Chapter 35

As always, despite dying at different times, they both awoke upon their biers simultaneously. Scorio hissed, the agony growing familiar, muscles spasming as he clenched his jaw and screwed his eyes tightly shut. His left arm was aflame, his lower leg raw and throbbing, his chest where the final swarm of blades had pierced him a mess of cramps and fire.

But he’d been through this before, and the knowledge that the pain would pass helped him ride the waves, to breathe through it, and he labored to ignite his Heart until at long last it caught, and the spasms began to ease. Minutes later, he was able to sit up, the bitter taste of bile thick in his mouth, his pulse pounding still like the waves of an outraged sea.

Naomi was sitting cross-legged upon her bier, human once more, frowning with her eyes closed. The sound of his movement alerted her, and she raised her face to regard him, gaze solemn but unable to disguise the subtle flicker of excitement in their hazel depths.

“How far did you get?” asked Scorio, voice raw as if he’d been screaming.

“Two more chambers.” She was clearly trying to sound matter-of-fact. “The blades revolved quicker the closer I got to the end of the hall, and I was cut before reaching the end. Then came a room with a hidden pit trap that tried to suck me into it as I skirted its edge. Nearly got me.”

“And the last room?”

She frowned. “A monster. More rock than flesh, as large as…” She cast around, trying to find something to compare it to. “Six of these biers piled up together, say. My tail couldn’t get through its carapace. When I finally stabbed it in the gut, it seized my tail, drew me in, and crushed my head with one blow.”

“Damn,” whispered Scorio, trying to imagine something both that quick and strong. Just the thought made him feel dizzy.

“But I think I’ll get it next time,” smiled Naomi. “The trick is to dance around it, keep it changing directions. Wait for an opening and slash its side just below the armpit where it can’t grab at easily. It’s fast—amazingly fast—but I think I’m faster.”

Scorio attempted to return her smile. “You’re starting to see why I keep wanting to tackle the Gauntlet again and again.”

“I do. But if we attempt it once more, it won’t be as we did. You gained nothing from it.”

Scorio felt his face flush and wanted to argue, but had nothing to say.

“My shepherding you through your trials gains you an illusory sense of progress. No. Better next time that I kill one of the statues and then leave you to fight your own alone.”

He nodded reluctantly. His breathing was becoming ragged again, and sweat was running down the side of his face. With an effort, he kept his voice steady. “Fair. But how would I cross that room with the floating blocks? They were coming faster at me than I could follow.”

“That was my fault, I believe.” She sat up a little straighter. “My presence triggered the room to a higher level of lethality. A Cinder alone, or a group of Cinders, should face slower attacks.”

“That’s good to hear.” Scorio leaned against the bier for support as a wave of weakness passed through him. “Any advice on how to tackle that room, though?”

“It’s like being attacked by six people at once,” said Naomi. “You can’t keep track of them all. If you try to, you’ll just spin in circles, leaving you even more open and vulnerable.”

“So?”

“So, instead, you relax. You learn to trust your peripheral vision and your own danger senses. You move forward quickly and confidently, and trust that your instincts will guide you.”

“My instincts will sense blocks the size of my fist flying at me from the side?”

Her smile was almost cruel. “Not at first. But eventually. Do you really think I saw every block that flew at us and directed my tail consciously to intercept them all?”

“I… actually did.” He smiled with chagrin. “I guess not?”

“No. The higher you progress, the more you will rely on instinct, reflexes, and muscle memory. You will direct your actions, of course, but there comes a threshold when you have to trust your body to act without overt commands.”

He felt feverish, his pulse pounding erratically once more, but Scorio pushed aside those concerns. “And you’re there, already? As an Emberling?”

She grimaced. “I’ve set my foot upon the path. A Tomb Spark is as far ahead of me as I am from you.”

Scorio chewed on his lip for a moment as he considered. “Can’t quite imagine. But I’ll take your word for it. Want to go again?”

