by Gage Lee
Furious at my surprise attack, Eric came at me like a burning tornado. He whipped spinning kicks at my head, followed them up with burning knife-hand strikes, and let fly with a barrage of fiery darts. He was lost in a berserk rage. The spell had pushed him over the edge, and there was no coming back. Eric didn’t see me, his old friend Jace, just an enemy that needed to die.
My shield absorbed the worst of his onslaught, transforming fiery kicks into flame aspects in my aura and jinsei in my core. The spell replaced Eric’s sacred energy as quickly as he spent it, though, so his strength never flagged. In a few seconds, he’d shattered my shield and hammered my serpents out of his way.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said, stalling for time. “There’s something inside you, Eric. A spell. Let me help you shake it off.”
My words had the same effect on Eric as a red flag did on an enraged bull. He abandoned all strategy and technique to charge straight at me.
Our collision shook the ground. My heels dug up furrows as Eric shoved me backward, and my serpents tore giant chunks from the Far Horizon to keep me upright. A shock wave blasted away from us, sending dust and pieces of the ground flying into the air.
It also hurt. My ribs ached, and my core groaned in protest at the tremendous impact it absorbed. There was a moment where I couldn’t think, much less fight.
Eric took advantage of my shock to pummel me about the head and neck. His blows landed with the speed and power of a jackhammer. My serpents parried as many of the shots as they could, but Eric’s training gave him the edge, and he knocked my head back again and again.
Kalani’s lessons sprung into my mind, and jinsei flowed through me in a spiral of power.
I had one last trick up my sleeve. If it didn’t work, I was dead.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped between punches.
One of my serpents darted forward and tapped Eric’s shoulder. The Army of a Thousand Eyes snapped into place, locking my core to my friend’s. His natural strength and the power of the spell would throw it off in a handful of minutes. It had to be enough.
Stunned by my surprise attack, Eric staggered away. His eyes met mine, confused and wary, and his fists came up into a defensive stance. “Coward,” he spat. “You can’t beat me with tricks.”
I poured jinsei through our connection, filling his core to its limits in the blink of an eye. The sudden shift within him hit Eric like a truck, and his defenses fell. I laughed at the stupefied look on his face.
“You can’t hope to defeat me,” I snarled. “I’ll always be stronger.”
Eric went on the offensive again. He pushed the jinsei I’d given him into his channels, delivering one brutal swing after another.
This time, though, I was ready for him. I dodged and ducked his attacks, tapping his arms and legs to drain the sacred energy I’d given him using my renewed Thief’s Shield. I stayed in close, forcing him to rely on physical attacks rather than his techniques.
Power flowed through us in a completed circuit. I fed his core, then stole the jinsei out of his attacks. The world became a blur of fists and feet, each attack more powerful than the last. Thunder rolled across the black plain with every thrown punch, and the ground cracked with every sweeping kick.
Eric’s skill made him an even match for my raw power, and the two of us laid waste to a square mile of the Far Horizon as our battle raged back and forth. He landed a looping haymaker to my chin, and my serpents responded by slapping his legs out from under him. I missed a stomp, and my foot opened a quarter-mile-long fissure.
Guardians gathered at a safe distance around us, their mirrored face shields reflecting strokes of jinsei lightning and arcs of flame. Those trained warriors flinched as the circle of power that bound Eric and me together fed on our strength, waxing greater as we cycled jinsei.
It wasn’t enough. I needed more.
Two of my serpents abandoned their attacks to work on a spell, giving Eric an opening to press his advantage. He came in hard, open palm strikes leaving burning handprints on my chest, arcing kicks shoving my serpents aside. A backfist knocked my head to one side, sending blood spraying from my mouth.
The sight of my blood made Eric hesitate. I saw the look in his eyes. He knew something was wrong.
I couldn’t let him stop his assault. Our only way out of this was to fight with everything we had. “That’s all you’ve got?” I taunted him. “No wonder you didn’t want to face real fighters in the Federation.”
