Chapter 15

Lindon levered himself up to a seated position, the flare of pain letting him know that he may have a cracked rib. He set the pain aside. It was nothing to the damage in his legs, which lay swollen and useless on the ground in front of him. He hadn't been able to walk for days.

He reached over and slid the glass case closer, using the three un-broken fingers on his left hand. One of his eyes was swollen shut, but through the other he watched the Sylvan.

She spun in place, arms swaying as though dancing to some music he couldn't hear. He'd started to think of it as female, though he had no reason to think she had a gender at all. Maybe it was the flowing madra of her lower half, which made her look like she was wearing a dress.

Regardless, the Sylvan had been his only companion these two weeks besides Yerin's voice through the door. He'd fed her what dribbles of his spare madra he could afford to Forge, and she'd grown almost half an inch. Her translucent blue form looked more solid, though that could have been his imagination, and she expressed a greater range of actions. Just yesterday she had swum a full lap of her tank inside the ever-flowing river.

Lindon looked up from the case to regard his fortress.

It was a slipshod attempt at defense—he'd used the claws of the spider-construct in his pack to cut dead matter away from the Remnants that regularly attacked him. With those pieces, those bright blue shells and shimmering green limbs, he'd boxed himself in. His back was to the door, and his fortress was piled up against the stairs. He'd backed himself into a corner, which had led to a few tense moments as he had nowhere to run, but he refused to move his fortification to the top of the stairs. If the door ever opened, he wanted to be able to run through in an instant.

Though he was starting to lose hope that the door would ever open.

While watching the Sylvan, he reached over to a binding shaped like a twisted blue seashell. He had to replace the dead matter in his walls every day or two, as it bled away regularly, but he used his own madra to supplement his few useful bindings. He'd been fortunate to find this one, which Gesha had demonstrated for him a few weeks before: it produced water.

He drank only a few swallows; he didn't have any more madra to spare. Most of his power each day went to refreshing the essential bindings and his weapon, the severed Sandviper stinger with the cloth-wrapped hilt. He cycled the rest of it, pushing madra through every square inch of his body.

Despite the haze of agony that hung over him constantly—and the series of sudden, vicious attacks that had driven fear so deep into his soul that he thought it would never leave—he was pleased with the weeks of work. The razor-edged tension had done wonders for his advancement, since there was nothing to do here but cycle and prepare to be attacked. And the slightest moment of inattention would result in his inevitable death.

One of his cores was at the peak of Copper, almost ready to overflow and pour through his body in the transition to Iron. He'd finally raised his second core to Copper as well, but focused most of his effort on one. That had been Yerin's advice.

Eithan's breathing technique had almost gotten him killed in the first few days, when he lost his breath in the middle of a fight and his madra fell out of control. Now, he rarely lost the rhythm, and he'd started to see the advantages: his madra recovered much more quickly, and he was sure he could advance to Iron any day he wanted.

That wasn't entirely true. He wanted to advance right now, because breaking through the barrier to Iron completely reforged the body. Advancing to Copper had cleansed him of scrapes, cuts, and bruises, and Iron was supposed to be a more thorough transformation. When Yerin told him that it would heal his broken legs, he'd almost cried from the effort not to force an advancement now.

But if he advanced before he was ready, he would damage his own foundation. That was the only thing that held him back. If his Iron body wasn't perfect, he wouldn't be guaranteed Highgold, much less the heights Suriel had challenged him to reach.

The blue marble sat in a corner, its flame straight and steady inside the glass barrier. He stared at it every day as he cycled, meditating on it. Suriel had believed he could do this. She'd known he would meet suffering even worse than this, and he would come out on the other side stronger.

He seized on that like a mantra, clutching it like the edge of a cliff.

Only one problem remained: his progress was too slow.

He'd only pushed madra through half of his body at most. He could execute a basic Enforcer technique now, making himself stronger for short periods of time, which he had hastily scrawled into the Path of Twin Stars in excitement. But he needed to suffuse his body with madra, soaking it completely, and he was at least another week away from that. Probably two.

