by Will Wight
Yerin woke from her cycling meditation again, cracking her eyes. “You finally bothering to teach us?”
Eithan hopped up to sit on the bar, taking another drink from his bowl. “The question is, are you ready for me to teach you?” He let that hang for a second as he took another sip, then added, “And the answer is no, you're not ready, so I'm going to spend this month trying to prepare you.”
He nodded to Yerin. “First, I'd like you to take turns on the training course. Yerin, you will try to beat your previous time...”
She rose from her seat, ready to try immediately.
“...using only your Goldsign.”
The bladed metal arm hanging over her shoulder twitched. She turned to stare at him in disbelief. “I'd have a better chance of clearing it with my bright smile and winning personality.”
Eithan turned to Lindon. “And Lindon—”
“Oy. Hey. Don't ignore me.”
“I at least expect you to clear all eighteen dummies after a month. Don't worry about your time, for now. While you’re working on that, you can bring your second core up to Iron, and brush up on your Soulsmithing. Fisher?”
Gesha leaned back inside, shutting the window with one hand and dabbing at her mouth with a cloth in the other. When she spoke, her voice had an extra rasp. “You should be able to identify all the properties of the seven basic aspects of Forged madra, as well as their combinations. I have the books with me.”
Yerin slapped the flat edge of her bladed Goldsign against the wooden bar. “You want me to fight with this thing? Why don't I just tie a knife to the end of a string and use that?”
Eithan studied her over the rim of his bowl. “You think, perhaps, that I don't know what it takes to reach Highgold?”
“No, that's not...” Yerin’s ears started turning red. “I'm the last one who would...”
“You think you know better than I do which exercises will allow you to integrate your Remnant's skills and abilities into your own? If your master left you a more complete training regimen for you to follow after Lowgold, then by all means use that.”
Yerin's ears had turned bright red. “I didn't aim to say that, Underlord.”
“Hmm.” He smiled. “You're young, and I'm unaccustomed to explaining myself. I'll try to be clearer in the future, but do as I tell you.”
She kept her eyes on the floor, tilted away from Lindon, but she nodded. “It's not so far apart from what my master used to have me do.”
“The only difference,” Eithan said, “is that you trusted him. Trust comes with time. And during that time, you will clear that course with your Goldsign or I’ll tie you to a string and drag you behind the house like a kite.”
She straightened and marched for the door.
Lindon started to follow her, but Eithan stopped him. “Before you do your morning cycling, take...” –he reached behind the bar with one hand, balancing his bowl in the other, and rummaged around in a drawer— “Aha! Take this.” Eithan tossed Lindon a pill the size of his knuckle. It was smooth, with swirls of blue and white mingled together. “Behold, the Four Corners Rotation Pill.”
Yerin stopped with her hand on the door.
“It's a pill to make your madra easier to cycle, and it should help you raise your second core to Iron fairly quickly.”
Lindon itched to write the name of the pill down in his notes. He had to record every step of his advancement in The Path of Twin Stars manual. Which brought him a moment of panic, as he realized he didn’t have his pack with him.
He let out a breath of relief as he spotted his pack—with the manual inside—leaning up against the wall. A polished wood-and-jade chest leaked wisps of red from the closed lid, so he assumed his Thousand-Mile Cloud was inside.
“Use the pill together with your parasite ring,” Eithan said, pouring himself another drink. “The effects should complement one another, so that it feels like cycling normally, but you'll see twice the benefit. By the time we land, I hope to be able to take you straight to Jade.”
Lindon cradled the pill in both hands as though it was his key into the heavens. It smelled like honey and rainy days, and the only thing stopping Lindon from popping it into his mouth was his desire not to waste a single second of its effect.
Yerin had already turned from the door to look at Eithan. “How far did that lighten your wallet, would you say?”
Eithan shrugged, but Cassias called back, “About five thousand scales, the way they measure them out here.”
Fisher Gesha's eyes bulged.
