Chapter 3

Renfei finished buckling on the green plates of her Skysworn armor, clipped the dark hammer to her belt, and sent a whisper of spiritual awareness to test the Thousand-Mile Cloud preserved inside her armor. It was fully powered and ready to deploy.

And so was she.

She pulled her hair back and tied it into a tail, then walked to the door. As she expected, Bai Rou was waiting on the other side. He had to bend down to see her through the doorframe.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Time's up,” she responded. “Let's go get him.”

Bai Rou, her partner in the Skysworn, was two feet taller than she was and twice as broad. He always wore a hat woven from dried stalks, which cast a shadow across his face. Only his eyes shone from within the darkness, bright yellow—his Goldsign. He wore the same armor she did, though his was three sizes bigger and he carried no hammer.

They had to travel down cramped hallways lit only by flickering, damaged rune-lights—no one had done the maintenance on these scripts for years.

Fortunately, their destination was nearby.

They reached the end of the hallway in a minute, in front of a...well, it wasn't a door. More like a thick metal plate bolted to the wall, with a script in the center.

This script wasn't derelict, like the others. The custodians of the prison knew better than to allow actual security to lapse.

From inside a pocket at her belt, Renfei pulled out her half of the key—a ceramic half-disc etched with one part of a script-circle. Bai Rou handed over the other half, and she fit the two halves of the disc together.

When the script was completed, she let her madra flow through it. Another security measure: this key was created anew for each new jailer, and would shatter if power from the wrong Path flowed through it.

She pressed it against the circle on the metal slab, and power spun through the door. The metal lit up in lines, as hidden scripts activated.

The bolts around the edges, each marked with a script-circle of its own, began to spin out of their mounts. An instant later, they pinged to the ground, followed by the thick metal plate swinging soundlessly open.

Renfei walked through the doorway, Bai Rou ducking after her.

They found themselves in a room of twisting mist. Images seemed to swirl and die within the mist, as sounds haunted the very edges of her hearing. She heard something like children whispering, a gong sounding, the cries of a thousand birds.

It was easy to ignore the illusions, as she and Bai Rou carried ward keys to this formation. The two of them saw only mist and heard only distant sounds, but anyone without ward keys would be snared in convincing visions.

They walked across a narrow bridge with no railing, a sheer drop on either side.

Though it looked bottomless, Renfei knew that more than simply air and darkness waited beneath. Anyone trapped in the tricks of this world would live only long enough to hit the bottom, whereupon they would be devoured by what waited there.

“This is too much,” Bai Rou said, his deep voice drowning out the whispers.

“Too much to secure him,” Renfei replied. “But not enough to keep him isolated.”

“Not enough?”

She sighed. “You know it won't be.”

The next door was wooden and opened to a simple physical key and lock. She opened into a dark stone room, lit only by light spilling in from the room of illusions. A pair of crimson lions waited at the end of the room, embers burning in their eyes, flames building in their throats. Remnants, sealed to the defense of this room.

The Remnants had been Truegold when they were imprisoned here, but were fed weekly to make them even more formidable. If she and Bai Rou had to fight their way through, they might be able to do it, but they would have to pay a heavy cost.

Fortunately, the Remnants recognized them and parted, allowing them to walk through. That didn't lessen the tension—their heat pressed against her like she was locked in an oven, and their burning gazes made them look anything but tame. She brushed her fingertips against the hammer at her waist.

Remnants could be bound, but they weren't predictable. These looked like swirls of bright color painted onto the world, their eyes like balls of fire. They glared at her, and she found herself wondering if they might make a fight of this after all.

She could feel Bai Rou's madra, like water and nightmares, gathering behind her. She realized she was cycling her own Cloud Hammer madra, and picked up her pace.

The next door was made of heavy stone, moved by brute strength. This might be the least secure entrance, but it was made so that it only opened slowly. Anyone who tried to ignore the lions and open the door would find themselves trapped and delayed.

This room was thick with water aura, a pale green waterfall splitting the hall in two. It wasn't water, not really—instead, it was liquid madra, water fused with the essences of death and venom. A truly vile combination.