A wordless howl of anguish ripped free from Eric. We slammed into each other again, a whirlwind of strikes and parries that filled the plain with a storm of violence.
My completed spell illuminated dragon lines across the Far Horizon. I drew jinsei through the sorcery, reveling in the rush of power that healed my wounds and strengthened my body. More sacred energy roiled in my core, and I pushed it into Eric through the Army of a Thousand Eyes.
Our fight became a synchronized battle of wills. We’d become two bodies with one soul, and we pushed each other to our limits. Lightning leaped into the sky from every parry, earthquakes shook the Far Horizon and left us standing on jagged pillars of rock as the Guardians scrambled for cover.
A vortex of screaming wind surrounded us. Jinsei surged through the dragon lines, and the nexus beneath my feet shot blinding rays of power up around us.
I cycled all of it, risked everything, for one last chance to save my friend from the twisted fate the sages had crafted for him.
Eric saw his opening at the same moment I did. We both threw everything we had into simultaneous punches. The sacred energy circulated through us in a burning whirlwind that filled and emptied our cores again and again in the span of a single heartbeat.
Our fists landed at the same moment.
It was like being hit by a thunderbolt.
The world went black.
The Advancement
I WAS DYING.
There was no other explanation for the endless spiral of pain that tore through my body. I opened my mouth to unleash a raw-throated howl of agony, but some jerk had replaced all the air in my lungs with kerosene and tossed a match down my throat. My scorched heart refused to pump any of the magma in my veins.
But those aches and pains were nothing compared to the inferno spreading from my core.
It had transformed from the source of all my strength into a swollen ball of molten lead intent on killing me. It seemed to grow with every passing second, smashing and scalding my organs as it warped me into a sacrificial altar dedicated to its awesome strength.
Hahen had warned me this could happen if I advanced before my body was ready for it. Not that I didn’t believe my mentor, but I’d never expected his dire prediction to come true so soon.
Then again, I hadn’t planned on cycling half the jinsei in the Far Horizon through my core during a life-or-death battle against my ensorcelled friend.
Speaking of which, where was Eric?
I opened one eye and realized I wasn’t blind. I was, however, curled up at the bottom of a black crater, the rim of which was a halo of fitful fire that reeked of sulphur. A few curious Guardians had gathered up there, but none of them had screwed up the courage to come down and see what had happened.
“Never a dull moment with you,” Eric groaned.
I rolled over, leaned up on one elbow, and tried to pretend I wasn’t dying. Given the stabbing pain in my broken leg, a ringing in my ears that spoke of a concussion if not an outright skull fracture, and the rippling ache that ran up and down my spine, that was quite an accomplishment.
“Truce?” I asked, desperately hoping my little stunt had broken the sages’ hold over Eric’s mind.
“Yeah, yeah,” Eric said. “I’m ready for round two, but I’ll accommodate your nap time.”
Eric lay on his back against the side of the crater. He looked stiff, like he was afraid to move.
“You okay?” I asked.
“No,” he responded. “Better than you, though.”
“So you did,” Eric said. “I hardly noticed, what with you trying to kill me and all.”
A chuckle tried to escape my battered body and nearly ended me. My breath was a tangle of fishhooks caught in my throat. A corkscrew of agony wormed its way through my rib cage and straight through my spine.
“That sounds like it hurts,” Eric said. “You need some ibuprofen, you big baby?”
“You have no idea,” I groaned.
My core had swollen to nearly three times its normal size. The sacred energy bottled up inside it churned and sizzled like boiling oil poured over freezing water. If it kept growing, I’d be dead in a few minutes.
And it showed no signs of slowing.
“What’s the problem?” Eric asked.
I gasped. “I advanced too quickly.”
“Show off.” Eric chuckled and winced.
“Tell your people to get back from the crater,” I said, gasping for air after every word. “Things are about to get messy.”
