Eternal Core (School of Swords and Serpents Book 6)

by Gage Lee

  “Because we’re not from the same version of the Grand Design, and when I try to reveal things from my side of reality, you can’t understand it. We’re fine as long as we talk about things that are the same here and there, but past a certain point of difference I can’t make you understand what I have to say.”

  That explained why he couldn’t tell me about my friends. The sages had moved them too far from the destinies I knew. I wondered what would happen when I went to see them. But I had a more pressing question.

  “Where am I supposed to anchor this?” I asked.

  “Your sister’s place,” my reflection said. “But you must build it first.”

  My head swam at the implications of what mirror me had just said. Maps had shown me the path to the Empyrean Flame’s quest. But if I had to create the temple where I’d found her, did that mean I had to find my sister, too?

  Frustration bubbled up inside me and spilled out in a torrent of words. “This is impossible. How am I supposed to build anything by myself?”

  Mirror me spread his hands apart, and threads of jinsei wrapped around his fingers. He worked silently, forming a cat’s cradle, then twisting it into a braided figure eight. “Time is short. To save the future, you must look to the past. You will need to grow stronger than you believe possible, but trust me, you have it in you.”

  Frustration and fear warred within me. I was tired of being led around by the nose, and angry that even the future version of me couldn’t just spell things out. Everything was a puzzle for me to solve. “Please, give me something to work with. A place to start.”

  Future me changed, the image slumping and then straightening, long hair thinning to a bald scalp as a beard dangled from my chin like Spanish moss from an ancient cypress. “Start with the key that unlocked the doors to the School of Swords and Serpents for you. Trust in yourself. You can do this.”

  The last sentence came in a series of shifting voices. A young boy. An old man. A middle-aged woman. With a start, I realized this wasn’t a mirror me at all.

  This was the Empyrean Flame.

  “Yes,” it said in a voice so old it sounded more like the creaking of a rusty hinge than anything human. “There’s time for one last thing, Jace. You must be at the pinnacle of power to complete the quest. You must ascend to the eternal core, and you must do it without ever using the Infinite Core technique.”

  That was a rude slap in the face. Eternal core was a myth. No mortal had ever achieved such power, though legends claimed many had died trying to push themselves to such heights. With the Infinite Core, a technique I’d controlled for mere seconds before igniting the Empyrean Flame, maybe it would be possible to reach such an insane level. Without it...

  “I can’t do that,” I said. “No one can.”

  “You can,” the Flame responded.

  “How can you be so sure?” I shot back.

  “Because you are bound to me,” it said in a warm voice. “Our time is up, Jace. I’m sorry for the confusion I’ve caused you. I needed you with me at the beginning, and now I need you with me at the end to hold the Grand Design in place.”

  “Don’t go,” I pleaded. “Just give me something—”

  “Start at the start,” the Flame interrupted me. “And you will know when the end has come, and what you must do, when the time is right. All things in balance, Jace. Remember.”

  “At least tell me why you didn’t put me back at the moment I left!” I shouted. “I’ve got a year and a half missing from my life!”

  “I tried,” the Flame said. “But the Design is always in motion now that the sages have interfered. Past and present are no longer certain. I’m sorry.”

  The mirror prison shattered, and my mind went with it.

  The Memory

  I CAME TO WITH A SPLITTING headache and the feeling that I was missing something important. I jackknifed up off the floor and looked frantically around my surroundings. I didn’t recognize this place. There was something—

  No, this was my dorm room. Bits and pieces of memory emerged from the confused fog where my thoughts should have been. The Empyrean Flame’s cryptic instructions burst back into my head as I scrambled to my feet. “I need a pencil,” I said, “something to write with.”

  “Easy,” Hahen said. “You’re safe. The spell seems to have overwhelmed you.”

  That was an understatement. The Empyrean Flame’s spell hadn’t just been a message. It unlocked more of my memories. Not all of them, not by a long shot, but at least I knew why it had kept me by its side as it redrew the Grand Design. Only the Flame’s immense strength and foresight allowed it to create the ridiculously intricate patterns that defined the destiny of almost every mortal. But it was also a being of entirely rational thought. It couldn’t foresee the many ways that humans would violate common sense to deviate from the path it had laid out for them.

  The Flame didn’t want to make that mistake twice, so it had enlisted the help of an irrational mortal to help it understand all the ways lesser beings could screw things up.

  That’s where I’d come in. Somehow, and this part was still entirely unclear to me, the Flame drew on my experience and mind to build flexibility into this new version of the Grand Design.

  With my help, the Design was more robust, more powerful. But even as it expanded out to encompass the entire length and breadth of mortal existence, it wasn’t complete.

  I groaned and sat back down at the table in the common area. The urge to leave the dorm room and do something, anything, welled up inside me, but sitting down was all I could handle at that moment. The great cosmic truth the Flame laid on me was a lot to take in all at once, and its cryptic clues to start the last leg of the quest didn’t help matters.

  “I have to get my friends together,” I said to Hahen. “We’ll start with Eric. He can help me reach out to—”

  “First, take a deep breath and explain to me what just happened,” the rat spirit demanded. “Then we can talk about your friends.”

