BA3 - Chapter 1

Min-hwan deflected my blow with ease and then twirled away. He landed a palm strike against Hana’s throat with a smack. I gritted my teeth as I watched her stagger back, coughing. Yuri darted in, her hands flowing like water as she pushed and pulled the blood in Min-hwan. She held his arms in a locked mirror pose, giving Cho and I the advantage.

I moved in, my hands electrified with an enzo spell to shock the opponent into paralysis. Cho was in my periphery, coming in at the same angle. I side stepped to avoid shocking him, too, and Min-hwan broke free from Yuri’s hold. He batted my attempted shock strike away and the spell backfired.

Muscle-tensing agony ripped up my arm before I could defuse it with the counter enzo spell locked in my muscles. I dumped the loaded spell into my veins and cut the paralysis in a blink, but it was already too late.

Min-hwan moved so fast his arms blurred through the air like a ghost. Pain bloomed in my gut from his heavy punch that sent me skidding back through the worn training grounds. Shin-soo gained his feet next to me with a groan. He wiped blood from his upper lip and shook his head.

“How do we keep losing,” he growled and reached for me.

I pulled myself up with his offered arm and looked at our predicament. Hana had moved in next to Yuri to guard her while she worked her own enzo spells of body manipulation. Min-hwan was getting particularly adept at rebuking those attacks.

My energy was getting low, and heat blazed through my two full core bands. I took a single breath to capture the heat and redirect it into ry.

“Go for his flank, I’ll distort you and follow,” I whispered in a pant to Shin-soo.

He wiped at his bleeding nose one more time, then nodded. “Don’t mess up.”

Shin-soo darted forward, his muscles exuding the black aura of infused zo munje. I twisted and whipped my arms through the air, releasing my stored ry. My fingers worked the complex pattern to direct the munje, offsetting Shin-soo’s appearance by almost a meter. It was a spell Hana had devised from the daggers she’d used to fight off Wong’s assassins, and something we’d perfected over the summer.

Min-hwan spun and kicked away Cho, then turned to face off with Shin-soo. I completed the complex motions and felt my spell resolve. I followed behind Shin-soo as he threw himself into the fray. He got in two good swings, both blocked, before Min-hwan delivered a low-kick to Shin-soo’s knee.

I dashed between Shin-soo and Min-hwan’s killing blow, aimed at my rival’s already broken nose. I shifted my weight and pushed forward, keeping the distance between us small. Min-hwan sent an open-palm strike toward my throat and I released a burst of infused zo with timed precision. I twisted out of the way and ducked low, then jabbed a two finger enzo strike up to his offending arm.

The spell discharged into his forearm before he could retreat and the Grandmaster growled with pain. Hana landed a heavy kick to Min-hwan’s back and I hesitated. That half second was all he needed to regain the advantage.

Min-hwan moved like lightning, fainting with another palm strike as his other hand gripped a fist-full of my dobok. The Grandmaster tossed me aside like a cloth doll. I cartwheeled through the air, desperately trying to gain equilibrium before the ground and I were reacquainted.

The heat monitor in the lower right of my vision flashed critical and I hit the ground with a roll. I came up to a knee and spared another breath to cycle the building heat energy in my core.

“You’re too close to red-line. Breathe again,” Mae ordered, and I complied. It wasn’t just my brain I could fry if I pushed too far—I could hurt her, too.

I pulled down another deep breath and took stock of my reserves that Mae conveniently presented for me on the left side of my vision. The battlefield blurred in my eyes as I pulled the data into view. Enzo was out, no more shock punches. Zo infusion was down to ten percent in my legs, and twenty-five in my back and arms. I was all out of ry and en, and almost completely out of energy from lunch.

Cho howled in pain and I refocused on the combat. He stumbled back, cradling his awkwardly bent arm.

“Dead! Mr. Pak, step out of the ring.” Sung-ki declared from his seat on the periphery.

There wasn’t time to spare an apology to my friend. I cycled the heat once more through the double bands and aligned for double zo. There wasn’t time for anything fancy, I just had to be faster.

I ran back into the battle, putting myself between Min-hwan and Yuri. Blue en twisted between her arms like a typhoon as she prepared to unleash some deadly attack. Min-hwan noticed just as I had, and turned his attention to ending that threat.

