Chapter 16

As one of the highest-ranking representatives of the Sandviper sect, though he wasn't a Sandviper at all, Jai Long had the honor of supervising a young man's advancement to Iron.

He'd reluctantly bowed to tradition, on the condition that the ceremony could be conducted in a tent at the entrance to the Ruins. If the Arelius family had continued at their current pace, they'd be arriving sometime tomorrow. He and the Fishers believed they had figured out the last of the script around the final floor, but they wouldn't know until they tried.

It was a delicate time, but tradition wouldn't wait.

The boy's whole family had gathered to see this paragon of their younger generation receive his Sandviper body at the tender age of eight years old. It was an impressive sign of dedication for such a young boy. Jai Long himself had reached Iron before that, but he'd had resources the Sandviper sect did not.

Jai Long clutched the sandviper in one hand, his spirit clamping around the creature's powers just as his fist imprisoned its limbs. With the other hand, he delicately squeezed the gland around the serpent's fang.

A drop of venom swelled, and he wicked it off with a needle.

The needle went onto a jade plate prepared for the purpose. He set the plate aside and withdrew a bowl the size of a thimble. With one stray whisk of Stellar Spear madra, he sliced the sacred beast's skin.

A few drops of blood filled the bowl, and Jai Long replaced the sandviper in its cage.

This whole process was supposed to be accompanied by a ceremony as the boy learned the glorious history of the sect and his own place within it, but Jai Long went about his business in cold silence. No one corrected him. They were afraid of him, one and all; afraid of his status within the Jai clan, afraid of the stories that surrounded him when he'd been banished. Afraid of his strength.

Kral stuck his head into the tent, grin blooming. “Bren! You're a man of the Sandvipers today.”

The boy—Bren, Jai Long supposed—matched Kral's grin with his own. He seemed only too relieved to look away from the red-masked stranger in his tent.

After a few more compliments for the boy and his family, which instantly put them at ease, Kral walked over to Jai Long. He gave a low whistle at the sight of the blood. “That's not too much, do you think?” he asked, keeping his voice low to avoid spooking the child.

“I'm sure you had more,” Jai Long said, not bothering to lower his tone. The most talented young members of the sect received two or three needles of venom, with an appropriate amount of blood to go along with it.

“Most people don't,” Kral pointed out. Then he raised his head to look at Bren, and he raised his volume to match it. “But he'll be the pride of the sect in a few years. I'll do it myself.”

The boy practically shone with pride, which made Jai Long wonder why Kral hadn't just done this whole procedure himself.

The young chief gave a few ceremonial words, offered Bren the bowl of blood, and then—when the boy had settled into a cycling trance—pricked him on the wrist with the needle.

Bren's jaw tightened and sweat beaded on his brow, but he only grunted once. His father gave a proud smile.

For Jai Long's Iron body, he'd been forced to undergo a ritual that blistered all the skin on his body, broke most of his bones, and kept him in bed for three months afterwards. For a half-civilized sect that survived in the harsh Desolate Wilds, the Sandvipers were soft.

As Bren cycled in preparation for his transformation, Jai Long pulled Kral aside to give him a report.

“The Fishers have gotten us through most of the doors,” he said, and this time he did speak quietly. This was sensitive information, after all. “We think we have a grasp on the rest of the script, but there's still one door between us and the final chamber. I suspect there may be another way—”

The flap of the tent brushed aside, and a Sandviper charged in with his chest heaving and face bright red. No sacred artist would push himself so far beyond the bonds of his breathing technique without a good reason.

Bren's family frowned in disapproval that someone had interrupted their son's ceremony.

“On the horizon,” the messenger said, panting. “Come and see.”

Jai Long had a good guess what he'd see, and he dashed from the tent without a word. Kral stayed behind to give a word to the waiting family, but Jai Long dashed up the side of a nearby tower. Its unsteady wooden planks creaked alarmingly, but he reached the top in seconds.

With that vantage, he could see the hideous Desolate Wilds spread out before him. The Purelake was a glimmering sapphire, the rest of it a black mess.

