Soulsmith (Cradle Book 2)

by Wight,Will

  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 could 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 substa
nce 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 was 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.”

  The boy practically shone with pride, which made Jai Long wonder why Kral hadn't just done this whole procedure himself.

  The young chief gave a few ceremonial words, offered Bren the bowl of blood, and then—when the boy had settled into a cycling trance—pricked him on the wrist with the needle.

  Bren's jaw tightened and sweat beaded on his brow, but he only grunted once. His father gave a proud smile.

  For Jai Long's Iron body, he'd been forced to undergo a ritual that blistered all the skin on his body, broke most of his bones, and kept him in bed for three months afterwards. For a half-civilized sect that survived in the harsh Desolate Wilds, the Sandvipers were soft.

  As Bren cycled in preparation for his transformation, Jai Long pulled Kral aside to give him a report.

  “The Fishers have gotten us through most of the doors,” he said, and this time he did speak quietly. This was sensitive information, after all. “We think we have a grasp on the rest of the script, but there's still one door between us and the final chamber. I suspect there may be another way—”

  The flap of the tent brushed aside, and a Sandviper charged in with his chest heaving and face bright red. No sacred artist would push himself so far beyond the bonds of his breathing technique without a good reason.

  Bren's family frowned in disapproval that someone had interrupted their son's ceremony.

  “On the horizon,” the messenger said, panting. “Come and see.”

  Jai Long had a good guess what he'd see, and he dashed from the tent without a word. Kral stayed behind to give a word to the waiting family, but Jai Long dashed up the side of a nearby tower. Its unsteady wooden planks creaked alarmingly, but he reached the top in seconds.

  With that vantage, he could see the hideous Desolate Wilds spread out before him. The Purelake was a glimmering sapphire, the rest of it a black mess.

  Except for a small group on the horizon, which his Iron eyes picked out immediately. They were a motley bunch, dressed in different colors and styles, but it was the banner they carried that caught his eye.

  Deep blue and white, with a black crescent in the center.

  The Arelius family had arrived.

  He leaped from the top of the tower, landing next to Kral. “We're out of time,” he said, ducking into the tent for just long enough to retrieve his spear. Bren was still cycling, oblivious.

  He emerged with his weapon, and heard Kral already issuing orders.

  “Gather the Fishers,” the young chief said. “Inform the Jai clan. We're going in now.” To Jai Long, he said, “And, uh...if we can't open the door?”

  Jai Long gripped his spear in both hands. Up to this point, they had tried to avoid unnecessary damage to the structure of the Ruins for fear of disrupting the script. They were dealing with an incredibly powerful script-circle they didn’t understand; the slightest disruption could change nothing, or it could detonate the Transcendent Ruins with enough force to obliterate the Wilds.

  He had commanded his teams to avoid even chipping away at the walls, for fear of hidden scripts. Until he gave the order.

  “We will make a new one.”

  ***

  Lindon woke to a splash of icy water.

  He jerked upright, gasping, hands raised to defend himself from the blow he knew was coming. But the first thing to hit him was the stench—it smelled like a dead pig rolled in rotten eggs.

  He rolled blindly away from the stink, but it followed him. His hands were resting in a putrid pool of black sludge and red blood, and more of it caked his skin.

  His sister Kelsa had been covered in something similar when she advanced to Iron. Did that mean...all this came from his own body?

  The puddle of filth had filled the entire space at the bottom of the stairs a finger's width deep, and it trickled out the open door. He couldn't believe it all came from his own body.

  Another splash of water landed on him, squirted from the twisted seashell binding in Yerin's hand, and Lindon hurriedly rose to his feet. His pack rolled off his stomach, one leather strap severed in the middle.

  He'd bitten through it.

  He staggered as he stood, his balance shifting strangely. Every step seemed to take him too far, too quickly, and his body felt like it would drift off the ground and float to the ceiling.

  “Cut that out,” Yerin ordered. She sent another stream of water splashing over him from the binding in her hand. “I'm trying to clean you off, and you're jumping around like a chicken.”

  “You made it,” Eithan said, in a tone of clear surprise. He watched like Lindon's mother examining a new breed of Remnant. “A flawless transition to Iron. Amazing. I'd like to say you have my extraordinary guidance to thank, but...well, how do you feel?”

  Lindon glanced at his hands, turning to consider the unbroken flesh. A dreadbeast had fallen on him, leading to
twisted fingers, but you couldn't tell now. He took another step, gingerly testing for pain on his formerly broken ribs. He breathed deeply, cycling according to the technique Eithan had taught him.

  Once again, his eyes filled with tears and he had to blink them back. But this time, it was because the pain was gone. He could stand.

  Another spray of cold water blasted him, scraping away another layer of black.

  Eithan rested his hand on a brown backpack sitting on the stairs beside him, safely away from the pool of sludge. “I transferred your belongings over. It's not quite as big as your original, but I...doubt you'll want to use that one anymore.”

  His original pack, empty and slack, was soaked in blood and sludge, one of its straps dangling in two severed ends. His mother had made him that pack, slaving over bits of leather and patches of canvas for weeks as she would have a particularly complicated construct.

  If she knew it had helped him reach Iron, she would have been overcome with joy, though it still felt like leaving another piece of home to die.

  He walked over to his new pack—actually the one he'd taken from Fisher Gesha, used to store her spider-construct—and staggered as a single step launched him five feet closer. He caught himself in the stairwell, face-to-face with Eithan.

  The yellow-haired man carefully pinched his nose and stepped up a stair.

  Lindon reached up his hands to catch Yerin's next blast of water, scrubbing his skin on stone until it was clean. Then he rifled through his pack, looking for the spare clothes he'd packed.

  When he reached the bottom, next to the tank of a happily playing Sylvan Riverseed, he remembered that these were his spare clothes. He'd never had the previous set cleaned, and they were missing from the pack. Eithan must have gotten rid of them, and Lindon couldn't blame him. But that still left him without anything to wear.

  Lindon looked up to see Eithan holding something out to him: an expanse of pastel pink fabric embroidered with metallic thread-of-gold flowers.

  “I noticed your deficient laundry situation, and I thought to offer you something of mine.”