Chapter 20

“I have no grudge against you,” Whitehall said, the expression on his face far colder than anything a child should have produced. “I don’t even need the girl dead. I want the treasures of the Sword Sage, and nothing more. Here and now, with the heavens as my witness, I’ll swear an oath on my soul to leave you both alive. Furthermore, I will take you as my personal disciple. Whatever you are, you’re not a Jade yet, and in my care you will be.” He held the dagger out in a steady hand, waiting for Lindon to take the hilt.

To win, all Lindon had to do was delay while Yerin harvested her master’s Remnant. “Forgiveness, elder, but it seems as though…” He considered saying ‘this one,’ but it didn’t seem like time for humble speech. “…I have no reason to accept. If the Remnant is sealed, and I mean no disrespect, but Yerin will destroy you.”

“She’s more powerful than any Jade in Sacred Valley,” Whitehall said frankly. “But the battle has weakened her. I give myself even odds of defeating her, but whether I do or not, I hereby swear on my soul that I will first destroy your core. Unsouled or not, you will be truly crippled then.”

Lindon shivered, though he covered it by adjusting his robe against the cold. Unsouled were considered cripples, but they could still use basic madra. With his core destroyed, it would be as though he truly had no spirit—he couldn’t work with scripts or Remnants, and no elixir would save him. Some sacred artists spoke of losing their core as worse than death.

He still needed time.

“Yerin promised to take me beyond the valley,” he said slowly. “I’ve been weak for too long, and I won’t settle for the mediocre strength we have here.”

Whitehall’s eyes lit up, and his grip on the dagger tightened. “Exactly right. That is the heart a sacred artist should have.” He waved his hand around them. “Even this place is built on foundations deeper than we’ve ever explored. Our elders stay Jade because they’re too afraid to risk what they have and dig deeper. I am not.”

From outside, there came a crash, and the sound of metal bent past breaking. Whitehall’s expression hardened. “Choose now. Join me and rise, we’ll leave together, or else I’ll cripple you and take my chances against the Sword Disciple.”

Lindon prided himself on thinking through his options. He had sworn an oath to Yerin, but he wasn’t even Copper. Whatever oath the heavens extracted, it wouldn’t destroy his core.

But though he remained at the Foundation stage, there was some iron in him that would not bend.

He was not a coward. He would not abandon Yerin to captivity. And, more than anything…

“This is my second life,” Lindon said. He pushed off from the cloud, balancing on his own exhausted feet. Whitehall’s eyebrows drew in, but Lindon didn’t care to convince him. “It was a gift from the heavens, and I’d rather die than waste it.” He shrugged. “At least I’ll die trying.”

He stood proudly before Whitehall, tired and weak, his empty hand bared. He had no cards left, no tricks left to play. There was a certain peace to it.

Whitehall’s face twisted in disgust, and he tossed the stolen dagger to the floor. “Trash.” That was all he said. He covered the distance between them in a single step, his palm striking Lindon just below the navel.

And in the last instant, in that knife’s edge of time during the elder’s attack, Lindon remembered that he did have one more card after all.

The Heart of Twin Stars cycling technique had been preparing his core for months now, but he’d always stopped before that final step. Now, as Elder Whitehall injected his burning madra into Lindon’s core, Lindon activated the technique.

He tore his core in half.

The agony was unspeakable, beyond physical, and his scream shook every corner of the Ancestor’s Tomb. Whitehall’s energy flooded into his body. The Empty Palm was only remarkable as a technique because it allowed a sacred artist to affect an enemy on the same level. A Jade did not need a technique to destroy the spirit of an Unsouled; he would simply overwhelm the weaker core with power and let it burst under pressure.

But if Lindon’s core exploded, he didn’t feel it. The agony of tearing it in two blanked everything, washing his world in white. He collapsed to the stone floor, and he welcomed the pain in his body.

When he came to, Whitehall had only taken one step to the door. The skin of Lindon’s stomach was scorched where the palm had struck him, and his spirit cycled rapidly on its own, trying to rid itself of the foreign Heaven’s Glory madra. His veins felt like they were on fire, but even that was a relief next to tearing apart his core.