“Well, that's a gem and a half,” Yerin said. “You got one for me?”
Eithan waved that away. “It's just a fundamental training pill. Lindon will be taking one of these every day, but I have some more interesting supplements for you. Right now, your best advancement material is your master's Remnant.”
Yerin grimaced, but accepted it. She would have preferred a pill of her own, Lindon knew, but at least Eithan’s reasons were good ones.
Lindon could barely pry his eyes away from the Four Corners Rotation Pill. This was worth more than every year's end gift he'd ever gotten from his parents, and he was supposed to take one every day. Eithan was like an endless treasure box.
Cassias stepped away from his controls, walking out of the glass room and toward the Underlord. “I would urge you to remember what happened when you took over the training of our family Coppers.”
“Oh, that's nothing to worry about.”
Cassias turned to Lindon. “I personally rescued a girl who ran from his training into a place called the Thousand Beast Forest. She survived by hiding from two-headed bears. I found her crouched in a cave, dirty and bleeding, but she begged me to leave her rather than take her back to train.”
Lindon moved his gaze from the pill to Eithan and back. “That does seem…harsh. Perhaps she may have been pushed a little too hard, don’t you think?”
“Don’t worry, I don’t train my students like that anymore,” Eithan said, holding up a bottle to the light. “I was far too lenient before. After weeks of my training, that girl should have been fighting those bears. With her fists.”
Yerin shrugged and opened the door. The wind grabbed the tattered edges of her outer robe, making them trail behind her like smoke. Her red rope-belt, tied in a broad bow behind her, was untouched by the wind.
“If you don't feel like you're going to die when you're training, then you're doing it wrong,” she said, and stepped outside.
Cassias nodded to her back as though acknowledging the point, Eithan laughed, and Fisher Gesha gave an approving grunt.
Lindon swallowed his own misgivings, pushing aside the sinking feeling in his stomach. This was the attitude of the strong. He had to focus on that, and not on what he imagined Eithan’s training had done to the poor Copper girl.
Popping the blue-and-white pill in his mouth, he followed Yerin.
Chapter 6
Jai Long entered his sister’s cabin to find her struggling into a set of sacred artist’s robes. She pushed her arm through one sleeve, trembling with effort, and cinched her robe with both hands as though the cloth belt was made of heavy chain.
She dipped her head when she saw him, though she had to grip her wardrobe to stand upright again.
He tried to sound cold, but instead his voice came out with a sigh. “What are you doing?”
“Going…with you.” She spoke as firmly as she could, but she was looking at the ground, unable to meet his eyes.
Even before the accident, she’d always been shy. And stubborn at inconvenient times.
“I have four Sandvipers staying behind to take care of you,” Jai Long said, gently taking her by the shoulder to lead her back to bed. “You’ll have to stay with the Purelake School for a while, in case anyone from the clan comes looking for you.”
She remained standing, and he was afraid to put too much pressure on her shoulder. Jai Chen glanced up at him like a guilty puppy.
“We don’t…have to…go
,” she said, each breath drawn with difficulty.
He couldn’t move her without her cooperation, so he folded his arms. “I’ve already jumped off the cliff. Six Lowgolds and an elder came to the camp looking for me last night, and none of them left.”
She didn’t need to know that they’d been looking for him because he’d been killing Jai clansmen in their homes. There were no civilians in the Five Factions Alliance; everyone who had come to the Transcendent Ruins had done so to try and pull profit from the jaws of danger. Those were sacred artists and warriors that he’d killed.
Though most of them hadn’t died like it.
But he didn’t need to tell his sister exactly how dirty his hands were. That didn’t matter; she was staying out of it.
“We could…go west,” she suggested hopefully.
He started to tell her no, but hesitated. She was referring to a legend. In the mountains to the west of the Desolate Wilds, there was supposed to be a hidden valley that occasionally emerged to trade with the outside. The inhabitants were weak, but protected by a curse.
Jai Chen had been obsessed with the legend since she was a girl. It seemed ideal to her: a hidden safe place.
