by Will Wight
He spat out bloody mud and rolled his eyes in his sockets, craning for a sight of Sandviper Gokren.
Twilight had passed, the stars bright pinpricks against the dark.
He could see no one. He strained his spiritual perception, and sensed…
Nothing.
He tried again, taking deep breaths despite the pain, quieting his spirit as best he could. The world remained dead around him. He opened his eyes, staring beyond what he could see, looking to open his Copper sight and catch a glimpse of aura.
No color. The world was gray and lifeless, and his limbs now trembled with creeping cold.
Calming his panic, he focused on his madra. His core was drained, but he could fix that by cycling. He braced himself for the pain as he tried to push himself up on his elbows.
In the dirt, he saw his arms twitch. He felt nothing.
Panic rose into his throat again, throwing off his breathing, and he tried to picture the heavy stone wheel in his core. He didn’t feel anything; not a spark.
His Bloodforged Iron body had drained everything.
Though the pain made his vision swim, and fear weighed him down, he managed to shimmy closer to his pack. It had fallen close to him, and there might be a Four Corners Rotation Pill or some scales inside. At least he could see what he had available, take stock.
He inched closer, seizing the corner of the pack with his teeth. Through pure will, he managed to slide his hand to the hook at the top. The hook held only a loop of cloth; all he had to do was slide that loop off, and the pack was open. He edged his thumb into the gap.
It didn’t take.
He tried again and again, despair growing like mold in his chest, until finally he caught the loop. With a limp finger, he pulled it open.
The pack tipped.
Its contents tumbled onto the ground, pelting his face and hand with junk. The pack must have been jostled around during the fight, because even some things that should have been secured in inside pockets had come free: his Path of Twin Stars manual, his Soulsmith primer, a sealed inkwell, a handful of halfsilver chips. It all spilled around him like trash.
In his hazy awareness, Lindon could only latch onto one thought: he had to put everything back where it was supposed to go. He pushed his hand, trying to keep his precious Path manual out of the dirt. Without madra, his arm might as well have been a dishrag.
He was empty.
The canyon had always been dark, allowing only a strip of light in from the sky, but at night the darkness surrounded him.
So when the light came, it hurt his eyes.
The blue light seemed blinding at first, even with his eyes closed, but when he swiped muddy tears from his eyelids and squinted into the shadows, his eyes quickly adjusted.
He stared into an azure candle flame, burning steadily at the heart of a glass marble. The flame was smooth and bright, the glass flawless.
As Lindon bled into the dirt, he stared at the ball of glass and fire. Just stared.
In the visions Suriel had shown him, he had died…but not here. Not alone in the dark.
He had a long way to go yet.
Lindon slapped one hand down on the marble, feeling its warmth. He hadn’t been able to cycle before, but given that he wasn’t dead yet, he had to think there was some power left in his soul. If he bled to death, he’d do it while cycling.
If that didn’t work…well, he’d climbed his way up from powerless before. He could do it again.
Lindon tried to draw on his Blackflame core, though it was like trying to inhale wood. There was nothing there. But if he could reclaim some shred of power, Blackflame was what he wanted. Pure madra wouldn’t do him much good if Gokren came back.
The thought made him shiver with fear, but he steadied his breath again and started cycling according to the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel. The pain in his lungs almost made him return to his earlier, simpler Foundation technique, but he persevered. Eithan had told him to practice this cycling technique, and at least no one could say he’d given up.
Breath after agonizing breath passed, each one feeling like it hadn’t delivered enough air, but he kept going until he started to feel something. An approaching flame, a slight red light, and a tingling feeling on his skin.
His eyes snapped open to find that he was staring straight into black eyes with irises the color of shining blood.
Orthos.
Chapter 19
Yerin dashed up the black slope, headed for the other peak, but Jai Long followed her.
He was playing with her, she could see that clear as glass. Maybe he wanted to hammer out a new technique, and maybe he thought she wasn’t worth his best. Whatever the truth, it stung.
She had clawed the last drop of madra from her core, and was running on prayers. But there was a mass of silver power left in her spirit, and she begged it for more power.
Her master’s instincts told her to attack.
I can’t, she thought. Give me something, and I’ll use it.
The Remnant had no other advice for her. Just a few wispy memories of running straight at an enemy, weapon and techniques primed and ready.
Someone else had a word for her, though.
Her long-time guest, unwelcome and uninvited, sat there in her core in a knot of deadly power. If she unleashed it, it could save her. If she released it, she could save herself.
As always, she reminded herself what would happen if she released her guest. Unless Eithan popped out of the ground, her guest would destroy everything. And everyone, probably including her. Unless it hollowed her out and used her as a husk, which was worse.
No, she didn’t need that parasite’s help. She needed her master to step up.
A twisting snake shot out from Jai Long’s palm, and she met it with the edge of her master’s sword. Only the sheer quality of the weapon saved her, because she had no madra left to pour into it. Her bloody fingernails drummed with pain to the beat of her heart.
Show me what to do, Yerin begged.
The Remnant still urged her to attack. The unwelcome guest still pleaded for freedom.
