Reaper (Cradle Book 10) Read online

  Instead of ghouls rising through the floor, this time strands of Forged madra—like Mercy’s Strings of Shadow technique—shot from each wall and webbed up the entire room.

  In the first instant, they were all on their guard. Each of them dodged or blocked strands shooting out from the walls, and they ended up separated by webs of hunger madra.

  For a breath or two afterwards, they all waited for the next part of the trap.

  Finally, Eithan cleared his throat. “I guess this one is free.”

  The borrowed authority of Subject One pulled Lindon toward the door on the left wall, so he sealed the hand back in its metal case before unleashing a Hollow Domain with a wisp of soulfire.

  The blue-white sphere filled the room, wiping out all the hunger madra. Each strand resisted a little, holding a small amount of will behind it, but the entire room was clear in a moment.

  “Ten scales if somebody can tell me what the point to that technique was,” Yerin said.

  “I don’t think that was a conscious attack,” Lindon responded. It was just a gut feeling, but he thought he was probably right.

  Orthos grunted. “It feels like something stirring in its sleep. I don’t like it.”

  Little Blue shuddered as she made a tinkling sound in agreement, snuggling closer to Lindon’s neck.

  “I suspect these are indeed instinctive defensive reactions,” Eithan said. “Like scratching at an itch while you sleep. But attacks of this level would never trouble someone like the Sword Sage, even taking the suppression field into account.”

  Ziel pushed himself up from the ground, rolling up a tiny scroll. He had copied some of the runes himself. “It’s definitely going to get stronger. Let’s get deeper while we’re still fresh.”

  “Thank you!” Mercy cried. “Whatever we do, we need to move.”

  Lindon nodded and led the way to the tunnel the hand had indicated.

  Until the tunnel vanished.

  He sensed something, and it felt similar to the substance he pushed through to create a portal. Like he was feeling the fabric of space itself.

  Now there was only a blank stretch of wall where a tunnel had been a moment before.

  Everyone except Lindon and Eithan put their guard up at the sudden shift, including Little Blue. Lindon looked around for the entrances; if they had all vanished, they were going to need to find a way to break through this stone before they died here.

  There were still two entrances left. The hall they’d come from had vanished, just like the one they had been headed into. Now there was one entrance against the right wall, and one in the ceiling.

  The ceiling tunnel was marked with the image of a coiled, serpentine dragon, and the entrance in the right wall bore another symbol of the Arelius Patriarch.

  Ziel leaned against his hammer and sighed. “They can manipulate space. Great. I should have known.”

  “Think of it this way,” Eithan said. “We have so much to learn!”

  Once more, Lindon brought out the hand.

  In the headquarters of the Twin Star Sect, on the edge of Serpent’s Grave, Jai Long completed his morning cycling. This aura chamber was perfect for him, having once belonged to the Jai clan; it was filled with glowing blades that saturated the air with the power of light and swords.

  He couldn’t replenish the animating force of the snake that brought all his techniques to life, but that resource seemed inexhaustible. Jai Long only wished it would one day leave his madra, no matter that his entire fighting style was now based around it.

  He wrapped the bands of scripted red cloth around his face with practiced motions before he unlocked the chamber door, and found Wei Shi Kelsa waiting for him on the other side.

  Just like the rest of her family, she was tall and intense, but where Lindon tended to look like he was contemplating a murder, Kelsa gave off the impression that she was always giving you one hundred percent of her attention. No matter what was happening.

  “Kelsa. Is something wrong?”

  “I thought you might want to train together,” she said. A fox’s tail of purple-white foxfire lashed behind her. Her Goldsign.

  She saw him glance at it, and her gaze darkened. “I still hate it.”

  “It could be worse,” Jai Long said.

  “It’s not practical, even if it can burn people. Snowfoxes have claws and teeth. I could have gotten those.”

