Shadowbound

by Gage Lee

  The ruin’s front wall was taller than the rest of the street by several stories. When it fell forward, its stones slammed into the remnants of the building across the street. Those came crashing down, too, right on top of the kamarotz. The Fell Lord screamed in outrage as he and his mount were buried in a rubble avalanche. The scrats who’d been mounted on the tops of the ruined walls added their voices to the horrible din as their crumbling perches dumped them onto the ground below, then crushed them beneath tons of stone.

  >>>Five enemies destroyed.

  Five reference points gained.

  You currently have eight reference points.

  Advancement requires ten reference points.<<<

  I asked the mental question, “What are reference points?”

  The voice didn’t respond.

  I had bigger problems than a silent interface, though. The Fell Lord Inphyr wasn’t dead, and neither was the kamarotz or most of the scrat horde. I ran, as fast as my legs would carry me, and then even faster by pushing ghostlight into my meridians. If I didn’t beat the bad guys to the Academy, the gate wouldn’t open.

  And I’d be a dead man.

  Chapter Twelve

  SCRAMBLING THROUGH the ruins had become more of a challenge thanks to my brilliant idea to drop buildings on my enemies. The destruction that radiated out from the kamarotz’s rampage had leveled most of the buildings in this block, and walls had tumbled like dominoes across this part of the city. Open streets were now choked with bus-sized chunks of collapsed buildings. The only upside was that I no longer had scrats shooting at me and the Fell Lord’s mental screams had stopped stabbing me in the brain. I hoped that meant he was trapped, and not that he was about to burst free and come flying after me.

  All the dust kicked up from the catastrophe I’d created didn’t help with my navigation. More than once I got turned around and ended up looking out over the purple abyss. The constant backtracking wore on my nerves and was taking a toll on my body.

  The ghostlight seemed heavier, and I desperately wanted to sit down and circulate my breathing. More ghostlight would let me strengthen my muscles and ease the fatigue creeping into my legs. There was no time for that, though. Scrats could be anywhere, and if Batboy dug himself out of the rubble, I’d never be able to escape. He could soar above the ruins on the kamarotz, then swoop down and snatch me up when he spotted me. I didn’t have any defense against that.

  My only hope was to beat Inphyr back to the school.

  With that cheery thought, I pushed on, climbing over piles of rubble, navigating around roads choked with fallen stones, and ducking through still-standing ruins to gain some easier distance toward my goal. It took fifteen minutes, which felt like fifteen hours, before I spotted the Ghostlight Academy’s black gates rising into the sky across the street. Biz leaned against them from outside the bars, while Baylo watched from inside.

  “Hurry it up,” Baylo shouted.

  “Slowpoke.” Biz smirked when I reached her. “I wiped out my scrats ages ago. What took you so long?”

  “We can talk about it inside,” I said. “But I bet mine was bigger than yours.”

  Baylo chuckled at that, and the gate swung wide. I gestured for Biz to go first, then followed her inside. The bars slammed shut behind us, the lock falling into place with a loud clang. Relief sucked the air out of my lungs and my legs nearly buckled. We were safe at last. Now we could rebuild part of the school and start working on getting out of here.

  A tremendous crash drew my attention back to the ruins, and a plume of gray dust rose into the sky. It was followed a moment later by a winged shadow that spiraled into the purple sky before soaring off to the north.

  “What was that?” Baylo asked me.

  “Fell Lord Inphyr and his pet kamarotz,” I said. “Don’t worry. I stomped them.”

  >>>The bonded task “Ghostlight Ore Recovery” is now complete. You have gained ghostlight ore and two reference points.

  You have ten available reference points.

  Advancement requires ten reference points.<<<

  “You didn’t kill him, so he’ll be back,” Baylo said quietly. “That’s a worry for tomorrow. Let’s get this ore to Ylor and Reesa.”

  Baylo reached for the sack over my shoulder, but I shook my head.

  “I’ll hang on to it,” I said. “It’s not that heavy.”

