Ghostwater

Chapter 15

Lindon wrenched his arm free of the Forged blade, biting back a scream. He rushed over to the hatch, grabbing it one-handed and trying to haul it open with the strength of the Burning Cloak.

Orthos raced in at that moment, skidding to a halt in front of the hatch. He looked around at the burns in the walls, the sliced floor, and the newly damaged glass cases. “Where is the enemy?” he demanded, excited.

Right arm hanging limp, Lindon slapped the hatch with his left hand. “Down there. He took Dross.”

The turtle’s spirit swept over the hatch. “…it was the Akura?”

Lindon nodded.

“Then thank the heavens you are still free,” Orthos said gravely. “The Akura do not kill honorably. They take prisoners.”

Without warning, Lindon gathered power in his left hand. The dragon’s fire congealed in seconds, and he drove it at the domed lid of the hatch.

Hidden rings of script shone on the lid and on the ground all around, the runes glowing the orange-white of heated metal. In seconds, they faded to orange and then to red.

“Can’t follow him,” Lindon muttered, looking around the room. The refiners had left so much behind; had the Heralds stripped this place decades ago, as they had the other habitats? If not, there could be something he could use.

“If you followed him, what would you do? A dragon does not walk blindly into the devil’s lair.”

“I know you see the problem here,” Lindon said, walking over to a cabinet next to the glass tanks. He threw open the doors—empty. “Without Dross, we are stuck here. Locked in a dying world.”

“Keep a calm head, boy,” Orthos said quietly. There had been no heat in Lindon’s words; even Yerin might not have heard any anger. But Orthos had a direct line to his spirit.

Lindon slammed his fist down onto the cabinet.

It stood as high as his chest and wider than his shoulders, but under his blow, it burst. Wood chips flew everywhere as the two halves of the furniture collapsed inward.

“He took Dross from me. From my hand. More easily than taking a bone from a dog.”

Lindon’s rage stirred his Blackflame madra, which called fire aura to him from outside; he could feel the red power flowing into him. The shards of the cabinet started to smolder.

“Swallow that anger,” Orthos said. “Use it to fuel the fire in your belly. Dragons sometimes lose, but they learn from their losses and come back stronger.”

“If I accept this loss, there is no coming back!”

“That’s not what’s setting your tail ablaze. If you had a choice between leaving alive and staying to compete with the Akura, what would you do?”

“Leave,” Lindon said immediately.

Orthos grunted thoughtfully, then heaved himself to his feet. “Give me a moment. Cycle your pure core.”

That was unusual. Normally Orthos would tell him to cycle Blackflame. But then, normally Orthos wasn’t the one telling him to keep his temper and think through a problem first.

At first, Lindon paced in restless frustration, irritated at having to follow instructions. But eventually he sat down in a cycling position and focused on his pure core.

He soon lost himself in a meditative trance, so he wasn’t sure how much time passed before Orthos returned. In his mouth, he carried a fist-sized chunk of what looked like shimmering blue chalk.

The turtle rolled the lump of chalk across the floor so it bumped into Lindon’s knee. “This,” he said, “is a gatestone. They come in different shapes and sizes, but crushing one will allow you to instantly return to one place. It is how the others have been escaping Ghostwater.”

Lindon’s eyes brightened and his heart cleared. This was the answer to all of his problems. He reached out for it before hesitating. “Where did you find this?”

“In one of the dreadbeast nests. A sacred artist must have died before using it.”

“Why didn’t you bring it before?”

“We didn’t need a way out before,” Orthos said, holding his gaze steady. “Now, you can decide: use this stone, or not.”

Of course he would. Lindon almost laughed out loud. But something else came out of his mouth.

“...why do you think he took Dross?”

Orthos said nothing, but Lindon’s mind started churning. Harmony already had an Eye of the Deep, so he had access to all of Ghostwater. What would he need a second one for? There was the possibility that he wanted Dross specifically, but there would have been no way for him to know that Lindon’s Eye was special before he stole it. Not unless he had access to the bloodline ability of the Arelius.

Maybe Harmony could have accessed the same observational security constructs that Dross had, but Lindon had no idea how likely that was. He had to assume that Harmony just needed another Eye.

Or perhaps he was acting to keep Lindon and Orthos locked inside Ghostwater as the world crumbled around him. Maybe he was just that cruel.

