Chapter 3
Renfei finished buckling on the green plates of her Skysworn armor, clipped the dark hammer to her belt, and sent a whisper of spiritual awareness to test the Thousand-Mile Cloud preserved inside her armor. It was fully powered and ready to deploy.
And so was she.
She pulled her hair back and tied it into a tail, then walked to the door. As she expected, Bai Rou was waiting on the other side. He had to bend down to see her through the doorframe.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Time's up,” she responded. “Let's go get him.”
Bai Rou, her partner in the Skysworn, was two feet taller than she was and twice as broad. He always wore a hat woven from dried stalks, which cast a shadow across his face. Only his eyes shone from within the darkness, bright yellow—his Goldsign. He wore the same armor she did, though his was three sizes bigger and he carried no hammer.
They had to travel down cramped hallways lit only by flickering, damaged rune-lights—no one had done the maintenance on these scripts for years.
Fortunately, their destination was nearby.
They reached the end of the hallway in a minute, in front of a...well, it wasn't a door. More like a thick metal plate bolted to the wall, with a script in the center.
This script wasn't derelict, like the others. The custodians of the prison knew better than to allow actual security to lapse.
From inside a pocket at her belt, Renfei pulled out her half of the key—a ceramic half-disc etched with one part of a script-circle. Bai Rou handed over the other half, and she fit the two halves of the disc together.
When the script was completed, she let her madra flow through it. Another security measure: this key was created anew for each new jailer, and would shatter if power from the wrong Path flowed through it.
She pressed it against the circle on the metal slab, and power spun through the door. The metal lit up in lines, as hidden scripts activated.
The bolts around the edges, each marked with a script-circle of its own, began to spin out of their mounts. An instant later, they pinged to the ground, followed by the thick metal plate swinging soundlessly open.
Renfei walked through the doorway, Bai Rou ducking after her.
They found themselves in a room of twisting mist. Images seemed to swirl and die within the mist, as sounds haunted the very edges of her hearing. She heard something like children whispering, a gong sounding, the cries of a thousand birds.
It was easy to ignore the illusions, as she and Bai Rou carried ward keys to this formation. The two of them saw only mist and heard only distant sounds, but anyone without ward keys would be snared in convincing visions.
They walked across a narrow bridge with no railing, a sheer drop on either side.
Though it looked bottomless, Renfei knew that more than simply air and darkness waited beneath. Anyone trapped in the tricks of this world would live only long enough to hit the bottom, whereupon they would be devoured by what waited there.
“This is too much,” Bai Rou said, his deep voice drowning out the whispers.
“Too much to secure him,” Renfei replied. “But not enough to keep him isolated.”
“Not enough?”
She sighed. “You know it won't be.”
The next door was wooden and opened to a simple physical key and lock. She opened into a dark stone room, lit only by light spilling in from the room of illusions. A pair of crimson lions waited at the end of the room, embers burning in their eyes, flames building in their throats. Remnants, sealed to the defense of this room.
The Remnants had been Truegold when they were imprisoned here, but were fed weekly to make them even more formidable. If she and Bai Rou had to fight their way through, they might be able to do it, but they would have to pay a heavy cost.
Fortunately, the Remnants recognized them and parted, allowing them to walk through. That didn't lessen the tension—their heat pressed against her like she was locked in an oven, and their burning gazes made them look anything but tame. She brushed her fingertips against the hammer at her waist.
Remnants could be bound, but they weren't predictable. These looked like swirls of bright color painted onto the world, their eyes like balls of fire. They glared at her, and she found herself wondering if they might make a fight of this after all.
She could feel Bai Rou's madra, like water and nightmares, gathering behind her. She realized she was cycling her own Cloud Hammer madra, and picked up her pace.
The next door was made of heavy stone, moved by brute strength. This might be the least secure entrance, but it was made so that it only opened slowly. Anyone who tried to ignore the lions and open the door would find themselves trapped and delayed.
This room was thick with water aura, a pale green waterfall splitting the hall in two. It wasn't water, not really—instead, it was liquid madra, water fused with the essences of death and venom. A truly vile combination.
A construct provided by the prison allowed them to pass through this one—a personal shield that repelled this exact Path of madra. Renfei was still nervous as she walked through the green waterfall, even though she could feel the shield intact. Bai Rou might survive contact with this liquid, though even he wouldn't enjoy it, but she would die without a doubt.
The next room was full of security constructs. The floor was a web of etched circles, and brightly colored devices made of Remnant parts stuck from every wall and the ceiling. Eyes on purple stalks pushed away from a mass of muscle-like madra stuck to one wall, examining them. The ceiling bristled with spiked tails, clenched claws, sparking fangs, and pieces she couldn't identify. She could, however, sense the power of the Striker bindings in all of them.
If the scripts beneath them were triggered, the constructs would unleash enough power to vaporize an Underlord.
Her heart rate picked up every time, but they were once again allowed to pass.
“No sign of entry,” Bai Rou noted, as they approached the last door.
“There wasn't last time either,” she said.
“This is different.”
Renfei had to admit that she couldn't imagine these defenses being penetrated. Their prisoner wasn't too dangerous on his own—he was locked in more as a political statement than to protect others from him. The Skysworn had received orders to keep him isolated, but that had proven more difficult than they anticipated. Everywhere they put him, no matter how secret or protected, had been infiltrated within days.
This time, with the approval of their Underlord, they had placed him in the most isolated facility that could hold him without killing him. Having just passed through the security herself, she had to admit, she couldn't imagine how someone could pass through each of those measures without the keys. Or without blowing a hole through each wall in sequence.
Maybe this time will be different, she thought.
It wasn't.
This cell was originally designed for top-level security threats that couldn't be executed by usual means. Its door was shot through with halfsilver veins, and the room itself was broad and brightly lit. There was a separate prison in the center of the room: a box of bars, at least twenty feet away from each wall. The box itself was fairly roomy for one prisoner, with a bed, a chair, and a pit with a water construct that flushed away his waste twice per day. The only thing a prisoner wouldn't have was privacy—anyone who entered the cell would see everything from every angle, through the gaps in the bars. Even the bars had flecks of halfsilver in them—the empire spent a fortune furnishing this place, and a smaller fortune powering and maintaining it.