by Gage Lee
The Guardians fell into step behind me and followed me. Unfortunately for them, I was not feeling generous. I put on a burst of superhuman speed and took off down the hallway like a bolt from a crossbow. By the time I’d reached the first corner, the School had shifted around me three times.
My tails would certainly tell whoever had set them on me that I’d ducked away. That was fine by me. It might flush their boss out into the open.
Dusalia, true to her word, waited for me in the courtyard. She raised an eyebrow when I jetted in from a side passage.
“In a hurry?” she asked.
“Always,” I said. “Were you followed?”
The elder gave me a dismissive wave of her hand. “No. Were you?”
“Always,” I said. “The Guardians will find me before long. We need to wrap this up.”
“I hope you have proof,” Dusalia said, “and not simple accusations.”
Her waspish tone didn’t put me in a bad mood right off the bat. I crossed my arms and sighed. “Why do you have to do that?”
The elder cocked her head, like a dog looking at a small animal it had never seen before. “What are you talking about?”
I shook my head and dropped my arms. “Turn everything into a fight. I told you I had information. That’s what I brought. If you want forensic evidence or farcaster recordings, you should’ve said something before now.”
Dusalia jabbed a finger in my direction. The weight of her anger crashed into my chest, and my venerable core deflected it. If I’d been weaker, she could have knocked me over with her temper alone. As it was, the petty display just annoyed me. “You should know enough to bring proof. It isn’t my job to tell you every minor detail.”
I opened my arms and turned slowly around to face every corner of the courtyard. “You want to yell a little louder? If the Guardians hear you ranting at me, someone will investigate. Then we’ll both have some explaining to do.”
“Is that a threat?” the elder asked.
“Are you serious?” I asked her. “You’re one of the few people I can remotely trust. You need the information I want to give you, but you can’t stop accusing me of things I haven’t done. I’m not threatening you. I’m asking you to show a little common sense. Keep your voice down so we don’t attract the wrong kind of attention.”
Dusalia glanced past me, then lowered her head for a moment. She gestured for me to come closer.
“You’re right,” she said. “I’ve been at this game for too long, Jace. I see shadows in every corner, threats behind every smile. I apologize for suspecting wrongdoing on your part. But you have to see things from my perspective. You had this job once. And you’re acting like you want it again.”
It was easy to see where Dusalia was coming from. For her, elder was the top of the ladder, a position of authority and power that most dreamed of reaching. And I had enjoyed my time with the title, until other things got in the way.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want that anymore. I can’t afford the distraction from my work.”
Too late, I realized I’d tipped my hand. Up until that moment, she’d considered me little more than a rebellious, jumped-up, power-hungry clan member who had somehow landed himself in the middle of the sages’ schemes. Mentioning my work jeopardized that impression. I changed the subject before she could ask any questions, and hoped she’d forget what I’d said. “Are you interested in what I have to tell you, even if I don’t have concrete proof?
“Is it about... him?” Dusalia asked, glancing around the courtyard as if afraid Tycho would appear from behind a bush to confront her.
“It’s about all of them,” I said. “But yeah, he’s running the show.”
Dusalia clasped her hands together and pressed the knuckles of her index fingers against her top lip. She seemed torn with indecision, as if asking me to divulge anything else would plunge her headfirst through a mental barrier she’d constructed to separate good behavior from bad. Finally, her chin drooped, and she nodded.
“Tell me,” she said. “I have to know.”
It was my turn to pause. I didn’t know what game Dusalia was playing, or who was pulling her strings. If Tycho had something on her, this information might be the leverage she needed to get free. But if his grip was tighter than I thought, then divulging this to her would prove I wasn’t on the sage’s side.
If Dusalia sold me out, my life would get a lot more difficult.
It was a chance I had to take.
“He’s using his clan members to manipulate the Grand Design,” I said. “On a scale no one’s ever imagined possible.”
