Shadowbound

by Gage Lee

  Biz frowned at Reesa’s explanation and raised an eyebrow in my direction. She cracked her knuckles, leaned back in her chair, and shook her head in exasperation. The feral, restless fire was in my sister’s eyes more often now that she wasn’t allowed to leave the Academy. It had barely been a day, and she was ready to punch anyone who crossed her path. I wondered what she would be like in three days, or a week.

  “We’ve all been through a lot of crap, and there’s a lot more headed our way,” my little sister said. “I don’t know what a resonance is or why it would be dangerous. Try to remember we’re kids, okay? Explain it to us like we don’t know everything.”

  Apparently, Ylor was the expert in this field because he leaned forward to look Biz straight in the eye. When he spoke, he used his sternest teacher’s voice, which didn’t even get a blink from my sister.

  “Ghostlight is not inert,” he started, then raised a hand before Biz could interrupt him. “Please, be patient. Sunlight is energy. It has no intent, no will of its own. It leaves the star that generates it and flows through space until it strikes a physical body or is otherwise deflected from its course. It can be converted into other forms of power by clever scientists and wise cultivators. But the sunlight doesn’t care what happens to it. It simply exists. Ghostlight is not like that. At all.”

  Baylo blew out a gusty, frustrated sigh. She kicked back from the table and stalked back and forth, her eyes burning.

  “Let me cut through the nonsense,” she said. “We’re all filled with ghostlight. It is more crucial than the beating of your heart, or the turning sparks of the thoughts that dance inside your skull. Ghostlight makes the difference between a living body and a living person. Without it, all things wither and die. But when you, or me, or even that disgusting fuzzball on your shoulder falls, the ghostlight continues. It flows back into the veins of the many worlds until it finds a new home, in another living being.”

  The memory of what I’d heard during my advancement suddenly became much more sinister. All those voices whispering to me in languages I didn’t understand had belonged to the dead. A cold chill washed across the back of my neck, and I wasn’t certain if it was a premonition or I was creeped out by what Baylo had just confessed to us.

  “When we circulate our breathing,” I said, my brow furrowed, “the ghostlight we gain comes from dead people.”

  The members of the Tribunal nodded slowly, warily. They were holding something back. I could feel it, like a word on the tip of my tongue. There was a question I needed to ask them.

  “Ew. Gross.” Biz made a gagging sound. “We’re breathing ghosts. I’ve got dead people living inside me. Well, not living, but you know what I mean.”

  My sister grimaced and flapped her hands as if she were trying to shake something particularly odious from her fingers.

  “That is not exactly correct,” Ylor said. “When you circulate your breathing, much of the resonance is neutralized and returned to the greater field of ghostlight that surrounds us all. For a time, anyway, the energy is yours and yours alone.”

  “What happens when I breathe it out?” Biz asked suddenly. “Does some of my resonance go with it?”

  “I suppose—” Ylor began, but I didn’t hear the rest of his answer.

  The resonance certainly hadn’t been stripped away from the ghostlight I’d circulated during my advancement. It had spoken to me. If I listened carefully, even now, those whispers were still there. I’d stuck a bunch of dead people in my spinal meridian. The thought was hard to shake. I wasn’t sure what the long-term ramifications of it might be.

  >>>One thousand blades of refined ghostlight have been transferred to your reserve. The refinery is now empty.

  Total ghostlight reserves are now at one thousand and four hundred blades.<<<

  “Enough of this,” I said with a dismissive wave my hand. I had too many distractions, all vying for my attention, to waste time with this theoretical nonsense that wouldn’t affect me one bit after I’d taken my sister home. “Let’s talk about something more interesting. Like the armory I’m about to restore.”

  Baylo clapped her hands together so loudly the other members of the Tribunal nearly jumped out of their chairs. She pumped her fist and jogged around the table to clap me on the shoulder. I had to catch myself on the table to keep from toppling out of my chair.

  “Yes!” she shouted. “Finally, we can get properly geared up. The scrats won’t know what hit them.”

