by Gage Lee
“But, like our bodies, the Earth is crisscrossed with channels filled with sacred energy to keep itself healthy.” Auralin went on at some length, describing the way the world worked to keep itself in balance.
To the professor, every natural occurrence was related to the flow of jinsei. Tides rising and falling? Jinsei waxing and waning in the channels that lay beneath the ocean. Forest fire? Jinsei imbalance. Tornado? Generated by jinsei vortices at the intersection of channels.
And mortals had harnessed the Earth’s power. The undercities ran on geomantic power stations that channeled jinsei from the Earth into generators. “Of course,” Auralin continued, “the overcities and most of the Empyreal schools do not use geomantic power, because of its disruptive effects on the practice of the sacred arts.”
“What effects?” I asked.
“Disruptive ones,” Auralin said, a twinkle in her eye. “Thank you for that question, Mr. Warin. It leads us to the first and most critical warning for geomancers. The Earth is unpredictable. Its power waxes and wanes with little warning. You must always be ready to disengage from a dragon line if you detect a surge. Now, let’s get to work on our first lesson.”
The professor held her right hand out to the side of her body, palm parallel to the floor. Jolts of jinsei shot down from her fingertips like miniature bolts of lightning and struck the floor with simultaneous electric crackles. The power raced along lines on the floor that had been invisible just a moment before. In a few seconds, lines of glowing silver crisscrossed the ritual circles and converged on their centers. My fellow students oohed and aahed, and the display even impressed me.
“The pathways you see are known as dragon lines. Some call them Earth’s channels.” Auralin folded her hands in front of her. “They are a source of substantial power, but only if handled with care. Today, you will learn to tap into this strength. I assume you’ve all mastered the basics of jinsei sorcery, or you wouldn’t be in this advanced class.”
The professor said that last bit with a smile, but she scrutinized each of us as if measuring the techniques we’d learned. She nodded, satisfied, then dove into an explanation of how to connect to the dragon lines. The first step was to attach a thread of jinsei between the Earth’s channel and yourself. Several of my fellow students struggled with that, though I managed it in just a few seconds. That was mostly down to my threadweaving technique, which gave me an edge none of the other students shared.
“Very good job, Mr. Warin,” Professor Auralin congratulated me. “Once you’ve created the bond to the geomantic line, begin cycling. Imagine your breath coming not through your mouth, but traveling up the cord tied between yourself and the dragon line.”
It took me a few breaths to get the hang of the process, but once I did it was as natural as normal cycling. The jinsei pulled from the Earth was richer, somehow, though far from pure. Earth and stone aspects tainted the sacred energy. A handful of fire aspects told me this jinsei had flowed through a magma seam on its way to me. That was a handy reminder to be careful of any fire sorcery I tried down here. The last time I’d pulled on magma elements, I’d melted a shrine and one of my mother’s agents. That was not an experience to repeat around my fellow students.
We practiced cycling jinsei out of the Earth’s channels for eight hours that day. I pushed myself as hard as I could, forcing my core to hold more of the jinsei with every breath. When the first day ended, I was wiped out, but also exhilarated. My core ached in a familiar way, telling me it was close to advancing to venerable. Only a tiny percent of Empyreals ever reached that level. It was one step below sage, and three steps from eternal.
The next several days were more of the same. Auralin watched us closely, always ready to leap into action if something happened. I assumed she was wary of the surge she’d warned us about. I hadn’t sensed any changes in the dragon lines in all the hours I’d pulled on them, which made me wonder how common they really were.
“How do you do that?” Rozzi asked me late Wednesday afternoon. “You pull more jinsei than I’ve ever seen before.”
“I work hard on advancement,” I explained. “And I get a lot of practice.”
That was a massive understatement. I’d lived an extraordinarily busy and dangerous life. Sometimes I wondered if any other Empyreal had ever gone through so much in such a short time.
“That’s the whole secret?” Rozzi asked.
