Chapter 66

Feverish, trembling with anticipation, Scorio approached the open portal. He couldn’t see beyond it; like those within the Gauntlet, the space bounded by its arch was opaque, a rippling field of white light.

Frowning, resisting the impulse to plunge straight through and seize his power, Scorio drew back and scrutinized the other three doors. Each was made of a different material; at first glance, they seemed to be bronze, silver, and gold. Turning back to the open one before him, he saw that its border was of smooth silver as well, but upon closer scrutiny realized it was iron.

Iron, bronze, silver, and gold. Emberling, Tomb Spark, Flame Vault, and Dread Blaze. He’d be coming back to this place for each evolution, it seemed. For a moment he wondered if one could force their way through a higher-ranked door, effect a shortcut that would allow him access to far greater powers than was his current remit, but then discarded the idea. Surely a place so steeped in power as this would be immune to such improvident strategies.

A deep breath. Scorio shook out his arms and turned back to the iron arch. Time to seize his heritage. Could one fail a trial? Funny, he’d never thought to ask. But had also never heard of a Cinder remaining as such after reaching this point. Perhaps failure wasn’t an option. Then in what way was this a trial?

One way to find out.

Scorio stepped into the white light, and became himself, or entered into another self, a Scorio who stood fierce and burning with hatred and frustration amidst a deep crowd that encircled gallows erected in the center of a city square.

He inhaled raggedly, the shock of the emotions washing over him, a contextual state of being that he couldn’t grasp. Why was he furious? Outraged? The great gallows, surely, where soldiers in officious garb formed a protective ring about the proceedings, their tower shields, and pikes arranged in tight formation as if in anticipation of the crowd’s attack.

A man was being led up the steps to the gallows platform, hands bound behind his back, clothing soiled and torn. His face—a jolt caused Scorio’s very soul to spasm in recognition, a face he’d never seen before this moment, but which somehow seemed familiar, an older version of his own, different, familial—his brother.

I have a brother, he thought, stunned, then the outrage surged to the fore of his being once more. And he is to be hanged?

An older brother, to be sure, but it was a visage touched by determination and stubborn hatred. He’d been poorly treated, his eye swollen shut, blood dried across his split lip, but he stood tall and proud as the guards led him to the noose.

To the side of the gallows stood a monstrous knight, a behemoth clad in such thickly armored plate that it was a wonder the wooden platform could support him. Some seven feet tall, he appeared an impregnable fortress, the iron of his armor nearly an inch thick and enameled in black and crimson. His helm was cast into a demonic visage, and twin horns swept up to meet at a small sphere above his head. He stood with his gauntleted hand upon the head of a massive ax, the blade looking to have been hewed from an obsidian boulder, its edge jagged but wickedly sharp.

“Stay your hand,” a man whispered at his side, voice earnest, desperate. “This farce must take place, tragic as it is. Do not act hastily, Scorio!”

The man was in his forties, face carved with lines of care, shoulders stooped, but in his eyes, a fierce light shone.

“That’s my brother,” Scorio heard himself say. “You’re saying I should sacrifice him upon the altar of the empire out of—what? A sense of decorum?”

“Eberro played a strong hand and failed,” said the man hurriedly. “But you stand to inherit the fruits of his labor. He would not want all his work to go for naught. If you can find the strength to resist temptation, you can step into his place. Rouse the provinces, foment a true rebellion. You will be followed. But squander your strength here, and the king shall turn his baleful stare full upon us. We’ll be crushed by his legions before you can do more than cry foul.”

Scorio grimaced and turned back to the platform. Eberro had been set beneath the noose, which was being placed about his neck.

The huge and perilous knight spoke, and such was the boom of his voice that it quelled the angry murmurs of the crowd.

“In the name of the king, sovereign light of these lands, lord of the beasts that crawl and birds that fly, I do hereby pronounce sentence upon Eberro of Spurn Harbor, who is found guilty of treason. He has fomented rebellion by seeking to pass spurious laws and undermining the authority of the king. For these trespasses, he is to die by hanging by the neck, as is befitting for all common criminals.”

The murmur rose into outcries of anger, and the crowd surged forward, causing the ring of soldiers to lower their long spears so that their phalanx bristled.

The huge knight appeared unperturbed.

“As the king’s appointed Warmonger in this province, I, Sir Kuragin, do affix my seal to this verdict and find the sentencing just. May this execution serve as a warning to all who desire to challenge the king’s unassailable authority, and think twice over future acts of heresy.”