  I opened my mouth to tell Hahen we didn’t have time for this, but he snapped his fingers before I said a word. Under his watchful eyes, I cycled the tension out of my body and aura. My mentor was right. He couldn’t help me until I told him everything I knew.

  “It was the Flame,” I said. “Before, it needed my help to redraw the Design’s beginning, and now it needs my help to anchor the end of the pattern so the sages can’t mess it up.”

  Hahen and I chewed over the rest of what the Flame told me, until he nodded and leaned back, his arms crossed. “That explains your memory,” the rat spirit said. “The life you lived changed when the Flame moved you along the Design. The Jace that was here these past eighteen months was very much a different person from the Jace with me now.”

  “It would have been nice if the Flame had been more accurate when it moved me,” I grumbled. “Though I suppose when you’re dealing with eternity, a year one way or the other doesn’t seem like much of a difference.”

  “And, yet, for you, it made all the difference in the world,” Hahen murmured.

  The tone in the rat spirit’s voice worried me. “I need to know what happened in the time I can’t remember.”

  Hahen cleared his throat and nervously twitched his whiskers. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  The way he asked the question told me I’d dropped more of my memories somewhere. The look of pain on his face made it just as clear that I didn’t really want to pick them back up again. “What happened?”

  Hahen clambered up on the chair and hoisted himself onto the table, where he sat down, cross-legged, his hands cupped in his lap. I realized the rat spirit was looking thinner these days, almost stretched, the substance of his body translucent. “I was there for most of this,” the spirit said, “and I’d rather not relive it. Are you sure you don’t remember any of the last year?”

  I concentrated, breathing in and out, cycling jinsei through my core, hoping the active meditation would unlock more memories tha
t the Empyrean Flame’s tinkering with the Design rearranged. But no matter how hard I tried to focus on the missing time, I could only catch snippets. There were brief flashes, devoid of context and empty of any emotional weight.

  “I’m sorry, honored Spirit, but I need your help.”

  “Very well,” Hahen said. “You know that upperclassmen of the School of Swords and Serpents have important duties to our society.”

  Hahen’s voice broke apart into a tangle of sharp consonants and dripping vowels. I couldn’t make out one word of anything he said after “society.”

  My hands clenched into frustrated fists. I wanted to punch someone, to break something. I’d fought an army of inhuman monsters. I had the power to level buildings. But no amount of strength or violence would help me push through this problem.

  “Well, that doesn’t work,” I said. “The Flame explained there were things I couldn’t understand because my version of reality isn’t the same as the one I’m currently in. It’s like I’m a farcaster tuned between frequencies. My guess is that includes everything in that weird eighteen-month gap.”

  “Let me try something else,” Hahen said.

  But that wasn’t any better. The rat spirit couldn’t tell me any more than the Flame had already revealed.

  But how could I fix the problems the sages had created in their lives if I didn’t even know where they were or what had made them abandon the School? I felt more helpless than ever before.

  Maybe it was just me and Hahen against the world now.

  That was a worrying thought. I’d relied on Clem, Eric, and Abi so often over the years it seemed impossible to go on without them. Could I anchor the Design without fixing the problems in their destinies? The Flame hadn’t said it was a requirement, but maybe it was.

  I just didn’t know.

  “The Flame chose you,” Hahen said, as if reading my mind. “Whatever else has happened, that has not changed. You can do this. I know it.”

  “Thank you, honored Spirit,” I said. “I hope you’re right.”

  Because if Hahen was wrong, everything I’d worked for, everything the Flame needed me to do, would crumble to dust.

  The Grind

  AFTER MY CONVERSATION with Hahen, I spent some time alone to meditate and gather my thoughts. I had to put my friends back on the right path for their destiny, but I didn’t know where they were, or what had gone off the rails in their lives. I’d lost the most important people in my world.

  My meditation carried me deeper and deeper, until, at last, the Grand Design appeared below me. It was even larger than the last time I’d seen it, its patterns more complex, its far reaches so distant they were little more than thin silver arcs even at this great height. The Empyrean Flame’s work this time was more ambitious, and it showed.

  But despite its grandeur, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong in this strange pattern. Something seemed askew, as if I was looking at the world in a funhouse mirror.

  The Flame’s words came back to me. This was the distortion the sages had caused. Until I anchored the Design, they’d keep pushing and pulling at it until it served their needs.

  That worry stayed in my mind until Hahen disturbed my restful meditation with a sharp jab from his pointy index finger. “The time for laziness is through. They need you in the laboratory.”

  I cracked one eye open to fix the rat spirit with my most venomous glare. “Something tells me it is very early in the morning.”

  “Yes,” Hahen said, “it is just before sunrise. If you had read your assignment sheet, you would know you’re due to work under Tycho at sunrise every day.”

  “You and I both know I didn’t read the sheet, or, if I did, I don’t remember it,” I groused. “Where is it?”

  “In the top drawer of your desk,” Hahen said. “Where you put it.”

  “I didn’t—”

  I bit off my complaint. Hahen knew what I’d gone through, but I couldn’t expect him to forget everything he’d experienced in the past eighteen months. As far as my mentor was concerned, I had read the assignment sheet and put it in my desk. “You know what, never mind. I’ll read it now.”