“That, and I always give it my all,” I said, realizing just how patronizing that sounded. “I’m sorry, that didn’t come out the way I wanted.”
But Rozzi only laughed. “I know what you meant. I think.”
She furrowed her brow in concentration. Rozzi worked harder than ever after that, drawing as much jinsei as her core could handle, then a little more. It was nice to work alongside someone who tried as hard as I did, and it became a competition. Not who could cycle more jinsei, she had no hope of doing that, but who could work the hardest. We ended our class days exhausted and giddy from the effort of hard work done well.
And then, just before lunch on Saturday, Rozzi screamed and burst into flames.
My first thought was that she’d overextended herself and gotten a nasty case of channel burn. But the instant I laid eyes on my classmate, I knew that wasn’t right. Flame and earth aspects filled her aura so densely I could scarcely see through them. Auralin shouted a warning for us all to get back, but I ignored it.
My technique was the best chance of saving Rozzi, and I wasn’t about to stand by and watch her die.
“Hold still,” I said in what I hoped was a soothing voice. I activated the Thief’s Shield and stepped toward her, my serpents surrounding us both. “I’ve got you.”
“Jace!” Auralin shouted. “Get back before you set yourself on fire.”
“It’s okay,” I called out, careful to not raise my voice. I didn’t want to spook Rozzi any more than she already was.
And she was plenty scared. Rozzi had frozen in place, but her scream went on and on. Blisters bubbled up on the backs of her hands and across her forehead. Her cheeks and nose were an angry shade of red, and her lips were dried and cracked. Rozzi had escaped serious injury, but she needed the fire out.
Now.
The Thief’s Shield quickly drained the worst of the fire from her aura and bled jinsei from the connection my classmate had woven to the dragon line. To my surprise, it didn’t take all of the flame aspects before it shuddered and cracked around me. I had to take a break before the technique imploded.
“Hang tight, Rozzi,” I said. “You’re gonna be okay.”
The words hardly left my mouth before more aspects flooded into her aura. “Jace,” Rozzi gasped, “what’s happening?”
The ground rumbled beneath our feet, and the bindings that held the stalactites over our heads flashed red with the galloping rhythm of a heartbeat. Hissing clouds of steam vented into the air from the pools around the classroom’s perimeter.
The student next to Rozzi shouted in pain and surprise. He slapped at burning spots on his robes, then cried out as splinters of jagged stone bit into his palms. A split second later, my aura filled with earth and fire aspects. My Thief’s Shield cracked to pieces, overwhelmed by the sudden flood of aspects.
“Surge!” Auralin called out. “Cut your spells free of the dragon lines!”
My serpents lashed out to do just that, but their tips clanged and bounced away from the spell I’d woven into the dragon line. A glance at my connection to the deadly flood of aspects ripped a curse from my lips.
Earth aspects, pure and hard as diamonds, fueled by jinsei from the dragon lines, coated my spell. My serpents couldn’t breach it, no matter how hard they tried. I couldn’t even unravel the spell anymore; the power and aspects that now surrounded it gave the sorcery a life of its own.
Well, that was awesome.
Two more students yelped and frantically tried to defend themselves from the primal powers assaulting us. Auralin worked on a spell, but I didn’t think i
t would save us in time. The powerful surge had flooded every student’s aura with aspects that manifested thanks to the jinsei from their connection to the dragon lines. Connections that we couldn’t cut.
My core had protected my body so far, but that defense wouldn’t last forever. I had to figure something out, or we’d all be broiled alive. Judging by Rozzi’s screaming, that would happen much sooner for some than others.
Auralin frantically drove her spell into the dragon lines. Spikes of magic speared through the silver rays. Jinsei sprayed from the spell’s manifestations like steam from pressure release valves. While the professor’s spell prevented the surge from getting any worse, it didn’t help those of us already burning.
