Unsouled (Cradle, #1)

by Will Wight

Suriel prepared to descend when she noticed a detail that the winged man had overlooked. That boy, fifteen and clad in white, was sneaking around to the front of the trespasser. He gathered his meager madra together, terror and resolve and muted self-loathing radiating in a psychic wave. With the same move he’d used on the children earlier, the boy drove his palm into the Gold practitioner’s core. Suriel winced even before the trespasser tore the boy in half, sending his torso flipping up and out of the arena. The boy had to have known it was useless. [He knew,] her Presence confirmed. And he tried anyway, Suriel thought. This was the sort of person the Abidan were created to save: the weak who stood against the strong. The sort of person the Phoenix was meant to save. The sort of person who might, with a little outside help, even reach beyond their fate.

Suriel’s expression told him nothing, but she flipped her hand palm-up. “They have nothing in common, save their commitment. They each have different motivations, different goals, different levels of talent, but all of them pursue the sacred arts with absolute dedication.” Lindon met her gaze with resolve, drawing himself up to his full height. He was taller than she was, he realized, though it made him feel somehow wrong. “I am dedicated.” “Are you?” Her purple eyes were cold and unflinching, her lips still as a carving. “Each of those sacred artists risked their lives, gave up their pride, endured beatings and public humiliation. They sacrificed comfort for lives of brutality and pain. And none of them built their power from nothing in a mere thirty years.” “I will do it.” “Not even I had reached their level in thirty years.”

“There are a million Paths in this world, Lindon, but any sage will tell you they can all be reduced to one. Improve yourself.”