by Will Wight
The two Fishers exchanged looks with one another, but Jai Long couldn't read their expressions.
“Fisher Lokk,” Kral began, his tone imperious. “I, Kral of the Sandvipers, request an exchange of the sacred arts. Let the words of the stronger sect be heard.”
The old man crossed his arms. “You'd risk your young chief?”
Jai Long almost laughed. Ragahn knew full well who guided the Sandvipers in Gokren's absence. “The Fishers are worthy of facing our best.”
Kral swelled at the praise, though he knew it wasn't sincere. Though they were both Highgold, Jai Long had never lost a sparring match to the Sandviper heir.
But that didn't mean he wasn't good enough to deal with a beggar's apprentice.
Fisher Ragahn nodded as though he thought Jai Long was speaking good sense. “Very well. Fight until the winner is clear. If there is danger, I'll step in.”
It traditionally fell to the elders to intervene in a fight and stop injuries on either side, but there were usually elders representing both halves of a duel. If Lokk was in danger, Jai Long had no doubt that Ragahn would move like lightning, but Kral was almost entirely on his own.
Not that you would know it from watching him. The Sandviper heir cast his furs onto the ground behind him, slowly sliding each awl from his belt as though expecting the mere sight of them to daunt his opponent. He ran green madra along the edge of each spike, displaying them like a street performer.
Lokk, by contrast, drew a curved blade in each hand and stood there. If purple madra flickered somewhat between the hilts and the blades, it looked like an accident. His expression was placid as still water.
If Jai Long was honest, he found the Fisher's display more intimidating.
No one signaled the beginning of the match, but both men sprang into action nonetheless. The first exchange was sudden and violent; hooks flew out from their handles as though attached to invisible ropes, whipping toward Kral. The Sandviper gathered green madra into a swirl around his awl, stabbing forward.
Three spikes of Forged Sandviper madra condensed around his weapon, driving forward with him.
The Sandvipers called that move the Four Fangs of the Serpent, but it was really a very ordinary Forger technique. It was only the most basic type of Forging—the madra would stay solid for a few seconds, and then dissipate—but it was still effective. It would be like facing four attacks at once.
Lokk's hooks crashed through the Sandviper technique, sending fizzing shards of green madra spinning to the ground. The grass fizzed around the venomous madra. The tips of his blades landed on Kral's back, puncturing the skin, but the Sandviper chief had taken the move in order to land a move of his own. He continued driving the awl forward, aiming at the Fisher's chest.
Just when Jai Long started to hope that Kral was really pointing at the other man's shoulder—because he didn't want to have to defend the young chief from an angry First Fisher—he learned why Ragahn had chosen to wait under a large tree.
A rope of purple madra flashed into existence behind Lokk, connecting his spine to a branch of the tree. It shrunk rapidly, hauling the Fisher up and away from Kral's attack.
Hauled back by a rope of his own madra, Lokk landed neatly on the lowest branch. He held only a pair of hilts; the bladed hooks were still stuck in Kral's back.
“Thank you for going easy on me,” Lokk said, his tone polite.
Ragahn turned to Jai Long as though asking if the duel was over, but Kral's expression was distorted in fury. He dropped one awl, and the aura around the tree rippled green.
“Down!” Fisher Ragahn shouted, making a beckoning motion to his disciple. Invisible force caught Lokk, pulling him away from the tree.
He stopped in midair, hovering only a few feet from the trunk. He hadn't undone his own Forged tether, and now he was bound in place.
The First Fisher leaped into the air, but Jai Long's senses were already overwhelmed by bright green aura.
Sandviper madra drew on aura from toxins, poison, and corrosion of all kinds. It was a Path born in the swamp, originally created as an adaptation to the dread corruption of the Wilds.
And this tree's leaves were half blackened.
Ruler techniques were faster and more powerful when the necessary vital aura was ready to hand, and the tree was riddled with poison. It burst into a harsh green cloud as though exploding in emerald flame, covering both Fishers.
