Chaos Core (School of Swords and Serpents Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Summary

  Shadow Alley Press Mailing List

  The Inquisition

  The Wink

  The Initiates

  The Aptitudes

  The Separation

  The Decision

  The Gauntlet

  The Debate

  The Hollows

  The Team

  The Graft

  The Competition

  The Preparation

  The First

  The Challenge

  The Award

  The Stitch

  The Lesson

  The War

  The Second

  The Darkness

  The Inferno

  The Recovery

  The Wheel

  The Path

  The Spies

  The Plan

  The Threat

  The Meet

  The Prize

  The Bonds

  The Third

  The Ring

  The Pit

  The Coopetition

  The Attack

  The Stitch

  The Favor

  The Betrayal

  The Rescue

  The Assault

  The Assessment

  The Chaos

  The Farewell

  The Inquisitor

  Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

  Books by Shadow Alley Press

  Books by Black Forge

  LitRPG on Facebook

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  Even more Cultivation on Facebook

  Copyright

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Summary

  The dragons have returned from Shambala, and Empyreal society will never be the same.

  AS JACE STRUGGLES TO control his unraveling core, the immortal dragons challenge the Empyreals for control of the world's destiny. Thrust into a competition against the deadliest students from around the world, Jace must lead his team of friends to victory. If he fails, all of humanity will be bound to the will of the Scaled Council.

  And if the dragons don't defeat the Empyreals, dark forces within human society just might.

  The heretics have stepped up their attacks, pushing the Shadow Phoenix clan to the brink of annihilation. A conspiracy of the wealthy and powerful threatens to enslave a very special group of students. And the Inquisition has dark plans for the Eclipse Core.

  And, like his core, Jace is splitting at the seams. Torn between the need to stop the Grand Design from falling into clawed talons and his quest to find his mother and the answers she carries, the young warrior must dig deep within to overcome the forces aligned against him.

  Chaos Core is the third installment of the best-selling School of Swords and Serpents series.

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  The Inquisition

  MY HEAD THROBBED AND my thoughts scattered around the inside of my skull like a swarm of bats. It took me a moment to get my bearings, and I was sorry when I did.

  I was back in the Far Horizon, surrounded by the Locust Court.

  With no idea how I’d gotten there.

  Sacred energy flowed out of my core and into my body. My skin hardened into armor that could turn aside most normal blows. My pulse shifted into overdrive and blood flowed along arteries beneath the jinsei channels that carried sacred energy to my arms and legs. Panic’s greasy claws scrabbled at the edges of my thoughts, searching for a foothold. It was hard to hold the fear at bay, because I was so confused about how I’d been spirited away to this battle in the Far Horizon.

  One moment, I’d been on the beach outside the School with my friends. Now, I was far from home with a horde of hungry spirits closing in from every direction. When I tried to bridge the gap between those two points, I found holes in my thoughts where memories were supposed to live. Something had happened, clearly, but I couldn’t remember what. I felt like I was drowning in uncertainty. It was hard to catch my breath, even harder to focus on the enemies all around me.

  The Locust Court clearly didn’t have the same problem.

  A hungry spirit burst away from the circle of its siblings with its mandibles spread wide to snip my head off my shoulders. Its scythe-like claws swept down on either side of my body to hem me in and keep me from running. There was nowhere for me to go but backwards, and that would put me firmly in the clutches of even more of the Locusts. For most people, that was a death sentence.

  But I wasn’t most people.

  Not even fear and uncertainty could dampen my martial instincts. My fusion blade sprang to life in my hands. The weapon was light as a feather and sharp as a scalpel, and my disciple core empowered me to wield it at the speed of thought. The crystalline weapon swung up into the charging Locust’s throat, and the tip punched through the chitinous armor there and burst out the back of the monstrosity’s head. Milky blood splashed into my face from the thing’s open mouth and ran down my cheeks in sticky rivulets. The fluid’s rotting stink made my eyes water and my stomach roil. My body wanted to heave up my breakfast, and its rebellion almost got past my self-control.

  Almost.

  I held onto my concentration and kept my blade in a defensive position, ignoring the stink, disregarding everything but the threats that surrounded me.

  The other spirits joined the fight before I could wipe the disgusting goo off my face. They threw themselves at me in a chaotic jumble of slashing limbs and clicking jaws. The ground twisted and boiled beneath their feet as the Far Horizon was bent to their inhuman will. The spirits raised mounds beneath their feet and launched themselves down at me like falling arrows. They burrowed into the amorphous terrain only to burst out of the ground to slash at my legs with their wicked chitin blades. The weakest among them didn’t even bother with tactics; they hurled themselves straight ahead at full speed, arms windmilling in a desperate bid to slide past my defenses.

  Not that there was any way for me to mount a perfect defense against the storm of deadly creatures. Dozens of them attacked me at the same time. Though they were far slower than me, my enhanced speed and strength couldn’t maneuver my blade everywhere at once. I wasn’t getting out of this in one piece, but I wasn’t about to lie down and die. I’d defeated these monstrosities once before. I’d do it again.

