Awakening Arte (The Eldest Throne Book 1) Page 10

  Roun nodded and swallowed a groan. Grimoires didn’t need as much sleep as mortals, but it’d still be rough—he already felt like half a corpse.

  “It’s almost dawn,” Zareus warned as he resumed chopping at the chimera flesh. “I’d suggest not being late to the summit. Change into new raiments and bring those back down for me to replace.”

  Roun spun and began up the stairway, his mind heavy with thoughts and emotions.

  12

  Dawn came as before, with the six of them seated in a circle at the summit’s center, their backs facing inward. Even Fane and Oyrivia took part without complaint, though from how pleasant an experience Sethra said it was—and with how important the dense élan was for Grimoires—he wasn’t surprised.

  Nothing changed for him when the Eldest Throne ignited, and he spent another morning thinking as he watched the light seep out from his spiritual vessel while the others again gave off an amber glow.

  Sethra looked at him with concern as they rose, but he insisted he felt much better despite still not getting anything from the dawnlight. It was only a half lie, because he did have more élan than ever before, even if his aches and fatigue continued to be a burden.

  Yhul ordered them to fall into pairs and claim space before beginning his rotation to speak with them in turns. Sethra and Roun walked to their usual spot, then Sethra eagerly turned her attention to the bloodhawk axe in his hands. He couldn’t help but grin as he handed it to her.

  “It feels so weird!” she exclaimed while examining the weapon. “Aren’t bloodhawk axes supposed to be a different color?”

  Roun nodded. “They usually are. This one is custom made, I guess. Avyleir said it would help while I sort myself out.” Another half lie.

  “Makes sense; you feel like a different opponent with an axe,” she agreed cheerfully as she handed the weapon back. “And you seem to enjoy using it, so consider yourself lucky. Yhul is probably going to tell me to use throwing daggers or something.”

  He rolled his eyes and was about to tell her she was being silly, but Yhul approached before he could, his horse-half moving fluidly despite being made of obsidian. The scribe held his oversized lance in his left arm and his targe at his right forearm as always.

  This time, however, there was a bō in his shield-arm’s hand.

  “No throwing daggers for you,” Yhul said with mild amusement as he offered it to her. “Or ever, Fate forbid. You may use the bō your clan so adores, though any polearm will do so long as we make the haft out of elderwood and it goes all the way through.”

  Sethra and Roun exchanged looks, then she took the bō from Yhul with a look of extreme suspicion.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Before Imperial Script and thus élanic weapons advanced so far, most Grimoires used a staff of elderwood,” the stone giant explained. “It’s a versatile weapon on its own, but elderwood also channels élan without needing scripts and can serve as an extension or focus.”

  “It wasn’t a perfect fit for everyone, though,” Kamil said, startling Roun. He hadn’t noticed him and Laeshiro walking up. The other Grimoire gave an apologetic nod, then lifted his hand to show them a kusarigama. “The Imperial Libraries eventually began tailoring weapons to the Grimoire instead of the other way around. My kusarigama is a good example; the right script will let me partially apply my arte to its chain.”

  “What about Laeshiro?” Sethra asked. The other boy had nothing in his hands, though a spider construct perched on a shoulder.

  “I chose a pair of kukri,” Laeshiro said. He unsheathed one from his lower back and showed off the dark-blue blade. “For finishing blows, mostly. Commanding my spiders takes a lot of concentration.”

  Roun raised an eyebrow at that, but the Rhalgr warrior didn’t seem bothered by the fact that his arte prevented him from rushing into battle like his clan had trained him to do.

  Sethra glanced back at her bō with a frown.

  “The staff should extend your range a little without sacrificing control, as well as let you more easily draw up soil without crouching,” Yhul explained. “Think of it as using a fine quill instead of your fingers.”

  She nodded, then prodded her staff against the pile of soil that aides had carried up to the tower’s summit for her to practice with. The soil followed her bō and swirled around her as she traced a small circle until the entire pile was flowing like water. She grinned, then tried it again, this time twirling the staff to form interconnected hexagonal walls around herself.