And his body was done.

With two broken legs, one eye swollen shut, two broken fingers on each hand, a cracked rib, and more wounds and complaints than he could even remember, he wouldn't survive another attack. The day had been quiet so far, which was a blessing from the heavens as far as he was concerned, but something else would come. A twisted dreadbeast, a sandviper, a Remnant. At least he stood a chance against the Remnant, thanks to the scripts he'd left scraped into the top of the stairs.

But even if he survived today, he'd never last until he finished laying the groundwork for Iron. If nothing else, he'd starve. Sandvipers tasted like chicken livers soaked in acid, but they were the best thing he'd found to eat in here. On the fourth day, he'd even been fortunate enough to find a binding that produced fire.

As injured as he was, he couldn't catch food anymore. He'd burned through Eithan's supply of scales in a week, using them to push the barrier of his core further and further, and then he'd started Forging his own.

At first, he'd wondered how a scale he'd Forged would help further his own advancement. It felt a bit like eating your own arm for sustenance. But it was quite simple, in practice: he Forged the madra, condensing it into a scale and setting it aside. Then he cycled to restore his madra to its peak condition and swallowed the scale again. Pushed beyond its capacity, his core stretched a little.

Gradually, by repeating that process over and over, he'd stretched his core to the limit of Copper. When his body was ready, he'd push the core just a little further, and then it would spill over and run through all the channels he was patiently preparing.

But that brought him back to the original problem.

He'd poured out his concerns to Yerin, who listened until the end. She'd kept him sane during these two weeks, though she was never as impressed with his accomplishments as she ought to be. To her, any sacred artist should be able to survive for a few weeks under constant attack.

Finally, when he'd finished explaining that he couldn't possibly finish driving madra through his body before he died, and she had to convince Eithan to release him, she sat in silence for a moment.

Then she said, “Have my eyes gone soft, or is it getting bright in there?”

At first he assumed that was one of her expressions, and 'bright' meant his situation was getting more hopeful. Then he looked at the walls.

Between the glow of Suriel's marble and the soft luminescence of the Remnant bodies piled around, it was actually quite bright in his little nook. So it took him a moment to realize that there were faint sparks playing inside the script that wrapped the chamber.

He contained his excitement. It really meant nothing to his situation, though any sign of change thrilled him. “Have you asked Eithan? Is he there, by chance?”

Eithan had said nothing to Lindon directly over the past two weeks. Not a word. Yerin had consulted with him a few times on an answer to one of Lindon's sacred arts questions, but otherwise he might as well have left. He spent his days with Yerin, locked in combat that Lindon could hear crashing through the door, and more than once Lindon had shed actual tears of envy.

Now, the light in the script meant the possibility of hearing from Eithan. And that conversation could be the key that opened the door.

Yerin left, and only minutes later, a new voice came through. Lindon closed his eyes, for a moment just savoring the sound of someone else's voice. It had been so long.

“I'm sorry to cut this phase of your training short, Lindon, but it looks as though someone has lit a fuse for us. They're fooling with the script, so power is flowing into empty chambers. Bad news is, this door's going to open soon.”

Lindon's spirits soared.

“But don't worry. The power is being drawn to the top of the pyramid, so every dreadbeast and Remnant in the Ruins will follow us.”

His spirits crashed back down to earth, and he almost cried.

The wait for the door to slide open felt longer than the previous two weeks. Lindon stared at the blank stone slab, every twitch of his body sending notes of pain through him like a symphony of agony.

Finally, the lines of script running along the wall flared brighter. Light grew along the bottom, and the door lifted away from the floor.

Tears welled in Lindon's one good eye, and he swiped them away. Better if they saw him as a grizzled survivor of suffering, rather than a boy waiting to be rescued. Though gaining a reputation as a coward would be worth it so long as they took him away.