A construct provided by the prison allowed them to pass through this one—a personal shield that repelled this exact Path of madra. Renfei was still nervous as she walked through the green waterfall, even though she could feel the shield intact. Bai Rou might survive contact with this liquid, though even he wouldn't enjoy it, but she would die without a doubt.

The next room was full of security constructs. The floor was a web of etched circles, and brightly colored devices made of Remnant parts stuck from every wall and the ceiling. Eyes on purple stalks pushed away from a mass of muscle-like madra stuck to one wall, examining them. The ceiling bristled with spiked tails, clenched claws, sparking fangs, and pieces she couldn't identify. She could, however, sense the power of the Striker bindings in all of them.

If the scripts beneath them were triggered, the constructs would unleash enough power to vaporize an Underlord.

Her heart rate picked up every time, but they were once again allowed to pass.

“No sign of entry,” Bai Rou noted, as they approached the last door.

“There wasn't last time either,” she said.

“This is different.”

Renfei had to admit that she couldn't imagine these defenses being penetrated. Their prisoner wasn't too dangerous on his own—he was locked in more as a political statement than to protect others from him. The Skysworn had received orders to keep him isolated, but that had proven more difficult than they anticipated. Everywhere they put him, no matter how secret or protected, had been infiltrated within days.

This time, with the approval of their Underlord, they had placed him in the most isolated facility that could hold him without killing him. Having just passed through the security herself, she had to admit, she couldn't imagine how someone could pass through each of those measures without the keys. Or without blowing a hole through each wall in sequence.

Maybe this time will be different, she thought.

It wasn't.

This cell was originally designed for top-level security threats that couldn't be executed by usual means. Its door was shot through with halfsilver veins, and the room itself was broad and brightly lit. There was a separate prison in the center of the room: a box of bars, at least twenty feet away from each wall. The box itself was fairly roomy for one prisoner, with a bed, a chair, and a pit with a water construct that flushed away his waste twice per day. The only thing a prisoner wouldn't have was privacy—anyone who entered the cell would see everything from every angle, through the gaps in the bars. Even the bars had flecks of halfsilver in them—the empire spent a fortune furnishing this place, and a smaller fortune powering and maintaining it.

Wei Shi Lindon Arelius stood outside those bars, his white sacred artist's robe scuffed and torn. He was on the balls of his feet, madra flowing through his body in an Enforcer technique, and blood trailed down from a split lip.

His eyes weren't black-and-red, as they had been when Renfei had first seen him. Now he didn't look quite so horrifying, but he had that rough look to him that she associated with lawbreakers. He looked like the kind of young man who started fights for fun.

Over her interactions with him in the last several months, she had grown to realize that he was practically the opposite. A troublemaker, certainly, but of a very different type.

He was supposed to be inside his cage, but she didn't wonder how he'd gotten out.

Instead, she wondered—not for the first time—how all these other people had gotten in.

Yerin Arelius stood opposite Lindon, a pale sword held casually in one hand. The Skysworn had obviously interrupted a training session between them—they were facing one another, and Lindon had a few more cuts than just his lip.

She had not taken a single injury that Renfei could see. At least, not in this fight. Yerin's whole appearance was a map of battles won and lost, her skin crisscrossed by thin scars, her black robes sliced and tattered, her hair cut straight above her eyes. A pair of silver arms stretched up from behind her, flattening into sword-blades that poised over each shoulder: her Goldsign. A red rope of living madra had been wrapped around her waist, with a complicated knot at her back, and Renfei instinctively kept her spiritual awareness away. The rope was rank with blood aura.

A huge black turtle waited in the back of the room, as long as a horse from tip-to-tail, and the peak of his shell as tall as a man. Orthos regarded her with black eyes that burned with circles of red, and then snorted out a puff of smoke, ignoring her. Dull red light smoldered in the facets of his shell, and smoke drifted up from him as though from a dying fire. As she watched, he stretched his neck out and took a bite from the nearby stone.