  “Not bad!” she exclaimed.

  Yhul gave her a satisfied grunt. “A spear or poleaxe would work just as well. Perhaps even a war hammer or club. There is nothing wrong with the bō, but I still ask that you give it some thought.” He curved to take in the rest of them. “We will eventually give you custom weapons with additional scripts that will support how you fight, but for now I’ll have you experiment with unifying your weapon and your arte.”

  Roun watched Yhul move towards Fane and Oyrivia, both of whom stood at the far end of the summit, chatting.

  “Fane has been told to master hand to hand combat,” Laeshiro said from beside him. “His arte can’t manifest on anything living besides his own body and it transfers slowly across anything else, including elderwood. There are some useful maneuvers I could teach him, if only he would listen.”

  “What about Oyrivia?” Roun asked.

  “They gave her a longbow, but I’m not sure why. No one knows much about her arte and she refuses to talk about it, so all we have are the rumors of her awakening, none of which are flattering or pleasant.”

  “What rumors?” Sethra asked with a frown.

  “It’s none of our business,” Kamil snapped. “Respect her silence and worry about yourself. Come on, Laeshiro.”

  The larger boy sighed, but nodded and went off with Kamil to spar. Sethra stood across from Roun, holding her bō, and used it to poke him in the chest over her walls of hardened soil.

  “Would it bother you if I used my arte?” she asked. “Feels unfair, but…”

  Roun shook his head. “You’ll need the help.”

  She grinned and let her hexagons melt back into clumped soil, then took a stance. Roun took his own stance, then they both sprang forward.

  He almost immediately regretted his words; Sethra’s uneven array of short hexagonal pillars left the battlefield forever in her favor and made his own footing hazardous. Sometimes she also used linked pillars as a platform or catwalk, giving her an advantage in height and reach, while at other times she simply raised large flat walls to outright block a blow or gain distance whenever he broke through her guard.

  They sparred for nearly an hour before taking a break. Roun hadn’t been able to defeat her once in that time, but he held his own and that left him pleased. Sethra’s bō was a challenging matchup even without her arte.

  “What do you think?” she asked while he panted and wiped at sweat. “Should I keep the bō?”

  It took him a moment to respond, and when he did, he didn’t hide his surprise. “What? Would you really use something else if I told you to?”

  She shrugged. “You’d think about it more than I would and I trust you to be dead honest with me.”

  Roun faced the Eldest Throne to hide his embarrassment. He passed a hand through his hair while he considered her question, enjoying the warm breeze and his view of Rozaria City. Clean white clouds filled a horizon free from the slightest hint of storms.

  “Each of the weapons Yhul mentioned has its own advantages and disadvantages,” he admitted. “And they’re basically all the same when it comes to your arte. Well, other than the fact that a plain bō might be easier to sweep along the ground.”

  “So I should keep it?”

  Roun nodded slowly as he thought further, then an idea came to him and left him grinning. “Wait, why not use them all? I mean, there’s no way you’ll be able to master all those weapons, but you’d still gain a lot of versatility if you learned the bas
ics.”

  Sethra eyed him as if he were insane. “How would I carry them all? In a basket on my back?”

  “No,” Roun said, his grin widening. “You said smaller hexagons were easier to make, didn’t you? I can see why tiny interlocking hexagons would be terrible for forming a wall or something, since it looks like you have to make them in a wave rather than all at once, but what if you used the small ones to make different heads for your bō? As long as you’re holding your staff, you should be able to easily control your arte enough to keep them in place—it’d be like touching the soil directly.”

  The hexagons should also be ‘grounded’ through her, though this he was less sure about; from what Sethra had told him, she lost control over any panel or pillar that wasn’t attached back to the ground somehow, but it was gradual. That meant she shouldn’t have any problems using this technique while leaping or something similar, but that was assuming she got it to work at all.

