue with them. Hahen would whip them into shape if anyone could, and I needed to speak with my clan elders.

  I’d once tracked Hagar to a secret meeting room in the School. I willed myself to retrace the steps that eventually led me up a narrow, crooked staircase to a heavy wooden door. I gave it a sharp knock with my knuckles, and when no one answered, pushed it open. To my surprise, it swung inward easily, and I found myself in a room that looked nothing like the one I’d remembered. The last time I’d been there, the circular chamber had been entirely empty. Now, it was filled with machinery that hissed and groaned, shooting sparks of jinsei into the air. The door swung closed behind me and settled into its frame with a faint thump that was almost entirely drowned out by the sounds of the surrounding machines.

  “Great,” I grumbled to myself. I hadn’t been sure what I’d do once I reached the secret meeting chamber, and I certainly wasn’t any clearer on the subject now. Somehow, Hagar had used this room to contact our clan’s elders. I’d hoped it would be obvious how I could do the same.

  No such luck.

  I studied the auras that surrounded the machines and split them into four groups based on what I found. The first group swarmed with aspects of listening and awareness, as well as notes of distance and focus. Though I had no idea how they operated, those were clearly listening devices of some sort. They could be radios, I guessed, though the awareness and focus aspects were more complex than what I’d expect to see in such a basic device.

  The next group was surrounded by aspects of memory and measurement. Each of those smaller machines sat on top of a machine from the first group. The pairs of machines were connected by thin plates of scripted copper held in place with small silver rivets. These had to be recording devices that stored information from the listening machines. My natural curiosity urged me to figure out how they worked and, more importantly, what secrets they
held.

  As much fun as it would’ve been to experiment with Hagar’s spy gear, I fought the impulse. I didn’t want to disrupt whatever work she was doing. It would be just my luck that I’d stop one of the recording machines right when it was about to store important information stolen from the heretics.

  The third group of machines formed a triangle around the room’s perimeter. Those held aspects of transformation, movement, and concealment in intimidating numbers. The machines were heavy with sacred energy, and they emitted popping noises at irregular intervals. They weren’t connected to any of the other machines, and the immense power they held made me wary of getting too close to them until I understood what they did. They could have been traps, for all I knew, set to ward off intruders.

  Which, technically, is what I was.

  It was the last group of machines that held the most promise. They were smaller than the others, their auras stuffed with sound, light, movement, distance, and focus aspects. Complicated dials and meters, none of which made any sense to me, covered their faces. What I did recognize, though, were square green buttons with the word TRANSMIT printed across them in thick block letters.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” I said quietly. Hagar had been my only contact with the elders for as long as she’d been my handler. Maybe these machines were how she did it.

  I rubbed my hands together, reached out, and pressed the green button on the nearest machine.

  “Hello?” I asked. “Is anyone there?”

  I released the button and waited for an answer.

  Nothing happened for a long stretch of seconds, and then a blurry red orb appeared above the machine. Garbled sounds filled the air in explosive bursts of nonsensical noise that were so loud I covered my ears with my palms and instinctively ducked my head away from them. The red ball above the device shimmered in time with the sounds, its outline pulsing and wavering until it finally snapped into place and a clean, clear voice broke through the chaotic sounds.

  “Jace?” Hagar’s voice was nearly a shout. “What are you doing?”

  “Something’s happened,” I said. “We need to talk.”

  “Bring him through,” Sanrin snapped. “He’s right. It’s time for us to talk.”

  “I’m ready when you are,” I said to the air. That was a lie, because I was suddenly nervous about my decision to track down Hagar and the elders. There was a dark undercurrent in Sanrin’s voice that made me wonder what I’d interrupted.

  “It’s your funeral,” Hagar said. “Stand still. I don’t want to cut you in half with the portal.”

  Those weren’t the comforting words I was looking for. I still had the occasional nightmare about the Lost that Abi had sliced up with a portal in Kyoto.

  A dark hole opened in the air behind me a split second later. Its edges wriggled with tendrils of sacred energy that moved with the slow, languid motions of seaweed deep beneath the ocean’s surface. Hagar waved at me from the other side of the portal, her eyes wide, dark smudges smeared across her cheeks.

  “Get in here. I can’t keep this open for much longer,” she said.

  It was hard to make out Hagar’s surroundings. The walls were damp stone that reflected patches of milky light. The portal cut off my view of the ceiling, though it did show me a dirt floor pockmarked by oily puddles of what might’ve been water. It didn’t look very inviting.

  I jumped through the portal, anyway.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  Hagar’s fingers danced across a web of red light that hung in the air before her. It vanished, and the portal snapped closed with an electric hiss at the same time.

  “With everyone else,” Hagar said.

  I snorted. “That’s specific.”

  “Best not to ask questions,” Sanrin said as he emerged from the shadows with Claude beside him. “I’d take you someplace more comfortable for this meeting, but none of our usual haunts is available just now. I can get you coffee, though.”

  Hagar opened her mouth to say something, and I interrupted her with my order.