Fisher Gesha was the only one to greet the Skysworn with respect, drawing herself to her feet and bowing over her fists pressed together. The old woman was tiny and almost impossibly wrinkled, her hair drawn up into a tight bun. She carried a sharp-edged hook of goldsteel strapped to her back, and the weapon was almost as large as her entire body. From the bottom of her robes, long purple spider legs stretched out, evidence of her drudge. The Fisher Goldsign, a web of madra between her fingers that slowly gave them webbed fingers, was difficult to make out at this distance.

Renfei had checked Gesha’s background after finding her with Lindon that first time. The woman was an ordinary Highgold Soulsmith, having spent her entire life in the remote Desolate Wilds out west. If there was anything strange about her, it was finding her in the Empire proper.

Body parts of vivid color, so bright they looked unreal, had been spread out on the floor behind Fisher Gesha. She had abandoned these Remnant parts when Renfei came in, and the pieces behaved oddly when left alone: one claw scuttled in circles, a sapphire lock of hair started to fade as though it were starting to vanish, and a loop of twisted violet entrails reached out a questing tendril as though to slither away.

Was she here to work as a Soulsmith, or had she just turned to her specialty to pass the time?

A man leaned back from an easel and a half-finished swirl of color, holding a brush in one hand and a shallow clay bowl of paint in the other. With a brilliant smile, he turned to her.

Steadying her breath and the flow of her madra, Renfei met his eyes.

***

Eithan Arelius wore a brilliant blue outer robe, though he had tucked a long towel into his collar to protect his clothes from the stray splatters of paint. His blond hair flowed freely down his back, his smile was brilliant, and his eyes were as bright as if he had just spotted a long-lost friend.

A tiny blue spirit clung to the top of his head, tilting its head to regard Renfei and Bai Rou with childish curiosity. It was like a girl the size of a hand, blue as the deep ocean. She looked human in fine detail except for her legs, which trailed off into a shape like a dress.

“Ah, the Skysworn! What a pleasure you could join us today!”

“How?” Bai Rou asked, astonished.

Eithan waved his brush. “Well, I took painting lessons as a child, but I admit it's not coming back to me as quickly as I would have hoped.”

“How are you here?” Renfei said. She couldn't let him escape this.

No matter where they had taken Lindon, from the most ordinary dungeon to the safe house of their Underlord himself, they had found Eithan Arelius and the others waiting for them. None of the security measures had ever been disturbed, and there was no sign that it had cost them any effort at all.

The bloodline powers of the Arelius would explain how he had found them in the first place, but even that explanation strained belief. They had moved Lindon to different cities, sometimes. And even if you assumed Eithan had simply sensed and followed them every time, even an Underlord shouldn't have been able to break the security on this place. It was made to hold Overlords.

There was a trick here, and Renfei didn't dare to hope Eithan would share it with them. If he deigned to tell them how he'd done it, perhaps the Skysworn would have an excuse to save them from the anger of their Captain. He was not happy that Eithan Arelius could come and go as he pleased anytime, anywhere.

“Well, we were in the neighborhood when I happened to notice that Lindon was in need of some company. What kind of Patriarch would I be if I didn't serve the least of my family in this fashion?”

Underlord Arelius didn't serve the least of his family at all, as far as Renfei could tell. He focused his attention on a few individuals, and recently Lindon was his pet project. It must have taken a great investment of time and resources to raise him to Lowgold in the Path of Black Flame. And after only a few months, Yerin had broken through to Highgold as well. An early advancement—she couldn't be more than eighteen.

Supposedly, she had been the disciple of a Sage before Eithan had found her, but Renfei regarded that rumor with a skeptical eye. There were only three Sages on the entire continent, as far as she knew, and Sages never took disciples. Everyone knew that.

Regardless, Yerin and Eithan were part of some plot, and Renfei had the sick feeling that she and the Skysworn were playing their role just as Eithan had planned.

“Tell me how you avoided our security,” Renfei said coldly, refusing to let him evade. She couldn't intimidate this man, not even with the weight of her office—Underlords were too valuable to the Empire to have their freedom restricted, barring great offenses. But she exerted as much pressure as she could to squeeze some kind of answer out of him.

The natural spirit perched on his head shrank back as though frightened of Renfei's voice, but Eithan's smile brightened if anything. “Ah, but I think there's more pressing business, isn't there? You can't be here for my stimulating conversation.”