Hana zipped to his left side, and Shin-soo charged at his right. The Grandmaster deflected both attacks, leaving his front exposed. I turned into a heavy hit aimed at his chest. He lifted his left leg in an unnaturally powered spin. The strike hit Shin-soo in the face, then knocked my arm off course before smashing Hana’s nose. Shin-soo wasn’t getting up from that.

The three of us fell back all at once, but Yuri was ready. She launched her storm spell as we hit the ground and trapped Min-hwan in a bubble of raging blue munje. The spell pulled him backwards toward the sea, giving Hana and I time to climb back to our feet.

Hana’s body sparkled with purple ry as she released her distortion spell—likely the last of it. This was our final stand. I dumped my remaining energy into zo and rushed forward, chasing the chaotic cloud that had wisped Min-hwan away.

He wasn’t fighting the storm. It sucked sandy water from the bay and battered him with invisible gravity that kept him stumbling like he was a boat on the high seas. I didn’t dare enter the sphere of effect, knowing Yuri’s spell didn’t differentiate friend from foe.

When the en munje lost its inertia and the water fell to the ground, I darted in. Min-hwan flicked his wrist and the ground shifted below me. Sand swallowed my feet, but I couldn’t stop from moving forward. I pitched forward and fell to my knees, watching as Min-hwan’s sandaled foot rose to meet me.

Crack!

My vision went dark and my ears went deaf, but I felt my back hit the ground. I felt a breeze on my feet. Jigu be blessed, they were so hot. I grunted and rolled to my side, trying to get the ground to stop spinning.

“Concussion and broken nose,” Mae’s voice was clear in my head when the bird songs and rushing waves sounded far off.

I stumbled to my feet and locked my sights on Min-hwan. He easily deflected Yuri’s attack, then advanced. She put up little blue barriers that pushed his palm strikes off-course, but she couldn’t keep it up long. Hana gained her feet behind Min-hwan, looking woozy.

Move, Jiyong. They need you.

My head swam and I stumbled forward.

“Jiyong, you’re dead! Out of the ring!” Sung-ki called.

“I’m fine,” I shouted back.

I launched myself at Min-hwan and didn’t even see his rebuttal, but felt it in my throat. I fell back to the ground gasping for air. The heat meter at the bottom of my blurry vision flared a warning. I sucked down a shallow breath and moved the heat through the collector rods at the bottom of my reservoir. It was no good, there wasn’t enough air to cycle.

I gasped again and laid back from the nausea growing in my stomach. There was nothing I could do to quell the sensation but hold my breath and close my eyes.

“You need to cycle that heat, Jiyong,” Mae reminded me.

The sickness swelled in me with the heat and I turned to the side. I wretched, but there was nothing to vomit up. I pulled in another shallow breath, my lungs burning for fresh air.

A shadow appeared at my side and Sung-ki pulled me up to sitting. He waved an uncorked vial under my nose and with a snap, my diaphragm expanded fully. Sweet air filled my lungs all the way and I grunted in relief.

“Listen next time,” the Li Alchemy instructor said with annoyance.

I glanced around with swollen, blurry eyes to see everyone—save for Min-hwan—panting and sputtering on the ground in defeat.

“I can’t hold back when my friend’s lives are on the line,” I said, my voice nasally from the broken nose.

Sung-ki tutted and passed me a corked vial. “Drink it and cycle.” He moved on to Shin-soo, who was still face down in the sand.

I drank the potion and breathed awkwardly through my mouth, then sent the healing zo to my nose. Cho joined me on the warm sand with a grunt.

“Sorry about that,” he whispered.

“About what?” I asked, wiping blood from my lips.

“I got in the way.”

I shook my head. “No, I should’ve been watching. I was too focused on only him.”

When my face wasn’t so inflamed, we helped Yuri, Hana, and Shin-soo onto the grassy knoll that overlooked the bay on Min-hwan’s private estate. Woong-ji brought us all water reinforced with energy to recoup our loss, and we cooled down in the shade of a fragrant evergreen.

