A green construct flashed in front of the Skysworn’s mouth, and her voice echoed over the crowd. “By the order of the Blackflame Emperor, and with the support of the Akura clan, every combat-capable sacred artist of Lowgold or higher is commanded to report to the Skysworn immediately for inspection and possible transfer to battle.”
Jai Long felt a chill. The pillar of shadow was still there, which meant they might see combat today. A small army of clerks and administrators from the Blackflame Empire was flooding out of the portal now, already shouting orders and organizing those they could reach.
He straightened his spine. “Stick with me. They’ll evaluate us together.”
He was certain the other two wouldn’t pass the Empire’s examination. They were both newly advanced to Lowgold, neither were ranked on any of the combat lists, and they both had Paths better suited to support.
It was easy for those in a large clan or powerful sect to forget, but most sacred artists were not dedicated to combat and advancement. A practitioner of illusion techniques, like the Path of the White Fox, was far more common as a teacher, artist, or messenger than a fighter. Not only was raising a real warrior a commitment of time and difficult training, but it was expensive.
As expected, most of the Lowgolds—and even a large chunk of the Highgolds—he saw lined up in front of the Blackflame clerks were quickly turned away. But not as many as he expected.
It was an hour before they were seen, and Jai Long didn’t even get an examination. A Lowgold sensed his power and the soulfire in his spirit, bowed, and presented him with a chip of cheap metal that had ‘Peak Truegold’ stamped on it.
“Sect, school, or clan?” the clerk asked. He was respectful, but it had the tone of a question he’d asked a thousand times already.
“Sect of Twin Stars,” Jai Long said. Those words sounded strange to his own ears.
The clerk dutifully marked it down before asking for his name, age, and Path.
“As a peak Truegold, you’ll be a squad leader,” the clerk explained. “Wait in the designated area for your squad to be assigned to you. It’s usually three Highgolds and five Lowgolds, but it depends on who we get.”
Jai Long saw a squad matching that description pass into a nearby tent from which no one had returned. Another portal, presumably. “Loading us out quickly.”
“Emperor’s orders.” The clerk clearly wanted him to move on, but Jai Long looked over to Jai Chen and Kelsa, who were being examined nearby. A woman was poking Fingerling with a drudge shaped like a spiky ball while a man watched Kelsa demonstrate her techniques.
Jai Long pointed to one, then the other. “That is my sister, and she’s not a fighter, so I want her off the list. That one is, but she’s an illusion artist, so I want her in my squad.”
The clerk scribbled a note. “If your sister passes the examination, she’ll be fighting, I’m sorry. But I can arrange to have them both assigned to you, unless there’s someone higher-ranked who wants them.”
“Underlords won’t be fighting over Lowgolds.”
The clerk, a Lowgold himself, chuckled nervously at the words of a peak Truegold. “Heavens know that’s true.”
“Where are we fighting?”
As expected, the clerk didn’t know.
To Jai Long’s dismay, his sister passed the examination as a fighter. As did Kelsa, but he had expected that. If she had claimed to be an entertainer or even lamplighter, they would probably have believed her, but she would have certainly asked to fight.
He was assigned three Highgolds and another pair of Lowgolds. At first scan, none of them were impressive.
But they all stood stiffly and silently as he watched them, frightened of his attention. Except for his sister, who looked terrified—just not of him—and Kelsa, who scanned the situation herself with unrelieved intensity.
“Can we not tell our families where we’re going?” she asked him, voice low.
“You can leave a message with one of the clerks,” Jai Long told her, “but I’ve never seen anything like this before. If it’s such an emergency, why do they need so many Lowgolds?”
This kind of rushed recruitment reminded him of a clan scraping up all its disciples to defend against a sudden raid, but that was only necessary when the experts were already occupied. The Emperor—an Overlord—could obliterate every Gold here with a wave of his hand.
Which meant that, wherever they were headed, the most advanced sacred artists were either absent or countered.
Their squad was waved through quickly, and he found them ushered into a tent taken up almost entirely by a shimmering doorframe that led onto another bustling camp far away.
He couldn’t tell how far, but the woman sweating and loading scales into the doorframe was an Underlord. And she wasn’t Forging the scales, either; they were coming from a scripted case at her side, and the madra shining from the purple-black scales was so intense that he had to close off his spiritual sense.
A Truegold attendant waved them through, and as the leader and most advanced member of his party, he stepped through first.
His heart dropped in an instant.
Even surrounded by a crowd of strangers, he recognized where they were immediately. The trees were black, the buildings were temporary, and the mountain looming in the far distance had a halo around its peak.
“We can’t get away,” Jai Long muttered. “There is no escape.”
They were heading back to Sacred Valley.
This time, when the labyrinth shifted, the tunnel opened over Lindon’s head and pointed straight upward. There was no ladder, but it wasn’t as though Lindon needed one.
He and Yerin leaped. They didn’t know exactly how high it was, but it didn’t matter much. If they started running out of momentum, they could leap off the walls.
It didn’t come to that. Lindon’s jump carried him into a huge, empty room that reminded him of an arena. Yerin hit the ceiling, far overhead, and had to push off. Orthos grumbled about the trip and demanded that Lindon put him down, while Little Blue cheered at the thrill.
Mercy was right behind them, pulling her way up with Strings of Shadow, and Ziel hopped up on discs of Forged runes.
To Lindon’s surprise, the last one up was Eithan. He pulled himself up the last few feet rather gracelessly, but he salvaged it by striking a pose when he made it all the way up.
“This isn’t fair,” he said. “You all know Enforcer techniques are my weakness. That, and fine imported silk.”
[These weaknesses have been logged for future reference,] Dross said dutifully.
Eithan looked startled.
Lindon had already started glancing around the room. What he had first taken for rows of seats were coffins, each carved with the image of a dragon. They were all very different in appearance—from four-legged dragons with wings spread to serpentine dragons with claws—and each was set with colored gemstones that would likely have matched what color the dragon was in life.
He sensed very little power coming from inside any of these coffins, but several had been opened, presumably to remove any treasures. He glanced inside, just in case, but found only a dragon’s skeleton.
Ziel only examined the script-circles around the room for a second before he said, “Death aura.”