Hollow Core Read online

  For a moment, the elder’s gaze wavered, and his forehead wrinkled with concentration. My mother had warned me that my core might be evaluated, but she had also told me few Empyreals would be able to understand the wound inside me. But as Grayson’s face darkened, I wondered if my mother had been wrong.

  “We’re leaving.” Her hand closed around my wrist like a steel noose. “I did not bring my son here to be butchered for your amusement.”

  “Then why bring him here at all, Eve?” Grayson’s smile hardened into a thin dark line across his face. “His core is weaker even than his father’s, and we both know how that ended. Did you really think this pup would stand a chance against my champion?”

  A fiery tornado of thoughts whirled through my skull. One of the five sacred sages, men and women so powerful they might as well have been another species from the rest of us, knew my mother. He knew my father.

  He knew me.

  “Because I thought you were a man of honor, Grayson.” My mother pulled me past the headmaster with no more care than passing a beggar on the street.

  “Listen to your mother, boy,” Grayson called after us. “My champion will break you even more easily than I broke your father for his crimes.”

  The words stung my ears like a swarm of angry hornets. Shame reddened my cheeks and forced me to lower my head. My mother never told me what my father had done to earn death for himself and exile for what remained of his family. My father was a ghost that haunted our family, a spirit that had cursed us with a dishonor my mother had never been able to purge.

  And, now, when I was so close to my chance to move beyond his sins and make a new life for myself, his specter had appeared again to turn the headmaster against me. A cold certainty settled over me, and I knew that if I left the arena there would be no escape from the chains my father’s crimes had wrapped around my throat. This was my one chance to prove that I was worthy of something more than exile in the undercity, that I was more than my dishonored father’s weak shadow.

  Fighting Hank Eli might get me killed, but leaving without even trying to win the challenge would leave me trapped in a life without hope or possibility. I’d spend the rest of my life as a virtual slave, my body breaking down under the strain of the thankless labor that would consume my days.

  I’d rather die.

  “I’m not leaving.” My words were as cold and unmoving as the floor beneath our feet. In all my fifteen years, I’d never defied my mother before that moment.

  “Don’t do this.” My mother held my wrist so tight her pulse pounded against mine. “Please.”

  “You deserve more than this.” I leaned in until our foreheads touched. I needed her to understand how important this was to me. I needed her to know what it meant. “I deserve more than this. And you taught me I can win despite everything that’s wrong with me. I can bring honor to our name. I have to.”

  “I would rather have a dishonored son who is alive than a dead son who is exalted.” My mother’s eyes pleaded with me to hear the sense in her words before I got myself killed. “There is more to a man’s measure than his honor, Jace.”

  “If I run from this, how will I ever know if that’s true?” My hand slipped out of my mother’s nerveless grasp and I left her there, alone, to face my fate.

  The Clans

  THE MEDICS HAD REMOVED Hau-Lin from the arena and carted him off for treatment by the time I’d reached the registrar. Their grim faces told me all I needed to know about the fallen challenger’s status. If he was very lucky, the wounded fighter would spend the rest of his days unable to cultivate jinsei.

  If he was at all unlucky, the challenger would be dead before sunset.

  “Tough break.” The registrar shot me a bleak smile and jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the retreating medics. “You sure you want to climb in there after that?”

  “I didn’t come all this way to quit.” I reached under my shirt and popped the catch on the coin purse strapped across my chest. “One hundred oboli.”

  The registrar took the cracked and faded vinyl purse from my outstretched hand. His eyebrows shot up with surprise when he unzipped the pouch and revealed its contents.

  “Where’d you get these?” He pinched one of the radiant soul coins between his index finger and thumb and raised it to his eye for closer examination. The obolus shone with a pure silver light that seemed to be more felt than seen. “Not even a single iota of aspected jinsei. I’ve never seen oboli so pure.”