When the door opened, Eithan was holding an arm over his nose. “I didn't expect you to smell of rosewater and lavender, but it would have been considerate of you to bathe.”

Lindon stared at him over the crude splints binding his two broken legs.

Yerin advanced without comment. Her hair had grown slightly uneven again, and the new sacred artist's robe that she'd received from the Fishers was little more than a collection of black tatters. She smiled at him out of one corner of her mouth and then stepped past him, gripping her sheathed sword.

With a grunt, she hauled one of the half-ruined Remnant corpses away from his wall and peered out. “Still scarce for now,” she said. “But we should scurry.”

Eithan looked Lindon up and down. “It's been hard on you.”

Lindon held his eyes very wide so he didn't tear up.

Lowering his sleeve, Eithan revealed a curious expression. “Was it worth it?”

With his less injured arm, Lindon pushed himself up straighter to slowly execute a seated bow. Sweat beaded on his forehead from the pain in his ribs, but he forced himself through it. “Gratitude, elder. This one cannot repay the favor.”

These two weeks had been the worst in Lindon's life, but half a month of agony was nothing compared to a lifetime of helplessness.

Now, he was on the verge of Iron. Iron might be nothing but a child's accomplishment out here, but his parents were only Iron. He hadn't even turned sixteen yet, so he'd surpass his sister.

If he returned to Sacred Valley, the Wei clan wouldn't just welcome him back. They'd reward him. He would be their new idol, the one they paraded in front of the other clans to show their superiority.

The idea was so sweet that it almost choked him.

Far more important was that he'd taken his first steps on the Path Suriel had shown him. He might really surpass Gold, and Eithan had helped him.

For that alone, he really did owe the yellow-haired man a debt he couldn't repay.

Eithan smiled broadly, pleased with his answer. “That's good,” he said. “Because it isn't over yet.”

Yerin glanced back over her shoulder, giving him a look of pity.

“You're only halfway through pushing madra channels through your entire body, so if you advanced to Iron now, you'd be crippling your own future. Lowgold would be difficult, and you may reach Highgold in your old age.”

Never would Lindon have thought that reaching Gold would be the lowest he would aim for.

“Even if you had finished, you will have reached only the most ordinary sort of Iron. If you were very gifted or lucky, perhaps you could reach the peak of Truegold. Underlord would be a distant dream.”

“Pardon my rudeness, but does that mean there's another option?”

Eithan's smile widened further. “You need a perfect Iron body.”

Lindon liked the sound of that. “Yerin mentioned that sacred artists prepared for each stage, but I’m afraid my family didn’t have such a custom. To us, Iron was Iron.”

“Well, contrary to what your family may have taught you, Iron comes in several flavors. Every serious sacred artist trains their body before advancing.”

Once again, Lindon was acutely aware that he’d missed something that everyone else considered common sense. “I’ll do whatever I have to,” he said. And then, a bit late, “…what do I have to do?”

“How did your master prepare you, Yerin?”

“I was probably seven, maybe eight,” Yerin said conversationally. “Master dropped me in a black pool, and it stung like fire. Water drilled right down into me until I thought I was dead for sure. Three days and three nights I squirmed like a worm on a frying pan, breathing through a reed. Then he let me out.”

She slapped one arm. “Steelborn body, he called it. You don't see much out of it until you're past Gold, but once you hit Underlord, it's supposed to be the best Iron body in the world for pure brute strength. Same one my master had.”

“And a wise man he was,” Eithan said. “A fine choice for you, and for your Path. Me, I was born with eyes faster than my hands, so to speak. I needed the reaction speed to keep up with my detection, so my family put me through the training for the Raindrop body. Poetic name; you're supposed to be able to thread through drops in a rainstorm without getting wet, though I've never found that to be true.”

“What did you have to do for that?” Lindon asked.

“I played games. Catching birds as they ran off, running as fast as I could, hitting balls back with sticks, that sort of thing.”

