Chapter 34

Scorio awoke in the tomb of battered copper and immediately sprang up to his feet. Sweeping the dense Coal mana into his Heart, he ignited and leaped, clearing the brim of the hole above with ease, catapulting himself out to land in a crouch.

The vast beam of lucid, burning light burned in the distance as always. The three walls of impossibly smooth iron, bifurcated by ever-narrower gaps. The raw, surging rock that rose from the ground like rough ocean waves frozen in time.

Familiar, eerie, vast, and still capable of instilling in his chest a sense of awe.

Naomi sprang out of another tomb off to his left, making it look easy. She landed lightly on her feet, fully erect, and began walking forward as if nothing strange had just happened.

Scorio strode forward to join her, and together they navigated the rough floor toward the great burning light.

“How long has it been since this Gauntlet was used?” she murmured, but he could tell the question was rhetorical. “It’s a miracle that it’s still here. Still operable.”

“Mostly,” said Scorio, voice hushed. “Lianshi thinks this decay is part of the process of collapse. The way the pain lingers, long after we awaken from death, another symptom of its corruption.”

“Perhaps in time we’d awaken with the wounds only partially healed,” mused Naomi, rounding the rough ridge of one upswept mass of raw rock.

“I love your choice of comforting imagery,” said Scorio. “It warms the heart and makes the future seem pleasant and enjoyable.”

“The future is nothing but pain and disappointment,” said Naomi distractedly, gazing into the shadows. “Much like the Gauntlet. But let’s see how far we can get.”

“You never tried the original,” remembered Scorio. “I’d forgotten.”

“A first time for everything.” She lightly padded one fist into the palm of her other hand. “Can’t say I’m not curious.”

“This one’s more difficult, as I said. However well you do here, you’d do much better in the new one.”

“I’m an Emberling,” she replied. “At my rank, we’re expected to make it past the tenth room. Try to keep up.”

Scorio lowered his chin and inhaled deeply. “You can count on that.”

They strode up to the burning blade, their forms seeming to melt away in its refulgent brilliance.

“We need to hit the room fast,” he said again, finding Naomi’s calm disconcerting. “Three blades, remember? The first sweeps down from the upper left—”

She turned and smiled at him. “I got it. Why don’t you go first?”

“First?” He blinked, then shrugged. “Sure. See you on the other side.”

“Good luck.”

Scorio took a few steps back. Was she excited? He’d never seen her this calm, this… pleasant. Putting the thought from his mind he took a deep breath, drank deep of the turgid Coal mana, and then sprinted forward.

Five steps and he launched himself into a dive. He aimed high, hands spearing into the light first, and then he was through.

As before the blade slid just under him as he leaped headfirst over its swing. He came down into a practiced roll, the chamber spinning all around him before he came up to his feet and leaped on the up bounce to land facing the entry wall, eager to witness Naomi’s arrival.

A large, curved black blade emerged from the wall, easily a foot long, its tip needle-sharp, its body organic and tapering to a segmented black tail that resembled nothing more than the vertebrae of the spine.

Despite himself, Scorio felt a chill at the eerie lethality of Naomi’s tail, but he couldn’t resist taking an urgent step forward. She wasn’t coming in fast enough. She was going to be—

Naomi’s Nightmare Lady form extruded itself from the gray wall, tall and ghastly, limbs elongated and lean, body emaciated and textured like highly buffed black leather. Her face emerged, horrific and alien, her gums stretched tight over her fangs, her brow backswept and elongated, twin horns flanking it, all of it wetly black as if freshly dipped in oil.

The scimitar materialized just as she stepped through and swept down at her, the stroke certain, vicious, aimed precisely to force her to sidestep into the path of the rapier.

Without looking up, her burning green eyes not even averting themselves from the far wall, Naomi—no, the Nightmare Lady—parried the downward sweep with a nonchalant flexion of her tail. Sparks flew from the impact of the two blades, and then the Nightmare Lady was through, never having changed her stride.

“That’s, ah, one way to do it,” said Scorio, his throat suddenly dry.

“Proceed,” said the Nightmare Lady, her voice Naomi’s, and as ever incredibly disconcerting.

Scorio nodded, took a couple of quick steps back, and then turned to stride to the now visible black door.

He passed through without bothering to ignite his Heart, and emerged into the second chamber. It was becoming painfully familiar. The river of darkness like a bottomless chasm running between the twelve statues, each powerfully limned in the cone of white light shining from above.

Scorio had fought almost all of them by this point. Killed three. He stared at them, wanting to brood, to ponder his failures, examine his successes for means of winning through, but then the Nightmare Lady was by his side and moving forward, never breaking her stride.

