And when the first of mankind gazed upon the Light of the Creator and his Angels, he felt awakening in his blood the magic of metal: power to be used to bring Light to a world which saw only darkness.
—The Holy Book of Creation,First Scripture, Verse Thirteen
Elantian Age, Cycle 12
Where the Rivers Flow and the Skies End
Snow fell over the temple in the mountains. It coated the white pines in the gray of ash and froze over the once-burbling rivers. Silken drapes hung still between open-fretwork eaves of a hall whose waterfall no longer streamed. In the quiet of a winter caught in rosewood and rock, sky and ice, came the sharp sounding of metal boots.
“High General Erascius. I bring news from our scouts.”
Erascius set the Hin tome down next to the Elantian translation he’d been working on. The metal bands on his wrists gleamed in the gray sunlight as he lifted his head, hair the white of snow, skin the pale of milk, ridged with scars from a still-healing wound. “Speak,” he commanded, the word a sharp puff of his breath in the cold.
The White Angel, a patrol assigned to the Elantian army at the new base on this mountain, bowed his helmed head. “Ourscouts have searched the School of Guarded Fists and the periphery. There is no trace of a star map, a musical instrument, or the Azure Tiger.”
Erascius found himself fixating on the irritating way the Angel’s armor glinted as he delivered this. His breath came quicker as his anger licked up like white-hot flames.
One month. One entiremonthspent in search of the Azure Tiger—one of the Four Demon Gods that gave the Hin immense power—and nothing to show for it. They, the Elantians, had crossed the Sea of Heavenly Radiance to bring light to this fallen kingdom, to take it and its resources under the wing of the great Elantian Empire. They had toppled the Last Kingdom’s emperor and eliminated most of the magic practitioners of this land—save for a handful. Most pressingly, during their attack on the last school of practitioning last month, they had let escape a boy and a girl, each of whom had bound to themself a Demon God: the Black Tortoise and the Silver Dragon.
The two had nearly singlehandedly taken down the entire Elantian army during the battle. And they might have, had they known how to fully use the Demon Gods’ powers.
This had put the Elantians in a compromised position and driven Erascius to focus on finding one of the remaining Demon Gods for himself. They had traced the Azure Tiger to this School of the White Pines, but the Hin practitioning masters had set it free before the Elantians could capture it.
The deaths of all those Hin masters had been little consolation for the loss of the Tiger.
“No trace of the boy?” he drawled.
“None yet, High General.”
“And the girl.” His voice had become dangerously soft. “What of the girl?”
“Last spotted by a western base. They followed her untilshe disappeared into the Emaran Desert with two companions.”
“When was this?”
“Several days ago, High General.”
The metal cuffs on his forearms flashed as Erascius pulled on his metal magic—magic that had once punctured the weak defenses of the Hin Imperial Army and qì practitioners like arrows through parchment. Magic that had expanded the Elantian Empire across this vast, resource-rich kingdom within a matter of weeks.
This was what differentiated the Elantian magicians from the vast majority of the Elantian army, and why they commanded while others obeyed. The Royal Magicians had been chosen by divine intervention to channel the power of their god. And there was no magician more powerful than Erascius. Through the different-colored cuffs on their wrists, the strongest of other Alloys might have wielded the magic of two or three metals. Erascius wielded that of thirteen.
With thirteen, Erascius held the power to secure the universe.
But not enough power by far to face two Demon Gods.
With a flick of his mind, he flung the White Angel into the air by the man’s steel armor, and held him there. Slowly, he began to squeeze the armor like a tin can. As the patrol began to choke, eyes popping and mouth gaping, Erascius thought of the pet fish the governor of this kingdom kept in his cushy palace in the Heavenly Capital.
“Severaldays,” Erascius said smoothly. “My top priority—a prize that could tip the perilous scales our rule rests upon—and you take severaldaysto report to me? You, a White Angel, appointed as an elite member of the Elantian Empire?”
The Angel’s legs kicked the air; his lips, turning blue, were moving as he tried to speak. “…The…governor…”
One more second and Erascius would have pulled the man’s heart from his chest, summoning the metal present in the man’s blood with his magic. But he paused at the soldier’s rasps.
“The governor has a message for me?” he said, and with a slow, deliberate twirl of his finger, he sent the patrol crashing to the floor. The man’s blood splattered the slate-gray stone, worn smooth by thousands of years of Hin feet.
Trembling, the Angel pushed himself onto one knee. His armor was dented, no doubt still crushing his ribs and squeezing his lungs—Erascius could feel the seeping blood and the broken bone from where he sat—but the man valiantly recited the message between gasps of air. “The governor…asks…for an update…on quashing the Hin…rebellion…”
By now, Erascius’s irritation had reached a simmer. He held the governor in no more regard than he did this wriggling worm of a man before him, but the politician had been appointed by the Elantian king, across the Sea of Heavenly Radiance, who had been crowned by the Creator. Erascius was born unto this earth to serve the Creator through the king, and he had to believe the governor, too, held a role in that service.