  >>>The bonded task “Promise of Steel” is now complete.

  Your Band of the Shadow Fist faction rating has increased by one.

  You have received two Akashik network interface upgrade credits.

  You now have ten upgrade credits available.

  An Akashik network interface upgrade requires ten credits.

  Your Silent Council faction rating has decreased by three.

  Your Iron Quill Cognate faction rating has decreased by three.

  You have expended five hundred ghostlight blades for the armory restoration.

  Current ghostlight reserves at nine hundred blades.<<<

  As if on cue, both Reesa and Ylor pushed back from the table. The pair of them offered me a stiff, overly formal bow, and cleared their throats.

  “I must bid you good night,” Ylor said. “I fear all of this excitement has exhausted me.”

  “Yes,” Reesa said quietly, her voice choked like she was about to sob. “I must rest as well.”

  I wasn’t sure what effect faction rating had, but losing it wasn’t doing me any favors with Ylor or Reesa. I cursed myself for not remembering to ask Reesa for her task when I’d turned on the generator. That would have given me a boost with her faction, the Iron Quill Cognate. Maybe that would have been enough to keep her from being upset with me.

  Baylo shrugged and watched the pair leave. When they were out of sight, she smacked me on the shoulder again.

  “By the shadow’s shriveled sack,” the warrior said through a toothy grin. “What a bunch of sore losers.”

  Biz scowled at the green-skinned warrior and shook her head. Threads of ghostlight slithered along her fingers and around her eyes. She pushed her chair back from the table, stood up to all of her four and a half feet, and blew her hair out of her eyes with an angry gust of breath.

  “You’re being a bully,” she said. “My brother made the right choice today, but he did it for the good of the Academy. Not for the Band. Not for you. It’s hard enough for him to deal with you without everyone constantly snapping at each other. Now Ylor and Reesa are both mad, not at you, but at Kai. How is that fair?”

  Biz stormed out of the room before Baylo could defend herself. The green-skinned warrior watched my tiny sister go, her lips pursed, the muffled sound of her grinding teeth underlining the sound of Biz’s feet on the tile.

  “I didn’t mean to cause trouble,” Baylo said. “But you took the first task for Ylor. Then it was all about gathering ghostlight. I thought you’d forgotten—”

  “Let it go,” I groaned. “I’m starving again. I’m grabbing a sandwich, or six. I’ll meet you back here when the armory restoration is complete. Try not to cause any more fights in the meantime.”

  Baylo gave me a sheepish nod and slumped back into one of the chairs around the table. It was hard to stay mad at her when she looked like a big embarrassed kid. But I knew if I went easy on her now, she wouldn’t remember what had happened tonight. I needed the message to stick this time. The Tribunal had to learn to get along.

  The good news was, I wasn’t really hungry, so I didn’t have to choke down more boring ham and turkey sandwiches. The taste of those meals wasn’t bad, it was just...You can definitely have too much of a good thing, and that’s where we were with the food situation. We’d never starve to death, but sometimes I let myself get hungry just because I didn’t want to take another bite of brown bread and lunchmeat. I’d reached the point where I’d even considered a pickle or two for a change.

  That’s just
how disgusting things had gotten.

  I shook off the food blues and found a quiet, isolated room on the east side of the Academy. Now that I’d fixed all the interior walls and the roof, there was plenty of space to spread out. I took advantage of that, sat cross-legged on a dirty carpet, closed my eyes, and willed the interface to upgrade to the next level.

  >>>Do you wish to spend your available Akashik network interface upgrade credits at this time?<<<

  I really needed to figure out how to get around all these confirmation prompts. If I didn’t want to spend my credits, I wouldn’t have asked. I silently gave my assent, and the voice returned.

  >>>The upgrade will require approximately fifteen minutes. When the upgrade has completed, you will receive the following benefits.

  At the second level, your interface node is upgraded to a universal connection.

  Improved sensory awareness allows for more accurate material, object, and creature assessments.