“They activate when you pass before them,” he said, but wasn’t sure she cared. “We never know which will awaken first—”

The second statue on the left stepped off its plinth. The hooded assassin with her curved knife and short stabbing blade.

Scorio and his friends had fought her three times. The third and last time had been worst. He regarded her with a special loathing and hatred.

Nightmare Lady’s tail swept out like a whipcrack, faster than Scorio could follow, the blade passing through the statue’s neck like a knife through a cream pie.

The statue froze mid-step, then collapsed into shards.

Scorio stopped, mouth opening, but all he could do was croak.

The next statue to step off its plinth was the archer; it immediately raised its bow, hand reaching up over its shoulder for a shaft, but again the Nightmare Lady’s black tail flashed out, the blade passing through its chest as if it weren’t there.

The statue stood still for a moment, hand frozen on the fletching of its stone arrow, seeming to have not registered the deep incision that crossed neatly across its torso.

Then it, too, fell apart.

Scorio realized that his mouth had gone slack. Gathering himself he ran to catch up with the Nightmare Lady, whose pace had yet to change.

“That was… I mean…”

The Nightmare Lady didn’t even glance at him. “I’m an Emberling, Scorio. That means something.”

“No kidding.” He glanced down and around himself as he stepped over the chunks of raw rock that had been the archer but moments ago, and gave a slow, disbelieving shake of his head. His whole body was tense, ready for combat, for pain, for a desperate battle, and yet there was nothing for him to do but follow his teacher as she strode toward the second black door.

“No idea what lies on the other side,” he said, voice husky. “Though I’m sure it won’t be a problem.”

“Stay close,” she said, pulling the door open. “If you can.”

Then she stepped into the dark void beyond and was gone.

Scorio turned to gape at the fallen statues, the room that had witnessed so much struggle and pain that day, and with a final shake of his head, hurried after.

The next room was a cube, the walls high and covered in a black latticework between which glowed white squares the size of Scorio’s fist.

The floor and ceiling were white, and a diffuse illumination rendered everything starkly clear.

The Nightmare Lady strode forwards, bold and certain, and Scorio hurried after her, igniting his Heart with an unsteady sweep of Coal. Where was the threat? The hundreds if not thousands of white square gaps between the black pattern on the walls? But they weren’t holes, they were—

A white cube flew out from the wall to the left, leaving a hollow where it had been embedded, coming at them at knee height.

The Nightmare Lady’s tail cracked out, slicing it in half.

It had been aimed right at Scorio’s leg.

Another blew out from the right, chest high, and again the Nightmare Lady’s tail flexed and slashed it in half.

More cubes came flying at them in rapid succession, from different angles and different heights.

Scorio walked forward in a cage of the Nightmare Lady’s making, her tail whipping about them as if possessed of a will of its own. It was everywhere, slashing and shattering the cubes, and still, she walked on, gaze never wavering, her awareness preternatural, defending them both as they crossed the chamber.

Scorio flinched, jerked from side to side, unsure as to when a cube would slip past her guard, ready to evade, but there were too many and they were coming too quickly.

He’d have had to sprint through, taking his knocks as he went, and pray he made it to the far wall.

Which manifested a black door when they reached it, the cubes ceasing their endless attacks.

Scorio’s chest was tight, the blood rushing in his ears, his eyes wide as he turned back to examine their passage.

Two lines of shattered white stone marked the way they’d come.

The Nightmare Lady placed a taloned hand on the door before them and pulled it open, then paused.

She turned to look back at him.

Scorio dragged his vision to meet her own, and was unable to resist giving a spontaneous laugh.

“Focus,” she said, voice cold and hard, and the bewildered humor died in his chest.

“Yes,” he said and gave a curt nod. “Ready.”

They passed through the void into a tower of a room, the ceiling easily some thirty or forty yards above. The far wall was only five yards away from the doorway, painted a pure white and textured like a natural cliff face, complete with disparate handholds and small ledges. These extended all the way up the face of the cliff, making for a difficult but not impossible climb.

“This isn’t so bad,” said Scorio, and then the floor fell out from under them.

He gave out a cry of panic as he fell, only to feel fingers curl around his arm with steely strength as the Nightmare Lady leaped and latched onto the wall—which immediately began to scroll downward, toward the suddenly yawning void that had appeared at their feet.

“Amusing,” said the Nightmare Lady, pressing Scorio to the wall as it slowly moved down. “Start climbing.”