Yerin and Lindon both remained silent for several breaths.

“What can I say? Not everyone grows up suffering in the wilderness.” He leaned closer to Lindon, though he did pinch his nose as he did so. “We could give you your choice, if we had a month or two. But we don't, we need to move you very soon. Today would be ideal, since tomorrow I'd give you even odds of being devoured alive.”

“Ideal,” Lindon said. “Yes, I agree, that does sound ideal.”

“I thought your schedule would open up. Ordinarily I would give you options, as I said, but now we have to forcibly create more madra channels and prepare you for Iron in a single day. That narrows our conditions somewhat, so I would suggest the Bloodforged Iron body.”

Lindon perked up at the name. This one sounded like a legendary technique, something worthy of a powerful sacred artist. “We can do it here?”

“It's the same one the Sandviper sect uses for its initiates,” Eithan said, “though of course they call it the Sandviper body. They've really run themselves a rut when it comes to naming their techniques, I can tell you that. They use it to avoid killing themselves with their own venom.”

“If it makes you immune to poison, I can see how that might be helpful,” Lindon said. It wasn't as exciting as he'd imagined something called the 'Bloodforged body' would be, but he guessed it was practical. Especially if he had to cross through more Sandviper Remnants on the way out.

Eithan considered the statement for a moment. “'Immunity to poisons' is really an impossible concept. Any compound that harms the body is a poison, and there's no one solution for them all. What this will do is naturally draw on your spirit to accelerate your body's ability to restore and protect itself. It should help you against poison, parasites, diseases, infection, and so forth, as well as small wounds.”

Anything sounded good to Lindon compared to lying here in pain. “If that's what you recommend, then I humbly accept your advice.”

Eithan held up a finger. “Before you agree, you should know that there are two ways to create this body, but we're going to have to do it the fast way. And the fast way is terrible.”

Steel rang as Yerin's sword left its sheath. An instant later, a Remnant cry followed like a high note from a flute.

“Back to work for me,” she said. “But you want to speed things up, that would be golden.”

She dashed out of view, and the Remnant screamed again.

“I think it's time for the fast way,” Lindon said to Eithan, who nodded.

“That's what I thought too.” Then he pulled a squirming sandviper out from behind his back.

Lindon recoiled, pushing himself against the wall to get as far away from the creature. Its centipede legs kicked at the air, its serpentine head baring fangs as it hissed. Its carapace was tan and bright, exactly the color of a desert in the sun.

Eithan held it calmly, regarding the monster with something like fascination. “This isn't one of the corrupted dreadbeasts of this region, you know. It's a perfectly natural sacred beast, it just happens to be hideous. For the first step, you must allow it to bite you. Once the venom is in your blood, you can use your madra to guide it, and it will actually burn channels into your body that madra will be able to follow later. It's unbelievably painful, but it's quick, and you will heal once you advance to Iron. But you have to guide it yourself to keep it from running wild, which means you have to stay conscious.”

Lindon's mouth was hanging open in horror, but he didn't close it.

“It gets more disgusting,” Eithan continued. “As the Sandviper sect found out so many years ago, you also must drink the blood of the sandviper itself. It helps slow the venom's progress into your organs, making it easier to control. And slightly less likely that you will die.”

Fumbling for his pack, Lindon pulled out the sheaf of yellow papers that was originally the Heart of Twin Stars and was now his personal Path manual. A small brush and portable inkwell followed. He flipped to one of the later pages, filling in the details that Eithan had shared. The motion gave him time to think, with each stroke steadying his shaking hands. Even the pain in his damaged fingers faded as he worked.

Eithan waited patiently even as Yerin fought in the distance.

Finally, Lindon had finished recording, and his own heart had settled. If this was the path forward, he was going to walk it. He'd come too far to turn back now.

But first, he gathered up one of the straps on his pack and placed it between his teeth.

