Run
"Well done. Beautifully done."
Tom flew with Chris clamped under one arm, heaping on the praise.
"You held out better than I expected."
None of it reached Chris. From the instant he had kicked off the stairs to slip Perez's grasp, something in his body had gone wrong, and it was growing worse by the second. His blood seemed to boil. His organs and muscles felt ready to burst. The only thing holding him together was the water mana he had wrapped around his skin to keep himself from burning.
What is happening to me?
He felt his eyes trying to shove their way out of his skull, and in that moment he understood. He squeezed them shut and shouted inwardly.
Gravity. It's the gravity.
As the pull on the stairs had grown steadily heavier, Chris had suffered for every increment. Far more dangerous than that gradual climb, though, was a crushing field collapsing all at once. Gravity that had stood at sixty-four times normal had dropped to one in a heartbeat, and a body adapted to sixty-four times the pressure could not bear the sudden release. It was trying to tear itself apart.
I have to stop it.
He laid down more water-attribute mana to shield himself, sending a great deal of it to his eyes in particular. Then he realized water alone could not hold a body that was coming undone. He needed mana that could brace him and press him back together.
What would do that?
The answer came at once. Earth-attribute mana, and metal.
I have to wrap myself in both.
He reached for the two attributes. Perhaps because he was desperate, he felt them even less clearly than usual.
Calm down. I have to stay calm.
With Iron Body complete, his flesh was both hard and supple, which was why he was still holding together. Drag this out any longer, though, and he would come apart. He drew a deep breath and steadied his mind. Rather than forcing himself to sense earth and metal, he focused on the attributes he could already feel.
Wood.
The mana he knew best. From what he was drawing in through his mouth and limbs, he extracted the wood attribute first, then pulled free the fire, water, and wind he had come to know on the stairs while completing Iron Body. That left three great masses. A few alien strains lingered besides those, but there was so little of them that he could ignore them. They were probably special attributes—light, darkness, lightning.
The mana most abundant in the natural world was ordinary mana. Of the three unidentified masses, then, the largest had to be that. Two remained. One would be earth, and the other metal.
Which of them is earth?
He racked his brain, then decided he did not need to sort them.
I was going to use both anyway.
He broke the two attributes into fine grains and sent them through his whole body. The mana raced along the roads Iron Body had laid through him and seeped into his flesh. It sealed the outsides of his blood vessels so they would not burst, wrapped his organs so his innards would not rupture, and last of all enclosed his muscles so they would not tear.
For an instant his skull rang. Something had gone wrong in the vessels of his brain. Forcing earth and metal into them had been too much.
The brain doesn't agree with earth and metal.
He drew both back out and concentrated water-attribute mana there instead. The ringing faded a great deal. Then his nose began to bleed, and the blood carried a fierce taste of metal. Blood always tasted of metal, but this was excessive. In that moment he realized the mana he had sent to his nose was the metal attribute.
So this is metal.
Take away ordinary, wood, fire, water, wind, and metal, and earth was what remained. The instant he felt that the last great mass was earth, the six manas sorted themselves into clear, distinct streams. Even as his body threatened to crack apart, exhilaration surged through him.
I can feel all six great manas, and tell them apart.
A triumph snatched out of a crisis.
After several attempts he learned what fit where. Metal suited the blood vessels and the bones. Water suited the brain, the eyes, the spinal cord, the nerves, and the skin. Earth suited the organs. With the mana shielding him efficiently, time passed, and his body adapted to the lowered gravity.
The crisis is over.
Even so, he kept the mana circulating. He had blocked the harm of that sudden shift, but he had not blocked all of it. As the mana kept turning, it repaired what had been hurt, and he used water most of all. Water mana carried a healing power, and it soothed his wounds. He guessed that a mage who specialized in healing would possess a water-attribute seed. The judgment was correct.
Once the damaged tissue was more or less restored, he looked around. Tom had him in his grip and was cutting through the sky at tremendous speed, and Perez was coming after them in a furious pursuit.
What?
Chris stared. Perez, dried out like a mummy only moments before, was now thick with muscle.
"That man..."
He started to speak to Tom and was startled all over again. Tom, gaunt from the long agony of imprisonment, had swollen like bread dough worked with yeast. Only then did Chris feel it. Tom's body was sucking in mana at a monstrous rate. His skin was breathing.
They say that once your realm is high enough, you absorb mana with your whole body. So it was true.
"So you're with us again?"
"Yes. The gravity changed so fast I thought I was going to die."
"When I hauled you off the stairs, I thought you might. You endured it well."
Chris was dumbfounded.
"You thought I might die, and you made no preparations?"
"I was locked in a prison. Hard to plan for every trivial detail ahead of time. It only occurred to me after we got out."
My life is a trivial detail?
The veins stood out on Chris's neck.
"It never occurred to you to cast a healing spell?"
"Don't you see Perez on our tail? Just staying ahead is more than I can manage."
"I nearly died. Isn't that incredibly irresponsible?"
"I trusted Iron Body."
He looked at Chris with a peculiar light in his eyes.
"You've completed it."
"It nearly shattered too."
"A Grandmaster's body doesn't break that easily."
"Grandmaster? What is that supposed to mean?"
"Didn't I mention it? Complete Iron Body, and you gain a Grandmaster's physique."
"A Grandmaster? Me?"
