Chapter 15

The next morning Scorio took his buckets into town, spent a couple of hours surreptitiously lining up for gruel and water, and then made his way carefully back into the ruins.

He returned to Feiyan and Helena’s old hideout, then turned to face the direction they’d warned him to steer clear of.

Nightmare Lady’s territory.

How big a space was it?

Wanting a better vantage, he made his way to the tallest building close by, a tower leaning drunkenly over to one side, and carefully climbed to the top, using the mostly collapsed interior stairwell that went round and round the tower’s hollow curvature. It took him a good hour to make it to the top, and despite the fact that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get back down, he settled with his back against a shard-pitted, gray stone wall that was all that remained of the highest floor and stared out over the ruins.

It was well into First Clay at this point, and the sun-wire’s bronzed light limned the craggy buildings. The deep ravines that had consumed some of the avenues burned on, their fiery depths speaking to hellish mysteries contained deep within the earth. The buildings were monumental in nature, their architecture brutal and blocky and without ornamentation. Some were so large he couldn’t guess at how they had been built, towering ten, twelve, fourteen stories tall. Great slab-like bridges extended over roads, others merely jutted out a half-dozen yards before ending raggedly.

All made from the same gray, shale-like rock, cracked and flaking.

Had the city been built, or carved out? Studying the scope of the ruins, shorn of all the decorations and disguises of civilization, Scorio began to suspect the latter.

Leaning forward, he stared at the area Feiyan had indicated belonged to the Nightmare Lady. It looked to be in the worst condition, yet also the most striking. Entire segments had given way to the depths, so that passage through it had to be done mostly across brutal bridges that jutted out over crimson and orange-hued chasms. Some of the buildings appeared to be completely hollow, shells standing over those infernal depths, for their windows glowed from within with a faint, burning smolder.

And above them all reared a huge tower, perhaps the tallest building in this section of the ruins, listing slightly to the side and pointing at the sun-wire like an accusing finger.

Scorio tapped his chin, considering.

Nightmare was an Emberling. That was just one level above a Cinder, which meant… what exactly? She couldn’t have too many powers. Perhaps she could only change into her monstrous form.

But that was already an insurmountable challenge. In her nightmare form, she had incredible mobility, impossible reflexes, and a tail that would impale him before he got close enough to fight her.

He had to use his chalk to trap her, which meant being inside a building. There was no way he’d have enough time to encircle her outside. Better to close off doors and windows.

He frowned, dissatisfied.

That required figuring out where she slept and having the ability to chalk off her exits without alerting her to his presence. And since she knew she was being hunted, she’d be cagey, sleep in places that could only be accessed in her agility-enhanced form.

Scorio let out a sigh and fought not to feel discouraged.

What advantages did he have? The chalk. She’d not picked up on its power, and wouldn’t expect or account for its abilities. Her arrogance. She was amused by him, but gave him absolutely no chance of succeeding. And time. Time in which to strategize, to gather his resources.

He considered reaching out to Feiyan and Helena, then immediately discarded the idea. He could return to Dola and… what? Get his throat cut? What of Leonis and Lianshi?

That idea gave him pause.

He hadn’t sworn to not get help.

Could he reach Leonis and Lianshi? He hadn’t even considered it before, assumed they were locked up tight within the Academy. But even if he could, would they help him? Come out into the ruins to fight an Emberling for his sake?

Scorio rubbed at his chin, considering. Say that they did agree. Was it responsible of him to embroil them? Nightmare Lady wouldn’t hesitate to gut him, much less two other Chars who meddled in their contest.

Was defeating his opponent worth losing Lianshi or Leonis over? Scorio grimaced. Tried to imagine Lianshi impaled upon Nightmare Lady’s tail blade.

No.

He said it with extreme reluctance. Even if they agreed to help—and some part of him hoped they would, thought there was a chance—he couldn’t bring them into such a dangerous situation. One with so very little hope.

He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he won at the cost of a friend.

So it was back to tackling it alone.

