Chapter 36

Scorio trained. Each day once again fell into a steady rhythm, but now he saw definite signs of progress. The deep shocks to his Heart that he’d suffered in the Gauntlet seemed to have galvanized his growth; rising to his feet with a saturated Heart and walking across the room came ever easier to him. Once he’d managed to cross back and forth four times, Naomi escalated the difficulty.

“A simple obstacle course,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Nothing onerous. Nothing a child couldn’t navigate.”

Which meant blocks he had to weave between, a boulder he had to carefully scramble over, and finally a pole laid at chest height beneath which he had to bend.

Even walking slowly this proved almost more than he could manage, the mana sloshing within his Heart dangerously, threatening to spill over.

But Scorio persevered.

Naomi would leave him to work on increasing his saturation point, drinking ever deeper of the Coal mana in his room till he could clear the entire chamber, at which point he moved to denser spots close by.

Repeatedly, he’d manifest his will and sweep the cloying black energy into his Heart, pulling it in till he was filled to bursting. Each time the faintest of flames would cover his body, nearly translucent in the light of the sun-wire, burning down the length of his arms and manifesting around his fists. Each time he thought he was able to draw in a little more, and each time it took him longer to ignite.

“Think of it in terms of a log,” Naomi told him one morning after he’d complained about failing to ignite for near ten seconds. “What happens if you place a twig in a fire?”

“It burns up fast,” he’d said.

“And if you try to light a log directly? Hold a burning twig to its side?”

“Nothing,” he said. “That much wood needs to lie in a bed of coals or amongst other burning logs to burn.”

“Precisely. The deeper your Heart becomes, the more mana you can store within it, the more like a large log it will feel. Like I told you. You’ll know you’ve reached the very edge of Cinder when you can barely ignite it at all. But once you do, you’ll find that it lasts for much longer.”

“You’d said that would be dangerous, but I can really appreciate that now,” said Scorio, kicking at a loose rock. “What if I’m set upon while crossing the ruins?”

Her smile had been all saccharine sweetness. “Then, my darling boy, you’d best run your heels off while you try to make that log burn.”

So he sat and meditated, drinking Coal mana down with ever greater inhalations, seeking the point of saturation, that moment when soft gray flames burned all over his flesh. And then he’d strive to ignite, straining, bending his will to the task, till at last his Heart lit up and he knew he had more to go.

Afternoons, as promised, were spent training. His instincts were good, his body strong, and he picked up her lessons without much need for repetition.

“Your memory is gone, but you had martial training before your current age,” she said at one point, stepping back and lowering her hands.

He’d wiped the sweat from his brow. “You think?”

“Absolutely. You’re not learning to fight. You’re remembering. Most Great Souls have violent backgrounds, and many of them trained at fighting before the age they imprinted upon the Archspire. You clearly did. Your form is clean, your execution crisp, and you don’t need reminding. You’re progressing… I don’t know, ten times faster than a normal trainee? You’re fortunate.”

“Doesn’t feel that way,” said Scorio. “I can’t seem to land a blow.”

“I’m an Emberling,” she said. “I’d be humiliated if you could.”

He’d laughed. “Now I’ve got motivation. Watch out!”

And he’d glided forward, leading with a feint and following up with a brutal front kick that he powered right from the hips.

Naomi had only laughed and slipped aside effortlessly.

Sparring and technique training gave way by the end of Second Bronze to working on the First Form. Naomi would stand to one side, eyes narrowed, watching as he slipped from one position to another, offering her commentary, guiding him, correcting him.

“Wait, wait, wait,” she’d said, interrupting him halfway. “You’re doing it all wrong.”

“How so?” he’d asked, rising from his combat crouch.

“You looking like you’re snapping punches out at the air.”

“Well, that’s because I am snapping punches out at the air.”

“But you shouldn’t be. You need to envision your foes. There are four of them. Each direction you move into represents your engaging and destroying one after the other. But it’s not enough to just visualize your immediate foe. You need to move with an awareness of the other three. Picture them closing in, imagine their expressions, feel their killing intent. Make the fight real. Destroy them, each in turn, so that when you finish, you feel the same primal satisfaction of having survived a real fight. Then, and only then, will you have mastered the Form.”

Scorio had raked his fingers through his sweat-soaked hair. “You’re saying I have to feel like I genuinely killed people to master this Form.”

“Precisely. Your focus must be absolute. Your immersion. Think of it as…” She cast around, looking for the right metaphor. “Think of it as a portable Gauntlet.”

He’d not tried to hide his skepticism. “Portable Gauntlet.”

“Are the foes in the Gauntlet real? No, I don’t want you to get metaphysical.”

“I wasn’t about to.”