And Yerin’s heart bled, because she finally accepted the truth: this wasn’t her master. Breaking him open wouldn’t be a betrayal, it wouldn’t mean abandoning him. If she dug into the Remnant and sucked its power dry, she wouldn’t be losing her master’s voice.
She’d lost that almost a year ago, in Sacred Valley.
So, as Jai Long kicked her body down the mountain with a bored sigh, Yerin reached inside herself. Her master’s Remnant was just a mass of silver power in her core, but she visualized it as it had appeared when she adopted it: a ghost of silver chrome, armed with six bladed limbs.
She reached for that ghost and crushed it with the power of her will.
As though she’d lit a beacon, the aura around her ignited. Silver light blazed into the sky, a column of razor-sharp power that turned all the vital aura in the area to sword aura.
Beneath her feet, a thousand invisible blades slashed at the stone, pebbles whipping up to sting her skin. Even the air whistled by her ears as it was cut, the wind lashing at her hair and her robe.
As the power of the sword raged within and without, she was devoured by a memory.
The girl stood before the Sword Sage amidst the wreckage of what had once been a prosperous family.
Her power blazed in his spiritual sense, half of it raw and unshaped, half bloody and murderous. She was only seven or eight and scrawny, and she looked like she’d missed more than her share of meals. Ragged hair hung into her eyes.
She hauled on a rope of blood madra that stretched from her stomach as though the far end was tied to a runaway horse. Her bare feet were planted, her teeth gritted, arms straining against the power of the parasite.
Which stretched out, its end forming into a blade, trying to cut him. She had managed to halt it while the blade was still an inch from his throat.
The world came back into focus as Yerin found herself scrap
ed and bloody and surrounded by a furious storm of silver light. Even the droplets of blood running from her wounds splashed up, sliced by aura, covering her with a scarlet mist.
A column of light rose into the air from her body, like she was a falling silver star.
She grasped at the Sword Sage’s memory like the fading edges of a dream; her master remembered that moment more vividly than she did. That moment: their first meeting. When she’d tried to save him from the power of her unwelcome guest.
Jai Long stood over her, and she found enough energy to stare defiantly back. He was far enough back that the sword energy didn’t cut him, but he was a sword artist himself—he could fight through the violent storm of her advancement to continue the fight while she was vulnerable.
But he merely crossed his arms and waited.
He could defend himself from this weapon, this seed of a true Blood Shadow, with only a fraction of his madra. He was in no danger.
But she didn’t know that. And she forced her body to its limit, muscles straining, blood running from the lip she was biting to keep the parasite from stretching any closer to him.
He was a stranger to her. The Blood Shadow had already consumed everyone she knew. All the others he’d seen in her position had given up—they had lost all reason to live, and thus all reason to fight. Their parasites thrived in such situations, filling their bodies like husks, stealing their power to bring it away.
And here, a little girl fought with all her body, mind, and spirit. She held on, her eyes furious and determined, resisting to the end.
And the fragment of a Dreadgod was no easy foe.
Yerin climbed to her feet, madra filling her, seeping into her weapon. Sword aura was so thick in the air, bright silver even to the naked eye, that it had started gathering on the edges of her blade. With half the effort it normally took, she executed her weapon Enforcer technique: the Flowing Sword. The technique collected aura with every slash and thrust, making the weapon stronger as it moved.
Everything in the Path of the Endless Sword revolved around vital aura. Most sword Paths could be used without a sword—their madra itself was sharp enough to cut old oak, so who needed the weapon itself? You could Forge whatever you needed for a fight.
On her Path, every technique was half a Ruler technique. Made her more powerful, gave her techniques extra heft…so long as she held a sword. If she didn’t have a weapon with a sharp edge, she was worth less than any other sacred artist.
That’s what her Goldsign was for.
Looking down on her, Jai Long must have felt the power building to a crescendo. He stood just beyond the silver light that poured as a torrent into the sky, and debris scattered by aura blades crashed against his chest.
Still he waited, arms crossed. Obviously, he expected more.
He had come to kill her, but here was a child who stood against a Dreadgod’s madra. She had power of her own—otherwise, the parasite would have chosen someone older—and enough resolve to keep on fighting even when the battle was lost, when she had no one left, when there was no hope of victory and nothing to fight for.
She was perfect.
Her master’s memories and attitudes soaked into her, washing over her with a palpable sense of his presence. He had chosen her because she fought to the last breath. Because, when backed into a corner and given no path to victory, she would still attack.
The Path of the Endless Sword had no defense. Sword aura could not shield her, it could only cut.
Whether she fought to escape, to kill her opponent, to protect herself, or to save someone else, she had to do so by attacking. That was the one weapon in her arsenal, the one road forward.
She’d studied the Path of the Endless Sword for years, and she knew exactly what it could do, but now she felt it. Bone-deep.
The silver light around her faded from a blaze to a halo and then died. Pebbles and droplets of blood, held aloft by the force of her spirit, scattered on the ground. The vital aura had carved out a smooth crater in the stone beneath her, and many of the rock pieces now drifted in the air as a fine dust.
“Congratulations,” Jai Long said, in his flat voice.
