Cradle: Foundation (Cradle Collected Book 1)

by Will Wight

  Gesha found her prey within two hours, but Lindon stopped Yerin from killing it. Forcing his trembling hands to be still, he looked down on a giant frog that seemed to be made from blue-green blocks.

  “Let me try first,” he said, affecting a casual tone.

  Fisher Gesha’s eyebrows went up.

  Yerin put her sword away. “Scream and bleed when you need help.”

  Lindon learned some valuable lessons that day. First, he learned that the Empty Palm blasted a chunk out of Remnants, who were made of solid madra. That would surely come in useful later.

  Second, he saw how strong Remnants were in the outside world.

  Yerin was true to her word, blasting the frog into a pile of blocky dead matter the second he screamed and bled. She tied the pieces of the spirit’s corpse together and dragged the bundle back, while Fisher Gesha carried Lindon.

  His Bloodforged Iron body had restored him enough that he could walk on his own by the time they reached Sky’s Mercy, though one of his cores was empty and the other only half-strength.

  Back in Sacred Valley, an Iron would be enough to fight anything but a very advanced, intelligent, or strange Remnant. Those were children compared to these.

  In the Transcendent Ruins, he had battled Remnants most every day for two weeks…but he hadn’t battled them, had he? Not really. He had used traps, and script-circles, and ambushes. Even when he’d personally killed a few, he had used weapons, or fought them together with Yerin and Eithan.

  Now that he thought of it, this may have been the first Remnant that he’d stood and fought, relying on nothing but his sacred arts. And it had driven a two-inch spike through his calf.

  It showed him how far he had to go. As though he needed another reminder.

  After they’d brought the Remnant inside, the sun was setting. Eithan finally woke up, stretched, and saw that the stream of aura flowing into the four pillars had slowed to a trickle.

  He opened up one of the columns at the corner of the house, revealing that the green-and-white madra swirling inside the crystal flask had only filled it a third of the way. “Good enough,” he said. “I'm on a schedule.”

  Then he carefully rolled up one gilt-edged sleeve and pressed his hand to the collection script, which gathered up aura and distributed it to the four crystals.

  The script took in the proper aspects of aura automatically, but it could accept virtually any madra. It would take that madra, purify it, and use it to reinforce the existing cloud madra, but the efficiency was terrible.

  Thanks to Fisher Gesha's tutelage, he could calculate exactly how terrible: cloud madra was the best to fill the flasks, twice as much pure madra would achieve the same result, and any other aspect would take four times as much power to generate the cloud and lift both buildings into the air.

  Eithan filled all four crystals in seconds. Dark blue clouds popped out of each of the four corners, swelling and lifting both buildings off the ground. The levitation circle on the bottom shone bright, showing that it was at capacity and ready to be used.

  The Underlord shook one hand as though it had fallen asleep and then walked inside.

  Cassias and Yerin treated this as normal, but Lindon and Fisher Gesha had exchanged astonished—and somewhat fearful—glances before heading in. Gesha had confided in him later that she, a Highgold, would have taken four or five days to fill up the circle.

  Lindon wondered how long it would be before he could do something like that.

  Three days later, Lindon had gained a new appreciation for elixirs.

  The Four Corners Rotation Pill doubled the speed at which he cycled his madra and expanded his core, noticeably speeding his advancement. Unlike the orus fruit or the Starlotus bud, it didn’t provide much external power, but the cycling effect alone was invaluable.

  When he put on his parasite ring, it usually felt like he was hanging weights on his spirit, slowing his cycling but filtering the quality of the madra. With the ring and the pill together, he could cycle at his full normal speed, but his madra would still be filtered. Twice the result for the same effort.

  He brought his second core up to Iron by the seventh day, which was actually something of a disappointment.

  His Copper core had compressed to a brighter, higher-quality core with ease, matching the second ball of pure madra floating in his spirit. He had confided to Yerin that he’d hoped for a second Iron body, but she’d looked at him as though he wished he’d sprouted a third eye.

