Cradle: Foundation (Cradle Collected Book 1) Read online

  Lindon ran his mind down the contents of his pack like he was running fingers along a bookshelf, trying to find the key to his situation. Yerin was wounded and visibly struggling; he needed to help somehow. His halfsilver dagger might be even more effective on a Gold than on a lesser practitioner, but he’d have to get close enough to use it. He had the feeling that the man’s spear would end him before he got within ten yards. Maybe he could throw his parasite ring at the man, hoping that the halfsilver content of that device would throw the man off, but at that point he might as well be throwing rocks. Could the Thousand-Mile Cloud do anything?

  As he was thinking, Yerin leaped on her one good leg. Despite her injuries and the blood dribbling past her eye, the move still looked graceful. The man brought his snake-fang spearhead up to point at Yerin, but she had already slashed out with another Striker technique.

  Bright green madra gathered around his weapon, giving Lindon’s Copper senses the impression of an infected wound. If Yerin was hit by one of those techniques, they wouldn’t have the medicine to save her.

  But he’d underestimated the Sword Sage’s disciple.

  Before the spearman had gathered his technique, Yerin lashed out in a wave of razor-sharp energy. It blasted down from her blade, crashing through the green power and into the ground…which was when the silver sword-arm on her back struck, sending a second identical attack into the man’s skull. It sliced without resistance from his head down to his feet.

  He crumpled into two halves. Lindon jerked his eyes away from the gory sight, turning to Yerin.

  She didn’t land so much as slam into the ground, crashing into a bush. He hurried over, heart tight with concern, slipping his pack over one arm. They were out of bandages, but he could cut his spare clothes into strips. That was assuming she only had surface wounds. If she’d broken a bone, he’d have to fashion a splint, and he had only a vague idea how to do that. And if she’d taken the man’s toxic madra or an internal injury, there was nothing he could do. They’d have to risk the journey back to Sacred Valley for medical care, which would only be slightly safer than letting her die on the forest floor.

  The thoughts flitted through his mind as he ran toward Yerin, fishing in his pack for a bundle of white outer robes and his halfsilver dagger. He’d found them both by the time he fell to his knees next to her, setting his tools aside to touch her with ginger hands.

  Her back rose and fell, so at least she lived, but her white sword was an inch away from her outstretched hand. He couldn’t help noticing how frost had already begun to gather on the nearby dried leaves, which steadily crumbled to frozen pieces. He was already a few feet away from the weapon, but he edged slightly backwards anyway.

  Her skin was clammy but her pulse steady, and he could hear her breath gaining the familiar rhythm of a cycling technique. She stirred, trying to sit up, and he grabbed her shoulder to either help her or keep her from moving too much. He wasn’t sure which.

  “Where’s the worst of it?” he asked, having decided that was the most pertinent question. If he could bandage the most severe injury, he could at least slow the rate at which she bled to death.

  She grabbed him by the neck in a grip like a scorpion’s claw, bringing her face close to his. Blood had matted her left eye closed, and the other was wavering and unfocused, but he stopped himself from jerking back in instinctive fear.

  “Remnants,” she grunted out, her other hand groping blindly in the dirt for the hilt of her sword. “Run.”

  The dying bandit woman’s scream finally died out, leaving the clearing quiet for half a breath. Then a shrill screech cut through the silence like a snake’s hiss and a teakettle’s whistle at once. An acid green shape rose in the corner of his vision, from the center of the rat-like bandit’s torn flesh.

  Lindon didn’t have a clear look at the Remnant, but he got the impression of a twisting serpentine body with insectoid claws running along the side, like a green Forged hybrid of an adder and a centipede. But he didn’t waste time staring at it; he wrapped his spare robe around his hand in a few quick motions, grabbing the hilt of Yerin’s sword with his newly gloved hand. He felt the cold even through three layers of cloth, but he slid it into the sheath at her side before the ice bit too sharply.

  That accomplished, he shoved the robe and the halfsilver dagger back into his pack, slipping one arm under Yerin’s shoulder. She hissed in through gritted teeth as he lifted her, and under other circumstances he would have worried about making her internal injuries worse.