  Jai Long began to walk away from the Stellar Spear aura chamber, and she fell into step beside him. As every morning, there was a decent-sized crowd on the path leading to the various aura chambers. Morning cycling was a common practice.

  “Not every Goldsign is practical.”

  “Why not? It isn’t fair that some people should have extra weapons growing from their body, while others have useless decorations.”

  “Even without Goldsigns, some people have longer reach with their swords, or learn techniques faster. The world isn’t fair.”

  Jai Long had bitterly resented the unfairness of Goldsigns for years, so he had accepted the truth of it more thoroughly than anyone else.

  Kelsa scowled about it, though she didn’t argue. It was a mark of her familiarity with him that she was complaining about this to his face at all; shortly after her advancement, she hadn’t said a negative word about his Goldsign for fear of offending him.

  He didn’t mind. If anything, having the worst Goldsign in the world made him empathize more.

  “You didn’t answer me,” she said abruptly. “Do you want to train together?”

  “Why do you have to make it a formal invitation? It doesn’t make much difference if we train together or separately.” There was enough of a gap in their advancement, and enough of a difference in their Paths, that there weren’t many benefits they could offer one another.

  “It’s romantic,” she responded. Jai Long missed a step, but she gave him a confused look. “What? I told you I was interested in you.”

  “People don’t normally do that,” he said. Not just say exactly what they meant with zero subtlety, but also express interest in him. No one had done that since he had botched his advancement to Lowgold when he was a child.

  “Most people like to waste time.”

  Jai Long had a knot of complicated emotions to untangle, but he knew how to control himself under pressure. And he was interested. Potentially.

  “If you wanted to spend some time together, we don’t have to train. There’s a new—”

  “What do you mean?” she interrupted. “Training together is romantic.”

  Jai Long stared blankly at her. Training was boring and repetitive work.

  As he did, he felt a light touch brush across his perception, and he realized there had been a web of madra strands observing him for a while.

  He glanced to his left and saw his sister smiling as she walked up to him. Fingerling was coiled onto her shoulder. She dipped her head as she reached Kelsa.

  “Apologies,” Jai Chen said, which made Jai Long think they’d been around the people of Sacred Valley for too long. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

  Kelsa looked from her to Jai Long, studying his eyes. “Your brother doesn’t think training together is romantic.”

  “It isn’t,” he said.

  “Jai Chen, what do you think?”

  His sister cupped her chin and gave the question far more consideration than it deserved. “I could see that, I think. It’s personal, intimate. One-on-one. You’d have to be with the right person, though.”

  Kelsa looked to him triumphantly, but now he only thought they were both crazy. He may have been out of his depth with this subject, but he had observed others. Training was just…work.

  Unwittingly, he thought of Lindon. The twenty-year-old Sage who used his free time to train more.

  Maybe something ran in the family.

  Jai Chen gave a sharp gasp, and he immediately stretched his perception out to her. Even with the support of the sect, she’d had a difficult time reaching Lowgold. Th
ere weren’t any Remnants with her unique blend of aspects, not to mention any appropriate scales.

  But since she had, her detection web had become easier to use and far more efficient. As a Truegold, his spiritual perception was naturally far beyond hers, but she could sense physical changes far faster than he could.

  It didn’t take long before everyone saw what she had. A thin pillar of shadow stretched into the sky behind Jai Long. He couldn’t feel it with his perception—it was veiled somehow, or maybe just beyond his ability to detect—but he certainly felt the power of the one stepping through it.

  Underlord.

  So this was a portal of some kind. Without discussion, the three pushed toward the black beam stretching into the sky. Of course, they weren’t the only ones.

  And a moment later, that was proved unnecessary, as a Truegold woman in the green armor of the Skysworn drifted up on a Thousand-Mile Cloud. The Underlord, whoever it was, remained on the ground.

