Shade, as it happened, had also been dropped into combat. This battle suited him though and he was slightly embarrassed when the Guan children appeared. He had been revelling in the fight, losing himself to the music of it.
The room he had fallen into stank of a specific mana. Shade knew this smell well, as it was his own. He felt the spatial tears occurring before their inhabitants emerged. Small to medium sized constructs tore through the fabric of space and rocketed towards him. If Shade had not known where they would appear, he would have stood no chance in avoiding the nearly instant attacks.
As though the room were made for him, Shade fell into a battle trance. He and Raze had become one, the sword an extension of himself. The constructs themselves were sturdy but Shade did not cut the strange stone they were made from, he rent space itself apart. In answer to the flow, Shade danced, a droplet of water avoiding the rest of the rain.
By the time the children arrived, Shade had worked up a sweat. He was not tired, though. Instead his muscles sang and his mana had never felt more natural under his skin. “Having fun?” Fa Lian asked, an eyebrow raised as she stepped through the opening into Shade’s room.
“I suppose I was. Forgive me.” Shade was earnest in his words, which seemed to make them all the funnier to the two children. He rolled his eyes and waited, content to let them have their fun. Shade had found that trying to calm children down with logic often had the opposite effect. He instead replicated Fa Lian’s earlier expression and counted to ten in his head.
By the time he was done, Ah Dan’s serious eyes were locked onto him. “We’re close.” He said, a voice deepening by the day. Within the few months Shade had known the boy, he had begun to fill into the man he would become. A sharp jaw was forming as the childish roundness fell away. A brow hardened by concern, ageing him slightly. At some point, his nose had been broken but it gave a fighter’s look to an otherwise angry face.
He looked like a man growing into a leader.
Shade felt sorry for him. “I believe you would be the best judge of that, Guan Ah Dan. Your connection to these relics and the labyrinth itself is potent.” Shade was choosing his words carefully. It was possible that Ah Dan had not realised his own importance. His education had been in stamina and mana control, not statecraft and history. Shade was unsure how much Ah Dan knew but the look of weary understanding meant he knew enough for now. “We are safe here, I think. Can you move us on?”
Ah Dan chewed his lower lip and looked to the ceiling, not to see anything but in a motion which meant he was thinking. Then he looked at Fa Lian and seemed to find an answer. “Yes. I can get us to the spear.”
“Get us to Yo Shen.” Fa Lian probably didn’t mean to sound angry but even Shade winced a little at the bite in her voice. Her brother had been missing for months and the frustration of the search always rose highest when the quarry was close. Shade understood and it seemed Ah Dan did too.
“Exactly right.” He said, nodding his head forward and closing his eyes. After a moment of politeness, head still bowed, Ah Dan dropped to a sitting position, his legs crossed. The tempo of his breathing stopped. Even to Shade’s admittedly limited magical senses, the energy that swirled around Ah Dan was palpable. Shade looked at Fa Lian and found her waiting for his glance, a smirk on her face.
She stepped closer to him, speaking low so as not to disturb Ah Dan’s meditation. “When I met him, he couldn’t even use a technique. That was less than half a year ago. Tell me, do you think you could beat him in a fight?”
Shade looked at the power flowing around Ah Dan, the pressure building in the room as it filled with his mana. He thought back to Ah Dan freeing him from his mother’s control. If it were Shade there in truth, not just his body. “I’m not sure,” Shade said truthfully, “but it wouldn’t be a fight I’d choose to have.”
“Likewise.” Fa Lian was watching Ah Dan with interested eyes. “I have become as strong as I could have ever imagined myself, with more room to grow. Yet I’m positive, without a shadow of a doubt, that he will soar past whatever heights I reach. It’s frightening.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Shade had no reply, instead choosing to remain quiet and watch the slight glimmers that glinted around Ah Dan as he worked. He agreed with her. Ah Dan would rise higher than many. For now, though, they were headed down. At the far side of the room, the floor fell away, revealing a sloping ramp to the lower levels. Dan opened his eyes and looked around innocently, completely unaware of the mystique currently surrounding him. Shade smirked to himself and stepped towards the opening, gesturing with his hand as he spoke. “Downwards, then.”
