Here, a monstrous eel undulated through the ocean, spreading clouds of poison over an underwater city. Ten thousand kilometers away, a plague devastated a spire full of white-clad pacifists. On another hemisphere, a kilometers-long azure dragon flew on a violent storm, moving like a hurricane toward a small kingdom.
The text showed her ten million people she could save: from rape, murder, genocide, slavery, starvation, ignorance, disease. Ozriel would try to save them all, and would fail, but the world would be better for his efforts. Makiel would leave those problems to mortals and focus on the bigger picture.
As Suriel stared at the web of information spread out over the planet, trying to decide, another star flared to life. It was red rather than blue, representing a crime that was fated to happen. She focused on it.
[Imminent spatial violation,] her Presence reported. [Domination of local inhabitants by an outside power is predetermined to follow.]
Someone who had grown beyond this world was trying to return to Cradle, using outside power to set up their own fiefdom in this relatively simple plane of existence. That was a grade three violation, something that the local Sector Control Abidan would address, but they’d take their time about it. This level of crime was far beneath her notice, but both Ozriel and Makiel would have agreed it was worth stopping.
It was perfect.
She took a quick stock of her appearance, to make sure that she wouldn’t start any myths by descending. Transparent gray ghostlines ran from the back of her head, twisting down her right arm to terminate in her fingers. Those would be strange, but not alarming. The Mantle of Suriel ran behind her like she’d tied a river of burning light around her neck, and she made that vanish. Her white uniform was seamless, a layer of inch-thick liquid armor that coated her from her neck down to her toes. It would be obviously unnatural, but shouldn’t alarm anyone. They would assume it was Forged madra, which was close enough to the truth. She left it.
She couldn’t bring her weapon, though it pained her. The meter-long shaft of blue steel hung at her hip, innocuous enough, but she couldn’t take the one-in-a-billion chance that she might somehow leave it in Cradle. With an effort of will, she banished it back to Sanctum.
Her long hair drifted around her, luminescent green and shining against the darkness of space. She toned it down to a deep shade of jade barely distinguishable from black, then focused on her eyes. Her irises had expanded to take up most of the sclera, marked with a ring of symbols that a few people on the planet below might recognize as script. They were tools to help her see the flow of fate, but they might advance the development of Cradle scripting beyond acceptable limits. Her eyes burned as though she’d pressed them against red-hot iron, but she endured, altering them to a roughly natural shape in a matter of seconds. They were still large and purple, but they looked human enough.
Suriel’s will flickered to the Presence, which acknowledged her command. [Plotting course to the fated violation. Destination: the Sacred Valley. Distance: one hundred sixty-two thousand kilometers. Engaging route].
In a streak of blue, Suriel took off.
Chapter 7
Once the sling came off Lindon’s broken arm, he redoubled his training. The Seven-Year Festival raced closer, looming over him, and he resented every minute of rest that might cost him his chance to read a Path manual.
He still intended to find his own way in the sacred arts, as Elder Whisper had told him, but he didn’t know enough yet. He needed to research the Path of the White Fox, and once he did…well, maybe he would find that it fit him. Maybe he wouldn’t need to explore a new Path at all.
He spent the mornings in the Shi family courtyard with Kelsa, where her beating him counted as training. Afternoons belonged to the archive, and he spent that time studying the other technique manuals to which he was allowed access. He never found anything else as perfectly suited for him as the Empty Palm, but he studied the theories. In the evening, he cycled.
The cycling technique in the Heart manual was intended to prepare him for splitting his core, which he never expected to need. Still, it was also a technique meant to improve pure madra manipulation, and thus a better match for him than the Wei clan’s Foundation technique. So he continued to use it.
The orus fruit treasure had long vanished, its power incorporated into his own, and he no longer felt the tingling lightning in his core. He felt no stronger, but his results spoke for themselves: he could practice with Kelsa for hours, using the Empty Palm ten or twelve times, before he gave in to fatigue. And that was due to his sister’s relentless beatings more than spiritual exhaustion.
Three days before the Festival, only a few hours before noon, Lindon spotted an opening in his sister’s stance. He took it, driving an Empty Palm at her belly.
She knocked his wrist wide, stepping in to put a fist into his side…and froze, her elbow cocked back, loose strands of hair drifting in front of her face. Her eyes were fixed on something behind him, beyond him, and he knew at once something was wrong.
“Kelsa?” he asked, taking a careful step back. She didn’t respond, and if he couldn’t hear her breaths, he wouldn’t have known whether she was still alive. In fact, she was still breathing in rhythm according to her Foundation technique.
Her eyes still glazed over, she folded up and sat on the grass. Her hands rested on her lap, her breathing deepened, and tiny balls of foxfire began to dance in the air around her.
When Lindon realized what was happening, he ran for his parents.
He found them together, outside their house, his father cleaning a boar as his mother did something similar to a Remnant. A bucket of bloody guts sat next to a scripted basin containing loops of light and color. Claws of Forged madra slowly fizzed into nonexistence next to slabs of meat leaking blood.
Lindon skidded to a halt in the yard. “Kelsa’s advancing to Iron,” he announced, then he ran back the other direction.
His mother overtook him in seconds and his father wasn’t far behind her, hobbling on his cane faster than Lindon could run. They both reached Kelsa before he did.
Sweat already soaked her training robes, plastering her hair to her neck. Her breath came in labored gasps, and each exhale was tinged with White Fox madra. Phantom images danced in the vital aura around her, complete with sounds; half-formed, unrecognizable ghosts that screamed, laughed, growled, and muttered as they were born of dreams and light.
White Fox madra swirled around her in a cyclone of illusion and color. Purple and white predominated, but every color flickered through, like bright-scaled fish flitting in and out of the light. Purple sparks twisted in the air, cast off Kelsa as though from a bonfire.
Nearby, the underbrush rustled, and a snowfox peeked its snout out to watch. It was young—only one tail trailed behind it in the bushes—but it was still drawn to the madra it sensed was so similar to its own. According to legend, the first Wei Patriarch’s ascension to Jade had drawn snowfoxes from all over Sacred Valley in a pilgrimage that lasted three days.
Kelsa’s eyes drifted closed and then snapped open, blazing with purple-edged light. All around her, vague dreams bloomed from the earth like squirming flowers.
“Second stage,” his mother noted, scribbling as she watched.
“She might be as fast as I was,” Jaran said, a proud smile on his twisted lips. “Copper to Iron in less than an hour, and no worse for it.”
“Then we should prepare for the third stage,” Seisha said.
“Prepare?”
“Not us,” she said, with a significant glance at Lindon. “You should leave, son.”
Lindon rarely defied his parents, but this was an exceptional chance. He’d never seen anyone advance to Iron before, and this was his sister. “I’d learn more if I stayed to the end.”