“A technique?”
“Sure. Probably stole the binding out of some advanced Remnant, strapped it into a script circle, and tied it to that crystal.”
Lindon pulled out a brush, dipped it in ink, and began taking notes. What was he even writing down? This was the basic of basics.
“Jai Long does it,” she said. “Fought him for a breath or two in the Ruins, and his moves looked like snakes.”
He nodded along with her words, still writing. “How can a technique have a mind of its own?” He stopped, brush poised, waiting for her answer.
“Plenty of the really powerful sacred artists can Forge something that looks like it’s alive. Carries a piece of their Remnant with it, or so they say, but I can’t speak to the details of it. My master could Forge a sword that would fly around and chase an enemy until they died or broke the technique.”
Lindon’s brush dashed over the page. “So all we have to do is break the technique.”
“All we have to do,” Yerin muttered. “Listen. Whoever left that binding behind was at least as powerful as Eithan. Better, more than likely. And it’s meant to test your Enforcer technique, meaning you’re intended to tear through it. That’s a tall order when I’ve got to fight by myself.”
She slammed the shell full of water down next to her so that it sloshed up and over her wrist.
He blinked, eyes wide and innocent as a child’s. “You were amazing today; I’ve never seen anything like it. I would only have gotten in the way.”
That was the attitude that scraped her nerves. You couldn’t always fight when you had a plan or a secret weapon. Nobody ever waited for you to sleep a full night, have a hot meal, and cycle your madra before they attacked you. No, you were more than likely to fight half-asleep, with a bleeding arm and a gut full of poison.
When she’d fought Jai Long herself, she’d just cut her way through a pyramid filled with dreadbeasts and crazed Remnants. Did he do her the favor of waiting until she was in her best condition? No, and neither would anybody else.
“If I waited to fight until I was ready,” Yerin said, “my bones would be rotting in Sacred Valley right now. You have to dive in there, or you might as well scamper back home.”
Well, at least he had the grace to look embarrassed. “I didn’t expect we would fight right away.”
“Yeah, you thought the Blackflame Trials might be testing your foot speed?”
“I was hoping to gather information. If we could just run past it, we might have been able to walk through to the next Trial. Wouldn’t Eithan be amazed if we left here only a day after we started?”
Yerin gaped at him. “You think Eithan wants us to run out of here quick? You don’t think he’d drop us right back at the entrance if we didn’t learn the lesson?”
Lindon flushed, examining his inkwell as though it held the deepest wisdom of the sacred arts. “No, of course, but surely there’s not just one way to solve a problem. If we come up with a solution on our own, then…”
Yerin stood up, brushing herself off. “I’m going to cycle,” she said abruptly, cutting him off.
She walked off, storming past the swords thrust into the ground in front of her cave. The vital aura had finally started to gather around them, generating enough sword aura for her to harvest.
Yerin knelt just inside, calming her breathing to cycle the aura steadily. It had the effect of calming her down as well, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
Lindon hadn’t lost the fight for her.
Sure, it would have been nice to have a second person fighting alongside her, if only to split the enemies. As it was, she had been on the defensive the entire time, battling as hard as she could just to survive for a while longer. That was no way to win a match, and she knew it.
But she’d had no choice. Her madra was squirming out of her control.
Not due to her uninvited guest—it was quiet and placid for the moment, content without straining against the Sword Sage’s knot.
No, it was the Sword Sage himself who was causing this problem.
She had to force her Goldsign to defend her when all it wanted was to strike at the enemy. Her master had left her a second, buried set of instincts inside her that kept trying to teach her how to attack. Her master had been a predator for most of his life. It wasn’t in his nature to stand back and protect himself in front of an enemy. Ever since she’d absorbed his Remnant, she’d only felt fully in control when she was attacking all-out.
Eithan might be right that cracking open her master’s Remnant was the fastest way to Highgold, but that meant there were other ways. Slower ones. As long as she worked hard enough, she could stay a step ahead of her unwelcome guest and keep her master’s voice around at the same time.
Her master was trying to teach her a lesson. And he was going to keep his hand on her sword, pulling her his way, until she learned what he wanted to teach.
This was her last chance to learn from the Sword Sage. She couldn’t waste that opportunity just because Eithan told her to.
Besides….she wouldn’t admit this out loud, but if she tapped into her master’s Remnant, his voice would go away. It would just be her and her unwelcome guest in her head. Alone again.
Yerin continued cycling, focusing on her breath to calm her frustration. She still had plenty of time to reach Highgold. This impatience could only hurt her progress.
Besides, she’d get another crack at the Trial tomorrow.
***
Iteration 217: Harrow
Suriel landed on hard-packed sand next to a lake-sized plate of chrome. In Limit, this had been a piece of a giant machine. In Harrow, a desert.
When Limit lost its grip on the Way and slammed into Harrow, the two worlds merged together and split the difference.
On the horizon, mountains flickered in and out of existence, as they tried to stabilize in one Iteration or the other. Here, Suriel’s presence was stability itself. Her connection to the Way anchored the world around her to order.
For the most part.
A fractal distortion in space unfolded into a field of impossible shapes before blooming into a two-story creature of dark glass. It had the legs of an origami centipede and the body of a black mirage, and it strained her human senses just by its proximity.
The creature of corruption reared over an upturned iron wagon, which had been half-buried in the sand. A woman crouched beneath it, filthy and ragged, having sheltered there for the better part of two weeks as reality crumbled around her.
Drawn to her sentience, the monster would have devoured her to remove her connection to the Way and to extend its own existence in the material world.