by Gage Lee
The businessman’s face changed, bit by bit. And his blade strengthened and solidified. Its tip hissed and cracked with power, and he clutched it in both hands like a man who’d found some long-lost family heirloom.
“They said you were a monster,” Rafael said.
“I am.” I pulled my sleeve up, revealing the bands of elemental power woven into my flesh. “But Tycho is a much worse beast. And if you don’t rescue your sister, he’ll kill her.”
“And you’ll kill me,” he said.
“No,” I admitted. “I’ll let you live knowing that you could have saved her but chose not to. Five minutes, Raf. Don’t be late.”
I burned another talisman to leave his office, praying he’d listen to me. I wasn’t sure that Rachel’s death would matter once I anchored the Grand Design. Maybe the Flame could bring her back like it had Tycho.
But maybe not. And whether she could be brought back or not, Rachel would suffer before she died. I couldn’t pass up a chance to save her from that pain.
My Gate of the Design technique dropped me into a cozy study, its walls lined from floor to ceiling with wooden bookshelves crammed full of leather-bound tomes. Flames crackled in a fireplace to my right, and the woman seated at the heavy desk facing away from it looked up without surprise. Her cool eyes took me in, and she lowered her fountain pen onto the blotter in front of her. “You got my message.”
“You could’ve been a little clearer,” I said. “But yeah, I got the gist. The dragons are mad. They’re chasing me down. We have to finish this.”
“We?” she asked. “I warned you of enemies on the move, but don’t be confused. I am not your comrade-in-arms.”
“Yes, you are,” I said. “Unless you want your entire clan wiped off the face of the earth, there’s something I need you to do.”
Dusalia’s eyes twinkled with merriment. “You’re more powerful than I imagined possible, but you’re still in no position to give me orders or threaten me.”
“I’m not threatening you,” I said. “But the Guardians saw us together. They’ll know we had a meeting. They’ll tell Tycho we had a meeting, and then he’ll come after you when I start my shenanigans.”
“You can’t be serious,” Dusalia said.
I weighed Dusalia’s allegiance to me against the leash her mysterious boss had around her neck and couldn’t see which way the scales tipped. It was a coin toss whether telling her my plans would end up with her ratting me out or helping me.
“Cards on the table time,” I said. “I’m about to go wreck Tycho’s plans to rule the Grand Design in the biggest, messiest way possible. He’ll want revenge. When he can’t find me, he’ll go after people I care about.”
“While I appreciate your concern for my well-being—” Dusalia started, but I cut her off.
“It’s not about you,” I corrected the elder. “It’s about the clan members you inherited when I turned over the reins. Tycho will hurt them to hurt me. It’s how he operates.”
Dusalia looked away from me, her eyes fixed on the fire. She chewed on the inside of one cheek, a surprisingly uncertain gesture for a woman who always seemed in complete control of her emotions. “I have obligations. Those take highest priority.”
“Stop hedging your bets,” I snapped. “Who owns you?”
The elder recoiled from the question as if I’d slapped her. Her eyes remained on the fire even as a thin tear trickled down her sunken cheek. “Not everyone wanted me to take over the Shadow Phoenixes from you. The confirmation was arduous. I needed allies, but asking for help from the other clans would have shown weakness. My only option was to go outside of Empyreal society.”
“Of course,” I sighed. “You sold out to the Scaled Council.”
Dusalia nodded. “It didn’t start out that way. They asked for a favor here, another there. But it all changed at the beginning of this school year. Their requests became demands. They wanted you watched, at all times.”
That’s why the Guardians were all over me. Dusalia had arranged for them to follow me around as a favor to the dragons. But if that was true, they’d acted against me before Niddhogg knew what I was up to. The Scaled Council’s seers must have seen my entanglement with the Five Dragons, and that freaked them right out.
On the one hand, that worried me. It meant the dragons were more prepared for what was coming than I’d thought. They already knew where Ultima Thule was, and could have a team ready to ambush me if I got anywhere near it.