“You heard him,” Eric shouted up to the Guardians on the crater’s rim. “Get out of here.”
“But sir,” one of the masked warriors protested, “you’re down there with an enemy. We can’t leave you.”
“Go!” Eric bellowed, then spat up a little blood on his chin. “Don’t make me say it again.”
While the soldiers reluctantly left their leader behind, I worked on a spell I hoped would save my life. It was a variant of what the professor had done in geomancy class. She’d had a lot more experience, though, and wasn’t working the magic on her own body.
My concentration wavered as jolts of pain burst from my core. Every time I thought the spell was done, another painful spasm came along and threatened to unravel my work. Before I’d finished the spell, my core felt like it was squeezing its way up my throat.
I didn’t think I could hurt any more than I did at that moment.
My spell’s activation proved me wrong.
Spikes of jinsei burst from my wrists, throat, elbows, knees, and ankles. A final, larger spike wormed its way up from my core. Every one of them hurt as badly as a nail driven into the affected body part, and my channels screamed at the torture I’d inflicted on them.
Pain was all right. It told me I was still alive, that I still had a chance.
“What are you doing?” Eric asked. He tried to crawl toward me, but his injuries were too severe.
“Surviving,” I groaned.
I made a mental fist and imagined it squeezing my core like a ripe orange. My core, now so powerful it threatened to take on a life of its own, ignored my demands at first. But as strong as it had become, I wasn’t about to let it kill me.
The golden orb bent to my will after a painful struggle. Jinsei oozed out of it and into my channels, where it burned like acid. When the sacred energy hit those spikes, it left my body and relieved the pressure growing inside me. Sparks of jinsei leaped free of the spell I’d created, dancing in the air like silver lightning bugs.
The pain receded, and my control over the power inside me strengthened. I forced the jinsei out of my core and into the spikes, which pulled it out of me like oil rigs pumping crude.
Geysers of power exploded from the spell and screamed into the Far Horizon’s featureless black sky. The streaks of argent power blinded me as they grew stronger and brighter with every passing second.
The pain in my core dialed back, far too slowly for my taste, until I could breathe again. Satisfied I was no longer in immediate danger of dying, I banished the spell and flopped back against the crater’s floor.
“You certainly know how to make an impression,” Eric said. “They probably saw that all the way back at the School of Swords and Serpents.”
Eric’s voice sounded tinny and distant, like a bad farcaster replay. I forced myself to sit up and inspect him and saw a strange, hazy aura surrounding him. That was weird. A glance at his thread of fate showed me that the end connected to the Grand Design had faded, and the separate piece had withered away to nothing.
My plan had worked. Eric was once again free to choose his own destiny. I’d fixed the damage the sages had caused, but couldn’t shake a sense of dread. My intuition told me there was something else coming.
Something worse.
“How are you holding up?” I asked as I took stock of my own wounds. Eric had busted my leg below the knee, and my right arm had a very unnatural bend between my elbow and my wrist. Some of my organs were out of whack, and my spine felt like someone had stuffed broken glass between the vertebrae. My channels weren’t burned black, but they were scorched, and they’d take time to heal.
Despite the damage I’d sustained during the fight and my subsequent advancement, my core had saved my life. It dulled the pain from my physical injuries and sped up my healing. As grisly as the aftermath of the battle was, it wouldn’t be long before I was back in fighting form.
“I’ll live,” Eric said, the sentence ending with a warbling whine. “Really wish you hadn’t busted my arm.”
“I think you got off light,” I said, gritting my teeth as I used strands of jinsei to straighten and bandage my broken leg. “Listen, you need to know.”
Eric’s outline had become a blurry smear of light. I had a very dark suspicion my friend didn’t have much longer to talk with me.
“What ancient secret have you been hiding from me?” Eric asked. He tore a strip from his robe’s hem and used it to form a makeshift sling for his wounded arm.
