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

by Gage Lee

  I couldn’t remember when I’d last seen the key. I’d used it to open the orichalcum pathway that led us to the final challenge of the Empyrean Gauntlet. And then...

  My memories ended there. I had no idea where the key had gone, or how it had wound up in my room.

  The key blazed with crimson light, and my blood vanished from its surface with a sharp crack and a whiff of ozone. A technique burst from the object and slammed into my chest. The surprise attack hurled me to the floor and pinned me there beneath an immense pressure.

  My ribs creaked under the force that held me immobile. My serpents flailed uselessly at the air, like the legs of a wounded spider. The attack had knocked me almost senseless; I couldn’t breathe, much less examine the technique for an escape from its merciless grasp.

  A dark and malignant power uncoiled from the key. Thick vapors emanated from the key’s heart and formed a perfect circle in the air above me. Shadows flooded into the center of that circle, filling it with a smooth, mirror-like darkness.

  “Ah, there you are.” Brother Harlan’s face appeared in the black circle. His eyes were fixed on me, silver lines of jinsei crawling around the irises. “You keep finding new ways to trouble me.”

  There was no breath in my lungs to respond. Instead, I focused on the technique that had pinned me in place. It was a powerful construct, protected by armored aspects and imbued with enough power to take down a horse. There was no way brute strength would be enough to get me out of this.

  “All you had to do was nothing,” Harlan said, disgust obvious in his voice. “That’s it. Just do nothing. Wait for your betters to make the important decisions. But you couldn’t even obey that simple command.”

  The priest’s words infuriated me. Do nothing. Let the dragons seize control of the world while he and his allies reaped the rewards of their betrayal.

  “Traitor.” I forced the word past the pressure on my chest.

  My serpents probed the edges of the construct on top of me. Their delicate, razor-sharp tips plucked at the lines of jinsei that held it in place. There was a weakness there. Faint, almost imperceptible.

  “You know all about traitors, don’t you?” Harlan chuckled. “Your mother the heretic. What do you think she’ll do next? Kill a busload of schoolchildren? Blow up a hospital?”

  Brother Harlan knew how to get to me, I’d give him that much. I was terrified of what my mother might do. Until the stunt she’d pulled with the bomb-carrying construct, I’d held out hope that she was misunderstood. But that trick had nearly killed my clanmates. It might have even killed me. I couldn’t pretend my mother was innocent any longer.

  I found a chink in the technique’s armor. The force aspects that gave the construct its strength weren’t shielded. Against most Empyreals, they would be safely wrapped up in the technique’s aura, untouchable.

  That didn’t put them outside my grasp, though.

  I weighed my options. The Thief’s Shield would rip the construct apart and bind its aspects in my aura. With any luck, it would also kill the portal that Harlan was using to harass me. It’d be nice to be rid of the inquisitor.

  I wasn’t sure that was the best option, though. Harlan had tricked me and invaded my home. He’d committed horrible crimes against all of humanity.

  He should be punished.

  “I see my little technique has taken your breath away.” Harlan chuckled to himself. “If I do nothing, they’ll find you just like that. No signs of injury, no signs of foul play at all. Poor Jace, his monstrous core must have finally killed him. That might be easiest.”

  My serpents worked at the trap just outside of Harlan’s view. One by one, they plucked force aspects from the inquisitor’s construct and loaded them into my aura. I held my tongue, though, and my breath. I wanted the priest to think I was helpless and dying.

  “You’ve caused so much suffering, Jace,” Harlan said with a stern frown. “Your foolish rebellion has disrupted the Grand Design. You’ve wounded the oracles who light our path with their words of wisdom. Even the Empyrean Flame has gone silent, because of you. For what you’ve done, your passing will be marked by pain and destruction. Your clan and all your little friends will know that you died for your hubris.”

  With every word the priest said, my serpents removed another force aspect from his construct. The last of them had been transferred to my aura, leaving the trap too weak to hold me in place.

  It was almost time to strike.

  “Let’s end this,” Harlan said. “Whatever you are, Jace, you will no longer be a thorn in my side. I will pluck you out and cast you down.”

  Harlan closed his eyes and pulled sacred energy deep into his lungs. His channels glowed with inner strength, and his aura flooded with aspects of fire and wind. The trap had only been meant to hold me still while Harlan launched the killing blow. He was going to burn me alive.

  The priest unleashed the technique he’d prepared. A gust of hot wind blew through the hole and swirled through my room. It grew more intense by the second, and flame aspects flooded toward my aura. Harlan’s attack was brutal and devastating. The instant it touched my flesh, it would burn me to ash.

  “No,” I said, cool and calm.

  Two of my serpents pushed me back onto my feet, while the others lashed out to spear dangerous aspects before they invaded my aura. The wind whipped my hair and the edges of my robes, but the fire vanished. My serpents worked with methodical precision, almost of their own accord, and dismantled the attack before it could touch me.

  Harlan had taken his shot, and it had fallen far, far short of his target.