He took a deep breath and considered. She’d visited him in the middle of the night. Could he assume she was most active when the sun-wire was dim? Made sense. Nightmares happened when you slept. Perhaps the central cycle of Amber was when she rested.

Unless of course she purposefully changed things these next three days, guessing that he’d make those assumptions.

But she’d only change her patterns if she thought there was a chance he could surprise her, and he knew she didn’t. She was a cat, playing with its food, enjoying the futile struggle.

So no. If assumptions had to be made, then he’d guess she’d not bother to change up her habits. Which meant activity in the dark, and rest when the day was brightest.

Even this minor act of reasoning managed to buoy his spirits. Gave him an illusory sense of progress.

But how would he find her? He gazed out over the wasteland of gray stone and fire, then shook his head.

He couldn’t. His very attempts would alert her to his presence as he fumbled around the ruins.

So then he wouldn’t try.

The realization made him sit back, no longer seeing the blasted city but instead staring out at nothing.

They’d made a date. At the end of the third night, she’d come to end his life.

That meant he just had to set up the perfect ambush and let her walk into it.

With a grin, Scorio rose to his feet and began the treacherous descent.

* * *

Scorio sat with his back to the wall, a lantern burning at its lowest wick by his side. Absolutely no light filtered into the ruined hallway from the sun-wire, but First Clay had to have begun, the sun-wire incandescing after its long cycle of darkness.

He stared at the distant square in the ceiling. She’d want to talk to him when she arrived. Express her disappointment. But would attack the moment he moved in a way she didn’t understand.

The chalk’s lines only lasted for about an hour. In the heat of combat that seemed a lifetime, but sitting here in the aching silence, it felt gallingly insufficient. What if she didn’t come after him right away? What if she waited till the next night cycle? How often should he refresh the lines?

The moments dragged by with insufferable silence. The walls were cold, the floor uncomfortable, but even if he’d sat in the most resplendent chair he’d have shifted and stirred with disquiet.

He rose to his feet, stretched. It had been a long night. A long test of his every assumption, and the fact that he still lived proved at least some of them had been correct.

But now all he wished was for her to show. For an end to this torturous waiting.

There wasn’t enough room to pace, and he didn’t dare walk to the hallway’s end beneath the trapdoor. He sat back down and resumed watching the hole in the ceiling at the end of the narrow hall.

Time seemed to have no meaning. The lantern’s light was just dim enough to see by but sufficient to last all day.

He didn’t want to think about what he’d do if she didn’t come soon enough. If his light died out. If he ran out of chalk.

Nor did he want to think about how he’d try to survive if he were forced out of this blind corridor.

He fidgeted, then forced himself to stop, then inevitably began to fidget once more. Was First Clay over? Could it be First Rust by now? She preferred the darkness. What if she decided to wait? What if—

He grimaced, rose, took deep breaths, and watched the square, moving his chalk from one sweaty hand to the other.

What if she couldn’t find him here? What if she were looking for him right now, but unable to detect him down in this hole? She’d found him the first time due to the vials. What if without it she was blind, and forced to scour the ruins?

Or worse yet, what if she decided not to bother, and simply kill him the next time she ran into him?

Scorio bit his lower lip, glared at the square, demanded silently that she appear.

She’d come. Something told him she’d take his failure to appear personally. That she’d be insulted by his not even trying to hunt her. She’d be annoyed, at herself more than anything, for believing he might prove interesting.

She’d want vengeance.

It had taken him two days to find this corridor. Ten yards in the bowels of a ruin, both ends blocked by collapsed masonry. Narrow enough that he could touch each wall by simply extending his arms. Ten yards by one. A simple, plain, brutal rectangle. With an entrance in the ceiling at the far end, a square a couple of feet wide. If he leaped, he could grab the edge, pull himself out.

Just like a tomb.

Or a womb, as Leonis might have put it.

He smiled in the soft glow of the lantern, tried to distract himself with thoughts of his friends. What would they be doing in the Academy? Did they think of him? Had they lit their Igneous Hearts yet? What powers might they have manifested?