Min-hwan paced thoughtfully. The wind was hot, and the mid-day sun beat upon our shoulders through the shading branches. Birds called in the distance over the sea, and we waited for his judgement, quietly panting from the exertion.

Min-hwan heaved a sigh then stopped and turned to face us. “You are not ready.”

My protests stopped just short of flying from my mouth. Despite my failure to beat him in combat, I knew I was ready. Min-hwan did not react to my thought, which only reinforced my belief. My mental shield_TK—a mental shield of sorts—was strong, and he could not hear me. I would be able to protect my thoughts and Mae’s with ease, even surrounded by enemies.

“Respectfully, Grandmaster, I don’t agree,” I said with a bow.

Shin-soo, my rival turned tenuous teammate, nodded to me. “We can do it.”

“What other choice do we have?” Hana asked, emboldened by our confidence. “This is our best opportunity. Ready or not, we have to take it.”

“I trust my friends with my life,” Yuri said as she grabbed Hana’s hand. “We won’t fail.”

Cho was quiet and all eyes fell on him as the silence dragged on. He shook his head, his eyes pinned to the ground. “I don’t want to die. I especially don’t want to be executed by my king and shame my family.” He looked to me, then nodded. “But I can’t let one more person experience the pain I had from that poison.”

Cho had worked twice as hard over the summer to recover the strength he’d lost from Dokun’s malware. His second core band had been damaged beyond salvation, and he’d had to start it again from scratch. It was a long road to recovery, but now he was even more powerful than before.

I placed a comforting hand on Cho’s shoulder. “No one will have to—”I paused and looked to Min-hwan—“if we’re allowed to do our duty.”

The ancient man stroked his long, silvery beard decorated with small decorative cuffs.

Hana cleared her throat. “Perhaps not all of us should go—”

She stopped short at my glare. I knew what she was going to say. Hana and I had more than enough arguments over the summer about my safety, and since she’d lost all those arguments, I knew she would try to get Min-hwan to hold me back. Hana would execute on this mission whether it was approved or not, that was just who she was, but if she could get me to stay home, to stay safe, that was even better for her.

I was far from fragile—though I’d had my hard times in the past. She treated me as if I couldn’t protect myself, and her justification? She’d saved me from the assassin that had cut off my munje flow the night we battled Hiro Kumiho in my family garden. Yet, had it not been for me and Mae, the malware Dokun had released would’ve killed hundreds, and crippled thousands.

Once we left Busa-nan territory, there was no knowing how many attempts there would be to capture me, and Hana was worried she wouldn’t be there when I needed her most. I knew she did it out of love, but I wished she’d have more faith in me.

I avoided Hana’s gaze, keeping my eyes on Min-hwan. The Grandmaster shook his head. “If there’s any chance of success, it is together.”

“I thought you said we weren’t ready?” Yuri asked and I nearly hissed a warning at her. We were just getting him to believe in us, and she was throwing us back into doubt?

Min-hwan hummed. “I never said there wasn’t a chance of success, only that you weren’t ready.”

I barely contained my grin. So, we were going to do this. We had trained for five hours every day over the summer to prepare, and while returning to school would’ve been fine, I wanted to go. I knew the risks. I knew that Hiro Kumiho would have a target on my head the second we set foot in Kokyu, but we were ready to face him.

A blast of red sparks flashed through my mind with stunning clarity.

I scowled. ‘Yes, I remember how powerful he is.’

“Let me remind you that we did not master the deflection spell,” Mae said in my head.

I sucked down a deep breath and refused to answer her. No, I hadn’t mastered it, but it was pretty good. I would be strong enough to withstand many attacks, just like Yuri had against Min-hwan. With my friends at my side, we could take Hiro down if we had to.

But that wasn’t the point of this mission. We weren’t going to fight anyone. Reconnaissance, data collection, and making “friends.” Hiro Kumiho wouldn’t be able to attack me in the open, because according to their king TK_McKingDude, Hiro Kumiho had been executed.

Grandmaster Min-hwan’s source—perhaps Akihiro, the man Woong-ji had meet with at the end of my first year—had told us Hiro Kumiho had never returned, and not been found. A man had been executed, but it hadn’t been my former father.

Min-hwan snapped me from thought. “I do think you have a chance of success, but the risk of failure…” he blew all the air out of his lungs. “We will have other opportunities with better odds.”

