Living in the sect headquarters of their vanquished foe was a strange experience to say the least. Leopold had volunteered to clean up the courtyard, and he’d done so with a mixture of cast psychokinesis and scouring flame. Willow stayed with Jeremy as he tried to explain how the spiritual pills work.
“You eat them and then you have to circulate the power within your own body. That forces advancement, but the effects can be dangerous if you aren’t prepared for that level of pill.”
“Let’s say that our magic systems are roughly synonymous,” Willow said, and waved away a whole host of exceptions. “Leopold and I are completely different sorts of people when it comes to this. I’ve had… things done to me. Against my will, but they were done and now I’m like this. I’m not sure the same pills will work on the two of us.”
“That’s fine,” Jeremy said. “I’m sure there are a million other lesser pills around this place for the outer sect members of importance. These six are the crown jewels though. They’ll let even me advance further. Our first step should be advancing Leopold, since he’s so far behind.”
“How long will it take to bring him up to speed,” Willow asked. “To you, to me?”
“It could be years if we fed him a steady stream of pills and tempered it with training. But you two work differently than we do, obviously. From what you’ve said before, it seems like your mages never become physically more powerful, just more skilled with what power they can wield.”
“As a rule, yes,” Willow said. “I’m a bit of an exception.”
“You’re like a cultivator,” Jeremy said. “And you were brought to this state in what? A week?”
“I’ve always been like this. I was paralyzed for many years and only healed much later. Now I can do both: move my body with psychokinesis, or use those spells outwardly or even cast simultaneous spells instead.”
“That’s what we’ll be trying to do for Leopold,” Jeremy said. “It’s the only advantage you two will have. You’ll be going up against the most powerful cultivators in the nation, people who’ve been fed the most expensive pills for breakfast, lunch and supper every day. People who don’t have to do anything but sit and circulate and train all day. The pampered and coddled, essentially, but that produces an exquisitely powerful cultivator in the end. Your magic, the outward manifestation of your power, is beyond what the most skilled cultivators could even dream of accomplishing. It’s your fighting prowess that’s lacking. You’re like glass cannons—one hit and it’s over for you.”
Willow nodded. “I don’t want him to have to be like me,” she said. “But…”
“You want him to survive,” Jeremy said.
“He’ll go all the way with me, wherever that leads. Sometimes I wish he wouldn’t, but—”
“It’s a lonely road, being the only one of your kind,” Jeremy interrupted. “To have a companion these long years would have been a great relief. You’re giving him a gift, Willow: the ability to keep up with you. And unless I’m wrong, he’d take the opportunity in a heartbeat.”
Willow walked over to the open window and watched as Leopold incinerated a bloodstain on the stone pavilion below.
“Yeah,” she said.
🜛
Circulation with the pills was much harder than it had been with her own essence alone. Each one was like a little sun, a massive infusion of essence pushed down and sealed inside a small sphere which would break upon ingestion. She and Leopold sat side-by-side as they furiously circulated the essence introduced to their bodies, never letting it stay in one place very long but instead stretching the limits of their capacity.
Jeremy watched over them. He sat as still as a statue while they sweated beside each other trying to keep the essence down. Leopold had started on a lesser pill, but Willow had been given one of the final six right away. Even for her ridiculous essence capacity it was an almost unbearable stretch.
But slowly, over hours, that stretch became less of a battle for survival and more of an unpleasant sensation. Then that too morphed into a feeling of uncomfortable fullness, and then blessed relief. The essence had either evaporated or, more likely, Willow’s capacity had been pushed even wider.
“Another,” Jeremy said, and opened the box of the four remaining suns.
“So soon,” Willow panted. Leopold grunted and got to his feet.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“To get another as well,” Leopold said, and hobbled off to the chest at the side of the room which contained dozens of lesser pills. He extracted one from the second shelf—his first had come from the first shelf—and returned. Jeremy gave Willow a look that said ‘I told you so’.
“We don’t have much time before the tournament begins. The three senior disciples of the Driving Rain sect will be nearly there already.”
“Then how are we—,” Willow began, then realization washed over her. Of course, portal magic. She kept forgetting that any location was a step away as long as she knew which way they were going and how far it was.
“Another,” Jeremy said, and handed Willow her second pill. She took it and, now that she’d experienced the effects of ingesting it, held it out for consideration for a moment longer to forestall the inevitable. Leopold had already eaten his and sat down again beside her. She could feel his paltry essence swirling around his body.
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“What are these made out of,” Willow asked.
“Rare powerful spiritual herbs, qi-infused minerals and the remains of sacred beasts,” Jeremy said. “All cooked together in a pill furnace to concentrate them and wrap them with a delicious edible shell. You’re stalling.”
“Only the essence is left,” Willow said, concentrating on the pill with her second sight. It truly was a sphere of essence, but nothing else remained inside. No minerals, no herbs, no animal parts. Just essence so highly concentrated it glowed. The shell appeared to be a minor variant of her own spell capsules.”
“I think I can make these,” Willow said, and Jeremy snorted.
“What?”
“Honestly? I wouldn’t be surprised at this point. Your magic is so much better than ours. I wish I’d been born back in America.”
He held out his hand expectantly. Willow concentrated and shoved a small iota of essence into a sphere, then wrapped it in a shell that would be almost too easy to break. So easy that stomach acid could do it.