  “How many bodies do you have? One? Well, there you go, then.”

  Eithan had been prepared to give him a pill a day, but thus far it took Lindon two days to process the energy of each pill. In a week, he’d only used three, with a bit of energy left over.

  Still, that was fifteen thousand scales. He pictured the Sandviper wagon he’d seen stuffed with boxes of scales back in the Desolate Wilds, and wondered if all of those together had added up to fifteen thousand. How many scales had they mined from the Transcendent Ruins every day? It couldn’t be too much more than fifteen thousand, and that was a whole sect of Golds working together.

  In the training course, he could clear six of the wooden dummies every time before he messed up: he either missed a step and took a blow or ran out of madra in one of his cores.

  That wasn’t enough to dampen his enthusiasm, because he was improving. His movements were sharper and faster than they had been the week before, and his madra control was getting better. Every time he struck a target, he had to inject the exact right amount of madra on contact—too little, and the circle wouldn’t light up; too much, and the extra energy would be wasted. His Empty Palm was therefore improving by leaps and bounds, as he learned to project his madra more efficiently and precisely.

  Cassias and Fisher Gesha praised his progress, but he wasn’t satisfied. After the first few days, he’d taken to wearing his parasite ring while training.

  The ring was meant to be an aid in cycling to grow his core, not in combat, and it hampered his control over every Empty Palm. It was like trying to practice swordplay with a heavy rock strapped to the end of his blade, and he was tempted to tear the ring off with every strike.

  But when he returned to defeating six dummies consistently, even with the parasite ring on, he finally felt as though he was making real progress.

  Yerin, in her turns on the course, was frustrated that her progress using only her Goldsign was slower than Lindon’s with his entire body. She could only light up four dummies before she was forced to block a blow on her shoulder, or she injected too little madra through the silver limb and a circle failed to light.

  She seemed to feel that she had fallen behind Lindon somehow, even though she had literally tied both of her hands behind her back. And she took out her frustration on him, which he felt was hardly fair. Why was it a mark against him that he was finally a little stronger than her Goldsign?

  His training as a Soulsmith was still in its infancy, though Fisher Gesha tutored him every night before his evening cycling. One night, she spread seven boxes out before him, flipping open their lids and revealing seven different types of Forged madra. They were all in different forms—one a liquid, one a sludge, one a collection of irregular chunks like pebbles, one a quivering pile of glass-like shards—and each a different color.

  “These are the seven most common aspects of madra, you see,” Fisher Gesha said, pointing to each in turn. “Fire, earth, wind, water, force, blood, and life.”

  He had studied these aspects before. There were other types of madra that he felt should have been equally common, but these seven were most widespread because they were the easiest types of aura to cultivate. Light aura was everywhere, but it was difficult to convert to madra, and required special techniques to harvest.

  The surge of pride Lindon felt when he heard that had surprised even him. His Wei clan practiced a Path of dreams and light, and now it seemed that might be an impressive combination, even by Gold standards.

  “You will
re-Forge each of these aspects into discs,” Fisher Gesha continued. “Solid discs, don’t just move them into a circle, you hear me? I had a disciple once…troubled girl. Anyway, reshaping madra besides your own is the fundamental skill of a Soulsmith. If you can’t do that, you can’t do anything. Bring your discs to me, and if I approve them, then we’ll try Forging them into needles.”

  By then, Lindon had grown used to setting extra challenges to push himself, so he decided to skip the discs and dive straight into Forging needles.

  Over the next few days, he bent all of his time and effort to the task, eventually succeeding…with six of the seven aspects.

  Even water madra could be forced into a solid shape if he focused himself, though it wouldn’t stay there, but life…he spent an entire extra day focused on Forging life madra, skipping his training, before he finally gave up and returned to Fisher Gesha in shame.