  In addition, a second-level interface has greater access to information stored in the Academy’s instance of the Akashik network. More in-depth data on the Tribunal and Monitor, and more advanced facilities within the Academy will be unlocked when the upgrade is complete.

  For your information, upgrading to a level-three interface will require thirty upgrade credits.

  You will be notified when this upgrade is complete.<<<

  Well, that was interesting. I wondered just how in-depth this new information about the Tribunal would be. I had a lot of questions about the Academy’s caretakers and hoped I’d be able to finally get some answers. Maybe if I could understand them better, I could convince them to work together without fighting all the time. It would be nice to have one meeting that didn’t end in a bickering match. I pushed myself up off the carpet and let out a rueful chuckle when my stomach growled.

  Turns out I actually was hungry.

  While the armory restoration and interface upgrades were processing, I headed for the kitchen. Wasn’t much else for me to do but wait, so might as well fill my belly. I took a deep breath of the brown bread, searching for hints of herbs or spices that I might’ve missed before. I caught the rich, yeasty aroma of fresh bread, but that was it. With a sigh, I turned my attention to making sandwiches that I’d eat but wouldn’t enjoy.

  I’d made it through my third ham and turkey sandwich when the interface notified me that its upgrade was complete. I decided to put it to the test and see just what I could learn from it.

  “Show me the list of students who were in the shadow vault when we opened it,” I said.

  >>>There were nineteen students on the vault manifest at the time it was unsealed.<<<

  “Wait,” I interrupted the interface. “That isn’t right. We pulled twenty kids out of that thing. Check the manifest again.”

  >>>You are correct. There was one student in the vault who was not on the manifest.<<<

  “Who?”

  >>>The one named Xin was in the vault, but not on the manifest. Would you like—<<

  The front door burst open and voices exploded into the Academy. I raced out of the food services room, shoving the last of the sandwich in my mouth and chewing rapidly. I recognized Xin’s shout and summoned Monitor to the hall. I ordered him to bring the Tribunal, just in case we were under attack. If that were the case, though, why hadn’t the watchmen in the tower warned us?

  I pushed those worries aside and raced to meet the other students. My heart pounded in my chest, and bone-deep worry settled into my stomach like a lead balloon. I realized these weren’t just the students I’d rescued or miners who could help me get out of this place. They’d become my friends in the short time we’d been together. The idea of them being hurt bothered me almost as much as the thought of Biz suffering.

  “What happened?” I bellowed as I reached the great hall.

  The last mining crew of the day was gathered just inside the doorway. Their half-empty sacks were slung over their shoulders, their eyes wide from the adrenaline that coursed through their veins. Something was very, very wrong with this picture.

  “Scrats,” Xin finally forced out of her breathless lungs. “Lots and lots of scrats.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  XIN AND THE REST OF the miners on her crew were so wound up by whatever had happened out there they couldn’t stop talking over one another. It was bad enough that the varm kept banging his fist on the table to make his point, but the drem made it a hundred times worse with their high-pitched chattering. After thirty seconds of futilely shouting for them all to be quiet, I triggered the Material Gaze of Discernment discipline, pushed a blade into my right arm’s meridian, and shattered the enormous table in the center of the hall.

  “Enough!” I shouted into the silence.

  Baylo and Monitor rushed in at the exact same moment. The warrior had a dagger clenched in her left fist, and her brow was furrowed with concern. The soulforged’s eyes blazed as red as a pair of stoplights, and he held one of the hexcasters we’d stolen from the scrats in his right hand and the crystalline tablet we’d liberated in his left. I couldn’t tell if he was prepared to wield the weapon, or if he’d just been trying to figure out how it worked.

  “Are we under attack?” Baylo asked.

  “I’ve discovered something interesting about this device,” Monitor started. “But, first, yes, please tell me if we are in immediate danger.”