  That was a lie. The ghostlight’s song had grown louder when we’d reached school grounds, and it weighed more now than ever before. Carrying it was a giant pain, but I wasn’t about to give it up to anyone else. I didn’t trust that the Tribunal wouldn’t use it for something other than what I’d gathered the stuff for.

  The warrior seemed on the verge of saying something but shrugged and led us into the Academy. As we made our way back to the hall, she glanced at me with a raised eyebrow.

  “Something’s different about you,” she said. “What happened out there?”

  “We got ambushed by scrats,” Biz piped up. “I punched all of mine out of the way while Kai ran and hid somewhere.”

  “How many reference points did you get?” I asked Biz, ignoring her jibe.

  My sister and Baylo looked at me curiously.

  “You feeling all right?” Biz asked. “You’re talking nonsense again.”

  We’d reached the great hall, though only Monitor was present. Baylo told the soulforged to round up the rest of the Tribunal, flopped down in a seat, and gestured for Biz and me to do the same. She leaned forward, elbows on the table, and peered intently at me.

  “What are these reference points?” she asked.

  “When I killed the yaoguai,” I explained, “and then the scrats back there, the interface told me I’d gained some. I’ve got ten points now, and it says that’s enough to advance.”

  Baylo leaned back in her chair and drummed her fingertips on the tabletop. She seemed confused, and curious.

  “You’re here for less than two days and you’re already on the brink of advancement?” The warrior smoothed her hair back with the palms of her hands, then shook her head. “That seems highly unlikely, Kai. After Awakening, the first stage toward advancement can take weeks. For some students, it takes months.”

  “Not for me.” I put my feet up on the table and laced my fingers across the back of my head. “It’s like you said during our training exercise: I’m powerful.”

  Biz snorted. She raised her hands in front of her, and the golden aura surrounded them once again.

  “If you’re so powerful, why can’t you do this?” she asked.

  “Because I can knock down buildings on top of Fell Lords instead,” I said. “You should’ve seen it.”

  Baylo interrupted our family banter with more questions about how I’d done that, and I explained the Gaze of Discernment discipline I’d picked up while harvesting ghostlight ore. She seemed surprised by that and asked me how the discipline worked. After we’d gone over that for a few minutes, the warrior blew the hair out of her eyes with a gusty breath and shook her head.

  “I don’t know where you two came from,” she said, “but you’re both full of surprises. First, the skinny little girl masters the Fist of Light, and now you’re about to advance. It wouldn’t surprise me if Biz was on the threshold of a new core level, too.”

  “And then what happens?” Biz asked excitedly. “Can I learn a new glowy-hands trick?”

  Monitor returned with Ylor and Reesa before Baylo could answer. The two of them waited behind the soulforged as he stood at attention and announced their presence. Only then did the other members of the Tribunal enter the hall and take their seats at the table.

  “Do you really have to make him announce you every time you come into this room?” I asked Ylor. “It’s a waste of time.”

  “Traditions must be followed,” the eldwyr said. “That is what separates us from the beasts.”

  “Just admit it makes you feel like a big man,” Baylo said. “Which is stupid, because you could encode the soulforged
to say anything.”

  “That’s not exactly correct,” Monitor interjected, only to be interrupted by Reesa.

  “Do you have the ore?” She licked the tips of her fingers and rubbed her hands together.

  “Right here.” I hoisted the bag off the floor and dropped it onto the table in front of me. The ore’s singing grew louder as the sack landed with a thud.

  The Tribunal’s eyes were glued to the black bag and the strange light that seeped through its loose weave. I half expected them to squabble over it like a bunch of Gollums screeching about their precious. Instead, one by one, they looked away and blinked as if waking from a long, strange dream.

  “This is an excellent supply of ghostlight,” Ylor said. “Bring the ore. We have much to show you.”

  “And not as much time as we’d hoped,” Baylo said to the other members of the Tribunal. “A Fell Lord attacked them.”

