“My master was.. particular. Though I had reached the heights of Highgold when I met her, she made me wait in a burning field where bloodthirsty sacred maggots spawned for three days and three nights before accepting me as her disciple. To this day I can’t look at a butterfly and wonder where it came from.”
—— Sendo Niao, the Sage of Burning Embers
I sat in the Sect’s library, a spread of tablets and Path-manuals slowly piling up before me on a table. I was tapping a fist against the dark wood of the grain, carved from an ancestral tree harvested in the South and my tapping was growing impatient.
Gai had spoken the truth two days ago; there were as many Iron bodies as there were stars in the sky, and though I had chosen something to complement my Path, that choice had only narrowed it down by a small degree. I had found five Iron bodies that either boosted a sacred artists strength, made their skin ‘unto stone’ as one manual put it and one interesting Iron body that reminded me about the Salamander Scale body.
The crossroad of Path, characteristic of madra and Iron-body was dizzying. If I went with a body that naturally healed itself, I would have only the average durability of an Iron body and the force of my madra to bear the brunt of hostile artists’ attacks. Then again, with a body that healed itself I wouldn’t need to worry about injuries.
I could go the other way around: pick a body that would pull on my core and make it harder. Combine that with the Stone Fortress technique and I might very well be able to shrug of the attacks of an artist a stage above me. The cut of it then, was that I would have only the average Iron-healing. Should I ever face a force that could overpower my defenses I would have to limp along- and if there was one singular truth in sacred arts it was this: there is always someone stronger out there.
Another approach was a body that made me physically stronger. The Stone Fortress would harden my skin, the Iron body would supply strength and put me in closer quarters with an artist I’d break them into pieces.
As with the other option I would only heal like a normal Iron-stage artist. And physical strength was the least impressive weapon in an artist’s arsenal. Though, with Forged stone madra, an Iron body-made for the pits and an Enforcer-technique meant turn an artists into a walking fortress…well, that was something.
Regardless, it was plain that I needed an Iron body. I took a breath, cycling as I did.
Adzei could have crushed me. Not discounting that very literal fact, his Ruler technique could have turned me into charcoal, Enforcer technique or not. Gai had healed me with a meaningful look, but the memory of the pain still remained, as did the casual humiliation. Iron would make me able to compete with him in physical strength, but the power of his madra would still see me dead.
I was tempted to pick an Iron body specifically meant to ward off heat or fire-based sacred arts, the better to fight Adzei and the Burnt Iron body which artists on the Path of the Dry Wind had tempted me. The specific ingredient for the Burnt Iron body, the vomit of harshcrows, was stored in the Vault of Fire. I cycled, growing further channels of madra inside my body, thinking.
I lacked access to that the Vault, though I knew Mifen, as a promising genius of the Sect, went there sometimes. Gai, being the healer of the Sect, too had a key.
Though, picking an Iron body with such a narrow ability seemed…shallow. The original Sinda Clan had been firefighters; it made sense for them to cultivate an such an Iron body, but why did the current incarnation of the Sect use it?
Huh. The longer I thought about it, the more I began to question it. Tradition?
In all of the time since the black dragons ruled and the Blackflame Empire had been black in truth, had no sacred artist found a better fit for the Path of the Dry Wind?
They must have. But..ah.
Tradition was as much vice as honor. No, I shook my head. A body for either healing or durability. I cycled more madra, meditating on the moment when Adzei had used his Ruler technique on me.
The heat laps at my skin like hungry Remnants. My skin turns red, then pink as my Iron body draws on my core and I exploit the surprise by punching Adzei in the face. He staggers, launching a Raging Wave at me. Another wave strikes me, and under the onslaught my still-healing skin cannot keep up. He activates his Ruler technique for a second time.
I cycled more madra, letting it permeate my body. Again.
The red-green aura washes over me, eliciting a grunt. It surges, burning, but my Iron body fuels my skin, turning it into skin of beaten metal. The Stone Fortress technique adds me another edge and I stride out of the heatwave and hit Adzei in the face. This time I take his Raging Wave in the face, neatly head butting him.
I opened my eyes. That was it. Rather than trying to shore up my weaknesses, I should be aiming for my strengths. A decision, and with it, a plan formed in my head.
I grabbed the manual written by the artist known as Ren Souken and began reading about the Enameled Iron body…
____
I swept a hallway, thinking through the paradox that was my dilemma. In order to leave the compound, I needed an Iron body. To get an Iron body, I needed to leave the compound.
I swept the corridor and slowly moved towards the disciples’ quarter. I swept and paused to cycle the Stone Fortress technique before one particular door, alternating as I did.
I began to count heartbeats. 1…2…3…4…5… Really, were none of them awake yet?
I released the Stone Fortress, and launched a nail-sized Striker technique at the wall. 5…6…7…8…9…10
Still nothing. I pulled as much vital aura as I could from beneath the ground, until my body held more aura than I could possible cycle- and the door opened.
Sinda Mifen glared at me. “What are you doing?” Her Goldsign, the orange feathers on her back, stirred in irritation. “I could sense you stirring the aura even in my sleep!”
I craned my head back and forth, sweeping the hallway with my eyes. “Can I come in?” Oh, most Jades and above could probably sense my presence, but a polite fiction had to be maintained. A thing not seen, was as the proverb went, a thing not being.
It was sometimes easy to forget Mifen’s age, but her eye-roll and the put-on-sigh betrayed her twelve summers. “If you must,” she said in a voice teenagers, even sacred artist ones all over the world used.