And when he thought of the core…

His spiritual sense dipped down to the center of his spirit, where two dim balls of light floated inside him like blue-white stars. Weak, but whole and unharmed.

After only a blink of thought, he understood why: when the cores split, they had moved. Where once he had one in the center of his body, now he had one a half-inch to the left and one a half-inch to the right. Whitehall had missed. Heaven’s Glory had entered his body, but it had only burned him. He wasn’t a cripple. At least, no more than before.

He wasn’t any stronger with two cores, of course, and in fact cycling would likely become twice as difficult in the future. But he had one crucial advantage: Whitehall wasn’t watching.

And no matter how strong his Jade spirit made him, he was still in the body of an eight-year-old boy.

Summoning strength from the depth of his spirit, scrounging for every scrap of madra, Lindon rose to his feet and lunged. Before Whitehall could react, Lindon had wrapped both hands around a small waist.

Then he lifted Elder Whitehall into the air.

The elder screamed incoherently as Lindon staggered over to the wall. A shoe caught him in the nose with a crunch, sending blood streaming into his mouth. Lances of Heaven’s Glory struck the painted ceiling, the pillars, the walls, but none reached Lindon. A flailing fist hit him in the side of the head, and the world around him spun. He limped forward, hoping he was going in the right direction.

When the floor fell out from under him, he knew that he’d chosen well.

They pitched out the hole in the side of the wall that Yerin had accidentally opened. Whitehall tumbled away from him, grasping at air with one hand as golden light shot from the other. His eyes met Lindon’s, and he looked pitifully like a confused, terrified boy.

While Lindon couldn’t deny some anxiety, he’d fallen too many times in the last few days. He’d learned to expect it. This time, he’d planned ahead.

He caught himself on the edge of a floating red cloud.

It had taken him the very last drop of strength to drag the Thousand-Mile Cloud along behind him, and when he hauled himself up to its surface, he collapsed in utter weakness. This time, finally, he had absolutely nothing left. No madra, no strength. Even his eyes were covered by tears, his nose and mouth filled with blood, his ears deafened by rushing wind. He drifted as if in a dream, feeling nothing but pain and gratitude for life.

Unguided by his spirit, the cloud drifted slowly toward the ground.

Hundreds of feet beneath him, Elder Whitehall’s body hit the rocks. He swiped tears from his eyes for a better look, horrified that the elder might survive, but then a golden Remnant wrenched itself free of the boy’s corpse. It was a twisted dwarf, a deformed imp drawn in shining yellow lines.

It would be poetic, Lindon reflected, if I killed a Jade just to die at the hands of his Remnant.

Not all Remnants were malicious, but Lindon had the suspicion that Whitehall’s likely would be. It didn’t drift away, but sat on its haunches like a frog, watching Lindon’s cloud descend.

Here he was, with no options left, waiting to slowly slide into inevitable death. It was not how he had imagined dying, but he hoped the story would make it back to his family. They would be shocked at how far he’d made it.

A weight slammed into the Thousand-Mile Cloud, bringing a veil of darkness over Lindon’s eyes, and then the same weight settled on him, pushing his pack into his bruised back. A choked gurgle escaped from his mouth as his breath was forced out under the pressure.

Yerin pulled her outer robe away from his eyes, leaning down to look at him upside-down. She looked…horrifying. He’d thought she looked halfway dead before, but with the fresh blood on her face, she looked as though she’d crawled out of her own grave.

“Don’t fall,” she said, and Lindon took her advice, hugging the cloud to his body.

Her madra filled the construct, and it lurched back into the air. It didn’t seem to want to rise, but she forced it up, jumping it back to the cliff in a series of awkward jerks. Finally, it slid through the gap in the Tomb wall and they both spilled out onto solid ground.

“Gratitude,” Lindon said between breaths.

She raised a hand in acknowledgement…and a steel limb lifted along with it. It looked exactly like one of the six blades on the back of the Sword Sage’s Remnant, and now it dangled from Yerin’s back like the single leg of a spider.

“Is that what Gold looks like?” he asked.

Yerin began to fumble around in her robes, searching pockets. “If my memory’s true, master left me…” An instant later, her hand emerged with a badge of solid gold. In the center, there was a simple picture of a sword. She slipped the ribbon over her neck and held the badge, examining it.