  As he staggered over to the Thousand-Mile Cloud, Yerin’s weight highlighting the exhaustion of advancing to Copper, he heard another of those sharp whistles rising up to the sky. A second Remnant was rising.

  He glanced behind him to the first, which was even more horrible to look at than he’d imagined. Like all Remnants, it looked as though it had been painted onto the world in lines of color, though this one had a luminous yellow-green that no paint could imitate. Its head gave the impression of a snake, its body serpentine and propelled along the ground by rows of segmented insect legs. Worse, on the end of its pointed tail was a stinger.

  It moved in a hideous slithering crawl in their general direction, but fortunately for them, Remnants were often disoriented as they were born. He’d seen some Remnants stand still after they were born, others drift aimlessly away into the distance, and still others go completely berserk. This one was so disoriented it looked drunk, weaving awkwardly around the dirt and leaves.

  But it was still heading unmistakably toward them.

  Lindon reached the rust-colored cloud in a few more steps, but each one felt as though he were walking beneath a headsman’s blade. Both his cores were dim and guttering like candle-flames, but he squeezed the last bit of madra out of one as he collapsed onto the cloud, pack on his back and Yerin in his arms. They lurched down the hill, deeper into the black forest.

  Yerin’s breath was hot on his collar, her eyes closed and her voice shaky. “Things as…they are…I’d contend…we shouldn’t stay here.”

  Through the trees, two bright green shapes scuttled after them.

  Chapter 3

  Life in Sacred Valley hadn’t been easy as an Unsouled, but it had at least been comfortable. He had his own home, all the food he could eat, a cozy bed…and a safe place to stay, which he’d once taken for granted. He was embarrassed by his own ignorance. If he had known how frightening the wilderness was, he’d have blessed the Shi family every night for the roof over his head.

  After running from the venomous Remnants, he slid down a sloping hill on the Thousand-Mile Cloud until he’d run out of every drop of madra. Exhausting his spirit left him with a dull ache inside of him, an emptiness, as though he were made less by its absence. And no madra to circulate in his limbs meant that he ran out of strength quickly, hauling his pack over one shoulder and Yerin over the other.

  Worse, the piping whistles of the Remnants followed them as they made it down the hill and into the black, blighted trees. Their constant presence pressed down on his mind, keeping him perched on the edge of terror. In hours, he felt as though a fire had passed through his spirit, leaving only a burnt-out husk.

  When he could move no longer, he found a tree with a thick trunk and a gnarled hollow at its base. He dumped Yerin into it, too tired to be gentle. She made no sound of complaint, only curled up among the roots with her eyes closed and breathing even. Probably cycling to improve her wounds.

  Now that he thought of it, she had an Iron body. He might not have even hurt her by dumping her there. Her steel arm hung limp on her shoulder, blade dangling next to her cheek.

  Lindon only wanted to collapse next to her, but the distant whistles continued. He forced his legs to carry him forward, scratching script into the dirt with the end of a stick. He extended the script all the way around the tree until Yerin was in the center of a warding circle at least fifteen feet across. Only then did he fall into the hollow next to her, digging into his pack for a stopp
ered clay bottle of water.

  Yerin didn’t open her eyes to take a drink, she simply plucked the bottle from his hand, guzzled half of its contents, and handed it back. By the time they had both drunk, only a few drops sloshed around at the bottom.

  He’d resolved to find a source of fresh water when sleep took him. Even with Yerin’s elbow shoving into his ribs on one side and a half-buried rock on the other, his body simply couldn’t stay awake anymore.

  When he woke, three rotten dogs snarled at the edge of his circle.

  He jerked back against the tree, swallowing a scream. It took him a few breaths to realize that he wasn’t trapped in a nightmare.

  The skin of the dogs was raw, bloody red with spots of diseased black. It was stretched tight over a visible rack of ribs, and their stench soaked the air. Their eyes were scarlet as swollen blisters, and they bared shredded lips in snarls that revealed blood-caked teeth.

