“We have to keep moving,” Eric said. “Or all of that was for nothing.”
The words burned like acid. Anger, raw and ugly and uncontrollable, exploded out of me in a shouting torrent. “All of what, Eric?”
Abi groaned in the cradle of my serpents, and Clem took a step away from me. Eric, though, returned my glare and shouted right back.
“The death and destruction.” He jabbed a finger into my chest. “You killed a sage, Jace. And your mother will probably finish off another one and an elder thanks to you.”
Black fire danced across my vision. My core yearned for me to lash out at Eric, to drain him as I’d consumed Tycho. How dare he raise his voice to me, the only person who could save this godforsaken world from itself? I was a true sacred artist. He was nothing more than a prizefighting wannabe punk.
“Hey,” Clem said. She took my hand and Eric’s. “Stop. Please.”
I held Eric’s fiery gaze. He was angry, but he was also afraid. Not only of the enemies on our trail, but of what he’d seen me do. I’d lived up to every dark rumor ever told about Eclipse Warriors.
About me.
That horrible look in his eyes doused the black flames in my heart. Sorrow and guilt tore through me like a razor-blade tornado, leaving me raw and wounded. I had shown my friends the real me.
“I didn’t have a choice,” I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. “They weren’t here to help. Sanrin brought Grayson and Tycho to control me.”
Clem’s hand tightened around mine. She looked away from me for a moment, then turned back with a tear trickling down her cheek. “I believe you. It was horrible, but...you’re right.”
“There had to be another way,” Eric insisted. “The world needs the sages, Jace. What will people say when they find out you killed Tycho?”
I’d grown up believing the same lies that Eric was spouting. The sages guide humanity along the path to righteousness. The sages protect us from the darkness. The sages are our only hope against threats we don’t even know about.
“There wasn’t,” I said. “Sanrin betrayed me. He jeopardized our mission. If the sages wanted to help, where have they been since Kyoto? While I fought the Locust Court, they hid. While the Shadow Phoenix clan struggled to defeat my mother, those old men plotted and schemed in the darkness. You know me, Eric. I didn’t kill Tycho in cold blood. There was no other choice.”
No one said anything for a moment that seemed to stretch out for an eternity.
“Okay,” Eric said. “We’ll talk about this after we’re through with this mess.”
It was far from the clean victory I’d hoped for, but I’d take what I could get. Eric still didn’t trust me, that was clear from the way he watched me, but he also wasn’t ready to throw down. We’d work through our differences when the quest was complete. Hopefully, he’d understand why I had to kill Tycho. If not...
“Let’s go.” I didn’t want to follow that train of thought any further down the tracks. Eric and I would mend our fences.
Clem released our hands, and we walked down the long hall, side by side. As we grew closer to the Forge, the air became thicker, sticky with heat and moisture. The strange lightning danced over our heads, while ruddy light waxed and waned within the walls. The smell of ozone became a biting stink tinged with hints of something rich and ripe.
“It’s like a rainforest,” Clem said. “There’s life all around us.”
I’d never visited a rainforest, but the description seemed right, somehow. The hallway was teeming with growth and life aspects, but it also swarmed with other aspects I’d only seen once before. Motes of time danced around us, fireflies of possibility that stayed always just out of reach. They were elusive and mesmerizing, and I nearly followed them straight into a trap.
“Why did you stop?” Eric asked when I pulled up short.
“Webs,” I said quietly.
The flimsy threads looked too thin and weak to hold a fly. I’d have no trouble barging through them. But there was a danger within them that was far out of proportion to their size. At first I thought they were laden with tiny scrivenings. But there was no jinsei, or even aspects, in those black webs. They concealed something more primal and terrible.
“I don’t see anything,” Clem said.
“Neither do I,” Eric added.
The longer I watched the webs strung across the hallway, the more threatening they looked. An eldritch power seethed inside each dark strand. I steeled myself, knowing we had to push ahead.
“I’ll blaze a trail.” I raised my fusion blade and swept it through the cobwebs closest to me. “Follow right behind me, single file. You don’t want these to touch you.”
The threads parted with ease. The severed ends didn’t fall limp as I’d expected. Instead they rose into the air like curious snakes, their tips bobbing and weaving as if examining me. As I stepped forward, they withdrew, opening a gap for me. They seemed more confused than threatening, now.
I sliced through the cobwebs one cautious step at a time. Shadows formed in the hallway ahead of me, only to vanish a split second later. Hazy figures that I almost recognized swam into view between the strands, then melted away with the next flash of light. The humidity and heat made it hard to breathe. My robes clung to my sweating skin, suffocating me with their weight. The fusion blade grew heavier in my hand, and slicing through the webs hardly seemed worth the effort. What was the point? I could just walk straight ahead. The threads wouldn’t stop me. All I had to do—
No, that wasn’t the way. I pushed the jinsei from my core into my head to shake off the confusion that had gripped my thoughts. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Eric and Clem both had slumped shoulders, their heads bobbing loosely