  “I made them.” It had taken me most of five years to distill enough jinsei through my wounded core to create the coins. I’d thought their basic silver hue would make them worth less than the colorful, swirling oboli that circulated in the undercity. Apparently, there was a lot I still didn’t understand about the jinsei arts. “Where do I sign?”

  The longer I stood in front of the registrar, the harder it was to keep my composure. My only shot at succeeding at the challenge was to stay calm and focused. If another fight began, and I had to watch the School champion tear apart another challenger, I’d be hard pressed to keep from panicking. My odds were long enough without adding that complication to the mix.

  “Sure, sure.” The registrar pushed a heavy leather-bound tome toward me. “Sign right here.”

  The book’s pages were wrinkled and warped from the imprints of hundreds of signatures. It smelled ancient and feral, like an immortal beast that had crawled up from the depths of the earth in search of fresh blood. It had a power far beyond any inanimate object I’d ever encountered before, and its translucent aura rippled around it like waves of heat from a sunbaked highway.

  While the registrar counted my money, I found the last page with names on it. There were dozens of cramped signatures between the narrowly spaced lines, and I couldn’t read any of them. The ink flowed and twisted like angry serpents when I tried to focus on it, evidence of the jinsei charms that guarded the book and its contents.

  The pen next to the book was almost as ancient as the tome. It had been carved from bone aged to a rich ivory hue and worn smooth from decades of handling. I lifted the pen from the pot of crimson ink, and its nib dragged my hand onto the page. Every stroke I made pulled at my core as if the book searched within me for jinsei I didn’t have to give. I had to wonder what signing the book would have cost me if my core had been healthy enough to store soul energy.

  “All done.” The registrar snatched the pen from my hands and dunked it back into the pot. He stabbed a finger toward a dark opening between two sets of bleachers. “Ready room’s over there. Grab something to eat and drink if you need it and wait for your lot to be called.”

  A pair of Empyreal initiates guarded the shadowed passage the registrar had directed me to enter. They blocked my path as I approached, eyeballed me for long seconds, then decided I wasn’t worth their trouble to hassle and stepped aside.

  “Go home, camper,” one of them whispered as I passed between them. The raw contempt in her voice reminded me of what I had at stake. If I completed the challenge, I’d be an Empyreal, too. No one would dare speak to me like that, ever again, without risking a duel of honor.

  If I lost, though, it would be back to the undercity labor camp for me. Back to a life of vacuum-formed algae ramen and recycled greywater. Back to shame and misery, until the end of my days.

  The passage between the bleachers led to the back wall of the arena where a stone-lined opening waited for me. The portal looked out of place in the modern setting, as if it had been plucked from an ancient forest somewhere and plopped down in the heart of St. Louis. The gaping archway was surrounded by moss-choked stones that glowed with the spirit energy contained within. Like people, inanimate objects could absorb and cultivate jinsei. Plants, especially trees, were efficient at harvesting the soul power, but stone took a very long time to accumulate an appreciable amount of energy. The amount of jinsei that emanated from the archway would’ve taken millennia to accumulate.

  That was impossible. The city of St. Louis w
as only a little over two hundred and fifty years old. This archway couldn’t have been here for any longer than that.

  And yet, as I passed through the stone-lined opening, I felt eons of ancient power around me. This place was far, far older than it had any right to be.

  The tunnel beyond the archway was shorter than I’d imagined it would be and opened into the ready room after a couple of yards. The cozy chamber was richly appointed with solid wooden furniture polished to a warm glow, the floor was a ceramic tile mosaic that featured the five dragons of the arena, and heavy oaken beams supported a low, arched roof. Everything in the room was so inviting, I instantly felt welcomed.

  Until I saw the rest of the challengers.

  There were three Empyreals inside the ready room, a dark-haired young woman in a blue gi emblazoned with stark white scrivenings, a bald and dark-skinned guy wearing long gray robes that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a museum, and a shorter man with a shock of red hair sprouting from the top of his head like a torch’s flame. The trio was seated together in the center of the room, and my arrival had clearly interrupted their conversation. They briefly eyed me with interest, then continued as if I weren’t even there.