Jai Long dashed over to Kral, seizing one of the bladed hooks as best he could without slicing his own hand open. He tugged one out of the flesh, leading to a pained moan from the Sandviper chief.
“It's only pain,” Jai Long said, pulling the second free. “Your ascension to Iron was worse.”
“I beat him,” Kral panted.
“Let's see if it was worth it.”
Ragahn had emerged from the toxic cloud—unscathed, of course—with an unconscious apprentice in his hands. Lokk twitched wildly as his master drifted down to the ground, as slowly as if he were lowered on a wire.
Jai Long stood straight, grinding the butt of his spear into the ground. “Your disciple fought well,” he said.
The unspoken words floated in the air: ...but he lost.
Fisher Ragahn turned a gaze on him, and though his expression was still blank, his eyes held a deeply banked anger.
He was a sacred artist too, after all. His pride was more dear to him than his life.
Fortunately, that same pride was keeping his anger in check.
“The Fishers will honor our debts,” he said. “You'll have my best for the next three days. But if Arelius shows up and takes everything, I'll hold you accountable.”
He flew off, lashing himself to the trees with a long line of purple madra and pulling himself forward.
“They aren't the most grateful losers,” Kral said, wincing as he straightened himself. The wounds would pain him for a few days, but Sandvipers were tenacious. He'd heal quickly.
“We haven't won yet,” Jai Long said.
There were still three days to go.
Chapter 15
Lindon levered himself up to a seated position, the flare of pain letting him know that he may have a cracked rib. He set the pain aside. It was nothing to the damage in his legs, which lay swollen and useless on the ground in front of him. He hadn't been able to walk for days.
He reached over and slid the glass case closer, using the three un-broken fingers on his left hand. One of his eyes was swollen shut, but through the other he watched the Sylvan.
She spun in place, arms swaying as though dancing to some music he couldn't hear. He'd started to think of it as female, though he had no reason to think she had a gender at all. Maybe it was the flowing madra of her lower half, which made her look like she was wearing a dress.
Regardless, the Sylvan had been his only companion these two weeks besides Yerin's voice through the door. He'd fed her what dribbles of his spare madra he could afford to Forge, and she'd grown almost half an inch. Her translucent blue form looked more solid, though that could have been his imagination, and she expressed a greater range of actions. Just yesterday she had swum a full lap of her tank inside the ever-flowing river.
Lindon looked up from the case to regard his fortress.
It was a slipshod attempt at defense—he'd used the claws of the spider-construct in his pack to cut dead matter away from the Remnants that regularly attacked him. With those pieces, those bright blue shells and shimmering green limbs, he'd boxed himself in. His back was to the door, and his fortress was piled up against the stairs. He'd backed himself into a corner, which had led to a few tense moments as he had nowhere to run, but he refused to move his fortification to the top of the stairs. If the door ever opened, he wanted to be able to run through in an instant.
Though he was starting to lose hope that the door would ever open.
While watching the Sylvan, he reached over to a binding shaped like a twisted blue seashell. He had to replace the dead matter in his walls every
day or two, as it bled away regularly, but he used his own madra to supplement his few useful bindings. He'd been fortunate to find this one, which Gesha had demonstrated for him a few weeks before: it produced water.
He drank only a few swallows; he didn't have any more madra to spare. Most of his power each day went to refreshing the essential bindings and his weapon, the severed Sandviper stinger with the cloth-wrapped hilt. He cycled the rest of it, pushing madra through every square inch of his body.
Despite the haze of agony that hung over him constantly—and the series of sudden, vicious attacks that had driven fear so deep into his soul that he thought it would never leave—he was pleased with the weeks of work. The razor-edged tension had done wonders for his advancement, since there was nothing to do here but cycle and prepare to be attacked. And the slightest moment of inattention would result in his inevitable death.
