Eternal Core (School of Swords and Serpents Book 6) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Summary

  Shadow Alley Press Mailing List

  The Gap

  The Curse

  The Mirror

  The Memory

  The Grind

  The Theory

  The Rematch

  The Barriers

  The Geomancer

  The Trip

  The Explosion

  The Advancement

  The Alarm

  The Deal

  The Sandcastle

  The Ledge

  The Worry

  The Investigation

  The Temple

  The Vault

  The Shelfstrosity

  The Offer

  The Rescue

  The Alliance

  The Machine

  The Trick

  The Island

  The Dragons

  The Sages

  The Spire

  The Temple

  The Reward

  Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

  Acknowledgments

  The Dragon Academy

  Books by Shadow Alley Press

  Books by Black Forge

  LitRPG on Facebook

  GameLit and Cultivation on Facebook

  Even More Cultivation on Facebook

  Copyright

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Summary

  THE END OF JACE'S QUEST is at hand, but so is the end of the mortal world.

  Since earning his way into the School of Swords and Serpents, Jace has gained allies, thwarted enemies, and set out to save reality from unraveling. With the end of the Flame's mission in sight, Jace is ready to relax and enjoy his last few years at the School.

  But things are not as simple as they appear.

  Jace has lost a year of his life. His most trusted friends have scattered to the ends of the Earth. And the enemy that pushed him down the Eclipse Warrior's path is back with a vengeance.

  With the odds stacked against him, Jace soon learns that he has only one chance to save the Grand Design and restore order to the world. He'll have to push himself to the final level of advancement and become the Eternal Core.

  Even if it kills him.

  Eternal Core is the final book in the best-selling School of Swords and Serpents series. Filled with cultivation magic, powerful enemies, and epic battles against impossible odds, this is the final step in Jace's legendary quest.

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  The Gap

  THINGS HAD CHANGED so much in the five years since I’d first entered the School of Swords and Serpents. The upperclassmen had seemed like monsters, sizing up the fresh meat as we’d entered the academy. I’d spent the year terrified that Grayson Bishop would have me killed. Even the building itself had felt like a terrible threat that was both impossibly huge and strangely empty.

  Now, though, I was the most powerful student to ever walk the Academy’s hallowed halls. It was my turn to look down from the upper balconies and wait alongside the other sixth- and seventh-year students for the new meat to enter. Grayson was long gone, and most of his allies with him, and Headmistress Cruzal and I were, if not allies, at least on speaking terms. It even seemed that the number of students had increased since the previous year.

  The balcony overlooking the great hall held more upperclassmen than I’d ever seen in one place. I recognized scarcely any of them, though, which made me wonder where they’d all come from. The freshman class, visible on the school grounds through the windows on my level, was also far larger than any I remembered. There had to be at least two hundred kids milling around outside.

  “Where did all these new students come from?” I asked Hahen, raising my voice over the growing din of my fellow students. All those quiet side conversations had multiplied as we waited for the newbies until the murmur had become a rumble that shook the rafters.

  The rat spirit’s ears twitched as his glance slid toward me, and he wrinkled his nose in what could have been annoyance or embarrassment. “These students,” he said, as if for the thousandth time, “are from the previous years’ classes or new arrivals from your recruitment drive last year.”

  Hahen’s eyes glided away from me and his whiskers faintly trembled as he looked up at the emblem of the Empyrean Flame above the School’s entryway.

  “Recruitment drive?” I didn’t understand what the rat spirit was talking about.

  “Yes, you convinced the School’s new administration to open its doors to more students.” Hahen looked at me suspiciously. “You spent the last half of your fifth year working with Rachel and the other annexes to round up every able-bodied potential student for admission this year.”

  Fifth year...

  I knew I was a sixth-year student now. But I couldn’t remember anything about this recruitment drive. No matter how hard I tried, no memories drew themselves on the blank canvas where the last however many months of my life should have been.

  In fact, the last thing I remembered at all was reaching up to touch the Empyrean Flame.

  The memory of the trip to that moment was crystal clear. But the moment of ignition was fuzzy around the edges, as if ethereal flames had gnawed away all the details. I struggled to remember anything after that. Shadowed images slowly formed in my thoughts. They seemed wrong, somehow, the details distorted. The harder I tried to make sense of them, the less clear they became.

  A burst of sound and motion knocked my train of thought off its tracks. The front doors banged open and the freshman class poured into the main hall. They cried out in surprise and excitement at the sight of the School’s interior. There were so many of them, and they were all confused and excited by their new home.

  The upperclassmen greeted the newbies with thunderous applause. The air quaked with our enthusiasm, the clapping a hypnotic rhythm that dredged up memories of my own first day. How Clem, Eric, and Abi took me in and showed me a kindness I’d hardly believed possible.

  Thinking of Clem summoned a crystallized shard of pain in my thoughts. We’d had an argument last year. No, it was more than just a disagreement.

  We’d fought.

  The memory’s pain was so much sharper than its details. There was no clue in my thoughts as to why we’d fought. The pain, though, was as sharp and fresh as a recent cut. It took my breath away.

