Unsouled (Cradle Book 1) (35 page)

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.