She passed it to Jeremy and ate the high-grade spiritual pill, bracing herself for the flood of essence into her body.
Gods, it was going to be a long day.
🜛
After two days of cycling, Jeremy took them out in the pristine courtyard for training. There he showed them basic combat techniques—some of the same stuff that Sun Geon had shown Willow. It was all new to Leopold, but with acceleration spells active he seemed to impress Jeremy.
“I suppose you don’t need decades of practice if you have all the time in the world to decide your next move,” Jeremy said after warding off all of Leopold’s blows. Leopold was sweating and sitting on the stone pavilion, clearly exhausted from their spar.
“But you’ve got no power behind the strikes. No follow-through.”
“That’s your people’s magic,” Willow said. “It circulates in your body, strengthening your skin, muscles and bone. It makes you naturally faster and stronger, and apparently ageless. Ours doesn’t work like that.”
“Yours does,” Jeremy said, and pointed at her.
“I’m a special case,” she said. “I shouldn’t even be alive. If you’re expecting Leopold to end up like me, you’ll be disappointed.”
“I don’t need to hit as hard as you,” Leopold said and slowly got to his feet. “I don’t need to have skin like stone and live forever. I just need to be fast.”
“Speed isn’t everything,” Jeremy countered. “You need to have some force behind—”
Leopold pulled a lowly spiritual pill from his pocket and popped it in his mouth. It was one of the level 1’s that he’d moved past, but the gush of essence filled him out nicely. Willow knew what he was doing—she did the same thing when she ate their jerky, or breathed the concentrated essence in the air.
“Let’s go again,” Leopold said, and Willow caught something in his eyes. Excitement. Eagerness.
She stepped back.
Leopold ramped his acceleration spell, but past its limits. He poured essence into it and it strained the spell form, but he became even faster than he had before. He disappeared in a blur and a chittering sounded from around the stone square.
Willow realized as the lance of fire speared down where Jeremy had been standing just a moment before—the chittering was the sound of Leopold concepting at high speed. Jeremy appeared on the other side of the pavilion and a barrier sprang up to encircle his feet.
“Huh,” he said, lifted a foot, and the barrier shattered. But not quick enough. Lightning shot from thin-air and hit Jeremy square in the chest, throwing him back against one of the stone pillars. When he slid down to regain his feet, Willow saw that the facade on the pillar had cracked.
Willow’s breathing intensified with excitement. Her eyes darted around at random but she couldn’t see Leopold. She quickly cast acceleration on herself and time slowed down all at once.
Where was he? Jeremy fell into a fighting stance in slow motion and turned his head, searching for Leopold. Even Willow’s second sight had trouble spotting him.
There! His essence shot across the pavilion almost faster than her max-accelerated eyes could track him. How had he gotten so fast? And he’d also cast invisibility at the same time?
Then she knew it: he was multicasting. Just like she’d always been able to do with her psychokinesis, he’d moved up to a level where he could maintain several spells at once. But he was running out of essence even as she watched, his reservoir unable to keep up with the rate at which he was burning it.
Two paving stones hinged up and slammed together with Jeremy in-between. He blasted them apart with twin punches and stuck his hand out in midair, closing his fist. Leopold materialized out of nowhere.
“Nice wor—,” Jeremy said, then Leopold melted and splashed down on the pavilion floor. Jeremy was still looking at his empty hand when something invisible slammed into the side of his face, sending him flying off to crash through the wall of a nearby building.
Leopold appeared where Jeremy had been a moment before, a giant metal bell crashing to the ground beside him. Was that what he’d hit Jeremy with?
Leopold looked absolutely thrashed. He was covered in sweat and his feet and hands were bloody, but he had a satisfied smile on his face. He laid right down in the square and rested his head on the tiles. Willow ran over.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” she said as she gently raised him back up.
“Me either,” he said with a smile. “But sometimes that guy really gets on my nerves.”
“I’ll be more careful next time,” Jeremy said as he walked back to the pavilion. Chunks of stone wall fell where he’d punched through into an unused building. He was rubbing his jaw.
“I see you found the warning bell,” Jeremy said. “Maybe we can find you something more your style in the armory.”
🜛
A week more was all Jeremy gave them. The tournament would nearly be underway, and they needed to get there before the fights started if they wanted to start picking off opponents one by one. The three of them gathered in the pavilion, which had been roughly repaired from their many practice bouts.
Leopold wore a spear with a shimmering blue blade across his back and a strange singing sword at his hip. Willow and Jeremy were unarmed—he’d explained that once you got to a certain cultivation level your own strikes would destroy any weapon that was less than a sacred relic. Apparently they were both at that point, but not Leopold.
Willow breathed out and oriented herself to the chalk drawing Jeremy had laid out. She carefully squeezed just the right amount of essence into her spell core, layered the requisite modifiers, and then cast the core away.
It shivered in the air for a moment, then opened up a hole in space. On the other side was a flooded field. In the distance were a low series of mountains which sported a large assortment of buildings hung with a riot of reds and oranges.
“Perfect,” Jeremy said and walked through. Willow looked at Leopold and he took her hand. Together they passed through the portal as well, towards the tournament which would determine the executioners of America.