Chapter 72

Scorio crawled out through the iron wall to collapse upon massive flagstones of dark stone. For a moment he simply lay there, gasping for breath, but then he heaved himself upright with his good hand, immediately sweeping Coal into his Heart once more as his scales retreated under his skin and the translucent flames guttered out.

They’d entered a large hexagonal chamber, the walls adorned with ancient carvings depicting garlands, heroic figures doing battle against fiends, all of it worn and eroded by the passage of time.

In the center of the room, their foe stood on all fours, a beast as large as a cart, horned and bristle maned. Its head was vaguely porcine, its snout flanked on each side by three tusks that swept down from the edge of its jawline.

Gasping, catching his breath, Scorio rose to his feet. The beast was studying them, a dim intelligence in its rheumy eyes. It was repulsive. Its face glistened, its skin swollen as if it had been basted in honey and recently pulled from an oven. Its forelegs looked more like arms, hugely muscled but dwarfed by the prodigious shoulders and massively deep chest.

It sneezed, gave its huge head a vicious shake, and then clawed at the ground, scoring deep grooves in the hexagonal stones.

Nightmare Lady was up, sweeping out wide, tail lashing behind her. Leonis summoned Nezzar from the air and moved to take the center, swinging the club about him as he moved so that it warped the air and made it moan.

This was the beast that killed Jova the first time round. How had she gotten this far as a Char?

Scorio inhaled deeply and focused on drawing more mana into his Heart. Steeled himself against the constant frustration that came from watching more than half of everything he drew upon vent itself from the cracks.

With a violent squeal, the boar fiend flung itself forward, its prodigious strength such that it didn’t run so much as spring forward, again and again, each leap covering ten feet at a bound.

Come on, come on! Scorio swept ever more Coal into his reservoir, cursing its depth and stubborn refusal to ignite.

Lianshi let out a cry and sprinted past Leonis, right at the incoming boar. The move was so counterintuitive, the sight of her rangy form so absurd compared to the horrific bulk of the fiend, that Scorio let out a cry of alarm, started to run forward. But then she stopped, crossed her arms before her face, and turned away.

The boar crashed into her at full tilt, tossing its heads as it did so. Tusks slammed into Lianshi’s side, but instead of sending her flying, the whole beast slammed to a standstill before her gleaming form. Tusks shattered; the beast’s mass rippled up to swell its neck at the sudden arrest of its momentum. It stepped back, blinking its eyes dazedly, to stare in confusion at Lianshi who was slowly lowering her arms.

Unhurt.

But that had been all the distraction the Nightmare Lady had needed. She appeared for a moment above the boar, knees tucked into her chest, chin lowered, somersaulting right over its broad shoulders, spinning so that her tail whipped down and around, its triangular blade passing over the the beast’s back.

Then Leonis was there, doing a stutter-step run that culminated in his swinging Nezzar two-handed up and into the boar’s chin, rotating from the hips, the runes bleeding behind into the air as the club’s tip crashed into the fiend’s jaw.

Its head snapped up, the architecture of its face shifting and collapsing upon itself, tender skin splitting, the last of its tusks shattering.

The Nightmare Lady landed on the far side, arrested her slide by slamming her claws into the stone, then hauled herself back at the boar’s flank even as it reared up onto its rear legs in agony.

Scorio lost sight of her then, saw Leonis swing Nezzar again, the club impacting the boar’s shoulder. It looked like he was attacking a boulder, but even from where he stood Scorio heard the distinct crack of bone snapping, and the huge forelimb suddenly fell limp.

But the fiend was impossibly strong. Even with black blood sheeting down its chest and past its ribs, with its head looking like a stepped-on peach, and its shoulder collapsed, it wheeled on the Nightmare Lady and slammed its head into her chest.

Her reflexes were sharp; even as the blow came, the Nightmare Lady sprang away, but not quite in time; the shattered remnants of a tusk caught her by the hip, and turned her agile escape into a cartwheeling fall through the air.

Leonis fell back, swung Nezzar before him in a warning sweep, the air moaning once more, then hurled himself aside as the boar fiend reared up and crashed down upon where he’d stood with all the force and fury of a cresting storm wave.

Scorio’s reservoir reached saturation. He inhaled gratefully, willed his Heart to incandesce, and as the boar fiend cast around, eyes blood-shot, black blood and snot leaking from between its jaws and the deep funnel-like holes in its snout, Scorio stepped to the fore.