Except for a small group on the horizon, which his Iron eyes picked out immediately. They were a motley bunch, dressed in different colors and styles, but it was the banner they carried that caught his eye.

Deep blue and white, with a black crescent in the center.

The Arelius family had arrived.

He leaped from the top of the tower, landing next to Kral. “We're out of time,” he said, ducking into the tent for just long enough to retrieve his spear. Bren was still cycling, oblivious.

He emerged with his weapon, and heard Kral already issuing orders.

“Gather the Fishers,” the young chief said. “Inform the Jai clan. We're going in now.” To Jai Long, he said, “And, uh...if we can't open the door?”

Jai Long gripped his spear in both hands. Up to this point, they had tried to avoid unnecessary damage to the structure of the Ruins for fear of disrupting the script. They were dealing with an incredibly powerful script-circle they didn’t understand; the slightest disruption could change nothing, or it could detonate the Transcendent Ruins with enough force to obliterate the Wilds.

He had commanded his teams to avoid even chipping away at the walls, for fear of hidden scripts. Until he gave the order.

“We will make a new one.”

***

Lindon woke to a splash of icy water.

He jerked upright, gasping, hands raised to defend himself from the blow he knew was coming. But the first thing to hit him was the stench—it smelled like a dead pig rolled in rotten eggs.

He rolled blindly away from the stink, but it followed him. His hands were resting in a putrid pool of black sludge and red blood, and more of it caked his skin.

His sister Kelsa had been covered in something similar when she advanced to Iron. Did that mean...all this came from his own body?

The puddle of filth had filled the entire space at the bottom of the stairs a finger's width deep, and it trickled out the open door. He couldn't believe it all came from his own body.

Another splash of water landed on him, squirted from the twisted seashell binding in Yerin's hand, and Lindon hurriedly rose to his feet. His pack rolled off his stomach, one leather strap severed in the middle.

He'd bitten through it.

He staggered as he stood, his balance shifting strangely. Every step seemed to take him too far, too quickly, and his body felt like it would drift off the ground and float to the ceiling.

“Cut that out,” Yerin ordered. She sent another stream of water splashing over him from the binding in her hand. “I'm trying to clean you off, and you're jumping around like a chicken.”

“You made it,” Eithan said, in a tone of clear surprise. He watched like Lindon's mother examining a new breed of Remnant. “A flawless transition to Iron. Amazing. I'd like to say you have my extraordinary guidance to thank, but...well, how do you feel?”

Lindon glanced at his hands, turning to consider the unbroken flesh. A dreadbeast had fallen on him, leading to twisted fingers, but you couldn't tell now. He took another step, gingerly testing for pain on his formerly broken ribs. He breathed deeply, cycling according to the technique Eithan had taught him.

Once again, his eyes filled with tears and he had to blink them back. But this time, it was because the pain was gone. He could stand.

Another spray of cold water blasted him, scraping away another layer of black.

Eithan rested his hand on a brown backpack sitting on the stairs beside him, safely away from the pool of sludge. “I transferred your belongings over. It's not quite as big as your original, but I...doubt you'll want to use that one anymore.”

His original pack, empty and slack, was soaked in blood and sludge, one of its straps dangling in two severed ends. His mother had made him that pack, slaving over bits of leather and patches of canvas for weeks as she would have a particularly complicated construct.

If she knew it had helped him reach Iron, she would have been overcome with joy, though it still felt like leaving another piece of home to die.

He walked over to his new pack—actually the one he'd taken from Fisher Gesha, used to store her spider-construct—and staggered as a single step launched him five feet closer. He caught himself in the stairwell, face-to-face with Eithan.

The yellow-haired man carefully pinched his nose and stepped up a stair.

Lindon reached up his hands to catch Yerin's next blast of water, scrubbing his skin on stone until it was clean. Then he rifled through his pack, looking for the spare clothes he'd packed.

When he reached the bottom, next to the tank of a happily playing Sylvan Riverseed, he remembered that these were his spare clothes. He'd never had the previous set cleaned, and they were missing from the pack. Eithan must have gotten rid of them, and Lindon couldn't blame him. But that still left him without anything to wear.