Panic tried to strangle my thoughts. The surge was like all my sorcery experiments gone horribly wrong at the same time. If my Thief’s Shield hadn’t been able to keep up with the deadly aspect flood, nothing else in my arsenal could. I was going to die in a classroom, and the Design would fall into Tycho’s clutches.
I took a deep, cleansing breath to calm my mind and push back against the pain from the burns crawling up my arms. My serpents had caused problems like this on a much smaller scale, because they’d pulled too many elemental aspects from the Design itself. If I released my control and summoned enough water to put out the fires, though, it would probably just drown everyone in the room.
But if sorcery could pull elemental aspects to me, maybe it could push aspects away.
Concentrating on the spell was difficult with all the screaming and burning going on around me. The other students were strong enough to resist mortal injuries so far, but their time was running out. I tried not to think about that, or the painful burns burrowing into the skin covering my shoulders and back. Despite all that, my serpents wove a sloppy funnel of sacred energy between me and the destination I had in mind.
The Vision of the Design opened in my thoughts the instant the last strand of my spell snapped into place. The new technique showed me the glittering pools of elemental power that threatened to spill over their crumbling banks. They looked like they could burst loose at any moment. I didn’t know what that meant, but it couldn’t be good.
And I was out of time to explore that mystery for the moment.
“Go,” I groaned.
The spell drained the aspects from my aura in the blink of an eye. Fire and stone poured away from me and vanished into the elemental pools, leaving me tired but safe.
At least for the moment.
It had done nothing for the other students, though. Auralin’s best efforts weren’t good enough.
A new idea, one almost as dangerous as the surge itself, jumped into my thoughts. It was the best shot we had.
I called to mind Professor Kalani’s instruction. I prepared a technique, and in the split second before it manifested, bound it to my fist with pure jinsei. Before I could doubt my plan, I leaped out of my ritual circle and into Rozzi’s. The second my feet touched the stone floor, I thrust my hand forward and struck my classmate in the solar plexus. The blow wasn’t hard, but the shock of the released technique knocked the air from her lungs and dropped her to her knees. Quick as lightning, I repeated the process, jumping from one ritual circle to the next, unleashing my bound technique into each of my classmates.
“What are you doing?” Auralin shouted as she drove another spell into the dragon line and unleashed a geyser of burning jinsei.
“Saving their lives!” I shouted back.
The technique I’d used was the Army of a Thousand Eyes. It had temporarily bound the cores of every one of my classmates to my own. Their cores were too powerful to hold for long, and already they were bucking against my control. I’d only have a few seconds to pull this off.
And that was all I needed.
I pulled on the connection between my core and my classmates’, draining aspects from their auras in a flood of fire and earth. There was no time to be delicate, and my sudden maneuver also ripped sacred energy out of them and filled the air with flashes of fire and a hail of earthen stones as the aspects manifested. The air temperature soared, threatening to cook us all.
And then the aspects I’d drained through the Army of a Thousand Eyes flooded through the spell I’d created in a cyclone of fire and earth. The temperature in the cavern dropped, and the other students collapsed to the stone with relieved moans. Auralin’s spells kept any more aspects of jinsei from flowing through the dragon lines, starving the geomantic connections between the Earth and the students.
When the last of the raging torrent of deadly energy had vanished through my spell, I severed the connection to the Grand Design.
A crash of thunder dropped me to my knees. A new technique, the Gate of the Design, tore through my mind with a deafening clang.
At that moment, though, I didn’t care that I’d picked up an awesome new power.
I was just glad to be alive.
The Trip
THE SURGE’S AFTERMATH wasn’t as terrible as I’d feared. My advanced core had prevented all but a few minor cuts and burns for myself. The other students’ cores, mostly disciples with a few bordering on the artist level, had likewise spared them any permanent harm. With only a few days of classes left before winter break, they’d have plenty of time to heal before their assignments resumed.
If it hadn’t been for my new trick, and Auralin’s magic giving me the room I needed to put it to use, things would have been far worse. I tried to imagine Tycho trying to explain that disaster to the other students’ parents.
