Eternal Core (School of Swords and Serpents Book 6)

by Gage Lee

  “What have you done, mortal?” a rumbling voice asked once I’d penetrated the forest. Eyes the size of sports cars suddenly opened in the deep shadows, golden light pouring from their irises. The whispering of scales sliding over scales came from all around as if the forest itself were part of the dragons.

  “The Grand Design has failed,” I called, “and villains seek to control it. I come seeking your knowledge and insight, mighty dragons.”

  A gust of wind blasted across me, followed by a loud, barking laugh. Jinsei washed through my core, carried by the dragon’s breath. The golden light of its eyes dimmed for a moment, then returned brighter than before. When its attention fell on me, my knees buckled, and my sage-level core recoiled.

  “You should not have come here,” the golden-eyed dragon said.

  That was an understatement. I thought I knew power and was ready for any challenge that came my way, but the weight of the golden dragon’s attention had nearly knocked me off my feet. And there were four more of them.

  How would I survive if these creatures decided to take me out?

  “I humbly beg your aid,” I tried. “The Flame wouldn’t have sent me here if—”

  “The Empyrean Flame betrayed us,” the dragon roared, the power of its words knocking me backward, bouncing me off a tree as big around as a house. My body tumbled and crashed to the forest floor, leaves and twigs snagging in my robes. “Then it cast us down from our thrones. It turned over the keys to creation to weak, dishonorable, greedy humans. And now that its work is undone, just as we warned, you dare to come here, to our prison, and ask us to save your pathetic existence.”

  More eyes appeared from the forest, pairs of green, blue, red, and black all staring down on me with an unbearable weight. Their attention scrambled my thoughts. I couldn’t summon my fusion blade, much less a technique.

  “Our answer,” the Five Dragons intoned simultaneously, their voices shaking my heart, “is that we will not help you. We would rather this hideous experiment fail, and for the mortal realm to vanish entirely, than to raise one claw in your defense.”

  The words pounded against me. My core shivered and shuddered, a rabbit hiding in the grass while an eagle hunted overhead. These creatures were more powerful than I could comprehend. Their strength rivaled the Empyrean Flame’s.

  And yet I, a mere boy, had been sent here to defeat them.

  Maybe that’s what the Flame had meant by warning me that I’d need to reach eternal core before I completed the quest. Nothing else could survive.

  But I was here now, and if I didn’t want to die, I needed to do something, quickly.

  Because the dragons were closing around me, their auras shaking the leaves and ground. It was impossible to see their entire bodies, but flashes of colored scales I saw through the trees gave me the impression of moving walls. The dragons were the length of a football field, at least. Maybe even bigger.

  Their serpentine bodies swirled through the forest as they geared up for battle. I scrambled to my feet and summoned my fusion blade. It seemed as pathetic as a toothpick against these enormous creatures, but I didn’t care. It was what I had, and I wasn’t going to die without it in my hand.

  “I do not wish to fight you,” I shouted, using jinsei to boost my voice until it shook the sky like thunder, “but I will not lie down and die.”

  A blue dragon suddenly swooped through the trees, shattering limbs and casting them out of its path like a hurricane. “Good, I prefer when my meal fights.”

  The sapphire head arced down toward me, as massive as a locomotive, as fast as lightning. My Vision of the Design gave me a split-second warning, but the number of branching paths it revealed was a confusing mess: The dragon’s head smashed me into a pulp. I leaped into the air, somersaulting and coming down hard, driving the fusion blade into the creature’s eye. A blast of golden fire caught me by surprise and burned me away to nothing.

  This was a pivotal moment in the Design. There was no way for the incomplete pattern to know how it would play out. The fate of everything hung on the edge of my sword, and the only person who could decide how it played out was me.

