Chapter 73

The stench in the next room was acrid, a pungent, burning smell that immediately caused Scorio to recoil and wrap his good arm over his mouth and nose. Eyes watering, he realized that he’d stepped through and onto a narrow ledge; beyond it, a forest of narrow stone stilts arose from a swirling pool of faintly luminous green liquid some fifty feet below, fumes rising noxiously from the eddying surface.

“Gah,” he protested into his sleeve, turning to glance at his friends. Lianshi was equally dismayed, but the Nightmare Lady seemed unperturbed. “Now they’re throwing stinky rooms at us? That’s just underhand.”

“Look,” said the Nightmare Lady, pointing a curved talon.

Scorio saw a cluster of leathery beasts hanging upside down from the rafters that crossed the ceiling, each perhaps three feet long, their wicked talons punched into the wood, their heads hidden behind their black wings.

“Great.” Scorio winced as he lowered his arm. “So we have to navigate over these poles to the far side of the room while fending off those creatures?”

“Ravenna would deal with them right from here,” said Lianshi, as Leonis stepped through and immediately gagged. “But we’ve no long-ranged attacks.”

“That’s what we get for all being heart-centered fools,” said Scorio, turning to examine the stilts. They were a uniform six inches or so across, rose to uneven heights, some clustered closely together, others standing in splendid isolation. “Look, see there? If you follow where the poles are closely gathered, they form a kind of winding path.”

“Making it twice as long to cross the room,” said the Nightmare Lady.

“More room for error.” Leonis had summoned Nezzar and propped it now on his shoulder. “If one of those… bats? Whatever they are, knock us off our pole, there’s a chance to grab at another.”

“They’ll have more time to knock us off, if we take the long way,” said the Nightmare Lady again.

“Or we could just focus on killing them,” said Scorio. “Then cross slowly and safely.”

Lianshi grimaced through the haze at where the beasts hung. “You’re assuming they only attack with their claws. What if they can, I don’t know, spit acid at us or the like?”

“Then this will be the room in which we die,” said Leonis with faux cheerfulness. “But I say we move slowly, carefully, and try to kill them as we go. If we find that to be a bad plan, then we just cross the room as quickly as possible.”

The Nightmare Lady stretched, reaching for the ceiling, then winced and recoiled down protectively over her wounded hip. “I’ll cross first. Draw their attention. You three make your way over when you see them focused on me.”

Scorio wanted to protest, but she was the most adept at this kind of terrain. “Fine. But no heroics. You find yourself overwhelmed, either make for the door or retreat to us.”

“How steady are these stilts?” Leonis reached out with Nezzar and tapped the closest one. The column shivered slightly but didn’t sway; immediately, however, the bat-like monsters stirred. “Steady enough.”

“Let’s go,” said Lianshi. “My eyes are starting to burn.”

The Nightmare Lady pointed. “I’ll go wide to the left. You head to the right along the denser area.”

“All right. Good luck out there.” Scorio paused, a second from igniting his Heart, and watched the Nightmare Lady as she moved as far down the ledge as she could before nimbly leaping out to the first pole.

She landed neatly, and several things happened at once.

For one, the pole immediately began to sink rapidly, forcing the Nightmare Lady to leap again. The second was the explosion of screeches that came from the bat-like creatures, who unfurled their wings and dropped into the air, revealing not furry, rat-like bodies, but rather bloated, baby-like torsos, their heads bulbous, eyes almost hidden between fat folds of flesh, their skin pitted, their mouths distending as they shrieked.

“Go!” shouted Scorio, igniting his Heart and leaping for the first pole, embracing his power so that his form warped mid-jump. He landed nimbly atop the narrow pole, and only his expectation that it would sink allowed him to keep his balance. The winged baby—monster—things swooped down at the Nightmare Lady, buffeting at her and lashing out with their claws. Out of the corner of his eye, Scorio saw her whip her tail at them as she scampered across the poles, leaping from one to the next with her incredible agility.