Scorio didn’t even bother nodding, but again swept Coal into his Heart and ignited it. He was breathing rapidly, shallowly, and as strength flooded into his limbs, he forced himself to slow, to take control of his body, and to focus his attention on the wall above him.

The Nightmare Lady climbed with lazy elegance, using handholds, or simply digging her talons into the very fabric of the wall to create her own where needed.

He had no such luxury. Clenching his jaw he surged upward, reaching for new handholds, straining and stretching.

He could do it, he realized. The real trap had been the falling floor. If you managed to reach the wall, all you had to do was exceed the speed with which it dropped—

—and that’s when he felt the wall began to scroll down faster.

Biting back a curse, he struggled to climb quicker, lunging and seeking ever more sparse ridges and cracks. His Cinder strength saved him again and again—narrow fingerholds that he’d not have been able to grip with his regular strength were all that he could find now, and to his horror he realized that despite his efforts, he was slowly descending toward the dark gap in the floor again, the wall scrolling down faster than he could climb.

A hand closed around the collar of his robes and plucked him from the wall. Scorio let out a strangled cry of panic as he swung free, and the Nightmare Lady scuttled upward, leaping with spider-like agility till she reached the top and stepped out onto a solid ledge a foot wide.

Scorio did his best to maintain his dignity as she sauntered down the ledge to the doorway that had appeared in the chamber’s side.

This she plucked open and then, together, they passed through and into a dark room whose true extent was hidden by cloying shadows.

A soft halo of light fell like a benediction upon a massive figure that sat slumped over in a great rusted throne at the room’s far side, a creature far larger than Leonis, its bulk clad in dark, umber leather armor vaguely shaped to its anatomy. A heavy leather cloak was draped across its chest, and it rested its broad chin on an upraised fist, eyes closed.

It wasn’t human. Its face was bestial, but the deep lines carved into its brow gave it the air of a being consumed by thought, its dark, lank hair lying close to its scalp and falling past its shoulders. Its nose was little more than upswept slits, and its mouth was black-lipped, with white teeth, some of them fangs, protruding and in view.

The Nightmare Lady released Scorio’s shoulder, and he stood still, held by the monster’s presence, for even in sleep it had a terrible dignity, a ponderous air of grave melancholy.

For a moment all was still, and then the Nightmare Lady stepped forward. Its eyes flicked open, revealing all too human eyes, and it straightened from its slumped posture, leather armor creaking, heavy cloak slipping to one side.

It seemed to recognize the threat posed by the Nightmare Lady immediately; it lunged to its feet, snatching up a great blade that was propped against the rusted throne as it rose.

The monster had to stand some nine feet tall, had to weigh easily over a thousand pounds, but still, it moved with lithe agility, the blade whipping up as the Nightmare Lady broke into a run, sprinting across the shadowed hall right at it.

Scorio just stood there, gaping.

The ogre lowered its blade into a defensive stance, its every fiber poised and alert, letting its foe come at it, until at the last it let out a reverberating roar and lunged forward, flowing smoothly from its defensive posture to an upswing attack which would have shorn the Nightmare Lady in twain.

But she slid aside, passed by his attack, stabbed her tail into the hollow beneath its lantern jaw, and then she was past the throne, tail following sinuously after her, its tip gleaming wetly as the sword fell from the ogre’s huge hands.

For a second it simply stared at Scorio, then it crashed ponderously down to its knees, hands at its ruined throat.

The Nightmare Lady’s tail coiled about her in a sinuous loop and neatly slashed through the back of the ogre’s neck, separating its head from its neck faster than Scorio could follow.

The huge body thudded down to the ground, the head lost in the shadows, and a doorway appeared in the wall behind the throne.

“Stay with me,” said the Nightmare Lady again. “I can’t protect you at a distance.”

“I… yes.” Scorio jogged forward, staring at the fallen corpse in something akin to horrified amazement. He’d known Naomi exceeded his abilities handily, but he’d had no idea she was so far beyond him.

“This is the fifth room,” said the Nightmare Lady, hand on the door’s handle. “The end of the Char level, though this has all felt more like a Cinder’s run. The fifth room is always a powerful foe, the culminating fight. The next room will be a whole level harder.”

Scorio forced his mind to work. “So if this was a Cinder run thus far, the next room should challenge an Emberling?”

“Exactly,” she said, voice rich with hunger and something akin to desire. “I may not be able to protect you from here on out.”

“You’ve no need.” He turned to regard the twilight hall. “I’m already more grateful than you’ll ever know for your having brought me this far.”

