by Will Wight
“Pardon my rudeness, but does that mean there's another option?”
Eithan's smile widened further. “You need a perfect Iron body.”
Lindon liked the sound of that. “Yerin mentioned that sacred artists prepared for each stage, but I’m afraid my family didn’t have such a custom. To us, Iron was Iron.”
“Well, contrary to what your family may have taught you, Iron comes in several flavors. Every serious sacred artist trains their body before advancing.”
Once again, Lindon was acutely aware that he’d missed something that everyone else considered common sense. “I’ll do whatever I have to,” he said. And then, a bit late, “…what do I have to do?”
“How did your master prepare you, Yerin?”
“I was probably seven, maybe eight,” Yerin said conversationally. “Master dropped me in a black pool, and it stung like fire. Water drilled right down into me until I thought I was dead for sure. Three days and three nights I squirmed like a worm on a frying pan, breathing through a reed. Then he let me out.”
She slapped one arm. “Steelborn body, he called it. You don't see much out of it until you're past Gold, but once you hit Underlord, it's supposed to be the best Iron body in the world for pure brute strength. Same one my master had.”
“And a wise man he was,” Eithan said. “A fine choice for you, and for your Path. Me, I was born with eyes faster than my hands, so to speak. I needed the reaction speed to keep up with my detection, so my family put me through the training for the Raindrop body. Poetic name; you're supposed to be able to thread through drops in a rainstorm without getting wet, though I've never found that to be true.”
“What did you have to do for that?” Lindon asked.
“I played games. Catching birds as they ran off, running as fast as I could, hitting balls back with sticks, that sort of thing.”
Yerin and Lindon both remained silent for several breaths.
“What can I say? Not everyone grows up suffering in the wilderness.” He leaned closer to Lindon, though he did pinch his nose as he did so. “We could give you your choice, if we had a month or two. But we don't, we need to move you very soon. Today would be ideal, since tomorrow I'd give you even odds of being devoured alive.”
“Ideal,” Lindon said. “Yes, I agree, that does sound ideal.”
“I thought your schedule would open up. Ordinarily I would give you options, as I said, but now we have to forcibly create more madra channels and prepare you for Iron in a single day. That narrows our conditions somewhat, so I would suggest the Bloodforged Iron body.”
Lindon perked up at the name. This one sounded like a legendary technique, something worthy of a powerful sacred artist. “We can do it here?”
“It's the same one the Sandviper sect uses for its initiates,” Eithan said, “though of course they call it the Sandviper body. They've really run themselves a rut when it comes to naming their techniques, I can tell you that. They use it to avoid killing themselves with their own venom.”
“If it makes you immune to poison, I can see how that might be helpful,” Lindon said. It wasn't as exciting as he'd imagined something called the 'Bloodforged body' would be, but he guessed it was practical. Especially if he had to cross through more Sandviper Remnants on the way out.
Eithan considered the statement for a moment. “'Immunity to poisons' is really an impossible concept. Any compound that harms the body is a poison, and there's no one solution for them all. What this will do is naturally draw on your spirit to accelerate your body's ability to restore and protect itself. It should help you against poison, parasites, diseases, infection, and so forth, as well as small wounds.”
Anything sounded good to Lindon compared to lying here in pain. “If that's what you recommend, then I humbly accept your advice.”
Eithan held up a finger. “Before you agree, you should know that there are two ways to create this body, but we're going to have to do it the fast way. And the fast way is terrible.”
Steel rang as Yerin's sword left its sheath. An instant later, a Remnant cry followed like a high note from a flute.
“Back to work for me,” she said. “But you want to speed things up, that would be golden.”
She dashed out of view, and the Remnant screamed again.
“I think it's time for the fast way,” Lindon said to Eithan, who nodded.
“That's what I thought too.” Then he pulled a squirming sandviper out from behind his back.
