by Gage Lee
“I have techniques the rest of you can’t understand,” I said. “But if you work with me, I can amplify them. That shield won’t just stop the dragons’ fire, it will steal their breath.”
Grayson sneered at me. “Then use your amazing powers. Why do you need us?”
A stout old man dressed in the gray robes of the Thunder’s Children held up an open hand to stop Grayson’s speech. “The boy is right. If we wait here for much longer, they’ll have their way with us. The dragons are stronger than we are, their bodies are more powerful. If they wear us down, they can take the fight to claw versus blade. I don’t fancy our chances against them like that, even with Jace on our side.”
“You can’t possibly believe him,” Grayson said. “He is a camper. His mother was a lunatic. His father a traitor. We can’t—”
I stomped my foot on the ground and poured jinsei down into the dirt. The impact blew Tycho and the other sages off their feet and sent them tumbling around me like tiddlywinks. That trick wouldn’t have worked if they were prepared for it, but clearly, none of them took me seriously. My fusion blade appeared in my hand and I took one step to place it against Grayson’s throat before he could rise.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snapped, my eyes flicking to Reyes and then back. “Tycho turned my mother into a monster and enslaved my father. And I know the rest of you are on board with his sick plan. You traveled through a gate built on a dead girl. I’d take your head if it didn’t mean I’d die in this forsaken forest. The dragons are coming, and your shield is down. If you want to live, listen to me.”
The dragons made my point more eloquently than I ever could. Five of them dropped out of the sky like meteors and slammed into the tortured ground all around us. The creatures twisted their inhuman faces into grinning mockeries, and the gold fixed me with its one good eye. The weight of its rage and glee at the coming slaughter washed over me like a putrid wave.
“Our victory will be complete,” the gold roared. “All of the world’s sages gathered together in one basket, ripe for the plucking.”
The sages threw their shield up again, but it wasn’t as powerful as it had been the first time, and I didn’t plan to lend them any aid. This was the moment I’d been waiting for. The dragons had pushed the sages to their limits. It was like Kyoto, a moment when the only thing between the sages and death had been my fusion blade.
“Last chance,” I said. “Open your cores to me, or you all die.”
The current and former headmasters of the School of Swords and Serpents stared at me as death surged toward us. Both of them had treated me like garbage as long as they’d known me. Grayson had tried to have me killed. Tycho had enslaved me. But I’d overcome every obstacle and trap they’d put in my path. The sages had underestimated me from the beginning, and now they had to pay the price for their hubris.
“You’d let us all die?” Tycho asked.
“You better believe it,” I said.
The dragons’ claws made terrible screeching noises as they raked down the sphere, simultaneously clawing at it and grinding it into the mud.
“How will you get us out of here?” Grayson barked. “I don’t believe you have a plan.”
“I have a plan,” I said. “But it doesn’t have to include you.”
The sphere was almost entirely buried. The ground closed in over the top of it, so all we could see was the golden dragon’s claws as he shoved us further into the dirt and scratched deep furrows in the shield. Our glistening jinsei bubble wouldn’t last much longer.
Tycho’s eyes narrowed in a combination of hate and admiration. “You’ve learned well. I’m with you. What do you need me to do?”
I gave him a dark smile and said, “Let me inside your defenses. All of you. It’s the only way.”
“What are you doing?” Grayson snapped.
“Borrowing your cores,” I replied. “I have allies, and strengths you’ve never seen. But I need more power, and you’re going to give it to me.”
The sages glanced nervously from one to another, strain evident on their faces, and I was sure that given any other circumstances they would’ve denied my request. But they had few options left, and the longer they delayed, the more certain their fate became.
“Do it,” Tycho said, gazing deep into my eyes. He searched my aura for any signs of deception, but there was nothing there. I was far too good a liar, and I’d grown far too powerful, for him to spot my true scheme.
“The rest of you, too,” I said. “And if you try to fight me, we’re all dead.”