Lindon didn’t have enough information to speculate. But using the gatestone would leave Dross to whatever Harmony wanted to do with him.

And Lindon recognized that an Akura wouldn’t move for a cheap prize. He benefited from this in some way.

Lindon scooped up the stone...and slipped it into his one remaining pocket. Suriel’s marble glowed there, though he didn’t remember putting it away.

“Whatever he wants, we can’t leave Dross to him,” Lindon said at last. And whatever the Akura was after, he wanted a piece of it.

Orthos nodded as though he’d expected nothing different. “Once, you were weak. That boy is long dead, but his Remnant still haunts you.” He turned to drink from the Life Well. “Your weakness, Lindon, is thinking you are weaker than you are.”

Lindon opened his void key, reaching in and pulling out a tiny vial of purple water. He drank it down quickly, feeling his focus sharpen.

“I think I can see a way to break the script on the hatch,” Lindon said after a moment.

Orthos shook his head firmly. “No. We’re too weak.”

“You just said—”

“Prudent caution,” the turtle said. “That is where you should find yourself.”

Lindon spread his one remaining palm. “If we stay here, we’re leaving Dross to his fate.”

“Convince me we can defeat the Akura without him escaping to his family,” Orthos said. “Then I will allow it.”

“I can repair my arm with the hunger bindings inside the dreadbeasts,” Lindon said.

“That arm didn’t win you the last fight, did it?”

“We have some fresh Diamondscale meat. It will strengthen us both.”

“Slowly,” Orthos said. “If we’re going to wait another two weeks, we might as well use the gatestone at the last moment and be done.”

“There are supposed to be some spirit-fruits in this garden, and I still have water from the Spirit Well. I could reach Truegold, but that will take just as long.”

Orthos shifted in place. He glanced to the side, snapping up another piece of debris and eating it.

“...Orthos.”

“It doesn’t have to,” he admitted. “I have the power of a Truegold. I had to share it with you in small doses before, as neither your spirit nor mine could handle the burden.”

A light dawned in Lindon’s mind. “But now we can. And whatever madra you expend, you can replace with the Spirit Well water. Let’s go!” He sat down in a cycling position immediately, ready to begin.

“Listen, boy. You’re only a few weeks from Truegold on your own. Don’t rely on me for this last step.” He hesitated. “And nothing good comes from opposing the Akura family.”

Lindon rested a hand on the turtle’s head. “Dross has traveled with us for four weeks now. Would a dragon abandon an ally in time of need?”

Orthos grumbled.

Then he opened his spirit.

Harmony knelt before the jeweled tree, calming his madra, stilling his mind.

The two Eyes of the Deep sat in his pockets, one silently, the other one chattering. He ignored them both equally.

The Akura family had known more than the others all along; they ensured that their disciples got the real prize in this pocket world. Of the other factions who had joined them to periodically plunder Ghostwater, only the Ninecloud Court had the knowledge they did. But the Ninecloud delegate hadn’t made it inside this time, so Harmony would be the final recipient of Ghostwater’s treasure.

The tree that loomed over him was made of scripted metal, spiraling from the floor up to the ceiling. Instead of leaves, its branches held metal cages, and inside each cage: a sapphire.

Only about a third of the cages were filled, but the chamber still sparkled with light from the Eyes of the Deep.

Harmony withdrew the silent jewel from his pocket. There was a ritual necessary to prepare the construct before coming here; he had to carry the gem around the outside world, then give it a thorough tour of the state of Ghostwater.

For the previous month, he had carried the Eye around with him as he cycled and trained, letting it absorb information about the world. About him. It would add its knowledge to the collective in the tree.

In return for his efforts, he would be rewarded.

He knelt before the tree, holding the shimmering jewel before him like a supplicant. “Harmony of the Akura clan returns the Eye of the Deep to the place of its birth.”

Without his power activating it, script flared to life all over the tree. One branch bent down toward Harmony, its cage creaking open.

Carefully, Harmony placed the gem within. His family wasn’t sure to what degree the tree was aware of his behavior, but it had been known to punish rudeness. When the cage carried away the Eye of the Deep, Harmony bowed.

The jewel was restored to its state among the others, and a whispering voice echoed through the chamber.

“Ask...”

