10

My elemental training continued in much the same way for the next week. I rose early, trained hard all day, then dropped onto my bed, not stirring until the unholy hour of morning when training began anew. Fire, sea, sky, and earth. I’d come to detest the very elements of nature. That which I’d always considered beautiful had turned inside out. I could only see the danger now. Burning, electrocution, frostbite, drowning, mud monsters. Even the snowy forest outside my bedroom window couldn’t soothe my frayed nerves.

I felt like my body and magic had been put through an elemental blender. This endurance training was supposed to prime our elemental magic, make it more able to survive the gods’ fourth gift, the Nectar that would unlock our elemental magic. There was a certain nuance to it, a process, a procedure. Like everything the Legion did, this process was equivalent to subtly hitting someone over the head with a hammer.

“Face your partner,” the Sky Dragon instructed everyone, projecting his voice to every corner of the gym hall.

Jace was my partner. We’d already fought four times this afternoon, and we’d each won twice. Jace was the better fighter, but he wasn’t nearly as scrappy as I was. Never underestimate the importance of scrappiness. The Legion of Angels might have been founded on the principles of dignity and honor, but humanity had been founded on dirty fighting.

Jace and I stood facing each other. We held no weapons; we were armed with only our magic and willpower. Our eyes locked, our bodies froze. It was like a good old Frontier standoff—without the guns. Our hands were posed at our sides, our fingers twitching.

Jace struck. He waved his hand up in an arc, igniting the leaves under my boots. I stomped them out.

“You should freeze them,” the Sea Dragon told me from the sidelines. There was disapproval in her voice. Like she expected me to be able to do magic just like that.

I couldn’t freeze anything. Even after a week, Jace was still the only one in the whole group who could so much as set a matchstick on fire, and his sister knew it. Kendra Fireswift shot me a smug smirk. She was getting on my last nerve. And on Jace’s too.

“Make more fires,” she demanded.

“I think she wants you to turn me into a bonfire,” I whispered to Jace.

He managed to ignite another crinkly dry leaf. It was more smoke than fire, though. The strain on his face was noticeable.

“Indeed,” he said.

“Why are you holding your breath?” I asked. “Afraid if you exhale, your breath will put out your fires?” I winked at him.

Jace snorted, and a small laugh escaped his mouth. His tiny fires went out like birthday candles. I chuckled.

“Less laughing, more kicking her ass,” Kendra instructed him.

Jace grabbed one of the flaming swords off the rack. I grabbed another. The blades had been pre-spelled for us. The rack charged the magic on them, kind of like how my electric whip worked. As we used them, the magic would slowly wear off.

Fire hissed as Jace swung his sword at me. I parried his strike, then turned and butted him in the face with the hilt of my sword. Soren, who was shooting flaming arrows at target boards with Nerissa, spared us a glance—and a soft laugh. Kendra glared at me like I was a demon, but I was hardly even a footnote to the scorn in her eyes when she looked at her brother.

“You are the son of an angel,” she snapped at Jace, whose nose was streaming blood. “You’ve been training with a sword since you could walk. And you’re letting a street urchin best you with her dirty tricks? Our father would be ashamed of you.”

“Nothing new there,” Jace muttered in a low voice.

“Would it help if I let you kick my ass?” I asked him.

The corner of Jace’s mouth quirked up. “Let me? You think I can’t kick your ass by myself?” His voice was half humor, half pride. Conflicted, as always for him.

I smirked at him. “Give it your best shot, hotshot.”

He rushed forward, so fast I could barely track him. He swung his sword. A tone chimed in the hall, signaling an elemental change. It sounded like ice.

A cold wind cut through the room. The frost froze the flames on our swords. Tiny ice pieces sprinkled to the floor every time our blades clashed. After a few strikes, there was nothing left of the frozen flames. Jace and I each took a step back, muttering at our swords. We were trying to cast water magic on the naked blades. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work.

From the sidelines, Kendra made a derisive noise. “Pick up the pace, Sniffles.”

“Sniffles?” I asked Jace.

“Kendra’s nickname for me. She used to beat me up until I cried.”