A deep breath. His heart was beating rapidly, though nothing had happened for hours. It had to be Second Rust.

Where was she?

He’d explored all manner of elaborate set-ups. Some easier to find than others. He’d worried endlessly about whether he should leave a note for her in his old room, or a trail to ensure she’d find him.

In the end he’d opted to leave nothing.

If he wanted her to believe he was truly hiding, then he had to make it hard for her.

But what if he’d made it too hard?

Scorio pressed his knuckles to his temples and grimaced. His thoughts were driving him wild. But he couldn’t afford to sit and attempt to meditate, to focus on his Igneous Heart. He had to be ready to act the moment she appeared, the very second.

So he watched, unable to even pace the length of the hallway, trapped in place at its very end, breathing powerfully, waiting.

Trapped.

More time passed. The silence was maddening. Perhaps he should scout outside. Just take a look. Refresh his trail, as it were. He was considering this possibility when instinct bade him freeze.

Nothing had changed. The darkness was still velvety and thick beyond the soft radius of the lamp. The square in the ceiling was utterly still. The silence suffocating.

But still, he froze, thoughts going quiet, eyes locked on that impenetrably dark opening.

“Scorio…” The voice had an almost singsong cadence to it, lilting and amused. But it didn’t hide the sheer menace that caused goosebumps to race along the back of his arms and caused the hair on the nape of his neck to prickle.

“Scorio…” Closer now, and then, at long last, movement.

Her tail.

It dipped in through the hole, and he caught his first vivid sight of its maleficent awfulness. The blade at its tip was a long, off-kilter triangle, dull black in hue and grooved down the center. Easily the length of his forearm, its edges seemed to disappear into the air, as if so sharp it gradated into nothing instead of simply ending.

It hung from a sinuous line of black vertebrae, segmented and gleaming as if dipped in oil, its power obvious in how easily it manipulated the massive blade.

“You didn’t come find me,” crooned Nightmare Lady, her tail rippling out across the ceiling as if gravity was inverted for it alone. “Left me by myself, wondering, growing sad, feeling lonely. Until at last, I decided I’d misjudged you altogether…”

Claws rippled into view, talons as long as his finger emerging from the tips of alien fingers that appeared to be all sinew and bone, gleaming and jet black just like the tail.

Scorio stared, unable to breathe, transfixed, until at last her head descended into view.

Her face truly was a nightmarish visage, her cheeks planes of upswept bone that melded with her brow to rush back into a mass of ridged horns, her hair falling in a greasy black waterfall into the hallway. Two cracks in the bone carapace of the upper half of her face revealed her eyes, both burning their fulminous green, bright and noxious and penetrating.

“Scorio,” she said, sweetly, softly. “There you are. My little coward. My deal-breaker. My latest disappointment.”

“Nightmare Lady,” he managed, allowing his fear to show. She’d expect it. Become suspicious if he showed too much bravado. “How about we talk? Perhaps new terms?”

Her smile pulled into a caustic smile, and with lithe, unnatural grace she dropped through the hole to land on all fours at the end of the hallway, a mere ten yards from where he stood, tail poised over one shoulder, its tip aimed unerringly at his face.

“Oh no. Don’t tell me you’re going to beg. I couldn’t stand to be so utterly mistaken about you.”

Quick as he could, he bent down and scratched a white line across the breadth of the corridor, and the air above the chalk immediately began to shimmer.

Her burning eyes narrowed, her head canted to one side, and then her tail exploded forward, launched with impossible speed, clearing the space between them faster than he could blink.

Only to crash against the invisible wall and bounce off violently.

Scorio didn’t wait but reached up and scrawled a second line horizontally across the top of the wall.

The air just below the ceiling immediately began to shimmer, extending from where he stood all the way to the hall’s end.

“What is that?” she hissed, sinking deeper into her crouch. Her whole body was twisted, warped by her transformation, skin a gleaming black, her flesh ridged and fluted, impossibly emaciated yet somehow looking utterly lethal at the same time.