  Like a child seeking the protection of his mother, Lindon shook Yerin’s shoulder. One eye snapped open immediately, though she had to scrape dried blood away from the other with her fingernails.

  Once she could fully see, she surveyed the dogs. “I called Heaven’s Glory a pack of rotten dogs, but I’d never conceived they’d be quite that ugly.”

  As though they understood the insult, the dogs hissed through teeth, lunging over the warding circle. Fear stabbed Lindon’s heart and he cycled madra on instinct, for whatever good it would do them.

  They stopped with only their front paws over the circle, yowling and shuffling backwards. They lifted their claws to avoid stepping on any of the symbols. They didn’t make the whimpering sounds of an injured dog; their howls seemed to contain rage and resentment, as though the pain infuriated them.

  Lindon shivered, staring at the dirt just in front of their paws. The script was written on nothing more solid than loose forest soil, and though the dogs were avoiding direct contact with the script, it wouldn’t hold long. The dogs didn’t have to touch the symbols to scrape dirt over them, and even the dirt might obscure the script before long.

  Besides, the warding circle was meant to protect against Remnants. Since the script had affected them more like a screen than a fence, they must be sacred beasts…though they looked hideous and diseased, unlike any sacred beasts Lindon had ever heard of. Based on everything he’d been taught, sacred beasts refined vital aura into madra inside their bodies, and the advancement process perfected their bodies. It made them stronger, smarter, more beautiful.

  Whatever aura these beasts cultivated had corrupted them, and he had no doubt that they would tear him to pieces. Even if he could use his Empty Palm, he had no idea where a canine’s core was located.

  “I don’t want to rush you,” Lindon said, eyeing the spearheads these creatures had for teeth, “but have you recovered at all?”

  She cracked one eye. “Not gonna bleed out, but scrubbing out a couple of pups might get…sticky.”

  “Sticky? What makes it so sticky?” He was trying to stay calm—the last thing he needed was to irritate the Gold at his side—but these rotting dogs were prowling around the tree now, and he was sure they were looking for a weak point in the script. If he’d spaced one rune too far out, they’d rush in and pull him apart.

  “You scowl when you’re fearful,” she observed. “Makes you look like you’re gearing up for a fight.”

  He took deep breaths, trying to slow his heart and keep his voice from leaping up an octave. “I’d fight them if I could, but can you?” Despite his preparation, his voice still broke on the last word.

  “Well, I’d observed that sacred beasts have been a little light on the ground the last handful of days. Spied a couple of Remnants, but nothing else. Weak and wounded as we were, we should have been hip-deep in predators before we took two steps out of the valley.”

  One of the dogs swept a claw at the air over the script as thought scraping at something invisible. Through his Copper sight, Lindon saw the aura the script had gathered: a circle formed from thin, tall rectangles that reminded him of paper doors. When he looked at the aura, he thought of force, impact, solidity…but rigid and thin, as though ready to break at any second. It was a pathetically thin protection against the beasts dripping blood-tinged saliva only a few feet away.

  “Why weren’t we, do you think?” Lindon asked, holding his tone steady.

  “If we were with my master, I’d say they were scared off by his presence. But these things see me as prey for a pack. You’re more like a bite they’d feed to their pups.”

  Lindon cleared his throat, unsure how to respond.

  “Point is, they weren’t scared off by us. Something drew them away.”

  Something impacted the tree behind them with a meaty thud, and the tree shook like a thick drum. A dog howled, but blackened leaves drifted down on top of them.

  “They were drawn away,” Lindon repeated, trying to focus on Yerin’s words instead of the monstrous fangs. “Does that mean you can’t kill them?”

  She pointed with her finger and her sword-arm together. “It means they’re all bunched up.”

  Lindon stared after her finger, where the gray pre-dawn haze was clustered thickly. He could see nothing but misty shadows beneath the trees.

  But after watching for a second, he saw something move. It barely shifted, just giving him the impression of motion, but it was the size of a house.