Kuragin.

The name caused Scorio’s entire body to seize up. For a moment he had been so embodied in the moment, so caught up in the horror and rage of the moment, that he’d forgotten himself, his true self, the Great Soul who underwent a trial.

This isn’t me, or if it is, it’s a me that was. A past life? My first?

But Kuragin. One of the Great Souls from back—home? Was the Academy home? Was this? Wherever this was—Sprung Harbor?

“Scorio,” said the man by his side. “Exert yourself! Control the crowd. Draw back. Eberro must be sacrificed for the greater cause. His martyrdom will fan the flames of revolution!”

The man had him by the sleeve. He was tugging insistently, but beyond him, Scorio could feel the crowd as if it were connected to him, an extension of him. Waiting for his signal, to surge forward, or to retreat.

Eberro, his brother, gazed out over the crowd and finally found him. Their eyes met. Scorio felt a jolt of physical pain flash through his body, a profound sense of love, yearning, and horror.

In his brother’s eyes, he saw loss and resignation. He saw his death coming, an ignominious dance at the end of the rope, seconds from now. But the resignation was a form of peace. Scorio couldn’t put it into words, couldn’t vocalize how he knew, but he saw in the depths of his brother’s eyes a form of anticipation.

From here the flames will spread, he thought he heard. From here the revolution will grow. My life was an attempt to play the game by their rules, to earn votes and pass laws in local councils. My death will show the world the sham that this public forum truly is. My death will turn me into a martyr, turn the indifferent into fanatics, and you shall lead them, little brother. Now lower your eyes. Don’t watch me dance. Pray for me, and then avenge me. Let my end be your beginning.

Scorio’s tears brimmed and ran down his cheeks. Kuragin was saying something, his words booming out over the crowd. Several hundred individuals, all of them partisans, ready to fight, to kill, to shed their blood to protect Eberro. All of them looking to him, the youngest, for a sign, that this was the right time, the moment to birth their cause.

“Don’t do it,” said the man by his side. “Be dispassionate. Use your mind, Scorio! Now is not the time. We’ll be crushed. Instead of a martyr, he’ll be cast as a common criminal. Don’t throw it all away!”

Scorio felt carved from stone, unfeeling, no—numb, riven to the ground by a huge spike of horror and disgust.

His brother watched him yet. Eberro, his elder, who’d sheltered him under his raised protective arm, who’d taught him honesty, righteousness, fairness, and a deep and unforgiving intolerance of tyranny.

I go now. Could he truly hear his brother’s words? Or was he imagining them, creating the words based on what he knew his brother must be thinking?

No matter.

I go now, he heard his brother’s voice say. Avenge me, little brother. Raise our banner high and cast down the cruel.

Scorio took a deep breath. His brother had made his peace. The land was a tinderbox awaiting this very spark.

All Scorio had to do was stand back, arms crossed, and let the king murder his brother.

“No,” he whispered and felt his heart crack asunder, the numbness falling away before a deluge of white-hot rage. “I can’t allow this to happen.”

“We are not ready,” cried the man by his side, voice scandalized. “We are not ready, you waste his life, you kill us all—”

“Then so be it,” said Scorio, his fury endlessly unfurling within his breast like a banner with no end. “I will pay that price, but I can’t—no, I won’t—stand here and watch him die.”

The hangman had stepped back, had his hand on the trapdoor lever. Sir Kuragin had turned to stare at Eberro. The crowd was poised, as if on a peak, ready for anything.

And in that hush, that momentary respite, Scorio heard himself roar, “People of Spurn Harbor, we save our own!”

And he ran forward, cresting through the crowd, shoving his way, but resistance was melting even as he met it. The crowd bellowed with one voice, a massive howl of fury that perfectly captured his own, and like a levee bursting, they pushed forward as one into the line of soldiers.

Sir Kuragin didn’t shout, but instead raised his ax up and behind his head then let loose a cry of delight and leaped off the platform to fall, ax descending, into where the crowd was thickest.

Scorio was a conduit, power and dread flowed through him like a flash flood, a rushing roar that drowned out the crowd, the screams of the dying, the shouts of defiance. Pushing forward, swimming through the press of bodies, he saw the hangman yank on the handle.

The trapdoor fell away, and Eberro dropped.

Scorio was screaming, reaching, but he wasn’t close enough.

His brother hung there, legs kicking, face growing purple.

Pain and madness, horror and denial. The rushing roar grew louder, grew overwhelming, and Scorio felt his heritage, his power, his birthright, erupt within him.

