Eternal Core (School of Swords and Serpents Book 6)

by Gage Lee

  I did not like the sound of that word, but Hahen was right. Bucking the system now, when I was off-balance and out of sorts, would not end well. I had to bide my time until I’d recovered enough to figure out who had carved a year and a half out of my life.

  But once I had my feet back under me, I’d find out what had happened, even if that meant a trip to visit the Empyrean Flame.

  “Fine,” I conceded. “Where are we headed?”

  Hahen gestured toward the door. “Tycho’s laboratory.”

  A chill seeped into my blood. “And who is my overseer?”

  The rat spirit’s weary sigh confirmed my fears before he spoke. “Sage Reyes.”

  The Curse

  MY PULSE QUICKENED as we made our way through the School to the main hall. Freshmen giggled and waved at me as I approached, and I did my level best to smile and wave back. It was strange to be famous and not know exactly why. Were those kids star-struck by the undefeated former School Champion, the guy who’d saved the world, or someone who’d done something else that I couldn’t even remember?

  “Here we are,” Hahen said as he guided me toward a familiar doorway tucked back next to the main hall’s stairs. “And get that look off your face. You’re here to work, not challenge a sage to a duel.”

  “That’s just how my face looks,” I said.

  “You should change it,” Hahen suggested.

  “You’re not helping,” I grumbled. “Let’s just get this over with before I lose my temper.”

  “Calm and smooth,” Hahen corrected. “I’m not opening this door until your face is as clear as a mountaintop pool. You can’t give the sage any reason to suspect anything’s changed.”

  Hahen was right, as usual. Tycho and his pals had meddled with the Design. I had to pretend I didn’t know unless I was prepared for a fight, which I was not. The safest thing for me was to make sure whoever had done it thought their hex was still in place. The list of people who could affect my memories was small, given the power and complexity of the technique. Tycho was definitely on that list.

  With a deep, cleansing breath, I pushed the anger and confusion aspects out of my aura. My mind cleared, and my thoughts became as gentle as ripples lapping against the shores of a windless lake. Another breath left my core full and my heart calm. “Okay,” I said to Hahen, “let’s do this.”

  “Much better,” the rat spirit said as he pushed the door open. As he walked down a hall that had once held powerful relics of Empyrean history, but which now held only empty display cases, Hahen filled me in on what to expect. “Your primary duty today is as it was during your freshman year. You’ll be cleansing jinsei and storing the aspects and purified sacred energy in containers.”

  “Because there’s nothing better for me to do than make Tycho rich,” I said.

  “Temper,” Hahen corrected, then continued as I cycled away my fury. “But you will also provide some jinsei medical services.”

  “I know how to do that?” I asked. Performing jinsei medicine was difficult and time consuming. It could also be deadly for the patient if the doctor didn’t know what he was doing.

  “Your assignment sheet showed this has something to do with damaged cores,” Hahen murmured, careful not to let prying ears overhear as we neared the laboratory. “And the sages all agree you are the foremost expert in that field.”

  The rat spirit threw open the door to reveal the most advanced jinsei laboratory I’d ever seen.

  The grungy, run-down facility I’d been trapped in as a freshman was gone. A softly glowing floor of scrivened ceramic tiles had replaced the pitted and scarred concrete I’d spent countless hours standing on. Workstations of polished polymer and stainless steel occupied spaces that had formerly held rusted countertops. Racks of crystal-clear containment vessels stood at attention in stark contrast to the haphazard collection of stained glassware Hahen and I had used years ago.

  “Someone got an upgrade,” I muttered.

  “Yes, we did,” Tycho said, a shark’s smile on his face as he swept into the room through a door opposite the one I’d entered. That hadn’t been here before, either. “I hope you like it. You’ll be spending a lot of time in here.”

  It took another deep, cleansing breath to calm my nerves enough to speak. The last time Tycho and I met was over the length of my fusion blade, with the business end stuck through his chest. I’d expected him to be angry, but he acted like we’d never even had harsh words for one another.