“As long as that’s clear.” She pulled on the doorhandle, sinews standing out like harp strings all the way from her wrist to her elbow. “Let’s see how this Gauntlet is going to challenge me.”

And with that, she stepped through.

Scorio took a deep steadying breath, rubbed his hands on his hips, and ignited his Heart once more.

The influx of power steadied his nerves, illusory as it was. Raising his chin, squaring his shoulders, resigned to his no doubt sudden and impending death, Scorio stepped through.

To emerge onto a narrow ledge that led into a vertigo-inducing void of utter darkness. Before them, however, was a hallway composed of free-floating white square frames, each successive one slightly turned from the last, so that the floor seemed to warp up and eventually become the wall, then farther away, the ceiling.

Through this twisting hallway ran a flat tongue of gray stone, a walkway as straight as an arrow, to end in a stone platform some twenty yards away.

Scorio grimaced as he hunched his shoulders in close, inhaling deeply as he scrutinized the layout, the bizarre, glowing white frames, the innocuous walkway that floated through their center, deceptively inviting and easy to cross.

“Not good,” said the Nightmare Lady, reaching out to place a hand on Scorio’s chest, holding him back. “You can’t see them, but there are invisible blades hanging in the air, points aimed toward us.”

“Invisible what now?” Scorio blinked and tried to focus on the empty air above the walkway. Nothing.

“Emberlings develop the ability to detect the hidden,” said the Nightmare Lady, her skeletal tail lashing uneasily behind her. “There’s a clear but narrow path to walk between the blades. If you remain directly behind me, you should be all right.”

“What else can you do?” asked Scorio.

“Not the time.” The Nightmare Lady moved to the edge of the platform. “Ready? Stay close.”

Scorio summoned his Igneous Heart, and startled; the air was rich with floating clouds of copper-hued mana, bright and airy. He swept his will through it, but it was like splashing his hand through mist after a lifetime of trying to churn honey; the mana parted before his determined sweeps.

“One second,” he said, closing his eyes. This time he focused on his Heart, causing it to inhale, to draw the copper into its center mass. The mana responded smoothly, streaming into him, and when his Heart ignited, it burned with brassy flames that leaped and flickered a thousand times faster than the black ones.

The strength that flowed into him was invigorating, imbuing him with a sense of quicksilver power and causing the pain and fatigue to sluice away.

“Now,” he said, opening his eyes.

The Nightmare Lady nodded and stepped onto the walkway.

Immediately the free-hanging square frames of glowing white began to revolve, the cumulative effect mesmerizing and disorienting, causing the stationary walkway to appear to warp and twist within their center.

“Careful!” cried the Nightmare Lady as she started forward, “there’s a force pulling us forward!”

Scorio stepped off the ledge and was immediately gripped by it, an inexorable drawing forth that made him focus more on controlling his speed than anything else; his sandals slid forward an inch with every step he took, and his hair and clothing immediately were drawn forward, toward the walkway’s terminus.

The Nightmare Lady edged forward, her control infinitely superior, but she seemed tense, hesitant; Scorio tried to mimic her movements precisely, but a line of blood appeared across his shoulder as something slid about him, parting the cloth of his robes.

“The blades are rotating as well,” snarled the Nightmare Lady. “Move closer!”

Scorio pressed in as tightly as he could as she moved on, contorting her body to avoid unseen perils, crouching, lifting a leg here, swaying out to the side, turning in a slow gyre as she continued to walk.

But it wasn’t enough to simply mimic her movements; almost immediately a dozen cuts flowered across his body, some an inch deep, and despite his newfound strength Scorio felt his heart began to pound, his throat to constrict.

Whatever passageway the Nightmare Lady was navigating, the safe zone didn’t extend much farther behind her.

The force pulling him forward grew with each step he took. He felt as if he were inching his way down a nearly vertical slope, all his weight on his heels, aware that one misstep could cause him to slam into the Nightmare Lady and send her flying forward. But the more he held back, the worse he was cut up.

There was nothing he could do but keep going.

Lines of pain blossomed across his back, and then a particularly deep cut passed through his heel as he hesitated, struggling to not topple forward. He felt the muscle of his calf contract violently as the great tendon was severed, the pain astonishing.

With a cry, he staggered to the side, and his left arm shredded before him, blood spraying forth to coat dozens of invisible sword blades.

Scorio blanched, mind reeling from the pain, tried to draw back behind the Nightmare Lady, but his ruined leg failed to comply. He lost his balance altogether and fell forward at last, off-center, and straight into a mass of other revolving blades.

His death was mercifully swift.