by Will Wight
Instead, the floor was spotlessly clean. No fur, no muck, no blood. Nothing.
Only two characters scratched into the stone floor, so large that they were visible from the entrance so far above.
Two words: “Nice try.”
Jai Daishou didn't need to have seen the characters before to recognize Eithan Arelius' handwriting.
He staggered back from the edge of the pit, clutching his stomach. All his life, he had heard of people coughing up blood in anger. He had always thought of it as an expression, an artistic way of illustrating the toxic feel of anger.
But now, he really felt as though he were choking back blood. It had taken him weeks to reach this jungle, far from his lands. And it cost him a small fortune to keep it secret.
All the while, he had been nothing but a fool dancing in Eithan's hand.
Jai Daishou actually did cough then, and he spat into his palm. The saliva was stained red.
So you could cough up blood in rage. Or perhaps his time was even closer than he'd thought.
In a fury, Jai Daishou tore away the veil over his core, uncaring of the consequences. He cycled his madra to its limit, and white blades of light shredded the trees, tearing apart the forest in time with his rage.
The Deepwalker Ape had been the last piece he could play with only one life on the line. The last weapon he could buy so cheaply.
But now? Now, he would see Eithan dead at any cost. If his clan had to burn, if the Empire itself did, Eithan Arelius would burn with it.
***
Lindon sat with legs crossed, surrounded by a ring of fifty candles. With his eyes shut, he could feel the aura around him.
Fire aura, bright and red, radiated from each of the candles. He pulled wisps of it into his core, pushing it through his madra channels in time with each of his slow, measured breaths.
In his time here—however long that had been—he had reached a deeper understanding of the Path of Black Flame. At first, he had seen fire and destruction as two entirely separate powers. He had wondered how he could possibly train both, without access to a dragon's den like the one in Serpent's Grave.
But the aura of fire and destruction went hand-in-hand. Even now, tiny sparks of black power surrounded the wicks of the fifty candles as they were burned away by the flames. Destruction aura. He could harvest almost five times as much fire aura as destruction, but he limited himself. Balance was important...or so he'd learned after his madra had revolted and he'd scorched the back of his hand.
In his core, he visualized a stone wheel grinding away with a deliberate, agonizingly slow rhythm. It pushed at the boundaries of his core, stretching him, expanding his spirit.
Even after all this time, the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel still felt like breathing through a thin straw. Sweat covered his forehead, his lungs burned, and each inhale was ragged. Only determination kept him breathing in time with the cycling technique.
Of course, it was more than just the restrictive technique that was making him feel trapped. There was also the fact that he was, quite literally, in prison. Not that you'd know it from his surroundings.
The Skysworn had brought him here directly after leaving Serpent's Grave. They had dumped him into this room and left without answering a single question. If not for his twice-daily meals, he would assume that they had forgotten him.
At first, he hadn't thought of these rooms as a prison cell. They didn't look like one. For one thing, they were rooms. He had a privy equipped with water-generating constructs, a small bedroom, and a sitting-room. The furniture was polished and finely carved, and the walls were smooth wood. His meals were simple but varied, and he was served tea with each one.
He wanted to burn through the walls and escape.
Every time he shut his eyes to cycle, it felt as though the walls shrunk to an inch from his skin. He remembered his time sealed in the Transcendent Ruins, and sometimes he had to snap his eyes open to remind himself that he wasn't still there.
He actually had burned through a panel of the wooden wall to see if escape was possible. The wood was only a finger thick, with scripted stone beneath that did not give way to Blackflame. If he became more desperate, he might try blasting through even that.
He needed out. He didn't even know how long he'd been here—he had no window by which to judge the passing of time, and they'd confiscated his pack. He could have counted meal deliveries, but he hadn't thought of that until it was too late. The duel with Jai Long was approaching, and he wasn't ready. They might wrench open his door one day and haul him to his death.
It couldn’t have been more than a week. Could it?
Even if freedom was too much to ask, he just needed a word. He could speak to his jailors through the door as they delivered his meal, and they would provide him with any reasonable request. They'd given him a few books on cycling theory, several loads of candles, and a new teacup when he'd broken his first. But they wouldn't speak to him. He was at the point where he would trade one of his meals for a single—
Boots tapped against the stone outside. Mealtime already.
The steps grew louder, and he snapped out of his cycling trance. He jumped to his feet, wiping the sweat from his face and preparing a smile. They glanced in sometimes, and he wanted them to see him in control and friendly, not desperate. They might take desperation as hostility, and treat him as an enemy. An enemy might never get out.
The boots stopped. The top half of his wooden door could swing open separately, leaving the bottom half in place. There were bars behind the top half, and they could hand him his food and tea through the bars. Unfortunately, that always gave him a clear look at the person who was refusing to talk to him. If they were faceless, sliding his meals under the door, maybe he could forget that they were humans at all. Pretend that his food was delivered by construct.
As he had for every other meal delivery, he stood with back straight and waited with a smile for the top half to swing open.
This time, he was left smiling at his door. Firmly shut.
