That wasn’t the way the world was supposed to work. That wasn’t what the Flame had ever intended.
It was time to find a new way.
I leaned back in my chair, crossed my arms over my chest, and waited.
Finally, the rat spirit shook his head.
“I can’t tell you what to do, but I will help you,” Hahen said.
“Me, too,” Niddhogg said. “Whatever you need, Jace.”
One by one, my other friends nodded. Even Eric finally agreed.
“So,” I said, “it’s decided.”
It was time for us to take the reins.
It was time to make a better world.
The Inquisitor
MY FIRST DAY WITH THE librarian, Garfield Tanoki, was more exhausting than I’d imagined possible. He seemed much less interested in teaching me scholarly pursuits than invested in getting me to do all the grunt work he could dream up. I spent hours finding misplaced books and sticking them in the right positions on the shelves. On top of the world’s most boring game of hide-and-seek with inanimate objects, Mr. Tanoki tasked me with hauling what felt like several hundred pounds of damaged books down to the workshop for repair. By the time I was released to scrounge up dinner for myself, I was too wrung out to care about food. I hauled myself back to my room in the dorms and flopped down on the bed.
Only to jump right back off with a startled yelp and one hand clamped to my lower back.
Something sharp had poked me, hard enough to hurt even through the natural defenses offered by my advanced core. My probing fingers found the stinging wound and came away with blood smeared across their tips.
Frowning, I pulled the sheets back. My eyes widened when I saw what had stuck me.
“How’d you get here?” I muttered as I lifted it off the bed and held it up to the light.
The orichalcum key shone with an inner fire. One of the teeth had bitten into me when I flopped down, and now my blood was smeared across the metal.
My new serpents appeared and lifted the key out of my hands. They moved with mechanical precision, their sharp tips applying just enough pressure to hold the object without damaging it. They seemed to know what I needed before I did and raised the key to my eye level so I could get a better look at it.
I couldn’t remember when I’d last seen the key. I’d used it to open the orichalcum pathway that led us to the final challenge of the Empyrean Gauntlet. And then...
My memories ended there. I had no idea where the key had gone, or how it had wound up in my room.
The key blazed with crimson light, and my blood vanished from its surface with a sharp crack and a whiff of ozone. A technique burst from the object and slammed into my chest. The surprise attack hurled me to the floor and pinned me there beneath an immense pressure.
My ribs creaked under the force that held me immobile. My serpents flailed uselessly at the air, like the legs of a wounded spider. The attack had knocked me almost senseless; I couldn’t breathe, much less examine the technique for an escape from its merciless grasp.
A dark and malignant power uncoiled from the key. Thick vapors emanated from the key’s heart and formed a perfect circle in the air above me. Shadows flooded into the center of that circle, filling it with a smooth, mirror-like darkness.
“Ah, there you are.” Brother Harlan’s face appeared in the black circle. His eyes were fixed on me, silver lines of jinsei crawling around the irises. “You keep finding new ways to trouble me.”
There was no breath in my lungs to respond. Instead, I focused on the technique that had pinned me in place. It was a powerful construct, protected by armored aspects and imbued with enough power to take down a horse. There was no way brute strength would be enough to get me out of this.
“All you had to do was nothing,” Harlan said, disgust obvious in his voice. “That’s it. Just do nothing. Wait for your betters to make the important decisions. But you couldn’t even obey that simple command.”
The priest’s words infuriated me. Do nothing. Let the dragons seize control of the world while he and his allies reaped the rewards of their betrayal.
“Traitor.” I forced the word past the pressure on my chest.
My serpents probed the edges of the construct on top of me. Their delicate, razor-sharp tips plucked at the lines of jinsei that held it in place. There was a weakness there. Faint, almost imperceptible.
“You know all about traitors, don’t you?” Harlan chuckled. “Your mother the heretic. What do you think she’ll do next? Kill a busload of schoolchildren? Blow up a hospital?”
Brother Harlan knew how to get to me, I’d give him that much. I was terrified of what my mother might do. Until the stunt she’d pulled with the bomb-carrying construct, I’d held out hope that she was misunderstood. But that trick had nearly killed my clanmates. It might have even killed me. I couldn’t pretend my mother was innocent any longer.
I found a chink in the technique’s armor. The force aspects that gave the construct its strength weren’t shielded. Against most Empyreals, they would be safely wrapped up in the technique’s aura, untouchable.
That didn’t put them outside my grasp, though.
I weighed my options. The Thief’s Shield would rip the construct apart and bind its aspects in my aura. With any luck, it would also kill the portal that Harlan was using to harass me. It’d be nice to be rid of the inquisitor.
I wasn’t sure that was the best option, though. Harlan had tricked