On the other hand, though, if the seers had predicted I’d free the Five Dragons to return to the world of mortals, that meant I could still pull this off. I’d just have to be very careful and move fast.
But I needed Dusalia on my side, first.
“It’s time for you to make a choice,” I said to the elder. “Either you work with me and save the clan, or you let your allegiance to the dragons doom you and the rest of the Shadow Phoenixes. I can promise you safety, at least in the short term, if you side with me. But you have to choose now. I’m out of time for playing games.”
“How can you promise me that?” Dusalia asked. “I will need assurances. Tell me your plan, and then I will decide.”
“No,” I sighed. “If I tell you anything, you could run off to the dragons and tell them what I’m up to.”
Dusalia finally turned back to face me, her hands clenched on the arms of her chair. She looked much older than she had when I’d entered her study, as if the weight of all the decisions leading to this point had finally landed on her shoulders. It was hard to stay mad at someone who looked so beaten and pathetic. She’d made mistakes, sure, but this was her chance to fix a lot of them.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m with you. I only ever wanted to keep the clan safe, Jace. I know it looks a mess, but it was my intent to save the clan from you and the others. The dragons offered me a way out, and I took it. If I’d known what they’d expect...”
I pulled the sack off my belt as her words trailed off. My serpents plucked the talismans I needed out of the bag and dropped them onto Dusalia’s desk. “There are enough talismans here for all of the Shadow Phoenix clan members, plus you. As soon as I leave, gather your people and give a talisman to each of them. Activating them will take you somewhere safe.”
“I can’t reach all of the clan members,” Dusalia said. “Christina is on assignment in Malaysia.”
With a curse, I grabbed one of the talismans off the desk and tucked it into a pocket in my robes. The timing was already tight, but one side trip wouldn’t hurt anything.
I hoped.
“I’ll get this to her,” I said. “I’ll round up the rest of my friends and meet you in the safe place as soon as possible.”
Dusalia looked away again, her lips trembling. “You may not have time,” she said, her voice thin and pained. “I triggered a warning to the dragons when you arrived in my study. They have a temporary truce with Tycho until you’re dealt with. If he doesn’t already know you’re on the move, he soon will.”
The urge to lash out at Dusalia built inside me. It would take no more effort than snapping my fingers to end the elder. Traitors deserved little else.
But I knew all too well what it felt like to be threatened on all sides, where any ally seemed like a better option than facing your enemies alone. I hung my head for a moment, gathered my thoughts, then looked her in the eye.
“Thank you for being honest,” I said. “When all this is over, remember that you did the right thing when it was hardest. I certainly will. Now, go. You have work to do.”
With that, I gave my clan elder a respectful bow and prepared to face Tycho for what I hoped would be the last time.
The Machine
ANOTHER TALISMAN BURST between my fingers, and I vanished from Dusalia’s studio and arrived in Tycho’s laboratory with my fusion blade drawn. My appearance triggered an alarm, and sirens blared from every corner of the room.
I ignored them and the flashing red lights that accompanied their wails.<
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They didn’t matter. The only important thing was to destroy as much of Tycho’s demented project as I could before he arrived. I’d planned to do this after everyone was safe, but Dusalia’s alert to the dragons had forced me to make adjustments on the fly. If I didn’t wipe out Tycho’s pet project before he unleashed it, the Grand Design might be anchored before I could finish the quest. That would ruin everything and leave the world enslaved to Tycho.
“That is not happening,” I snarled.
My blade and serpents lashed out at the machinery around me. The heavy glass tubes shattered and spilled bubbling fluid onto the floor. The wires and bits of floating metal and glass tangled together and drooped toward their bases like dead vines. Jinsei erupted from the floundering machinery, and my senses picked up eerie squeals and howls as the stunted spiritual essences that Tycho had created faded.
I hung my head in shame at their pain, not because I’d caused it, but because they were the ultimate end of my mother’s work. This machine that she had created was the source of all of this suffering. I glared down at it, my eyes burning with rage. With an anguished cry, I brought my weapon down on the central machine.