  My martial instincts guided my weapon to the deadliest of threats, and I turned aside a disemboweling stroke followed by a swipe that would have decapitated me. A backhanded parry tore an insectoid arm out of its socket, and a short jab from the fusion blade’s butt punctured an enormous faceted eye before plunging into the thick goo of the brain behind it. My weapon spun around me in a dizzying blur of death and destruction. A dozen of the spirits fell away from me, their bodies leaking reeking, translucent blood.

  And a dozen more sliced at my body in return.

  My skin, hardened by the power of my core, turned aside most of those attacks. But a few overwhelmed my natural defenses and opened ugly wounds along my biceps and thighs. The injuries burned like a thousand bee stings. Blood ran down my arms and legs in thick streams, and jinsei glowed like fireflies in the sluggish crimson. A quick moment of contemplation told me the attacks hadn’t pierced any organs or slashed through arteries. That was good.

  The attacks had, however, sliced through important jinsei channels.

  And that was very, very bad.

  There was no time or space to go on the attack, no lull in the battle to think my way out. My fusion blade darted and slashed in re
sponse to the attacks that poured in from every angle. My skill was a deadly shield that severed limbs and crushed torsos. The dead dissolved into foul-smelling goo, slathering the shifting terrain beneath my feet with their essences. But every attack I stopped caused more of the sacred energy to leak from my damaged channels. If I didn’t figure out some way to give myself the space and time to heal my injuries, the Locust Court would whittle me down to nothing.

  My thoughts circled a hole in my memory in search of an answer while my blade rose and fell and swooped around to protect my body from further damage. There was a simple solution to this problem, something that I should have known that would free me from this mess. I’d destroyed the Locust Court once; all I had to do was activate the power of my Eclipse core and—

  Deja vu swept over me. I’d been here before. Not just in the Far Horizon, but this exact same spot, surrounded by the exact same enemies, doing the exact same things. If I triggered my serpents and the Thief’s Shield technique, I could destroy the spirits with little more than a thought. And if I used my newest and most potent power, the Eclipse Transplant, I could fill the auras of the spirits with aspects that would wipe them out. All it would take is a thought on my part. It would be so easy.

  And it would be exactly the wrong thing to do.

  Memories rushed in to fill the holes in my thoughts. Disgust boiled up in my gut at the same time.

  “Enough!” I shouted, pushing jinsei into my words.

  The spirits of the Locust Court vanished at once. The Far Horizon melted away to reveal the cold white walls of the Atlantean Temple of the Grand Design, where I’d been held by the Inquisition for the past three months. My body was no longer standing. I was strapped to an examination table, thick woven adamantine bands across my chest, loops of obsidian chains around my wrists, ankles, and knees. Being so immobilized was maddening.

  It wasn’t nearly as bad as the dark aspects they’d used to trigger the hallucinations, though.

  A heavy, featureless mask covered my entire face. Scrivened seals around its perimeter kept the thing glued tight to my skin. Jinsei poured through a tube in the bottom of the mask, forcing me to breathe it in. Madness, fear, and confusion aspects tainted that sacred energy. They were what had reconstructed that scene from my dark memories of the battle against the Locust Court. This had been another of the Inquisition’s favorite tests.

  I’d failed it.

  Again.

  “This would be a lot easier if you’d cooperate with us, Jace.” Brother Harlan, one of the priests of the Empyrean Flame who’d been charged with testing me, scowled at me. “After all these weeks, still you fight and lie. If you’d only answer my questions, this would all end and you’d be back at school before you knew it.”

  My hands wanted to fly to my face and rip the mask off. The drowning sensation filled me with a blind, animal panic. It was all part of the tricks and torture the priests had visited on me during my stay. They insisted it was all for my own good.

  Liars.

  They wanted to know what made me tick. They wanted to know all about my new Eclipse core.

  And I didn’t want them to know anything about me.

  I closed my eyes and let the jinsei flow through me. I endured the aspects that lodged in my aura and hid my thoughts from the fear and confusion that would have infected them. The technique that had let me breathe life back into the grass on the beach would let me pluck those foul motes out of my aura and shove them into Brother Harlan.

  That would have been the easiest way to ease my pain.

  It would also have showed the inquisitors one of my secrets. I wouldn’t let that happen. Instead, I meditated and pushed the foul jinsei through my core and channels. I took the strength I could from it and hardened my mind against the poison that tried to invade it. The Church could hold my body, but it couldn’t chain my thoughts.

  “Let’s get that mask off you.” Brother Harlan’s sausage-thick fingers were surprisingly dextrous and managed to drain the mask, unfasten its seals, and remove it without pinching my skin. It was a small mercy after what felt like an eternity of these arduous tests. “Isn’t that better?”

  I blinked away the jinsei that still clung to my eyelids and blew out an exasperated sigh. Brother Harlan had been with me every day since I’d been taken by the Inquisition. We’d gone through the cruelty and kindness dance at least a hundred times, and I was sick of it.

  “Let me strap it on you for a while,” I said. “You’ll see how pleasant it is.”