  “Are you all right?” Hahen asked, his hand coming to rest on my forearm.

  It was hard to find words for a moment. I wasn’t fine. My memories were shot full of holes. I couldn’t remember where my friends were, or what we’d done, or why I’d fought with Clem.

  Something was very wrong with me.

  “Welcome, new friends and sacred artists!” a familiar voice, boosted with enough jinsei it was louder than a jet engine’s roar, called out.

  The sound of those words was like an ice pick in my heart. I’d killed the man, and he’d earned that death. He would have stayed dead, too, if I hadn’t needed help from Consul Reyes to finish the Empyrean Flame’s quest. She’d forced me to bring him back in exchange for a temporary alliance and some powerful foot soldiers to help us deal with Xaophis.

  If I’d known Tycho Reyes was coming back to the School of Swords and Serpents, I’m not sure I would have made the same deal.

  “Who let him in here?” I asked Hahen.

  The rat spirit leaned away from me and furrowed his brow. His whiskers twitched so violently I thought he was about to sneeze. “He’s the headmaster,” Hahen said. “Just as he has
been for the past year.”

  None of the words emerging from the spirit’s mouth made any sense to me. Disjointed memories fluttered and overlapped in my head, like frames of a film in a broken projector, and my core lurched like I’d just guzzled a gallon jug of purified jinsei. A line of pain bisected me from the top of my skull down the length of my spine, like I was being sawed in half.

  A chasm opened in my memories. On one side, I was in a place of blinding light, my every thought a labor of creation that shifted the world on its axis. On the other, a blizzard of fresh memories exploded through the haze of my thoughts like deadly shrapnel.

  I’d been here and there, somehow, but nothing was complete. Shards of the past slipped and slid through my awareness like a jigsaw puzzle with no edges. Glimpses of a past, of my past, collided as two sets of memories struggled to fit into space for one.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said to Hahen, my voice loud enough to draw uneasy stares from the other sixth-years standing on the balcony nearby.

  Why didn’t I recognize their faces? None of them had ever been at the School. Except I knew the young woman with the dueling scar in front of her left ear was Marga. She’d told me the story of how she’d earned that stripe during one of our trips to an Empyrean shrine.

  The images from that journey were there one moment, gone the next. We’d fought our way past a yeti blockade in the mountains of the Himalayas. Or was it a wendigo attack on the icy plains of Alaska? Every time I tried to focus on a memory, my concentration burned it away like the sun evaporating morning dew with its rays.

  “And I would be remiss if I did not introduce you to one of our most illustrious students, the young man responsible for so much of our School’s success in recent years.” Tycho turned away from the students as he continued his speech, one arm sweeping up toward the balcony where I stood. His eyes burned like a pair of jinsei crystals, bright and powerful, his attention like sticky fingers on my core. “Mr. Jace Warin!”

  The weight of Tycho’s attention hit me, but it wasn’t an overwhelming presence like it had been when we’d first met. A moment of grim satisfaction passed over me when I saw the slight widening of his eyes as he realized how much I’d changed since the day I’d run him through with my fusion blade.

  But a smirk replaced the wariness in his expression a second later, and all the old fears and worries came flooding back. My core was nearly a match for Tycho’s, but he was a sage with more years of experience than I cared to count. Beating him once was no guarantee things would go my way if we crossed blades a second time.

  “I can’t wait to get out of here,” I whispered to Hahen through a forced smile. I waved to the students who cheered me from below. “Do you see Eric or Abi around here?”

  Hahen’s whiskers worked overtime with all their twitching. He added raised eyebrows and flattened ears to his expression this time. “No, of course not,” he said.

  His tone made it clear that I should have known two of my best friends weren’t nearby. Why they weren’t around was the real mystery. Try as I might, it was impossible for me to dredge up a single memory about either of them from after our trip to ignite the Flame. And that made no sense.

  Tycho’s attention drifted away from me as he directed the new students out of the entry hall and into the dining room. The smell of bacon, sausage, warm maple syrup, pancakes, sliced fresh fruits, and other tasty breakfast delights tugged at my taste buds if not my stomach. Food was a luxury I hardly needed since advancing to master, but I still enjoyed the way food tasted and the conversations shared with good friends over a good meal.

  “You have an hour before you’re due for the first session in the laboratory,” Hahen said, as if I would understand what he meant. “Do you need time to rest and gather yourself beforehand?”

  “Let’s take a walk,” I said. There’d be time for a nap after I figured out what had happened to my memories. “I’m not really tired.”

  “Of course,” Hahen said.

  We left the balcony and its unfamiliar students behind. My thoughts tried to run away with me, but slow, cycled breaths kept them on the track. I thought of a list of all the people who’d have a reason to tamper with my thoughts. The catalogue of enemies had twelve names on it when we reached the first set of guards wearing strange combat gear and holding jinsei-powered firearms, and my mind jumped the rails.

  “What are combat troops doing inside the School?” I asked Hahen once we were safely out of the soldiers’ earshot.

