by Gage Lee
Bolts of crackling jinsei reached out for me when my body entered the storm’s leading edge. The power arced across me in sparking jolts, but slid harmlessly off my Thief’s Shield. If the lightning had been a direct attack, it would have pushed my defenses to their limits. Thankfully, it wasn’t. There was just so much jinsei in the air the lightning aspects had manifested. Where had that much energy come from? The dragons were powerful, but they weren’t that powerful.
A tree shot past my left side, and a branch the size of a telephone pole swung over my head with scant inches to spare. Smaller projectiles pinged off me, causing no harm other than irritation. The wind knocked me slightly off my path, and the tree I’d targeted passed just to my right.
“Nope.” I grunted with effort and lashed out with my serpents. They hooked around the tree’s trunk, using my momentum to twist me at an upward angle. At the end of their arc, all six of the mechanical appendages pushed against the tree and I shot into the air with the speed of a ballista bolt.
Right into the storm.
Straight at the dragons.
Entering the wall of wind was like stepping into the path of a hurricane with an umbrella for protection. My serpents formed a shield around me to prevent flying logs from crushing me, but they couldn’t defend me from the fist-sized stones caught up in the tornado, or the smaller branches that smashed into me.
Something crashed against my legs, upending my flight and sending me into an uncontrolled tumble. The top half of a redwood hit my serpents like a baseball bat, and I soared higher into the air, utterly out of control. The deafening crackle of leaves battered my ears as the green storm blinded me. I had no idea if I was facing up or down, or how close I was to the dragons or the ground. My body twisted and turned at the mercy of the wind, and I could only hope that my momentum would carry me through the storm and over the ring of dragons.
I desperately tried to orient myself as I burst through the storm wall. My serpents spread wide, trying to offer some control, but their thin lengths sliced through the air with a keening whistle and no resistance. The sky flashed overhead, then I was looking down at a blur of prismatic colors, then up at the sky again.
My body soared over the dragons, then began to fall out of the sky at terrifying speed toward the very hard ground waiting to smash me into a thin red paste. Something screamed, long and loud. I thought it might be me, at first, but realized the sound was coming from too far away. Was it the dragons?
Maybe, but it was definitely not the black dragon. That one had looped away from the others to come after me. The creature’s lean body whipped past my right side, then corkscrewed around, jaws spread wide, limbs churning as if climbing an invisible ladder. It crossed my vision in flashes as I spun, moving farther away for a handful of heartbeats.
The next time I saw it, though, the beast was much, much closer. A black beam of light speared from its open jaws and slammed into me. The impact shoved me toward the ground, but it also stopped my spinning. I couldn’t see the dragon, though its breath still burned my skin and the weight of its aura pressed against me like an anvil on my spine.
My serpents speared toward the ground. They couldn’t stop my fall, but maybe they could cushion it enough to spare me a horrible, splattery death. I pushed jinsei into them, strengthening their mechanical forms as much as possible.
The dragon closed in on me. The ground surged up to meet my face. It was a close race between two very grisly deaths.
Sorry, Maps, I thought. I tried.
Something hit me with the force of a meteor. Crushing pain encircled my ribs and drove the air from my lungs in an explosive bark. My spine snapped like a whip as my vertical fall became a horizontal flight, inches above the ground.
The black dragon had me. One set of talons had snatched my body the instant before I hit the ground. It carried me through the wreckage of the forest, bouncing me off every stump and boulder it could find. My skull caromed off a jagged chunk of wood, and stars danced through my thoughts. A burning pain gnawed its way into my torso, and I realized the dragon’s breath was still chewing at my flesh. My legs crashed into something big and immovable, sending spikes of pain shooting up through my channels.
“Feel the pain and humiliation of your defeat, human,” the dragon crowed, slamming me through a stand of saplings that had bent but not broken before the storm. They lashed my face like a dozen whips, opening cuts across my face. “Know that your error in coming to this place has freed us to exact our revenge on the traitors of Shambala. When we finish with them, your people will be broken and devoured. We are merciful, though. You will not live to see the devastation you have unleashed.”
Every sentence out of the dragon’s mouth ended with him ramming me into an obstacle. My head swam and blood ran from my ears and nostrils. One of my legs was broken, and there was something wrong with my other knee. My Thief’s Shield couldn’t extract enough aspects or jinsei from the dragon to slow it. I was a dead man if I didn’t escape its claws.
My serpents dug at the scaled prison around my torso. They tried to lever even one talon free, but the creature’s claws were too powerful. The blades couldn’t penetrate the scales, and even digging at the creases where they overlapped got no reaction.
All the while the dragon bashed me into any big object it could find. My face was a mask of blood, and I’d retreated to the quiet, empty space of meditation to focus my thoughts. A solution bubbled up from the depths of my subconscious. If I couldn’t get the dragon’s claws off me, maybe I could get myself out of its claws another way.
“Your end approaches,” the black dragon howled, its voice so loud it vibrated inside me. “Behold your finale.”
I forced one eye open through the sticky blood coating its lids. The dragon had lined me up with a boulder the size of a house. There was no way I’d survive that impact.