“The sages messed with your fate,” I said. “The spell they wrapped around your core pushed you to join the Guardians. I don’t think that’s what you wanted.”
Eric frowned and looked off into the distance. “I remember they wanted me to be a performer, not a fighter. When I refused...”
Memories shuffled through my mind in erratic bursts. Eric and me laughing over a lavish dinner. The two of us sparring. Me watching him in his first professional fight.
A headache tightened around my skull like a band of iron. Images flip-flopped in my mind’s eye. Eric winning a fight. Eric losing to the same fighter. Eric going to Las Vegas for a training camp with the Battle Federation. No, that wasn’t right, he’d gone to the Guardian Academy.
More visions riffled through my mind like cards in a magician’s deck. There was too much to take in, and none of it made any sense. And then...
Eric and I squared off in a courtyard at the School of Swords and Serpents.
“I tried to stop you,” I said.
“And we fought.” Eric looked away, eyes downcast. “That wasn’t me, Jace. I mean, it was, but that’s not what I wanted. You were like my brother. They got in my head.”
My jaw tightened in anger at the way Tycho and his co-conspirators had warped my friends and me to secure power for themselves. They’d torn us apart and endangered countless lives because they were afraid to lose their positions of authority.
More than ever, I wanted to take them all down.
“It wasn’t either of us. The sages scrambled everything up,” I said. “The good news is, now we both know the truth. The bad news is, we’re running out of time. What is it you really want, Eric?”
While I’d freed his fate, that didn’t get us out of the woods. The sages had put a lot of work into this plan, and until I’d cleared up the problem with Abi and Clem, their machinations would keep pushing Eric and me away from our chosen destinies. Until Eric had his vision of the future firmly in mind, he was in danger of slipping back under the sage’s control.
“That’s never changed,” he said, standing up. “I want to be the best fighter the Federation has ever seen. I want Tru back. I want—”
Eric had limped across the crater toward me, his outline growing fuzzier with every step. A strange hissing noise distorted his voice.
“I see it,” he murmured. “The lights,
the crowds. It’s not too late.”
Eric kneeled down next to me and threw his arms around my shoulders. “Now it’s your turn to listen to me,” he said. “I can’t hold on much longer, but the future isn’t what you think it is. You’re not looking for a place. Search for a punishment.”
The weight of Eric’s arms lessened. He was more blur than not, and those last words were faint as the sound of windblown leaves across glass.
“Wait,” I pleaded. “What does that mean?”
I couldn’t make any sense of what my friend said.
“That’s all I can see,” Eric said. “We’ll meet on the other—”
There was no crash of thunder or bolt of lightning from the sky. My friend was gone, with nothing to mark his passing but a memory of a future I’d yet to live. Eric would become the Battle Federation champion. He’d chosen his fate, and the Vision of the Design opened to show me he’d succeed.
That was a relief, though I selfishly wished he was still around to help me out. After all we’d been through, I couldn’t believe he was gone.
For now, anyway. Eric wasn’t dead, he was just where he belonged, connected to a version of the Grand Design that wouldn’t come to pass if the sages had their way. I’d see my friend after I finished the Flame’s quest.
“Okay,” I told myself, “you can do that right after you finish stitching yourself back together.”
My venerable core had done a lot of work while Eric and I talked. The damage to my organs was almost repaired, but the rest of my body was a mess. I bandaged my wounds with sacred energy and thought through the next steps.
I had to fix Abi and Clem. Reaching them would be a snap, thanks to the Gate of the Design, but what came next worried me.
I didn’t want to fight my friends. They weren’t as strong as Eric, and there was a very good chance a duel would end in death. Either theirs because I didn’t know my strength, or mine because I didn’t defend myself fiercely enough.
And there was absolutely no way I could use the same trick I’d used with Eric to disrupt a spell around either of their cores. That risked pushing me to a fatal advancement. It was ironic that the hardest part of advancing was no longer improving my core but slowing it down so my body could keep up.