“Hey,” he called out, raising his good hand to gesture at the huge pig. “Over here, ugly. It’s my turn.”

The beast swayed, propping its weight up on its sole good leg, then let out a whinnying cry and bounded at him, several thousand pounds of muscle and ruined tusks.

Scorio exerted his will, and black scales swept out across his arms, white-hot talons spring from the tips of his fingers, and wicked power suffused his body. Feeling elastic, limber, barely constrained by the ties of gravity, Scorio crouched, waited till the last moment, then sprang forth to meet the boar.

But first, he feinted, raised his clawed hand high as if he were going for the fiend’s eyes, then ducked down and threw himself into a slide, twisting to hit the stones on his back and pass under the charging boar’s head.

A flash of its broad chest passing overhead, into which he sank his talons with a vicious slash. Hide and muscles parted at his touch, the swathe of pectoral muscle coming undone with a stench of burned flesh.

Momentum carried the boar on, but with its chest ruined, it couldn’t bring its remaining foreleg to bear; with a cry it crashed down to the flagstones, slamming into the stone with enough force to wrench its heads sideways, causing it to turn as it slid so that it ended up perpendicular to where Scorio rose to his feet.

“Mine!” cried out the Nightmare Lady. She leaped atop its uppermost shoulder as it heaved, and slammed her tail blade down to impale it through the throat.

Its guttural roar grew wet, turned into a gargle, then with a final shiver, it lay still.

Scorio immediately released his scaled form and rose into a crouch, arms resting on his knees. “Everyone all right?”

“Fine,” said Lianshi, with a grimace. “Though I’m covered in pig spit.”

“Fine,” said Leonis, sitting off to the side, Nezzar set down beside him as he tended the now crimson bandage wrapped around his thigh. “That was… close.”

“Fine,” said the Nightmare Lady, leaping off the boar. But when she landed, she staggered before catching her balance.

“It hit you hard,” said Scorio, tone sober. “You sure?”

“Fine,” said the Nightmare Lady, her sulfurous green eyes narrowing. “Just a glancing blow.”

But the wound across her prominent pelvic cradle was torn and welling black blood.

“I’m sorry, everyone,” said Scorio. “It took me too long to get into the fight. My Heart…”

Leonis climbed to his feet. “Don’t worry about it. We’ve soundly crushed every obstacle thus far. It makes sense that we’d start to take a few nicks and cuts.”

“We’re supposed to crush every obstacle of this section,” said Naomi as she shrank down to her human form. “The first five rooms are Char killers. As Emberlings, we’re performing a little worse than expected.”

“Next five are designed to defeat Cinders,” said Lianshi, giving up on the slime that caked her robes. “Should be interesting.”

It was a question Scorio had put off asking for as long as he could, but now he couldn’t hold it back. “How far do you think Jova will go?”

“As a Tomb Spark?” Naomi turned to consider him, hand pressed to the wound on her hip. “She should pass the first fifteen rooms without too much difficulty. I’d guess eighteen rooms or so?”

“I didn’t need to hear that,” said Leonis, releasing Nezzar so that it faded from view. “We’re only five in. Can we work on keeping our morale up?”

“Come on, you big complainer,” said Lianshi, giving him a mock-shove as she passed him by. “Let’s see what the next room contains. Should be some kind of trap, right?”

“Right,” said Scorio, rising to his feet as well. “Just let me collect my Coal mana again.”

They moved to stand before the black door that had appeared in one of the hexagon’s walls, and there waited till Scorio gave them all a firm nod.

“I’ll go first,” said Lianshi. “I’ll activate my gift to foil whatever trap awaits us.” She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and Scorio felt her Heart incandesce a moment before she stepped through.

Naomi, pale-faced, shifted up into her Nightmare Lady form and stepped through right after. Scorio ignited his Heart as Leonis summoned Nezzar back, and with a grim nod to his friend stepped forward.

Through the black door, through that jolt of nothingness, to step out into a complex, cramped room filled with movement and violence. Scorio immediately pressed himself back against the wall, his chest tightening as he took in the chaos and complexity of the small—room? chamber?—before them.