Naomi chuckled, her heavy drapes of hair swinging back and forth as she shook her head in amusement. “You do know that you’re paying a price for this?”

“Sure,” said Scorio, waving a hand as if pushing her concerns aside, then blinked as she fell out of focus. “The pain takes a toll on the body.”

“Not just the body. But beyond that, it’s not safe to just lie here for hours unguarded. We’re still in the ruins, Scorio. All it would take was one predator stumbling upon us when we reappeared, all wracked in agony and unable to defend ourselves, for this experiment to end.”

Scorio grimaced and looked around the dark mausoleum, dragging his patch of darkvision across the numerous biers and the distant, partially collapsed balconies that ringed the huge walls. “Fair. What are you proposing, then?”

“That we don’t remain here long enough to attract attention.” She gathered her thick hair in both hands, twisted it into a rough spiral, and dropped it behind one shoulder. “Or that I remain on watch while you go in.”

“You would wait?”

“For a while. I know you’re intent on running the Gauntlet again. Better you do it safely than die because I grew impatient.”

“Then let’s give it another go now.”

“No,” she said, her tone final.

Pressure immediately built up in his chest. “What do you mean, no?”

“I mean no.” Her gaze was stern, unyielding. “Look at you. You’re soaked in sweat. You can barely stand. Your gaze keeps going in and out of focus. How many times have you died today?”

“How many?” He blinked at her. “Six? Seven?”

“That’s enough. I’ve humored you and satisfied my curiosity both by coming here. Now we’re going back.”

Scorio snarled silently but was forced by a wave of vertigo to lean his brow down upon the bier, eyes closed, as he fought to keep his balance. “Just one more. I swear it. One more and we can go back.”

“One more and I’ll be forced to carry you back,” said Naomi. “No. We’re leaving now.”

Scorio hammered his fist down upon the bier and willed himself to get it together. For his breath to smooth out, for his heart to stop pounding, for his skin to stop prickling.

But it didn’t.

Finally, his shoulders slumped. “Fine.”

“Then let’s get going. It’s a long walk home.”

With an effort he straightened, wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve, and turned to follow her as Naomi weaved a path through the biers.

His feet were clumsy, and he seemed to kick and trip over every errant piece of rock or fragment in shadows. A headache began to pulse behind his eyes, and he couldn’t quite catch his breath, as if he’d continuously just finished sprinting to outdistance an enemy.

Naomi led them back through the Academy, her footsteps silent as before, pausing again and again to turn and wait for him to catch up. Each time he did, he wanted to mutter something bitter about her not needing to slow down for him, but he didn’t have the breath.

They stepped outside. The rain had ceased falling, and the sun-wire glimmered in the sky, dormant and sullen, Bastion and its ruins wrapped all the way around it. In the far distance, he could make out the copper and blacklight hues of the city at night, patchy and unequally distributed across Bastion’s bulk.

It was hard to focus. After a while, his attention narrowed down to just following Naomi and not tripping every third step. He sensed her shifting into her Nightmare form several times, but couldn’t tell why—his bleary attempts to look around revealed occasional movement in the distance, but he wasn’t able to discern the exact nature of the threat.

Toward the end, his vision began to blur, and he just couldn’t catch his breath. Wheezing, he staggered on. Naomi spoke to him, but he didn’t understand the words—he simply raised a hand to gesture that they should keep going.

But his legs wouldn’t obey, and he found himself kneeling for some reason. Then the ground swung up to slam against his face.

It was cool and damp. Delicious. He closed his eyes for just a moment, just a few seconds to gather himself, and when he opened them again, everything had changed.

He lay in a bed, a massive, sunken four-poster with a sagging canopy of faded blue silk. A mess of blankets, throws, and even heavy rugs were draped across its collapsing frame, turning it into a collage of different hues, the colors of which burst into vibrant islands wherever the shafts of ruddy light from the holes in the ceiling spilled across them.