One of his cores was at the peak of Copper, almost ready to overflow and pour through his body in the transition to Iron. He'd finally raised his second core to Copper as well, but focused most of his effort on one. That had been Yerin's advice.
Eithan's breathing technique had almost gotten him killed in the first few days, when he lost his breath in the middle of a fight and his madra fell out of control. Now, he rarely lost the rhythm, and he'd started to see the advantages: his madra recovered much more quickly, and he was sure he could advance to Iron any day he wanted.
That wasn't entirely true. He wanted to advance right now, because breaking through the barrier to Iron completely reforged the body. Advancing to Copper had cleansed him of scrapes, cuts, and bruises, and Iron was supposed to be a more thorough transformation. When Yerin told him that it would heal his broken legs, he'd almost cried from the effort not to force an advancement now.
But if he advanced before he was ready, he would damage his own foundation. That was the only thing that held him back. If his Iron body wasn't perfect, he wouldn't be guaranteed Highgold, much less the heights Suriel had challenged him to reach.
The blue marble sat in a corner, its flame straight and steady inside the glass barrier. He stared at it every day as he cycled, meditating on it. Suriel had believed he could do this. She'd known he would meet suffering even worse than this, and he would come out on the other side stronger.
He seized on that like a mantra, clutching it like the edge of a cliff.
Only one problem remained: his progress was too slow.
He'd only pushed madra through half of his body at most. He could execute a basic Enforcer technique now, making himself stronger for short periods of time, which he had hastily scrawled into the Path of Twin Stars in excitement. But he needed to suffuse his body with madra, soaking it completely, and he was at least another week away from that. Probably two.
And his body was done.
With two broken legs, one eye swollen shut, two broken fingers on each hand, a cracked rib, and more wounds and complaints than he could even remember, he wouldn't survive another attack. The day had been quiet so far, which was a blessing from the heavens as far as he was concerned, but something else would come. A twisted dreadbeast, a sandviper, a Remnant. At least he stood a chance against the Remnant, thanks to the scripts he'd left scraped into the top of the stairs.
But even if he survived today, he'd never last until he finished laying the groundwork for Iron. If nothing else, he'd starve. Sandvipers tasted like chicken livers soaked in acid, but they were the best thing he'd found to eat in here. On the fourth day, he'd even been fortunate enough to find a binding that produced fire.
As injured as he was, he couldn't catch food anymore. He'd burned through Eithan's supply of scales in a week, using them to push the barrier of his core further and further, and then he'd started Forging his own.
At first, he'd wondered how a scale he'd Forged would help further his own advancement. It felt a bit like eating your own arm for sustenance. But it was quite simple, in practice: he Forged the madra, condensing it into a scale and setting it aside. Then he cycled to restore his madra to its peak condition and swallowed the scale again. Pushed beyond its capacity, his core stretched a little.
Gradually, by repeating that process over and over, he'd stretched his core to the limit of Copper. When his body was ready, he'd push the core just a little further, and then it would spill over and run through all the channels he was patiently preparing.
But that brought him back to the original problem.
He'd poured out his concerns to Yerin, who listened until the end. She'd kept him sane during these two weeks, though she was never as impressed with his accomplishments as she ought to be. To her, any sacred artist should be able to survive for a few weeks under constant attack.
Finally, when he'd finished explaining that he couldn't possibly finish driving madra through his body before he died, and she had to convince Eithan to release him, she sat in silence for a moment.
Then she said, “Have my eyes gone soft, or is it getting bright in there?”
At first he assumed that was one of her expressions, and 'bright' meant his situation was getting more hopeful. Then he looked at the walls.
Between the glow of Suriel's marble and the soft luminescence of the Remnant bodies piled around, it was actually quite bright in his little nook. So it took him a moment to realize that there were faint sparks playing inside the script that wrapped the chamber.