  I ignored every vision I’d seen, dropped low, and rushed forward to pass beneath the dragon’s head and serpentine neck as it dove toward me. The dragon was big and fast, but it took time to change its heading. The sacred creature’s snout slammed into the ground where I’d been standing and tore a massive furrow through the earth. Titanic trees toppled behind me, and I darted and wove to stay in the shadow of the dragon’s body so I wouldn’t be crushed by a massive bole. The blue dragon was a long, snake-like creature, with short legs and streamlined wings tucked in tight against its back. Jewel-like clusters of crystals grew among its scales, throbbing with aspects and jinsei. Each of the spiky nodules was a little bigger than I was tall, and I lashed out at the nearest one with a sacred-energy-fueled stroke of my fusion blade.

  My weapon shattered crystals and unleashed a torrent of purified jinsei and a cloud of lightning aspects. Too late, I realized my mistake. The freed aspects absorbed jinsei and manifested as a sparking field of death all around me.

  I shouted in pain as bolts of lightning struck me, shredding the hem of my robes and leaving scorch marks across my skin and blackened soot where they slammed into the threads of stone woven into my muscles.

  But I wasn’t the only one hurt by my attack. The blue dragon slammed into the ground, jinsei and blood gushing from the shattered patch of crystals. It thrashed on the forest floor, screaming in anguished rage as it struggled back onto its feet.

  “It has wounded us!” all five dragons shrieked in unison. “It must die.”

  The forest became a blur of motion. The sound of shattering trees was a deafening cacophony. A blizzard of enormous green leaves tumbled to the ground. I jumped over heaving boulders, tumbled beneath falling trees, and bounced from one patch of uneven ground to another in a mad attempt to avoid annihilation as the dragons trampled through the forest in a frenzied search for me.

  The creatures were so big it was difficult for them to target me, which was the only reason I survived the first minutes of that encounter. Their bodies tangled around one another, coiling and uncoiling as they attempted to crush me beneath their weight. Their massive claws dug channels in the ground and swiped the air.

  Meanwhile, I gained elevation by jumping onto the stump of one tree, bouncing from that perch to a falling bough on another, then leaping high into the branches of a vast cedar a hundred feet above the ground.

  My lofty vantage let me look down on the dragons, who hadn’t realized I’d escaped their clutches. Their bodies wove around one another in a tightening circle, crushing everything in their path. If I’d still been down there, their tightening noose would’ve annihilated me.

  I studied their motions and watched for weaknesses or patterns I could exploit. The gold dragon was the clear leader. It was a beautiful creature, and the power that radiated from it filled me with reverent awe. I hated the idea of killing it. But I hated the idea of dying even more.

  As strong as my techniques had become, I didn’t think any of them would do much to the dragons. Their cores were far more powerful than mine, and their bodies radiated jinsei like coiling suns. If I wanted to harm them, it would have to be with cunning and strength.

  I charged my fusion blade with as much jinsei as I could channel.

  Then I threw myself from the tree, plummeting not at the golden dragon’s head, but at where the patterns it had established told me it would be. Though the dragons were powerful, experience had shown me they couldn’t change course on a dime. They’d handed me a chance to end the fight with one sure stroke.

  This was going to be fun.

  The Dragons

  THE DRAGON REALIZED its dilemma the instant before my strike landed. It could either leave its eye open and risk losing it, or it could close its eyes and be blinded for a split second.

  While blinking didn’t seem like the gravest
danger, a fighter as experienced as the golden dragon understood how quickly the battlefield changed. Losing sight of me for even a moment was a terrible risk. In that sliver of time between my leap from the tree and my impact with the dragon, I could change tactics or unleash a different technique. The dragon couldn’t afford to lose track of its opponent for even a moment.

  It took my attack full-on and didn’t flinch even when my fusion blade plunged into its pupil. I bore down on my weapon’s long handle. My goal was to drive the weapon straight into the golden dragon’s brain.

  Unfortunately, the dragon was far stronger than I’d expected. It whipped its head hard to the side the instant after impact. That sent me sliding toward the dragon’s tail, my weapon tearing a hideous wound through the creature’s eye before it slipped free.

  The maneuver had shaken me loose from my foe, and I tumbled through the air. My legs flipped over my head, and my arms went wide as I spun like an out-of-control top. Tycho’s floating trick would have been very handy just then.