“What is the fastest path that I may use to reach Underlord?” Harmony asked. He had struggled with this question for weeks, regretting that he didn’t have a second chance to ask another question.

Then he had sensed the delegation from the Blackflame Empire next to the Life Well. It meant they had an Eye of the Deep of their own.

The heavens, it seemed, were looking out for him.

The tree trembled for a moment, its script shining and its jewels shaking, as it contemplated the question.

Then a sparkling wave of blue-and-purple light washed over him, and he knew.

The shock of the sudden knowledge left him panicking and disoriented, as though he’d woken up from a dream and not recognized the room around him. When he regained control of himself, he pressed his fists together and bowed to the tree.

“Akura Harmony is grateful for your wisdom,” he said, his voice still rough.

Then he waited.

In front of him, at the base of the tree, was a scripted basin like a birdbath. He stared at the basin hungrily.

The answer was only half the prize.

A few breaths later, a clear tube slid out from the tree and hovered over the basin. A twinkling white pearl rolled through the tube, splashing into the center of the basin.

A drop of ghostwater: the substance for which this world had been named.

Abandoning dignity, Harmony leaned over the basin and lapped the droplet up with his tongue. Lords and Ladies would kill for this.

A moment of cycling later, and he realized why.

The droplet of ghostwater traveled through his madra channels to his head, where it fused with his channels and nested at the base of his skull. It shone there like a distant star, a tiny pinprick compared to the full moon of his core.

He tapped it, and it was as though his mind was refreshed. He stood, Forging his Nine Blades of the Underworld technique. Ordinarily, the technique struck nine times at a target, and it took his full concentration to control it otherwise.

Now, he caused the blades of dark madra to rise in a perfect circle. Once again, and they appeared one at a time on the same spot, delayed by a perfect second each time.

It was like he’d struggled all his life to juggle nine balls at the same time, and suddenly it had become as natural as breathing. One of his older cousins, who had earned a droplet of ghostwater twenty years before, had described it to him as ‘strengthening his mental power,’ but he hadn’t pictured what that meant.

The power faded after only a breath of time, the point of light in his skull dimming. The ghostwater was tapped out, but it would draw from his body and spirit and restore itself over time.

One breath of increased control meant the difference between victory and defeat in a fight. Now, he could consider himself invincible among those of the same stage. And soon he would step into a new realm entirely; the tree had made his steps clear.

He pulled out the second Eye of the Deep.

He would be the first Akura since the Herald who found this place to return more than one Eye. Only a handful of people in history had attained ghostwater at all, and he would have more.

...assuming the tree accepted this one. It shone purple, thanks to the light from the construct inside the gem, and it was talking to him.

“Oh, this place is amazing! I’m a little insulted I didn’t know about it, but you know, I guess they couldn’t tell me everything. I mean, they could, because I do exist to store knowledge, but it’s fine. It doesn’t hurt at all. Although now that you mention it, I do feel a sort of connection. Like that is the place I’m supposed to return to. You think that’s the Eye talking?” He paused for a moment, considering. “Hey, how about this for a plan: let’s not put me in there. I know you’ve sealed me inside this vessel, but how about you let me go? Hm? I don’t trust mysterious compulsions that are telling me to go somewhere.”

The construct pushed against the script keeping it locked inside, and the script flared. Harmony reinforced it with his madra again.

The Blackflames had corrupted this Eye somehow, maybe fusing it with a Remnant or the memories of one of their dead sacred artists. He knelt and held it up, hoping the tree would accept it anyway.

But before he could open his mouth to ask, his spirit whispered a warning. Instinctively, he looked up to the ceiling.

A dark, furious sun had dawned above and behind him. It was like feeling a dragon’s birth.

The aura was only Truegold, but it carried such fury and destruction that his spirit trembled. It surprised him; he hadn’t thought any Truegold could be a threat.

“Did you feel that? Is that Lindon? I tell you what, let’s wait for him. I’m sure we could talk this—”

A cage drifted down from the tree, and Harmony shoved the Eye inside.

The construct shut up as though choked off. The cage started to rise, but it froze only a few feet up.

The branch trembled, and the gem shone purple. The ring of script inside glowed as the spirit pushed its way out, and suddenly Harmony could actually see it emerging from the crack in the sapphire.

It spoke as though through gritted teeth. “...not going to...stay...here...”

The tree’s light shone brighter.

