She'd left her Goldsign in place as a mirror, so Lindon flared the technique again. This time, he got a clearer look: a thin aura of black and red rose around him in a haze of power. He would be shrouded in Blackflame madra when he used this technique.
“What does it do?”
“Ask your...stone book, there.” She scratched her nose, then added, “But I could take a guess. Looks to me like a basic full-body Enforcement. Works different depending on your madra, but basically every Path has something like it. Your body's protected and powered by madra while you use it, until you run out of madra or have to drop it.”
He studied the stone, which seemed to agree with her. As far as he could tell. “If it's so simple, then why did they record it here?”
“You're asking me, but who am I supposed to ask? Not every Path has complicated techniques—sometimes they're stone simple, and it's all about how you use them. Or maybe this was the Trial they gave to Copper kids.”
From the tone of the tablet, Lindon doubted this was something so frivolous as a playground for children. And Eithan would never have sent him somewhere easy, he was sure of that.
Lindon flared the aura again, trying to see how long the sensation of painless, corrosive heat would last. He couldn't hold it longer than a blink before the technique fell apart; he'd need to work on keeping his madra control steady and predictable. “It protects me, you say?”
“It Enforces you—figure you know what that means by now. But every Path’s madra does something different. You'll have to play around with it.” She hopped up, brushing her knees clean. “Hit me.”
He looked at her sword.
“Got to try out your shiny new technique, don't you? Hit me.”
Not for a moment did Lindon think he'd hurt her. Quite the opposite, in fact: he was worried her counterattack would slice off his arm. “I will do as you say, then. Excuse me.”
The technique flared, and as soon as he felt the heat and saw the black-and-red haze around his body, he kicked off from the dirt. He'd been used to Enforcing himself with pure madra, and he had a sense of how strong his Iron body could be.
When he kicked off, it sent a pain flaring in his knees. The ground exploded behind him and wind rushed by his ears as he launched into the air.
Lindon had an instant to scream before he slammed face-first into the packed dirt a dozen feet behind Yerin.
Dirt ground into his eyes, into his lips, between his teeth. His body slapped down to the earth a second behind his head, and a brief moment passed before he could lift his face enough to spit out a mouthful of dirt.
He groaned as he rose to his knees. It hadn't hurt as much as he'd expected, as though he'd taken a hit on a suit of armor instead of to his flesh.
Worse was the internal strain. His knees ached and the bottom of his feet felt bruised.
Yerin gave a low whistle. “Well, isn't that a kick in the pants? You always have to get used to a new Enforcer technique, but…bleed me like a pig, it looked like you strapped a couple of lightning bolts to your legs.”
That felt about right. His Bloodforged Iron body had already come to life, draining Blackflame madra to heal his strained knees.
In fact...he hadn't noticed it before, but madra was trickling into every corner of his body for healing. His black-and-red core was already guttering like a spent candle.
Had he really spent his madra so quickly?
After a moment of thought, he realized the reason: the Enforcer technique strained his joints and burned away at his muscles, and his body responded by drawing on madra to heal him. He'd drain himself dry in five breaths.
“What's got your tongue?” Yerin asked, walking over to him. “Didn't bite it, did you?”
“This Fierce Burning Outer Robe costs me more than I thought.”
“First thing, we're not calling it that.” She chewed on her lip as she thought. “Burning Cloak,” she said at last.
He cast a glance at the stone. “The 'fierce' character is core to the reading of the name, and there's a different symbol for a rain cloak than for a sacred artist's outer robe—”
“Burning Cloak,” she said, more firmly. “That's a real technique name. You want to call it Fierce Burning Clothes on Fire in your own head, that's on your account, but I'll cut you every time you say it out loud.”
“It will be an honor to use the Burning Cloak technique,” Lindon said with a little bow.
“True enough, it will.” She jumped, casually clearing fifteen feet and landing next to the stone. “Now, fire up that crystal ball and let's test the edge of this Trial.”
If Lindon spent any more madra, he would be crawling in the dirt instead of fighting. “Lend me a moment to cycle, if you don’t mind.”
She gave him a wry look, but her scars lent it a sinister, threatening cast. “I'm not throwing you into a tiger's den, I just want a look at the enemy. We don't like what we see, we back up.”
She had a point. The arch hadn't closed when they passed through it, and there was nothing preventing them from heading back to their caves at the first sign of danger.
Besides, he was curious himself. There might be prizes to this Trial beyond simple knowledge.
He walked over to the crystal ball, cycling the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel to replenish his madra. It strained his spirit and his lungs, and he couldn’t tell if it restored anything at all—sure enough, the technique was trash for refilling a core.
Lindon rested his hand on the warm, smoky ball that sat on the pedestal. Now that he was close enough, he could see threads of red running through the gray, like the crystals he'd seen in Orthos’ chamber.
“The tablet says nothing about what we'll face when I start the Trial,” he warned, but Yerin gave a heavy sigh.
“Jabber jabber jabber, we’re burning time. Light that candle.”
One breath in, one out, and a black-and-red nimbus flared around Lindon's entire body.
When the crystal touched that light, it flared red.
Beneath the ground, a script kindled to life.
Though Lindon saw nothing, he could feel it, like a circle of fire ten feet beneath his shoes. He was aware of it in the same way he was aware of his own limbs.
Yerin drew her white blade. “Eyes up.”
Cassias followed Eithan, because he had no other choice. The Underlord had seized his Thousand-Mile Cloud, and it was either climb on behind him or be left behind in the tunnel.
As soon as Cassias set foot on the cloud, Eithan took off, sending the construct straight up and out of the valley. Sheer black walls passed them on either side, but with an Underlord’s madra propelling them, they reached the peak in seconds.
This was really a secondary peak of Shiryu Mountain. The Jai clan main complex occupied the highest peak with the living quarters for the head family and their subordinates. Cassias could see glimpses of their palaces high above and almost a mile away.
Serpent’s Grave proper spread out far beneath them, a mound of bones in an ocean of yellow sand. But Eithan didn’t take them down; instead, he flew them around this peak, overlooking the valley where the two children would live for the next few weeks.
There was a temple carved into this peak. Not sitting on top, where it would be visible from miles around, but carved as though to seem part of the stone. Only from the back could you see the stairs leading up, the braziers resting to either side of the entrance, the polished archway leading into shadows deeper within. From any other angle, this place would be invisible.
Cassias ran webs of Arelius power over the whole place, astonished. It seemed that this was connected to the Blackflame Trials below, but while the heads of the family had always known about the Trials, Cassias had never even heard rumors of something like this temple.