In his experience, there were no safe places. He immediately wondered what terrible dangers lurked in the valley no one entered.
But even if the valley didn’t exist, the mountains were at the very western edge of the Blackflame Empire, and no one had actively controlled that border for fifty years. It was so remote that even maps drawn in his father’s day hadn’t bothered to include it.
The lands west of the Wilds were unknown to him, but they certainly wouldn’t have a Jai clan.
“We can hurt the clan if we go east,” he said. “We can take revenge for Kral. Do you really want to go west instead?”
The day before, he wouldn’t have asked her such a question. He wasn’t as sure of his course as he had been yesterday.
He had burned to avenge himself on the Jai clan for years, but now that he had the means, he was starting to realize what a monumental task he’d begun. To abandon it now, before he’d gone too far, had a certain appeal.
If they left, this would end as one minor attack on a branch of the clan. No one would look into it too closely, and in five years, no one would remember he or his sister were ever here.
Jai Chen surveyed the floor, clenching her hands together as she thought. Finally, she straightened her back and spoke with resolve.
“I will…go with you. No…running…away.”
He gave her a wry smile, though she couldn’t see it. “It will take weeks to get there, and we don’t have a cloudship this time. It will be painful, and messy, and you’ll hate every inch of the journey.”
“If you…hear me…complain,” she said, “leave me…behind.”
Once she was packed, he carried her outside, where Gokren had a motley collection of flying creatures assembled. Thousand-Mile Clouds, collared Remnants, strange constructs that looked like wide broomsticks, a sacred eagle with feathers like dawn, a hovering leaf wider than a man, a huge levitating cauldron, and two dozen gray-white bats.
Some of the sacred bats had been taken from the Jai clan, but the Sandvipers had a colony of the same breed of bat, and two of their trainers used to work for the Jai clan.
Gokren was supervising the collection of mounts and vehicles. He turned, smoothed back his gray hair with one hand, and eyed Jai Chen. After a moment he gestured to a white Thousand-Mile Cloud.
“Load her up,” he said, looking up to Jai Long. “We’ll get a canopy rigged to hold off the wind and give her some privacy.”
Jai Long bowed his thanks and settled his sister onto the cloud.
By the time he’d finished, the sun was setting, and most of the vehicles had gathered a load of packs and bags. Gokren lit his pipe, holding it between his teeth as he pressed the end of a scripted lighter into the bowl.
“You could fly me there and return,” Jai Long said, hating himself with every word. He needed their help; he shouldn’t be turning them down. “You don’t have to risk their lives for my revenge.”
Gokren let out a mouthful of smoke. “I’m not an idiot, son.” He paused as though he’d said something profound, letting bluish haze drift skyward. “I don’t throw my sect away for nothing.”
He took another breath, let it out. “Old powers like the Jai clan are as traditional as they come. After you hit them, they’ll send a Highgold after you. When you beat him, it’ll be a group of Highgolds next. Then whichever Truegold ranks the lowest, and only then will the elders start to move.”
If it weren’t for the Ancestor’s Spear, that plan would eventually work. The clan could afford to slowly drown him in sacred artists.
With the spear, he would feed on whoever they sent. To him, every Jai clan enemy was a treasure chest of scales and elixirs.
“I won’t reach Underlord that way,” Jai Long said, though Gokren knew that better than he did. If advancing from Gold to the Lord realm was simply a matter of stockpiling power, no one would ever be stuck at Truegold.
“That’s true enough, but I think I can get you there.” Gokren watched the best of his sect saddling their mounts and preparing to leave their home. “Took me forty years to reach Truegold. I’ll never be an Underlord, not in my lifetime…but I understand some things. By the time Jai Daishou moves himself, you’ll either be Underlord or the next thing to it.”
That was Jai Long’s plan, though he had expected it to take years. He had meant to wage a long, secret war against the clan, stealing their madra and slowly advancing. Once he could face Jai Daishou as a fellow Underlord, the game would change.