Lindon had his head respectfully down, but now he looked to her. “Is it time already?” he asked. “I thought I was to have two more days.” She supposed he was nervous about the answer, but with his tight jaw and wide eyes, he looked more like he was spoiling for a fight instead.

“We must take you to the arena ahead of the others,” she explained, turning from Eithan and trying to suppress her frustration with the Underlord. If he would just cooperate, he could make life easier for her, but no. The higher-ups of the clans did what they wished, without concern for those beneath them. It was a large reason her parents had sent her to join the Cloud Hammer sect, as a child.

The cloud hovering over her head was boiling, she was sure.

“We can't disclose the location of the venue ahead of time,” she said. “To prevent tampering. We will notify the respective Underlords when the venue has been prepared, and then give them time to travel there.”

These were standard procedures when the representatives of two great clans or families dueled with real stakes, but since both Underlords had personal pride in this, the Skysworn had to have an Underlord of their own to ensure parity. That was a large part of the reason her Captain was in such a foul mood lately; he hated having to waste his time supervising a fight between children.

That, and he had to deal with Eithan Arelius.

Lindon turned to the others, and even on his contentious face, there was a look of uncertainty. Yerin walked up and tapped him on the chest with her fist. “Your path's as straight as a good road,” she said. “Kill him if you can. Try not to die.”

The words sounded casual, but Renfei detected a tremble in Yerin's spirit. For the briefest instant, her madra was disrupted in its flow.

A smile pulled at Lindon's lips, as though Yerin had said something touching, but Orthos bulled in a second later. “Destroy him!” the turtle said, through a mouthful of gravel. “Scatter his ashes around the arena! Crush your enemy, drive him before you, hear the lamentations of his—”

“I will do what I can, Orthos,” Lindon said, resting his hand on the turtle's head.

The sacred beast snorted, pulling back. “Cycle Blackflame and say that to me again.”

Lindon complied, his spirit going from a tranquil pool to a rolling chaos of dark fire in an instant. Renfei pulled her awareness back slightly—destruction was a difficult power to sense too closely. It always reminded her of insects swarming over their prey, and gave her a headache.

His eyes now matched Orthos', giving his features a sinister cast. He had a solid build, such that he looked older than he really was, and the eyes gave him a menacing edge.

“I will do what I can,” Lindon said again, but Orthos snapped at the air between them.

“No! The dragon destroys! Victory is not good enough, you have to finish him.”

Lindon straightened himself, his Blackflame madra suddenly boiling. “I'll send his ashes back to the Jai clan in a jar.” His dark eyes faded, and he smiled sheepishly. “...if I can.”

Orthos snorted. “We need to have a Soulsmith make you a spine.” He wandered away, muttering to himself, and Fisher Gesha approached next.

“All right,” she said, slapping her palms together. “To business, hm? Which would you like to take?”

To Renfei's surprise, she led Lindon to a huge trunk at the corner of his cell. Renfei hadn't noticed it before; she had been too preoccupied watching the people. That was a mistake, and she chided herself for it. She had worked for the Skysworn long enough to know that it was the detail you missed that killed you.

The Fisher threw open the chest, pulling out devices of bright color: constructs and weapons. The products of a Soulsmith.

“Well, hurry it up,” she said. “Tell me what you want.”

“Everything,” Lindon said. He sounded much more certain than when he had spoken with Orthos.

Fisher Gesha's eyebrows shot up. “Everything? You want to fight with your pockets bulging like a squirrel's cheeks?”

“Everything,” he said again.

When he was finally ready to leave, he turned to the Skysworn with a bright blue band around his head, a purple bracelet on one wrist, a black bracer on the other, three rods of varying length and color at his waist, a gelatinous red mass that pulsed like a heart stuck to his chest, a bright green dagger in an ankle sheath, and—sure enough—his pockets swollen, spilling multi-colored light into the air.

He looked like a clown. More weapons did not mean a more prepared warrior, and everyone present had to know that.

She looked to the others as though they would stop him, but even Yerin looked resigned. Eithan beamed as though watching his proud son leave for the first day at a School of sacred arts.