The room was large, off-kilter, the floor sloping subtly down to the back left, as if the building in which it was housed was in the process of settling unevenly into its basement levels. Carpets were scattered haphazardly across the stone floor, and heavy pieces of battered furniture were set against the walls, ranging from dressers to wardrobes, half of them looking to have been scavenged from out under landslides and cave-ins. A large table was covered in arcane alchemical equipment, while thick candles of differing heights were clustered across most of their surfaces, with melted wax having hardened into waterfalls over the edges and pooled on the floor.

White curtains, gauzy and insubstantial, drifted into the room from where they framed a large doorway that led out onto a half-ruined balcony. The light outside betrayed either First or Second Bronze, and propping himself up on his elbows, Scorio gazed around blankly, having no idea how he’d come to be here.

Everywhere he looked more details suggested themselves. There, a basket filled with vibrant rolls of yarn, the balls ranging from sulfurous yellow to the rich incarnadine. A small, dead tree was planted in a clay pot in one corner, its branches of the smoothest alabaster, and from which hung countless shells of viridian green and deep, cobalt blue, their reflective surfaces causing spangles of light to slowly swing across the walls and ceiling. A stand filled with shelving displayed endless treasures, ranging from glimmering nautilus shells to hunks of raw, luminous crystal to slowly breathing fronds of the most delicate cerulean blue.

This had to be Naomi’s place. Scorio pressed his hand to his brow, realized that his headache was gone, and slid out from under the covers. He was still dressed in his robes, thankfully. He rose, swayed for a moment, and then decided that he felt much better. Stepped over to a broad bowl of clear water, cupped water to his lips to drink, and then splashed the remainder over his face.

Naomi stepped in from the balcony, dressed in black robes, the hems faded to gray, several patches sewn neatly over the knees and elbows. “You’re awake.”

“Barely.” Scorio smiled widely. “That bed made waking up a nearly impossible task. How long have I been out?”

“Just a day.” She rubbed the back of her neck and then moved to a table where she picked up a cutting knife from a breadboard then set it down. “You needed the rest,” she said, voice low. “You pushed yourself too hard.”

“You’re right.” Scorio stretched, relishing the pops that came from his spine as he did so, and then released it with a contented sigh. “Thank you. For taking care of me. For bringing me back here.”

She still didn’t turn to him. “Don’t worry about it. Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Right.” She took up the knife again and cut a thick slice from a small loaf of black bread she pulled out of a hempen sack.

“Can I help?” asked Scorio.

“No, I’ve got it.” She reached for a clay crock but knocked it so that the lid spilled off. Her attempt to catch it only knocked it off the table altogether where it cracked apart on the floor.

“Oh!” She dropped into a crouch and began to hurriedly pick up the pieces.

“Here,” said Scorio, joining her with three long steps to crouch beside her. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, of course,” she said, quickly piling the fragments atop each other and rising rapidly to her feet. She cast around, trying to decide where to set them, then simply stepped to the opening and hurled them out into the void over the balcony.

Scorio went to hand her the piece he’d picked up, and then saw how high up they were. His insides clenched and his breath caught.

“Where…?” He moved to the doorway and peered out over the ruins. They had to be at the very top of that massive tower in her territory, for the city spread out far below them, the sun-wire so close overhead he felt like he could stretch out his hand and clasp it.

“I call it the Widow’s Tower,” said Naomi quietly, busying herself with spreading butter over the bread. “Been here over a year now.”

“Wow.” Scorio studied the floor of the balcony before stepping out onto it. It was more an act of faith than anything else, for gaps clearly showed in the stonework, and half the balustrade was gone.

But it was exhilarating as well, his chest filling with emotion as he gazed out over the ruins. The light of Bronze—whichever it was—flattened the details and covered everything in its copperish light. They had to be ten, maybe fifteen stories up. Looking down, he saw that the tower was indeed angled, angled alarmingly actually, so that he drew back inside with a hiss.