With Gokren’s help, his chances improved dramatically, and his timeline shot up. He might reach the peak of Truegold before the end of the year.
“It’s still a roll of the dice for you,” Jai Long pointed out. He had to be honest with anyone willing to risk their life for him.
Gokren removed his pipe, gazing into the bowl as though it would tell him the future. “I might be gambling,” he said, “but I’d say I’m backing the favorite.”
***
On the fourth day after they left, Sky's Mercy had to duck down to the ground to let the constructs recharge. The house landed in an open field, the blue cloud slowly dying away until both Sky’s Mercy and the training barn had settled safely onto the grass.
The barn creaked and moaned as it came to a rest, but the main house remained solid and silent. Lindon was glad he’d taken Cassias’ advice and stayed out of the barn during the landing process, or he would have feared for his life.
The second they landed, everyone left the cloudship and returned to the wonderful embrace of solid ground.
Eithan allowed Gesha and Lindon to look at the scripts and constructs sustaining the giant Thousand-Mile Cloud. It was intriguingly simple. Only one circle on the bottom of the main house to guide levitation, and four pillars—one at each corner—to produce and control the cloud madra. The controls were more complicated than the actual mechanism for flight.
But the madra involved...
Both of Lindon’s cores added together would only add up to a normal Iron sacred artist, but compared to his old self, he was a powerhouse. Even so, he couldn’t activate any of the scripts involved if he drained all the madra in his body.
The house drew vital aura from the sky to keep itself powered, but it could only drain so much while in flight. Cassias activated the collection script, and ribbons of white and green aura—visible only in Lindon’s Copper sight—streamed into the four pillars of the house. The only script Lindon had ever seen consume more power was the one that had activated the Transcendent Ruins.
Lindon had peeked inside earlier, and besides the Forged madra devices that produced the cloud, each pillar held a crystal flask the size of his head. The aura ran inside those crystals, condensing and processing into the madra that powered the cloud.
It would take three days to fill up the crystals, Cas
sias said. He had made it to the Desolate Wilds in a month, but that had been carrying one person. Not five people and an extra building.
If they had to spend three days drawing aura for every three days flying, it would take them twice as long to return.
Eithan assured them that he intended to make it back in a month, but they would still spend one day grounded for every three in the air. No one asked him how he planned to recharge their power reserves—he was the Underlord, so he knew what he was doing.
He spread out a blanket and had a nap in the sun, but the rest of them were expected to spend the day doing chores. Lindon regarded the idea with dread: if he was hauling water or scrubbing floors, then he wasn’t training. He wasn’t getting any closer to defeating Jai Long.
But just because he wasn’t practicing sacred arts didn’t mean he couldn’t improve.
When he was sent to fill a man-sized wooden tub with water, and then bring it back to Sky’s Mercy to fill up their reservoir, he refused to Enforce himself with madra.
He didn’t know any real Enforcer techniques, but everyone used madra to reinforce their body to some degree. Cycling madra to tired limbs, focusing it to lift something heavy—Lindon had been doing that since he’d learned to walk.
This time, he kept the madra firmly in his core, relying solely on the strength of his Iron body.
Before he’d carried the tub downhill for two miles, filled it up with water, and carried it two miles back, he’d never appreciated just how heavy water could be. The tub was big enough that he could bathe in it comfortably, big enough that he looked like an ant carrying a grasshopper carcass as he made his way back. Without his Iron body, he would have collapsed halfway up, even using his madra.
He arrived red-faced and sweating, limbs shaking, and his breathing disordered. But after ten minutes of letting his Bloodforged Iron body restore his fatigue, he set off again.
This might not improve his sacred arts, but at least he could build his muscles. ‘A healthy spirit lives in a healthy body,’ as his clan used to say.
After four trips, the reservoir was full, and Gesha was impatiently waiting on him. They needed dead matter for his Soulsmith practice, so Lindon, Yerin, and Gesha went out to track and kill a wild Remnant.