“Fiend?” Blake circled around the edge of the pond, climbing up onto the dry embankment and shaking off his boots. He’d probably never get all the mud out, but it was better than nothing.

  He’d never seen a fiend in-person since the Integration. Even then, it had only been in glimpses. As the world crumbled, a beast had torn through his childhood home, before the Integration sealed him and the beast together as one. There had been lots of lightning, everything was falling apart, and he barely remembered the night. It didn’t help that it hurt. A lot.

  He didn’t want to remember it.

  Ethbin said, This should be a lesser fiend, if my senses are correct. Around stage three of Mana Condensation.

  “Should…” Blake whispered. “That word’s doing some heavy lifting.”

  He circled the pond until he reached a tree, then looked more closely. It was about twenty paces wide, with the tall, mangrove-like trees looming overhead, interlocking branches and shading the pond. He could barely see the tops of the trees with how the mists shrouded them.

  Lily pads floated in the pond below, and a couple of them boasted a bright pink star-shaped flower. At the very center of the flower was a golden pearl. Blake felt nothing from it, not when it came to his spiritual senses, but that could mean anything. It didn’t have Honour, unlike the ring. It could still have lots of mana.

  But over the past few years, he’d gotten good at trusting his gut and his instincts. Usually, something just looked powerful or special.

  These golden pearls, the way they seemed to create sunlight and formed halos in the fog, they had to be powerful. And considering everything else in the merge-mists had been gray, brown, or dull, green? Pink had to be special.

  Look lively, Ethbin said. You’re about to intrude on the fiend’s treasure. It has been nursing these for a few days now, looking to see if they’ll get any larger before it enjoys its snack.

  Blake was about to ask where the fiend was when the branches above cracked and shattered. A beast dropped from the canopy, breaking out of a cocoon of branches and plummeting.

  It landed in the water with a great splash, creating a tidal wave of pond water that surged up over the embankment, flooding Blake’s boots once more and nearly making him lose his footing.

  When the waves subsided, an eight-foot-tall beast stood waist-deep in the pond. It was an upright, humanoid lizard covered in black scales. A pair of horns, just like Blake’s, protruded from the top of its head, but it had a reptilian head. Four eyes stared straight out the sides, surrounded by blighted growths, and spiked armour covered its chest and hips. It only had two hands, but its fingertips boasted long talons.

  Corrosive smoke leaked from holes in its back, staining the air with an acrid haze and making Blake choke on the sulfuric stench. It was almost pitch black, but it dispersed quickly.

  Its head flicked toward Blake, and it let out a high-pitched screech, before throwing its arms down and screeching like a tea kettle. It was about to charge. Its muscles rippled and its eyes swivelled forward. They narrowed, like it was disgusted by what it saw.

  A chill ran down Blake’s spine. For a second, he froze, staring at the beast, blinking. Images of the night of the Integration ran through his mind…his house crumbling, windows shattering, distant sirens wailing, his mom and sister shrieking…

  Blake slapped his head and pushed the images away. Instead, he asked, “Uh, Ethbin? Is it as strong as you thought?”

  Fourth stage Mana Condensation.

  “So it’s stronger.”

  Well—

  The fiend charged. It sprang forward, leaping through the water on all fours, tossing lily pads in every direction. It opened its mouth wide, revealing two rows of needle-sharp teeth, then pounced out of the water.

  Blake ducked to the side. As he’d come to realize during the past few days, fighting anything stronger than him was an excellent furnace to fuel his Honour. As long as he didn’t flinch from the challenge, that bravery created Honour in his channels. Or more accurately, it allowed him to pull it through his siphon, but there was rarely time to sense it in the middle of a battle.

  He channelled the Honour into his weak Augmentation technique and sprang to the side, dodging a swipe of claws. They whistled past his nose.

  He didn’t have a full-body Augmentation technique, and even though the basic technique would make him more durable, he still didn’t like his odds against those talons.

  Blake tried to counter the fiend with a broad swing of his staff. It struck the fiend in the shoulder and sent it staggering to the side, but the beast seemed unperturbed. Its rusty armour took most of the blow, leaving only a dent.

  You’re using your staff like it’s a sword, Ethbin remarked. But it’s a staff.

  “I was using it like a heavy thing to hit something else with!” Blake pulled it closer again and gripped it with two hands. “Besides, it’s hardly thick enough to be a staff.”

  Yes, stop reminding me that you need to get a proper weapon, and kill this monster before it rips your face off.

  “Is that a little stress I hear?” Blake rolled to the side, this time anticipating the beast’s next charge better. He jumped back upright and struck the monster on the back of the head. It staggered into the bog on the other side of the pond.

  Forgive me for being concerned, Ethbin said. But if you die here, then that leaves me stuck in this bog for hundreds of years, and I must hope that someone else happens to pass through, who can miraculously sense Honour.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  So, in other words, a sentence of eternal boredom and suffering.

  “Don’t worry, old man,” Blake said. “I’ll keep you safe.” Though he said it with a sardonic tone, he did mean it.

  He tightened his grip on the staff as he spoke, determination filling him. But with the usual burst of determination, there was something else…more Honour surged.

  That’s loyalty. I’ll explain later. Just kill this fiend.

  Blake’s second blow had shaken the fiend, but it was getting up, and it was turning back to face him. Its skull was thick, and it didn’t seem to be using its brain much, anyway. Then again, if he struck its body, he was going to come up against armour. Its snout was the only vulnerable and easily strikable target.

  He lunged forward, holding his staff up, and jabbed at the beast’s snout. It poked the upper lip of a nostril, and the fiend howled. His staff slipped free, not striking as directly as he hoped, and he stumbled forward. One of the beast’s flailing arms caught his bicep, and the talons tore through flesh and muscle. Blake yelled and stumbled, almost impaling himself on the rebar, but he kept moving.

