Gilded Ashes: When Shadows Reign

The bell kept ringing.

By the fifth toll, the sound crawled under Raizen's skin.

Professor Atman was already moving.

He crossed the office in two quick steps and pulled the door open. The calm, polite look was still on his face, but the Chasmis eye was brighter now, lines moving fast inside the ghostly iris.

"Come" he said. Nothing else.

Another vague request from the professor. Raizen snatched up his sword from the floor and sheathed it and followed anyway.

Atman stepped into the corridor without breaking stride.

"Where are we going?" Raizen shouted, raising his voice over the bell.

"Down" Atman answered. "To the platforms. That is where the main training zone is. I think that's where the beast is."

"I thought you had containment systems" Raizen said, not asking why they were going straight at the beast.

"We do" Atman replied. "They're very good. Most of the time."

That "most" didn't feel good right now. Another not-so-reassuring thing…

They reached the stairwell. The bell's sound poured up and down the shaft, vibrating through the rails. Students hurried along the steps, some pale, some oddly excited.

A pair of seniors passed Raizen going up, expressions tight.

"What happened?" one of them shouted as they squeezed by.

"Zone C breach" the other answered, not slowing. "Someone's beast is glitching. The idiot tried a mutation, more than he could handle."

Glitching, Raizen thought. That was the word Saffi used when systems misbehaved. Not when something with teeth did. But then… Mutation…?

Atman descended in quick, even steps.

"Professor" Raizen tried. "Mina and Saffi… Where would they be in this?"

"No idea!" Atman laughed. "Mina knows the protocols. She will know where to move your friend. That will have to be enough for now. Focus."

Raizen's hand tightened on the railing. He didn't like the idea of "enough for now" either.

The bell rang again.

A different sound joined it now. A low noise from below, like distant thunder. The wood under Raizen's boots gave a faint shudder, as if something large had hit it far away.

He glanced at Atman.

The professor's expression did not change, but his steps did quicken by a fraction.

"Tell me straight" Raizen said. "Your beasts. They are not like normal Eon constructs, are they?"

"Normal Eon constructs? Hell no!" Atman said. "Normal constructs are temporary. You force Eon into a shape, use it, and let it dissolve. Ukai does not do that. Not at our levels."

"What do you do?" Raizen asked.

The portraits flashed past them - jaguar with three tails, armored bear, porcupine wolf - now just blurred spots of color.

Atman did not look at them.

"Healing Eon works by remembering what was before the wound" he explained. "Close the blood vessel. Rebuild the bone. Grow what is missing."

Raizen had seen that kind of healing at the Academy. The strange, warm glow that stitched flesh back together.

"At Ukai" Atman continued, "some clever madman asked a question. If Eon can fix a body before it was hurt… Can it fix a body that doesn't exist yet?"

Raizen frowned.

He could almost see where this was going.

"So instead of fixing someone" he said slowly, "You… build something."

"Yes" Atman replied. "We take the principle that heals and twist it. We provide a frame, a pattern, and then we ask Eon to grow something into that shape. Not a tool. A living thing. Eon from our Eon. Something that can think for itself, in simple ways at first. Something that can change."

They passed another floor. The bell's tone seemed lower here, closer.

"That's what your students summon?" Raizen continued. "Those beasts. They aren't just energy in a form. They are… Alive."

"Shared life" Atman corrected. "Part of the student, part of the world. The bond ties them. When one grows stronger, so does the other. When one gets hurt, the other feels it. It's like grafting a new limb onto a will instead of a body."

Raizen swallowed.

"And if the bond is bad?"

"Then the limb doesn't listen" Atman said. "It disobeys. We say that… It glitches."

They turned another corner.

Shouts were clearer now. Subtle panic threaded some of them.

"Some students mentioned a… Mutation… What's that?"

"We'll discuss that later. Short answer: Every feature or trait you add to your beast. I'll tell you everything… If we live" he chuckled again.

"For now, you should understand only this: Our Eon Mastery is powerful because our beasts have minds. That is also why, when something goes wrong... It goes very wrong."

The 2 burst out of the stairwell onto one of the wider corridors Raizen recognized from before. This one opened toward the training grounds.

Smoke met them.

Not the cyan ghost-smoke from Atman's trick. This was the normal kind: grey, thick, flavored with burnt tastes.

Raizen's skin prickled.

Atman lifted a hand instinctively, Eon flickering faintly around his fingers like a glove, then dropping again.

The training grounds were chaos.

The neat order Raizen had seen earlier - circles, lines, zones, instructors at calculated points - had fractured. Some platforms were still calm, their students calm, beasts dismissed, instructors keeping them in place.

Other platforms were not.

A section of the far ceiling of vines hung shredded, leaves hanging down in clumps. A movable wall lay cracked in two, its hinges twisted. One of the outer railings had been torn open, pieces of wood hanging by metal supports.