“This?” Scorio still didn’t dare believe his plan had worked. He bounced the chalk in the palm of his hand. “Something you overlooked the last time we spoke.”

She snarled and leaped up, only to crash against the invisible barrier that now blocked the trapdoor.

Down she fell, only to race toward him the moment her feet hit the ground, tail slamming into the wall of force before him, its tip stabbing again and again, faster than he could follow, a dozen times in less than a couple of seconds, and then she was upon it, clawing at the shimmering air, talons raking down and across, a cyclone of rage, screaming as she sought to break through.

Scorio pressed back against the stone wall and prayed that she wouldn’t overwhelm the chalk.

For a solid thirty seconds, she battered and stabbed at the wall, only to finally fall back, shoulders heaving, tail whipping about her. Turned slowly, she examined the corridor with greater care, then sent the blade of her tail slicing down along the ceiling, probing at the invisible barrier. She walked away, running her talons along both walls, sending a flurry of stone chips flying until she reached the cave-in at the far end.

Pausing, she considered it, then placed a foot upon the largest rock, her prehensile and talon-tipped toes closing about its face.

She pulled, and when the rock didn’t stir, she turned at last to gaze at him over her ridged shoulder.

“So. You have me trapped.”

“Yes,” he breathed, hardly daring to relax. He licked his dry lips and forced his shoulders to settle.

“But trapped does not mean defeated. We are at an impasse.” She turned to face him fully. “And we are past the deadline. You lost.”

“The competition, sure. But you’re in my power now. We’ll strike a new deal, or you’ll die.”

Her lip writhed back from her fangs. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. “You think to renegotiate?”

Scorio gauged where she stood, reached around, and made a mark upon the wall, followed immediately by a second a foot away.

Each mark was no wider than an inch.

Immediately beams of shimmering air appeared as if they’d simply always been there, one on each side of her torso, pressing in tight.

The Nightmare Lady hissed, wrenched against them in surprise, and gave Scorio the second he needed to make a third mark, and then after a moment’s hesitation, a fourth.

Two more beams appeared. The third sliced in between her legs, nearly severing her tail, while the fourth cut in just over her left shoulder.

She exploded into a frenzy, jerking and hurling herself about, constrained by the four beams, hemmed in at crucial angles. But it wasn’t perfect. The second she realized that all she had to do was relax, lie back and slip out, she’d escape.

Scorio didn’t intend to give her the chance.

Carefully, watching as the beam extended, he drew a fifth line down at an oblique angle, arching his arm over the fourth, drawing it slowly till the shimmering wall pressed down upon her. She screamed, bent before it, but was held in place by the beam over her hip and lying across her other shoulder.

Not lifting the chalk, he continued to draw the line down, forcing her to constrict into an ever-smaller space, till at last, he had her head trapped, tilted back, the chalk’s line pressing right into her neck.

“It’s not sharp,” he said, “at least, not sharp enough to cut through flesh. But it can constrict you just fine. I make this line a little longer and I’ll crush your neck.”

To which she simply screamed at him and thrashed within her confines once more.

“Enough!” His bark echoed within the hallway. “I don’t want to do this. Talk with me and we can figure something out.”

He saw the moment when she realized that she was only pinned while facing him full-on, and how that by lying back and narrowing her profile she might be able to escape; but it was too late, and the shimmering walls now held her too tightly, her neck squeezed between two vise-like beams, her head too large, the ridged horns preventing her from wriggling free.

Again she screamed and slashed at the beams with her talons, whacked at them with her tail blade as a maddened man might hack at tree trunk with an ax.

But finally, she relented, sagged, and stood there, heaving for breath.

Pinned.

Trapped.

Defeated.

“I win,” said Scorio, making his words deliberate. “Doesn’t matter that we’re outside the competition. I win because I can kill you and you can’t stop me and that by any definition makes me the victor of this encounter.”