“But when?” I challenged. “How long will we have to wait? How many more innocent people will continue to suffer and die as Dokun plots?”

Min-hwan’s eyebrows pinched with knowing compassion. “Jiyong, we can’t save everyone.”

Gui-ne’s and Se-nim’s faces flashed in my mind’s eye—this time my own doing. Mae didn’t want to relive their faces anymore than I did. I hadn’t been strong enough to save them, but I was now. If I had trained harder in my second year—instead of babysitting the traitor Ko-nah—I could’ve been strong enough to make the difference.

I clenched my fists. “We have to try. We have to do our best or renounce the name of Bastion.”

Min-hwan’s eyes twinkled for a brief flash, then he turned away. Cho and I exchanged a nervous glance, then looked back to the grandmaster. He stopped his pacing and crossed his arms, looking over the lapping ocean waves.

“What do you think, Woong-ji?” he asked.

I immediately looked to my master. Her gaze was set on the grandmaster. “I think we’re as well prepared as we could ever be for this journey, and it will be enough.”

“Sung-ki?”

The alchemy instructor grimaced. He’d agreed to join this mission to get a better understanding of the drugs Dokun had used to deliver his poison. There were still people suffering from left-over symptoms. The malware would keep executing the last command they had received in ten percent of the population. For some that meant frequent headaches, and others involuntary twitches. The damage had been done, and some wounds couldn’t be healed by known means.

Sung-ki sucked his teeth. “I suddenly find myself wishing the exchange program was for fifth-year students.”

I pinned him with an annoyed stare.

He rolled his eyes. “You’re right. They aren’t ready.”

My shoulders slumped.

“But Cho is also right. There are many people suffering, and many more who will suffer if we do nothing. As Jiyong said, we have an opportunity to make a difference and we must take it.”

Sung-ki valued honest above all other things—except perhaps extracts—and so I knew this was important to him. He’d been unable to do little more than keep the critical students from dying earlier this year when Dokun’s malware was distributed throughout the school by some of the third-year exchange students and the treacherous Ko-nah.

Min-hwan nodded. “You must be cautious and decisive at every step if you are to accomplish these goals with your life intact. It is not just your lives on the lines, but the life of every exchange student going with you. Any plot discovered could implicate all of the students from Bastion.”

“I said it before in your office. We will not fail. I’m going,” I declared.

Hana looked at me with a mixture of fear and disappointment. “Me too.”

“Same,” Shin-soo said with a nod.

“They’re going to need my skills,” Yuri said as she drew in a huge swell of sea water, then pushed it away with a grin.

Her years at the sewage treatment facility had helped her excel with water manipulation. Kokyu was largely a collection of islands. There were huge land masses that supported the bulk of their farming needs, then smaller, and even human-made structures connected by super-fast transit systems similar to our trains but much more advanced.

Min-hwan told all the exchange students at the mid-summer preparation gathering that there would be a significant difference in technology. This was of course the doing of Dokun and his copy of Mae. The last twenty years had seen an explosion of technological growth since Dokun had founded his first company: Xi Tech_TK.

We had been given study materials at that meeting to prepare, and with Mae’s help, I’d memorized nearly everything. She already spoke their language, and now we’d absorbed the ins and outs of their culture as well as their city layout. We would have a significant advantage, something I didn’t think the others had taken into account.

“Cho-bin?” Min-hwan asked and I looked to my friend with a start.

His forehead wrinkled with worry. “I’m ready to do what’s necessary.”

Cho had been most worried about the whole operation. His strengths were in alchemy, and it was going to be impossible to bring any of our own extracts through Kokyu’s strict port customs. We would have to find equipment and materials when we got there to supply him and Sung-ki with what they needed.

Min-hwan sighed and turned back to face us. “Then we will proceed as planned. Go and enjoy your last day of the summer with your families tomorrow, and I will see you soon.”

I nodded, suddenly feeling reality. We were going to Kokyu to spy on the kingdom’s ambassador at the peril of execution—if we weren’t caught by Dokun first. We would have few resources apart from each other, and no way off the island until our exchange was complete.

But we could do it.

We were Bastions.