Yerin stretched her second bladed arm, which loomed over her other shoulder. With the pair of them, she looked like she’d glued a couple of steel fishing rods to her back and strapped knives to the end.
“Highgold,” she said, feeling the new resonance of her spirit. “Well, that’s got a kick to it.” She pressed her fists together, a sacred artist’s salute, and noticed her fingernails had stopped bleeding—Lowgold to Highgold wasn’t a big advancement, but advancing always did the body good. “Thanks for waiting.”
“I need an opponent,” he said softly. “Not a victim.”
Madra flooded through her flesh and into her skin, fueling her Steelborn Iron body, sinking into her muscles like water into thirsty soil.
She kicked off, and the leap took her over Jai Long’s head. He lashed out with a hand glowing like a star, but her Goldsign blurred and met his technique. They clashed with a sound like steel on steel.
Her second Goldsign whipped out, and he had to turn it with his other hand. When she followed up with a hit from her white sword, he took a step back.
Aura flashed out from her sword, slashing one of the strips of cloth from around his face, and he backed up again.
This time, he thrust a palm forward, and a Forged snake flashed through the air to bare fangs of light in her face.
He was following up with more snakes, defense and offense in one, and his spirit still hummed against her senses. She was far from being able to compete with him in raw power.
At least, as far as madra went.
While she was suffering through the birth of her Steelborn Iron body, her master had painted a rosy picture of its future. ‘It grows with you,’ he’d said. ‘Our body Enforcement techniques aren’t worth a chip of rust, see. So you need a body that Enforces itself.’ She’d seen him bend a steel door in half and crush a rock to powder. ‘You won’t notice at first, but it’ll be sharper every stage.’
For the first time, Yerin could feel the gift her master had left for her.
***
Something had changed for Yerin at Highgold, and it wasn’t her spirit. Jai Long had fought dozens if not hundreds of Highgolds, and it wasn’t that her spirit was so much stronger than usual.
Her techniques became sharper, like she’d spent a month practicing, but Jai Long could understand that. Highgold was a journey through the skills and experiences embedded in the Gold Remnant, so she’d have inherited some insight from her master.
It was her sheer physical strength that baffled him as she crushed his serpents, shoved his attacks aside, and matched his movements even through Flowing Starlight.
She drove his Enforced punches apart with her twin Goldsigns, which now moved as quick as her hands. He ducked her sword stroke, which she’d telegraphed by shifting her weight…but then she caught him in the side with a kick.
The force of it strained his Iron body and sent him rolling; he gathered himself and vaulted over from one peak to another. Now he was on the slopes of Shiryu Mountain’s main peak, beneath the Jai family palaces.
When she saw how far she’d kicked him, she looked more stunned than he was.
Jai Long’s whole purpose in allowing her to reach Highgold had been to measure himself against her. He was still ahead. The power of his techniques, his precision and timing, his speed: these were all beyond her.
But they should be. He was Truegold.
He shouldn’t feel any pressure from her attacks, but he did. He should be so much faster with his Flowing Starlight that she couldn’t keep up, and yet she did. She shouldn’t be able to threaten him except with her weapon, but that kick had nearly broken his ribs.
There was less of a distance between them now than there had been six months ago. He’d used the Ancestor’s Spear to gain power faster than any other sacred artist could, and she was still closi
ng the gap.
Fear crawled up his spine, and for the first time, he focused his full power. He had to kill her now.
If he didn’t, then the next time they met, she would kill him.
He gathered points of light on the tips of his hands, forming Star’s Edge techniques. It would have been more effective with a weapon, but he worked with what he had.
Yerin leaped over to the slope with him, slashing out in a Striker technique. He broke it with one Star’s Edge, sending a Serpent’s Shadow at her to cover her movement as he leaped up the slope.
She followed, of course. Only when he reached the cliff and stood beneath the Jai clan homes did he turn and wait for her.
When she landed on the cliff, tattered black robes fluttering in the breeze, she sheathed her sword.
“You’ll need that,” he warned her.
She shrugged. “Still better armed than you are.”
A hand-sized Striker technique shot out from one of her Goldsigns, and though he crushed the madra immediately, she’d closed the gap.
He drove a Star’s Edge at her throat.
They exchanged a dozen blows in an instant, his Enforcer techniques crashing against her Goldsigns. His core had finally started to weaken, dimming from a bright moon to a fading star, and hers couldn’t have been much better. Her breaths were still in a cycling rhythm, but they were ragged.
She flicked her eyes to his hands, watching for his next attack, and he took the opening. He squeezed one last burst of speed out of Flowing Starlight, dashing behind her.
This was his chance. He didn’t have the power for a prolonged battle with her, certainly not without a weapon. She wasn’t even a priority target; if he’d known she would grow so fast, he would have taken Gokren’s suggestion and crushed her with the full power of their numbers.
He had one chance to end the threat she represented, and this was it.
Her back was open and unprotected. In one invisible motion, he slashed a razor-sharp Enforced palm at the back of her neck to sever her spine.
As he moved, his spirit cried a warning. He leaped back as the air rippled, and sword aura tore the space where he had just been standing