  That drew a raised eyebrow from Ylor. He looked at me, then back at the emerald warrior.

  “And they’re both still alive?” The eldwyr seemed perplexed both by the fact that we’d run into a bat-riding freak and that it hadn’t slaughtered us. “Which one was it?”

  “Inphyr,” I said. “I dumped a building on him and his kamarotz.”

  “That’s an intriguing development,” Ylor said. “If the Fell Lord was this close to the Academy, we must move quickly. It is unlikely he will attack immediately, but Inphyr will want his revenge. Sooner, rather than later.”

  “Great.” Biz grinned up at me as we followed the Tribunal out of the hall. “More fights!”

  Ylor led our little procession through the eastern archway. We traipsed through the hall that encircled the meditation garden until we reached the doorway on its eastern wall. The room beyond was even larger than the great hall and cluttered with the shrouded remains of long banquet tables. Chairs that might have been comfortable once upon a time had decayed into mounds of dry-rotted sticks of wood and moldy cushions. The fuzzball jumped off Biz’s shoulder and took off, rooting through the ruins with chittering enthusiasm.

  “I have always hated those things,” Ylor spat. “They will steal anything that is not nailed down.”

  As if to emphasize the eldwyr’s point, the fuzzball thrust both of his arms into the air, tarnished silverware clutched in each three-fingered hand. The little guy shoveled his finds into his pouch, then disappeared under an age-yellowed tablecloth to search for more treasure.

  “But he’s cute,” Biz said. “That’s more than we can say about you.”

  Ylor grumbled at that, and Baylo and Reesa both stifled snickers.

  The eldwyr sniffed and forged a path through the litter to the doorway in the banquet hall’s northeastern corner. The door itself had long since gone missing, though the hinges remained fastened to the frame. We took an immediate right outside the room, then another right into a long, narrow hallway. There was a metal door to our left, and another on the same wall at the end of the hallway. Three windows were spaced along the eastern wall, letting in daylight and showing me that the walls here were much thicker than the interior walls. The Academy might’ve been a school, but it was also a fortress. After I repaired it, the building might even be strong enough to resist an attack from Batboy and his scrat minions.

  “Come along.” Ylor opened the first metal door with a wave of his hand and entered what looked surprisingly like a stone-walled elevator.

  The rest of us piled in with the eldwyr, and the door closed behind us. We descended so quickly my stomach jumped into my throat. The elevator shot down several floors, then came to a grinding halt. The lift opened with a faint rasp, and we found ourselves in a narrow corridor with mildew-stained stone walls and an uneven floor spotted with puddles of dark water. Thin copper tubes and much thicker iron pipes scabbed with flaking rust ran along the ceiling. Some of them vanished into rough-hewn holes in the stone above us, while others followed the corridor into the next room. The only light came from small amber studs set into the walls. The uncertain light was enough to see by, but it was already giving me a headache.

  Ylor led us onward, and we soon found ourselves standing in a room stinking of mold and crammed full of inert machinery. A steady drip, drip, drip of water splashing into a puddle was instantly irritating and did nothing to help the headache brewing between my temples. Ylor didn’t seem bothered by any of this and strode across the room to a tall, thin machine mounted to the wall.

  “This is the generator,” Ylor announced. The piece of machinery didn’t look like much. A bunch of thin metal rods rose from an opening in the floor and entered a crystalline chamber shaped like a flattened egg. “Once we activate this, we can proceed with the rest of the plan. But, first, we must process that ghostlight ore.”

  “Hold up,” I said, irritated that there was yet another restoration I’d have to perform before I could get down to the serious business of releasing the kids from their cages. “Restoring the generator was never part of the deal to free those kids. All you told us was that they’d need room and board.”

  “The ore must be processed to release its ghostlight into the Academy’s reserves,” Reesa explained, a faintly smug smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She’d wanted the generator moved to the top of the restoration list, and now she was about to get her wish.

  “Explain what’s going on here, Ylor,” I said. “Because I’m starting to feel like you’ve all played me.”