My blade smashed through the casing that surrounded the machine, revealing its interior. All that remained inside the heavy shell was a cube of orichalcum, a yard on each side. Intricate scrivenings, glowing with fearsome amounts of jinsei, covered the precious metal. The patterns they formed were so dense it was impossible to tell where they began or ended, and only slivers of the red-gold metal showed between the blazing silver arcs and lines.
A wave of dreadful familiarity washed over me at the sight of the structure. My head throbbed and visions of the past erupted from the deepest recesses of my memory. A nightmare slice of the past that I’d long forgotten forced its way back to the surface, showing me another beginning.
A man’s shadow fell over the machine, which rested upon a pedestal. He placed his hands on either side of the cube, each fingertip placed carefully within scrivened rings. Every muscle in his body stiffened at the instant his last finger reached its place. Currents of jinsei flowed from his core into the cube, and a guttural moan tore loose from his throat.
Six pieces on the top of the box shifted, rotated counterclockwise, then stood up on their edges. More complex scrivenings lined the interiors of the exposed metal flaps. Jinsei burst from the centers of those triangular panels and collided in midair. Beams of sacred energy coalesced into a sphere, first the size of a pinhead, then a marble, an apple, a grapefruit, a bowling ball.
And with every millimeter that ball of light grew, the man’s shadow was diminished. His hands withered to a skeleton’s claws, skin stretched over them like old, cracked leather. A terrible cry burst from his lips, somewhere between the anguished squeal of a rusty hinge and the primal bellow of a dying beast. The man came apart even as his death cry continued. His shadow separated into thousands of dry flakes, faint sparks of jinsei fading away as they drifted toward the ceiling, then vanished entirely. With a loud crack, a golden shell appeared around the jinsei.
That’s his core, I thought.
A blade emerged from the box’s dark interior, like a guillotine in slow-motion reverse. The instrument sliced up into the core and rose until it had bisected the sacred spirit. The core halves didn’t fall, though. They remained attached to the core, as if straining to reunite. The hideous blade and the split core descended into the orichalcum cage. The box’s flaps closed with a horrible screeching sound, and the silver light faded from the scrivenings. Its terrible work done, the box went dark.
When the vision faded, the alarms and sirens had died. The laboratory’s sole door had opened, and Sage Reyes stood at the threshold.
“And now you know,” Tycho said as he entered the room. “After all this time, all this struggle, you’ve uncovered the pain I’ve kept from you since the beginning.”
My fusion blade crackled with jinsei. The heavy weight of the darkness in my eyes grew until they felt like a pair of black holes in my skull, eager to consume, to destroy. I turned to face the sage, a threat bubbling over my lips. “You shouldn’t have come here, Reyes.”
Tycho floated a few inches off the floor, his robes glistening with strands of jinsei woven through its fabric. His aura hummed with defensive aspects held in place by spikes of sacred energy that emerged from his channels. A crown of black fire encircled his bald head, not quite touching his skin. He radiated power and a deathly calm.
I realized this was the first time I’d seen the sage prepared to fight.
It was a terrifying sight.
But the hesitation in his eyes told me Reyes didn’t want this battle. Though he had much more experience than me, our cores were equal. Truth be told, my core seemed more vibrant than his, as if my transition to his level had, in some way, stolen some primal vitality from him.
“Yes, you see it,” Tycho said through a bitter smile. “Power is not infinite, Jace. Weaker artists pull their power from the world around them. They require so little the diminishment of all others is hardly noticed. At our level, though, the drain on others is more noticeable. Most of our kind prepare themselves for the transition from venerable to sage. They siphon a tiny bit of power from each of their clan members, who willingly make the sacrifice to strengthen their clan. The amount of power required is significant, which is why there are only ever Five Sacred sages. But you, thoughtless and dangerous as ever, didn’t know any of that. In your zeal to advance, you stole from the other sages.”