  “It’s impossible,” she said, eyeing his seventh box. “Life madra on its own is a liquid, and that’s the end of it. Even life Remnants are giant blobs of ooze. I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to say you couldn’t do it, hm? Thought it might get you to think about your limitations.”

  She looked over the other six needles, which were supposed to have been simple discs. “Doesn’t seem to have worked, did it?”

  On the night of their eighth day, he was cycling power into his core, using up the last of the Four Corners Rotation Pill before he snatched a few hours of sleep. He breathed evenly in the pattern Eithan had taught him, building up his power one step at a time and slowly pushing the bounds of his core.

  After about an hour, he slowly opened his eyes.

  …to see Eithan peeking in through a crack in his door.

  The first few times Eithan popped up unexpectedly, Lindon’s reactions had been entertaining enough that the Underlord kept trying to catch him off guard.

  But you could get used to anything if it happened often enough.

  “What can I do to serve the Arelius family?” Lindon asked, rising from his bed. Eithan had done so much for him already, the least he could do in return was ignore the Underlord’s…quirks.

  Eithan kicked the door open and grinned like a child playing a prank. “Cycle! Now!”

  Lindon reasoned that Eithan had also earned a measure of trust, so he dropped to his knees, hands in his lap, and began to cycle. Just as Eithan had shown him in the Transcendent Ruins.

  At first, every breath using this cycling technique had felt like trying to inhale water. But he’d grown so used to it over the following weeks that he rarely had to consciously think his way through the technique anymore.

  Eithan tapped his fingers together as he waited for Lindon to settle into a cycling rhythm. When Lindon’s breathing evened out, Eithan’s grin broadened.

  “Now,” he said, “close your eyes. I’m going to teach you a trick.”

  I should trust him, Lindon reminded himself. I owe him.

  Once he’d returned to the position he’d held before he was interrupted, Eithan’s voice cut in. “Madra is very responsive to your imagination. It’s part of you, just like your thoughts. So as you study more advanced techniques, you’ll find that holding a clear mental picture is just as important as moving your madra in certain patterns.”

  That fit Lindon’s experience. As he advanced, his madra was easier to visualize, and he was better able to get the power to do what he wanted without forcing it into a pattern.

  “I’m going to teach you a cycling technique. Once you’ve mastered it, this method will take you to Jade and beyond.”

  Lindon leaned forward eagerly, eyes squeezed shut, suddenly afraid to miss a word.

  “This is a technique for processing your madra, not for battle,” Eithan went on. “If you try to fight while cycling like this, you might as well tie your ankles together.”

  Lindon wondered if he should be taking notes.

  “In your mind, focus on your core. Ah, I mean one core. Pick one.”

  The core that had reached Iron first was brighter and more solid than the other, so he focused on it, letting the bright blue-white ball fill his vision as the other one fell behind into irrelevance.

  As he breathed, his madra cycled, spinning out from his core to run out to the rest of his body and then swirling back.

  “Your core is made of stone. Picture it as a huge, stone wheel. It’s all you can see. It’s like a wall of heavy, solid stone.”

  Lindon focused on that image, superimposing it over the blue-white sun.

  “Now, as you exhale and cycle madra through your body, the stone grinds away at the edges of your core. It’s heavy, and it rolls slowly, pushing your core outward.”

  That was harder to hold. Madra usually flew out from his core freely, but he had to slow it down, forcing his core to rotate and running power through it a scant inch at a time.

  He felt like he was pushing that stone wheel up a hill with all his strength, all while trying to keep madra from slithering through his grip. If he lost concentration for one second, the strings of madra would escape and the wheel would fall back down, crushing him.

  The effort of moving his madra in such an unnatural pattern caused his channels to strain, as his spirit groaned under the effort. Sweat dripped over his eyelids as he concentrated, and each exhalation was agonizingly slow.

  “Now, when the madra comes back in, spiraling from your limbs to your core, the stone wheel shifts. It slowly rolls back the other way, grinding your core again.”