“I'm ready,” he said, voice muffled around a mouthful of padded leather. With eyes squeezed shut, he extended his wrist.

“Breathe carefully,” Eithan said. “Cycle.”

As Lindon did so, pain flashed like someone had stabbed through his arm. Then the venom came, and his blood burned.

If anything, Eithan had understated the pain.

Venom cycled in his veins along with every pulse of madra, and Eithan poured coppery blood through his clenched teeth. Lindon bit down on the leather strap through a mouthful of sandviper blood, and bit down just as hard on memories.

The mountains of Sacred Valley, knocked over like towers of sand. Everything he loved, washed away.

Li Markuth, like a monster in a world of children, and Suriel who could pack him up like an old toy.

If this pain was all it took to approach them, it was a small price.

Lindon pushed the venom everywhere he hadn't already worked his madra, forcing it into his muscles, his skin, even the very center of his bones. It was an endless moment, but still over sooner than he'd thought.

His aching jaw went slack, the blood-stained leather strap falling from his teeth. He panted, losing control of his cycling technique just to fill his lungs with oxygen.

He tried to open his good eye, but the lid wasn't cooperating. Now that he noticed, his limbs were moving out of his control; his fingertips twitched and his back arched as though someone else had tied strings to him and started to pull.

Finally, he wrenched his eye open and was distracted by his own flesh. Black veins stood out along his skin, tracing lines like a map over every inch of himself he could see.

“Is that all?” he croaked out, and Eithan stared at him for a moment.

Then he gave a pure, rich laugh.

“You tell me,” the man said finally, wiping a tear from his eye with one finger. “Not even I can sense your insides better than you can.”

Lindon closed his eye again, cycling madra to get a sense for his own condition. The venom had indeed permeated his own body...but not as thoroughly as he'd expected.

“I think I could fit some more in,” Lindon said, though half of him couldn't believe the words were coming from his own mouth.

Eithan shrugged. “I'm no Sandviper. I've only read about the Bloodforged Iron body. But if you don't think this is enough...”

He tossed the mangled corpse of the sandviper aside and reached into his outer robe, producing a second live specimen.

Lindon recoiled again, just as he had the first time. “Would you mind telling me where you're getting those?”

With his free hand, Eithan lifted the bloody strap to Lindon's mouth. “Once more,” he said.

Again, Lindon bit down on the padded leather and squeezed his eyes shut.

***

Five of the little sacred beasts had been all that Eithan could scrounge from the Ruins—it seemed that once they knew he was hunting them, they'd started to run away.

The fifth was still alive, squirming in his hand and sending out its madra to try and burn away his hand, but he kept it suppressed with his own spirit. The other four were dead, having been drained of both venom and blood. The husks rested on the ground at his feet, twisted and broken.

In that respect, they looked much like Lindon.

His body wasn't moving much anymore, as he'd run out of energy sometime in the night. When he twitched, it was like lightning moving through dead flesh more than any conscious attempt at motion, and his skin was all but invisible beneath swollen black veins. Sandviper blood ran from his teeth as his own blood ran from his ears, the corners of his eyes, and even sweated through his pores.

He'd lasted more than a day, which had left even Eithan astonished. His standards were high—too high, really—but this Copper had still surprised him.

Yerin had done well for herself too. She'd fought almost without rest for a full night and most of the next day, and was even now finishing off a pack of twisted dreadbeasts. He kept his eyes on Lindon, but it almost didn't matter; he could still see Yerin, shoulders slumped in weakness, dragging her sword behind her as she limped back to their little enclosure. She passed through their barricade on the stairs, eyes moving to check Lindon's condition...

...and Eithan stepped aside to avoid the sword plunging into his back.

“You buried him,” she snarled, heat in her eyes and aura gathering around the edge of her sword.

He held up both hands to show his innocence, forgetting for a moment that he held a live sandviper in one. That didn't paint the best picture.

“He asked me to!” Eithan protested.