The walls were animated, divided into huge blocks of gray stone that ground slowly toward each other, extruding themselves, growing into rectangles that would suddenly and without warning slam forward to crash against their opposite. A crooked path shifted constantly between these slamming blocks, the far wall only some twenty feet away, but the means to get there constantly slamming shut at different points, with the blocks then slowly receding toward their native wall to only reverse course and slam back out again.

“By the ten hells,” said Leonis. “How are we supposed to navigate that?”

“It’s just a variation,” called the Nightmare Lady over the cacophony. “Like the room with sliding blades.”

“Or the chamber with the small, flying blocks,” shouted Lianshi from her far side. “We just need to get across.”

Scorio studied the shifting segments of wall. One slammed against its partner right before him, perhaps a foot from where he stood pressed against the wall, the sudden draft of air ruffling his hair, the sound concussive. The blocks were only five feet tall; the ceiling easily some twenty feet in height all told. For a couple of seconds, the blocks remained pressed together, then began to withdraw.

“We could leap atop the blocks,” he called out. “Perhaps go from block to block as they smash together.”

But his idea was immediately ruined by the sight of a pair of blocks smashing together at the height of some five feet off the ground. A few moments later, he saw two segments crash right up against the ceiling.

“It’s a three-dimensional maze,” shouted Lianshi. “We need to think both vertically as well as horizontally. Move up and down.”

“But how?” Leonis’s shout was easily the most intelligible. “There’s no pattern!”

Mesmerized, Scorio watched as one block reversed its withdrawal and extended blindingly fast across the chamber to smash into its still retreating neighbor. They weren’t mirror reflections; sometimes they smashed at each other, other times one would pursue its retreating partner with terrible force.

“Reflexes and speed,” called out the Nightmare Lady. “Watch.”

And with a bound she ran forward, tail whipping behind her. Ran past the first set of blocks as they ground away like waves retreating from a shore, then leaped as a second set of blocks rushed to crush her. Lianshi let out a scream, but the Nightmare Lady’s leap carried her high, to land on the same blocks that would have killed her. She scampered forward, ducked under the third blocks as they slammed overhead, then threw herself back as the fourth wave crashed, both before and above her, together at the same time.

Scorio watched, feeling almost dizzy, as the Nightmare Lady caught herself, leaped high as the third blocks came roaring toward each other again, landed atop them, and then tripped.

It was her left leg that gave out under her. Her wounded hip.

She fell to the ground, and again Lianshi cried out in alarm. The Nightmare Lady pushed up from the ground with such force that she rose to her feet, then flung herself forward just as the fourth row of blocks smashed together again.

“Did she make it?” Lianshi’s question was wild with horror. The fourth row of blocks remained pressed together. “Did she get through?”

Scorio stared, unable to breathe, but when the blocks peeled apart to retreat, he saw Naomi crouched against the far wall, heaving for breath, her hip dark with blood.

The strength went out of his knees, and he heaved a huge sigh.

“She did it!” Lianshi gave a little punch up into the air and hopped off both feet. “She did it!”

“How by the ever-true fiend that lay with its mother will I get across that?” Leonis was scowling at the huge blocks. “Think I can batter them aside with Nezzar?”

“Worth a try,” said Scorio.

“Let’s see.” Leonis extended his hand, and his hexagonal club appeared a moment later, runes burning bright. They waited till the first row of blocks crashed together before them, and then he brought the club down with all his force upon an upper edge.

Cracks fragmented out, chips of stone fell, and the club bounced off with a dull, reverberating boom.

“Gah,” said Leonis, releasing the club with one hand and shaking it out. “That would take me a year to destroy.”

“Guess we’re not meant to brute force our way through.” Lianshi rose to her tiptoes, lowered back down, and then shook out her arms. “Here I go.”

Scorio wanted to stop her, to ask, “Are you sure?” But he bit back the words, gave her an encouraging nod, and watched as she readied herself.

In that moment, she was infinitely precious to him. He drank in the sight of her determined face, her wide cheekbones, her set mouth, the lock of black hair that had slipped forth to hang down past her mouth.

And then she ran forward, leaping past the first set of blocks as they withdrew. Continued right past the second set, an all-out sprint without finesse or any attempts at acrobatics.

Which was why the third set of blocks slammed together as she ran, crushing her between them.

Or trying to.

