But then, if he took a Fisher's Remnant, what would happen?
There was a point beyond which the absorption would fail. Even if it didn't, the different types of madra could mix in violent or chaotic ways. It might even damage his core, or the madra could rebound on him and tear his body apart.
No, though everyone envisioned taking the spear and gathering the powers of their enemies into one body, that was just a childish fantasy. It would never work.
The spear would be at its best when devouring compatible madra. In other words, madra from sacred artists on the same Path.
If Jai Long held the spear, he could advance by doing nothing more than cutting down others on the Path of the Stellar Spear—blood members of the Jai clan—and gutting their Remnants.
The spear's nature aligned so closely with his own desires that he almost considered it the will of the heavens.
Even better, the other Factions were considering this a contest of strength. Which was how they considered most things, now that he thought of it. They pushed into the Ruins, fighting the dreadbeasts sealed within as well as the other competitors, with the understanding that the most powerful would come out on top.
Jai Long didn't think of himself as an arrogant man, but sometimes it seemed that he was the only one with eyes in a crowd of the blind.
Couldn't they see that the strongest weren't always the victors?
So he worked on his map even as the young servants returned, carrying jars of water bigger than their whole bodies. As they ran back out, one of them stopped at Jai Long's table and bowed with fists pressed together.
He stayed that way until Jai Long noticed and raised his head. “What is it?”
“I ran into Grenn on the way back,” the boy said. “His mother called him in to cycle, so he couldn't deliver messages to you tonight, so he passed them on to me.”
Jai Long held back a sigh. He'd wondered what was taking his usual messenger so long, and once again he lamented the lack of discipline among the Sandvipers. There was so much he despised about the Jai family, but there was a reason they were a first-class clan in the Blackflame Empire while the Sandvipers remained nothing more than a second-rate sect in the Wilds. Without organization and control, strength meant nothing.
He gestured impatiently, and the boy’s spine straightened like a broomstick. “Sir. Grenn said that the foreman said that the miners can’t go into the southwest corner of the fourth floor. Too many beasts.”
Jai Long scribbled a note. In the four floors closest to the entrance of the Transcendent Ruins, he had accurate maps of virtually the entire area. Only a few spots remained blank, so he’d ordered the mining crews to move their operations.
“Tell the foreman he can expect three more Lowgold guards by sundown tomorrow,” Jai Long said. A single guard would be a great help in protecting the mining crew from dreadbeasts; three was perhaps too many. But this was a race, and he intended to win.
Kral might balk and committing so many of his Sandvipers to what he saw as a slave duty, but Jai Long would talk him around.
The messenger boy stood there mouthing words, awkwardly committing Jai Long’s message to memory. When he’d finished, he straightened again.
“There was a message from the Jai clan too, sir. A Lowgold stranger showed up at the gates today, and she had a Copper with her.”
“Her son?”
The boy shook his head, and his smile had a bit of a sneer to it. “Grenn saw the Copper himself. Said he looked even older than the Lowgold.”
That happened sometimes—a child was born with a tragically weak spirit, or had it crippled in some accident before he could advance further. Those unfortunates deserved pity, not ridicule.
But whatever they deserved, this one had earned not a whit of Jai Long’s attention. “If you deliver me a message every time an outsider shows up at the gates, you’ll walk your feet off.”
“No, that’s not…the Copper’s just strange, sir. Not important. The important thing is that she beat Sandviper Resh in the middle of her squad, and then walked away with one of the Jai clan.”
“Ah.” Now Jai Long understood why the message had mentioned the Copper. If he, as a representative of the Sandviper sect, wanted to avenge Resh’s humiliation, he couldn’t punish a Lowgold under Jai protection. He’d have to target the Copper instead.
“Where are they now?” Jai Long asked, dipping his brush to write a letter to his former clan.
“Uh, they were taken to a Jai clan inn, but it looks like they snuck out. Grenn said he was supposed to tell you that nobody could find them.”
Jai Long’s suffering had begun when he first advanced to Gold. In the heat of battle, he’d been forced to adopt a strange Remnant instead of the one his family had planned for him. Instead of the Goldsign borne by most on the Path of the Stellar Spear—hair as sturdy as a helmet, and rigid as iron—he was cursed with a face that…a face that he didn’t like to think about.
There had been a few other consequences of that Goldsign. His voice hadn’t changed, but his laugh…
It rang out of him, wild and crazy, like the cackling of a deranged murderer. His usual voice was cool and composed, but when he laughed, he sounded like a blood-drunk killer. The messenger boy paled and took a step backwards.
Jai Long swallowed the last chuckles, but a smile still stretched the edges of his cloth mask. “They lost her. The Jai clan can’t find their new recruit, so they turn to me.”
Technically they had turned to the Sandvipers to help, but there was no real difference. He handled most of the day-to-day workings of the sect, and whichever of his relatives had sent this message must have known where it would end up.
Surely, that knowledge had burned them.
“I think so, sir…” the boy said hesitantly.
“I’m amending my previous message. Tell the foreman he will have to wait for his three Lowgold guards. Then go to Sandviper Tern, get three of his best, and tell him the story you just told me. They’re to retrieve the Copper for the mines. Do not kill his protector, but don’t retrieve her for the Jai clan either.”
His clan had handed him a razor-sharp opportunity. In one move, he could regain the standing the Sandvipers had lost at the hands of this stranger, show her that she couldn’t treat their sect lightly, and reinforce to the clan that Jai Long was their servant no longer. And he would gain a miner. Only a Copper, but enough single scales could eventually pile up into a fortune.
The messenger boy was standing in place with brows furrowed, repeating words silently to himself.
“What will you say to the foreman?” Jai Long snapped, and he forced the boy to repeat each message until they were all perfect. One day, he was going to have to train better messengers. Maybe he could purchase a few speaking constructs from the Fishers. Through a proxy, of course.
When the boy finally finished, Jai Long picked his brush back up and dipped it into the inkwell. “Is there anything else?” he asked, by way of dismissal.
“Nothing special,” the boy said, fidgeting in place. Clearly there was something he wanted to say, but not an official message.
“Did you hear something?” Jai Long asked, his attention on the paper in front of him.
“It’s just a rumor. Some of the Cloud Hammers were talking about it, and I only heard them because I was sitting behind a fence and they didn’t know I was there, because one of them asked the other one if he was sure, and then he said…”