His right arm, flung forth to reach for his brother, changed. Black scales burst from his skin, swept around his forearm, and burnished his hands as his fingertips turned into wicked claws, easily six inches long. His whole body was changing, compacting, layering with denser muscle, thick, heavy scales covering his shoulders, sweeping up his shins, to send huge, horned spikes out from his knees, out of his elbows.

And the power. It was delirium-inducing. The bonds of the earth seemed to lessen, paling before his might, and with a roar that shook the air, he leaped. Exploded up and forward, bounding through the air as if hurled from a trebuchet, up and over the crowd toward the gallows. Sailed through the air, and as he flew, his claws glowed with heat, their bases cherry red, their tips pure white.

He swiped his hand across the thick rope and split it. His brother dropped to the ground below where he lay choking and grabbing at the noose.

Scorio slammed into the gallows itself, caused the vertical construction to rock, and gripped at it, latching on with his huge claws, which immediately began to blacken the wood and set it afire.

Kuragin, massive, untouchable within his armor, looked up from the bloody swathe that surrounded him to stare at Scorio.

And pointed his monstrous ax at him in a challenge.

One that Scorio was all too glad to meet.

The huge knight crouched and then leaped, somehow bursting into the sky despite the hundreds of pounds of metal that weighed him down.

Scorio roared again, the sound reverberating in the air, the sound bestial, frightful, impossibly loud, and he leaped, leaving the gallows to hurl himself at Kuragin, his claws swinging at the armored man even as Kuragin’s body began to change, even as he swung his ax to meet him mid-air.

High above the crowd, they met, the force titanic, and Scorio had the briefest glimpse of the knight’s ax skittering off his scaled left arm even as his right buried itself into the huge breastplate, which parted like butter before the white-hot claws.

And then it was gone, all gone, and he was back in the imperial gel, thrashing and lashing out at a knight that wasn’t there.

Scorio stilled, hung suspended, his Heart raging, the mana reserves almost entirely depleted, but the Delightful Secret Marinating technique was still in effect, and huge gouts of Coal mana were pouring down from the air above.

Enough.

Scorio lurched toward the pool’s edge, grabbed hold of the rim, and hauled himself out. Emerged in a great upheaval of gel, to turn and sit, legs still sunken into the pool, his shoulders heaving as he gasped and set to sucking in air.

People were around him. Crouched by his side, hands on his slick shoulders, asking him questions, telling each other off.

Scorio stared at nothing. In his mind’s eye, he saw Eberro falling to the ground, kicking, alive.

Was that what had happened in his past? What had happened next? How had he gone from that plain Scorio to Scorio the Scourer, Lord of Nagaran, Master of the Black Tower, The Bringer of Ash and Darkness, the Shadow of Spurn Harbor, the Abhorred, Quencher of Hope, and Unmaker of Joy?

What had happened next? Had he fought Kuragin? Had he saved his brother in truth? Had he raised banners against this king?

Heart pounding, he fought to emerge from that dream-like reality. His past. A past now almost a thousand years gone. Everyone he’d seen would be dead now, more than dead, dust blow away in the wind or absorbed by the worms into the soil.

Except for Kuragin.

The realization hit him like a fist to the chest. He’d find that bastard and see what he’d learned during his own Emberling challenge.

“Scorio?”

He blinked, raised his head, focused on Lianshi who crouched before him. She was wiping slime from his cheek with her thumb, her eyes wide and brimming with terrible compassion.

“Whatever you saw,” she whispered, “I grieve for you. I grieve for that old pain. I’m so sorry.”

“You had to make your own choice,” he said, voice a rough croak. “In your own trial.”

She nodded, pain glimmering in her eyes.

“And Leonis.” Scorio looked up, saw his friend’s grim visage. “You, too.”

“Yes,” said Leonis.

“Naomi?”

“This is my first life,” she said, and Scorio saw that she’d retreated to the side of the chamber, where she crouched in the deepest dark. “I had no trial.”

He didn’t understand but could only nod.

“Take your time,” said Lianshi softly. “There’s no rush.”

“How can you tell?” asked Scorio. “That I passed my trial?”

Leonis’s smile was tired. “You disappeared, friend. For ten minutes you were gone, and we but gathered around an empty pool.”

Scorio nodded then turned and gazed down at his hands. So common, so human, familiar, and tanned from the light of the sun-wire.