“I’m sure that hurt your feelings,” I said. “Look, as much as I’d like to stay and chat with you, I’ve got work to do. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just wreck—”
Tycho burst into action. He rocketed toward me on a wave of jinsei that shoveled the wreckage I’d created across the floor and into the walls. His fusion blades, a pair of jitte, appeared in his hands, but he didn’t attack. Instead, he circled me until the jinsei that supported him formed a moat around my feet. The sacred energy sizzled as a blanket of fire aspects poured out of Tycho’s aura and onto its surface.
“Nice trick,” I said, activating my Thief’s Shield. “But my aura’s bigger than yours.”
Before Tycho could manifest the flame aspects and burn me alive, I drained them away with my technique and lashed out at him with my serpents. Their bladed tips drove him back on the defensive, and not even the blurring speed of his jitte moving to intercept the attacks saved him from a beating. A serpent opened a shallow cut above his right eye, another tore through the robes shielding his left arm, and a third ripped through the end of his slippers to slice off a sliver of his big toe.
Those weren’t serious wounds, but the look in Tycho’s eyes made it clear he hadn’t suffered their like in a very, very long time. A mixture of dread and rage aspects billowed through his aura before he purged them.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Reyes barked as he glided back, blood dripping from his wounded foot. “If you destroy this machine, you wipe away your mother’s greatest achievement. No matter how powerful you become, Jace, she created you. Don’t throw away the legacy of a woman who changed the world so much, in so little time.”
My laugh was dark and bitter as a cup of burnt coffee. I focused every ounce of my attention on Tycho, and my lips curled higher when he flinched.
“My mother was insane,” I said, each word enunciated slowly and carefully. It hurt to admit the truth, but a wound can’t heal until the infection is cleansed. “You and your scheme destroyed her. That machine isn’t her legacy, Reyes. I am.”
Playtime was over. My core blasted streams of sacred energy into my channels, giving me strength and speed I’d never imagined possible. A rooster tail of dust and debris shot into the air behind me and rattled against the wall like a hailstorm as I leaped across the room at Tycho. My serpents slammed into the wall to my right hard enough to shake the ceiling and send me somersaulting to the left. I spun like a corkscrew, my fusion blade sweeping
through the air around me in a crackling blur.
My weapon smashed into Tycho’s jitte, knocking his defenses aside. I dragged the serpents across the ceiling to arrest my spin, and chunks of stone rained down from the slashes they created. Fist-sized pieces of rubble hit my skin and bounced away, deflected by the threads of stone woven into my body and my core-hardened skin. Momentum carried me through the storm of boulders, my arm extended before me, my fusion blade arrow straight.
The tip of my blade touched Tycho’s chest exactly where I’d executed him two years before. I expected a moment of exultation, but felt only the cold, ugly satisfaction of finishing a nasty job. Tycho’s death wasn’t an achievement, it was simply undoing a wrong I’d committed by bringing him back.
A ringing impact jarred my blade out of line a hairsbreadth before it reached his heart. One of the sage’s jitte had flown through the air and caught my weapon in its forked crotch, then violently twisted it to the side. Instead of killing Tycho, the sparking jinsei blade ripped through his ribs and erupted from the left side of his body.
Reyes had saved himself, but not without cost. Blood rained from the shredded side of his robes to form a crimson pool beneath his floating feet.
Tycho shouted a curse, right hand pressed to the ugly wound in his chest, and forked the fingers of his left hand at my face to unleash a brutal attack technique. Twin beams of sacred energy laced with deadly venom aspects speared toward my eyes. In unison, his jitte screamed toward me, wielded by Tycho’s own serpents. The combination of attacks left me little room to maneuver, and no time at all to block.
My serpents were quick, but at the speeds Reyes and I moved, even they weren’t quick enough to keep up. They moved with painful sluggishness in a desperate attempt to intercept the jitte, and the Vision of the Design appeared in my head far too slowly to be of any use. One path ended with a jitte stuck in my side, the other with nasty scorch marks across my face. No surprise there.
But Tycho didn’t know about the ways I’d changed since we’d last faced off.