Lindon looked up to see Eithan holding something out to him: an expanse of pastel pink fabric embroidered with metallic thread-of-gold flowers.

“I noticed your deficient laundry situation, and I thought to offer you something of mine.”

Only then did Lindon notice the...elaborate curtain...was actually a sacred artist's robe. It didn't have an outer robe to it, but was all one piece, with loose sleeves and enough room in the legs that it wouldn't inhibit movement.

Under the circumstances, he couldn't complain. It didn't matter what the robe looked like, it was better than one he had on.

He glanced between the pink and gold ensemble in Eithan's hand and his own ruined set of bloody rags, considering.

“Yerin, if you don't mind,” Eithan said.

Her silver sword-arm flashed, briefly overlaid with light in Lindon's spirit-sense, and his clothes were slashed to ribbons. He snatched at them, trying to preserve some level of modesty.

She turned quickly, which surprised him to some degree. He'd thought of her as a Gold first, but she was still a girl his own age. Now that he thought of it, that might have been a blush coloring the back of her neck.

Eithan grabbed the twisted blue seashell from Yerin's hand and activated it, sending a flood of water gushing out. It didn't end until Lindon spluttered at him to stop, minutes later, every inch of his body scrubbed clean by the force.

Something bright fluttered toward him, and he caught the pink-and-gold robe out of the air.

“It's surprisingly absorbent,” Eithan said, “and it will dry before you know it. The threads are plucked from the mane of a sacred beast known by the natives as a 'Celestial Lion-Horse,' and it is both comfortably warm and pleasingly cool. I had to hire a whole family to work on it for months. It's supposed to be worn as the inner part of a set, but I'm forced to waste it on you.”

“Gratitude,” Lindon said, wincing as he wrapped it around his wet body. If it was that expensive, he hated to ruin it. He could sell it instead. How many scales would this buy him? Come to think of it, how many scales would it take him to reach Jade?

He chided himself for thinking of Jade so soon after reaching Iron, his hands moving automatically to fold and tie the robe.

Maybe it was the expensive fabric, but something felt strange.

He stopped halfway, considering. The robe was tight across the shoulders, and the robe—which he'd expected to reach the floor—only stretched to his ankles. He looked back up to Eithan.

“Do I seem taller to you?”

Eithan glanced him up and down. “Older is the word, I think, more than taller. Your muscles have developed further, and we need to get some food in you, because you've burned most of your fat in the transition. You don't look like a child spoiling for a fight anymore, but there's still...what do you think, Yerin?”

Yerin turned back around and considered him. “Like he's ready to tear into someone with his bare hands.” Coming from her, that sounded like a compliment.

Eithan moved his hand back and forth. “Eh...I'd say he looks like an evil sect leader's rebellious son.” He thought a moment longer and added, “Wearing his mother's robe.”

Lindon's response was cut off by something flying through the air toward him; his hand blurred as he caught it, body responding as fast as thought.

“I thought you might want that,” Eithan said, and Lindon opened his hand to see the wooden badge carved with the symbol for empty.

He stared into it as a tide of joy swelled in his chest.

After a few breaths of silence, he spoke. “It doesn't fit me anymore.”

He clenched his fist closed, crushing the badge with no more effort than it would take to smash a dry leaf.

The pieces spilled from his palm, landing like so much trash, but he tucked the shadesilk ribbon into his pack. It was still valuable.

Eithan slapped him on the back. “There's nothing quite like advancing, is there? It's like you're reborn.”

Lindon couldn't agree more, but he gave a humble bow. “I'm only glad to be past the pain.”

“We will have to get you something to eat soon,” Eithan reminded him. “Otherwise, your body will devour itself from the inside out.”

Lindon's look of horror must have been something to see, because Eithan gave him a pat of reassurance. “Nothing to worry about. We have a whole day, probably, before that starts to happen. Plenty of time. More urgently, our break time has ended.”

Yerin nodded and drew her sword, running up the stairs.

“The way forward opened while you were sleeping,” Eithan told him. “The only way out is now at the top of the pyramid, which just so happens to be where the Jai clan spear awaits. What fortuitous chance!” He flourished his wide sleeve, gesturing the way forward. “And a small army of dreadbeasts and Remnants stands in our way. What a wondrous opportunity for training!”