  “The refinery does have a small amount of reserve power that will allow it to operate without the generator. But, if you choose not to activate the generator, you will have to store a portion of all restored ghostlight in the refinery’s battery. I assure you, restoring the generator will make everything much simpler and more efficient in the long run,” Ylor said.

  It was Reesa’s turn to take up a position next to a dead machine. This one was a hulking box against the north wall, its surface featureless except for a seam that ran along its top. The worm woman pushed her hands flat against either side of the seam, and two panels swung up and out to reveal the machine’s dark interior.

  “This is the refinery,” she explained. “When operating on battery power, it can extract some thirty percent of the total ghostlight contained in the ore, while the rest of the energy goes toward restoring the battery. The generator converts the chaotic forces from within the splinter’s core to more efficient power, however. When this energy is used to operate the refinery, up to ninety percent of the ghostlight can be extracted from the ore. It was a very clever design on my part.”

  Ylor rolled his eyes while Reesa spoke but didn’t say anything. Clearly, he had his own opinions about the refinery’s design, and I was glad he kept them to himself. We didn’t have time for the Tribunal to argue amongst themselves. I wanted this Academy up and running long before the Fell Lord got his act together and attacked.

  But I still didn’t like having these new restorations sprung on me.

  “I’ll crank up the generator,” I said. “From here on out, though, I want to know of any potential surprises like this ahead of time. No more springing ‘just one more thing’ on me, got it?”

  Ylor and Reesa both bristled at my tone but nodded stiffly.

  “I just dump the rocks in there?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Reesa said. “It will take a few minutes for the refinery to register the presence of the ore. Once it does, however, a centrifuge—”

  “Got it.” I crossed the room and dumped the sack’s contents into the bulky machine. The chunks of heavy ore rattled around the inside of the metal container, then vanished through a hole in its bottom. The doors swung shut of their own accord, and a flash of golden light sealed them in place.

  “Now we wait,” Ylor said.

  I wasn’t going to do that. It might take the refinery minutes to complete its task, but I could use that time to prepare for the next step in my plan. I summoned the restoration options again, selected the generator restoration, and willed the interface to acti
vate it. I didn’t like the unexpected expense, but if it would make my life easier, I’d fire it up.

  >>>There is not enough ghostlight in your reserves to activate this item. Would you like to add it to the production queue?<<<

  I verified that I did, indeed, want to add this to the production queue. The interface informed me that it would begin as soon as there were enough blades stored in the Academy’s reserves. I also added the food storage facility and dormitories for the first-year students to the production queue and then dismissed the interface. The whole process reminded me a lot of RimWorld, a game that Biz and I had spent way too many hours playing while she was laid up in bed.

  “Where are the ghostlight reserves?” I asked.

  “There’s a storage vessel about a hundred feet below us,” Baylo explained. “It’s armored and protected. I’ve been told that it has a capacity of over a thousand blades, but it’s never been completely filled. It’s too dangerous to have that much ghostlight stored in one place.”

  “It’s not dangerous,” Ylor interjected. “In large enough quantities, ghostlight can become agitated and seek a release. I assure you, however, that our containment vessel is perfectly safe.”

  “Uh-huh,” Biz said with a roll of her eyes. “Like cleansing the chapel was safe, or gathering ghostlight ore would be safe?”

  “Yes, well.” Ylor shrugged. “I cannot foresee every possibility. I also will not be held responsible for the actions of foolhardy children—”

  Biz took a step toward the eldwyr, her hands and eyes glowing gold.

  “Easy,” I said, blocking my sister’s path with my outstretched arm. “No fighting.”

  >>>Ghostlight ore refining in progress. Activation pending. Estimated wait time is fifteen minutes.<<<

  “Can we leave and let the refinery do its thing?” I asked Ylor. “I’ve got everything queued up. As soon as the ore is refined, the generator, food storage, and first-year dormitories will be activated.”

  “You figured out how to do all this on your own?” Ylor asked. “When did you have time to do that?”