  It was like letting the wheel roll downhill, only to haul it to a stop and pull it back up again. He poured all his madra into the effort, controlling his spirit with every ounce of his concentration.

  There was an instant in the middle where he felt like he was manually stopping his own lungs. He gaped like a fish, his lungs frozen as though the stone wheel sat on his own chest, before he finally got it moving the other way.

  Eithan waited for him to get himself under control before graciously reminding him that he still had to hold his previous cycling pattern. It took Lindon another half an hour to match the old timing, and by that time his soul felt like he’d pounded it flat. Only minutes of cycling, and he was more exhausted than he would have been after hours of practicing in the dummy course.

  But Eithan wasn’t finished.

  “Once you have a grip on that, you want your wheel to spin as slowly as possible without stopping. Breathing in the same pattern, I want to see how slowly you can move your madra, how heavily that wheel turns, how that huge stone wheel is almost stopped and your madra is just crawling along.

  “Then you exhale, and it goes back the other way.”

  Only two more minutes, and Lindon began to seriously wonder if he was going to pass out. He couldn’t wait for Eithan to leave so that he could take a real breath.

  “This technique is called the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel,” Eithan said, and Lindon felt his weight settle onto the end of the bed. “It has a long and fascinating history.”

  Lindon would have cried, but he couldn’t spare the breath.

  “I’ll spare you the details.” Lindon almost let out a sigh of relief. “But to reach Jade, you need to form a spiral in your core. The spinning motion will condense the quality of your madra, increase your receptivity to spiritual forces, speed up madra recovery, help your control…all sorts of benefits. Eventually, the suction force will become strong enough to contain a Remnant.”

  Though he itched to take notes, Lindon would lose the breathing technique if he so much as opened his eyes. And that would be disrespectful to the Underlord who had gone through the trouble of teaching him a technique.

  If only he would leave.

  “Every Path has their own Jade cycling technique, and it emphasizes certain aspects of the spirit. Some are particularly good at processing aura efficiently, others help you recover your madra in minutes, and so on. It’s a deep and varied field. But I selected this technique just for you!”

  L
indon tried to thank him, but grunting out a single syllable almost lost him control of the revolving stone wheel.

  “The Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel slowly grinds away at your core’s borders, focused entirely on improving your capacity to contain madra. It does what you tried to do by Forging and swallowing your own scales: it uses temporary power to push at the bonds of your core, expanding your ability to permanently store power. But while swallowing scales loses some energy in the Forging process, this keeps the entire cycle contained, so there’s no loss. It’s also slow, difficult to practice, and you will feel like you’re choking and dying.”

  Lindon nodded and almost choked.

  “But it works with any madra, including pure. If you fill your second core with another Path, this technique will work for that too. And your Path of Twin Stars breaks one normal-sized core into two smaller cores, so without special elixirs or a technique specifically focused on capacity, you’d never get even one of your cores up to its normal size.”

  Lindon finally lost the technique. His madra slipped out of his control, he gasped as though he were coming up for air, and the power he’d been damming up in his core surged through his body. His eyes snapped open, and he jerked to his feet like a puppet with strings pulled.

  Eithan nodded. “That can happen.” He rose, brushing his robe off as though preparing to leave. “All cycling methods have tradeoffs, so if after a few days you have objections, I can recommend a different technique. But control can be learned, quality can be improved with elixirs, collecting aura only takes patience, and as for recovery…why would you need to recover madra quickly when you have more than you could ever use?”

  Lindon was still trying to recover his breath, but he swiped his sleeve across his sweaty forehead and bowed slightly. “I won’t give up, Underlord. I trust your wisdom.”

  “Underlord isn’t my name,” Eithan said, before pointing to Lindon’s pocket. “You might want to avoid wearing that ring of yours for the time being. This technique is hard enough without hobbling yourself.” He touched his forehead and nodded. “Well then. A good night to you.”