Free Web NovelChapter 97: Iron Vein Marrow
The road ended at the base of the western range two hours before dawn.
Lin Xuan stepped off the last stretch of packed dirt onto loose scree, slung Plain Steel back across his shoulder, and let his eyes adjust to the difference between starlight on dirt and starlight on cliff. The air had cooled enough that his breath came out in pale ribbons. The metallic taste of veins that had been bleeding into the stone for centuries rolled down off the rock face.
[ This is it. Two hundred meters up. ] freewebnoveℓ.com
He tilted his head back and looked.
The cliff did not look two hundred meters tall. It looked like a geological insult that knew exactly what he was here for and had decided to make him work for it. Vertical for the first ten meters, near vertical the rest, the upper third polished smooth by centuries of wind. The outcrop with the Marrow he could not see from here. Mira had pinned it as a small red dot somewhere up where the rock turned indigo against the predawn sky.
’You said the easiest one first.’
[ I said the simplest target. Two different things. ]
’Treacherous.’
[ Climb. ]
He pulled his hood down, flexed his fingers once, and started up. The first ten meters went easily. Cloud Step gave him a small lift at every push-off, the body at Stage Seven lighter than he had time to admire. He found a rhythm: hand, hand, foot, foot, pivot. He ate the lower face in under a minute.
The cliff stopped cooperating after that. A hold under his right hand crumbled the instant he weighted it. He swung sideways, caught a different ledge by the fingertips, and felt the rock bite back. Below him a fist-sized stone clattered down the face for a long, embarrassing breath before he heard it strike the scree.
’Charming.’
[ The wind has been working this face for a thousand years. Half the rock is theatre. Don’t trust anything that looks safe. ]
He found a wider lip three feet up and pressed his weight onto it with two fingers before committing the rest of his hand. It held.
The first Ironjaw Centipede came out of a fissure at chest height as he was reaching for his next handhold. Long as his forearm, the colour of rusted iron, each segment armoured in plates that ground against each other. Two mandibles longer than his thumbs scissored open and shut once, testing the air, before it leapt at his face.
He twisted on his left hand and brought Plain Steel up across his body. The blade caught the centipede mid-flight, halved it through, and sent both pieces ticking down the cliff with their legs still pedalling.
The motion cost him purchase. His left hand slipped, his right scrabbled, and he dropped two body-lengths before his fingers caught a knuckle of rock and stopped him. He bit his tongue on the way down. He tasted iron for the second time in two days.
"Cute," he muttered into the stone, hauling himself back to where he had been.
[ Xuan. Hold there a moment. ]
’I am very held.’
[ Don’t move. I want to try something. ]
He held.
[ Look up. ]
He looked up.
The cliff face came alive in his vision. Yellow markers bloomed across the rock in a patient zigzag — outlines of hands at specific holds, footprints at specific stances, each shape glowing as if someone had painted them with sun. A handful pulsed faintly, marking instability. A handful more carried small symbols Mira flagged as beast nests. The pattern wove between them and led, point by point, to the pale red dot at the top.
"Whoa." The word came out of him quietly, against the stone.
[ Pathfinder Mode. Surface read, density read, beast read. I was holding it back for a scenario where you would appreciate it. ]
’You have been sitting on this since before?’
[ Saving. For dramatic effect. Which I would now like to claim. ]
’Yeah, you got it.’
He started up again.
The change in pace was immediate. Hand to the first marker, foot to the next, weight pivoted, hand up. The yellow outlines guided him past a brittle ledge he would have grabbed by instinct, around a hairline crack he could not have seen in this light, and through a tight switchback that put twenty meters of climb behind him in under three minutes.
Two more Ironjaws spilled out of grooves the path crossed. He took both without losing his rhythm, one with a back-thrust over his shoulder, the other with a flat cut across the face of the rock as he passed. Their pieces ticked downward, unmourned.
A heavier scrape sounded above him. He looked up in time to see a Stone Pike detach from a horizontal crack and drop toward his head, dog-sized, mandibles wide like chisels.
He pushed off the wall with his feet, hung from one hand for the half-breath it took the Pike to fall past him, and drove Plain Steel up into its underbelly as it came. The lizard convulsed once and dropped. He let the carcass tumble to the scree. Bestiary credit was Bestiary credit. He had no time for taxidermy.
The yellow markers carried him the last stretch. The final outlines turned from yellow to gold, stable rock with no beasts, and he pulled himself onto a narrow ledge a body-length below the vein crack.
The crack ran vertically through the rock, the width of his fist. Along its lower lip something dark and slow oozed out. Iron Vein Marrow, exactly as Mira had described. Ink-black, viscous as old honey, beading on the lip and gathering enough mass to drip before it could catch on the wind.
He pulled the small glass phial from his sleeve.
[ Quickly. The air starts setting it the moment it leaves the stone. ]
He pressed the phial against the lip and let the marrow drain in. The first drops touched the inside of the glass and stiffened into hair-thin metallic threads. More followed, weaving against each other into a soft skein at the bottom. The phial filled inside a minute. He capped it.
[ Enough for the first reforging. ]
He slid the phial back into his sleeve and let his forehead touch the rock. He breathed out for the first time in what felt like a year. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
A panel bloomed.
[ Bestiary update: Ironjaw Centipede — Rank F high — 3 defeated. +30 OP ]
[ Bestiary update: Stone Pike — Rank F high — 1 defeated. +20 OP ]
[ Iron Vein Marrow obtained. ]
[ Plain Steel Reforge Components: 1 / 3 ]
’One down.’
[ Two to go. ]
He turned to look down the cliff for the descent line. The first markers of the return path were already lighting up.
Above him, a wide, slow shadow crossed the rock. He did not move.
It crossed back the other way. He tilted his head just enough to follow the silhouette. Wings folded into a hook against a thinning indigo sky. Feathers along the leading edge threw a thread of red-orange against the dawn light.
[ Cinder Hawk. ]
[ Morning patrol. ]
[ Don’t move. ]
The hawk circled the cliff once more, paused on a thermal that lifted it almost directly above Lin Xuan’s head, and tilted its eye downward.