“They’re not though, are they?” She’d raised a challenging eyebrow. “They reset each time you enter. They’re illusory opponents you get to train against. The Forms are the same. Portable, invisible Gauntlets. If you execute a Form with the same intensity and seriousness that you take on a Gauntlet run, that’s when you’ll master it.”

Scorio frowned. “So that’s why they were developed? To compensate for not having access to the Gauntlet like we now do?”

“Kind of. Not really. But yes. Also because you can perform a perfect Form without dying horrifically. Now. Again. From the beginning. And this time I want to see murder in your eyes.”

She’d retreated to sit on the shattered shard of rock, and he’d returned to his baseline. Taken a deep, controlled breath, and held it as he’d raised his chin, staring through the blasted practice ground and out into a realm of his own imagining.

He stood there till he was able to imagine four foes approaching him, two on either side, two more just ahead. Ghostly, limned by the same stark light which illuminated the statues in the Gauntlet’s second chamber. The assassin and the archer ahead, the axman on his left, the pig-headed brute on his right.

Only when he could see them with crystal clarity, only when he felt his skin prickle and his gut tighten did he slide rapidly to the left, snapping his arm up to block the downward swing of the axman’s first attack, forearm cracking into the haft just below the blade.

He drove the axman back, step by choreographed step, and when an opening appeared, he slammed his fist forward, a crushing blow that would have shattered the man’s sternum.

The silvery image in his imagination faded away like mist before the sun-wire’s amber burn, and over the ridges of his shivering knuckles he saw Naomi watching him, her expression pensive, her brow furrowed.

She gave him a slow nod of approval, and he whipped around to engage the next attacker.

But his favorite time, to his surprise, became his dusk runs. When he would tighten his sandals and set out for a long, leisurely run through the ruins, alternating the routes, leaving at the tail end of Second Clay so that the rising streamers of mist would coalesce into funnel clouds around the sun-wire. Running alone, his body weary and his spirit satisfied, the sound of his footsteps echoing off the buildings, picking routes that avoided dangerous areas, running as the sun-wire dimmed and darkened and the clouds would cool sufficiently to release their spiraling curtains of rain which raked over Bastion in winding curtains, gentle and warm.

Those moments, as the rain first began to fall and soaked his robes to his body, washing away the dust and dirt and dried blood, were like medicine for his spirit. His thoughts would still, his will would relax, and he’d simply inhabit his body, moving easily, his pace carrying him all the way around the perimeter to his starting spot, the ruins made ethereal and beautiful by the rain.

He’d run four laps, and when he ended up at his chamber, he’d sit on the windowsill cross-legged and devour his evening meal. He’d watch the last of the rain peter out as he spooned the gruel into his mouth, feeding the furnace that was his appetite, watching the ruins come alive at night, until at last, satiated and exhausted, he’d step over to his blanket stretched out over the stone floor and lay down. To sleep deeply, dreamlessly, profoundly, his body healing, his spirit mending, till First Clay awoke him to another day of training.

Naomi and he visited the old Academy twice more before the end of the Eighthday. Scorio attempted five more runs all told, and each time, Naomi accompanied him and stood aside after destroying her statue, watching and advising him on his approach.

On his fifth run, she moved forward slowly till the first statue activated, demolished it, then retreated to the back of the hall, using her claws and tail to anchor herself high up in the corner.

“Now you,” she said.

Scorio took a deep breath and steadied his nerves. He’d defeated his foe two out of the last four times, but both had resulted in him being so grievously wounded that he’d not bothered challenging the flying cube room; sitting instead to bleed out as the Nightmare Lady had gone on ahead.

Now he stared at the remaining eleven statues. He’d fought all of them but two. Had projected so much anger and frustration onto them all that they’d come to have personalities in his mind; the sneering archer, the laconic spearman, the brutish axman, the vicious assassin.

“Center yourself,” said the Nightmare Lady from behind and above. “You need to master yourself if you want to master your foe.”

Before, such words might have irritated Scorio, sounded flippant or shallow. But after working hard at his First Form, after spending so many hours meditating and manipulating Coal, they were instead a truth he wrestled with. A path he’d failed to walk.

Another deep breath and he shook out his hands. Shrugging his shoulders, he hopped up and down on the balls of his feet, then with a whoomph ignited his Igneous Heart.

Calm, focused, he walked forward. Stared straight ahead, focused on the fuzzy darkness at the end of the room, and allowed his senses to open, his mind to relax, thoughts to drift.

Past the first couple of statues.

He passed the assassin and she stirred, stepping down neatly off her pedestal, blades whispering up, their stone edges improbably sharp.

Scorio reacted immediately, wheeling about and then swaying back once, twice as the assassin slashed at his face with her dagger.

She was wickedly fast, but when she brought her sword up and around to decapitate him, Scorio ducked under it and moved behind her, grabbing hold of the folds of her cloak and using her momentum to haul her right off her feet and throw her headfirst into the statue of the axman beside her plinth.