Scorio focused on his own path. Even in his enhanced form, the way was treacherous. Fortunately, the poles began to rise the moment he stepped off them, giving his companions a means to follow, but he hurried on, occasionally being forced to leap more than a yard from one narrow pole to the next, painfully aware of the huge drop into the green, glowing fluid below.

The Nightmare Lady screamed. Scorio glanced over, and saw her fall, only to catch hold of the pole as if it were a tree trunk, her talons sinking into the ancient stone. It continued its descent, but she simply leaped from it to the next, grabbing its body in a similar fashion. The winged monsters, prevented from getting at her by the profusion of poles, vented their frustration with more shrieks and then flew at the three of them.

“Here they come!” shouted Scorio and moved quicker, taking more daring leaps, striving to not use the more obvious poles to save them for his friends. Heart hammering, he lurched from one to the next, then ducked as the first fiend flew down at him.

Reflexively he flailed at it with his good arm, and nearly overbalanced as his claws connected; the impact nearly knocked him over, such was his surprise at striking true. The baby monster burst into green liquid, as if its bloated body were little more than a thin skin stretched to breaking over its oozing innards.

A blanket of white, enervating light settled over his shoulder, arm, and side, and he felt his robes burning away, felt his flesh begin to smolder and sear. With a cry he yanked his upper robe off, his movements clumsy with his bad arm, his whole body swaying atop his sinking pillar, but then he had the acid-soaked garment off and tossed it away, to drop flapping and burning to the pool far below.

“Scorio, jump!” shouted Lianshi, and with a jerk, he saw that he’d already dropped some ten feet. Around him were the pitted and scored sides of the pillars. Panicked, he leaped at the closest one, sank his claws into its surface, and wrapped his legs around it at the same time.

Immediately it began to sink.

Desperate, he wrapped his wounded arm about it, his hand useless but the arm itself still functioning, and sought to lurch up, stab his claws in deeper, climb higher.

Overhead the baby monsters screeched, flapped their wings, and dove again and again at his friends. They clearly wished to come to his aid, but ignoring the fiends for even a moment would be lethal.

Then, from the side, he saw the Nightmare Lady come leaping toward him, looking like some demented, monstrous squirrel as she navigated the poles with ease. Scorio was already some twenty feet down, and with a grunt he surged up again, reaching with his claws before slamming them home and pulling himself up.

Not enough. He’d never climb faster than he was dropping at his rate, but then the Nightmare Lady was there, her hand closing about his upper arm, hauling him off the pillar and scrambling up the next pole as it began to descend.

They reached the pillar’s top, which was still below its original level. The Nightmare Lady leaped to the next, set to scaling it again, her strength seeming indefatigable. A roar of pain from Leonis. Up they climbed, then she reached the pillar’s top again and from it leaped, twisting her body to hurl Scorio so that he flew and crashed against the far wall to drop with a thud to the ledge.

The pain in his wounded wrist throbbed and his good arm and side stung badly from the acid burns, but he ignored it all to rise to his knees and stare back out over the poles.

Leonis had slipped, now lying across the top of a pole, Nezzar gone, Lianshi helping him rise as she ignored talons scraping across her back uselessly.

Then the Nightmare Lady was there, bursting up from below to beat the baby fiends away with the flat of her blade, its reach such that the resultant acid explosion failed to fall upon them.

Together they hauled Leonis up, and Scorio watched, breath stilled, as they navigated the rest of the way over and finally made the ledge.

Upon doing so, the remaining bat babies screeched petulant disgust and winged away. The last of the poles returned to their original height, and all was still.

“You’re a lifesaver, Naomi,” gasped Leonis, sinking against the wall.

The Nightmare Lady made no answer. She, too, sank into a crouch, and Scorio saw with alarm that her thigh gleamed with black blood. Her hip wound had torn open even wider.

“Damn,” he said. “Leonis, your robe.”

Without questioning the big man pulled it off. Scorio and Lianshi set to tearing it and tightly binding the Nightmare Lady’s waist, but the wound was placed in too awkward an angle to be effectively staunched.

“We’d best hurry,” said the Nightmare Lady, voice subdued. “I’m losing strength.”