He kept his expression in place as each breath stretched on. He hadn't heard anyone walk away, so surely someone was still there. Was this silence designed to make him uncomfortable? Or had it only been a few seconds, and his frantic mind was stretching each instant into an eternity?
He took three deliberate breaths and confirmed that no, they really were making him wait. Why? Every other day, they had simply delivered the food.
An instant later, he was given his answer.
The door swung open.
Normally, a balding old man delivered a box with his meal in it, collected his old box, and left without a word. Lindon had deliberately not picked up his old box today, in the hopes of prodding a sentence out of the man—a demand, a curse, anything. It hadn't worked when he'd tried that before, as the man had simply gestured and the wind had carried Lindon's empty box to him, but surely anything worth trying was worth trying twice.
Eithan and Yerin stood outside, both smiling.
The Underlord had a smug grin on his face, hands in the pockets of his blue silk robes, long yellow hair tied behind him. He looked like a child who had the satisfaction of seeing a trick he'd pulled work flawlessly.
Yerin's smile came with a breath of relief, as though she hadn't expected to find him here. He stared at her like he hadn't seen her for months: her skin covered by razor-thin scars, her black robes sliced and tattered, and two silver blades hanging over her shoulders. A sword was buckled onto her hip, strapped onto a red belt that seemed to be made of liquid...or perhaps a living Remnant.
Even after all the times she’d saved his life, he’d still never been happier to see her.
Eithan...he couldn't be quite so happy to see Eithan. Usually, when the Arelius Patriarch popped up unannounced, that meant he was about to put Lindon through something dangerous.
Lindon stared at them for longer than was appropriate. He knew his eyes were wide and his lips parted, but he still couldn't quite bel
ieve that they were here. Now, with no hint and no warning.
“You like looking at me so much, I might get the wrong idea,” Yerin said, grinning and rapping her knuckles on the lower half of the door, which was still shut. “You going to ask us in, or what?”
Lindon stammered for a few moments before saying, “...in? You're not coming to get me out?”
Eithan put on an offended look even as he levered the handle and slid the rest of the door open. “Get you out? After all the trouble we went through breaking in here? That would just be rude.”
He shut both halves of the door behind them when they entered.
Yerin glanced around the room and nodded approvingly. “Not bad. Can't even call this a proper prison, can you?”
Eithan ran his hands over the scorched hole in the wall paneling. “Ah, what happened here? Training accident?”
“No, I was trying to escape. I stopped because I thought you might come for me.”
“Just to visit you,” Eithan said, leaning against the wall and folding his arms. “Looks like you have a cozy place to call your own. I wouldn't want to ruin that.”
Lindon had no response.
Yerin kicked the side of Eithan's leg so hard that it sounded like a hammer hitting the ground, but the Underlord didn't so much as flinch.
“The Skysworn say they haven't arrested you,” Yerin explained. “They like to fiddle with words. Basically, they're keeping you like a fish in a pond so they can keep an eye on you. You're not in danger.”
That was a relief, but it didn't explain why they weren't freeing him.
Eithan buffed his fingernails on the edge of his robe. “I'd prefer not to antagonize the Skysworn more than I already have, but I couldn't let your training stagnate with such an important deadline looming. So I decided to bring the training to you! We can all three continue our pursuits in this very room. Convenient, isn't it?”
Lindon wouldn't have called it convenient, but he still had to admit he was greatly relieved to see them here. At least he wouldn't be alone anymore. And there were some burning questions he finally had the chance to ask.
From his pocket, he withdrew a glass ball that burned with a blue flame in the very center. The Skysworn had confiscated it from him—along with most of his belongings—when they brought him here, but it had appeared beside him one morning when he woke up.
“You showed me something like this before,” Lindon said, voice low. “Where did you get it?”
Eithan tapped his fingers together. “That's an interesting first question. You don't want to know about my Path, perhaps? The techniques I could teach you?”
“Of course, yes. But this first.”
“Very well. I inherited it from my family.”
Lindon waited for more, but none came.
“Did you know all along?” He asked. “Is that why you...picked me?”
This was one of the questions that had needled him ever since he'd seen Eithan produce the marble with the void at its heart. Had Eithan really singled him out because he saw a singular opportunity, or because he'd recognized Suriel's marble? Was Lindon only special because of the glass ball in his hand?
Eithan patted the pocket on his right hip. “I keep mine in here. Close your eyes and stretch out your perception, if you would.”
Lindon followed instructions, reaching out to sense Eithan with the extra sense he'd developed when he grew to Jade. He was still growing used to the impressions given by his spiritual sense—it seemed to only feel the nature of madra, ignoring anything physical, so something could feel as though it was right next to you even if it was blocked off by a brick wall.
At first, he felt Yerin's power: sharp, cold, and somehow not fully formed, like a gemstone halfway through cutting. The sword on her hip gave off a different power, distant and cold as a far-off mountain. He couldn't get a grasp of exactly how powerful that weapon was. Her belt...he pulled his perception away from the belt. It always made him think of murder, of blood-drenched hands and the scent of a slaughterhouse.
