And a dozen more sliced at my body in return.
My skin, hardened by the power of my core, turned aside most of those attacks. But a few overwhelmed my natural defenses and opened ugly wounds along my biceps and thighs. The injuries burned like a thousand bee stings. Blood ran down my arms and legs in thick streams, and jinsei glowed like fireflies in the sluggish crimson. A quick moment of contemplation told me the attacks hadn’t pierced any organs or slashed through arteries. That was good.
The attacks had, however, sliced through important jinsei channels.
And that was very, very bad.
There was no time or space to go on the attack, no lull in the battle to think my way out. My fusion blade darted and slashed in response to the attacks that poured in from every angle. My skill was a deadly shield that severed limbs and crushed torsos. The dead dissolved into foul-smelling goo, slathering the shifting terrain beneath my feet with their essences. But every attack I stopped caused more of the sacred energy to leak from my damaged channels. If I didn’t figure out some way to give myself the space and time to heal my injuries, the Locust Court would whittle me down to nothing.
My thoughts circled a hole in my memory in search of an answer while my blade rose and fell and swooped around to protect my body from further damage. There was a simple solution to this problem, something that I should have known that would free me from this mess. I’d destroyed the Locust Court once; all I had to do was activate the power of my Eclipse core and—
Deja vu swept over me. I’d been here before. Not just in the Far Horizon, but this exact same spot, surrounded by the exact same enemies, doing the exact same things. If I triggered my serpents and the Thief’s Shield technique, I could destroy the spirits with little more than a thought. And if I used my newest and most potent power, the Eclipse Transplant, I could fill the auras of the spirits with aspects that would wipe them out. All it would take is a thought on my part. It would be so easy.
And it would be exactly the wrong thing to do.
Memories rushed in to fill the holes in my thoughts. Disgust boiled up in my gut at the same time.
“Enough!” I shouted, pushing jinsei into my words.
The spirits of the Locust Court vanished at once. The Far Horizon melted away to reveal the cold white walls of the Atlantean Temple of the Grand Design, where I’d been held by the Inquisition for the past three months. My body was no longer standing. I was strapped to an examination table, thick woven adamantine bands across my chest, loops of obsidian chains around my wrists, ankles, and knees. Being so immobilized was maddening.
It wasn’t nearly as bad as the dark aspects they’d used to trigger the hallucinations, though.
A heavy, featureless mask covered my entire face. Scrivened seals around its perimeter kept the thing glued tight to my skin. Jinsei poured through a tube in the bottom of the mask, forcing me to breathe it in. Madness, fear, and confusion aspects tainted that sacred energy. They were what had reconstructed that scene from my dark memories of the battle against the Locust Court. This had been another of the Inquisition’s favorite tests.
I’d failed it.
Again.
“This would be a lot easier if you’d cooperate with us, Jace.” Brother Harlan, one of the priests of the Empyrean Flame who’d been charged with testing me, scowled at me. “After all these weeks, still you fight and lie. If you’d only answer my questions, this would all end and you’d be back at school before you knew it.”
My hands wanted to fly to my face and rip the mask off. The drowning sensation filled me with a blind, animal panic. It was all part of the tricks and torture the priests had visited on me during my stay. They insisted it was all for my own good.
Liars.
They wanted to know what made me tick. They wanted to know all about my new Eclipse core.
And I didn’t want them to know anything about me.
I closed my eyes and let the jinsei flow through me. I endured the aspects that lodged in my aura and hid my thoughts from the fear and confusion that would have infected them. The technique that had let me breathe life back into the grass on the beach would let me pluck those foul motes out of my aura and shove them into Brother Harlan.
That would have been the easiest way to ease my pain.
It would also have showed the inquisitors one of my secrets. I wouldn’t let that happen. Instead, I meditated and pushed the foul jinsei through my core and channels. I took the strength I could from it and hardened my mind against the poison that tried to invade it. The Church could hold my body, but it couldn’t chain my thoughts.
“Let’s get that mask off you.” Brother Harlan’s sausage-thick fingers were surprisingly dextrous and managed to drain the mask, unfasten its seals, and remove it without pinching my skin. It was a small mercy after what felt like an eternity of these arduous tests. “Isn’t that better?”
I blinked away the jinsei that still clung to my eyelids and blew out an exasperated sigh. Brother Harlan had been with me every day since I’d been taken by the Inquisition. We’d gone through the cruelty and kindness dance at least a hundred times, and I was sick of it.
“Let me strap it on you for a while,” I said. “You’ll see how pleasant it is.”
“Easy.” The priest’s warm eyes turned cold and hard. He didn’t look like a fighter, but his core was the equal