Lindon recoiled, pushing himself against the wall to get as far away from the creature. Its centipede legs kicked at the air, its serpentine head baring fangs as it hissed. Its carapace was tan and bright, exactly the color of a desert in the sun.
Eithan held it calmly, regarding the monster with something like fascination. “This isn't one of the corrupted dreadbeasts of this region, you know. It's a perfectly natural sacred beast, it just happens to be hideous. For the first step, you must allow it to bite you. Once the venom is in your blood, you can use your madra to guide it, and it will actually burn channels into your body that madra will be able to follow later. It's unbelievably painful, but it's quick, and you will heal once you advance to Iron. But you have to guide it yourself to keep it from running wild, which means you have to stay conscious.”
Lindon's mouth was hanging open in horror, but he didn't close it.
“It gets more disgusting,” Eithan continued. “As the Sandviper sect found out so many years ago, you also must drink the blood of the sandviper itself. It helps slow the venom's progress into your organs, making it easier to control. And slightly less likely that you will die.”
Fumbling for his pack, Lindon pulled out the sheaf of yellow papers that was originally the Heart of Twin Stars and was now his personal Path manual. A small brush and portable inkwell followed. He flipped to one of the later pages, filling in the details that Eithan had shared. The motion gave him time to think, with each stroke steadying his shaking hands. Even the pain in his damaged fingers faded as he worked.
Eithan waited patiently even as Yerin fought in the distance.
Finally, Lindon had finished recording, and his own heart had settled. If this was the path forward, he was going to walk it. He'd come too far to turn back now.
But first, he gathered up one of the straps on his pack and placed it between his teeth.
“I'm ready,” he said, voice muffled around a mouthful of padded leather. With eyes squeezed shut, he extended his wrist.
“Breathe carefully,” Eithan said. “Cycle.”
As Lindon did so, pain flashed like someone had stabbed through his arm. Then the venom came, and his blood burned.
If anything, Eithan had understated the pain.
Venom cycled in his veins along with every pulse of madra, and Eithan poured coppery blood through his clenched teeth. Lindon bit down on the leather strap through a mouthful of sandviper blood, and bit down just as hard on memories.
The mountains of Sacred Valley, knocked over like towers of sand. Everything he loved, washed away.
Li Markuth, like a monster in a world of children, and Suriel who could pack him up like an old toy.
If this pain was all it took to approach them, it was a small price.
Lindon pushed the venom everywhere he hadn't already worked his madra, forcing it into his muscles, his skin, even the very center of his bones. It was an endless moment, but still over sooner than he'd thought.
His aching jaw went slack, the blood-stained leather strap falling from his teeth. He panted, losing control of his cycling technique just to fill his lungs with oxygen.
He tried to open his good eye, but the lid wasn't cooperating. Now that he noticed, his limbs were moving out of his control; his fingertips twitched and his back arched as though someone else had tied strings to him and started to pull.
Finally, he wrenched his eye open and was distracted by his own flesh. Black veins stood out along his skin, tracing lines like a map over every inch of himself he co
uld see.
“Is that all?” he croaked out, and Eithan stared at him for a moment.
Then he gave a pure, rich laugh.
“You tell me,” the man said finally, wiping a tear from his eye with one finger. “Not even I can sense your insides better than you can.”
Lindon closed his eye again, cycling madra to get a sense for his own condition. The venom had indeed permeated his own body...but not as thoroughly as he'd expected.
“I think I could fit some more in,” Lindon said, though half of him couldn't believe the words were coming from his own mouth.
Eithan shrugged. “I'm no Sandviper. I've only read about the Bloodforged Iron body. But if you don't think this is enough...”
He tossed the mangled corpse of the sandviper aside and reached into his outer robe, producing a second live specimen.
Lindon recoiled again, just as he had the first time. “Would you mind telling me where you're getting those?”
With his free hand, Eithan lifted the bloody strap to Lindon's mouth. “Once more,” he said.
Again, Lindon bit down on the padded leather and squeezed his eyes shut.