  He wasn’t sure if the light finally improved enough or if his eyes finally picked out a pattern, but after a few more minutes of squinting into the haze, he saw it. Not one giant beast—an army.

  The distance seethed with creatures, scurrying like ants in the grass. He could only make out their shapes; many of them looked like the rotten dogs, but others were the size of bears, or even trees. Leathery wings fluttered in the sky as something passed over the tree.

  Black-stained teeth snapped shut two feet from his face, and the hound hissed out a putrid breath, but a cold weight had already settled into Lindon’s gut. They weren’t surrounded by three rotten beasts, but by hundreds.

  After a moment of dizzy panic that felt like staring over the edge of an impossibly high cliff, Lindon’s mind snapped into focus. They were safe here, at least for now. He had his pack and the treasures he’d stolen from the Heaven’s Glory School, and he had a Gold on his side. There had to be some way to escape.

  Yerin lifted an edge of her outer robe and scrubbed dried blood away from her scarred skin. “Don’t fuss about it. Should be a way out, once I’m full up and ready to use the cloud. You should cycle too, it’ll do you good.”

  The Thousand-Mile Cloud was actually outside the script-circle, a dense red cloud with wisps of essence drifting away from it. It would dissolve in a few days without maintenance; Lindon had been sustaining it on pure madra over the past week, just as he had with his mother’s constructs back home.

  He was grateful that the rotten dogs hadn’t so much as glanced at the Thousand-Mile Cloud, but the unfortunate reality remained. They would have to breach the warding circle to get to the cloud, and they needed the cloud to leave.

  “I’ll rely on you, then,” Lindon said. “If I may ask, how long will you need?”

  Yerin closed her eyes again and steadied her breath before answering. “A day or thereabouts. My madra’s in better shape than my body, but I should have everything stitched together come tomorrow’s dawn.” The loops of her red rope-belt squirmed away from the roots.

  The dogs hissed again, just far enough away that he couldn’t quite touch them if he extended his arm. One of them lay down on its paws, staring at him with fever-bright red eyes.

  On a sudden impulse, Lindon looked past the dog to try and see its aura. It was easier the more he did it, but this time he didn’t know what to make of the vital aura gathered around this monster. If identifying other types of aura was like reading simple characters, this was like trying to read a page that had been sliced to pieces and glued back together in a random order.

&nb
sp; The aura gathered around the creature’s shoulder swelled like a blister, slick and crawling black. This aura felt like death and decay, like a maggot’s corpse. The deep purple aura around the dog’s ribs was stringy and muscular, like roots or snakes, and it somehow gave off the impression of chains held in powerful tension. Deep red aura dripped from the hound’s mouth, and Lindon could practically smell the coppery tang of blood.

  He let the vision fade, thinking. He'd heard of blood madra, which supposedly held all sorts of sinister powers over living bodies, so he assumed that's what was running from the dog's jaws. But what was the rest? If he had to give a name to the bulb over the shoulder, he'd call it “death aura,” but that was based solely on the feeling it gave him. He'd never heard of death madra or any aura of death, and he wasn't entirely sure what such a power would do. Likewise, he had no clue what his mother would call the tight aura chains. Connection aura? Binding aura?

  There were more aspects of vital aura surrounding the dog than just those, and the unity of all those different powers in one body meant something significant. He just wasn't sure what.

  But it might be the clue that let them out of here, so he meditated on it. Cycling didn't take much of his attention, as he didn't have to pull aura from the atmosphere and could focus solely on his own madra. He retrieved the parasite ring from his pocket, slipping the scripted circle of twisted halfsilver onto his finger.

  Instantly, his madra turned sluggish, as though his madra channels had all halved in width. He had to force his madra to cycle, pushing it through the pattern described in his Heart of Twin Stars manual as though forcing syrup through a narrow tube.

  It was twice as hard to cycle with the parasite ring on, but the exercise was supposed to strengthen his spirit twice as fast. He had just reached Copper, but that didn't mean he had time to rest. It was the opposite, as he saw it. He was years behind every sacred artist in his clan, so he had to work harder than anyone else to catch up.