He felt almost nothing from Eithan, as though the man were made of air. Eithan had mentioned before that he wrapped his core in a veil: a technique that allowed him to mask his power. Lindon wondered if Eithan would teach him, now that he had enough power to mask.
Sharpening his focus, he dove into Eithan's pocket and encountered...a gap.
He wouldn't have noticed anything strange if he hadn't been specifically looking for it, but it was like something in Eithan's pocket was hidden, concealed so that he couldn't sense a hint. He pushed further, tightening his perception, trying to penetrate it.
He may as well have saved his effort. Confused, he ran his perception into the marble he carried. Suriel's marble was warm and comforting, even to his spiritual sense, and it also brought a sense of order, of rightness. Like the flame added something into the world, rather than taking it away.
When Lindon opened his eyes, Eithan dipped into his pocket and withdrew the void marble. He held it up so that Lindon could see: a perfectly clear orb the size of a man's thumbnail with a perfectly dark hole in the center. Lindon still felt nothing, as though the object had no power whatsoever.
“The legacy of my bloodline works slightly differently,” Eithan explained. “An Arelius sees things as though with our physical senses, seeing and hearing and smelling rather than picking up on spiritual perception. As such, I saw the marble in your pocket like a ball of glass...but I could see nothing inside.”
He closed his own eyes and nodded. “Even now, I can see you holding a transparent ball, but I can see no blue flame.” He tossed his own marble up and caught it. “As for mine, however, I can pierce it quite easily with both my bloodline powers and my perception. It is the same for you, yes?”
Lindon nodded slowly. “So what did you think it was?”
“Naturally, I assumed there was something inside. I thought it was a Lord-stage barrier meant to protect a small treasure, or perhaps a pill or construct. And I was very curious to learn what Copper had caught the eye of an Underlord. It was only later that I began to suspect it had been produced by someone far above any Underlord.”
He held up the void marble, inspecting it. “As far as I knew, this was the only example of such a heavenly relic in the world. If I ran into another, I would have expected it to look like mine. How interesting that I was wrong.”
“I would love to hear that story,” Lindon said, sensing an opportunity. “I'm only too happy to share mine.”
“He is,” Yerin confirmed, fiddling with one of the edges of her outer robe. She must have been bored. “Shared it with me more than once.”
“And I would be delighted to listen,” Eithan said, closing his fist around his marble. “Later. Unless this heavenly messenger told you something urgent?”
Suriel had said he had thirty years, and he'd spent slightly more than one. He supposed he could wait a little longer, though the curiosity might kill him in the meantime. He sighed and shook his head.
The glass ball vanished into Eithan's pocket. “Excellent! Consider our conversation a prize for when you defeat Jai Long, hm? Something to look forward to.”
Lindon dipped his head in acknowledgement, but he wasn't satisfied. Suriel had seen something in him, even if he wasn't quite sure what that was. She must have seen something in Eithan as well, or at least someone else up there had.
Eithan had said more than once that he wanted to pursue the sacred arts to their height. And he thought Lindon and Yerin had what it took to join him.
Maybe the heavens thought so too.
Chapter 2
Outpost 01: Oversight
People from various worlds often likened the Way to a tree, or a branching vine. Suriel had always thought of it more as a network of veins, stretching out in all directions from a central heart. The Way touched everything, bringing order, stability, and protection from the ravages of the void. Only in the shelter of the Way could life and reason exist.
In the cent
er of that heart of the Way, at the nexus of everything that existed, was Oversight.
As she drifted in endless blue, thousands of kilometers away, she could see the entire station: one blue-and-green planet of standard size orbited by no less than sixteen moons. Each of the moons was so close that it almost looked like they skated along the planet's surface, and she could see city lights blanketing every surface over all seventeen spheres.
This was the headquarters of Makiel's First Division: the Hounds.
He had created this system himself, hand-selecting the fragments from the void and binding them together with the force of his will. He had positioned it here, manipulating the Way to enforce natural laws. The inhabitants of Outpost lived as naturally as they would in an Iteration, but with an endless blue sky devoid of sun or stars.
Twelve billion people lived here, and the vast majority of them were not Abidan. They were simply people. They went about their lives, living and dying with no knowledge of the greater cosmos.
These were his ties to Fate. Every sentient being was a tie to the Way, and even here at the heart of it all, Makiel wanted to be closer.
As staggered as she was every time she thought about the vast expenditure of time and personal power that must have gone into the creation of this outpost, it frightened her as much as it impressed her. Every other division of the Abidan was headquartered on Sanctum, so they shared a cultural understanding that facilitated interaction.
Not the Hounds. The First Division was centered here.
They tracked targets forward and backwards in time, reading Fate to find criminals and predict disasters, and their official excuse for their location was a desire to see as clearly as possible.
Suriel had no doubt that was true. From Oversight, a sufficiently talented Hound could glimpse the destiny of every Iteration in existence. It was especially easy to locate those places where one Iteration's fate overlapped another's, and investigate for violations.
But even here, she couldn't sense Cradle.
She touched the Way—so easy here—and simply adjusted her position in space. One blue flash later, she stood on an endless arctic plain, a layer of gray clouds overhead and snow drifting in the wind.