Zeph Kaizen's Arc

Chapter 23 of 51

Zeph stepped over the broken gauntlet and followed Kaine into the hall. The stone door swung shut behind them. The signature from the last payment still bled through the walls in a low hum he could feel in his teeth. He knelt at the center of the chamber. His hand was still shaking from the last strike. He pressed his palm flat to the floor to still it. "Third payment," Kaine said. He crouched across from Zeph. His yellow eyes did not blink. "A tiger's face. Held clean. Refused clean. Any blur and the room turns on you." "I know." Zeph closed his eyes. He built the tiger in his mind the way he had before. White fur. Blue stripes along the flank. The weight of its shoulder against his hip on the slope. The image would not hold. The face slid. One second it was the tiger. The next it was the old man's white beard. Then the winged thing on the steps. Then the young Saiyan at the door. His mind was too full of what he had already spent. "It's breaking apart," Zeph said. "I can't keep the face." "Then you don't pay. And the chamber corrupts past cleaning." Kaine's voice was flat. "Stop reaching. You keep grabbing at it. The face is not out there." Kaine pulled a bracelet from inside his robe. Gold. Blue stones set into the band. He held it out on his palm. "Our grandmother wore this in her trials. It steadies the eye. It does not do the work for you. It only stops your hand from shaking while you do the work." Zeph took the bracelet and slid it onto his wrist. The metal was warm. His breathing slowed one notch. He closed his eyes again. He stopped reaching. He let the tiger walk into the space on its own. Blue stripes. Yellow eyes. The low sound in its throat when it had chosen him on the slope. The face held. It did not slide. He named it out loud. "I refuse the tiger. I refuse what it gave me. I refuse the hand it saved." Heat rose up his spine. His hair lifted off his scalp. A short pulse of gold light ran down his arms and stopped at the bracelet. The chamber did not corrupt. It settled. The hum in the walls dropped to nothing. Zeph opened his eyes. His hands were steady. The third payment was made. He was not yet in the gold form, but the door to it stood open in front of him for the first time. Kaine stood. He was already looking at the ceiling. "That pulse went out clean. Farther than the last one." "How far?" "Far enough that they felt it in Windchill." Kaine walked to the door. "Whatever they send now won't be a creature. It will be your own kind."