He collapsed onto his back, wallowing in pleasant relief. He hadn’t wasted his life yet. And now he had a Gold on his side.

“Do you trust me now?” he asked.

“More than none,” she responded. She heaved herself into a seated position, and the new limb on her back bobbed with her. “Real test hasn’t even arrived yet.”

Lindon craned his neck, looking out the door, and he almost cried. Three other rusty clouds had come to a stop, carrying men and women in white robes. “Oh look,” he said. “There it is now.”

Yerin didn’t seem to hear him. She was kneeling in the corner of the Tomb, next to something he hadn’t noticed before: the body of a man in black robes. The stone around him was charred in a long, black line, and a sword lay bare beside him. Its blade seemed unnaturally white.

She bowed so deep that her forehead touched the ground. Three times she bowed, as the first man from Heaven’s Glory ran through the door. His hands were glowing golden, and his Jade badge marked him as an Enforcer. Enraged eyes fell first on Lindon.

“Disciple, report!” he demanded.

Then Yerin rose from beside her master’s body. She had left her own sword with him, and was sliding the white-bladed one into a sheath at her side. The silver blade on her back rose like a scorpion’s tail, and she turned her scarred face toward the Heaven’s Glory elder. A gold badge dangled from her neck.

The Jade scrambled backward so fast that it looked like someone had kicked him. He screamed for the others to stop, to back up, to surround the tomb.

Lindon had discovered that he could only stay tense and afraid for so long before his body just grew numb. Yerin could frighten Heaven’s Glory away from the Tomb on her own, and if she couldn’t, it wasn’t as though he would be a great help.

So he was free to pursue an idle theory that had bothered him for some time.

From his pack, he withdrew the Starlotus bud. It was pale white with streaks of pink, the sort of pure color that he normally associated with Remnants, and its petals were curled into a half-bloom, as though it had frozen in the act of opening completely. It was a natural work of art.

He bit it in half.

It tasted like sweet grass with a slightly bitter undercurrent, but it dissolved like sugar on his tongue. He swallowed it in seconds, crossing his legs and straightening his back into a cycling position.

“They have to pull the tiger’s tail, don’t they?” Yerin said. “If they want their share sooner rather than later, I’ll…what are you doing?”

The energy of the spirit-fruit—was it still a spirit-fruit if it was an edible flower? He assumed so—showed in his mind’s eye as a bright pink-tinged white. It dispersed in his stomach, flowing around his spiritual veins in a river of lights that tickled as they traveled. When they had traveled around his body, they tried to enter his core.

Or rather, his cores.

When he had first read the Heart of Twin Stars, he’d theorized a few uses for the technique besides defense. He hadn’t been able to test them without ripping his core in half, but now he had his chance.

While keeping one core tightly closed, he directed the Starlotus madra into the other.

The right-hand core grew brighter, stronger, immediately nourished by the spirit-fruit. It had a small effect immediately, but many of the pale pink dots stayed in the core, tickling him from the inside out. They would be digested over the next days and weeks.

When he’d finished gathering the Starlotus energy into one core, he inspected the other. It was totally clear.

He emerged from cycling with a bright smile on his face. Yerin laughed at him. “You look like you just tore that elder apart with your teeth.”

He rubbed at his front teeth, and his finger came back sticky with blood. He spat out a mouthful, but his enthusiasm was undimmed. “I took half the Starlotus.”

A lance of gold shot through the door, and she dodged to one side, baring the white blade in her hand. “You thought now was the opportune moment to fuzz up your core?”

Lindon climbed onto the Thousand-Mile Cloud, beckoning her to join him. “We’re not fighting, and I wanted to test a theory.”

“If Heaven’s Glory wants me to spill some more blood, I’m not telling them no.” Yerin strode over to the open door, her master’s pale blade to one side.

Even to Lindon’s numb heart, some feeling returned. Panic. “We have to leave now. They won’t follow us outside the valley.” She wasn’t listening to him, so he added, “What would your master say about throwing your life away here?”

She deflected another lance of light, but she didn’t leave the Tomb. “He’d say if I killed one of them for each of my fingers, I could die proud.”

Of course he would.

