Until then, he needed to defend himself.

Lindon slipped in between the Lesser Treasure Hall and another building, its stone walls slick with the appearance of rainwater. He stood over a flower-bush, in the center of one of those densely packed gardens he’d noticed before. As soon as he was out of sight from the street, he scrambled to untie his bundle.

Seven three-foot poles attached to purple banners spilled over the grass, but they weren’t the only contents of the treasure he’d taken from the hall. A pair of polished wooden placards followed the banners, each the size of Lindon’s hand and banded with script-circles that wrapped around each edge. Ward keys.

He slipped both keys into the sash at his waist and scurried around the edges of the garden, stabbing poles into soft earth. Boundary formations worked on the same principle as smaller script-circles: if they were evenly placed in a ring, they would activate the vital aura in an area to fuel some result. If their placement was too sloppy the boundary wouldn’t trigger at all, and it would only work at peak efficiency if the banners were a precisely equal distance apart.

Lindon didn’t need peak efficiency. He needed whatever he could get.

When the seventh banner was placed, Lindon initiated the script on the back. It flared blue-white…and, a second later, the other two banners visible to him through the undergrowth flashed as well.

The madra rushed out of him all at once, almost exhausting his spirit. He stumbled as he walked away, only holding himself upright with a hand on the wall. In his mind’s eye, the light traveling through his madra channels was dangerously dim.

Before he’d eaten the orus spirit-fruit, he wouldn’t have been able to activate this boundary at all. Even now, though a Copper could likely use it with ease, he had to be careful.

He suppressed the instant longing he felt for all the other treasures inside—the ones that would advance him to Copper, or that he could use without feeling like he might lose control of his body at any moment. He had chosen, and now he would prove his choice useful.

As he left, he glanced back at the boundary. He didn’t feel anything from the boundary, as he carried the ward keys with him, but a faint suggestion of white haze had gathered between the boundaries. He even thought he heard a distant eagle’s cry.

He’d lived among a White Fox aura his entire life, and he could tell when it was gathering.

When he rounded the building again, Kazan Ma Deret was stating the facts of his case. “I saw Shet die. He lost himself, crying and moving in circles, until he finally threw himself at the feet of a Remnant and begged it to kill him. That is what the Trial did to a strong, honorable sacred artist. I ask you now, how could that trash have possibly survived where Shet did not?”

More than ever, Lindon was glad he hadn’t tried to walk up those steps. They sounded brutal.

“It seems he has come to answer for himself,” Elder Rahm said, turning to squint in Lindon’s direction.

Lindon squared his shoulders, drawing himself up to his full height. Deret was a year or two older than he was, but he looked the Kazan straight in the eyes. “Do the Irons of the Kazan Clan have nothing better to do than oppress their juniors?”

Elder Rahm turned toward him slowly, like a tree bending in the wind. Kazan Ma Deret looked like he was about to erupt.

“Very well,” Lindon said. “I’ll give you some pointers. Elder Rahm, will your humble disciple be punished if I injure a peer in the course of a supervised duel?”

Deret’s face turned slowly red, and madra clenched over his shoulders, forming squarish boxes of rippling haze. The hammer on his badge said he was a Forger, and the Kazan walked the Path of the Mountain’s Heart. He would be able to conjure weapons of crushing force. Even half-formed, the constructs floating over his shoulder could smash Lindon’s limbs to pieces.

“Are you sure about this, boy?” Elder Rahm asked.

“I can’t render any merits to the Heaven’s Glory School if I can’t even put down a dog from the Kazan Clan,” Lindon said, bowing over his fists.

Deret choked out his own agreement to the duel, all but incoherent with rage.

For once, Lindon’s appearance worked in his favor. He looked like he was eager to fight, even as his hands shook and cold sweat ran down the back of his neck. He hated provoking people like this, especially people capable of crippling him, but he needed Deret angry enough to follow. And he was confident in his plan. Well, reasonably confident.

His mind spat out a dozen ways this could go wrong, eroding his certainty by the second, but he was committed now. Elder Rahm raised one ancient hand in the air, even as Kazan Deret’s Forged madra began to take on shape and definition. They were definitely bricks, appearing line by line as though sketched in midair, and they would gain heft and weight as soon as he finished Forging them. For now, they remained floating.

“To incapacitation or surrender,” Elder Rahm reminded them. Lindon leaned onto the balls of his feet, shifting his weight as though he meant to dash with all his speed straight toward Deret.

A blinding golden light flashed from the elder’s hand even as he called, “Begin!”

Lindon turned and ran.

Most Forged madra did not float. Soulsmiths had to craft their constructs with special techniques in order to get them to levitate, and Mountain’s Heart bricks were very dense. The Kazan used their Forgers to build walls, constructing intricate scripted arrays to keep the madra from dissipating.

So Deret couldn’t simply will his bricks to blast Lindon from a distance, which was the only reason why Lindon had a chance. But he was an Iron. He could simply throw them.

Without looking behind him, Lindon ducked to one side just as a solid brick smashed into the stones at his feet, blasting into rolling pebbles of Mountain’s Heart. He felt the impact through his feet, and it seemed to rattle the air like thunder. Even the stone it landed on showed a faint crack.

Lindon’s frantic, heavy breaths had very little to do with physical exertion. He had started only a few dozen yards from the edge of the Lesser Treasure Hall, and in the seconds it had taken him to cover that distance, Deret had almost destroyed his legs.

As soon as he crossed the corner, stepping into the dense garden, he snatched the ward key from his belt. Otherwise, he didn’t slow down; the Iron would be only a breath behind him, and he would have another brick ready to hurl.

Lindon dove into the bushes and waited.

Sure enough, Deret followed a second later, one brick raised in his hand, another forming over his shoulder. He stopped when he saw the garden.

Lindon couldn’t allow him to inspect the area for too long, so he rolled away from the bush, intentionally shaking its leaves. A brick blasted the bush to pieces, shredding the branches and tightening the bands of fear around Lindon’s throat. If Deret didn’t approach, if he just stood there at the mouth of the alley and threw bricks…

“I knew a Wei coward wouldn’t fight,” Deret called, a freshly formed brick dropping into his hand. “All you have are your tricks…but do you even know any? Did they teach the Path of the White Fox to an Unsouled?”

Lindon trembled as he stared at the spot where he’d hidden the formation banner. Deret was one step from crossing the boundary. But if Lindon moved again, he’d need the luck of a Gold to avoid getting smashed to pieces by a brick.