With a desperate cry, I slammed my serpents into the ground. The powerful blades dug into the earth and held fast. A terrible wrenching sensation twisted my aura as the dragon’s flight stretched the bonds to my serpents. But this was no mere physical feat, and separating a sacred artist from his serpents was a task of phenomenal difficulty. My spine stretched, my body feeling like the strain would tear it in half.
“What trick is this?” the dragon howled as it tried to rip me free of the ground to correct its course.
My upper body had slipped partially free of its grasp, but it tightened its grip around my waist before I could escape. Terrible, crushing pain exploded from my hips.
“Let. Me. Go!” I shouted and summoned my fusion blade. The crystalline weapon appeared with a ferocious shriek. I brought it around in a powerful, sweeping strike. I drove power out of my core and into my spine and arms, bending all my strength to this single strike.
The dragon screamed.
Blood burst like a geyser from its truncated wrist, and the enormous creature soared toward the sky, a bellow of pain trailing behind it. The severed fist, still wrapped around my waist, bounced across the ground. The dead talons slid through the churned earth and came to a surprisingly gentle stop against the enormous rock the black dragon had intended for my gravestone.
Every part of me ached. Even at my level, healing all these wounds would take time I didn’t have. If I didn’t get back on my feet in the next minute or two, the dragons would tear me limb from limb.
“I am not getting eaten,” I promised, and used the rock to drag myself into a sitting position. It was blessedly cool against my scorched skin, and I realized most of my clothes were gone. The dragon’s breath had eaten them away and done a number on my skin. I meditated and focused all my attention on cataloging my injuries.
Left eye gone.
Right leg broken.
Left knee completely separated, the leg held together only by the sleeve of meat around the tattered bones and tendons.
Most of my ribs were snapped like kindling.
My arms were okay, which was nice, but both my hips were dislo
cated.
But as damaged as my body was, there were parts of it that were unscathed. The ribbons of stone and fire I’d used to strengthen myself against the devouring heat of my core showed no signs of wear and tear. Not even the black dragon’s corrosive breath had harmed them.
“We can rebuild him,” I groaned, remembering a line from the opening of some show I’d watched as a kid.
It had seemed hokey then, but it was true. The body was a mere vessel for the core. If it failed, it could be replaced.
I meditated, dropping deeper and deeper. But instead of focusing on the Grand Design, I bent all my concentration to the portion of the pattern that defined my body. My mind expanded, revealing the truth: we were all just a segment of the Grand Design, wrapped in aspects, manifested by jinsei.
The human body was no more than a complicated scrivening that I couldn’t hope to entirely understand. But I could see the damage I’d suffered as gaps in the scripts that held me together. My blades sprang to life, scrivening to repair those broken paths while my Thief’s Shield snared aspects from all around me. Stone for strength, the seawater mist in the air for resilience, the roots of the trees beneath me for life.
My legs bristled with bark, and twiggy little limbs thrust out of my skin like a porcupine’s bristles. Green braids of plants dangled from the wounds I’d patched up. A deep, trembling chill filled my head as water aspects coalesced there, replacing my eye with a scrivened facsimile made of water and jinsei. With more time, I could have created something better, something more like the real me. But time was a luxury I didn’t have.
I’d used all the time aspects I had to save my friends, I thought with a near-hysterical laugh.
Pull it together, Jace. You can have a nervous breakdown when you kill the Five Dragons. And fix Maps. And deal with Tycho and the sages. And build the Temple.
That earned me another raucous laugh. My grip on sanity was becoming weaker by the moment, so I turned my thoughts to the simple physical tasks under my control.
I tested my body by standing up and was pleased it supported me. I felt different, but stronger. The dragons would find me harder to chew this time around.
They soared overhead, circling me like the biggest, scariest vultures. The five of them were descending, even the wounded black dragon with its bleeding stump.
They were spoiling for a fight.
Too bad for them, I had other plans.
I ran.
The spire was closer now, and the jinsei I’d forced into my legs gave me the strength and speed to reach it before the dragons reached me. Dirt and fallen leaves kicked up behind me, and the wind rushed past my ears. If I could reach the tower, maybe there’d be something there to help me. Some tool or weapon to turn the tide of this ridiculously lopsided body.
But even if the spire was empty, it didn’t matter. I was alive, at least for the moment, and I had a goal. Everything else was just noise. I’d keep moving, and trust that I’d figure it out. With every crashing step, I pulled more aspects into my body, shoring up my limbs, armoring my torso, and preparing myself for whatever the bad guys could throw at me next.
The scream I’d heard earlier tore through the air again. I’d thought it came from the dragons, but, no, it was ahead of me. A split second later, I saw the source.
A young girl lay on the grass, her back arched, her mouth open to unleash a twisted cry of agony. I recognized her instantly, and the sight hurt worse than any wound the dragons had inflicted.
Samara.
I faltered, unsure of what to do. She was dying. A glance told me the damage to her channels was too grave for her to survive. Someone had pushed her past the edge. But why was she here?
The answer was more horrifying than I’d imagined.
Samara’s voice took shape in the air above her. It sliced through the fabric of reality like a knife made of fire and revealed a dark space beyond.