Lindon considered a number of approaches. His first instinct was to shout at her, reminding her of her oath. He considered begging, bargaining, even leaving her and taking his chances outside the valley.

Quietly, he said, “Please don’t leave me to die.”

She flinched visibly, even as a trio of Heaven’s Glory enforcers came up the stairs, their hands shining gold. The grip on her sword shifted. She leaned forward, then back.

With a growl, Yerin swept her white blade across the doorway to the Tomb. The colorless sword energy hung in the air at neck-height, frozen in place even as she turned and ran toward him.

“You can go rot,” she said, shoving him to the back of the cloud and hopping in front herself. “But bleed me if I’m leaving anybody. Not even you.”

***

On their way out, Yerin sliced another pillar. The Ancestor’s Tomb groaned, cracked, slowly crumbling under a lack of support. As they flew out the hole in the wall, the ceiling tilted and collapsed into a landslide of rubble, delaying Heaven’s Glory.

And interring the Sword Sage forever in his killer’s tomb.

They slid down the other side of Mount Samara on the Thousand-Mile Cloud, and as Yerin steered them down the slopes, Lindon kept his eyes on the scenery at the bottom. It was a rolling ocean of green, and every once in a while something stuck its head up over the treetops like a fish breaking the water’s surface.

He drank in the sight, because it was one no one in the Wei clan had ever seen. This was the land beyond Sacred Valley.

“If you’re through with the other half of that flower,” Yerin called back, “I’ll give it a home myself. It’ll do anybody’s spirit some good.”

“Apologies, but I still need it. The other half only went to one of my cores.”

“…you’ve got two short breaths to explain that before I push you off and let you roll down.”

So Lindon explained the Heart of Twin Stars. It turned into something of a winding story, as he had to explain the orus spirit-fruit, his fight with the Mon family, the Empty Palm technique, and eventually the Seven-Year Festival.

“As soon as I found this manual, I had an idea. If I could separate two different types of madra into different cores, then maybe I could learn two Paths!”

“Two Paths,” Yerin repeated. She didn’t sound nearly as excited about it as he was. “That’ll cost you twice the work. You’re having enough trouble with one Path as it is, I wouldn’t scrape yourself too thin trying for two.”

“I’m sorry, you must have misunderstood. I’m not on a Path. They wouldn’t teach me. I’d be open to learning a sword Path, if you had some extra time…”

She turned to him, her scarred face still streaked with blood. “This is why my master would have killed your clan elders.”

“Because they didn’t teach me a Path?”

“I’ll feed it to you in small pieces. You saw me stick solid sword-madra in the doorway, true?”

“Right,” he said. “Uh, true.”

“What kind of a technique do you contend that is?”

“It’s a Forger technique,” he said.

“And when I throw madra out of my sword?”

“Striker.”

“And when I call up aura from every sword in the room?”

That was a Ruler technique, and he saw where she was heading. “I know about all that. Some of the elders in my clan can use techniques outside their discipline.”

She nodded along. “Since you know, then answer me this: if anybody can do anything, what does your spirit matter?”

“Anybody can’t,” he said. “Most people can only learn a technique if their spirit has an affinity for it.”

“Is that true? That’s a mind-bender for me, then, because Heart of Twin Stars sounds like a classic Enforcer technique.”

He paused, because he wasn’t sure. Enforcers could use their madra to make themselves stronger, and their techniques had to do with strengthening the body…but the core was part of the body.

“Here’s another riddle for you. That Empty Palm you worked out? Looks to me like a Striker move.”

“It only reaches a few inches.”

“It’s a rotten Striker move, then, but a runty cub is still a tiger. See, your test everyone in Sacred Valley loves? That bowl of liquid madra? It’s a rotting trap of a test, and it’s filled you all up with lies.”

Lindon’s breaths were coming more and more quickly until it felt like he couldn’t breathe.

“That test doesn’t show you what you are. It shows you what you’re best at. Shows where you start, not where you end up. You start as a Forger, well cheers and celebration for you, that means you’ll have to work extra hard as an Enforcer. Outside of the valley, you don’t get to call yourself a sacred artist until you’ve at least learned the basics of all four disciplines and harvested a Remnant. To my eyes, every one of your elders is still in training.”