“Cheater,” she hissed.

“Not quite. I chose to lose our challenge so as to win overall. Now. Will you speak with me, or shall I end this?”

Again she struggled, but this time it was half-hearted. Her body was contorted between the beams, and though her tail lashed back and forth, Scorio knew she wasn’t going anywhere.

They’d talk whether she wanted to or not.

But he hoped to reach an agreement before the chalk walls faded away and she came at him again.

If she was that murderous, that obstinate, then she could wait him out, force him to expend all of his chalk, and eventually, perhaps not today, maybe not even tomorrow, but eventually—force him to kill her or risk her tearing him apart.

“You think I’ll teach you everything I know after this?”

“Just hear me out.” He took a deep breath, held it, then sat. He studied her for a spell until she seemed to have mastered herself, then continued. “I’ve dedicated every waking moment since we last spoke to figuring out how I could defeat you. This was literally the only way I could think of. Everything else resulted in my complete and utter defeat.”

“Base trickery.”

“Sure. But it worked. And the reason I was willing to go this far was that I can’t express how important it was for me to impress you. To show you that I could rise to this challenge, in one way or another. To demonstrate that I was willing to do anything to get your attention, and force you to see me as other than prey.”

Her tail lashed angrily, and he could almost feel the insults that she was biting back.

“I didn’t set this up to kill you. To ridicule you. To take advantage of you. I did this because I wanted your attention. I wanted you to stop and actually see me. The man who reached the Chamber of Balance. Who once rose to Blood Baron. Who escaped through the Brass Door. And who found it within himself a way to trap the Nightmare Lady against all odds.”

Her tail ceased its angry lashing, the movements becoming pensive.

“And why? Because I’m out here in the dark. I’ve no friends. No allies. No resources. No way of figuring out who I am, what I can do, or what I’m meant to do. And it’s killing me. I want power. I want to figure out who I was. What mattered to me. Why I was called The Abhorred. I don’t feel like a monster, but clearly, I did something—or a lot of somethings—that earned me those titles. Why?”

He definitely had her attention now.

“You’re the only one who can help me. But I know you never will while you see me as prey, as weak, as another moment’s entertainment. This was meant to show you otherwise. To stop you in your tracks and make you look at me. See me. Hear me.”

He paused, chest tight, the upswell of emotion making it hard to continue.

Her green eyes had narrowed once more. His words had hit home.

“So help me. It won’t cost you anything. You’ve already taken my vials, my bridge, my steel rod. So in that way you’ve profited. You’re out here in these ruins by yourself. What do you have if not time? Give me a week. Get me started. Then I’ll go. You need never see me again. But I need you. I can’t do this without you. So please. Help me.”

The silence between them stretched out, and in the dim light of the lamp, her stillness seemed to cause her to meld into the darkness.

With a crack, she smashed her tail blade against one of the beams, again to no effect.

“Fine.” She was still clearly angry but working to rein it in. “What else do you expect me to say?”

“I didn’t have much by ways of expectations,” he said. “Especially as I know you’re liable to cut me down the moment you’re freed. I can’t stop you once these walls are down. But I want to trust you.”

“You need to trust me,” she said.

“True. One week. That’s all. One week and I’ll walk.”

For a long, long time she said nothing. Didn’t struggle, didn’t lash her tail, didn’t glare at him. Simply watched him, pensive, still.

And then, at last, she began to change. Slowly at first, and then all at once, her tail retracted, her talons faded away, her emaciated and stretched-out body shrank and filled out, and her horns melded with her brow. Robes coalesced around her as if emerging from mist, and her eyes lost their green burn, and lips filled out to cover her teeth.

The only aspect of her that remained the same was her luxurious mane of black hair, which hung thick and heavy about her face as she stared at him from under lowered brows, her irises a rich hazel rimmed with dark borders.

“Fine,” she said, tone terse, words clipped with smoldering annoyance. “You’ve got one week, Scorio the Abhorred. You’d best make the most of it.”