PRESENT DAY
Water splashed beneath Akari’s boots as she charged the massive gloomfang. Standing over ten feet tall, the creature had the body of an ape and the face of a cave bat. Slick black carapace clung to its spindly frame, and its arms hung well past its knees as it waded through the flooded street.
Akari cycled spacetime mana as she approached, dodging cars and debris along the way. Movement flashed at the edge of her vision as Kalden and Zukan charged the creature’s flanks.
The gloomfang locked on Akari with its glowing green eyes, stretching its lipless maw to reveal two rows of jagged teeth. Then it let out a high-pitched screech that echoed off the surrounding buildings. That screech wasn’t just for busting eardrums, either. She’d read about these things online, and they used the sound waves to map their surroundings.
Akari closed the gap an instant later, leaping on top of a crashed car to get even with its torso. The creature stomped toward her with a splash, then it raised a massive club toward the sky. Akari threw her right hand toward the club and extended the other hand downward. Space warped around her as she conjured a pair of portals, almost too quick to see.
These weren’t the old disc-shaped portals she’d made as an Apprentice. These warped space in three dimensions, conforming to the shape of her opponent’s weapon with no visible edges.
The club passed straight through Akari’s body, smashing into her opponent’s kneecaps. Its legs buckled from the impact, and Akari leapt forward. Pure mana flowed from her outstretched hands, and a pair of blue blades slammed into the creature’s chest.
She’d hoped the gloomfang would stagger back, but this thing had reached the peak of the Artisan realm—practically a Master in terms of raw power. Instead of collapsing in the flooded street, it held still like a rooted tree.
A clawed hand seized Akari’s left arm, and her opponent flung her down the street like a rag doll. The world spun in a blur of gray sky and broken buildings as she flew, and her back slammed through a brick wall.
Talek, that thing was way stronger than it looked. A month ago, that crash might have shattered her spine. But she was an Artisan now, and it would take a lot more than a stone wall to break her bones.
‘You okay?’ Kalden’s voice asked in her mind. Their latest advancement had improved their telepathic abilities as well as their bodies. Now, instead of relying on Kalden’s aspect, they spoke directly through their Aeon soul bond.
‘Yeah.’ She felt at her left tricep where the gloomfang’s claw had cut through her skin. Her fingers came back slick with blood. ‘Just need a quick potion.’
Akari opened the leather pouch on her belt, and her arm sank deep into the pocket dimension. She retrieved a healing potion from the top row, popped off the lid, and drank it like a shot of cheap corzi. The taste was dry and bitter on her tongue, and it burned far hotter than corzi as it ran down her throat.
Worst of all, she’d have to cycle the stuff while her teammates fought without her.
Damnit. She really missed Relia.
Akari forced herself to her feet and stepped forward. The gloomfang had tossed her on the second floor of an abandoned building, and she had a clear view of the battlefield below.
Kalden engaged the creature with a whirlwind of blades, but the gloomfang dodged with blinding speed. One second, it hid behind the stone pillar of a parking garage. An instant later, it ducked behind a crashed van. A few blades still struck its body, but it raised its forearms and deflected them with its carapace armor. The armor shone with green light, and it looked like a defensive aspect.
Akari couldn’t explain how she knew that last part. Artisans could sense a lot more than Apprentices, but this skill took practice to understand. Almost like a whole new set of instincts.
Zukan flanked the creature from the side and hurled a flaming orange spear at its left shoulder. The weapon slipped through the gaps in his armor before exploding like a grenade. Blood and carapace splattered the nearest car, and the gloomfang shrieked in pain.
“Hey,” Kalden’s voice said over the radio. “What happened to no lethal hits?”
There was a short pause while the creature staggered back from its wound. That should have destroyed its heart, right? How the hell was it still standing?
Pale green mana raced through the gloomfang’s channels, and its body glowed like a web of luminescent vines. The light gathered around its shoulder, and the flesh and armor pulled together like flowing mercury.
“It looks fine to me,” Zukan replied in his half-dragon voice.
Talek. Of course, the nightmarish cave demon was a healer.
“We’ll have to drain its mana,” Kalden said. “What if—”
“Wait,” Akari said. “I have an idea. Keep your distance for a second.”
Easier said than done. The gloomfang sprang forward like a jungle cat, and her teammates responded out with their own techniques.
She explained her plan over the radio, and Kalden and Zukan lured the creature down the street toward a pile of stone rubble. Akari followed from above, using her portals to jump between buildings. This part of Koreldon City still lay in ruins from the recent attack, and the structures themselves lay eerily empty. Even the furniture was long gone—probably taken by looters.
