Minutes passed in a delicate dance that required me to constantly adjust my stance and position in the circle of spirits. I hardened my aura with aspects I stole from the creatures and relied on the Thief’s Shield to ward off the worst of the attacks my enemies launched from my blind side. That tactic allowed me to push my attack against the spirits, killing several of them and weakening their circle. It also cost me a dozen minor injuries to my back and legs.
In the midst of the battle, something grazed my core. It was a gentle touch, gone almost before I registered it. My brow furrowed at the distraction. I didn’t have time to worry about something so minor when I was surrounded by hungry spirits.
The spirits became cannier as the fight wore on. They faded away from my assaults and surged in to claw and bite in concentrated attacks that penetrated the Thief’s Shield. The painful injuries they inflicted slowed my reactions and forced me to spend precious jinsei to stop the bleeding and restore my flagging strength. A trio of the foul creatures slammed into my left leg, howling with glee when their concerted effort staggered me.
“You need to fight,” I shouted to Tycho. That last attack had nearly brought me to my knees. “I can’t kill them all on my own!”
“We’re trying,” the sage called back. “We were ambushed, and they drained the jinsei from several of us. The hungry spirits are consuming the sacred energy from the area faster than we can cycle it into cores.”
Oh. That sucked.
I hadn’t noticed the drain because I’d stolen power back from the Locust Court killers through my serpents and with my Thief’s Shield. While the monsters’ attacks had physically weakened me, they’d bolstered my stores of aspects and jinsei.
I’d have to carry the weight of the fight.
That called for a new strategy. The Thief’s Shield was a powerful defense that stole from the spirits when they attacked. The sacred energy and aspects I gained from it let me fill my jinsei channels to harden my body against damage and accelerate my reflexes, and the aspects further reinforced my aura to strengthen the technique. Unfortunately, my enemies had figured out they could overwhelm the Shield with brute force.
I changed tactics, dropping back into a defensive posture, my fusion blade held before me. A series of wide sweeps cleared a gap in the circle of spirits, and I darted through it to put my back against a wall. My new position traded mobility for a narrower battle front. The spirits had to come at me head-on, now, and that meant they’d have to get past my weapon to do any damage.
The Locust Court proved too smart to fall for that. They pulled back into a cordon of teeth and claws, then raised their heads and howled a repetitive series of alien syllables. The sound tore at my ears and nerves, and even my Eclipse nature recoiled at the horrifying cry.
At first, I thought it was some sort of assault. Then the orange borders around the portal grew brighter and widened.
They weren’t attacking. They’d called for reinforcements.
Locust Court monsters poured through the portals into the courtroom. Their chitinous forms crashed into dead bodies and splintered furniture in a cacophonous hailstorm. They howled eagerly, ready to rip and rend.
“Jace,” Tycho called, his voice weak and ragged, barely audible over the battle cries of our enemies, “there are too many. They’re draining our jinsei faster than we can replenish it. Get out of here.”
“Too late,” I shouted back.
The wall of spirits around me had doubled, then tripled in strength. There was nowhere for me to run even if I wanted to. This was my last stand.
Last stand...
I remembered one of the stories I’d read about the Utter War. How a single Eclipse Warrior had held off unit after unit of Locust Court killers to save a retreating force of Resplendent Sun shock troopers. How had they done it?
A spirit leaped at my head, jaws wide and claws stretched out to flay my skull open, and I slashed its head off its shoulders. A cloud of jinsei blinded me for a moment, and two more of the creatures took advantage, rushing my flanks. The one on my right screamed when I cut its arm off, and it staggered away with sacred energy spurting from the wound. The one on my left, though, got past my blade and punched through the Thief’s Shield to open a shallow gash across my ribs.
The pain drove me back to the wall behind me, my hand clutched over the injury. It burned like fire. My Eclipse nature urged me to tear and shred. Nothing would have made me happier, but all I could think of was healing the pain with a flow of jinsei through my channels.
The spirits smelled weakness and moved in. Their mere presence drained the jinsei from the air and pulled threads of it loose from my core. There were too many. I needed more sacred energy to fight them. I activated my Borrowed Core technique to connect to more creatures, and a cascade of thoughts clicked into place.
That technique bound itself to cores, not creatures.
If I wasn’t careful, I could drain the cores I connected to.
I understood how that Eclipse Warrior had held off the Locust Court.
The technique didn’t want to do what I needed, and it took me precious seconds to force it to make the first connection.
The monsters had evolved to become the most efficient and ruthless devourers of jinsei in the many worlds. Their cores were perfect at taking jinsei into themselves, wasting not a drop of the precious energy.
They had no defense as a thread of sacred energy from my core slid into the closet Locust Court spirit. The Borrowed Core connection snapped into place.
The spirit was mine.
The monsters screeched when