“So then…how could I be…”

“Unsouled?” She shrugged. “Never heard that word before coming here. You just started two steps behind, that’s the spine of it. Nothing worth crying about. Some of them polished families can take a squalling baby from Foundation to Jade in two and a half pills. It’s practicing your Path that’s hard, and it sounds to me like you’re halfway through with yours.”

For a long time, Lindon couldn’t say a word. The truth blasted through him, leaving him numb. He didn’t need to find a Path of his own.

He was already on it.

The wind pressed icy needles against eyes covered in tears, and suddenly he was scrambling through the pack on his back, digging out the Heart of Twin Stars manual. It was only halfway complete; the rest of the pages were blank. While Yerin asked him what he was doing and if he was crying, he juggled the manual, a brush, and a jar of ink. Anyone who founded a Path was expected to take careful notes, to pass their knowledge on to future generations.

With careful hands, he wrote at the top of the page:

The Path of Twin Stars.

EPILOGUE

Information requested: current status of Wei Shi Lindon.

Beginning report…

Wei Shi Lindon and Yerin, Disciple of the Sword Sage, leave Sacred Valley on the back of their constructed cloud. They plan to hide and rest before moving into the forest. Sacred beasts the size of buildings prowl in the shadows beneath the leaves, and even Yerin has no confidence in her power to protect them both. She knows that only if they are stealthy and quick will they survive, and then only if nothing goes wrong.

She is not aware that the Transcendent Ruin has risen in the heart of the forest, for the first time in eight hundred years. Its promise calls to sacred artists for thousands of kilometers around…and to the other, older, darker things that wait in the surrounding wilds.

DIVERGENCE DETECTED: the Desolate Wilds, Transcendent Ruin. Continue?

Divergence accepted, continuing report…

On the peak of Mount Samara, a crippled Heaven’s Glory elder named Anses picks through the ruins of what he calls the Ancestor’s Tomb. His pride is trampled, the power of his school has been questioned, and now it seems that they have created for themselves a powerful enemy. The Sword Sage’s disciple will return, he knows, with greater force and with vengeance.

But despite his certainty, he has a deep-seated fear of the wilderness outside Sacred Valley. He could not survive it, and therefore he believes no one could. In his judgment, the Sage’s disciple must have doubled back. Where will she go if not to the home of her ally, the Unsouled Wei Shi Lindon?

He crafts a message to his fellow elders, urging them to march with all their flagging strength on the Wei clan.

DIVERGENCE DETECTED: the destruction of the Wei clan. Continue?

Divergence accepted, continuing report…

As the members of the Heaven’s Glory School excavate their ancient tomb, a five-tailed snowfox the size of a man waits nearby. He is soundless, scentless, his presence masked to both sight and spirit. He is an ancient sacred beast, one of the original inhabitants of this valley, and he is only seen when he wishes to be.

He has followed the Unsouled Lindon since the intervention of Suriel, the Phoenix, Sixth Judge of the Abidan Court. Though he does not remember the events prior to her temporal reversion, he has noticed the effects of her involvement and believes that Lindon is favored by heaven. He watches the two young sacred artists leave the valley, and for the first time in centuries, he experiences hope. Maybe these children, blessed by the heavens, will save the valley from the Dreadgods’ return.

DIVERGENCE DETECTED: return of the Dreadgods. Continue?

***

Iteration 217: Harrow

[Divergence denied,] Suriel’s Presence said. [Report complete.]

The reports came to her in a mix of words, images, and impressions, retrieved by her Presence and transmitted to her in an instant. She’d looked into Lindon’s past, his surroundings, his upbringing, even his future. He was an interesting distraction.

Her Presence told her he had a seventeen percent chance of surviving the Desolate Wilds, a four percent chance of making it past Gold, and a zero-point-three percent chance of ascending beyond Cradle.

But in every world, in all the thousands of variations on humanity the universe spun out, people always loved to bet on the underdog.

She would return to the reports later, but although they took virtually no time, they did take her attention. She needed to focus now, to treat the situation with the gravity it deserved.

Makiel was coming. And the First Judge of the Abidan Court demanded all of her concentration.

Her hair had been restored to its radiant emerald shine, her eyes to vivid purple. She drifted in high atmosphere, waiting, as fiery chunks flew out from the planet and past her into space.