Due to the size of the tower and the dimensions, tracing the edge took a long time. By Shade’s guess, they had done one and a half cycles of the whole thing before they came to the next room. As they walked, they discussed their various ordeals from separation. Fa Lian laughed as though Dan had told the funniest joke in the world when he explained that all that had been in his room was art. Shade was more interested in what Dan had seen but he seemed reluctant to share. Maybe, Shade thought, that, too, was a trial.
When they all reached the end of the winding ramp, their tunnel tightened slightly before ending in a door. It was an intricate thing, seemingly made of the same rock as the labyrinth but carved with a beautiful relief of a phoenix. Shade had seen a few in his mother’s menagerie but never cared much for the firebirds. Dan stopped in front of it and looked hard at the handle seriously.
“What’s the problem now?” Fa Lian asked, her impatience clear and obvious. Each moment they waited was another that her brother might be in peril. Shade understood it in concept but he had no desire to save his own siblings from danger.
“There’s not usually a door…” Without another word, Dan reached forward and tried the handle. There was a strange pulse through the rock, not just of the door but the whole tower seemed to shiver, although whether it was anticipation or a warning, Shade could not work out. Still holding the handle, Dan turned and gave a small grimace. “Here goes nothing,” he said, opening the door.
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Hestia was not sure if she was winning but she was certainly not losing.
She had given Shin Boh Tahn the time he needed to prepare himself. Stabbing him in the back would have been humorous but nothing more. You needed to do more than kill the wielder of a soul relic to relieve them of it. Even death would have a hard time taking hold of the man when the sceptre was in his possession.
Her own crown, sword and belt were thrumming with power as the pope healed his ward and sent him on his way. She watched as the priest climbed up the tower, his limbs stretching as he reached for handholds. She found it strangely beautiful, the brutal command with which the creature had attached itself to the priest was, to her eyes, a work of art.
“Your pet will not find the spear.” She called across the small divide which had formed in the cavern. Between her power and his, the spear’s skeletal forces were kept well at bay, simply by the pressure given off. “Even if it does, it does not have the requirements to wield it.”
“The boy does, though.” The man’s old voice carried far though he was nearly whispering. So, he was betting that the body would trump the mind. Hestia supposed it was possible. “Found him covered in blood, stinking of consequence. I couldn’t just leave him there and he was broken in just the right way to be useful.” Consequence is the metric by which a person can influence fate. Anyone with enough consequence to wield a soul relic would inevitably be a potent force in the world, regardless of if they ever found one or not. “It seems we both prepared for Allusia’s importance.”
It was true. Hestia pretended that she ignored the squabbles and goings on of her children but that was only true for the unimportant ones. Certainty sat upon her throne, a regent who thought herself usurper. That ambition was, in itself, a powerful tool. However, the golden child was not her favourite. It was the black sheep, Shade, who could not help himself from furthering Hestia’s goals. That made him immensely interesting.
Even now, she could sense him somewhere within the tower. Every time she placed a barrier before him, each time she tried to guide him to greatness, Shade pulverised her attempts and made his own path. It was wonderful. “I cannot let you enter, you understand?”
Hestia flared her power. She and the man had been posturing for long enough. The sword slipped from its relaxed position in her palm to a more fierce stance. The crown roared to life, a flaming sun of magical power. Her centre of gravity became the centre of gravity as the belt’s power surged to life.
Opposite, the whip and sceptre were amplifying the man’s spells, his thousands of wards and barriers gorging themselves on the energy from his weapons. His method was crude. The relics were more than mana batteries and this fool was about to learn that. If all went well, Shade would leave the tower with the spear. Failing that, she would kill whoever claimed it and bring Certainty to get it.
Smiling as though she had already won, Hestia stepped forward into battle.
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As Ah Dan opened the phoenix door, Shade felt the activation of his mother’s soul relics in close proximity. The previous waves of energy had all been the tremors before an earthquake by comparison. The tower quivered so violently he and Dan were forced to their knees. Fa Lian stayed standing, staff planted against the floor as a ballast. Dan screamed and Shade knew it was not just the movements that had brought Dan to his knees. “This will get worse before it gets better, we must find your brother and get him out of here.”
“What do we do with him? Leave him?” Though she pretended to be willing to go on, Fa Lian was clearly worried, already standing over Dan with her arms awkwardly hovering. She was quite gentle, really.
“Can you carry him? I think…” Shade was not looking at either of them but instead into the room beyond. In the darkness, shapes were moving. Glints of red and green amongst the pitch black. “We might have to run.”