“Hello, Jace,” Grayson Bishop said as he floated through the opening. “What a mess you’ve made.”
The Sages
GRAYSON LOOKED LIKE he’d been through the wringer. His beard was a gray, stringy mass that dangled from his pudgy chin in lank strands. More than a few pounds had settled around his middle since we’d last crossed paths. Those once proud shoulders were stooped, and the sage seemed shorter, even smaller, despite the weight he’d gained. The power within him still glowed like a beacon, though, and I knew better than to let my guard down despite his appearance.
“I made a mess?” I shouted. “I’m cleaning up the disaster you created!”
The dragons had halted their descent to assess the situation, though they continued to circle us. Behind Grayson, more sages emerged from the portal opened by Samara. The girl’s scream died away when the last of them came through. She curled into a ball, her hands twisted into claws beneath her chin, her knees nearly touching her forehead. She was so thin it was hard to reconcile her appearance with my memories.
Tycho, the last of the sages through the hideous gate he’d wrought from his clan members’ spirit, didn’t even look down as he stepped over Samara’s corpse. She’d given everything to him, and he couldn’t even acknowledge her sacrifice.
“You’re dead, Reyes,” I snarled.
“Don’t be so dramatic, Jace,” he spat. “We have bigger problems than our personal disagreements. The six of us must band together to defeat the dragons. We have the advantage in numbers—we must put it to use.”
As if called to battle by Tycho’s words, the dragons shrieked and plummeted from the sky with their wings tucked back along their lean bodies. They fell in a deadly formation, like enormous arrows fired from the bows of gargantuan archers.
“When this is over,” I said to Tycho, “you and I will settle our differences once and for all.”
Tycho gave me the subtle bow of one equal to another, then raised his hands overhead. The jitte he’d summoned in our battle reappeared, fusion blades cracking with power. “Shield!”
The other sages clustered around him, faces toward the sky, hands raised with their palms toward the dragons. A swell of jinsei burst from the gathering, surrounding them, and me, in a dome of sacred energy.
The dragons unleashed a combined blast of deadly breath toward us a moment later. They’d converged on us to bring all five of their different attacks to bear at the exact same moment. Fire from the red, a blast of seething lightning from the blue, corrosive black energy from the black, a strange, faintly sweet-smelling gas from the green, and pure golden light from the gold. It was impossible to look away from that attack, and for a moment, I was sure it was the last thing I’d ever see.
“Brace!” Tycho shouted as the breath weapons hammered the shield.
The crystalline jinsei dome buckled, a divot appearing in its spherical surface. Tycho and the others pushed back against the assault, groaning with the effort and flooding the shield with more jinsei.
I shifted my vision into the spirit world to see how the elders’ powers interacted. Tycho and Grayson had woven the spell that created the shield. The other three, none of whom I recognized, poured their sacred energy into the other two men through conduits of hastily cast sorcery. It was a crude method, but it would work, and I could contribute to the defense.
I wove a spell of my own that tapped into the funnel created by the other three sages. I cycled my breath and pushed all the jinsei I could into Tycho and Grayson.
Both men gasped with surprise as the flood of power slammed into them. They hadn’t expected me to help them, and for a moment I thought I’d made a terrible mistake. But the sages were experienced combatants, and they held tight to the defensive shield.
“We can’t stay on the defensive forever,” I said as the dragons flapped their wings and once again took to the sky. “If we don’t press the attack, the dragons will wear us down.”
Grayson glanced over his shoulder at me and shook his head. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, boy,” he said. “Our cores are t
he match of the dragons, and we have you to help tip the balance. They can stay outside the shield forever, for all I care. We can sustain ourselves with sacred energy.”
“You call that winning?” I asked. “The dragons keep us prisoner in here, too afraid to leave our shield, while they’re free to roam outside. What do you think they’ll do when they realize you won’t come out of your shell to face them?”
One of the sages, an elderly woman clad in a black robe that told me she was one of the Shadow Phoenixes, spoke up. “Jace is right, Grayson,” she said, her voice leathery and frail. Unlike the other sages, she had not aged well, and I wondered where they’d found her. There was no time to ask, though, because Grayson immediately made his thoughts on the subject known to the rest of us.
“I will not be told what to do by a boy,” he declared. “We stand firm until the dragons exhaust themselves. When they’re too weak to continue the fight, then we go on the offensive.”
I cut off the flow of power between my core and the rest of the sages. This was ridiculous. “They’re stronger than you are, Grayson. If you stay in here until they’re exhausted, you’ll be exhausted, too. We have the advantage in numbers. We have to attack. It’s the only way out of this.”
“We stay on the defensive—” he began, and I unleashed an Eclipse Warrior’s enraged shout.
“How did that work for you in Kyoto?” I snarled. “The rest of you can do as you like. Cower behind your shield. But I have a plan, and if you work with me, I think we can defeat them.”
The truth was that my plan was barely half-baked. But it did give us an opportunity, and it would give me an edge in what came after the battle with the dragons. I just had to convince the others to go along with it.
“What is your plan?” Tycho asked.
The dragons had gone high into the air to prepare for another attack. They circled overhead, but it wouldn’t be long before they descended again.