So unlike the world in which he’d stood, where a single disc of blazing gold hung in the blue sky and the breeze had smelled of salt. A world that had felt so right, so natural, so familiar, that he’d not even noticed the differences from Bastion while he’d been there.

“Friend Scorio well?” Nox shifted his weight.

“Well enough,” said Scorio. It was painful, wresting his mind, his consciousness, his focus, back to this strange cylindrical world. To put the past behind him, to forget the burning cause, his brother’s near martyrdom, the howl of the crowd, the sense of an entire countryside about to erupt into flames.

To return to Bastion, to the imminent Gauntlet run.

To Jova Spike and the truth she knew about him.

Jova Spike. Against whom he’d soon compete with his new powers.

And so thinking, he summoned his Heart. It appeared smoothly in his mind’s eye, still fractured and pitted. Into it, he swept the vestiges of mana that yet hung in the air and sought to ignite its form.

But he couldn’t. More mana was needed. His will, however, felt stronger, more refined. He gathered great sweeps of dark power about him and funneled it into his Heart, more and more till he felt as if he’d drawn in an ocean of ebon might. Only when he thought he was filled to bursting, much of it leaking from the cracks, did he seek to ignite once more.

And almost couldn’t. With a frown, he bent his will to the act, and finally, just as he was about to desist, his Heart lit up with black fire.

And with it an awareness of his new technique. Which required but the desire to awaken, much as one needed to but think of opening one’s eyes for it to be so. Scorio willed his power into existence, and his fingertips changed, distended, and became claws.

Claws which arced up, razor-sharp and growing hotter by the second, so that the very air shimmered about them, superheated and roiling.

“Now that’s a fearsome power,” said Leonis. “Those claws look like they could cut through rock itself.”

“One hand alone?” asked Naomi, perhaps less impressed. “You’ll need to train carefully to maximize—”

Scorio raised his other hand and fed mana into it. Fingertips elongated, grew hard, six inches long, gradating from deep burgundy at the base to cherry red to searing white.

“Both hands,” said Naomi, grudgingly respectful. “That’s much better—”

But Scorio wasn’t done. He willed the mana to spread across his form, taking his time, and as he did so the black scales appeared, emerging through his very skin to wreath his hands and the backs of his forearms all the way up to his shoulders, and there across them to meet at the base of his back. His robes faded away, disappearing into mist, so he was left wearing only an ornate metal belt that held up a layered black cloth that hung to his knees.

“Oh,” said Naomi. “Oh.”

Scorio rose. His body was changing, even where no scales rippled across its surface. At once becoming leaner and more muscled, his shoulders broader, his arms and legs thicker, longer. He’d gained some six inches in height, another six inches of reach not counting his claws. But the power. The sweet, delirious power that burned him from within. It was terrible, not moving, not unleashing it, not giving vent to its destructive power.

He flexed his super-heated claws, each leaving after-images in his dark-vision, which, he realized, had doubled in scope, now encompassing most of what he saw directly before him, with greater detail and depth.

“That’s…” Lianshi’s voice was hushed with awe. “You look…”

Scorio extended his arm, turned it about so that he could admire the scales. Each was diamond-shaped, slightly fluted in the center, rising to ridges along the visible edges. Overlapping with perfection, yet fluid, not constraining his movement at all. He felt clothed in glory, the scales gently warming him. They extended across his shoulder blades but not further down his back; his chest and torso remained bare, as did his thighs.

“Impressive,” said Naomi, rising to her feet. “Let’s see what you can do. I’ll be waiting in the old Gauntlet.”

“He just passed his trial,” protested Lianshi. “That’s not fair—”

“Who said anything about fair?” asked Naomi as she strode by, and in a flicker flash, she was gone, replaced by the chitinous horror that was the Nightmare Lady. “You want fair, give up now.”

And with a backward glance of her sulfurous green eyes, she reached the exit tunnel and leaped lightly out of view.

“You don’t have to do this,” said Lianshi hurriedly, turning back to Scorio. “You’re weak, you just underwent a traumatic experience, a huge physical transformation—”

“It’s all right,” said Scorio, stepping past her. “I want to.”

Lianshi shook her head once, confused, but a moment later she and Leonis followed.

Scorio reached the tunnel that led by torturous ways into the old academy. Despite his now-massive mana reservoir, he could feel it venting furiously through the cracks into the air around them.

He already missed the imperial gel’s phenomenal properties.

Scorio crouched, felt the huge muscles in his legs bunch up, then leaped up into the tunnel.

It was time for a rematch.