Drones darted overhead at strange angles, no longer gliding. Some flickered, their signals overloaded.

Farther away, another beast - something like a heavy, scaled dog - lay broken against a wall, its form already unraveling into loose Eon.

Raizen's heart hammered.

Where are they?

He scanned for familiar shapes. Saffi's sharp outline. Mina's tall figure. Nothing yet. Too much movement.

The bell rang again, right above them now.

Atman's gaze went upward and then outward.

"There" he said.

Raizen followed his eyes.

A shadow passed behind some vines.

For a second, he thought it was just the canopy shifting in the wind.

Then it moved against the leaves, not with them.

Something large pushed along the inner curve of the training area, just under the living ceiling. Each motion sent a ripple through the tangled branches, like a huge animal moving under a blanket.

Voices rose, sharper now.

"Get it away from Zone D!" someone shouted.

"The link is already completely severed!"

Raizen's spine shivered.

Atman started walking, quick and focused, along the main walkway that cut through the platforms. He didn't run. That somehow made it worse.

Raizen fell into step beside him.

"What kind of beast are we dealing with?" he asked.

"How should I know?" Atman said. "Something that shouldn't really exist in a normal drill."

That was not an answer.

They moved closer. The smell of burnt sap thickened. The air was warmer here, like they had stepped near a forge.

Someone ahead yelled, "Fire!" and Raizen saw it.

Not on wood.

In the air.

A column of blue-white flame poured down from somewhere above, burning empty space near one of the intact platforms.

But the fire didn't catch on the wood. The vines didn't burn.

The flame went out in a blink, leaving the air wavering, hot.

"What was that?" Raizen whispered.

"Advanced pattern, or Mutation" Atman said, eyes narrow. "Someone's been experimenting."

There was another sound now. A low, rolling bellow that vibrated the vines and planks. It was not like the wolf's growl. Not like any beast he had seen that day.

Deeper. Longer.

They rounded another section.

The source of the chaos finally showed itself.

It burst through a curtain of vines at the far side of the open space, ripping them down like thin cloth.

For a moment, all Raizen saw was the chest.

Thick. Scaled. Plates of dark gray and dull blue overlapping like armor. Each breath made the plates shift.

Then the rest of it came into view.

A long neck, corded with muscle, rose from that chest. The head at the end of it was blunt, a huge lizard head. But somehow worse.

It reminded him of something he only read of. Dragons: Heavy jaw. Two short, forward hooked horns above the eyes. When it exhaled, thin wisps of blue-white smoke drifted from its nostrils.

Its body ran back into a powerful torso. On the upper part, a pair of wings. Behind, two hind legs dug into the wood, claws biting deep.

The wings unfurled half way once, sending a sharp gust across the platforms.

Along its spine, glowing lines ran between the plates, veins of light blue that pulsed with its heartbeat. The same color flickered in its throat every time it drew breath.

Its eyes…

Raizen swallowed.

Its eyes were not bright orange like the wolf's. They were a pale, eerie blue, ringed with darker cracks, like glass that had been carefully shattered.

A beast stood on the platform closest to it - something like a horned antelope, blades growing from its horns. The tamer beside it shouted, hand outstretched, trying to recall or command.

The winged lizard turned.

It moved faster than something that size should.

One step. Two.

Then it struck.

Its jaws snapped down on the antelope. Not a threat. Directly a killing bite. Scales scraped against Eon flesh with a sound like stone on stone.

The beast shrieked - a strange, layered sound.

The tamer fell to her knees at the same time, clutching her chest as if someone had punched through it from the inside.

The lizard lifted its head, jaws dripping with glowing fire residue that evaporated fast.

It didn't look satisfied.

If anything, it seemed even more restless. Its wings twitched, scraping along the vines. Claws dug deeper into the wood, carving trenches.

Raizen stared, pulse racing.

"How do you stop something like that?" he asked, voice low.

"At this point?" Atman said. "You kill it. Since the link is severed from its tamer, it should be no harm"

He watched the beast with the eyes of someone looking at a broken machine and trying to see where the first crack had started.

"The bond is gone" Raizen said softly. "No one is on the other end anymore... So It should be collapsing, right? Then why isn't it dissolving?"

"Because something else is holding it together" Atman answered, jaw tight. "Something that shouldn't be there."

"What??"

"I don't know" Atman raised his shoulders. "Nobody does. We just learned not to push past our limits."

Raizen's hand brushed his sword.

No one was getting close to the lizard.

Maybe no one could.

The creature swung its head slowly, scanning its surroundings.

Its gaze slid over platforms, beasts, people.

Then it stopped.

The beast's eyes locked onto Raizen across the distance. Blue irises met his gaze and held it, unblinking.

The lines in its throat pulsed brighter.

It exhaled once, hard. A small spark of blue fire escaped between its teeth, hissing in the air.

"Ah" Atman breathed beside him, trying not to laugh. "It noticed you!"