  While the other challengers were an intriguing bunch, they couldn’t hold a candle to what I saw against the wall nearest to me. My attention was immediately consumed by the sights and smells of fresh fruits, pastries, and small sandwiches piled high on silver serving trays atop a broad wooden table. Crystalline pitchers of water so clean and clear I at first though they were empty rested between the platters of food, their surfaces dripping with beads of condensation. After a lifetime spent eating the undercity’s excuse for food and drinking runoff from the overcity, these refreshments were a feast.

  A feast I didn’t dare eat.

  I didn’t know how long I’d be in this waiting area, and I didn’t want to face my opponent with a belly stuffed with rich foods my system might not be ready to handle. A glass of water, though, that couldn’t hurt me.

  The crystal goblets on the table had wide round bases and broad mouths encircled by a wide golden band. Just one of the drinking glasses would be worth a month’s rent in the undercity, and the table held dozens of them all as clean as if they’d never been touched by human hands. I plucked one of them from the formation and winced as its base jostled against its neighbors with a wind-chime tinkling.

  “You’re not from around here.” An Empyreal had sidled up on my left so quietly I hadn’t even noticed her until she spoke. Her voice was smooth and pleasant, though I caught a teasing edge in her words. “Let me help.”

  She prodded the goblet in my hand with her fingertip and pointed at the spout near the bottom of the heavy pitcher.

  I held the goblet under the spout like it was normal for a no-name camp laborer to be waited on by an Empyreal. I watched her push the trigger on the side of the spout and hoped I’d remember how to do it myself when the time came.

  “Thank you,” I said, because I didn’t want to offend her. We were both challengers, but she was of higher status and would have been well within her rights to call for a duel of honor for any slight she detected.

  “You’re very welcome.” She straightened her sky-blue gi, and the white scrivenings flickered around her waist like lightning across a storm cloud. “My name’s Clementine Hark, representing the Thunder’s Children clan.”

  “Jace. Jace Warin.” I didn’t have a clan name to tack onto my own, which left an awkward silence between us. “I’m from here. St. Louis, I mean.”

  “Oh.” She poured herself a glass of water, then clinked it against mine in an impromptu toast. “Best of luck in the challenge.”

  “And to you.” I took a sip of water and savored its cold, clear lack of flavor or texture. I tried to imagine what it would be like to always drink water this pure and couldn’t wrap my head around it.

  “What’s your style?” Clementine asked. Amongst Empyreals, that must’ve been a common question.

  But I didn’t know how to answer it. I couldn’t reveal my style without also revealing that I had a hollow core. And if anyone found out I was damaged, I’d never be allowed to enroll. There were no rules, specifically, against those of us who couldn’t store jinsei learning to become mystic artists, but that didn’t mean we were respected or valued. And after what Grayson had said about the School wanting to improve the quality of its new initiates, I had no doubt he’d reject me based on my inner wound.

  I couldn’t let that happen. There was a chance, a slim one, that what I learned at the academy could fix my injured core. That would allow me to adopt a more traditional style and become a powerful Empyreal in my own right. Once I was cured, no one would dare to challenge my right to attend the School.

  But until that happened, no one could know about my hollow core.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t know it. It’s a laborer thing.” I took a deep drink from my goblet and hoped Clementine would get the clue and wander off to pester someone else.

  “Oh, mysterious. I’ll make you a bet.” She motioned toward the other challengers she’d been seated with. “Abi, Eric. Come here for a second.”

  The other challengers shrugged and walked over to join us near the refreshments table. The taller man’s dark gray robes were shot through with veins of purest black that gleamed against the cloth like fresh oil. His dark skin was a marked contrast to his clothing, and his bald head gleamed under the jinsei-powered lights hidden in the ceiling’s recesses. His friend was clad in a pair of white shorts and a loose-fitting vest embroidered with gold scrivenings that flashed like embers with every step that he took.