  Sethra stared at him, then stared at the weapon in her hand. Her expression grew thoughtful. “I don’t know...”

  “Your hexagons are as hard as stone, Sethra. It wouldn’t be my first pick, but you can still cut someone with stone. Besides, your weapon wouldn’t be as brittle and there wouldn’t be any need to worry about the edge.”

  The other Grimoire shrugged and gathered up a pile of soil. Roun stepped beside her and watched as she experimented; it didn’t take long before a look of wonder and excitement rippled across her face. She clumped tiny hexagons into a honeycomb pattern around the end of her bō, but it took a few attempts before she figured out how to flatten the outermost hexagons enough to call them an edge. She told him it was actually almost as challenging as making them too large, so she only bothered attempting an edge on one side, but when Sethra finished, she was holding a very formidable-looking guandao.

  Sethra gave the weapon an empowered swipe and they both stared as it left a mark in the teal stone-like material of the tower.

  Yhul loomed behind her. “Interesting. I greatly approve.”

  They both jumped, but Sethra patted Roun on the shoulder when they faced the scribe. “He thought of it. I’m not smart enough to figure out something like this.”

  “That’s not true,” Roun muttered. “I just offered a different perspective.”

  “Well, either way, our team is now more powerful than ever before!” She frowned over at her weapon. “Though this needs a lot of focus. It’s also draining me more than I thought it would.”

  “You’ll improve the technique, I’m sure,” Yhul said expectantly.

  Sethra sighed and turned back to face him. “Come on, let’s get back to sparring.”

  After a few hours of helping Sethra practice maintaining various modifications to her bō, they were all dismissed back down to Zareus, who had them continue practicing their cantrips and personal artes. Roun still stuck to Farsight, but he paused every so often to observe the others with pangs of envy. Zareus ended the day by quizzing them on Imperial Script, then dismissed them. The scribe halted Roun on his way out and suggested he rest tonight.

  Instead, Roun went up to the summit.

  Rozaria City was a gloomy wasteland of élanic lamps and other devices meant to hold back the night and it gave the city the look of a faded painting that had lost all its color. The night didn’t seem to care as it probed every unguarded crevice and every space left open by a broken or poorly maintained light.

  Avyleir Library, however, was so well-lit that it was almost like daylight.

  He turned from the guardrail and eyed Yhul. The giant was resting at the center just like he had been that first day; Roun wasn’t sure whether he’d be disturbing the scribe and hadn’t thought to ask permission, but a voice rang out before he could decide to leave.

  “Have you come to speak with me?” Yhul asked. He rose to his feet without a trace of drowsiness in his voice or movements.

  Roun hesitated.

  “Ah,” Yhul said, seemingly reading his expression. “You’re no bother, if that’s your concern. I was meditating, as sleep is no more one of my needs now than meals are.”

  Roun stepped into the well-lit arena and shrugged, then showed Yhul his bloodhawk axe. “I’ve always had a pretty hard time aiming the thing and I still can’t trust the axe to not cut me when it returns, so I wanted to practice.”

  “I see. We could have done this during the day, however. Why now, when you should instead enjoy a moment of peace?”

  “We’re either doing group training or sparring with our partners, and standing there being a living target isn’t something Sethra would get a lot out of.” Roun paused and tilted his head. “Speaking of being a bother, though, are you… trapped up here? I mean, I’m not even sure what you, uh...”

  “What I am?” Yhul asked as he stretched to his full height.

  “Is it an inappropriate question?”

  “Yes, but it’s not an opinion I agree with,” Yhul said. “As for your first question, I can leave as I please.” His spiral lance gestured down the ledge. “I leap up and down, but it’s rare that I have reason to.”

  Roun tried to swallow his surprise. Yhul noticed it anyway and laughed.