They compacted her tightly, but with a hideous groan that rose to a screech they came to a stop, some twelve or so inches apart, Lianshi pressed tightly between them. Alive. Her form shimmered with a subtle iridescence, then the blocks withdrew, she collapsed forward, stumbled past the fourth set, and crashed down next to Naomi.

“Lianshi!” Leonis’s boom carried over the crashing blocks overhead. “You all right?”

“Fine!” She sat up, raked her hair from her face, then gave them a nervous smile. “Just… catching my breath.”

“Damn useful power,” muttered Leonis. “I’m getting more envious with each passing second.”

“We’ve got this,” said Scorio. “You want to go next, or me?”

“You go.” Leonis reached down to give his bandage another tug. “I’m… yeah. You go.”

“All right.” Scorio ignited his Heart, summoned his scales, and then waited for the first blocks to crash together. They were withdrawing slowly, grinding away against the ground. Then, with terrible speed, they smashed together, blasting him with air once more. The moment they parted, he ran through.

Each block was about five feet deep. He crossed the first in two steps, but then threw himself back as the second set crashed together. No time to wait for them to part; he vaulted up with his one good hand, leaped forward, but saw the third set rush toward each other at his height.

Time seemed to slow. With supreme effort, he contorted his body, arching around to change his forward dive into a shoulder slam as he collided with the front face of the third block. The ones below him began to part, and with a grunt he leaped up onto the third blocks, his head brushing the ceiling, some fifteen feet above the ground.

The blocks began to withdraw from under him. He eyed the fourth set of blocks, saw that the ones five feet off the ground below him were about to part, and dove down on instinct.

The blocks parted just before he hit the seam. He speared through and crashed into Naomi, who caught him as best she could, which meant not at all, and they both slammed against the far wall and then collapsed to the ground.

Scorio immediately jerked his legs in before the fourth blocks could crush them, and pressed his back to the wall, dismissing his scaled form. Naomi sat up beside him, scowling, but gave him a grudging nod as Lianshi squealed and leaned over to hug him tight.

“You can do it, Leonis!” she cried, turning back to their companion. He seemed so close, only twenty feet away, but the crashing blocks did nothing to hide his fear.

“C’mon,” muttered Scorio, willing his friend to succeed. “You can do this.”

Leonis dismissed Nezzar, rubbed his palms together, ran his hand over his beard, then hunched. For a moment, Scorio lost sight of him, the blocks closing between them, but then he heard Leonis roar his defiance.

“He’s going for it!” cried Lianshi, scrambling up to her feet.

The blocks parted, and Leonis appeared in a dead sprint, eyes wide, pounding toward them as fast as he could go.

Time slowed. The first set of blocks crashed together behind him. The second set did the same. The third set parted just in time for him to rush through, and then he ran past the fourth set as they continued their retreat.

With a cry, he slammed into the wall, nearly bouncing off it, then turned to stare, glassy-eyed, at the blocks smashed together all at once like teeth being gnashed in fury.

“I did it,” he gasped, stunned, and then collected himself. “I did it!”

“You just ran right through?” Naomi’s incredulity was palpable. “That was your plan? Just… run?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” asked Leonis, smile shaky, then Lianshi grabbed him around the neck and hugged him tightly.

“It did work!” she said. “Brilliant!”

Naomi sniffed and turned to the door that had materialized beside them. “Scorio, you ready?”

“One moment,” he said, and exhaled. He closed his eyes and set to re-saturating his Heart. Again. Once more he felt a glimmer of bitterness, but he banished it and worked on the Coal mana in the room. Ignored the Copper, elusive and mercurial as it was. When his reservoir finally felt packed again, he gave another nod. “Let’s go.”

Naomi nodded curtly, touched her wounded hip in an almost absent-minded manner, and stretched up into her Nightmare Lady form. Tail coiled close behind her to avoid the ever-smashing blocks, she pressed through the archway into the blackness beyond, and was gone.

“Room six defeated,” said Leonis, catching his breath, a sheen of sweat gleaming on his brow. “Onto room seven.” And with that, he went through.

“We’re doing great,” said Lianshi, reaching out to squeeze Scorio’s arm, her smile nervous, encouraging. “We’re doing really, really well.”

“Don’t say that,” Scorio wanted to protest, her words somehow making him certain that tragedy awaited them in the next room. But then she stepped through the archway and was gone.

Deep breaths. A final glance at the smashing blocks, and then he, too, stepped through and into the seventh chamber.