  As I fell, I spotted a strange spire rising from a hilltop in the distance. It thrust toward the sky like a bony finger and radiated intense power. It also bore an uncanny resemblance to the Temple of Maps, where I’d met my sister. That had to be why the Empyrean Flame had sent me here. If I could reach that, maybe I wouldn’t have to kill the dragons.

  Or be killed by them.

  The golden dragon made a graceful loop through the air beneath me, then charged upward, jaws spread wide. Fangs like scimitars rushed to meet me, ready to shred my body on the way into the dragon’s gullet. Its breath, filled with jinsei and hot as the Umbral Forge’s belly, wafted around me.

  My serpents speared out around me like the ribs of a parasol. Their bladed tips dug into the ridges of the dragon’s snout, and I pulled my legs up before the creature could bite them off. Before the dragon could recover, I twisted around the fulcrum of my serpents and swept my sword across its nose. The sparking jinsei weapon ripped through the enormous serpent’s nostrils, slashing apart the cartilage in a burst of blood. Before I could celebrate, though, the dragons reminded me that there were five of them and only one of me.

  The red and green dragons exploded out of the forest’s canopy while the blue dragon sailed into the twilit sky, where its body seemed to vanish into the background.

  I jumped away from the golden dragon’s snout as the green dragon drew near, and my serpents twisted around me to form a protective shell. I flipped up and over the green’s horned head, slicing my blade down the center of its brow as I rotated, then landing nimbly on the back of its neck. As it streaked forward, I ran down the dragon’s spine, twirling my blade through figure eights that opened wounds down the length of the green’s body. The injuries wept jinsei freely, filling the air with sprays of silver light.

  The red dragon reversed direction through the sky above me with surprising agility. It was the smallest of the dragons, and the fastest. It raced past me to the tip of the green dragon’s tail, then whipped around and rushed straight toward me. The crimson monster opened its jaws to unleash a blast of fire to burn me off its ally’s back.

  But I was not about to fall for that trick. I summoned the Thief’s Shield and hurled myself straight at the red’s open gullet.

  Caught off guard by my audacious maneuver, the red dragon shifted its aim slightly lower to roast me alive as I speared through the air toward its face. The crimson gout of churning flame exploded around me, but the Thief’s Shield stripped away the aspects just before they reached me.

  The red dragon’s breath weapon was an enormous cone, though, and there were plenty of other aspects that came nowhere near my shield. Those rocketed past me, and the billowing flame crashed over the green dragon’s body in a crackling tide. Emerald scales blackened and the viridian crystals growing from the dragon’s body shattered.

  Both soaring reptiles roared, one in anger, one in pain. The green dragon spiraled out of the sky to crash into the trees in a desperate bid to crush out the flames chewing into its scales. The red whipped its head to one side and rushed past me, its enormous claws slashing as it raced by.

  There was no way my serpents or fusion blade could stop an attack from those enormous talons. Instead, I thrust my supernatural limbs toward the razor-sharp claws as I fell and pushed myself up and over the sweeping attack. My boots landed on the dragon’s rippling side, and I raced toward its head.

  The red had seen the damage my blade could cause, though, and it rolled beneath my feet in a desperate attempt to shake me off.

  I ran in the opposite direction of the dragon’s rotation like I was stuck on the world’s most dangerous treadmill. My serpents found purchase where the dragon’s protective scales overlapped, and I reached a spot at the base of my foe’s skull where its spiny mane gave me something to hang onto.

  “We don’t have to do this!” I shouted. “I came here looking for help, not a battle!”

  The dragon jolted as if surprised and threw its sinuous body into a steep dive that had me clinging to its back for dear life. “Why should we aid you, pathetic insect? Your kind turned our descendants against us. You robbed us of our rightful place as rulers of the mortal realms. We will feast on your core.”

  “I didn’t do any of that!” I shouted over the wind racing past me. The red dragon had plummeted into the forest canopy, shattering tree limbs and shearing the tops off the towering redwoods. I dodged jagged logs that flew past the dragon’s snout, and my serpents deflected smaller shards of wood before they impaled me. “The mortal world is in danger of falling under the heel of tyrants. Help me stop them!”