  “It looks much more comfortable than when I first worked here,” I said, forcing myself to smile. Pleasantries took a lot of mental effort. “Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to meet with me today.”

  Tycho beamed at my gratitude and drifted across the room toward me. The hem of his robe swirled a good inch above the ground, but there was no sign of his feet beneath it. I wondered if that was a trick I’d pick up when I reached the level of sage.

  “Think nothing of it, Jace,” he said, his smile softening. “You’re a valuable member of the School of Swords and Serpents. Not to mention the only sixth-year assigned to this very important work.”

  It was impossible for me to tell if Tycho’s good humor was genuine. His aura was clear and empty of any aspects at all. Either he was a talented liar, or he was honestly happy to see me. Not knowing which of those options was true had me on edge.

  “I’m honored.” I nearly choked on those words. “And what is the work we’ll be doing today?”

  Tycho paused for a beat, and I wondered if I’d just made a terrible error. Hahen had said something about an assignment sheet, but I hadn’t seen any such thing.

  Or, at least, I didn’t remember seeing it.

  If information on that sheet held the answer to my question, then I’d look disrespectful for not reading it, at best, or like an idiot at worst.

  But the sage’s smile didn’t waver. “I considered providing more information up front,” he said, “but deemed it prudent to keep this quiet. Just between us, in fact.”

  There was something ominous in his words, despite the cheerful expression on Tycho’s face. He was up to something, I just knew it. For the moment, though, all I could do was play along until I gathered enough information to make a move.

  “Sounds interesting,” I said, feigning nonchalance and pretending to examine one of the workstations. My real motivation was to put the equipment between Tycho and me. It wasn’t much of an edge, but a split second’s advantage could determine who’d win if he started a fight. “Is it dangerous?”

  “Possibly,” the sage admitted. “Though I am hoping you know more about this issue than I do. Shall we begin?”

  “Certainly,” I said, “though if I had more information—”

  “You can come in now,” Tycho called toward the door he’d entered through.

  A stunningly beautiful young woman came into the room. Her dark hair was tied up in a pair of coiled buns on top of her head. Her robes, black and glistening, spilled down from her throat in an inky stain that puddled on the floor around her feet. She fixed me with a brilliant smile that left me stunned.

  Rachel.

  She gave Tycho a deep bow, then rushed past him. She threw her arms around my neck and lifted herself off the ground to kiss the side of my neck, my cheek, and, finally, my lips. “It’s been so long,” she said, her cheeks flushed with excitement. “I wish we were meeting under more pleasant circumstances, though.”

  Rachel kissed me again, then drew back, the twinkles in her eyes fading. “Is something wrong?”

  Yes. No. I wasn’t sure what the right answer was. Rachel and I hadn’t spoken in... there was no way for me to know how long. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she’d have heard I was with Clem, but Rachel acted like I was her boyfriend.

  Maybe that explained why Clem and I had fought.

  “Sorry,” I said, covering for my confusion. “Hahen has been running me ragged chasing my next advancement.”

  The rat spirit nodded
his agreement, though I couldn’t tell if that was because he really had been pushing or to cover for the gaping holes in my memory.

  “That’s all right,” she said, patting my cheek with her soft hand. “Shall I tell him, honored Elder?”

  Tycho nodded and gestured toward one of the exam tables on the far side of the room. “Let’s move over here where we can see you better, my dear.”

  Rachel smiled enthusiastically, grabbed my hand, and dragged me over to the table. She slipped up onto it with a feline grace and lay down flat on its contoured polymer cushion. Rachel grinned and placed her hands on her stomach, forming a pair of parentheses around her core. “It hurts right here, Doctor.”

  My cheeks burned bright as jinsei flares. Tycho’s watchful gaze was an uncomfortable weight against my aura. Did Rachel expect me to disrobe her to examine her stomach? I couldn’t imagine doing that in private, much less with an elder in the room. My thoughts were still scrambling for a way out of this mess when Tycho broke the tension.