***
Five of the little sacred beasts had been all that Eithan could scrounge from the Ruins—it seemed that once they knew he was hunting them, they'd started to run away.
The fifth was still alive, squirming in his hand and sending out its madra to try and burn away his hand, but he kept it suppressed with his own spirit. The other four were dead, having been drained of both venom and blood. The husks rested on the ground at his feet, twisted and broken.
In that respect, they looked much like Lindon.
His body wasn't moving much anymore, as he'd run out of energy sometime in the night. When he twitched, it was like lightning moving through dead flesh more than any conscious attempt at motion, and his skin was all but invisible beneath swollen black veins. Sandviper blood ran from his teeth as his own blood ran from his ears, the corners of his eyes, and even sweated through his pores.
He'd lasted more than a day, which had left even Eithan astonished. His standards were high—too high, really—but this Copper had still surprised him.
Yerin had done well for herself too. She'd fought almost without rest for a full night and most of the next day, and was even now finishing off a pack of twisted dreadbeasts. He kept his eyes on Lindon, but it almost didn't matter; he could still see Yerin, shoulders slumped in weakness, dragging her sword behind her as she limped back to their little enclosure. She passed through their barricade on the stairs, eyes moving to check Lindon's condition...
...and Eithan stepped aside to avoid the sword plunging into his back.
“You buried him,” she snarled, heat in her eyes and aura gathering around the edge of her sword.
He held up both hands to show his innocence, forgetting for a moment that he held a live sandviper in one. That didn't paint the best picture.
“He asked me to!” Eithan protested.
The sword-arm on Yerin's back stabbed in Lindon's direction. She really was getting better with her Goldsign, thanks to his guidance. “He asked for this?”
Under other circumstances, Eithan would have had trouble believing it too. “I'm performing as instructed. If it helps, I'm as horrified as you are.”
Her eyes filled with disgust, and she drew her sword back, flooding it with madra for a strike that would be...at best, inconvenient to avoid.
Instead of dodging, he seized Lindon’s wrist, holding up the boy’s blackened hand. It was curled into a fist so tight that blood leaked out of the palm. Eithan scrubbed away dried blood and grit from a line of metal on Lindon’s finger: a halfsilver ring.
“Do you happen to know what this is?” he asked, and before she could respond, he answered for her. “This acts as a filter for madra, refining madra quality during the cycling process. But it makes cycling twice as hard, and it takes twice as long. Like running with weights strapped to your legs.”
Yerin’s narrowed eyes moved from him to the ring. “He put that on himself?”
Eithan released Lindon’s arm, wiping his hand with a cloth he happened to carry in his pocket. It was difficult to do with only one free hand, the other still clutching a sandviper, but he managed. “I’ll admit, I shut Lindon in this room without concern for his will. But he has kept that ring on every day since the door first shut. And now…”
Lindon spoke precisely on cue. “One more...” he grunted, his voice scraping through a ruined throat. “One more.”
Eithan shrugged at Yerin's look of astonishment. “As soon as he asks me to, I'll stop.”
Then, before the girl could react, he turned and thrust the sandviper's fangs into Lindon's arm.
He tore the creature's head half off with one hand, preparing to drip the blood into Lindon's mouth as he had done before, but the boy's back seized up. His eyes—well, the one eye not hidden by swelling—rolled up into its socket, and foam bubbled up quickly at the mouth.
“Ah,” Eithan said, setting the sandviper corpse aside. “That was too much.”
Yerin dropped her sword and fell to her knees, pressing fingers against Lindon's throat. “What's the cure?”
Eithan wiped his bloody hand off on Lindon's clothes, then fished around in his pocket until he grabbed the scale waiting at the very bottom. “The venom has escaped his control and passed into the heart, so he's dead.” He withdrew the blue crystal coin, holding it up for her consideration. “Unless we trigger the transformation to Iron.”
He hesitated a moment, considering the accuracy of his own words. Honesty was very important.