  Now it was my turn.

  I crossed the room to the portal in the blink of an eye. My serpents darted forward with the speed of striking scorpions, their spiked tips rushing for Harlan’s face.

  The priest’s eyes shot wide. He threw his hands up to cover his face from my attack and cried out in alarm. Other voices shouted a warning to the priest, far too late to do him any good. Techniques flashed from behind Harlan as his allies tried to save him.

  For a moment, I considered killing him. It would have been so easy.

  It would also have marked me for a monster. The priest was a horrible person, and he’d schemed and plotted to do great harm. But he didn’t deserve to be murdered for that. Far better to let him survive, waiting for justice to come for him.

  But that didn’t mean I couldn’t leave him with a little gift to show him who he was messing with.

  “You’ve made a terrible mistake.” My voice sounded distant, as if I were hearing it from a recording. “You should not have attacked me.”

  My serpents struck with perfect accuracy. Their tips plucked the force aspects from my aura and embedded them deep into Harlan’s. The priest’s knees buckled under the sudden and unexpected pressure, and he clawed at the throat of his robes. He hadn’t expected his trap to be turned against him, and panic made it impossible for him to think his way out.

  “I didn’t do any of this,” I snapped. “You turned away from the Flame. You abandoned your role as guardians of its plan for humanity.”

  Harlan’s eyes were so wide I could see myself reflected in his gaping pupils. The voices behind him were an incomprehensible din, distorted by the portal. That was all right. I didn’t care if they could hear me. My words were for Harlan. He could tell them what I’d said.

  “You attacked me,” I continued. “You plotted to kill my friends. You failed.”

  The last of the force aspects had pushed Harlan onto his back. The portal had swiveled to keep him in focus, and I held his gaze.

  “I want you to remember this moment.” My voice shook with emotion I could no longer restrain. “I want the instant when you realized you were no longer safe burned into your memory. If you ever come for me again, Brother Harlan, or you send someone to attack me or anyone I know, I’ll come for you.”

  I let the pressure build. Harlan’s cheeks were the color of ripe cherries, and blood vessels burst in the c
orners of his eyes, staining the whites pink. The priest was dying.

  What was it he’d said to me? All I had to do was nothing.

  “Leave us alone,” I commanded. I left the pressure on Harlan for another moment, then ripped the force aspects out of his aura.

  Breath rushed back into his lungs in a painful whoop, and Harlan clutched his throat with both hands. His eyes were still wide, tears of blood leaking from them.

  “You’ll never—”

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “I will. And you don’t know it yet, Harlan, but you’ll see that I was right to. When all this is over, when you realize you’ve lost, you’ll see what I did. And you’ll know who beat you. For now, leave me alone. Stay far away from the School. Because if I get even a whiff of your interference...”

  I dropped another force aspect into Harlan’s aura. It wasn’t much, just enough to let him feel the power closing in on him again.

  When panic filled his eyes, I destroyed the portal with a swipe of my serpent.

  I snatched the key out of the air as it fell.

  As it lay in my palm, the compass spun wildly. A dozen voices, a hundred, a thousand, chuckled in my ears.

  “I’m not in the mood for games,” I muttered. “You could give me some help here.”

  “Find the way,” the Empyrean Flame whispered with all its borrowed voices.

  The compass swung a final time, then came to rest with its arrow pointing at a symbol on the rim. It had frozen in place, solid and immovable as if it had been forged in that position.

  It wasn’t much of a hint.

  But it was a start.

  And that was enough.

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  Not ready to say goodbye to Jace and the other students at the School of Swords and Serpents? Click here to receive "Maps," a bonus short story about Jace's summer!

  Looking for the next book in the School of Swords and Serpents series, and need it right this minute? Check out: Burning Core. Or keep reading to take a sneak peek.

  The quest for the Empyrean Flame has begun, and a deadly new threat has appeared from beyond the realms of mortals.

  AS THE NEW SCHOOL YEAR begins, Jace and his friends must puzzle out the meaning behind the map sent by a mysterious benefactor. But as Jace's daunting quest leads him to the most exotic destinations on Earth, he finds himself hunted by the last person he'd expected to oppose his mission: his own mother.

  With the heretics hot on his trail and a chaotic invasion looming, Jace and his friends must overcome challenges like none they've ever faced.

  Because the end of one myth is often the beginning of a new legend...

  Burning Core is book four in the bestselling School of Swords and Serpents series, a tale of wuxia adventure, cultivation mastery, and lurking threats.

  Chapter One: The Deeps

  HAHEN JABBED ME IN the ribs with his index finger. “You must go deeper than ever before to find your way to the next level of advancement.”

  Hearing those words for the hundredth time that summer nearly pushed me over the edge. Three times a day, every day, the rat spirit and I had chased my advancement from a disciple’s core to the artist level. It was a difficult transition. Only one in three Empyreals ever made the leap. With each passing day it felt more likely I was in the unlucky two-thirds stuck at disciple. I gave Hahen an exasperated sigh and opened my eyes.