“We will send a messenger to contact you when the fight is ready to begin,” Renfei said. “Each Underlord is of course allowed a retinue, though we hope that you will conduct yourself with honor, as befitting your respected rank and station.”

Eithan turned back to his painting. It depicted a tall, lonely mountain, jutting from the surrounding landscape like a gray spear. The top was flat, as though the summit of the mountain had been sliced off, and it was capped by an ancient stone building supported by columns.

Renfei stared at the picture. She was afraid her mouth might be hanging open.

“See you there!” Eithan said.

***

On the top of a gray mountain, Lindon waited, cycling Blackflame madra to fight off the chill of the relentless wind. The gusts shoved at him, stronger than he would have thought possible—even with his Iron body reinforced by Lowgold madra, he had to bend down and grip the edge of a nearby boulder to stay in place.

The power of wind was strong here, covering his spiritual sight in green swirls. A Jade wouldn’t be able to survive alone under these conditions; they would eventually exhaust their madra fighting against the wind and be shoved off the sheer edge of the nearby cliff.

Lindon had grown up in Sacred Valley, surrounded by mountains, and this mountain was a strange one. It had been sliced off at the top as though by a sword, so it now terminated in a flat plane. A vast stone structure had been built at the center, squat and ancient, supported by granite pillars.

It was impossible to reach this place without flying, and even the Skysworn who had carried them here on their Thousand-Mile Cloud had been forced to fight their way up. Sacred eagles with emerald talons had harassed them all the way.

Lindon didn’t even know where in the Blackflame Empire he was. South, they said, but he had no reason to tell.

He had traveled with the Skysworn for a full day, spent the night huddled in a tiny valley, and then taken off again the next day at dawn. When they finally reached this barren peak, the two green-armored Truegolds had stuffed him into a room carved into the base of the mountain for two more nights, leaving him to marinate in nerves.

Today, of all days, they’d taken him out only to abandon him on the edge of the cliff while they checked inside the “sanctuary,” as they called it, for potential tampering.

The Blackflame madra warmed his spirit and his flesh, protecting him from the cold of the wind, but he shivered anyway.

The day had finally come.

He hadn't seen Jai Long for months, not since the Skysworn had taken him away to prevent him from causing a panic with his identity as a Blackflame. At first, he had almost been relieved, thinking that his imprisonment meant the duel would be canceled.

Then Eithan had shown up and told him otherwise.

Eithan had brought Yerin and the others to him more than ten times, and each time the Skysworn either moved him or increased security. It never seemed to matter.

Lindon stared up at the stone columns, wind whipping at his hair and his outer robe. Though his heart pounded and his breath was coming faster, he felt a strange calm.

The others, especially Yerin and Fisher Gesha, had done everything they could to prepare him for this day. He was as ready as he could be.

There were still no guarantees, of course. But this was just another obstacle he had to overcome. Just one more step.

...of course, he was still armed to the teeth.

The constructs felt strange against his skin. The blue headband tickled, the purple loop around his wrist squeezed, the mass on his chest pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He had helped Fisher Gesha make every one of these constructs...though perhaps “helped” was too strong a word. She had provided the bindings and the dead matter to make the constructs, and he had simply assisted her and maintained them afterwards.

Their essence bled into the air, like tiny motes of colored light rising from the surface of the constructs as their madra dissolved. Lindon couldn't help but worry when he saw that. They would degrade over time, and probably wouldn't be useful in any fight after this one, but they should last at least that long. Still, he couldn't help feeling like they'd crumble at any second.

He looked up as two figures walked out of the cavernous entrance to the sanctuary. Bai Rou loomed over his partner, his green armor making him seem as steady as a statue, his glowing yellow eyes in the shadow of his hat striking and intimidating. He seemed to radiate menace.

He was overwhelming, but Lindon preferred the impression Renfei gave: she was calm, composed, ready to act at a moment's notice. Her black hair was pulled back in a tail, a gray cloud hovering inches over her head, hammer bouncing on her hip. She didn't seem threatening, just in control.

That was how Lindon wanted to feel.

She met him with a direct, unblinking gaze. “We're to confiscate your weapons,” she said.