“Are you sure—?” He caught himself and took a deep breath. “Obviously this is safe.”

“I guess so.” She placed his slice of buttered bread on a small wooden plate and handed it to him, eyes averted. “I have lived here a year, after all. It’s not fallen yet.”

Scorio stepped back to sit on a stool, hiking one foot up to rest the heel on a rung. “Why’d you choose to live here, then?”

“None of your business,” she snapped, smoothing the fabric of her robes down over her hips before casting her gaze around. She moved abruptly toward the bed and began pulling at the coverlets and blankets, straightening them out.

“You’re right,” said Scorio softly, taking up the raggedly cut bread. “None of my business. I’m sorry.”

Naomi sighed, a blanket stretched taut before her, then released it. “When… after I left the Academy, I was in a bad place.” Her hair had fallen forward to hide her face. “I couldn’t go back to my father. I didn’t want to stay in the city. Didn’t have any friends. So I came to the ruins to hide.”

Scorio listened attentively.

Naomi smoothed down the fabric of the cover carefully. “Like I said, I was in a bad place. Was taking… risks… that I wouldn’t take today. One of them was a dare. A wager, I suppose. With Bastion, with the world. With hell. I came up here one night. I don’t remember why. With so little to do, I’d spend my time exploring. I had an idea that…”

She trailed off, shot him an alarmed glance, then turned away to move to a dresser where she snapped a stalactite of hardened wax off the edge and began to crumble it into the wells of each candle.

“An idea?” asked Scorio softly.

“That… I might leap from the top.” She carried on hurriedly, “To see if I could survive the fall in my nightmare form, of course. Test my limits. And—well. I found this room.”

She toyed with the broken sliver of wax in her hands. “And… it was raining. And I sat on the balcony’s edge and felt the building shift under me. And thought it might collapse, and that was… okay. I didn’t mind. Felt excited. Like… the building was answering a question I hadn’t dared to pose. Not out loud. Not directly to myself.”

Scorio sat, bread forgotten, staring at her back.

“Obviously the tower didn’t fall,” said Naomi, tone growing hurried once more. “But it felt like the wager was still on. I started coming back here every night. And thoughts of—well—jumping off towers ended. I decided instead that I’d take better care of myself and let this tower decide if I was to fall or not. Leave the question in the hands of the ruins. And slowly… well.”

She cracked the wax fragment in half, dropped it atop the dresser, then turned to stare at him, her gaze defiant. “Slowly I started bringing things here. Making the space my own.”

Scorio nodded soberly, expression grave. Held her defiant gaze until it softened, and she looked away again.

“I think I understand,” he said softly. “Or maybe I don’t. But thank you. For bringing me here. I don’t take it lightly.”

“Well, you were near death, and leaving you in your room seemed needlessly cruel, so.” She curled her hair briskly behind her ear. “Are you going to eat that bread or not?”

“Oh. Yes. Of course.” And to demonstrate willingness he took a large bite out of the slice.

She crossed her arms. “I suppose you’ll be wanting something to drink.”

“Parched,” he managed to say around a mouthful of dry bread.

“Hmm.” She pushed off the dresser, crossed the room to where a large pitcher sat beneath a curious funnel that descended from a crack in the ceiling. She noticed his curious gaze, then took up the pitcher. “I fashioned a rain catcher on the roof. To save myself having to go into town all the time.”

“I should have thought of that,” said Scorio, raising a hand to his brow. “Brilliant! All the trips I could have avoided…”

Her lips quirked into a self-satisfied smirk as she poured water into a wooden cup and crossed the room to hand it to him. “I’ve had a little more time than you to figure things out.”

“You’re being modest.” He sipped the water—it tasted hard and rich with minerals after the smooth neutrality of the water fountains. “I’m so focused on training that it would probably never have occurred to me.”