“There's always the possibility that it will take too long, and then he'll be brain dead,” he clarified. “He can't breathe like this, you see.”
Yerin snatched the scale from his hand.
Clutching it in her fist, she broke the structure and reverted it to madra, using her spirit to force a flow of blue-white energy into Lindon's mouth.
That wouldn't be enough. His madra wasn't cycling at the moment, and her soul wasn't strong enough to do it for him. Not quickly, anyway.
So Eithan did it for her.
He pushed his palm against Lindon's core—the one swollen with energy, ready to spill over and advance into Iron—and guided the scale's madra within. It flexed, resisting for a second before cracking like a broken dam.
The madra flooded all through Lindon's body, expelling all physical impurities and transforming him with the power of the soul. His core would condense and restore itself into a smaller, denser form, transmuted from Copper to Iron.
Eithan took a quick step back.
The Iron transformation was never neat or pretty, as the body expelled impurities through any medium, but this was particularly gruesome. Black blood oozed through Lindon's skin, his muscles convulsing beneath as though they were liquefying and pouring out. Black tears ran from his bloodshot eye, and apparently his throat wasn't quite as far gone as Eithan had thought, because his screams were deafening.
The black substance oozing from Lindon's body carried a stench like bodies rotting in a cesspool, so Eithan headed up the stairs to the relatively pleasant air. There were only a few corpses decomposing up here, so at least he might get a whiff of something clean.
He left Yerin to watch over Lindon. If the boy died, that would be shame, though it wouldn't set Eithan back much.
But he expected a better result.
Chapter 16
As one of the highest-ranking representatives of the Sandviper sect, though he wasn't a Sandviper at all, Jai Long had the honor of supervising a young man's advancement to Iron.
He'd reluctantly bowed to tradition, on the condition that the ceremony could be conducted in a tent at the entrance to the Ruins. If the Arelius family had continued at their current pace, they'd be arriving sometime tomorrow. He and the Fishers believed they had figured out the last of the script around the final floor, but they wouldn't know until they tried.
It wa
s a delicate time, but tradition wouldn't wait.
The boy's whole family had gathered to see this paragon of their younger generation receive his Sandviper body at the tender age of eight years old. It was an impressive sign of dedication for such a young boy. Jai Long himself had reached Iron before that, but he'd had resources the Sandviper sect did not.
Jai Long clutched the sandviper in one hand, his spirit clamping around the creature's powers just as his fist imprisoned its limbs. With the other hand, he delicately squeezed the gland around the serpent's fang.
A drop of venom swelled, and he wicked it off with a needle.
The needle went onto a jade plate prepared for the purpose. He set the plate aside and withdrew a bowl the size of a thimble. With one stray whisk of Stellar Spear madra, he sliced the sacred beast's skin.
A few drops of blood filled the bowl, and Jai Long replaced the sandviper in its cage.
This whole process was supposed to be accompanied by a ceremony as the boy learned the glorious history of the sect and his own place within it, but Jai Long went about his business in cold silence. No one corrected him. They were afraid of him, one and all; afraid of his status within the Jai clan, afraid of the stories that surrounded him when he'd been banished. Afraid of his strength.
Kral stuck his head into the tent, grin blooming. “Bren! You're a man of the Sandvipers today.”
The boy—Bren, Jai Long supposed—matched Kral's grin with his own. He seemed only too relieved to look away from the red-masked stranger in his tent.
After a few more compliments for the boy and his family, which instantly put them at ease, Kral walked over to Jai Long. He gave a low whistle at the sight of the blood. “That's not too much, do you think?” he asked, keeping his voice low to avoid spooking the child.
“I'm sure you had more,” Jai Long said, not bothering to lower his tone. The most talented young members of the sect received two or three needles of venom, with an appropriate amount of blood to go along with it.
“Most people don't,” Kral pointed out. Then he raised his head to look at Bren, and he raised his volume to match it. “But he'll be the pride of the sect in a few years. I'll do it myself.”