The sword-arm on Yerin's back stabbed in Lindon's direction. She really was getting better with her Goldsign, thanks to his guidance. “He asked for this?”

Under other circumstances, Eithan would have had trouble believing it too. “I'm performing as instructed. If it helps, I'm as horrified as you are.”

Her eyes filled with disgust, and she drew her sword back, flooding it with madra for a strike that would be...at best, inconvenient to avoid.

Instead of dodging, he seized Lindon’s wrist, holding up the boy’s blackened hand. It was curled into a fist so tight that blood leaked out of the palm. Eithan scrubbed away dried blood and grit from a line of metal on Lindon’s finger: a halfsilver ring.

“Do you happen to know what this is?” he asked, and before she could respond, he answered for her. “This acts as a filter for madra, refining madra quality during the cycling process. But it makes cycling twice as hard, and it takes twice as long. Like running with weights strapped to your legs.”

Yerin’s narrowed eyes moved from him to the ring. “He put that on himself?”

Eithan released Lindon’s arm, wiping his hand with a cloth he happened to carry in his pocket. It was difficult to do with only one free hand, the other still clutching a sandviper, but he managed. “I’ll admit, I shut Lindon in this room without concern for his will. But he has kept that ring on every day since the door first shut. And now…”

Lindon spoke precisely on cue. “One more...” he grunted, his voice scraping through a ruined throat. “One more.”

Eithan shrugged at Yerin's look of astonishment. “As soon as he asks me to, I'll stop.”

Then, before the girl could react, he turned and thrust the sandviper's fangs into Lindon's arm.

He tore the creature's head half off with one hand, preparing to drip the blood into Lindon's mouth as he had done before, but the boy's back seized up. His eyes—well, the one eye not hidden by swelling—rolled up into its socket, and foam bubbled up quickly at the mouth.

“Ah,” Eithan said, setting the sandviper corpse aside. “That was too much.”

Yerin dropped her sword and fell to her knees, pressing fingers against Lindon's throat. “What's the cure?”

Eithan wiped his bloody hand off on Lindon's clothes, then fished around in his pocket until he grabbed the scale waiting at the very bottom. “The venom has escaped his control and passed into the heart, so he's dead.” He withdrew the blue crystal coin, holding it up for her consideration. “Unless we trigger the transformation to Iron.”

He hesitated a moment, considering the accuracy of his own words. Honesty was very important.

“There's always the possibility that it will take too long, and then he'll be brain dead,” he clarified. “He can't breathe like this, you see.”

Yerin snatched the scale from his hand.

Clutching it in her fist, she broke the structure and reverted it to madra, using her spirit to force a flow of blue-white energy into Lindon's mouth.

That wouldn't be enough. His madra wasn't cycling at the moment, and her soul wasn't strong enough to do it for him. Not quickly, anyway.

So Eithan did it for her.

He pushed his palm against Lindon's core—the one swollen with energy, ready to spill over and advance into Iron—and guided the scale's madra within. It flexed, resisting for a second before cracking like a broken dam.

The madra flooded all through Lindon's body, expelling all physical impurities and transforming him with the power of the soul. His core would condense and restore itself into a smaller, denser form, transmuted from Copper to Iron.

Eithan took a quick step back.

The Iron transformation was never neat or pretty, as the body expelled impurities through any medium, but this was particularly gruesome. Black blood oozed through Lindon's skin, his muscles convulsing beneath as though they were liquefying and pouring out. Black tears ran from his bloodshot eye, and apparently his throat wasn't quite as far gone as Eithan had thought, because his screams were deafening.

The black substance oozing from Lindon's body carried a stench like bodies rotting in a cesspool, so Eithan headed up the stairs to the relatively pleasant air. There were only a few corpses decomposing up here, so at least he might get a whiff of something clean.

He left Yerin to watch over Lindon. If the boy died, that would be shame, though it wouldn't set Eithan back much.

But he expected a better result.