  A green construct flashed in front of the Skysworn’s mouth, and her voice echoed over the crowd. “By the order of the Blackflame Emperor, and with the support of the Akura clan, every combat-capable sacred artist of Lowgold or higher is commanded to report to the Skysworn immediately for inspection and possible transfer to battle.”

  Jai Long felt a chill. The pillar of shadow was still there, which meant they might see combat today. A small army of clerks and administrators from the Blackflame Empire was flooding out of the portal now, already shouting orders and organizing those they could reach.

  He straightened his spine. “Stick with me. They’ll evaluate us together.”

  He was certain the other two wouldn’t pass the Empire’s examination. They were both newly advanced to Lowgold, neither were ranked on any of the combat lists, and they both had Paths better suited to support.

  It was easy for those in a large clan or powerful sect to forget, but most sacred artists were not dedicated to combat and advancement. A practitioner of illusion techniques, like the Path of the White Fox, was far more common as a teacher, artist, or messenger than a fighter. Not only was raising a real warrior a commitment of time and difficult training, but it was expensive.

  As expected, most of the Lowgolds—and even a large chunk of the Highgolds—he saw lined up in front of the Blackflame clerks were quickly turned away. But not as many as he expected.

  It was an hour before they were seen, and Jai Long didn’t even get an examination. A Lowgold sensed his power and the soulfire in his spirit, bowed, and presented him with a chip of cheap metal that had ‘Peak Truegold’ stamped on it.

  “Sect, school, or clan?” the clerk asked. He was respectful, but it had the tone of a question he’d asked a thousand times already.

  “Sect of Twin Stars,” Jai Long said. Those words sounded strange to his own ears.

  The clerk dutifully marked it down before asking for his name, age, and Path.

  “As a peak Truegold, you’ll be a squad leader,” the clerk explained. “Wait in the designated area for your squad to be assigned to you. It’s usually three Highgolds and five Lowgolds, but it depends on who we get.”

  Jai Long saw a squad matching that description pass into a nearby tent from which no one had returned. Another portal, presumably. “Loading us out quickly.”

  “Emperor’s orders.” The clerk clearly wanted him to move on, but Jai Long looked over to Jai Chen and Kelsa, who were being examined nearby. A woman was poking Fingerling with a drudge shaped like a spiky ball while a man watched Kelsa demonstrate her techniques.

  Jai Long pointed to one, then the other. “That is my sister, and she’s not a fighter, so I want her off the list. That one is, but she’s an illusion artist, so I want her in my squad.”

  The clerk scribbled a note. “If your sister passes the examination, she’ll be fighting, I’m sorry. But I can arrange to have them both assigned to you, unless there’s someone higher-ranked who wants them.”

  “Underlords won’t be fighting over Lowgolds.”

  The clerk, a Lowgold himself, chuckled nervously at the words of a peak Truegold. “Heavens know that’s true.”

  “Where are we fighting?”

  As expected, the clerk didn’t know.

  To Jai Long’s dismay, his sister passed the examination as a fighter. As did Kelsa, but he had expected that. If she had claimed to be an entertainer or even lamplighter, they would probably have believed her, but she would have certainly asked to fight.

  He was assigned three Highgolds and another pair of Lowgolds. At first scan, none of them were impressive.

  But they all stood stiffly and silently as he watched them, frightened of his attention. Except for his sister, who looked terrified—just not of him—and Kelsa, who scanned the situation herself with unrelieved intensity.

  “Can we not tell our families where we’re going?” she asked him, voice low.

  “You can leave a message with one of the clerks,” Jai Long told her, “but I’ve never seen anything like this before. If it’s such an emergency, why do they need so many Lowgolds?”

  This kind of rushed recruitment reminded him of a clan scraping up all its disciples to defend against a sudden raid, but that was only necessary when the experts were already occupied. The Emperor—an Overlord—could obliterate every Gold here with a wave of his hand.

  Which meant that, wherever they were headed, the most advanced sacred artists were either absent or countered.