“I thought big sisters were supposed to be nurturing.”

“You obviously didn’t grow up in a family with an angel patriarch,” he said darkly.

We gave up on the swords, tossing them aside. We each grabbed a water wand from the rack, weapons that had been spelled to shoot water. Jace thrust his wand forward, and a stream of water burst out of the tip. It hit me right in the face. I stood my ground, enduring the onslaught. I aimed my wand low and fired. A stream of high-pressure water exploded out of the wand, hitting him in the groin. He doubled over but didn’t fall. He turned his back to me, so the stream was only slamming into his back.

The chime sounded again. Rather than a single elemental note, it was a melody of four notes, the signal that it was time for the elemental obstacle course. Oh, goody.

We all waited in front of the door that linked the gym hall with the entrance to the obstacle course. The Dragons could use the castle’s magic to reshape the spells and challenges of the course. That meant there was an infinite pool of possible courses, a plethora of elemental combinations they could use to torture us.

“This time, each candidate will enter and complete the course alone,” Major Valentine announced. “Mentors will wait here.”

“Great,” Nerissa said bleakly, stepping into line. She’d been getting a lot of help from Soren in the course.

I moved into line right behind her. “You can do it!” I said brightly.

She frowned at me. “Has anyone ever told you that your unwavering optimism is annoying?”

I grinned back at her until a smile broke out on her face. Every minute a chime sounded, the signal for the next person in line to go. When it was her turn, Nerissa entered the course with rugged determination. Now it was just me and Jace. He didn’t say anything. He’d put on his game face.

The bell chimed, and I ran into the obstacle course. An open plain awaited. Lightning crashed down from a purple sky. I danced around the bolts. One snapped against my heels, but I was already jumping into the pool of water at the edge of the plains.

I swam as fast as I could. The lightning hadn’t given up. The barrage of charged bolts was closing in on me, and I did not want to be hit while in the water. I considered my options. A small island awaited me after a short-but-potentially-electrifying swim. Option number two was the underwater tunnel below me. Taking it meant avoiding the lightning, but I knew from my roughly two million trips through the Dragons’ obstacle course that the tunnel was the long way there. I’d have to hold my breath for an indeterminate length of time.

Lightning hit the water’s surface just a few feet from me. The resulting jolt of electrical magic made the decision for me. I dove, praying that I didn’t met any underwater beasties this time around.

After several minutes in the tunnel, my lungs burned with volcanic fury. This was the longest I’d ever held my breath. The tunnel spilled out into an underwater chamber. A circular platform waited at the center. Hope jumpstarted my muscles. I swam to the platform and stomped my foot down on it. Magic flashed, and then the platform shot out of the water, catapulting me onto the island.

I landed on the cracked ground, rolling to my feet. I sucked air into my lungs in ragged gasps. My body shook. No, wait. That wasn’t my body. It was the ground. The ground was shaking. Tremors rumbled deep inside the earth. The ground split beneath my feet. I darted away from the emerging canyon—only to nearly fall into another canyon.

I listened for the tremors, feeling them out. Soren had told me how to predict where the next quake would hit. I had to put myself in tune with the magic creating them. A twinge of magic tugged on my senses. I ran to the right, avoiding a new split in the ground. The edges of the first canyon bumped, sealing together with seamless perfection. It was as though there had never been a canyon there. I dashed over it before it decided to open again.

I crossed the small island, avoiding earthquakes and sidestepping canyons. I reached the far shore, but instead of a sea of water, I met a sea of smoke. It swirled around me, drawing me forward. With every step that I took, the smoke cleared a little. I found hell on the other side.

Not literally, of course. The fire arena was marked by flames. They rolled across the land like a river of fire, consuming everything in their path. A black tree was caught in its wake. The flames pulled it down. Within seconds, it was nothing but ash.

Just past the former tree, a ring of fire burned around Nerissa. She was trapped, and the river of flames was coming. I had to help her. I took a running start up a mound of hardened stone, launching off it to jump over the fire ring and land beside her.

“You ok?” I asked.

She rubbed a smudged hand across her face. “Fantastic.” All around us, the fire was raging, burning higher. “I can’t believe you just did that.”