That last was another lie. I wasn’t even sure I needed Tycho’s core. But I wanted the leverage to go along with the jinsei.
“Fine,” Grayson said. “But if you betray us—”
“I’m not an idiot,” I said. “I want out of here as much as the rest of you. If we don’t stop these dragons, they’ll destroy us and then the world.”
“And what comes after?” Tycho asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess we’ll find out.”
Before anyone could change their mind, I activated the Borrowed Core technique using the skills I’d learned in Kalani’s course. It coalesced around the tips of my serpents in woven balls of jinsei waiting to be unleashed. My serpents reached out and touched the sages.
The spell unfolded in blossoming blades of power. For one moment, the sounds of the golden dragon clawing at the sphere and the grinding of the earth around our shield were washed away by the roar of the world’s most powerful mortals becoming one.
Strength rushed into me. I rode the wave of inconceivable power, surfed across buffeting floods of jinsei, then prepared the next step of the plan. I bound the sages to me using the Army of a Thousand Eyes.
My entire body trembled with the power I’d accessed. The sages groaned around me, unaccustomed to the sensation of another cultivator inside their cores. They’d manipulated everyone around them for so long that they’d forgotten what it felt like to be on the receiving end. I felt their minds recoil from mine, terrified by what they saw.
“What have I done?” Tycho said, his voice a tortured gasp. “What monster have I unleashed?”
I focused all of my attention on mastering the power at my disposal. It was like holding on to a live wire straight from a nuclear power plant. The strands of elemental power I’d woven into my body helped absorb some of it, and my sage’s core mastered the rest. After a few moments, I open my eyes and looked at the kneeling sages gathered around me.
“Hold on, kids,” I said. “It’s about to get crazy.”
The Spire
WITH THE OTHER SAGES bound to my core, it was time to really kick things into high gear. I reached out with my spirit sense and found the nexus at Ultima Thule’s heart. Its presence soothed me like the warmth of a bonfire. I reached out for it and stretched a spell between us. There was no time for subtlety or caution. I was up to my eyeballs in danger, and what mattered the most now was raw power.
The nexus had more than enough of that to spare, and it hit me like a tidal wave. I embraced the power with my aching core, feeling it push me far past my limits. Elemental aspects of fire, water, earth, life, and death poured into my aura along with the jinsei. I was filled to bursting, but still I drank from the wellspring of the dragon lines, letting the power rage through my body.
“What are you doing?” Grayson whispered, his voice hoarse.
The earth shuddered beneath us, but still I kept drawing power. The sages looked sick around me, their faces pale, their eyes sunken. Good. Let them fear me, let them understand who they’d wronged and the price they’d pay for the mad scheme that had endangered us all. Even Tycho, normally unshakable, looked like he’d seen a ghost.
“Saving your useless lives,” I groaned.
Nexignus surged into my mind at last, sounding breathless and a little dazed. “That was an exhilarating summons, manchild. What do you wish for me to do?”
“I need your body,” I s
aid, “now.”
“So forward,” Nexignus said, “but I promised you a boon. This is but a shell, but it is yours if you can control it.”
With a victorious shout, I channeled the Borrowed Core technique to the great elemental. I poured jinsei into it, pushing it beyond its limits, not just tying our cores together, but merging them, at least temporarily. And to the elemental’s massive power, I added the chained might of humanity’s six sages, and all the strength I could channel from the dragon line nexus. Nexignus and I became much more terrifying than the mere sum of our parts.
My perspective shifted violently. I was aware of my human form, of the frail Jace body wrapped in a bubble of power. But I was also Nexignus, an enormous elemental made of earth and fire and jinsei. And with my mighty hand, I grabbed the spherical shield the sages had woven around us, and pulled it out of the ground.
The force of the eruption hurled the golden dragon backward and scattered its allies behind a cloud of pulverized earth and stone. My hand was a hundred feet in the air when I halted our rise and dragged my mighty form from the ground.