  “Rachel has been complaining of an issue with cycling,” the sage said. “I’ve examined her core and found nothing amiss. I’ve referred her to several other jinsei specialists, and they have found her fit and healthy. We hoped that, given your expertise in the area of damaged cores, you could shed some light on the situation.”

  “Oh,” I said, relief flooding through me. “Oh! Have you ruled out delamination?”

  “Yes,” Rachel responded, giggling at my obvious embarrassment. She laid her hands down at her sides. “Look closely, Doctor.”

  My cheeks burned ever brighter, somehow, and I swallowed hard to hide my discomfort. My feelings for Rachel were a mess of conflicting emotions. I’d honestly thought she’d want nothing to do with me after I’d become an Eclipse Warrior, and the dustup I’d had with Grimaldi’s men in front of the annex hadn’t put her mind at ease. To have her so eager to see me had my heart aching and my head spinning.

  I purged my aura of its unwanted aspects, then focused all my attention on my friend’s core.

  “Let’s see what’s happening,” I murmured and shifted my vision to look at something I understood: cores and jinsei channels.

  Tycho’s attention clung to me like a cloud of smoke, forcing me to clear my thoughts again before I could examine Rachel. The elder was very interested in this procedure.

  Rachel’s core was perfectly fine, if a bit on the weak side. She was still a disciple, but there were no flaws or injuries to her core holding her back. With enough practice and hard work, she could reach artist.

  Maybe even master.

  “Good news,” I said with a smile, “your core is fine.”

  “It doesn’t feel fine,” Rachel said. “Cycling hurts after just a few minutes.”

  “Hurts how?” I asked, probing deeper into her core. Maybe the injury was more subtle than I’d expected.

  “Like...” Rachel gathered her thoughts. “Have you ever had a Slurpee on a hot day? You drink it too fast, and it gives you a headache, but it also freezes your stomach. It feels like that. Kind of.”

  That was definitely weird. I’d never heard of anything like that, and there was no damage to Rachel’s core. Whatever pain she felt came from somewhere else. I expanded my search to her channels.

  The main meridian that extended from her core up the length of Rachel’s spine to her head was a vibrant cord of light filled with sacred energy. The peripheral channels extending from it to her arms and legs also bore no sign of damage or defects. If she was injured, it was an incredibly subtle sort of damage.

  “Cycle for me,” I said. “I want to watch your jinsei flow.”

  “Anything you say, Doctor,” Rachel said in a tone that made me fidget uncomfortably. A moment later, she took in a deep breath, held it, and then released it in a long, slow exhalation.

  The sacred energy poured into her core in a smooth rush. It filled her center without turbulence or signs of stress. The jinsei flowed into her channels without resistance, even when it reached the narrower channels of her fingers and toes. To my experienced vision, Rachel’s core and channels were in perfect condition.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” Rachel breathed. “It will soon, though.”

  “I hate to ask—” I started, but Tycho cut me off.

  “Continue cycling,” the elder said in a tone that I remembered all too well. “Please let Mr. Warin know when the pain begins.”

  “Yes, Elder,” Rachel agreed, her voice low and frightened.

  There was the Tycho I knew and loathed. All the playacting in the world couldn’t hide the snake’s true nature for long. He was coiled and ready to strike, as much a danger to his allies as his enemies. He’d tried to use me up and throw me away, and I wasn’t even a member of his clan. I shuddered to think of how hard the elder could be to those who owed ultimate fealty to his commands.

  And I wondered if Consul Reyes still thought saving him from the grave was worth the price she’d paid.

  “There,” Rachel said with a faint gasp. I’d been so lost in thought, I hadn’t even watched the jinsei flowing through her. The pain in her voice refocused my attention, and the problem immediately jumped out at me.

  Rachel’s thread of fate snapped and hissed like a live electric line. A few feet from the point where it emerged from her core, the black cord grew fuzzy and snarled, like an unraveling piece of yarn. Not far from that disturbance, something even stranger happened.

