Yerin’s narrowed eyes moved from him to the ring. “He put that on himself?”
Eithan released Lindon’s arm, wiping his hand with a cloth he happened to carry in his pocket. It was difficult to do with only one free hand, the other still clutching a sandviper, but he managed. “I’ll admit, I shut Lindon in this room without concern for his will. But he has kept that ring on every day since the door first shut. And now…”
Lindon spoke precisely on cue. “One more...” he grunted, his voice scraping through a ruined throat. “One more.”
Eithan shrugged at Yerin's look of astonishment. “As soon as he asks me to, I'll stop.”
Then, before the girl could react, he turned and thrust the sandviper's fangs into Lindon's arm.
He tore the creature's head half off with one hand, preparing to drip the blood into Lindon's mouth as he had done before, but the boy's back seized up. His eyes—well, the one eye not hidden by swelling—rolled up into its socket, and foam bubbled up quickly at the mouth.
“Ah,” Eithan said, setting the sandviper corpse aside. “That was too much.”
Yerin dropped her sword and fell to her knees, pressing fingers against Lindon's throat. “What's the cure?”
Eithan wiped his bloody hand off on Lindon's clothes, then fished around in his pocket until he grabbed the scale waiting at the very bottom. “The venom has escaped his control and passed into the heart, so he's dead.” He withdrew the blue crystal coin, holding it up for her consideration. “Unless we trigger the transformation to Iron.”
He hesitated a moment, considering the accuracy of his own words. Honesty was very important.
“There's always the possibility that it will take too long, and then he'll be brain dead,” he clarified. “He can't breathe like this, you see.”
Yerin snatched the scale from his hand.
Clutching it in her fist, she broke the structure and reverted it to madra, using her spirit to force a flow of blue-white energy into Lindon's mouth.
That wouldn't be enough. His madra wasn't cycling at the moment, and her soul wasn't strong enough to do it for him. Not quickly, anyway.
So Eithan did it for her.
He pushed his palm against Lindon's core—the one swollen with energy, ready to spill over and advance into Iron—and guided the scale's madra within. It flexed, resisting for a second before cracking like a broken dam.
The madra flooded all through Lindon's body, expelling all physical impurities and transforming him with the power of the soul. His core would condense and restore itself into a smaller, denser form, transmuted from Copper to Iron.
Eithan took a quick step back.
The Iron transformation was never neat or pretty, as the body expelled impurities through any medium, but this was particularly gruesome. Black blood oozed through Lindon's skin, his muscles convulsing beneath as though they were liquefying and pouring out. Black tears ran from his bloodshot eye, and apparently his throat wasn't quite as far gone as Eithan had thought, because his screams were deafening.
The black substance oozing from Lindon's body carried a stench like bodies rotting in a cesspool, so Eithan headed up the stairs to the relatively pleasant air. There were only a few corpses decomposing up here, so at least he might get a whiff of something clean.
He left Yerin to watch over Lindon. If the boy died, that would be shame, though it wouldn't set Eithan back much.
But he expected a better result.
Chapter 16
As one of the highest-ranking representatives of the Sandviper sect, though he wasn't a Sandviper at all, Jai Long had the honor of supervising a young man's advancement to Iron.
He'd reluctantly bowed to tradition, on the condition that the ceremony could be conducted in a tent at the entrance to the Ruins. If the Arelius family had continued at their current pace, they'd be arriving sometime tomorrow. He and the Fishers believed they had figured out the last of the script around the final floor, but they wouldn't know until they tried.
It was a delicate time, but tradition wouldn't wait.
The boy's whole family had gathered to see this paragon of their younger generation receive his Sandviper body at the tender age of eight years old. It was an impressive sign of dedication for such a young boy. Jai Long himself had reached Iron before that, but he'd had resources the Sandviper sect did not.
Jai Long clutched the sandviper in one hand, his spirit clamping around the creature's powers just as his fist imprisoned its limbs. With the other hand, he delicately squeezed the gland around the serpent's fang.
A drop of venom swelled, and he wicked it off with a needle.
The needle went onto a jade plate prepared for the purpose. He set the plate aside and withdrew a bowl the size of a thimble. With one stray whisk of Stellar Spear madra, he sliced the sacred beast's skin.
A few drops of blood filled the bowl, and Jai Long replaced the sandviper in its cage.
This whole process was supposed to be accompanied by a ceremony as the boy learned the glorious history of the sect and his own place within it, but Jai Long went about his business in cold silence. No one corrected him. They were afraid of him, one and all; afraid of his status within the Jai clan, afraid of the stories that surrounded him when he'd been banished. Afraid of his strength.
Kral stuck his head into the tent, grin blooming. “Bren! You're a man of the Sandvipers today.”
The boy—Bren, Jai Long supposed—matched Kral's grin with his own. He seemed only too relieved to look away from the red-masked stranger in his tent.
After a few more compliments for the boy and his family, which instantly put them at ease, Kral walked over to Jai Long. He gave a low whistle at the sight of the blood. “That's not too much, do you think?” he asked, keeping his voice low to avoid spooking the child.
“I'm sure you had more,” Jai Long said, not bothering to lower his tone. The most talented young members of the sect received two or three needles of venom, with an appropriate amount of blood to go along with it.
“Most people don't,” Kral pointed out. Then he raised his head to look at Bren, and he raised his volume to match it. “But he'll be the pride of the sect in a few years. I'll do it myself.”
The boy practically shone with pride, which made Jai Long wonder why Kral hadn't just done this whole procedure himself.
The young chief gave a few ceremonial words, offered Bren the bowl of blood, and then—when the boy had settled into a cycling trance—pricked him on the wrist with the needle.
Bren's jaw tightened and sweat beaded on his brow, but he only grunted once. His father gave a proud smile.
For Jai Long's Iron body, he'd been forced to undergo a ritual that blistered all the skin on his body, broke most of his bones, and kept him in bed for three months afterwards. For a half-civilized sect that survived in the harsh Desolate Wilds, the Sandvipers were soft.
As Bren cycled in preparation for his transformation, Jai Long pulled Kral aside to give him a report.
“The Fishers have gotten us through most of the doors,” he said, and this time he did speak quietly. This was sensitive information, after all. “We think we have a grasp on the rest of the script, but there's still one door between us and the final chamber. I suspect there may be another way—”
The flap of the tent brushed aside, and a Sandviper charged in with his chest heaving and face bright red. No sacred artist would push himself so far beyond the bonds of his breathing technique without a good reason.