The School of Swords and Serpents would like to offer our sincere condolences over the grisly tenderizing and barbecuing of your child.
I couldn’t stifle a chuckle at that, which earned me strange looks from my classmates and the professor. “Yes, well, class dismissed. Please enjoy your holiday vacation,” Auralin said through a forced smile. “And let’s keep this incident between us, shall we? I’d like some time to investigate this on my own without involving anyone else.”
We all nodded as we filed out of the cavernous classroom. I considered telling Professor Auralin I suspected surges would only get more violent and unpredictable, then decided against it. That information came from my Vision of the Design technique, which most people did not share and didn’t really understand. Plus, if I told Auralin the danger came from the sages’ monkey business, she’d either think I was a loon or report what I’d said to Tycho. Neither of those outcomes would help me.
Hahen stepped through the cavern’s stone wall as I exited the classroom, and I grinned as the Guardians he’d emerged between nearly jumped out of their skin. His whiskers twitched and his eyes narrowed in suspicion when he saw me. “People are talking about a power flare from down here. What did you do?”
“Hello there, Hahen, I am very glad to see you are doing well, too,” I said, and glanced toward the Guardians’ mirror-like masks. “Can you believe this guy? I was nearly burned and crushed to death, and he thinks I did something wrong. I also saved a bunch of lives, thank you very much. What everyone felt was a geomantic surge. No one can blame that on me.”
Not that it would stop them from trying.
“That’s unusual,” Hahen mused as we headed toward the dorms. Our Guardians had fallen back a bit, not to give us privacy, but because we’d stopped trying to ditch them. There were always more of them around, anyway. “Does Professor Auralin know what caused it?”
“She does not,” I said with a shrug. “But I think I do.”
As if to prove that they were eavesdropping on me, the Guardians hustled a bit to catch up.
“You guys can just walk beside us if you’re interested in what I have to say,” I offered. “No? Suit yourself. If you want to be rude, I’m not talking at all.”
And I didn’t until we entered my room. Then I flopped down at the table and put my feet up on it. “You’ll never guess what I know now.”
Hahen stood on the seat opposite me and leaned his elbows on the table. “Just tell m
e.”
I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. This was a big deal, and I wasn’t about to let the rat spirit ruin my big reveal. “No. Guess.”
“You know what caused the surge,” Hahen said. “What is it?”
“That’s one of two things I learned today,” I said. “The other one is more impressive. Anyone with half a brain knows the sages’ tinkering with the Grand Design caused the surge.”
Hahen scowled at me. “Now tell me what else you’ve learned. I’m far too old for this teasing.”
“Spoilsport,” I said, dropping my feet off the table and leaning in close to whisper, “I know how to make portals.”
This was not entirely true. I did, however, feel confident that the Gate of the Design technique was the missing piece to that puzzle. It probably wasn’t the same method used by the other people I’d seen bipping and bopping from one place to another, but that was because they didn’t know about the Design or understand how it worked.
I did.
Hahen looked supremely skeptical about my claim. “That is a difficult technique to master.”
It was my turn to give Hahen a disapproving frown. I rested my elbows on the table and rested my chin in my hand. “You remember that I’m a master, right?”
The rat spirit chuckled and hopped up on the table. He sat cross-legged and bonked me on the nose with his knuckles. “Your master-level core is impressive, Jace. But being a master is not the same as controlling one of the most difficult techniques known to mortalkind. Tell me what you think you know.”
“All right,” I said with a faint smirk, “but this is technical.”
“I think I can handle it,” Hahen said with a sincere smile. He lived for hashing this kind of stuff out with me. There were few things he enjoyed as much as exploring the limits of his theoretical jinsei knowledge.
“Okay,” I said. “The Grand Design is the big plan for everything in the known mortal universe. It holds the destinies of everything known to mortalkind.”