“Hmm.” She replaced the pitcher and leaned against the dresser once more. “About that.”

“Fine, yes, I know.” Scorio frowned down at his half-eaten slice of bread. “Obviously I pushed myself too hard.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

He looked up. “Then?”

“The best training isn’t about abuse.” She paused, then moved her head from side to side as if reaching a compromise. “All right, it’s not just about abuse. It’s about finding your edge. Remember what I told you?”

“Sure. That the best trainers find their students’ edge and keep them there. Don’t push them so hard that they lose all hope or ambition.”

“Right.”

“But I haven’t lost all hope or ambition.” He raised his chin. “If anything, I’m more excited now than I ever was before.”

She nodded slowly, as if he’d inadvertently said just what she’d expected. “That’s the problem.”

“How so?” He took a deep breath. “What’s wrong with wanting to advance as quickly as possible?”

“Look at it this way. What’s the downside of working with Coal mana?”

Scorio hesitated. “It’s crude. Low quality. You said that a Great Soul can gain strength at the expense of control.”

“Precisely.” She raised her chin, still hugging herself tightly. “If you push yourself like you did yesterday, you’ll gain strength. There’s no question. You’ll find that your Heart can absorb more mana, and perhaps it’s even the fastest way to reach Emberling. But it will come at a cost.”

“Loss of control?”

“You’ll be sloppy. You’ll burn through mana faster than you realize, will flare out, and die off. Worse, your Heart will take damage, and your mind will suffer. Training in that manner will cause you to become raw, mentally exhausted. You’ll make bad decisions. You’ll make mistakes. Your temper will get the better of you, making you easier to manipulate, to goad into falling for traps. Power is not the sole element of the equation, Scorio. There also needs to be control.”

He wanted to protest. He felt a flicker of anger well up within him, unreasonable as he knew it to be. Carefully, he set the plate and cup aside so he could interlace his fingers on his lap and keep his hands under control. “My training is all that I can control right now. The only way to gain an edge. I’ll pay the cost if it means reaching Emberling quicker.”

She shook her head, expression frustratingly pitying. “You will be a raging shadow of what you could have been, Scorio. A brutish thug compared to the warrior you should become. I’ve seen others do it. None of them got very far before they were put down.”

Scorio took a deep, calming breath. “So you’re saying I should train slower? Let the others get even more ahead of me? Content myself with crawling when I could run?”

“No.” And now a touch of fire entered her tone, and he remembered in a flash that within her was the Nightmare Lady, that being of impossible strength and finesse. “You train smarter. Are you not listening to me?”

He pressed his fists to his temples as he bowed his head. “I am. I’m sorry. It’s just that…”

“Just that you want to gain strength as quickly as you can. I understand. You aren’t the only Great Soul to feel that way. If anything, that’s the default for all Great Souls.”

He dropped his hands. “Except for a few obvious exceptions.”

Her hazel eyes narrowed. “We need a reason to train, to fight, Scorio. The wiser you are, the sooner you realize that power is not its own reward.”

“Not sure I agree.”

She glared at him. “Well, that proves you’re a callow idiot.”

For a moment the air between them fairly roiled with tension, then Scorio raised both palms and laughed uneasily. “I won’t dispute that. I’m sorry. I’m just… I feel very strongly about this.”

“Fair.” She leaned back against the dresser. “I’m not asking you to train less. I’m telling you to train smarter. The Gauntlet and constant death will act like shocks to your Igneous Heart. But you need to step back and absorb those shocks, process them, integrate them into your being. You need to spend time working with mana, pushing your Heart, and most importantly, you need to rest.”

“Hmm, most of that sounded good but the resting part.”

“Rest is integral to training. It’s when you sleep that your body realigns itself with the changes that have taken place.” She brushed her hair roughly back. “Think of training as the active part of your training, and sleep as the passive part. Sleep is when your Heart grows more powerful, when your body restores itself and prepares for more training. If you don’t rest, you’ll just slowly collapse. Just like you did yesterday. And you’ll lose time recovering that you could have spent training intelligently.”