Lindon's hands instinctively moved to cover his pockets. The Skysworn had taken his pack when they first captured him and had yet to return it to him, and he felt almost helpless without it. The constructs returned some measure of that control.

“Jai Long will have a weapon,” he said reasonably. “Surely you won't deny me mine, if this duel is to be entertaining at all.”

He had some strategies he could attempt against Jai Long. Eithan put Lindon's chance of winning at thirty or forty percent. “Those aren't the worst odds I've ever bet on!” he'd said.

But Lindon's chances went down significantly if he had to walk in unarmed. All of the ideas he'd come up with for rigging the fight had involved altering the arena in some way, but it seemed that the Skysworn had anticipated him. Unless he could still get some time alone with the stage...

“We will return any weapons appropriate to your stage of advancement,” Renfei said. “We can't have you bringing an Underlord weapon into a fight between Golds.”

Lindon shifted so that his outer robe covered up the pulsing mass attached to his chest. It had been worth a try.

They peeled the constructs off him one at a time, and though he put up a few more halfhearted attempts at bargaining, he didn't struggle. They would sense any object of power he had on him, regardless of how he tried to hide.

This was within his expectations. During one of their planning sessions, Eithan had warned him that they would likely confiscate anything too powerful, though he had hoped they would match his weapons to the level of his opponent. In that case, Lindon would have been left Highgold and Truegold tools as well.

Renfei did give him a reproachful look when she discovered that one of his launcher constructs was made from Underlord-grade parts. As was the artificial heart on his chest. And the band around his forehead.

Two more of his constructs were Truegold, and four were Highgold. They sealed all those into a scripted box that Bai Rou produced, but kept the Lowgold devices in a sack. Those would be returned to him quickly, he assumed. He hoped.

“Your first core is…” Renfei flicked her spirit through Lindon’s, and he froze, wondering if she would see past the first of his surprises. But she said “…Jade,” and he relaxed. “Your second core is Lowgold, so you go on record as a Lowgold. You can take in weapons appropriate to your stage.”

As expected, they missed Suriel's marble. The glass ball sat tucked into his pocket, burning with a steady blue candle-flame. Had they looked inside, they would have seen it, but they had done all their searching with their spiritual sense.

They also left him his badge, which was heavy and cold against his chest. It was made of gold, etched with a hammer, and it reminded him of home. Nothing reminded him that he was a sacred artist of Sacred Valley like that badge.

The two Skysworn ushered him inside, and Lindon took a deep breath.

As far as he was concerned, the duel had begun. From here on out, he had to take any advantage he could.

“What about my sacred beast?” Lindon asked them. “I have a contracted partner. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe sacred artists are allowed to do battle alongside their partners.”

Bai Rou gave a single, deep laugh.

“Traditionally, contracted partners are allowed to duel as a single unit,” Renfei confirmed. “However, Orthos is too far above you. That makes you his partner, and if he were to participate, this would be officially recorded as a duel between Jai Long of the Jai clan and Orthos, guardian of the Arelius family. This is not what we were permitted to allow, nor what either side wants.”

They walked through the entrance, the wind cutting off as though sliced with a knife, and Lindon started to sweat. It was quite cool inside, but every possibility they denied him reduced his chance of winning.

This was still within his predictions, though. At least they'd left him some weapons.

The hall was a vast, empty space, and Lindon suspected it was rare to see a visitor in a year. Dust had piled up in the corners, cobwebs on the ceiling, and the stone was worn with the passage of time. More, there was no sign of any inhabitants other than the fresh boot-prints in the dust that must have been left by the Skysworn.

A single heavy, wooden door waited at the end of the hall, and Bai Rou pushed it open. Yellow eyes bright, he ushered Lindon inside.

Or rather, outside.

The room was fairly spacious, but the far wall was open. Only pillars held up the ceiling, and the spaces between them were filled with views of a snowy mountain range. The sight brought back a sudden, unexpected longing for home.

Wind rushed in again, though not as fierce as it had been on the edge of the cliff. This room was about a hundred yards square, and had no furnishings at all. Besides the wall behind Lindon, with its single door, everything else was open to the sky.

The Underlords were already waiting.