The elder eyed me warily. She paced back and forth a moment, paused and raised a hand, then shook her head and went back to pacing. Doubt aspects swirled through her aura in thick clouds.
“Do you have any idea how crazy that sounds?” she asked. “What could you possibly know about the Design?”
I fished around in my memories for a good lie to tell. There was no way I would own up to working for the Empyrean Flame. Only a handful of people knew anything about how the Gauntlet had ended, and I was not going to be the one to expand that circle.
“You know about the Eclipse Warrior stuff?” I asked. “Everybody does, so you must’ve heard something.”
Dusalia nodded without hesitation. “I know that some believe you are one of them,” she said. “And your eyes seem to bear that out. What does that have to do with the Grand Design?”
I patched together some half-truths, some legends, and a few outright fibs to make my case. “Tycho Reyes thought the Eclipse Warriors were the key to changing his destiny. I don’t know all the details, but he hoped to bend his fate using us. When that failed, he came up with a new plan. One that didn’t rely on children to do the heavy lifting. He’s got a whole mad scientist laboratory set up to make little monsters who can change the Design.”
Dusalia’s eyes went wide, and she pressed her fingertips to her mouth as if stifling a gasp. “I don’t know what to say,” she whispered. “What you’re telling me is madness. But it’s madness that no one of your age or experience should know. Tell me the truth. Any lie and we’re done forever. Did Tycho Reyes tell you this?”
“Yes,” I said.
Dusalia glared, her eyes burning against my aura as she weighed my honesty. Finally, she let out a sigh and gestured toward one of the benches on the far side of the courtyard. “Come sit with me,” she said. “I need to think.”
I followed the older woman to the bench and left a respectable distance between us as we sat. I didn’t think she was a threat to me, but I didn’t want to make it easy on her if she decided to turn assassin after my revelation. I watched her aura carefully for any signs of deceit or treachery. If she had any thought of turning traitor, this was the moment it would happen.
But there was no darkness in her aura. She was terrified and uncertain of what the future would hold, but she believed me, and she did not approve of what the sages were up to.
Dusalia was a long way from being in my pocket, but this was as close to an ally as I’d had in far too long.
“What am I supposed to do with this information?” she asked. “If the sages are really up to no good, who do I report it to? The other elders? The sages would destroy them. The dragons? The Scaled Council would incinerate me before I got the words out of my mouth. You put a powerful weapon in my hands, Jace, but I’m afraid that it’s pointed at my throat as much as at any of our enemies.”
“So it’s worth something to you, then?”
Dusalia laughed, then stifled the sound with the back of her hand. Her shoulders shook for a few seconds longer, and she looked at me with surprisingly happy eyes. “It’s worth my life. But I’m not sure if that has value anymore. You’ve outdone yourself this time, Jace. What is it you want?”
This was tricky. Dusalia was a smart woman, and she knew I wouldn’t hand over this bombshell of information to her without expecting something in return. That, in a lot of ways, was the p
roblem of Empyreal society. It was almost impossible to do anything good without everyone suspecting you had ulterior motives.
“Before Sanrin died,” I said, my voice low and choked with emotion at the memory of that horrible day, “we captured a significant amount of material from one of my mother’s hideouts. Do you know anything about that?”
Dusalia kept her mouth closed. She looked around the courtyard, nervous as a mouse in a room filled with cats, and clutched her knees as if afraid they were about to fly off her body.
“You’re talking about the false cores,” she whispered. “Yes, I’m aware. But you know as much or more about them as anyone, don’t you?”
“I do,” I admitted. “I’m the only person living who’s ever stitched one into another person, but that’s neither here nor there. What I need from you is the location of those cores.”
Dusalia raised an eyebrow at me. “You don’t know, do you?”
I hung my head and banged my knuckles on the stone bench on either side of me. “Can we stop with the twenty questions?” I asked. “Just tell me what you think I don’t know. I’m exhausted, and this will go a lot faster if we talk like people.”