“Neither can I.”

She let out a strained laugh. “You missed the top of the flames by a hair’s breadth. If it had touched you, it would have set your whole body on fire. Didn’t you think about it?”

“No. At times like these, I find it’s best not to think too hard. Overanalyzing things just slows me down.”

“That would explain why your hair is on fire.”

I squeezed the tip of my braid between my thumb and index finger, putting out the tiny flame. My hair appeared untouched. Hmm.

“I’m going to give you a boost over the flames,” I told Nerissa. “Then you run for the exit like your tail is on fire.”

“Very funny.”

I shot Nerissa a grin, then grabbed her and threw her up high. She shot over the flames, landing safely at the exit. I drew in a deep breath and ran right through the fire. Flames hissed against my skin, but it hardly burned me at all. Maybe my elemental resistance really was improving.

I sprinted for the exit Nerissa had taken, but the opening closed before I got there. It reopened on the other side of the fiery field.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I growled under my breath, then headed for the new exit.

Jace burst out of the smoke, speeding past me. I pushed myself to run faster. He’d started a minute after me. He was not going to finish before I did.

Flames shot out of the ground all around us. Jace grabbed one of them between his hands and tossed it in my face. I dodged to avoid the fire, but that slowed me down. He burst through the exit. I came out right after him. The first thing I saw was the smirk on Kendra’s face. The second thing I saw was my time on the score board.

“Your friend Pandora was the slowest of everyone,” Kendra commented to Jace, her full lips turned up into a smile of dark delight.

I longed for elemental magic—if only to set her hair on fire.

“I’m sorry, Leda,” Nerissa said. “If not for me, you might have beaten his time.”

I knew she was just saying that to make me feel better. In a whole week of training, I hadn’t once beaten Jace’s time on the obstacle course. I just wasn’t fast enough.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s not a competition.”

Which was why the scores were posted up there in bright shining digits for everyone to see. To see I was a loser. No, I couldn’t think like that. The scores meant nothing. What mattered was what happened when I drank the Nectar. I frowned at my pathetic score anyway. It might not be a matter of life-or-death, but it annoyed me anyway.

“You saved my life,” said Nerissa.

“You won’t die in training. There are too many safety measures in place.” I sighed. If I’d been thinking straight in there, I would have just kept going. But, no, I was so busy trying to hold onto my humanity that I’d taken leave of my senses.

“You haven’t been paying attention, Leda. This is the Legion of Angels. Of course you can die in training,” Nerissa said.

Captain Somerset walked over to me, the skirt of her red Fire Dragon dress swaying like flames in the breeze. “Pandora.” Her tone was foreboding.

“Yes?”

“You interfered in another candidate’s training. We cannot allow your indiscretion to go unpunished.”

Was she serious?

All it took was one look at the hard gleam in her dark eyes for me to realize that she was very, very serious.

“Rules are rules, Pandora. You aren’t doing her any favors by helping her. She needs to build up the resistance herself. You can’t do that for her. You can’t drink the Nectar for her.”

Maybe she was right.

“Everyone else is dismissed for the night,” Captain Somerset declared. “Pandora, you will train that course, repeating it until you beat Fireswift’s time. That is your punishment.”

I read Jace’s time off the scoreboard. He’d completed the entire course in under four minutes, nearly a half a minute faster than the next best person. I’d never finished the Dragons’ obstacle course in under five minutes. This was going to be fun. Since when had Captain Somerset become such a hard ass? She was certainly channeling Nero right now.

The candidates waited until the Dragons had left the gym. Then they began filing out with their mentors. Alec Morrows walked the other way—right for me.

“That was cool what you did, Leda.” He put one arm around me and the other around Nerissa.

I smiled through the bone-crushing creak of his embrace. “Thanks. But Captain Somerset doesn’t think so.”

He grunted. “Captain Somerset is a killjoy. The woman needs to learn to loosen up. Speaking of loosening up…”

If this was his smooth transition to propositioning me, I was going to punch him.