  “When we have finished with you, we will deal with them,” the red said.

  And with that, it raced toward a tree limb and ducked its head just beneath the mighty bough. The limb was thicker than I was tall. If it hit me, I’d be scraped off the dragon’s back like a tick plucked from a dog’s scruff. At this speed, I’d probably end up with broken bones to boot.

  With a frustrated shout, I vaulted off the dragon’s skull and passed over the limb. My serpents snared a branch above me, and I twisted around it like a gymnast on parallel bars. That maneuver brought me within reach of a tree trunk. I kicked off that, twisted through the air, and landed on another branch a dozen yards away.

  For the moment, no dragons were close enough to kill me, but that wouldn’t stay true for long. The mighty serpents had once again twisted their bodies into a noose of muscle, fangs, and scales. Though they moved with synchronized grace, the black burns on the green dragon’s body told me they were far from perfect. But that weakness wouldn’t be enough to hand me victory. I was outnumbered and overmatched. My blade and serpents weren’t strong enough to hack these creatures down, and I didn’t have other techniques that would level the playing field.

  The spire was clearly visible, a bony finger thrust toward the sapphire sky. It was at least a mile away, maybe more if I’d misjudged its scale. The dragons were fast, but they weren’t as nimble as I was. If I escaped the churning cyclone they’d formed with their bodies, I could run for the tower. The island was rich with jinsei, and I cycled at phenomenal speeds. Pushing my body to its limits, risking channel burn, I could reach the tower in less than a minute. Could I dodge the dragons for that long?

  There was only one way to find out.

  I ran along the limb, my eyes focused on the spinning wall of draconic bodies ahead of me. Red scales rasped over blue, white over green, and gold had somehow woven itself through all of them. The barrier they formed was a hundred feet tall, but it shifted up and down as they constricted and bulldozed the forest.

  A storm of shattered trees, broken boulders, and churned earth swirled just inside the ring of dragons, adding another layer of danger. My core-hardened body could stand up to a lot of punishment, but a tornado of debris would push even me past my limits. I couldn’t afford to be hurt, either, because I had no idea what I’d have to do once I reached the spire.

  “Surrend
er,” the gold dragon roared, putting a massive blast of jinsei behind its words. “You cannot defeat us in our realm, human. Your struggles only prolong your agony.”

  The mighty command forced me to hesitate, but it couldn’t make me obey. As powerful as the dragons were, I was a sage. That still meant something, even against the most terrifying foes I’d ever faced.

  The tree I’d perched on was taller than the dragons’ barrier, but the limbs grew sparser above mine. Another few yards, and I’d stick out from the tree like a sore thumb. The dragons would have no trouble spotting me at that height, and they’d move in for the kill. Fighting the Five Dragons two hundred feet above the ground seemed like an excellent way to die.

  It also looked like my only choice.

  “Here goes nothing,” I whispered to myself. I refilled my core with a few quick, cycling breaths, then exploded into motion.

  My serpents dug into the tree and let me run straight up its trunk. The blades bit the bark with every step I took, pushing and pulling me toward the redwood’s pinnacle.

  The dragons roared as they spotted me, and closed their circle. Redwoods, sheared off just above ground level, flew into the air, where the wind from the dragons’ spinning barrier twirled them like titanic batons. The tempest tore a million verdant leaves from the trees, choking the air and making it difficult for me to see more than a few feet into the constricting storm. I used the blazing dragon cores as a guidepost, then flung myself out of the treetop.

  “You cannot escape,” the gold dragon roared, fixing me with its one good eye. “You have fought valiantly, little man, but your kind has never stood a chance against the Empyrean Flame’s true children.”

  The jinsei-fueled leap carried me toward my goal, but gravity eagerly yanked me toward the ground. Another tree loomed out of the whirling leaves to my right, and I snapped my serpents toward it. The blades caught the wood and flung me toward a treetop near the wall of wind. It was a coin toss whether I’d reach my target before it was wiped out by the dragons, but it was my best chance to clear their bodies.