  Mentions of an attack on the Academy set the miners off again, and the quiet I’d bought with the destruction of the table was blown away by another round of babbling. With a frustrated sigh, I clambered up onto a chair and slammed my hands together once, twice, then again.

  “Everybody—” I started, only to be interrupted by Ylor and Reesa, who swept into the hall together.

  “What is this about an attack?” Ylor shouted.

  “Hey!” Xin barked. Her voice echoed and twisted around itself, as if a whole chorus of young women of all different species had shouted at the same time. The eerie effect silenced the rest of the students and left us all staring at the horned girl. “Everyone shut your mouths.”

  Everyone in the hall went still as statues. Xin glared at the miners she’d returned with, fixed each member of the Tribunal with an icy stare, then cleared her throat and inclined her head toward the chair I was standing on. I hopped off my pedestal. I wasn’t sure where that trick she’d just pulled came from. Just like I had no idea where she had really come from, either. When this was all over, she and I needed to have a little chat about why her name wasn’t on the manifest. For now, though, I was just glad she’d shut everyone up so I could hear what she had to say.

  “Thanks,” I said honestly. “I swear I was about to have a migraine. Or a stroke. What’s all the excitement about?”

  “We were out by that tower, the one Ylor says used to be home to a blood cult,” Xin explained. “There’s a seam about a block from there. We hadn’t seen a scrat all day. We were mining when our drem watcher raised the alarm.”

  Xin took a deep breath and wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her left hand. Her cheeks were still flushed from the run back to the Academy, and the red glow was visible even through the smudges of dirt on her face. I noticed her fingernails were black with grime, and she had new tears and rips in her clothes and boots.

  Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to hear what she had to say.

  “There’s an army out there,” Xin said carefully. “A few hundred scrats, at least. They were on top of us not five seconds after the drem warned us they were coming. I don’t know how they got so close without him hearing. We dug down in the ruins to hide, buried ourselves under all that rock and dirt. They marched right past me, Kai. Not five feet from the end of my nose. If I would’ve moved, or had to sneeze...”

  I put a hand on Xin’s shoulder, then changed my mind and pulled her in for a hug. She didn’t return it, but she did lean her forehead against my shoulder and took a deep, shuddering breath. It was easy to forget that w
e were all just kids. No matter how strong we were, or what we’d learned in the Academy, we weren’t soldiers. None of us was prepared for what had happened to us, and we surely weren’t ready for what was coming next.

  Xin slipped out of my arms and wiped her face on her sleeve. She looked up at me with red eyes and a clenched jaw.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  With all the confusion of the last few minutes, I’d nearly forgotten that Xin had been a stowaway in the shadow vault, somehow. I wanted to ask her how that had happened, and question the Tribunal about why they hadn’t known, but this wasn’t the time to distract anyone from the coming battle. Xin had proven herself a valuable ally so far. I had to trust that would hold true.

  >>>Armory restoration completed.

  Your new facility is located on the fourth floor of the east wing.<<<

  “We gear up,” I said. Then, to Baylo, “The armory’s ready. Just in time.”

  “Yes!” the emerald warrior growled and pumped her fist. “Let’s do this.”

  Baylo’s enthusiasm got the rest of the students all wound up to see what I’d restored. A few of them took off to round up their friends, and by the time we reached the armory everyone trailed behind me like a flock of ducklings. I hadn’t been to this part of the school before, but my newly upgraded interface did me a solid by displaying arrows in the corners of my vision to guide me in the right direction. In no time at all, we’d made our way upstairs to a pair of heavy doors banded in iron and sealed with a monster of a padlock. Spikes ran along each of the iron bars, and the door handles had been cast in the likeness of rearing dragons, their jaws spread wide to reveal an impressive set of miniature fangs.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Baylo said. She fidgeted beside me, eager to get into the new room. “Come on, open it.”

  I considered tormenting the warrior by wasting more time in the hall. Maybe I could make a little speech, talk about how grateful I was for everyone’s help or something. But, honestly, I didn’t really have patience for that, either. I reached out, and the padlock vanished at my touch.