“The Dragons have a ceremony tonight,” he said, grinning. “So we’re all planning on taking advantage of the early evening. We’re going to the Tranquility Pools for a bit of food and games. You should join us.” He glanced at Nerissa. “Both of you.”

“I could use a little down time. I’m in,” said Nerissa. “Leda?”

I peeled my eyes off the scoreboard. “If I get out of here tonight, I’ll try.”

“You can do it!” Nerissa said brightly.

“You were right,” I told her. “The unwavering optimism is annoying.”

“Come on, Leda. Promise you’ll join the party.”

“I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”

“You could just come naked,” Morrows suggested.

“In your dreams.”

“Oh, yes.” His eyes lit up. “You have played key roles in my dreams. Especially after our trip across the Black Ruins. The way you handled that cannon.” He winked at me.

“Actually, it was Claudia Vance who shot the cannon,” I reminded him.

“In my dreams, you all get to shoot the cannon.”

My mouth dropped. He did not just say that.

Nerissa pushed him away. “Don’t mind him, Leda. And don’t let him scare you away from the party. You simply must come. You can buy a bathing suit from one of the castle’s shops.”

“Wait, what? The castle has shops?” I gasped.

“Of course,” she replied. “Where do you think the people living here buy things?”

Good point.

“So, you’re coming to the party?” she asked.

“I’ll try. That’s the most I can promise. I have a sinking suspicion I’ll be stuck in that obstacle course all night.”

Nerissa smiled. “Let me put it a different way: drinks and pizza and scantily-clothed soldiers by the poolside.” Her brows lifted. “That should be motivation enough.”

* * *

Getting out of the repeating elemental hell loop was more motivating than the promise of food and half-naked soldiers at the end. I managed to beat Jace’s time after only an hour. I’d figured out his trick. If you stood on the underwater platform at just the right spot, it shot you past the plain of tremors.

I’d like to think I was clever for figuring that out, but I only stumbled upon the answer by mistake when a shark decided to chase me through the water tunnel and I crashed into the platform at an awkward angle.

Technically, skipping a section of the course was cheating, but I wasn’t feeling too torn up about it. Firstly, Jace had cheated too. And secondly, Captain Somerset hadn’t said anything about cheating being disallowed. No, not cheating. Outsmarting the system. That sounded much better.

I beat Jace’s time by under two seconds—a narrow lead, but a lead just the same. I smiled at the scoreboard as I left the gym. It felt good to see my name at the top for once. I guess I was competitive too.

I stopped by the castle shops on the way back to my room in the Sea Tower. There were a surprisingly large number of shops in Storm Castle. Or maybe not so surprising. There were no towns or shopping malls way out here. The castle shops had everything you could ever need—for twice the price you ever wanted to pay. I was stuck at the wrong end of a supply-and-demand problem. The only swimwear I’d brought to Storm Castle was a wetsuit, and I was pretty sure that wasn’t suitable for a poolside party. So I forked over the money for a bathing suit, trying not to think about it. It was either overpay or go naked to the party. And I was not going naked, no matter how much Morrows would approve.

My only consolation was the outfit I’d found was cute: a bikini under a zipper top and a little hip-hugging skirt. I changed in my room, completing the set with my running shoes. It was not a good idea to walk barefoot in a medieval castle.

On the way to the pool, I passed the armory. The smell of metal, smoke, and fire filled the air, mixing with a strange magical perfume. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant, but it was potent. Despite the late hour, the castle’s master magic smith was still working. I’d been meaning to speak with him since my arrival at Storm Castle, but I’d finished every day since then too tired to pay him a visit.

A magic smith was like an artist, bending the elements to his will to create magic weapons. They lived and worked here at Storm Castle, the place on Earth where elemental magic was at its strongest. The master magic smith was the most talented of all the smiths—and he was also the most knowledgeable. He was rumored to know the history of every notable weapon and piece of armor ever made. I hoped that was more than a rumor.

“Master Smith,” I said.

He looked up from the whip he was braiding. Lightning sparks danced across his fingers, blending into the black strands of the whip. The master smith looked twenty, but his dark eyes were so much older. They were the eyes of someone who’d seen the end of the world—and lived to tell the tale.