  “They were stationed here following the Empyrean Gauntlet.” Hahen’s frown deepened at my confused look, and he fixed his eyes on the floor ahead of us. “You really don’t recall any of this?”

  I guided us down a twisty pathway I hoped wouldn’t hold any more guards. I didn’t want anyone to overhear our conversation about my new weakness. I still had plenty of enemies out in the world, and any of them would pay handsomely for that kind of news.

  “There’s a lot I don’t remember,” I said to Hahen after we tucked ourselves into a small study hall far from the rest of the School’s residents. “Everything after I ignited the Empyrean Flame is full of weird holes and dead spots.”

  “Jace,” Hahen whispered, “you did that a year and a half ago. You remember nothing from your fifth year at the School? Or what happened over the summer?”

  Concentrating on that stretch of time dredged up brief flashes of memory, like snippets stolen from someone else’s home movies. Abi and me arguing. Tru storming out of a room with fire leaking from her jaws. Clem boarding a lift transport with tears melting the snowflakes on her red cheeks.

  As intense as each of those scenes appeared in my memory, though, I felt no impact at reliving them. Those experiences should have left me breathless. Instead, they made me curious and confused about how they’d gotten into my head.

  “Someone, or something, has messed with my memories,” I confided to my mentor. “What little I still have from my fifth year feels wrong. Flat, I guess.”

  Hahen peered up at me, his eyes narrowed in concentration as he studied me. The spirit’s attention was as light as a landing feather against my master-level core, and I did not resist his probing stare. If there was anyone I trusted, it was Hahen.

  “There’s something,” Hahen said quietly. “Little more than a shadow, really. It could be left over from your earlier core, but... honestly, Jace, it’s difficult to know with you.”

  He didn’t have to explain what he meant. My core had suffered spindling, folding, and mutilation twice before my adventures had reforged it into something else entirely. I’d been a Hollow, an Eclipse Warrior, and now an elder with a master-level core. That shadow he saw could be nothing more than the result of all the changes I’d gone through.

  Or it could be a brilliant curse woven into me by someone with an extraordinary amount of skill.

  Someone like a sage who’d come back from the dead after I’d stabbed him.

  Though, I suppose Tycho had never technically died because the sole reason he was back among the living was that the Flame had rewritten his portion of the Grand Design so I’d never killed him.

  That memory of the powerful fire laboring over that section of the Design while I watched was crystal clear. The rush of excitement and dread that bubbled up along with that vision of the past was visceral. There was no doubt in my mind it had really happened.

  When I tried to chase the memory, though, a distorted vision of Clem and me rock climbing somewhere with red sand clinging to our sweaty faces took its place.

  This was all too confusing and frustrating. I needed answers, but I wouldn’t get them holed up in a room with Hahen. Fortunately, as the clan elder of the Shadow Phoenixes, I had access to some very smart people who could help me sort this out.

  “Okay,” I said, “it’s time to call in the big guns. Have you seen Niddhogg around?”

  Hahen shook his head, eyes big and sad. “Not since he left for Shambala last year.”

  “Perfe
ct,” I grumbled. “We’re headed there now to get some answers.”

  A look of pure horror washed over Hahen’s eyes. “We can’t do that.”

  “We can,” I corrected him. “I have plenty of money to pay the portal fees, and it’s not like someone from the PDF will tell a clan elder they can’t travel wherever they want.”

  “Jace...” Hahen licked his lips nervously and his whiskers gave such a hard twitch I thought they’d pop out of their follicles. “What elder will sign off on you traveling into hostile territory?”

  It was my turn to frown, and if I’d had whiskers, they’d have twitched. “Me. I’ll sign off on my request. Because it’s mine.”

  Hahen and I stared at one another for long seconds, as if we were both positive the other had gone insane. Sure, I had some holes in my memory, but I was still the leader of the Shadow Phoenix clan. That happened before the trip to the Heart of Creation. The former hollows were my current clanmates.

  “You are not an elder,” Hahen said, careful to enunciate each word. He held his hands up to chest height, palms toward me. “When Sage Dusalia returned, the Consul decided, and you agreed, that, as the eldest-ranking member of the Shadow Phoenixes, she should take control of the clan. She’s taken the rest of the clan to a secure location to help them catch up in their training so they can rejoin the School of Swords and Serpents next year.”

  That didn’t sound like something I’d do. My stomach churned at the very idea of turning my clan members, my friends, over to someone in a position of authority. Those were the people I’d fought against. None of the Five Sacred sages were my allies.

  “This is madness,” I said. “Someone’s done something to my mind. Brainwashed me or something. We need to talk to the Scaled Council, or—”

  “Not today,” Hahen said, his voice low and patient. “You are a sixth-year now, and that means you have service duties. It’s my responsibility that you get to your assignment on time.”

  “Hahen—” I began, but the rat spirit cut me off with a sharp slice of his hand.

  “Jace, for what it’s worth, I believe you,” he insisted. “And I will do everything I can to help you understand whatever has happened. But, at least for now, we have to play by the rules. And that means you must do your duty and report to your overseer.”