The assassin crashed into the other statue, which shattered about her, crashing down and toppling as she recovered, shoving herself back up.

But Scorio was upon her, having snatched up a large chunk of rock in one fist which he brought crashing down upon her head.

Her face snapped to the side, but still, she surged up and into him, the force lifting him off his feet and sending him sprawling back onto the floor.

Scorio rolled aside as she fell upon where he’d been laying, her sword point sinking an inch into the rock. He scrambled up, saw her dagger lost amongst the wreckage of the other statue, and dove for it.

She wheeled, fluid and precise, and brought her blade scything down, nearly shearing off his left foot.

Scorio rolled over the rubble, ignoring the pain, and grabbed the knife. Came up in a crouch and hurled it at her face as she dove at him, blade raised high for a killing blow.

The knife hilt cracked right between her eyes with enough force to throw off her attack; Scorio dodged aside, her blade sweeping past his face as he wrapped an arm around her neck. He rode her down to the ground, slipping around behind her and immediately locking his ankles about her waist.

They rolled upon the rubble. She tried to hack over her shoulder at him with her stabbing blade, but couldn’t find the right angle.

Clenching his jaw, Scorio locked his hands and arched his back, hauling on her neck, bringing her jaw up.

She was a force of nature, writhing and bucking, hacking at the ground above and beside his head.

Scorio ignored it, focused on his Igneous Heart. Inhaling deeply, he pulled, drawing on the Coal mana, sucking more and more of it into his Heart.

Feeding more strength into his body.

Feeling his muscles swell with power.

She was slamming her elbow into one of his thighs, had dropped her blade to scrabble at his hands.

Scorio felt the ocean roaring in his ears, felt his whole body aflame with effort, and then the air was rent by a sharp crack, and her head snapped right off.

He fell away with a gasp, her head rolling free, her body going rigid, locked into its final contortion as if carved that way.

Gasping, Scorio sat up, his forearm raw, his chest working like a bellows. Stared at the statue as it shattered into fragments, wide-eyed, then over to where the Nightmare Lady hung suspended, her sulfurous green eyes blazing.

“Well done,” she said. “And without suffering a single cut.”

Scorio could only grin as he wrestled his way to his feet, his Heart extinguishing, his body suddenly weak after the excess of effort. He reached up to wipe the sweat from his brow and stared down at the wreckage of the statue he’d feared the most.

“I did it,” he said, testing the words even as he said them. “I defeated her.”

“And now you’re ready for the next chamber,” said the Nightmare Lady, extending her tail to lower herself slowly to the floor. “Recapture that focus. You’ll need it.”

Scorio scrubbed at his face. “Right. Focus. How do you want to do this?”

“Go through alone,” she said. “That way it shouldn’t trigger the room’s higher level of lethality.”

“All right. Wish me luck.”

“No,” said the Nightmare Lady. “Not luck. Skill.”

He paused, looking back at her, and then nodded. “Skill, then.”

Controlling his breath, he stepped up to the black door and took hold of the handle. Closed his eyes, centered himself, and then pulled it open and stepped through.

The same chamber as before confronted him. Black latticework of shadows along the walls, with the white cubes glowing softly by their hundreds. He had to cross some twenty yards.

Simple. At a sprint, he could reach the other side in seconds.

But a full-out sprint meant no control. No ability to react. He’d be pummeled to paste before he could reach the far wall.

Scorio shook out his arms, rolled his head about on his neck so that a few sharp pops sounded, and then closed his eyes.

Just waited for a few moments, and then summoned his Heart. The Coal was heavy in the room, and it took little effort to sweep it into his Heart and there ignite it.

The strength, the sense of power, was immediate, and with it came a burst of confidence.

Focus.

Scorio stepped forward. Restrained the urge to dart glances at the walls, to try and spot the cube before it came flying at him.

Stared straight ahead, through the far wall, allowing his senses to spread out about him as they’d done in the previous chamber.

Movement to his left.

A cube came flying fast and low, and without thinking, Scorio lifted his leg so that it flew under it and was gone.

A flare of victory. But he didn’t have time to relish it—another flash from his left, shoulder height, and he twisted about violently so that the cube sped past his chest.

He didn’t sense the third one, however, and it impacted his right hip with punishing force, sending him staggering.

Hissing in pain, Scorio lurched forward, his calm fracturing, his focus slipping.

More cubes came flying at him. He ducked under one, jerked forward to avoid another, but then was hit three times in succession, pain exploding from his elbow, his upper thigh, and a long trail of fire across his back as one raked past him.

Gasping, feeling as if he were choking, Scorio broke into a run, arms up to protect his head.

The rate of fire increased, cubes smashing into him from all sides, and he only made it halfway across the room before he collapsed to the floor, body broken.