  He spun around, trying to ignore the blazing pain. Trying to ignore the feeling of a sliced muscle rubbing against itself. Blood rushed down his arm. It was a deep cut, and if the adrenaline wore off, he was going to feel it a lot worse.

  Alright, yes, technically you can jab with a staff, but it’s not a spear, Ethbin said.

  “How would you like me to use it? Or is answering that going to cost you too much energy?”

  Trust your instincts.

  Blake narrowed his eyes. The fiend staggered to the side, holding its snout, screeching. Still, by attacking the snout, Blake could only cause it pain. He wasn’t going to kill it.

  He needed to create an opening. Then, at whatever cost, hit its weakest point.

  Its eyes.

  Trust his instincts, huh? Trembling, both in fear and pain, Blake dragged himself up and took a grip near the top of the staff. The fiend pounded the swamp and snarled, then began bounding forward. Concentrating his Honour in his legs, and using the old Augmentation technique, he sprinted forward to meet the beast.

  At the last moment, he plunged his staff down into the bog, instead of attacking, like he was pole-vaulting. Hoisting himself up, he delivered a strong, Augmented kick to the fiend’s nose. Bone and scales cracked beneath his boots, and the fiend’s own momentum carried them both to the ground.

  But Blake got up first. He ripped his staff out of the mud and jabbed it into the beast’s closest eye. It struck bone, but he pushed deeper. Still bone. Did fiends have a plate of bone behind their eyes?

  The Honour in his veins was a roaring vapour. Some returned to his siphon and swirled around, following a loop. It always had to flow in a loop. The harder he pushed, clenching his mind like he would clench a muscle, the more he pushed the Honour against his siphon. He imagined it was a grindstone, and the Honour seemed to condense faster.

  Liquid Honour swirled around his siphon now. It was light and frothy. He didn’t know what to do with it, but as it accumulated, he shouted. Exertion, rage, pain all mixed together into a frenzied blend. A faint power radiated out from the Honour, subtly enhancing his base strength all around his body, even without the Augmentation technique.

  The fiend’s skull shattered. Its skull imploded, and his staff pierced straight into its mind with blunt force. He wrenched it to the side, then twisted until the fiend stopped moving, then finally, ripped it out. A jet of black blood and brain matter spewed out, and Blake leapt back. The stench, like rotten eggs and intense body odour, made him retch.

  “Disgusting beast,” he spat, then kicked its corpse for good measure. Slowly, it sank into the bog. In a few hours, there’d be no evidence it was ever here. “You should go back to wherever you came from.”

  I told you not to stab it, Ethbin said.

  “Yeah, but it worked. You said trust my instincts, and my instincts told me to plant the staff in its eye. What else would you have wanted me to do?”

  Strike its neck. Find points where you could rupture veins and kill it without breaking its skin.

  “I…I don’t know how to do that,” Blake said.

  I’m realizing that. Perhaps you don’t have the instincts of a cultivator.

  “In my books, that’s a good thing.”

  Perhaps it is.

  Then he looked down at his arm. It was bleeding badly, and now that the blur of the fight was passing, Blake had to find a way to deal with it. He pulled out the rest of his makeshift bandages from his bag and bound them tight around the three deep slashes. It wasn’t bad enough to warrant a tourniquet yet, and he didn’t think he was ready to potentially lose a limb while he was this young.

  You’re being dramatic.

  “I also don’t like the sight of my own blood,” Blake said.

  Really? Pathetic.

  Blake rolled his eyes. He was fine with normal blood. But his was a sickly shade of dark red, darker than a human’s should’ve been, and the sight of it made his stomach churn. It was a fiend’s blood, not a human’s.

  “And yes,” Blake continued, “a tourniquet can do permanent damage to your limb.”

  I don’t know what that is.

  “For once!” Blake proclaimed, then tied the knot of his regular bandage tight. “I know something the grandpa doesn’t.”

  For once, Ethbin said. He put extra stress on once.

  “I feel like you’re going to say ‘but’.” Blake winced.

  Indeed. You’ve also begun condensing Honour on your own. You condensed a wisp of it. Look.

  Blake cast his perception down into his gut again. He couldn’t see the siphon, as usual, but there was a wisp of condensed Honour swirling around. A single trickle of dark liquid locked in permanent orbit around the siphon.

  You’ve begun condensing a sea of Honour, Ethbin explained. This is the goal of the Condensation stages. Gathering and expanding your Honour sea, preparing energy that you will eventually use to form a core. For now, the sea acts as your storage.

  “So I can…draw Honour from the sea?”

  No. Not the Honour you just condensed. That would be unwise. You would be Harvesting yourself if you did that. The purpose of your sea is as a vessel to store usable Honour. Think of it this way: your Honour sea is liquid, the usable Honour is vapour. You dissolve as much as you can in the sea, storing it for later.

  “...Right.” Blake scratched his neck. “I don’t suppose I stored any?”

  No. But next time you fight using Honour, you may find that a little lingers afterward. However, in the long term, you will need a proper cycling technique to gather enough Honour to fill your core and tinge it with an aspect. I won’t be able to help you with that until we have all your meridians open, until we join a sect, and until we have a technique slate to modify.

  Blake’s chest deflated. “Was…this what you wanted me to find, then?”

  I wanted to put you in a situation where you would begin condensing an Honour sea, which you did. But I had another hope…

  Blake nodded slowly, then looked over at the pond. “So…those orbs?”

  I have a challenge for you, Ethbin said. And it is related to those orbs. If it goes well, you’ll have the knowledge to get through the next stage of Honour Condensation. First, we’re going to envision your spiritual organs, and properly. It’s the next step on a long road, but I promise, you’ll find it useful.