  “I don’t know how to go deeper,” I grumbled. “Give me something to work with here.”

  The rat spirit scratched the underside of his chin and tugged on his whiskers. He frowned at me, shook his head, then sat across from me and crossed his legs. He took a deep breath, let it out, and put his hand on his chest.

  “I am not a sacred artist, but when I cycle my breath, I feel it in my lungs.” He lowered his hand to his pudgy midsection. “And then in my core. Those are the first two levels of meditation. To reach the artist level, you must go deeper, to the third level. Only there can you find the insight to advance along your path.”

  This was nothing new. Hahen had explained it to me before, and I’d failed time and again. My patience had grown thin, and I almost snapped at my mentor. It took me a moment to gather myself and push my anger down.

  It wasn’t Hahen’s fault I hadn’t found the way after months of trying. With only a handful of days left before the new semester started, my failure to reach the next level had made me desperate and grumpy.

  That wasn’t the proper mindset to advance.

  After a long, deep breath, I considered the rat spirit’s words carefully. I picked them apart for new meaning that might light the path ahead of me. You feel it in your lungs, you feel it in your core—

  You feel it.

  Maybe that was the problem. I’d been thinking my way through meditation. I needed something more visceral to guide me. I jumped to my feet and stepped around Hahen to my desk. I pulled a case of jinsei vials out of its bottom drawer and popped the cap on two of the glass cylinders. Without hesitation, I guzzled them both down.

  My earlier cycling had filled me with jinsei. The new purified sacred energy I’d poured on top stretched my core an uncomfortable amount. An ache grew at the center of my being and pulsed in time with my breaths.

  Perfect.

  “What are you doing?” Hahen asked irritably.

  “Giving myself something to feel.” I dropped into a lotus position, facing the rat spirit.

  I closed my eyes and drifted into a meditative state. After two breaths, all sensations from the outside world faded away. The only sounds were the beating of my heart and the gentle rush of breath entering and leaving my body. I breathed deeper, slower. More jinsei flowed into my already overloaded core. The ache inside me was a spike of pain that sharpened with every inhalation. It was easy enough to ignore discomfort while meditating, but that wasn’t the point. I focused on the pain and followed the thread of hurt deeper into myself.

  A golden shell blossomed in my vision. It took up my entire mind’s eye and emanated warmth and power. There was no doubt in my mind that this was my core. The great sphere rebuffed my first attempt to enter, and my second. The gold wall was as impenetrable as a steel plate.

  Frustrated, I willed my mind’s eye to orbit clockwise around the shell. The glowing wall shone like a benevolent sun until I reached the halfway point. I was so surprised by what I saw there, my concentration nearly faltered and dropped me out of my meditation.

  My core was divided into two hemispheres by a gnarled scar the color of fresh ashes. On one side of that line, the shell was flawless as freshly smelted gold. The other half, though, was coarse and dark as wrought iron. Dents and pits marred its surface. Rough-hewn lines covered the blackened metal in a crude pattern. Cracks revealed the silver light of jinsei hidden beyond the darkness, like rays of winter moonlight through storm clouds.

  It nearly broke my heart to know this ugliness was inside me. The golden side was the real me, the hollow core, pure and natural. The rest was the Machina I’d used to save my l
ife. That device had seemed elegant and brilliant to my eyes. Seen with my mind, it was malformed and misguided, a child’s attempt to recreate the work of a master artist.

  I had to find my mother. She’d built this thing. She’d made me a cripple. If anyone knew how to restore me, it was her.

  The despair and excitement that accompanied thoughts of my mother nearly drove me back to the waking world. I couldn’t allow that, not when I was so close to finding my way to the next advancement. I clamped down on my errant emotions and focused all my attention on the cracks in the dark side of the core. The largest of them held me mesmerized as it expanded and contracted with the rhythm of my breath. At its widest point, I willed myself forward.

  Nothing happened at first. My mind battered at the crack, but couldn’t force its way through the darkness to the light. Brushing my thoughts against the cold iron shell summoned the taste of old pennies.

  You’re thinking too much, I thought. The visions in my head had distracted me from my journey. I forced myself to feel the pain that had led me this far. It was still there, sharp and clean as a scalpel’s edge. The ache guided me where thoughts couldn’t. A moment of pain obliterated my awareness.

  I clung to my meditation as I passed through it. Losing myself when I was so close to advancement would be the worst kind of defeat. The pain receded, bit by bit, and my attention pierced the shell. I’d broken through the resistance...

  And plunged into a rat’s nest of writhing black cords that immediately tried to strangle me. Loop after loop snared me, holding my thoughts motionless, paralyzing me with fear. The more I struggled against them, the tighter the bonds became. Darkness surrounded me in a crushing weight. My strength was nothing compared to the ebony coils, my powers were useless inside my shell.

  And that was the key. This was my core, my mind.

  “Enough,” I growled, and willed the cords to leave me be.