  “Yes, please. Black is fine.” The words were hardly out of my mouth when the ground shook beneath our feet and the dots of green light in the ceiling swayed drunkenly. “What was that?”

  “Again, best not to ask,” Sanrin said. He tilted his head toward the room’s only exit and led the way out.

  The passage we followed was long and narrow, the walls unfinished dirt that left smudges on our exposed skin and robes. More of the green orbs provided light from the ceiling, and the harsh illumination changed familiar colors into alien reflections. Hagar’s brilliant red hair was as black as coal and glistened with an unwholesome sheen. Under the emerald light, it was impossible to tell whether she was merely her usual pale self or sick.

  We finally left the tunnel for a room that might’ve been cozy if the furniture didn’t consist of packing crates and empty cable spools. Hirani raised a carafe of coffee toward us and offered a wisp of a smile. While everyone looked ragged and rough around the edges, she seemed to have suffered much more than the others. Her eyes were sunken into deep pits, and the bags under them were darker than bruises.

  “What is going on?” I blurted out.

  “War,” Hirani said with a sad shrug. She poured coffee into the chipped mugs that rested on the cable spool next to her, and her hand shook so badly she splashed it everywhere. “Never mind this.”

  She snapped her fingers, and five mugs of steaming coffee appeared in the air before her. She made a shooing gesture, and a mug drifted toward each of us.

  I plucked mine from the air and found it was the perfect temperature. One sip identified it as a rich French roast, the complex flavors bright and clear on my tongue. If it hadn’t been for my strange surroundings, it might’ve been the best cup of coffee I’d ever had.

  “This is why Hagar has been gone,” Elder Sanrin said. “She’s been a great help to the clan during a very dark time. We’ve been watching for signs that the next challenge would begin; is that why you’re here?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m here because the Inquisition sent one of its brothers to the School.”

  I filled them in on what had happened, including Rhône’s threat to take the hollows back to Atlantis at the end of the year. Sanrin’s face grew darker with every sentence, and Hirani and Claude looked like they wanted to fly off to Atlantis and crack some skulls immediately. By the time I’d finished my story, the elders had gathered close to me, eyes burrowing into my aura for any signs I’d left something out or hadn’t been completely honest with them.

  “Well, you’ve certainly kicked the hornet’s nest this time, kid.” Claude clapped a hand to my shoulder and shook his head.

  “I didn’t do anything!” I half-shouted. “I trained the hollows like Headmistress Cruzal asked me. That’s it.”

  “And that was enough to attract the attention of the Inquisition’s spies,” Sanrin said. “It’s not your fault, Jace. Things are changing very quickly out here. Between the heretics, the Gauntlet, and this convergence point that everyone’s so wound up about, we’re all jumping at shadows. And each other’s throats.”

  My clan’s elder shuffled over to one of the crates and took a seat. He sipped at his coffee, and I wasn’t sure if it was the green lighting or the stress he was under that had crisscrossed his face with deep valleys of wrinkles. It looked like all his years of extended life had caught up with Sanrin in the time since I’d last seen him. He sat in silence for several moments and then fixed his gaze on me.

  “Your mother has gotten ahead of us, Jace,” he said. “Her Machina have given the heretics the edge they’ve needed to turn the tables on us. I suppose it’s a good thing you didn’t go to Bogotá, because that facility is lost to us now.”

  “And Versailles,” Claude added.

  “Don’t forget the Hong Kong research station,” Hirani said.

  The ground shook again, so hard I lost half of my cup of coffee to the floor. The green lights sw
ung wildly from side to side, throwing bars of emerald light across the room in disorienting sprays. The tremor lasted for several seconds and left the elders looking even more worried.

  “How are they beating us?” I asked. “And what can we do to stop them?”

  “We can’t see them in the Grand Design any longer,” Sanrin explained. “Their Machina warp the Flame’s plan and make it impossible for us to predict where they’ll attack. They’ve also entrusted their constructs with a frightening amount of autonomy. We didn’t expect them to ramp up production so quickly, and they’ve caught us with our robes untied as it were. We had to pull back, consolidate our position around the world. Fortunately, the heretics seem more concerned with rooting out our holdings than advancing their own plans, for the moment. That’s given us time to evacuate key personnel to more secure locations. With the sages gone, though, we haven’t been able to mobilize the other clans to our defense.”

  It was difficult to process all the information Sanrin had thrown at me. I’d known the heretics were a problem, but had no idea they were engaged in a covert war to wipe out my clan. I’d come here looking for information about my mother and protection from the inquisitors. Instead, I’d found my allies on the ropes and in dire need of aid themselves. The other clans, who the Shadow Phoenixes had sacrificed their power and honor to protect, were cowards who wouldn’t risk their own power in a war against the heretics.

  We were all alone on the front lines of a battle against foes we didn’t understand and couldn’t predict.

  “We’ll regroup, come up with a new plan to go after them,” Hirani said quietly. “It’s the only way.”

  But the look on Sanrin’s face and the grim set of Claude’s jaw told me that wouldn’t happen. Pulling back and consolidating our forces would buy the clan time, but it wouldn’t defeat the heretics. For that, we’d need much more powerful allies.