Dusalia raked her fingers down the lines of bare scalp between her braids. “I sometimes forget what that’s like. I’ll be frank. I know where the false cores are. I even know how many are left. What I don’t know, though, is how to get them.”
I raised an eyebrow and turned to look at her. “What does that mean?”
“It means Elder Sanrin worried that his days were numbered when he went off to battle your mother at the Umbral Forge.”
“He didn’t make it that far,” I said dryly. “And that’s not why he came after her. But go on.”
Dusalia eyed me warily again, then shrugged. “I don’t know his reasons. But I do know the end result. He locked those cores away in a secure vault—”
“Great,” I said. “It should be safe then. All I need is a key—”
“—which he then filled with deadly guardians. No one’s been able to get in, and survived, since his death.”
The Shelfstrosity
THE GUARDIANS ARRIVED before Dusalia could give me the vault’s final location. “Check the paper,” she whispered to me, then brushed past the guards, berating them for interrupting a private meeting between an elder and her clan member.
I couldn’t see the Guardians’ faces through the mirrored visors, but I swear I felt them blush under her attack. Dusalia wasn’t the strongest elder I’d seen, but she could be the most vicious.
“What’s wrong, kids?” I asked as I headed off for another day in Tycho’s laboratory. “Elder got your tongue?”
They said nothing, of course, but fell in behind me. One day, I swore, I’d get one of them to talk.
I didn’t worry about Dusalia double-crossing me. The Machina weren’t doing her any good locked away in Sanrin’s vault. Giving me the location was both a favor to me and a potential windfall for her. If I defeated whatever guardians Sanrin had left behind, the Shadow Phoenix clan would reclaim treasures even if I made off with all the Machina. And if I couldn’t penetrate the defenses, well, I was one problem she wouldn’t have to worry about anymore. Selling me out gained her nothing, but working with me suddenly looked very profitable.
Of course, leaving the vault was a little riskier.
Which was why I didn’t rush off to storm the treasure trove immediately. I needed time to rest, and time to plan. I had no connection to Sanrin’s bank vault, so I had to scriven a talisman for it the old-fashioned way. That required a lot of calculations that I hoped were correct. Cross-referencing the longitude and latitude coordinates Dusalia had sent via the paper with what I saw in the Grand Design was difficult. Scrivening them into the talisman appropriately was even more challenging, and I’d spent many long nights cursing and sipping coffee while I figured it out. On top of the long days in Tycho’s laboratory keeping up appearances and making sure no one died, that work was fraught with potential errors.
When I finally finished scrivening the talisman that would whisk me off to Sanrin’s Secret Stash, I felt a sense of accomplishment.
That was immediately deflated by my mentor.
Hahen looked dubiously at my talisman. His whiskers twitched, and he rubbed his paws together nervously. “Are you sure this will take you where you need to be?”
“I’m kind of sure?” I said. “I used the scrivenings for these other locations as a baseline, and reverse-searched the calculations for their latitude and longitude coordinates. I used those components to create the transport grid, then translated it into scrivenings. It should work.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Hahen asked.
“I’ve got another talisman to bring me back home.” I showed him one of the spares I always kept hidden in my robes.
“Jace, what happens if you made a mistake?” Hahen asked. “What if the Gate dumps you into the middle of a mountain?”
I rapped my knuckles on the kitchen table we were sitting around. “Remember when I appeared where this was supposed to be? The technique just pushed the table out of the way, because we couldn’t occupy the same space at the same time.”
Hahen fidgeted nervously and sniffed at the table. “Do you think your technique will move a mountain for you?”
“You really know how to kill a mood,” I said. “But no, I don’t think that’s what will happen. I think I’ll get pushed to the edge of the mountain.”
“And if your height markings are wrong? How far will you fall?” Hahen asked.
I glanced at the rat spirit and wrinkled my nose. “Why would you put that kind of evil thought in my head?”