But there was no zone of relief. Cubes continued to shoot out, skimming just above the ground to smash against him with terrible force.

It couldn’t have taken longer than ten seconds to die, but it felt like it took forever. Scorio was pulped and crushed, battered and broken by the endless impacts. When darkness finally claimed him, Scorio dove into it with relief.

“Gah,” he gasped as he opened his eyes upon his bier, his whole body convulsing, the pain pulsing through every part of him. He turned one way, found no relief, turned back. His spine felt crushed, his hips askew, his skull collapsed. Sharp pain stabbed at the back of his eyeballs, and he shoved his head over the side of the bier as a spasm wracked him and he vomited violently upon the floor.

He could dimly make out Naomi hissing in pain as she, too, awoke; but was lost in his own wretchedness to focus.

So this is what an anvil feels like, he thought and tried to reach for his Heart.

Movement. Vision bleary, he saw a massive insect rising beside his bier. Large and hulking like a beetle, it lifted its forelegs, their black, shining length covered in errant bristles and ending in two wicked hooks.

Scorio gave out a cry of alarm and shoved back, falling off the far edge of his bier to crash to the ground.

A scuttling sound from his left, and the beetle came swarming around the side of the bier, hook-arms ready.

Scorio was still pulsing with pain, unable to think, unable to do more than shove away again, heels skidding across the ground as he cried out in alarm.

The beetle tensed, about to leap, when a great blade chokked down through its head and into the side of the bier, pinning it neatly.

Yellow ichor gouted out and the insect vibrated in place, its legs shaking and contracting, and then it went still.

Scorio stared, wide-eyed, as the Nightmare Lady retracted her tail, then fell back to clutch at the closest bier, the strength fleeing her emaciated body.

With a retch, Scorio turned over to vomit again.

By slow degrees, they recovered, and finally, Scorio was able to stand, his head pounding, his body weak. With a deep breath, he ignited his Heart, and the strength washed over him like a healing balm, smoothing the last of the phantom pain away.

“Thanks,” he managed at last, wiping his wrist across his mouth. “That was… close.”

“Urgh.” Naomi had reverted to her human form, and her face looked bone pale. “My warnings aren’t for my own amusement, you know. Perhaps even I should start listening to them.”

Scorio took up his waterskin and swished warm water about his mouth before spitting it out. “How far did you get?”

“No further.” The bitterness in her voice was plain. “The damn beast won’t die. I cut off its leg, blinded it, and still, it could somehow sense me. All it takes is one lucky grab and then it pulls me in and crushes my head.”

Scorio took a few sips, knowing better than to flood his stomach with gulps. “Maybe it's meant to be tackled by more than one Emberling.”

She frowned. “I know I can beat it. I just need to figure out its weakness. It’s clearly not blood loss.”

“You’re the Emberling,” he said, pressing his hand to his brow.

She leaned back against the bier and gave him a crooked smile. “Still. Congratulations. First time you take down a statue without being badly injured. That’s a huge improvement.”

“It’s these gorgeous muscles,” he said, gazing at his arm and chest. “Overnight, they just doubled in size, and now I have the strength of ten—”

“Scorio.” Her warning was clear.

“Yeah, all right. Fine. A little more focus didn’t hurt.”

“How did you do in the cube room?”

Carefully, trying not to groan, he stood up. “Fine at first. Then fell to pieces after the first couple hit. My clarity just fractured like a pane of glass.” He drew a deep breath and forced a bitter smile. “Suddenly all I wanted to do was cover my head and run.”

“You understand that’s completely natural, right?” She raised an eyebrow. “That’s what people do in such situations. What you’re trying to learn is unnatural. It’s to repress healthy survival instincts in favor of an inhuman amount of control.”

“Right, yes.” He drew himself upright, the last of the pain fading away. “I understand. Still doesn’t make it any less galling to remember running like a child into certain death.”

To which she could only snort. “You should have seen my tantrum when that massive beast seized my tail again. Even I, poised and lethally elegant as I am, lose my temper once in a while.”

Scorio failed to restrain a grin. “Lethally elegant?”

Naomi flushed, curled her hair behind one ear, and turned away. “Something like that. Ready to head home?”

“Ready.” He eyed the bier one last time, the massive beetle spider that had crumpled at its base, and gave a grim nod. “Two more days and we’ll be back with the others. You going to join us?”

“I… might,” said Naomi, not looking back as she walked toward the exit. “Still debating.”

Scorio hurried to catch up. “They’d love to meet you. They’re good people.”

“That’s not the issue,” said Naomi, voice low.

Scorio considered, then remembered her room, high up in that precarious tower. “Right. Well, the invitation’s open. Just let me know what you decide.”

Naomi simply led the way out of the vast and shadow-wreathed basilica, and didn’t say another word.