“Okay, keep it right there.” Akari knelt on the floor and retrieved two grenades from her pouch. She pulled the pins and shot two spacetime Missiles toward her opponent, targeting a few fist-sized chunks of stone near its feet. Another pair of Missiles hit the grenades, and she swapped their positions with the stones.
“Shields!” Akari said over the radio.
Kalden and Zukan broke off their attack and conjured defensive Constructs. The explosions followed, and the creature shrieked again.
Her teammates charged into the cloud of smoke, but the gloomfang did a backflip and landed on top of a crashed semi-truck. Its body shone with more green mana as it healed the missing chunks from its flesh.
Zukan drove his spear into the asphalt and vaulted upward. The gloomfang spun like a shifting shadow, lashing out with its whip-like tail. The tail caught Zukan in midair, tossing him toward the nearby parking garage.
The dragon reacted far faster than Akari, spinning his body through the air and sending a burst of fire mana from his boots. The flames scorched the concrete wall behind him, and he soared back into the fray.
Meanwhile, Kalden circled around and attacked the gloomfang from behind. The creature spun with another swipe of its tail, but Kalden ducked in a low crouch, letting the dark whip pass over his head. Then he lashed out with a pair of violet blades—a blend of pure mana and battle mana. The blades found the gap in the gloomfang’s armor, separating its feet from its legs.
The gloomfang crumbled to the floor in a dark heap. Kalden struck again, but the creature rolled off the semi-struck, out of sight.
Zukan rejoined Kalden a second later, and Akari used a portal to catch up. They all glanced over the edge of the truck, and she half-expected to find the thing lying on the ground, squirming in pain.
Instead, the gloomfang got up and ran away. On Its arms.
For Talek’s sake. Now she missed fighting mana spawn. At least those had the good decency to die when they lost. Real mana beasts had way too many tricks up their sleeves. Especially ones that had evolved deep in the Hollows.
The gloomfang reached the edge of the street and leapt over the steel guardrail. Akari raised her right hand and cycled mana to her wrist launcher. A dart flew toward her retreating opponent, and space warped around her as she swapped her body with the dart.
Akari soared over the railing like a human bullet, twisting her body downward to see the gloomfang retreat into the nearest subway tunnel. She slowed her momentum with a burst of pure mana, then she landed with a roll and followed the creature underground.
Darkness shrouded the tunnel beyond, and she cycled mana to her helmet to activate the flashlight. Her route took her past rows of kiosks, and she spotted several exposed wires where looters had taken the wall-mounted screens.
At least this tunnel hadn’t been flooded like the others. Maybe it still had its wards in place.
“Where’s it going?” Zukan asked over the radio.
“Subway tunnel,” Akari replied. “I’m in pursuit.”
“Careful,” Kalden said. “There’s a breach nearby.”
“I’ll get him before then.” She and Kalden might be Artisans now, but they still weren’t ready to explore the Hollows beneath Koreldon City. Even a Master would tread lightly down there, and it didn’t help that the ambient mana disrupted her portals.
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Glass crunched beneath her boots as she stepped onto the nearest train platform. From there, she followed the gloomfang’s muddy handprints down a long, straight tunnel. She caught a glimpse of its retreating form and smiled. The creature was trapped; it just didn’t know it yet.
Akari sent Kalden a mental image, then she raised her wrist launcher and fired a dart past the gloomfang’s head.
Her Spacetime Missile caught up with the dart, and Kalden appeared at the end of the tunnel, a few paces ahead of the gloomfang. A shield of pure mana sprang to life from his hands, stretching all the way from the floor to the ceiling. The creature rushed head-first into the shield, but Kalden held his ground.
Akari fired a second dart and displaced her own body. She soared toward the gloomfang an instant later, and two blades formed in her outstretched hands. These were nothing like the crude things she’d formed at the start of the fight. These were the weapons of a blade artist, with points as thin as a single molecule.
Her bond with Kalden offered far more than just telepathy. With enough practice, they could share mana, aspects, and entire techniques. Several generations of blade artists churned in her soul now, and those skills demanded to be used.
Akari slammed into the gloomfang’s back, and her blades struck between the carapace at its shoulders. She Cloaked her arms and sliced the weapons upward, severing the limbs from its torso.
The creature screeched in pain and collapsed on the floor, struggling to fight back with no arms or legs. Akari would have felt bad for the thing if it hadn’t killed dozens of innocent people around town.
Kalden lowered his shield and stepped forward. “Nice work. At this this one won’t bleed out . . .” He trailed off as the gloomfang stopped squirming. Blood pooled on the concrete floor around its wounds, and its body went suddenly limp.
“Shit,” Akari muttered. “Now he runs out of mana?”
“Guess we’d better hurry.” Kalden climbed on the gloomfang’s back and pressed his hands to the spot between its shoulder blades. Akari did likewise, and they struggled to sense its mana.