“I want to be sure you’ve been careful with your calculations.” Hahen folded his arms over his chest. “And now that I put the fear of death into your thoughts, I know you’ll double-check them once again.”
“That’s really not cool,” I said.
I spent the next week checking, rechecking, and triple-checking my work just to be on the safe side. When I finally had a day where Tycho’s flood of patients had slowed to a relative trickle, giving me a bit of extra rest, I decided it was time to put the talisman to the test.
“I’ll see you soon,” I told Hahen. “Don’t wait up.”
“You have no idea what the guardians are?” Hahen asked nervously.
“Not a clue.” I gave him a jaunty wink and tried to look a lot more confident than I felt. “But it’s all right. I’ve fought dragons. A couple of guardians should be a piece of cake.”
But I knew that wasn’t true. Sanrin had studied my mother. He knew how powerful she was, and he knew she had Machina at her disposal. Whatever defenses he’d put in place, they’d be designed to stop my mother.
Or anyone like her.
I sent a trickle of jinsei into the amulet before I got cold feet. The world shifted around me, replacing the dorm room walls with impenetrable blackness. My eyes ached with the effort of piercing the relentless dark. The faint sound of dripping water reached my ears, followed by the sighing of a gentle wind.
I raised my hand overhead and summoned a ball of silver jinsei. The sacred energy lantern ignited with a sputtering hiss, and its cold glow pushed back the impenetrable void. No wonder it was dark.
Sanrin had hidden his vault in a cave.
A big one.
The ceiling was far overhead, at the very limits of my lantern’s light. Stalactites dangled from its limestone ribs, water dripping from them with faint, echoing splashes into puddles that dotted the floor. The cavern was very still, save for a faint breeze brushing its fingertips across my cheeks. The only sign that any human had ever set foot here before me was a squat concrete building anchored to the stone floor by enormous iron beams. The concrete was pitted from water dripping down its face, and a tiny moat of still water surrounded the structure. The only entrance was a rust-scabbed slab of a steel door set into the side of the building facing me.
The structure was a litt
le more than a hundred feet on a side, but only ten feet tall. I felt the pulse of a dragon line nearby; I focused my senses and found a nexus at the exact center of the building. That explained how Sanrin had powered the place, and told me there was a vast amount of jinsei available to fuel whatever defenders he’d left behind. I tried to imagine exactly what I’d face in there, but came up empty. The elder was tricky, and he had more resources at his disposal than I could fathom. The only way I’d find out what I was up against was to poke my nose in and deal with whatever poked back.
I cracked my knuckles and approached the door. “Little pig, little pig, let me in.”
Complicated scrivenings held the door firmly closed. My spirit vision showed me twisting arcs and whorls, as well as the thick threads of power that attached the design to the dragon lines beneath the building. The barrier was beyond my ability to unravel, so I decided not to.
Instead, I concentrated all of my attention on the threads leading to the dragon lines and summoned my serpents. My blades descended on the threads that tied the scrivenings to the power, slicing through them all at the exact same instant. Silver sparks exploded from the scrivenings, and the door swung open on squealing hinges. But almost as quickly as the door opened, lines of jinsei hidden in the frame snapped out to snatch it closed.
My serpents caught the steel plate and held it open long enough for me to slip through. By the time I’d entered the room and turned back to look at the barrier, it was sealed once again.
The inside of the vault was just as dark as the cavern had been. If it weren’t for my jinsei lantern, I wouldn’t have been able to see at all. Even with the silver light, there wasn’t much to see. The low-ceilinged interior was lined with a confusing arrangement of metal shelving units all crammed with unlabeled boxes, vessels, and other containers. Odd protrusions jutted off the ends of each shelving unit. They reminded me of the mouths of crescent wrenches, but seemed to have no purpose.
What I needed was the Army of a Thousand Eyes. But stretching my senses out revealed no life at all.