When it did, the cage continued to move. The spirit was drawn back inside the gem with a yelp, and the cage settled into place.

The jewel shone purple for another few seconds, and then its light dimmed.

The spirit was finally, blessedly, quiet.

Lindon held up his hand of flesh, and the madra of a Truegold Blackflame burned the dreadbeast’s blood away.

He’d done some quick surgery on a few of the monsters in the garden, extracting the twisted corkscrew bindings in their body. They were hunger madra, the same as his arm, and he’d been able to patch up the hole in his skeletal limb.

It was still scarred, and you could tell where the different sources of madra butted up against one another, but it worked. That was all that mattered.

And he was Truegold.

With Orthos’ power running through him, and the water from the Spirit Well to guide it, he was filled with a sense of strength he’d never felt before. Orthos told him that it was always best to spend a few days practicing and cycling after advancement in order to get used to his new power. He’d heard such advice before, and generally agreed.

But not only were they out of time, something felt different about Truegold. He felt complete, as though he were a bowl that had been completely filled.

He suspected that was partially overconfidence, but it was partially that he was approaching the limit of his Blackflame core. When he reached the end of Truegold, he would have advanced as far as he could normally.

After that, he’d have to reforge his body and spirit in soulfire.

Even minutes after advancing, he was looking forward to the next step.

Lindon opened his void key, the closet doorway appearing in the air. This time, when he pulled Little Blue off his shoulder, he handed her a pure scale.

His pure core was still Highgold, but that was higher-grade than he’d ever fed her before. She smiled at him before tilting her head back and swallowing the coin whole. Her blue body rippled for a moment until she let out a drifting hiss of satisfaction.

He reached into the void storage, placing her inside. She squeaked, just as she had last time, clambering up his arm.

Now, he met her eyes. “I can’t take you with me this time,” he said.

Little Blue let out a sad note.

“I know. But we have to bring Dross back. You remember Dross?”

She whistled.

“I’m going to have to fight for him, and I’m afraid I can’t look after you at the same time. You understand?”

She frowned for a moment, but then turned and walked to the edge of his fingers. She was six inches tall now, and he actually felt her weight as she leaped off like a diver, landing lightly on the edge of a jar filled with Dream Well water.

Little Blue sat down on the jar and gave him an impatient peep.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said, and closed the void key.

Outside, Orthos gave the hatch a sideways glance. “This is not wise. I’ve changed my mind. The courage of a dragon is valuable, but it must be balanced by the wisdom of a dragon.”

Reaching into his pocket, Lindon withdrew the gatestone. The chalky ball shimmered in the light as though it were made of crushed blue glass. “Then you’ll be relieved to know that I have decided to use the gatestone.”

Orthos brightened. “Really?”

“Yes.” Lindon lobbed the stone so that it landed a few feet away from the hatch. Before Orthos could ask what he was doing, Lindon extended a finger. A quick beam of dragon’s breath struck the gatestone dead center.

The device let out a blue orb big enough to swallow a person, then disappeared. The stone was unharmed, a man-sized web of cracks hovering in the air.

Orthos rounded on him in a fury. “What have you done?”

“The scripts around the Spirit Well were disabled, and I thought about why. The cracks must have sliced through the runes and interrupted the script.” Lindon pointed to the ground, where many of the silk-thin cracks ran into the stone. “Even if that’s not what happened before, I’m fairly certain it would work that way now. Look.”

He extended a palm, and a much thicker bar of dragon’s breath punched through the hatch.

There was no flaring script to defend it. This time, it blasted through the metal, and Lindon moved it from one side to the other to obliterate the hatch. The edges of the tunnel now glowed white-hot, but there wasn’t as much melting metal as he’d expected. That would be the destruction aspect of Blackflame at work.

He walked over to the edge and prepared to hop in. Orthos peered over the edge.

“That’s a long way down,” he said.

“Look at it this way: the entrance is plenty big enough. You’ll fit just fine.”

“What if it gets narrower as you fall? My shell is not meant for tight spaces.”

Lindon looked down into the darkness, swept it with his spiritual perception, and then took a deep breath. “I’ll let you know,” he said as he jumped.

There was a rush of air and darkness, then he hit the ground. Even without an Enforcer technique active, he absorbed the impact lightly: the benefit of the meat from the Silverfangs and Diamondscales.