  “If you think you have the time,” Hahen chided me.

  “I’ll make time,” I said. “And if Tycho gripes at me, I’ll gripe right back. He needs me as much as I need him.”

  I crossed the small suite to my desk, pulled open the top drawer, and found a single page of densely typed paragraphs. I skimmed it while Hahen filled me in on the rest of my sixth-year responsibilities.

  “As I’m sure you’ll see on that page,” he began, “the School and our government take assignments very seriously. Failure to appear for your scheduled shifts or otherwise shirking your duties is a crime against Empyreal society. The punishments range from annoying to severe, based on your overseer’s input.”

  “The schedule makes no sense,” I grumbled. “I have assigned hours to work in Tycho’s laboratory every day, but I only have classes a few weeks out of the semester?”

  “That is correct,” Hahen said. “Most of your classroom learning is behind you. Now is the time to become a productive member of society. You’ll have one week of intensive study for each class, spread throughout the year.”

  “This year I only have Martial Mastery, Geomancy, and Master Scrivenings?” I asked. “Whose idea was it to put me in an advanced class with Ishigara? I’m terrible at scrivenings.”

  “You used to be,” Hahen corrected me as he dug a pair of clean robes out of my closet and tossed them in my direction. “But you applied yourself with rigor last year, and now you’re passable with a scribing tool. Get dressed, we need to meet Tycho before he comes looking for us.”

  The fear in Hahen’s voice grated on my nerves. “I said I’ll deal with Tycho if it comes to that.”

  The rat spirit had spent centuries laboring for the Reyes family before I’d liberated him. He was a wise and gentle creature, and they’d nearly broken him with demeaning tasks and torturous servitude. My mentor would never go back to that while I lived.

  “You really think they’d throw me in jail?” I asked after I’d donned fresh robes and headed for Tycho’s domain.

  Hahen glanced at me out of the corner of one eye. “The School owes a great debt to the Empyreals who fund it through their generous donations and tax dollars. Neglecting your assignment duties is a crime against those people.”

  While I supposed it made sense to give back to those who’d made the academy possible, hearing it spelled out in such a transactional manner irritated me to no end. We were students, not investments waiting to mature.

  We walked most of the rest of the way in silence. Hahen seemed nervous, and it annoyed me to be reminded about the School’s need for more money. With the amount of wealth I was creating in Tycho’s lab, the School shouldn’t have to worry about finances for years to come.

  I was about to mention that to Hahen, when the rat spirit stopped and pulled me over to one of the empty display cases lining the hall to the laboratory. “Promise me that no matter what you see today, you won’t make a scene.”

  “You know I can’t promise that,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.

  “Swear to me,” Hahen demanded. “No matter how distressing your experience today, you will hold your temper with Sage Reyes.”

  The way Hahen said the man’s title, with a mixture of awe and dread, raised my hackles. Tycho was a man, and not a good one, much less a saint worthy of Hahen’s admiration and fear. “What is he up to?”

  “I don’t know,” the rat spirit said. “It may not even be him. But he is your overseer for this assignment. The danger that we discussed this morning is real. He could have you sent away if you displease him.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I promise you I won’t blow up at Tycho. No matter how much he deserves it. At least, not today.”

  Hahen bowed to me. “That is all I ask.”

  I returned the bow with a slight frown. “I
f he’s up to no good, though, I can’t promise how long I’ll hold my tongue.”

  Hahen nodded to me, then turned and continued down the hall at a brisk pace that required me to hustle to catch up to him. He didn’t say another word as he opened up the laboratory’s door and gestured for me to enter.

  Tycho was already inside the room, hustling from one occupied examination table to another. He beamed a smile at me as I entered, then cooked a finger in my direction. “This is perfect,” he said, “our subjects were just getting comfortable.”

  The subjects he was talking about, a pair of young boys who couldn’t have been any older than ten and a scrawny wisp of a girl all of six, lay flat and stiff as boards on the examination tables on the laboratory’s right side. Their robes were the glistening black of the Disciples of Jade Flame, but they had no arms and only covered the kids down to their knees. Anxiety and fear aspects filled the children’s auras with black and red streaks that grew more vivid as I approached.

  “Good morning,” I said, bowing to Tycho, then to each of the children. “I’m Jace. Thanks for coming to see me.”

  When your eyes are glowing black pits in your head, it pays to be a little extra nice to people you don’t want to freak out. I had no idea why Tycho had brought these kids here, but if they had a problem like Rachel’s, they’d be easier to work on if they trusted me.

  “Samara, Race, and Augustus,” Tycho said, pointing first to the girl, then to the boy on her right, and finally to the boy on her left, “haven’t been feeling well. Since you helped Rachel, I hope you’ll be able to do the same for them.”

  I watched Reyes for any sign of dishonesty or treachery, but nothing registered in his face or aura. His aura was as clean as a fresh sheet of paper. Even if he was guilty of something, he was too practiced a liar for me to catch with such a simple check. “I’ll do what I can,” I said, and turned my attention to the kids on the tables. “Which one of you brave sacred artists wants to be first?”