  “I suppose it sounds impressive, but the answer to your second question should explain that. I am a Centurion. Aside from Grimoires, those like myself are the greatest weapons humanity has ever devised against chimeras and those with dark intent.” Yhul seemed to pause in thought for a moment, then continued. “There are not too many of us, however; the transformation requires a warrior of extreme discipline and unbreakable spirit, as our new bodies are essentially sarcophagi and the process is… unpleasant. The cost in time, skill, and material required to make these bodies is also absurd, and a failed transfer renders it useless, so sometimes not even a worthy candidate is given the opportunity.”

  “Does that mean you were a legendary warrior when you were flesh and blood?” Roun said, impressed—but not especially surprised.

  “No, Roun. I’m a false Centurion shunned by the Canton of Glory.” The giant’s featureless, helm-like head twisted to glance down at himself. “I’d prefer to keep the circumstances of my transformation to myself, but before I became a Centurion, I was a crippled, clanless orphan whose only friend was a lame horse given to him out of pity. My companion’s spirit also resides in this body now, something which was once thought impossible, yet here we stand.”

  Roun frowned as the silence stretched on. “False in their eyes only,” he whispered. “You’re a great instructor and mentor, and knowing you were clanless too is… inspiring, actually. If I can grow to become half as great as you and even a tenth as useful to someone—anyone—then I think I’ll be happy too.”

  “There are worse things than me to aspire towards, I suppose,” Yhul said with a laugh. “But thank you. Now come and hone your skill with the bloodhawk.” Yhul gestured at the lantern at his back, which activated by itself and glowed a bright red. “You may use me, and for now I will do nothing but watch and offer advice. I expect you to strike the lantern while evading me before long, however.”

  Roun watched as the giant positioned himself, then shrugged with a twisted grin and began. The axe whirled and curved around, missing more times than hitting, but he got a better feel for it every time and Yhul’s feedback improved him even further.

  He even forced himself to trust that the axe’s script would return it into his palm instead of cleaving it open, though sometimes he allowed the weapon to orbit around him. The script was ravenous—it partially powered itself from ichor, but the axe couldn’t bleed the Centurion—so he didn’t practice for long.

  Roun did, however, make a point to return as many nights as he could.

  Life at Avyleir slowly fell into a routine; they greeted the dawn and then spent the morning doing physical conditioning, which was tended to involve sprints, ground-shoves, and tossing massive sacks filled with grain. Afterward they obeyed Yhul’s tutelage as he shifted from exercises in familiarity to
true drilling.

  Yhul guided them through maneuvers and stances from various combat styles that revealed a deep understanding of far too many weapons. The scribe even impressed Laeshiro, who later told them that Yhul seemed to know some of the fighting styles guarded by the more secretive families in his clan.

  For Roun, Yhul built upon the training his father had given him; this apparently meant taking inspiration from the drills warrior monks used. In other words, Roun’s mornings were ruthless, but Yhul always seemed to know when they pushed themselves, and though he seemed confident whenever giving his advice, Yhul also always seemed to listen to their thoughts and complaints and was flexible in his instruction.

  They also worked on making better use of their sacred bodies. This ended up being Roun’s favorite portion of the day now that he had a bit more élan to spare.

  One exercise had them enhancing their muscles to jump high enough to touch the tip of Yhul’s spear, but not a hair more, and do so faster and faster while he shifted the weapon around. At other times they sprinted back and forth until Yhul struck at them, forcing them to shift from enhanced speed and balance and instead divert élan solely towards strength to stop the lance.

  Fane and Oyrivia kept their usual distance during the mornings, but Roun noticed they always spent the time speaking to each other. He still didn’t understand why they continued to refuse their duty, but he understood loneliness, so he was happy to see they at least had each other’s company.

  The two of them also eventually stopped ignoring Yhul; Oyrivia’s new longbow seemed to entrance her enough for her to spend a portion of every morning practicing with it—even when she was supposed to be doing something else. Fane usually joined her, as the blunt effectiveness of employing unarmed fighting styles to deliver his arte wasn’t lost on him, and he seemed likewise amused by the raw destructive potential it gave him.