He would probably look back on this month in Ghostwater as one of the most profitable of his life...assuming they made it out.

“Nothing down here,” Lindon called up. “You can jump.”

“Are you certain?” Orthos shouted back.

“I’m going to start exploring. If you don’t think you can join me, you can leave it to me, and I’ll let you know what I find.”

A moment later, a dull red meteor crashed into the ground as Orthos hit shell-first. He swung from side to side to right himself, marching over to Lindon.

“A dragon doesn’t hesitate.”

Orthos had hesitated for quite a long time, but Lindon said, “I’m glad for that. I think we should head this way.”

The room at the bottom of the shaft was nothing more than an open space with three dark tunnels leading in different directions. Since advancing to Truegold, Lindon’s spiritual senses had immediately expanded, so he headed through the entrance where he most clearly sensed Harmony’s shadow madra.

They walked through a dark hallway with rooms on either side. The hall reminded him of the Dream Well facility, except it was lit only by the subtle glow from Orthos’ shell.

The sense of Harmony’s madra pulled them straight down the hall, and Lindon started to pick up speed.

Until a man appeared next to them.

He was a hulking figure a head taller than Lindon, packed with muscle, his golden eyes vertically slitted like a reptile’s. Black scales covered his arms up to the elbow, and he loomed like an executioner.

Lindon had ignited the Burning Cloak and gathered up a handful of dragon’s breath when he recognized the figure.

Northstrider, the Monarch on the Path of the Hungry Deep. Creator of Ghostwater.

He was shocked for a moment, but hurriedly dropped to his knees.

“What are you doing?” Orthos growled. “Get up.”

“Don’t you see...”

“No, I see it. It’s a projection.”

Lindon swept the image of Northstrider with his spirit. It reminded him of the White Fox madra his family had always used; a blend of light and dreams.

Northstrider’s projection surveyed them both, or seemed to, and then spoke. “For you who travel here after my departure, I have left this message.”

“Let’s hurry,” Orthos said, and trotted off. Lindon followed him, with Northstrider’s image floating along next to them.

“I poured years of effort into this world and its research projects,” he went on, undisturbed by their jog down the hall. “None of them delivered what I wanted: a mind, subordinate to my own, that could manage a small portion of my powers. The messengers of the heavens use such constructs, so perhaps they can only be created beyond this one small world. But I still left behind the greatest mind a man could create.”

Some of the doors had small windows, and the shining lights or shifting movement he saw inside made him want to look inside. But a new sensation from up above had drowned out the trail of Harmony’s madra: it was a surge of power that felt like the Eye of the Deep, only many times more powerful.

They picked up the pace.

“I dismissed the researchers, but scattered keys all over the world. Over four thousand memory storage constructs, each gathering knowledge on their way back here. When they return, they contribute to a greater whole. Eyes of the Deep record and gather knowledge, all with the purpose of returning here. To add their information to the collective.”

Now the world was crumbling. This would be the last delivery Ghostwater ever received. It only had a few weeks left, at most.

Lindon extended his perception behind him, sensing a disruption in space that felt like cracks in existence. The spatial cracks were crawling after him, down from where he’d crushed the gatestone.

Maybe they had less time than he’d thought.

“I will allow a few beggars into this world to fight over the other scraps, but you who bring an Eye of the Deep, you will receive the true prize. A drop of ghostwater. If you have tasted of the other wells, you should know they were only prototypes. By-products of our attempts to create this one power. It no longer benefits me, but what is trash to a Monarch may still be treasure to all others.”

The hallway opened up onto a huge chamber, like an artificial cave. A metal tree filled the far wall, with cages instead of leaves and Eyes of the Deep hanging like glowing fruit. Two-thirds of the cages were empty, but it was still bright.

To the right of the tree, there was a jade doorframe. Identical to the one Lindon had destroyed in the first habitat.

And in front of the tree, Harmony stood in front of what looked like a stone birdbath. His Goldsign hovered behind his head, so all Lindon saw was a circle of darkness on his shoulders.

“Return the Eye of the Deep to the tree,” Northstrider instructed, golden eyes turning to the massive scripted device. “You may ask one question and receive one drop of ghostwater. And for the rest of your life, know that you are in my debt.”

Then the Monarch vanished, and Harmony turned to meet them.