  My friend’s Thread split in half. One cord spiraled away toward the glowing pattern of the Grand Design, which loomed in my thoughts like a vibrant grid of electric power. But the other twisted off in the opposite direction, growing fainter and less distinct the further it stretched from Rachel’s core.

  I couldn’t see what that end was attached to, and that disturbed me. The longer I studied it, the less I understood. It wasn’t as if her Thread was truncated, like mine. That would be obvious. But it wasn’t complete, either, and the free end dwindled away to fuzzy nothingness.

  That seemed impossible. The whole point of a thread of fate was to bind mortals to the Grand Design.

  Tycho’s attention bore down on me. He was studying me like his life depended on it. That told me this was very important to him. And I was not about to give him information he needed for free.

  It was time to lie.

  “I think I see the problem,” I said. That was the last bit of truth I planned to give to Tycho. “I’ll try to fix it, but I’m not sure how long the repairs will last.”

  Rachel laughed and took my hand. “Repairs, huh? Am I a car that needs a valve job? Do your best. That’s all anyone can ask.”

  I shifted my view away from cores and channels to see Rachel’s smiling face. Tycho had taken a position at the head of the examination table. He nodded somberly, then made a dismissive “go ahead” gesture with his left hand.

  My first step was to give the sage something to look at. I carefully wove several loose strands of jinsei around my friend’s core. “The core has a very fine separation here,” I lied to Tycho.

  “Shouldn’t you make those loops tighter, then?” he asked, a mixture of curiosity and annoyance in his voice. “If you want to close a gap, it’s best to force the two halves together.”

  “You’d think,” I said while shielding my real work with the serpents that had appeared at my mental command. “But forcing a core to do anything is treacherous at the best of times. Trying to slam a damaged one closed could cause more problems than it cures.”

  While I spoke to Tycho, I wove a sling of jinsei around the two halves of Rachel’s split cord, while simultaneously gathering a cat’s cradle of silver threads between the tips of my serpents. I hoped that was enough to distract him. Then I slipped the ends of the sling through the loose loops around Rachel’s core and tied them in place with a series of sacred energy knots.

  “I see,” Tycho said dubiously. “Why are your serpents working so far above Rachel?”

 
“They are zealous when it comes to gathering jinsei,” I said with a shrug. “I didn’t want them to take any from her.”

  Tycho nodded and watched as I continued my work.

  A few careful tugs pulled the ends of the cords I’d wrapped around Rachel’s Thread through the loops that surrounded her core. That pulled the two halves of the damaged Thread together and secured it to her. It wasn’t a perfect job, but it was neat and tidy.

  “Give it another shot,” I said. “Keep going until it hurts.”

  “I bet you say that to all the girls,” Rachel flirted, and then began her cycling.

  To my relief, the sacred energy flowed long past the point where it had hurt previously. The thread of fate struggled inside the bonds I’d created for it, the two halves trying to force themselves apart like magnets repelling each other. My work held them together, though.

  I glanced at Tycho, hoping he didn’t see the Thread. He watched impassively, showing no emotion. With any luck, he only saw what he expected: a core wrapped in jinsei and sacred energy flowing through his clan member without hurting her.

  A strange spark flared to life inside my healing spell, drawing my attention back to the work I’d done. There was something trapped between the two halves of Rachel’s Thread, a construct I hadn’t built. It had been invisible until I’d performed my jinsei surgery, but now it was active.

  And it was growing.

  My serpents jumped into action to help me assess the threat. They gingerly parted the strands of jinsei I’d woven around Rachel’s bifurcated Thread to reveal the invasive spell to my sight. It was a crude bit of sorcery, a circle of sacred energy surrounding a triangle of shorter threads. It seemed familiar, somehow, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  Whatever. This spell was no match for my serpents. I guided them to snip through a pair of strands that fed jinsei from Rachel’s thread of fate into the construct. It was but a moment’s work to slice through a trio of cords that held it in place.