This world was beyond healing.

A glimpse of rolling, textured blue, and someone stepped into reality. Not Makiel, as she had expected. This man was young and compact, with dark blue skin and rows of tightly packed horns instead of hair. Gadrael, Second Judge and Makiel’s loyal right hand.

He was dressed as she was, in the seamless white armor of any Abidan on active duty. The Mantle of Gadrael streamed from his shoulders like a furiously burning cape of pure starfire, just as the Mantle of Suriel hung from her own. Instead of her correlation lines, which trailed from her fingers like ribbons of gray smoke and connected to the back of her neck, he carried a black circle strapped to his forearm like a medieval buckler.

He’d brought his weapon, primed and ready for use. She summoned her own, the meter-thick bar of blue, but he held up a hand. “Peace, under the Way.”

She clipped the weapon to her waist without banishing it. He wouldn’t violate a truce, but he’d been too quick to offer one. “Tell Makiel I haven’t found him. My Presence can give him a full report.”

“He knows. He’s looking himself, since you remain unmotivated.”

The barb didn’t disturb her, but the content of his message did. She’d been sent to hunt for Ozriel because she was the only one of the Seven capable of finding him without being killed on sight. If she tracked him down, Ozriel would talk to her.

If Makiel found him, they would kill each other.

Gadrael waited for the reality to settle on her. “He thought that would convince you to search. If that wasn’t enough…” he turned to the burning planet. “…this might be.”

The planet beneath them fuzzed and flickered with visual static, even as it burned. Continents appeared in the ocean, vanished, appeared again. Water plumed kilometers in the air, calmed, shot up again. A city rose from the ocean in ruins, and then was drowned.

When one world crashed into another, this was the result. Time, space, and reality itself bent and warped while the Way tried to force order out of the collision’s pure chaos.

“Which one is it?” Suriel asked quietly. She could have asked her Presence, but she wanted Gadrael to hear the question.

“Iteration two-sixteen, Limit. It was scheduled for demolition no later than two standard months ago, its adept population already evacuated.”

But they had no one to remove it, with Ozriel gone, so now Limit had dragged Harrow with it into the void.

“Quarantine protocols?” she asked.

“Effective. I implemented the walls myself.” So no other worlds would be drawn in to this disaster. “It only escalates from here. If we don’t recover Ozriel, or at least the Scythe, we could lose it all.”

He wasn’t wrong. This was Sector Twenty-One, but if it was happening out here, it was potentially only days away anywhere. Sector Thirteen, where she was born. Sector Six, with its rich history and gorgeous natural art. Even Sector Eleven, with one-one-zero. Cradle.

Important worlds like Cradle, Haven, Sanctum, and Asylum would be protected. Even in the event of total system collapse, the Abidan would collect and quarantine these worlds, their last bastion against the infinite chaos.

But in times like this, anything could go wrong. Cradle might be safer than anywhere else, but it wasn’t safe.

“Acknowledged,” Suriel said. “Designation zero-zero-six, Suriel, formally accepts the charge to locate and withdraw zero-zero-eight, Ozriel, under censure.”

Gadrael nodded, his expression firm as granite. It always was. The Way would crumble to dust before he smiled.

She accessed the Way, drawing flows of pure order around her as she prepared to exit Harrow, but the other Judge didn’t follow. He stood on nothing with his arms crossed, black buckler facing the dying world.

“What is your mission here?” Suriel asked.

“Mercy,” Gadrael said.

She stopped. The tendrils of layered blue returned to the Way. She had faced patients in the past that were too far gone, where the only comfort she could offer them was a painless end. She had gained her power, in a large part, so that she never had to face that again. Now even death was no barrier to her healing.

And it still wasn’t enough.

“A shield is meant to protect,” she said. “It’s not an appropriate tool for this.” She drew her weapon.

Gadrael nodded, his arms still crossed. She wondered if this had been Makiel’s plan all along, to make her face the reality of the situation by dirtying her own hands. It wouldn’t change anything either way. This was still her duty.

Heart aching, she activated her sword.

THE END

Cradle: Volume One

Unsouled

Lindon’s story will continue in…

SOULSMITH

Cradle: Volume Two

Available soon!