Pressure built around me, and I strengthened my flesh with sacred energy to resist its crushing fist. My ears popped. My ribs ached.
And still, I created more water.
A resounding crack slapped against my ears, and for a moment I thought my body had given in to the mounting pressure. And then I fell, swept out of the cell on a tide of water that splashed and sloshed across the floor. I rolled free of my ruined cell and came to rest flat on my back in the middle of the laboratory. My lungs filled with a deep breath of cleansing, pure air, and I let out a frustrated sigh.
The crisp, clipped rhythm of Krieger’s boots crossing the floor stopped as he reached me. He peered down, a look of amusement and bewilderment on his face. He shook his head and raised his hands helplessly, as if he couldn’t believe what he was looking at.
“Mr. Warin,” he said, “I said fill the crucible, not drown yourself.”
“I’ve always been an overachiever,” I said, then coughed and blew water out of my nose.
Krieger looked over his shoulder at the alarm lights that should have flared red to warn him a student was in trouble. All ten of them were still green.
“It’s only been a few seconds since we started this experiment,” he said. “Whatever happened in there was too fast to trigger the warning system before you destroyed the cell.”
The professor offered me his hand, and I accepted his help to stand. I wasn’t hurt, but the ordeal had left me winded and my core empty of jinsei. I’d gone far beyond tired and was utterly exhausted.
“I’ll be sure to keep a more careful eye on you when we get to truly dangerous subjects,” he said. “You’re dismissed, Jace. Get yourself dried off and into some new clothes. I’d hate to have you catch your death of pneumonia after you so cleverly escaped from drowning.”
The Visitor
HAHEN MET ME OUTSIDE the classroom with a frown across his snout. He glanced down at the water that dripped from my soaked robes and sighed. “This may be more difficult than I thought.”
The last thing I wanted to hear after almost drowning myself was that there was no simple fix to my problem. Jinsei sorcery would be the perfect complement to my Thief’s Shield, but only if it didn’t kill me first.
“Figures,” I muttered as we headed for the dorms. “What did you see?”
Hahen hurried along beside me, careful not to step in the water running off the hem of my robes. “Your serpents are evolving. They’ve gained a primitive intellect that lets them operate independently of your wishes.”
Well, that was a surprise. My serpents had become more active after I picked up Vision of the Design. I’d assumed the technique had changed their behavior. Now I wondered if the Machina I had taken into my core had somehow jumpstarted their evolution. If they were learning and growing on their own, that was a whole new level of worry. If their power kept pace with mine, they’d be a danger to everyone around me.
“How do I control them?” I asked Hahen. “I’d rather they not incinerate me when we get to the fire lessons in sorcery class.”
The rat spirit reached up to pat me on the arm, then withdrew his wet hand in disgust. He shook as much water as he could from his fingers, then rubbed his palm on his robes. “I don’t know how to stop them from changing. Perhaps when they finish this growth spurt, they will be more obedient.”
Hahen and I continued our discussion of my rogue appendages on the way back to my room, but we didn’t know enough about the Machina or my supernatural limbs to come to any solid conclusions.
Which was the same problem my friends and I had with our research on the Heart of Eternity. Days of fruitless investigation bled into one another, and our lack of progress was taking its toll on us all. They were far from giving up, but their frustration was growing. We needed a breakthrough, soon.
My close-knit team met every day after dinner to review what we’d found. Tantalizing tidbits about the Heart were scattered throughout Empyreal history. Abi and Clem both agreed that the legends of King Uther of Britannia and his Grail Knights were stories of cultivators searching for the Heart to unlock secrets of advancement to the highest levels. Unfortunately, myths and fables didn’t give us much to work with. They’d been so distorted by retellings and translations over the years that it was impossible to separate fact from fiction.
I did my best to squeeze information out of Librarian Tanoki, but the need to keep my quest secret made it impossible to ask direct questions, and my more oblique queries didn’t earn anything useful. I must have cursed the Empyrean Flame for dumping this job on me a thousand times during those days. If only I had another clue, some bread crumb to the right track.
Needless to say, I was reaching my wit’s end with the whole quest. I woke up each morning eager to ferret out any new scrap of information and went to bed exhausted from my lessons, fruitless attempts at advancement, and hours of poring over moldering tomes. It was no surprise that an unexpected late-night visitor caught me napping.
The faint hiss of the portal snapping closed had me lurching out of bed, my fusion blade in my hand, my serpents rising above my head like a cobra’s hood. The tall thin stranger slid back out of my reach, my sword whistling through the space he’d just left.
“Jace,” Sanrin said in a cold, calm voice. “Please put your weapon away.”
I’d come to think of Sanrin as an advisor and friend, not merely my clan elder.
Despite that, the ties that bound me to him had begun to fray the minute I’d been given the quest to replace the Flame