Lindon slid his pack onto his back and reached for the weapon he'd hacked from the Sandviper Remnant two weeks ago: the bright green severed stinger, longer than his own limb, with white cloth wrapped around its hilt to serve as a grip.

He grabbed it, habitually running madra into it to replace the essence it lost over time. It flickered with color in response, rippling brighter, and the motes of madra drifting upward slowed. He was very careful not to let his madra flow into the binding within; it was as dangerous to him as to anyone else, if he used it carelessly.

The severed stinger had never been a heavy weapon, but it seemed absolutely weightless now.

“I admit, I look forward to finding out what an Iron body is like,” Lindon said. That was not nearly enough to describe his feelings. He'd dreamed of Iron his entire life, which seemed to him to be when one really learned to use the sacred arts. And his weeks of agony stretched behind him like a long shadow.

He hungered to find out what that suffering had bought him.

“Fortunately for you, a perfect test awaits!” Eithan nodded forward, where Yerin stood with white blade bared in front of another doorway. And another set of stairs leading up.

Lindon had survived his weeks alone in the Ruins according to his usual methods: he'd trapped, dodged, or tricked every Remnant or dreadbeast that slithered close to his shelter. He'd killed his share of creatures for food, for resources, or in self-defense, but they had almost always been restricted by a script circle. He'd used the Remnant’s venomous needle to butcher helpless foes, not to fight.

So his heart pounded and his eyes twitched at every movement as they made their way up the stairs. Yerin walked ahead with blade drawn, seemingly unconcerned, and Eithan took up the rear. He was whistling.

These stairs were much longer than the ones where Lindon had set up camp, and wider too. They could have easily walked side by side and had room to swing weapons, but by tacit agreement, they all stayed away from the walls.

There were monsters in those walls.

Each stone block was missing a chunk in the middle, leaving a square tunnel onto darkness, and Lindon could hear things slithering or skittering across stone. It was the first drawback he'd felt in his new Iron body: yesterday, he wouldn't have heard the things crawling in the shadows.

It must be worse for Yerin and Eithan, but Yerin acted as though this were no more dangerous than a hike through the woods. A glance back showed that Eithan was walking with eyes closed as he whistled, palms laced behind his neck and elbows in the air.

They had only walked for one intense minute, the stairs spiraling upwards, when Eithan said, “On your right.”

Lindon jumped left and readied his scavenged weapon in both hands. Yerin only turned her head slightly to the right. As something bright red flashed out of the darkness, a Remnant with claws bared, her Goldsign flashed.

The smooth silver blade was a blur as it slashed the Remnant in two. Dead matter hissed as motes of essence escaped like smoke from a flame.

On some instinct that hadn't fully formed, Lindon started to open his Copper senses to feel the vital aura and search for another threat. A hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“Try not to stare into the sun,” Eithan suggested, then continued whistling.

After a moment, Lindon understood. The Remnants and dreadbeasts were gathering because of how thick the vital aura had become. Lines of script running along the top and bottom of the wall provided all the light they needed, proving that the script was fully powered. It would be funneling all the aura for miles into the room at the top.

“Behind you,” Eithan said, and Lindon staggered forward.

He spun just in time to see a monkey with rotten skin grabbing at his shoulder, its lips peeled back in the grin of a fanged skull. His hands moved before he told them to, swinging the stinger with all his strength.

He smashed the monkey to the ground.

With half a thought, he withdrew the weapon and stabbed again and again, puncturing the monkey's hide each time. It shrieked and clawed at the Remnant part.

And a pulse of red-streaked force billowed out from the monkey, catching Lindon and slamming him into the ceiling.

Like sacred beasts, dreadbeasts were effectively monstrous sacred artists, and every one of them had a level of advancement beyond his. This was not a mistake he would have made before hitting Iron, and for an instant he thought it had cost him his life.

But he hit the back of his skull against the ceiling and landed on his feet. More than the impact to his head, what stunned him was that he was...fine.

The strike to the skull had hurt, but more like being struck by a stick than slamming his head against a rock. And he hadn't had to try to land on his feet, as though his body had known what to do without him.