  Their squad was waved through quickly, and he found them ushered into a tent taken up almost entirely by a shimmering doorframe that led onto another bustling camp far away.

  He couldn’t tell how far, but the woman sweating and loading scales into the doorframe was an Underlord. And she wasn’t Forging the scales, either; they were coming from a scripted case at her side, and the madra shining from the purple-black scales was so intense that he had to close off his spiritual sense.

  A Truegold attendant waved them through, and as the leader and most advanced member of his party, he stepped through first.

  His heart dropped in an instant.

  Even surrounded by a crowd of strangers, he recognized where they were immediately. The trees were black, the buildings were temporary, and the mountain looming in the far distance had a halo around its peak.

  “We can’t get away,” Jai Long muttered. “There is no escape.”

  They were heading back to Sacred Valley.

  This time, when the labyrinth shifted, the tunnel opened over Lindon’s head and pointed straight upward. There was no ladder, but it wasn’t as though Lindon needed one.

  He and Yerin leaped. They didn’t know exactly how high it was, but it didn’t matter much. If they started running out of momentum, they could leap off the walls.

  It didn’t come to that. Lindon’s jump carried him into a huge, empty room that reminded him of an arena. Yerin hit the ceiling, far overhead, and had to push off. Orthos grumbled about the trip and demanded that Lindon put him down, while Little Blue cheered at the thrill.

  Mercy was right behind them, pulling her way up with Strings of Shadow, and Ziel hopped up on discs of Forged runes.

  To Lindon’s surprise, the last one up was Eithan. He pulled himself up the last few feet rather gracelessly, but he salvaged it by striking a pose when he made it all the way up.

  “This isn’t fair,” he said. “You all know Enforcer techniques are my weakness. That, and fine imported silk.”

  [These weaknesses have been logged for future reference,] Dross said dutifully.

  Eithan looked startled.

  Lindon had already started glancing around the room. What he had first taken for rows of seats were coffins, each carved with the image of a dragon. They were all very different in appearance—from four-legged dragons with wings spread to serpentine dragons with claws—and each was set with colored gemstones that would likely have matched what color the dragon was in life.

  He sensed very little power coming from inside any of these
coffins, but several had been opened, presumably to remove any treasures. He glanced inside, just in case, but found only a dragon’s skeleton.

  Ziel only examined the script-circles around the room for a second before he said, “Death aura.”

  Lindon had assumed as much. There were only a few reasons to collect corpses in a place like this labyrinth, and “honoring the dead” was probably the least likely. This had once been the place to generate death aura and funnel it away to some project.

  Though, like all the other aura in the place, it had been consumed by hunger.

  Lindon started to open the hand, ready to move on, when Eithan stopped him.

  “There’s no exit,” Eithan pointed out.

  Lindon saw he was right. The only way out was the entrance through which they’d come.

  “All right,” Mercy said, “back down!”

  She made as though to leap down the hole, but Lindon had unraveled the case around the hand already. Hunger filled the room, and he sensed immediately where to go. It was a hallway sealed behind a blank stretch of wall.

  No enemy techniques struck at them this time, but it still left them in a quandary. Yerin sat down immediately, arms crossed.

  “Bet my sword against a fingernail there’s about to be a door there.”

  Mercy took several deep breaths, calming herself. “You’re right. I know you’re right, but…we’re going so slow.”

  “I’m just as worried about going too fast,” Lindon said. “We want to know what we’re walking into.” He didn’t mind the chance to explore the room some more, so after packing away the hand, he immediately checked the entire room. By looking to Eithan.

  Instantly, Eithan pointed to a corner of the room. “An unfortunate previous explorer. Left some records. Could be a map.”

  Lindon crossed the space in one leap, landing on the highest tier around the outside wall. A skeleton huddled there, in between heavy stone coffins that had been dragged around to make a makeshift fortress. Old scripts had been painted around him, though they were faded with time.