  “Easy.” The priest’s warm eyes turned cold and hard. He didn’t look like a fighter, but his core was the equal of mine. He’d seen action in his days, and still had the skills to make me very sorry if he felt threatened. I could likely beat him in a fight, but only if I used all of my Eclipse core abilities and was willing to kill him. I wasn’t sure we’d reached that dire strait yet. “I’m removing your restraints. Don’t do anything we’ll both regret.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” I snorted. “There’s nowhere for me to go even if I escaped this room.”

  “Finally accepted that, have you?” Harlan unfastened the straps on my legs first, then worked on my wrists. “It’s a shame you only figured that out on your last day here.”

  Those words sucked the air out of my lungs. I choked on my surprise, then laid my head back on the surgical table. It was a trick. It had to be.

  The Church had snatched me off the beach after I’d said goodbye to my friends on the last day of the school year. They hadn’t used a portal to reach me, because that would have set off all the Portal Defense alarms. Instead, they’d rolled up onto the beach in an inflatable boat. Five inquisitorial guards had spilled out of that boat, their weapons trained on my heart. If they’d come with fusion blades, I would have risked a fight with them. But the strange jinsei-powered firearms they cradled were ugly and potent weapons. I doubted I would have survived the encounter if I’d put up a fight. They’d bundled me up on their boat and motored out to meet an impressively armored yacht.

  And I’d been in their custody ever since. They were very curious about the Eclipse core and had spared no expense trying to pry its secrets out of me. I’d held them at bay, but it had cost me. I was exhausted, and my core constantly ached from the strain of keeping my channels filled with jinsei to resist the Church’s tricks and tests.

  “You’re lying,” I said.

  “I’m not,” Harlan said. “The inquisitors have decided it’s best if you return to the School to begin classes for the new year.”

  “People will want to know what happened to me, where I’ve been.” I waited patiently for Harlan to undo the final restraint. If I moved before he did that, he’d leave me chained up longer just to show me who was boss.

  “Don’t worry about that.” Harlan unfastened the strap from my left wrist. “The Church informed your clan and the School once you were safely on Atlantis. They’re aware that you’ve completed your visit to the island. No one will know what a pill you’ve been or how much of the Church’s time and money you’ve wasted by your refusal to cooperate with us.”

  “A pill? I’ve taken all your tests and answered your questions.” I’d also kept the real secrets they wanted to myself.

  “You and I both know you’ve lied to us.” Brother Harlan released my right wrist. “Fortunately for you, the Empyrean Flame wants you alive and back at the School. The oracles have conveyed this message to your clan and Headmistress Cruzal. There’ll be no questions about your time here, and you’d be wise not to stir up any trouble regarding your vacation with us.”

  The implied threat hung in the air between us, a cleaver’s blade ready to fall on my neck if I stepped out of line. The Inquisition had kidnapped me. They’d held me prisoner and tortured me for three months. They’d broken a dozen laws and turned sacred energy into a foul instrument to try to uncover my secrets.

  And they were going to get away with it.

  The urge to show them who they’d crossed kindle
d in my thoughts. I could beat Brother Harlan. I could beat anyone they sent against me. I’d break them against my Thief’s Shield, leech the jinsei from their cores, and leave them empty on the floor.

  Of course, if I tried anything like that, I’d never make it off the island, but maybe that was okay. Maybe the important thing was that the Inquisition would think twice before they snatched another kid.

  I smothered the fiery dreams of rebellion before they could inspire me to act on them. Killing a bunch of inquisitors wouldn’t make them think twice about anything. They’d decide that Eclipse Warriors were all monsters and deserved to die. They’d find out about Rachel and the outreach program, and those kids, who’d never had a chance to grow into their powers or know even a second of life without being hollow, would end up on Atlantis.

  No. It was better to play along. I’d done it this long. I could do it for a few more hours if that’s what it took to leave Atlantis behind.

  “I didn’t lie,” I lied, smoothly and easily. I’d gotten good at it now that it was a survival technique. “I did the best I could. I’m sorry it wasn’t enough for you.”

  Brother Harlan stepped back from me and took up a spot next to the room’s only exit. He motioned for me to come to him, and then raised a hand when I was a few feet away. Just out of arm’s reach for a normal kid.

  Good. I wanted him to think I was a stronger-than-average but still relatively normal kid. That was my story, and I was sticking to it.

  “It would be so much easier if I could believe you.” Harlan sighed and pressed a button next to the door. It opened, impossibly smooth and utterly silent. “Step into the hall. We have a little trip to take, and then we’ll get you back to the School.”

  Harlan thought making me take the lead would keep him safe. I hid my smile and did as he asked.

  Just a little longer, and I’d be free.

  “Walk straight down the hall, until I give you another direction,” Harlan said from behind me.

  The hallway was not the drab hall that we’d used to reach the testing lab. The previous passage had been all chipped linoleum, nausea-inducing green paint, and a dropped ceiling spotted with tea-colored water stains. The stinks of mildew and antiseptic had warred in my nose in that hallway.