"There are fools who insist that a mage who ascends to Ring Binding possesses a Grandmaster-class body. Every word of it is nonsense. The level of the flesh is entirely different."
"Did you complete Iron Body too, Tom?"
"Me? No. I never even meant to learn it."
"Something this good... why not?"
"It hurts too much. Plenty of people died of the pain while learning Iron Body. More than one or two went mad. Why would I learn something that dangerous? No one in our tower learned it either."
And you taught that dangerous, agonizing art to me. You madman!
Curses boiled up inside him, but he did not let them past his teeth. If Tom lost his temper and flung him at the ground, his body would be smashed to pieces.
Could Iron Body even survive the impact of a fall?
Chris had no wish to find out.
"Once Iron Body is complete, can I fight a Ring Binding mage and win?"
"No."
"No?"
"The body itself is far better than a Ring Binding mage's. But the flesh isn't a mage's specialty. Once a mage starts casting, even a Grandmaster is helpless. Chris, the magic towers rule the world. How do you think they managed that? They're strong enough to keep kingdoms under their heel."
"I'm a Grandmaster, and I'd still lose?"
"You'd beat the lower ranks of Ring Binding. You'd fight the middle ranks to a draw. Challenging the upper ranks is suicide."
Even as they spoke, Chris was watching Perez. The gap was closing, little by little.
I'd better learn what I can before they catch us.
"Teach me the rest of Iron Body."
"What rest?"
"You said that if I shattered the stairs and broke us out, you'd teach me the way to Seed Cultivation."
"Did I say that?"
"Yes."
"You must have misunderstood."
"Misunderstood what?"
"That's all Iron Body is. I taught you everything."
"This is all of it?"
"Kid, you've got a body on par with a Grandmaster's. That ought to be enough. Greedy, aren't you."
"I haven't learned a single spell."
"That is magic."
"What kind of magic is this? I can't cast a flight spell, I can't throw a fireball, I can't shoot a wind blade, I can't throw a water fist, I can't even use an air hand..."
"Iron Body is the essence of the Body Mage. You've learned the highest secret there is."
"A Body Mage? What's that?"
The gravity on the stairs had been so strong that sound from outside never carried in, so Chris had heard none of the talk above or below them. Even if it had reached his ears, he would not have taken it in. Every scrap of his attention had been fixed on climbing against the gravity, completing Iron Body, and breaking the fifty-fifth step.
"A mage who devotes himself to tempering the body is called a Body Mage."
"That's just a knight."
"No. A Body Mage is one branch of mage."
"Fine. Branch, trunk, or root, I don't care. Please teach me the road to Seed Cultivation."
"I told you. I taught you all of Iron Body. That's the end of it."
"You're saying you won't teach me anything more?"
"That's right."
"Wow. Unbelievable. Good heavens."
Betrayal washed over him.
"You can't do this. That isn't what you promised."
"You belong to Mickclonia Magic Tower. I'm Laphunian."
"Master, you took me as your disciple. I'm Laphunian now too."
Tom's voice went cold.
"I told you not to call me Master!"
The back of Chris's neck went tight. Even in the prison, Tom had refused that title. He had forced Chris to call him Tom.
At the time Chris had accepted the excuse that it was only to keep him from slipping. Looking back now, that had not been the reason at all. Tom had never intended to take him as a disciple. He had meant only to use him for the jailbreak.
"This is too much."
"Feeling hurt?"
"Yes."
"Think how much I've done for you. Come at me like this, and I'm the one who ought to feel hurt."
"Aside from teaching me Iron Body, what have you done for me?"
"Iron Body alone is more than you deserve, and I heaped a great deal more on top of it."
"What, exactly, did you heap on me?"
Tom gave no answer. The wind was spinning like blades, trying to grind him down. The black smoke wrapped around him sheared away and tangled with the wind's edges.
"Why did you choose me?"
He answered that one.
"I didn't have a choice."
"There was Joe. He's a mage. He would have been easier to teach."
"That one's a spy."
"A spy?"
"He was trying to pull information out of me..."
Perez hurled a fireball. A thick clot of black smoke tore free and struck it head-on. With a thunderous boom, the fireball burst in a brilliant explosion.
"He must have been the one who planted him."
"Joe really is a spy?"
"He is. He even went so far as to play the cannibal, but he couldn't fool my eyes."
While they spoke, the two of them passed beyond the domain of Mickclonia Magic Tower. At that moment two figures shot up out of the tower's territory and gave chase at a furious pace.
"Who are they?"
"The other two of the Three Great Elders of Mickclonia Magic Tower. Richard and Daryl."
"Then we're in terrible danger!"
Tom already looked hard-pressed by Perez alone. If those two joined the hunt, defeat was certain, and if Tom was caught, Chris would be caught with him. Desperation seized him.
"You've thought of something in advance, haven't you?"
"Thought of what?"
"A way out. Surely this isn't all of it."
"Well. I've done everything I was meant to do."
"Oh, come on!"
Fury climbed his throat. If Tom was taken, Chris was finished.
"Can't you fly any faster?"
"This is the limit."
Tom flicked a glance behind them.
"Richard's the best of them at flight magic. Daryl's next. Perez is the slowest."
"This is not the time for idle observations. They've closed a great deal of ground."
"That's because I'm hauling a lump of baggage."
"What lump of baggage..."
He broke off as it hit him.
The lump of baggage is me.