All mana artists could shape and control their own mana, moving it in and out of their bodies at will. But Aeons took this a step further. With enough practice, they could sense and control their opponents’ mana, including the mana that made up their souls.
Lena Cavaco had made this sound easy, but nothing could be further from the truth. Akari’s new senses were a jumbled mess, and it felt like tracking a single raindrop in a mana storm. It didn’t help that the gloomfang was bleeding to death on the ground. Its soul would crystalize when it died, and then she and Kalden would miss their chance.
Again.
If only Relia were here. She could have patched up the gloomfang’s wounds and knocked it unconscious with a single technique. They could have worked on it for hours, squeezing every drop of mana from its soul.
“I think I’ve got something,” Kalden said.
Right. Stay focused. Akari pulled at the soul with all her mental might, but nothing happened. The gloomfang had drained its mana during the fight, and the soul itself felt far too solid. Not quite a crystal, but close enough.
“It’s all just mana,” Lena had told them in a previous lesson. “Aeon souls can break down any form of power.”
Akari pulled harder, but nothing happened.
“Visualize the outcome you want. Just like when you first sensed your own soul.”
Akari forced herself to relax her muscles, slowing her breathing and her cycling. Brute force worked with mana arts, but Aeon souls were more subtle. They required mental focus and strength of will.
She drew in several more breaths, in through her nostrils and out through her mouth. She fell deeper into her trance and sensed . . . something. Something warm and bright in her mind’s eye.
Her instincts told her to seize the power with her channels, but that would just suck in the tunnel’s ambient mana. Instead, she visualized the power flowing into her Aeon soul, just as Lena had told them.
The gloomfang’s stopped breathing beneath her, and the source of power darkened in her mind.
Shit. Had she missed her chance?
Then Akari felt a sharp pain in her chest, as if she’d inhaled a breath of fire and blades. Her eyes snapped open, and a fresh layer of sweat covered her skin. Panic took over, and she tried to expel the power before it killed her.
“You’re okay.” Kalden said through gritted teeth. “Just stay focused.”
Akari clenched her hands into fists and tried to cycle. Tears clouded her vision, and her chest felt like it might explode from the pressure. She was no stranger to pain, but this felt wrong.
‘We’ll be fine,’ Kalden said in her mind. ‘It’s just like when the Solidors did the ritual. The crystal has to expand.’
She nodded and kept cycling. Kalden was right; this felt exactly like the Solidor’s ritual. They’d survived that, and they would survive this, too. It was the best path forward.
Several heartbeats passed, then the power shifted inside her. A second surge followed as the gloomfang’s broken soul merged with her own. This felt more familiar, like the ache she’d felt during her last four advancements.
The pain subsided over the next few seconds. Her shoulders sagged with relief, and a shaky breath escaped her lips. Finally, she yanked off her helmet and glanced at the mana watch on her wrist.
The first number showed her current mana count at 621, steadily ticking upward now that they’d stopped fighting. But she was more interested in the second number, which showed her maximum count:
3361
Footsteps echoed down the tunnel as Zukan caught up with them. “Did it work?” he asked.
Akari moved her glasses and rubbed the tears from her eyes. Sure enough, her maximum count had increased more than fifty points. That was an entire week's worth of training, all crammed into a single moment.
And this was just the beginning. With enough practice, she and Kalden could pull even more mana from their fallen opponents. With a technique like this, they really could reach Master by twenty-one. Maybe even sooner.
“It worked.” She turned to Kalden with a grin. “How about you?”
He nodded. “I managed to pull about thirty points before it died.”
Akari winced. “Sorry if I distracted you.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll do better next time.”
Zukan strode past the fallen gloomfang, shining his flashlight toward a pit in the floor. “This must be the breach.”
Akari got to her feet and joined him for a closer look. The tunnel dropped several dozen feet underground—probably straight into the gloomfang’s lair.
The city’s wards had been unbreakable for the past century, creating a solid barrier between the surface and the Hollows below. But wards needed power to function, and Storm’s Eye had changed everything in one fateful day.
Now, hundreds of mana beasts roamed free from the depths of the planet, threatening anyone within a hundred miles of the breaches. The Koreldon City officials had placed a premium bounty on the beasts’ cores, and combat artists spent their days hunting them down.
Zukan and Kalden rolled the dead gloomfang on its side, while Akari placed a few lanterns around the tunnel. She also set up a portable shield Construct over the breach. That wouldn’t stop a Master-level mana beast, but it might buy them a few precious seconds to escape if it came to that.
“I still don’t understand this,” Zukan said as they worked.