Scorio frowned and looked away. “Fine. Like I said, I may have overdone it a bit there.”

Naomi laughed and threw up her hands. “May have? Hells above and below, that’s probably the best I can hope to get out of you, isn’t it?”

He closed one eye and squinted at her through the other, giving her a lopsided smile. “At least I’m charming?”

Despite herself, Naomi smiled. “And who sold you that lie?”

“This guy called Old Memek. Wizened musician, plays an oud? Hangs out in Ward 7?”

For a moment Naomi just stared at him, unsure if he was joking, but when his grin widened, she reached around, snatched up a chunk of wax, and threw it at him.

Her aim was good. The wax bounced off his head even as he flung up an arm to block it.

“So this is what we’re going to do,” she said, adjusting her robes and drawing herself up with stiff dignity. “You’re going save the bulk of your Gauntlet runs for when your friends can join you. It’s safer. But!” She raised her voice as he went to protest. “It doesn’t mean you won’t get a chance to die repeatedly in between. We’ll go together every two or three days, and you’ll get two to three runs while I stand guard. That’s enough to keep you at your edge, though I’ll be monitoring you, making sure you’re still not pressing too hard.”

“Only two or three times?”

“In the meantime, you’ll continue your regular training. Because there’s more to becoming a powerful Great Soul than just dying repeatedly. You’ll resume your runs, your morning meditation, and in the afternoons, we’ll train and spar.”

“All right.” Then he remembered his brief exchange with Leonis and smiled. “Actually, I can use the time to do some hunting. Fiends have Heartstones, right? I can start harvesting them, then maybe go to the alchemist and see if he won’t give me octs in exchange. Think he will? I mean, I’d love to get some basic amenities… sleeping on a blanket is starting to get old. And an actual weapon wouldn’t go amiss.”

“As long as you’re not an idiot about it and go after apex predators,” she said, expression dour. “Yes. Fine. I mean, I can’t stop you. Just… restrict your hunting to the borderlands. And if you get hurt, it’s on your own head.”

“Sounds great,” he said with a grin.

“But you shouldn’t be thinking on swords—depending on such items is a trap that will slow your progress. Have you been practicing the First Form like I told you?”

For a moment he couldn’t remember what she was referring to, then he felt his face flush. “Ah, well—”

“I thought as much.” She began walking slowly toward him, fixing him with her glare, and Scorio found himself shrinking back on his stool. “You will resume training as I mandated. You will focus as much on manipulating your mana and saturating your Heart as you will dying. You will hone your focus. You will do the hard, boring work, and not focus on the easy task of dying or hunting fiends.”

“Easy?” he managed a brittle laugh. “You think going through the Gauntlet is easy?”

She stopped right before him, and never had the Nightmare Lady ridden so close beneath her skin. Raising a hand, she poked a finger into his chest, just as Leonis had, ages and ages ago. “Yes. Dying is easy. Nihilism is easy. Throwing yourself off the top of a tower can be far, far easier than resisting the urge and forcing yourself to wait for another dawn.”

The air trembled with the intensity of her words, and Scorio stared at her, transfixed.

“I know the urge, you see,” she said, voice dropping to a near whisper. “The urge to throw yourself into oblivion. To call it strength. To call it bravery. To see refuge in the dark. And after a year of sleeping in this chamber, I can now see it for what it is.”

Scorio flinched but forced himself not to lean back any further.

“So you will train as I dictate. And every two or three days, we will go to the old Academy, and you can die to your heart’s content. Am I clear?”

“Yes,” he managed to say. “Perfectly.”

She pursed her lips as she glowered at him for a moment longer, then stepped away. Moving up to her sideboard, she hesitated, then picked up her knife. Looked back at him over her shoulder and frowned. “So. Another slice of bread?”