He shook himself awake—an instant's hesitation could prove fatal, when facing a stronger enemy—but the monkey just scurried back into its tunnel.

Some shrieking followed its exit, as though it had gotten into another fight just out of view, and dark blood splattered onto the stairs.

“Hm,” said Eithan. “They're certainly excited.”

Lindon and Yerin broke into a sprint at the same time. He didn't check to see if Eithan was following; he suspected the yellow-haired man would survive if he was dropped into a pit of Remnants with nothing but his bare hands.

More Remnants and dreadbeasts boiled out of the walls as they continued, and Lindon learned about his Iron body.

For one thing, if combat before had been like trying to stay alive in the middle of a panicked nightmare, now he felt as though he were tearing his way through a lightning-fueled dream. His hands moved faster than his thoughts, his weapon a green blur, and keeping up with Yerin's running pace was easier than walking. His hearing was so acute that every breath of air was a note in a symphony, and he spotted movements he would never have noticed before: the tense of muscles in a wolf's shoulder, the flick of a sandviper's tail.

Compared to his previous self, he felt unstoppable. His blood burned in his veins, and madra flowed steadily from his Iron core, his breathing even and measured.

At the same time, he saw the difference between Iron and Gold.

Just when he was feeling like a dragon in human skin, a pale gray Remnant with six arms boiled up from the depths of the tunnel, howling like wind through a forest. It seized his weapon in one hand, his empty arm in another, and both his legs as its head peeled back to reveal a gaping mouth.

Lindon struggled, but he might as well have still been Copper; it looked insubstantial and blurry, like a weak Remnant, but it still had physical strength far beyond his own. Scrabbling from behind told him that there was a dreadbeast coming from the other direction, and Yerin was dealing with two enemies of her own.

Eithan was still whistling with his eyes shut as he dodged four creatures, but Lindon couldn't count on him.

The hands squeezed tighter and tighter until Lindon's breath came too quickly to fuel his cycling technique. He tried everything he could think of until his wrist went numb, and the Sandviper stinger clattered from his hand. Only then did he scream Yerin's name.

She went from a black-and-red blur with a sword of white to utterly still in a moment. Her Goldsign flashed, and Lindon felt an invisible pulse move through him despite his spiritual senses remaining closed.

It was the technique she'd demonstrated before: the Endless Sword. But this time, she didn't hold back.

The Remnant was blasted away from him, shredded into a thousand shapeless pieces and a cloud of dissolving madra. The dreadbeast behind him didn't even get to make a noise before it was reduced to a chunky puddle, and Eithan quick-stepped forward to avoid the chunks of blood that his own enemies had become.

Five or six cuts appeared on Lindon's arms where the Remnant had grabbed him, flaring to life like fires after a lightning strike, but he was staring at Yerin. She took a deep breath, restoring her breathing before she spoke. “Everybody stable?”

Lindon nodded wordlessly and she took off.

He scooped up his weapon, vaguely ashamed of himself. Just because he'd let the power of an Iron body go to his head, he'd forgotten the sheer force of the sacred arts. Of all the weapons in a sacred artist's arsenal, physical strength was among the least. He might be able to compete with Yerin in the force of his grip now, but she could carve him into pieces with her will.

It was a sobering reminder, but it was also somewhat liberating.

He had something to look forward to.

It wasn't much longer before they reached the end of the spiraling staircase, and by now the constant attacks were taking their toll. He hadn't used much madra, having no techniques in his repertoire that would help against monsters, but Yerin was noticeably weakened. They'd both taken wounds, in contrast to Eithan, who continued whistling as though his surroundings didn't affect him at all.

At the end, with the snarling of monsters behind them, they reached a door.

It was a heavy slab of stone, just like the ones before, but this one was carved with an intricate mural. It was divided equally into four sections, each depicting a different sacred beast: a serpentine dragon on a cloud flashing with lightning, a crowned tiger, a stone warrior with the shell of a tortoise, and a blazing phoenix.

Though Yerin moved forward to place her palm against the door, he froze at the sight.

He'd seen this before.