He set down his whip. “You are the one they call Pandora.”

So he’d heard of me. This conversation could go one of two very different ways. People tended to either instantly like me or instantly hate me.

“My friends call me Pandora,” I replied.

I hoped the master smith had a sense of humor. Too many of the older Legion members did not.

He chuckled. “A fitting name. What can I do for you, Pandora?”

I looked over the weapons around him—swords, daggers, whips. They were all magical, but not one was unique.

“What do you know about immortal weapons?” I asked.

“They are very rare. Few people have ever seen one.”

I peeled up the bottom of my top to show him my scar.

“A scar from an immortal weapon.” His dark brows lifted, and he leaned in for a closer look. “A bullet from Shooting Star, one of the weapons of heaven and hell.”

Wow, I’d hoped he’d known something about immortal weapons, but I hadn’t expected him to be able to identify one by the scar it had left.

“Do you have any immortal weapons?” I asked him.

He didn’t appear shocked by my question. He probably thought I was morbidly curious. Truth be told, I wasn’t eager for a second encounter with an immortal weapon. I’d barely survived the first.

“We have only two at Storm Castle,” he said. “One is Diamond Tear, a dagger used by Colonel Starborn. The Colonel is away at the moment, so I can’t show you that one. But I can show you our second immortal weapon. It’s too big to be wielded in combat.”

He used the key around his neck to unlock an enormous locker that could easily fit two people—stacked on top of each other. But there weren’t any people inside the locker; there was only a rod. Except for the runes etched into it, it looked an awful lot like a flagpole. I saw what he meant. A Legion soldier with supernatural strength would probably be able to swing it around on the battlefield, but it was impractical to carry for extended periods of time. It was far too long and heavy.

“This is the Lightning Spear,” he told me. “The Dragons sometimes use it in their training rooms. It’s indestructible, so it can absorb a lot of magic. I use it to cleanse the castle of excess magic, which I can later put into the weapons I make.”

“Do you know how to make an immortal weapon?” I asked.

“No, that magic is far beyond my limited power.”

“Who can make them?”

“No one on Earth,” he said. “And no one in heaven or hell either.”

“I thought the gods and demons used them in their wars.” Well, when they weren’t warring by proxy anyway.

“There are two classes of weapons used by gods and demons—and, sometimes, by their angels,” he told me. “The simple ones are made by gods and demons. Those are their normal weapons. Weapons of the immortal, they’re called. And then there are the immortal weapons. Immortal weapons cannot be broken, or so they say. The weapons and armor are powerful, sentient.”

“Alive?” I asked.

“In a way. They were forged in the Sea of Souls, where the fallen gods and demons live on. Pieces of their immortal souls were absorbed into the metal of the immortal weapons. Parts of their personalities and their power live inside those weapons. Only an expert magic smith can create a cohesive weapon out of the soul of a god or a demon. Only an expert magic smith can control such powerful, unwieldy magic. There was once someone who could make immortal weapons, an immortal named Sunfire, born long before gods and demons came to be.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, as though afraid his next words would be overheard. “Sunfire could manipulate light and dark magic equally. He was the first and only person who has ever been able to forge an immortal weapon. Later in his life, when the wars of gods and demons threatened to tear his world apart, he created the full sets of immortal weapons and armor to fight them.”

“There’s more than one set?” I asked in surprise. I’d thought the weapons of heaven and hell were the only ones.

“Yes, but they have been lost to the ages. Most of them have not been seen in centuries, if not millennia.”

“Where is the immortal blacksmith?”

He shook his head. “No one knows. He disappeared long ago. Some say he is dead. But his legacy lives on in our magic, in our ability to manipulate magic to create enchanted weapons. Every magic smith today owes our power to Sunfire.” He sighed. “And yet even the most skilled among us cannot hold a candle to his work.”

If Sunfire was alive, I had to find him. I had to speak to him about the weapons of heaven and hell. In my hour of need, I’d been able to control them. What was my connection to them? And what was my connection to the Guardians? I had memories of past Guardians wielding that same armor and those same weapons. Something was going on here—something bigger than all of us—and I intended to find out what it was.