“By the flame,” the sage from my clan moaned. “This is impossible.”
“This won’t stop them,” the Titans of Majestic Stone barked. “Look, they’re already gathering their strength.”
“I’m not done yet,” I growled.
The elements answered the call of my borrowed body, and I directed arcs of flame from Nexignus’s body out like blasts from a cannon. The attacks scorched scales and shattered horns, catching the dragons by surprise.
Too late, the creatures realized the fight had turned against them. They tried to take to the sky but I called down bursts of air to hammer them into the dirt. Beams of deathly elemental power ripped through their wings, shredding them and forcing them to stay on the ground where Nexignus could reach them.
Given time, the dragons would heal their wounds.
But I had no intention of giving them even a second’s respite.
I took all the power from the dragon line nexus and poured it through myself and Nexignus. The cost was terrible, it flayed my core and threatened to destroy my body, but I would not stop. My attacks hammered the dragons, snapping limbs and ripping chunks of scales from their flesh. The assault was relentless and brutal, but I didn’t want to kill them.
Not yet.
And while I hammered at the dragons, I wove a protective spell around the Borrowed Core technique, strengthening it and tightening its hold on the sages. They might be able to break it, but only if they had power equal to my own, and none of them did. My hold on the geomantic lines beneath us was too powerful.
That was a trick Nexignus had shown me.
“What have you done to us?” Tycho demanded.
“What you deserve,” I shot back.
The gold dragon had clawed its way out of the mud. It surged toward me, power dripping from its jaws. It had drawn from the other dragons, taking their energy for its own. United, they put everything they had into one final strike.
The enormous creature shot up, its claws outstretched toward the shielding sphere. Hatred burned in its one eye, and it lashed out at Nexignus’s body, clawing at the enormous chest, whipping its tail toward its face.
My free hand, Nexignus’s free hand, shot out and grabbed the gold by the neck. Elemental fingers tightened around the majestic creature’s throat, squeezing hard enough to pinch off the blast of golden breath it had been about to unleash.
“This ends here,” I roared, my voice amplified by the nearly infinite supply of sacred energy flowing through me. The sages screamed and clutched their heads, falling to the bottom of the sphere, blood running from their ears.
My serpents appeared from around Nexignus’s body. They scraped the clouds, then struck like scorpion stingers, piercing each of the dragons. The creatures cried out in pain, and I unleashed the Borrowed Core again.
The dragons cried out as I manacled their wills to my own. The gold screamed a torrent of curses at me, the draconic tongue burning runes into the air as it tried to free itself. The earth buckled beneath my feet as I marched toward the spire, dragging the wailing dragons behind me.
And still I pulled jinsei from the nexus, knowing what came next would be harder than anything I’d done before.
The Temple
THE TRUDGE TO THE SPIRE seemed endless. Despite the long strides of Nexignus’s borrowed body, it was a painstaking slog. The dragons kept digging in their heels and flapping their half-healed wings to escape. The other sages tried to tear themselves free of my techniques, forcing me to reinforce it every few seconds. If it hadn’t been for the constant flood of jinsei into my core from the nexus, I’d never have made it.
As it was, by the time I clambered up to the spire and had Nexignus lower the sphere to the ground, I felt like I’d been torn in ten different directions. I clenched my jaws against the pain and issued an order to Tycho and Grayson. “Drop the shield.”
I felt a combination of giddy elation and bone-deep weariness as the two men obeyed me without a word. I’d devoted so much of my time to this task, and now it was finally coming to an end.
The spire was a disappointment up close. It was tall, and thin, and the outside bore no ornamentation or windows. There was no door, only an open archway punched into its base. When I stepped into the tower, there was nothing waiting for me except for a staircase that wound its way up the interior of the hollow structure.
“Great,” I said, “more exercise.”