  “Guys, my new friend here has a secret.” Clementine threw her arm across my shoulders and turned me square to the Empyreals. “He doesn’t think I can guess his style. I bet that I can.”

  “That’s not a fair challenge, Clem.” The robed challenger gave his friend a disapproving frown. “You know more styles than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “Abi’s right.” The challenger in the vest, who had to be Eric if the other one was Abi, shook his head. “Clem’s eye for the jinsei arts is an instinct.”

  “Spoilsports!” Clem chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, then raised her index finger into the air. “I’ll make it a challenge for myself. I’ll guess your style based solely on your breathing technique.”

  Abi and Eric both looked unimpressed by this handicap. Clearly, they’d seen this party trick before and were sure that Clem could figure me out with even a scrap of information about my style.

  “I have nothing to bet.” There was no sense in dragging this out. I didn’t want anyone to have even a chance to figure out my problem, and crying poor seemed like the easiest way out of the situation. Surely these wealthy Empyreals would understand that I, a lowly camp laborer, couldn’t afford to gamble my few meager possessions.

  “That is a problem.” Clem stroked her chin and her green eyes sparkled with mischief. “But even if you have no money, you must have something of value to offer. Let’s say I wager two hundred oboli against two hours of your service to me.”

  Clementine’s offer was shockingly extravagant. Two hundred oboli wasn’t a fortune, but it was a start. That much money could get Mom and me out of the undercity, at least for a few months. We could rent a place in the outskirts, find work beyond the labor camps. With my mother’s martial arts skills, she might even be able to get work training clan supplicants for their entrance exams.

  An older man emerged from the shadows across the room. He wore a long coat emblazoned with powerful scrivenings that identified him as a prominent member of the Disciples of the Jade Flame. He must’ve been there all along, keeping an eye on the challengers. He caught my eye and gave me a single slow nod.

  What did that mean? Why would an elder jinsei artist take any interest in the foolishness of challengers?

  Maybe he knew that I was odd enough Clem wouldn’t be able to identify my style. Or maybe it was a trick to humiliate m
e in front of his fellow Empyreals.

  Two hundred oboli against my one and only chance to gain entry to the world’s most impressive academy of mystic and martial arts. I didn’t believe Clem would know the obscure style my mother had taught me, and I didn’t think she’d be able to identify my hollow core from my breathing technique. If I was right, then that two hundred oboli wager was as good as in my pocket. If I took the bet, I could leave the Five Dragons Challenge with twice the money I’d entered with, even if the champion snapped me in half.

  But if I was wrong, then I lost everything.

  “You first,” I said, stalling for time. “All of you show me your breathing technique, and then I’ll show you mine.”

  Abi crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head.

  “It is forbidden. My clan does not allow the display of our sacred techniques to outsiders.”

  “I’ll do it.” Eric closed his eyes and raised his hands to the level of his solar plexus. He formed a triangle with the tips of his index fingers and thumbs touching and drew in a deep breath.

  Because of my hollow core, it was often difficult for me to focus on auras. But Eric’s energy surrounded him like a cloak of flames, and his core glowed like a bowl of molten gold. His jinsei flared ever brighter around him as he inhaled, and when he finally let the breath out it carried dark flecks of corrupted energy that drifted away like ash on the wind. With every breath, his jinsei glowed brighter until his core was full of sacred energy and his aura had shed all but a fraction of its corruption. It was an impressive display, but Eric’s style was painfully obvious to anyone who’d ever studied the jinsei arts.

  “Cloak of Fire style.” All three of the other challengers seemed surprised at my knowledge, which annoyed me. Eric was a member of the Resplendent Sun clan, who flaunted their styles and techniques on televised tournaments all over the world. There were very few jinsei artists who wouldn’t immediately recognize that style.