“Niddhogg says you’ve gone insane,” she said flatly. “Seeing this, I’m inclined to agree with him.”
“That runt of a dragon wouldn’t know insane if it bit his tail off,” Hahen said with a snort. He looked up from our project to squint at Hagar. “It’s good to see you again. We could use your help.”
Hagar crouched down in front of me to get a closer look at the rat sitting in my lap. The little creature had answered Hahen’s call and gladly accepted the role that we’d offered it. Now, it sported a tiny band of copper around its left front leg. Though I didn’t dare bond with it using my techniques to be sure, the rat seemed pleased with its lot.
“You really are putting rings on them.” She held out her hand, and the rat leaped into her palm. “I’m afraid to ask why, but my curiosity is killing me.”
“Mine, too,” I admitted. Hahen and I had been working on this during our spare time over the break. “I’m experimenting with the technique-stitching discipline that Professor Ishigara taught us before the break. If it works, I’ll be in much better shape for the second challenge.”
“I’m with you so far,” Hagar said. “What technique is stored in that thing?”
“The most basic one I know,” I said. “It’s the Beggar’s Core.”
“What’s with the rings on the rats?” Hagar furrowed her brow and stroked the rodent’s back. The little creature chittered and coiled its tail around her wrist. “They don’t have any techniques.”
Hahen reached down to collect another rat that had scampered out of the bushes at the edge of the courtyard. The creature curled up in his hand with its tail encircling its body. Its dark eyes looked up into his face, and I swear the little guy smiled up at Hahen.
“That’s the experimental part.” I fished another tiny ring from the pouch on my robe’s belt. We’d liberated these from one of the School’s many long-forgotten storerooms. I’d no idea of their original purpose, but the tiny bands were the perfect size for a rat’s forearm. I’d spent days and cross-eyed nights putting all the tiny scrivenings on the things. “Each of these bands has a technique attached to it.”
“That’s never going to work,” Hagar said. “The item has to be attached to you to trigger the technique. You’ll save yourself a lot of time by throwing all these rings down a toilet for all the good they’ll do you.”
“We’re about to find out if you’re right.” There were a couple dozen rats running around the courtyard with my bands on their wrists. I closed my eyes, concentrated on the medallion attached to my chest, and activated the Borrowed Core technique.
As I’d hoped, I didn’t feel so much as a twinge from my core. The technique flared to life, and I guided the connection toward one of the banded rats. The instant our cores were connected by my technique, I felt the ring around its wrist. The object had had some time to soak up jinsei from the creature’s natural breath cycles, and now the technique it held was primed and ready to go.
It was time to see whether my experiment worked or I’d wasted a bunch of time.
I let out a long, slow breath and triggered the Army of a Thousand Eyes technique that I’d scrivened onto the rat’s band. There was a faint tug at my core, and I braced myself for the pain failure would bring. Hahen and I were deep in uncharted waters with this experiment, and for one terrifying moment, I thought I was about to discover the price of failure.
And then, the technique came to life. My awareness spread through the rats in the courtyard. Their senses became my senses, and for the first time in what felt like ages my core didn’t hurt when I used a technique. I’d worried that having another creature in the chain between me and the Army would weaken the technique or cause it to fail altogether.
But that hadn’t happened. I’d been right.
The Borrowed Core had forged a pure connection between me and the rat. Its core was my core.
I sent one of the rats in the Army scurrying out of the bushes toward Hagar. It pounced on her arm and scrambled up the sleeve of her robes to her shoulder. Before she could react, it plucked a single strand of hair from her Mohawk, then scurried over to me with its prize clasped in its jaws.
“Ouch,” Hagar said with a frown. “I take it your experiment worked?”
“Better than I’d hoped,” I said. There was just one more thing to try.
I cycled my breathing through the Borrowed Core technique and crossed my fingers that I wasn’t about to injure myself. My breath flowed in through the rat, down through the technique, and into my core.
No, not my core. Into the medallion. That was where the Borrowed Core technique had originated. As the rat and I breathed in harmony, the medallion’s jinsei stores refilled. Professor Ishigara had warned me I’d only be able to use the technique I’d stitched into a vessel using the jinsei in the vessel. That should have given me one use of the technique per day.
But she hadn’t understood the true potential of the Path of the Pauper’s Dagger.
If I’d known about this discipline during my first year, things might’ve gone very differently for everyone. Threads of anger, the remnants of my Eclipse nature, wormed their way up from the darkness at the back of my thoughts. Had Hahen known about the technique-stitching discipline? If he had and had withheld that information from me...
I pushed those thoughts away and let the Borrowed Core technique fade. There was no point in blaming anyone for what I had or hadn’t been taught. Until I’d become an Eclipse Warrior, my core had been weak. Even