Pure mana shot out from Kalden’s fingers as he formed a blade between two pieces of carapace. “Which part?”
Zukan made a vague gesture between Kalden and the gloomfang. “How can you steal mana from a creature’s soul? Souls are just portals to the Ethereal. They don’t actually contain any mana.”
“You’re half-right.” Kalden grasped the hilt of his conjured blade and pried open the carapace. “Souls are made of mana, but it’s not the number you see on your watch. That number is your potential mana.”
“I understand that,” Zukan said. “And that’s why I’m confused. What part are you taking?”
“The structural mana,” Kalden said. “Imagine your soul is a pipe that lets in water. The pipe itself is made of ice—water in a structural form. And its size determines how much water it can take before it breaks.”
Akari stayed quiet and let Kalden do the talking. He’d always been good at explaining difficult concepts in simple terms. Meanwhile, she was better at plunging into the unknown, even when she didn’t fully understand something.
Zukan raised a clawed hand to his chin. “So you take your opponent’s ice”—he gestured at the fallen gloomfang— “and you use that to widen your own pipes?”
Kalden nodded. “That’s the general idea.”
“And why can’t the rest of us do this?” Zukan normally sounded so calm and stoic, but his voice carried a hint of judgement this time. Maybe even some jealousy. Akari couldn’t blame him for that. If anything, she felt guilty. All her life, she’d been the underdog, forced to scrape by with less. She’d always looked down on people who’d been born with too many advantages.
Now, the tables had finally turned. These Aeon powers were the greatest advantage the world had ever seen, and Akari hadn’t even earned them. Elend and Glim had stolen the crystals, and the Solidors had done the ritual in exchange for future favors.
How was she supposed to feel about that?
“Ordinary souls can move mana,” Kalden said after a short pause. “But Aeon souls can move mana in all forms. Even crystal. More importantly, they can maintain that form after they release it.”
“You lost me there,” Zukan said.
“Souls are made of structural mana,” Kalden said. “This form is almost impossible to study, much less create. But Aeons can transfer it from one soul to another.”
Zukan hummed in consideration. “So it might be possible for non-Aeons? If we could turn ordinary mana into structural mana?”
“It might be,” Kalden agreed uncertainly. “But you’d be making an artificial soul. Science hasn’t progressed that far yet.” He made another incision in the gloomfang’s chest, revealing a melon-sized crystal core. It shone with pale green light, just like the creature’s aspect.
“You guys wanna do one more?” Akari asked as they bagged up the core.
Kalden stepped behind Akari, lifting her left arm and inspecting the wound on her tricep. “This won’t heal without rest.”
“Damnit.” She’d almost forgotten about her wound. “Stupid potions.”
“I can’t do much without a proper alchemy lab,” Kalden said.
Akari shook her head. “Sorry—wasn’t complaining. I just . . . miss Relia.”
“It might be worth searching for a new healer,” Zukan said. “At least until we get her back.”
“I’ve looked.” Kalden rubbed at his helmet. “Combat healers are hard to find these days. Every team wants one.”
“Don’t we have several healers in our class?”
“Sure.” He shot a meaningful look at the dead gloomfang. “But we can’t bring Apprentices to a fight like this.”
“I’m still an Apprentice,” Zukan reminded him.
“You’re an honorary Artisan.” Kalden sealed up the bag, and it vanished into his pouch. “On the bright side, no one’s gotten hurt until today.”
True enough. Akari’s new body was everything she could have hoped for, and few things could break it. Besides, she’d be back in fighting condition by this time tomorrow.
Zukan shot another glance at the hole. “In that case, I’d suggest we head back to base. No sense waiting around for something to ambush us.”
The group made their way back through the train station and toward the surface. The streets above lay empty, but empty didn’t mean quiet. Sirens echoed in the distance, along with the sounds of honking cars and screeching mana beasts.
Storm’s Eye had left several deep trenches through the city, and people had evacuated the surrounding buildings. Windows and storefronts gaped open like wounds, and dozens of cars stuck out from pools of stagnant water.
For all that, life went on. People built walls to contain the breaches, the combat artists fought the mana beasts, and things got better every day.
Akari turned toward the west and formed a portal on a distant rooftop. She and her teammates all stepped through, and she formed another portal on Chapel Street, less than two blocks from their new apartment.
No sooner had they stepped through than Kalden flipped open his cell phone and brought the silver device to his ear.
“This is Kalden,” he said. There was a short passed as he listened to the voice on the other end. “Okay. We’ll be there in five minutes.” He closed the phone and stuck it back in his pocket.
“Who was that?” Akari asked. “Arturo?”
Kalden shook his head. “That was Irina. She and Elend are back in town.”
“About time.” Maybe now, they could finally come up with a plan to save Relia.