Her room was smaller than mine, on account of nobody wanting my parent’s old abode, but better furnished. A window of glass sat against another courtyard, from which I could hear disciples shouting, followed by the tell-tale sound of Raging Waves being used. A scripted disc had been nailed to the ceiling, shading the room in palettes of soft golden light. Her bed, sitting against another corner the left side of the wall, looked luxurious. I slept on sheets older than I were, but Monarchs preserve me if hers weren’t newer than my maimed hand.
Not by my own volition that injured limb shuddered; the sound of Raging Waves reminded me of pain.
“Does it hurt?”
Mifen sat on a small pouch placed in the right corner of the room. She gestured to one of the others pouches, and though I would never sit in the presence of a Gold without explicit permission I did so now. I didn’t have the standing to refuse, and the more, I needed something from her.
I raised the hand before her brown eyes. She scratched her head, displacing the short hair adopted by many female sacred artists.
“I…” she began, before pausing, her face set in a grimace to frighten Remnants. I could play on this- play on the indecision, the not-shame, this conflict of emotion that made war across her face.
In fact, a voice that was distinctly not my conscience urged me to do so. I could lever this into the reagents necessary to create the Enameled Iron body.
But I was interested in hearing what she was about to say, interested if whether the Blackflame Empire’s hypocritical notion of honor had become something she internalised or would admit to.
I inclined my head, staring at her. I would not make it easy.
“A Jade should be better,” she said obliquely. “Striking a rival Jade from another sect or clan would have been one thing. Attacking a Copper, an artist two stages below him…only a wicked artist would have done so. Maiming someone less than a Copper…” she trailed off.
Attacking a Copper would be like attacking a child, no matter that child’s actual physical age. Attacking someone that had not even reached Copper..was that like attacking a pregnant woman? An unborn child?
“It would be wrong,” I said, filling that last word with all the petty insults, the humiliating duties I had been forced to fullfil, the injuries I had taken in sixteen years.
“It would be wrong,” Mifen echoed, glancing at a constructed square sitting on her bed. It looked like a theatre - made from grey stone with steps rising up, with neatly drawn curtains in red.
In my Copper-sight it glowed: auras of earth, of dream and something I couldn’t judge. The scripts were intricate, flowing over the steps, twisting into circles on the curtains that hung above the stage. A Soulsmith had spent a lot of time on this.
Not quite ready to speak my favor, I pointed at the construct.”What’s the binding? What does it do?”
Mifen got up from her pouch and lifted the theatre-construct so that it was turned towards me. Before my eyes Scorchwind madra flowed in ribbons into the construct. Mifen put the square on the floor, and sat down on her pouch.
Three figures, each the size of my pinky rose on the ‘stage’ of the theatre. A blue sheet twined itself into existence above the figures head and scents of the earth and a faint of rustle of a breeze caressed my face.
Looking closer, I saw that the two of the figures were bigger than the third one, carrying it between them.
“It’s just something I put together, when I’m not cycling,” Mifen said with the reserve of artists everywhere.
Sinda Mifen was a Soulsmith?! It was not enough that she was one of the leading stars of the Sect, she was also a beginner Soulsmith- I thrashed that thought. Envy would get me nothing here.
“It’s beautiful,” I said quickly and Mifen looked at me, surprised. I was equally surprised; for I meant it. The figures might be crude clay, but in a decade’s time this construct might be worth money. I told her as such, and she began to blush.
“You didn’t come here to see my scrap-constructs, did you,” she said, waving the compliment away. I could see that she was pleased, though.
I thought back on the conversation we just began. “I..I came here to right a wrong. With your help…” I told her about the Enameled Iron body, about the things I would need from the Vault of Fire.
I had prepared dozens of arguments, all meant to persuade Mifen about my cause. In the end it only took the one.
“What will you do with Adzei? If I get you the things you need to advance to Iron, what will you do?”
I thought about the average sacred artist’s lust for revenge, about how the conflict between him and I was cyclical and had so little do with either of us.
“I will end it.”
I got up to leave, but was struck by an impulse. “The figures on the stage, carrying the smaller one. What do they represent?”
Mifen looked down on the stage. “I created this construct to remind me of a sunny day…”
____
I knelt before Ai Sarazu’s door, trying and perhaps failing to find the courage to knock again.
The first time had been instructive enough. I bit down on my lower lip and tapped the door, once. Something airy and breezy, a summer wind, passed me through. I stumbled up and down, falling on my ass. Again.
I grit my teeth, seizing the unruly madra in my channels and tried to force it under control. The Slow Drip turned my core into a placid bay-usually that was, but now the lake was rocking.
I synched my breath to my cycling and released madra in something that couldn’t be called a technique, but rather a mere release.
As my core emptied, the madra in it began to still. My suspicion was that the less madra I had to disturb, the easier it would be to control. I returned it into my core, piece by piece, heartbeat by heartbeat until I regained control.
Ai Sazaru, sacred artist on the Path of Sapphire Sky was ranked 48th among the Empire’s Truegolds. Forty-eight. A four, then an eight. In the entire Blackflame Empire, from the Trackless Sea to the Stonedeep Mines, from the Desolate Wilds to the Wasteland, less than fifty artists could make the claim to be her equal.
And she had done so with a Path of pure madra. Though the scripts she had carved into the door prevented me from entering, they didn’t actually hurt me. Oh, I had stumbled, and I was sweating now, but that was due to my spirit and my madra, and not actual physical wounds.
I supposed that I might damage my channels if I tried to enter the room too many times.
I knelt before the door and as my spirit calmed, I cycled.
I had time; my schedule demanded a certain amount of hours cleaning, but said nothing of how I spent those hours. I would wait until the door opened, and then I would make my request to the Skysworn.
Submitted January 12, 2019 at 12:37PM by SebastianLindblad http://bit.ly/2H9OaSZ
No comments:
Post a Comment