He contained his excitement. It really meant nothing to his situation, though any sign of change thrilled him. “Have you asked Eithan? Is he there, by chance?”
Eithan had said nothing to Lindon directly over the past two weeks. Not a word. Yerin had consulted with him a few times on an answer to one of Lindon's sacred arts questions, but otherwise he might as well have left. He spent his days with Yerin, locked in combat that Lindon could hear crashing through the door, and more than once Lindon had shed actual tears of envy.
Now, the light in the script meant the possibility of hearing from Eithan. And that conversation could be the key that opened the door.
Yerin left, and only minutes later, a new voice came through. Lindon closed his eyes, for a moment just savoring the sound of someone else's voice. It had been so long.
“I'm sorry to cut this phase of your training short, Lindon, but it looks as though someone has lit a fuse for us. They're fooling with the script, so power is flowing into empty chambers. Bad news is, this door's going to open soon.”
Lindon's spirits soared.
“But don't worry. The power is being drawn to the top of the pyramid, so every dreadbeast and Remnant in the Ruins will follow us.”
His spirits crashed back down to earth, and he almost cried.
The wait for the door to slide open felt longer than the previous two weeks. Lindon stared at the blank stone slab, every twitch of his body sending notes of pain through him like a symphony of agony.
Finally, the lines of script running along the wall flared brighter. Light grew along the bottom, and the door lifted away from the floor.
Tears welled in Lindon's one good eye, and he swiped them away. Better if they saw him as a grizzled survivor of suffering, rather than a boy waiting to be rescued. Though gaining a reputation as a coward would be worth it so long as they took him away.
When the door opened, Eithan was holding an arm over his nose. “I didn't expect you to smell of rosewater and lavender, but it would have been considerate of you to bathe.”
Lindon stared at him over the crude splints binding his two broken legs.
Yerin advanced without comment. Her hair had grown slightly uneven again, and the new sacred artist's robe that she'd received from the Fishers was little more than a collection of black tatters. She smiled at him out of one corner of her mouth and then stepped past him, gripping her sheathed sword.
With a grunt, she hauled one of the half-ruined Remnant corpses away from his wall and peered out. “Still scarce for now,” she said. “But we should scurry.”
Eithan looked Lin
don up and down. “It's been hard on you.”
Lindon held his eyes very wide so he didn't tear up.
Lowering his sleeve, Eithan revealed a curious expression. “Was it worth it?”
With his less injured arm, Lindon pushed himself up straighter to slowly execute a seated bow. Sweat beaded on his forehead from the pain in his ribs, but he forced himself through it. “Gratitude, elder. This one cannot repay the favor.”
These two weeks had been the worst in Lindon's life, but half a month of agony was nothing compared to a lifetime of helplessness.
Now, he was on the verge of Iron. Iron might be nothing but a child's accomplishment out here, but his parents were only Iron. He hadn't even turned sixteen yet, so he'd surpass his sister.
If he returned to Sacred Valley, the Wei clan wouldn't just welcome him back. They'd reward him. He would be their new idol, the one they paraded in front of the other clans to show their superiority.
The idea was so sweet that it almost choked him.
Far more important was that he'd taken his first steps on the Path Suriel had shown him. He might really surpass Gold, and Eithan had helped him.
For that alone, he really did owe the yellow-haired man a debt he couldn't repay.
Eithan smiled broadly, pleased with his answer. “That's good,” he said. “Because it isn't over yet.”
Yerin glanced back over her shoulder, giving him a look of pity.
“You're only halfway through pushing madra channels through your entire body, so if you advanced to Iron now, you'd be crippling your own future. Lowgold would be difficult, and you may reach Highgold in your old age.”
Never would Lindon have thought that reaching Gold would be the lowest he would aim for.
“Even if you had finished, you will have reached only the most ordinary sort of Iron. If you were very gifted or lucky, perhaps you could reach the peak of Truegold. Underlord would be a distant dream.”