I climbed, because what choice did I have? I hadn’t come this far to turn back, and I wouldn’t be defeated by a bunch of temper tantrums from enormously powerful creatures who should’ve known better.
When I reached the top of the spire, it was almost worth it. From this vantage, I could see across the island, and beyond it to the sea and the shore of the School of Swords and Serpents’ island. More than that, though, I sensed the power this place represented. The spire marked a nexus of nexuses. The entire world of mortals converged on this one spot. This was what I’d tapped into, this was what I needed to finish the quest. Was I supposed to heal the tattered dragon lines and return Ultima Thule to the world?
That seemed like a worthy goal, but I didn’t know how to do that. And the Flame had told me to anchor the Design beyond space and time. Returning the island to the world wouldn’t accomplish that.
But I could build the Temple here, and maybe that would be enough.
I held the vision of the Temple of Maps in my mind. The memory surged into my vision, waiting to be given form. Elements rose from the island at my command, giving shape to the tower, expanding its interior and exterior to recreate the sacred site where my sister would live.
More than that, though, I wove the Temple into the Grand Design. I gave it a place at the utmost extent of reality, far from the heart of the Design, far from the mortal realms. I rebuilt the spell of Exile, and modified it, allowing me to heal the world.
And isolate the Temple from it forever.
“Don’t do this,” the golden dragon roared. “You don’t understand what it’s like. An eternity trapped, isolated from everything. It will drive you mad, boy. And even if you’re successful, do you think you can hold us as slaves forever?”
“Listen to him,” Tycho implored me from where I’d left him at the bottom of the tower, his voice boosted by jinsei. “If you banish us all to the outer reaches, what does that gain?”
I let the question hang in the air, unsure of its answer. Maybe that was the point. Fixing the Design wasn’t about what it would gain me. It was about restoring the world for all mortals, not just the powerful.
The Temple took form around me, stone by stone, moment by moment, one layer at a time. The world shook around me, not just physically, but the spirits of the dragons and sages quaked and the dragon lines trembled as I pushed them to their limits and beyond. My vision doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled. The Grand Design loomed large in my thoughts, infinite possibilitie
s stretching out around me.
When I’d reached the Umbral Forge, it had asked me to lay the foundations of this new world. I’d already given people freedom to choose their own destiny and prevented the seers from ever perverting the true intent of the Design again. Now it was time for me to make my mark on the world once more. One last rule to anchor the Design.
“Sacred energy is no longer finite,” I said. “It will grow as it is needed. Those who wish to better themselves will never be hampered by those who hoard jinsei for themselves. The power will flow, freely, to those who prove most deserving of its grace.”
A blazing bolt of jinsei streaked up through the center of the Temple of Maps, transfixing me, filling my core with burgeoning power.
The Empyrean Flame engulfed me, a faceted sphere lined with scrivenings so powerful, so complex, it dwarfed even the Grand Design. It was beyond anything I’d imagined possible, and my mind couldn’t comprehend a fraction of what I’d seen. But then, bit by bit, I saw the truth.
The scrivenings weren’t beyond the power of men. Given time and skill, mortals could’ve crafted this.
“Do not despair, Jace Warin,” the voice called. “Others sacrificed as you do now, to make the world a better place. For a time, it was. Much has changed, though, and the beginning of all things must be rewritten. You must close the loop that you have opened, but first you must give yourself the gifts you will need to survive so the Design may be renewed.”
I remembered my sister begging me not to forget her, and the Flame’s encouragement to go back to where it all began. Suddenly, I understood what had to be done.
I wasn’t the only one who’d made a sacrifice.
My thoughts coalesced on the precise section of the Grand Design that defined everything about me. The instant where my former fate had been sealed, and the world changed forever.
A snarl of conflicting lines surrounded that intersection where my mother’s and father’s fates entwined. More threads expanded from the instant of their meeting, wrapping round and round, a loose braid that moved through the Design, one end looping back to the beginning, before the other parted ways and spiraled off to float free above the Grand Design.