“Damn it,” said Scorio, frustration and anger coursing through him. “Fine. One moment as I gather my strength.”

Never had he felt such rage at his own limitations. Every second he took sweeping more Coal into his Heart cost the Nightmare Lady more blood. Finally, he nodded. “Let’s go.”

Leonis rose, summoned Nezzar, but Lianshi touched his shoulder. “Let me. I can withstand any immediate accidents on the other side, remember?”

The big man nodded grudging acceptance and stepped aside.

A deep breath, then Lianshi passed through the dark doorway and was gone.

“I’m next,” growled Leonis, and followed a moment after.

Scorio felt a pang of despair at the sight of the ridiculous robe bandage wrapped around the Nightmare Lady’s angular hips. “Hang in there.” Before she could protest, he stepped through.

Darkness, nothingness, and then he emerged from a central column of crude iron into the well-lit crossroads between four hallways. The column was the center of the hub; each hallway was narrow, dark, still.

No—a flickering green light was approaching, bobbing, eerie and murky. He sharpened his darkvision and saw a figure approaching them down the hallway’s length; a large man, easily the size of Leonis, bare-chested but for a leather strap that crossed over his pectorals to hold a baldric in place over his shoulder. Armored plates ran down each arm, and he held a dagger in one blocky fist and a spear in the other.

But it was his head that held Scorio’s attention: a green crystal had been slammed through his skull, punching through the upper half of his face, destroying it utterly, and emerging from the back. Leather straps cruelly bound twin tusks to either side of his head, an aspect that appeared almost ceremonial, and his thin lips were pulled wide into a distended sneer.

“One in each hallway,” said Leonis, tone terse. “All approaching.”

Glances to each side proved him right; identical men were closing in on the hub and its column, unhurried, their leers provocative, the green crystals rammed through their skulls glowing with eerie light.

The Nightmare Lady emerged, and immediately Scorio felt reassured by her presence.

“Foes coming down each hallway,” he said quickly. “Don’t know what the crystals do.”

“I’m on it!” said Lianshi and darted down the hallway before her.

“Damnit, Lianshi!” cursed Leonis, rushing after her, Nezzar appearing in his hand.

The Nightmare Lady grabbed Scorio by the shoulder and thrust him into the same hall, then turned to guard its entrance as she slowly retreated backward.

Green light flared, illuminating the crude hallway luridly. Lianshi let out a cry that was more surprise than pain, and Scorio saw her standing, arms crossed before her face, her form iridescent, as the beam of light that had burst from the fiend’s cranial crystal died away.

Leonis let out a guttural roar, shoved past her, and stabbed Nezzar forward like a blade, hammering its blunt end at the man’s visage.

But then the three others appeared at the mouth of the tunnel, and each of their three crystals began to burn brightly.

“Watch out!” shouted Scorio, summoning his scaled form and knocking the Nightmare Lady aside.

She was surprisingly light; caught off-balance, she stumbled aside, and then he pressed his forearms together before his face, hunched behind his arms, and closed his eyes as the world burst into viridian light.

The pain was astonishing. It felt as if molten metal had been poured over his bare skin. He cried out, staggered back, but then the light faded away, leaving motes of afterimages dancing in his eyes as he gasped.

Movement. The Nightmare Lady flung herself forward, claws raking, tail stabbing. The three men weren’t defenseless, however; they quickly gave ground, stabbed at her with their spears, tried to retreat to the central hub.

The sound of fighting came from behind Scorio, but he ignored it, shoved aside the stunning, all-consuming pain that suffused his arms, and let out a desperate cry as he ran forward to help the Nightmare Lady.

She’d used her tail to behead two of the spears, clasped the third just behind the blade, and yanked its wielder forward to punch his crystal right out the back of his head. The other two fiends pressed in, discarding their spears to bring their curved knives to bear. In the confines of the tunnel, a knife fight would be disastrous. Scorio barreled past the Nightmare Lady as she turned to deal with the threat, and ignoring the outrageous pain in his good arm—if it even qualified as such any longer—he swept his claws across the blades, knocking them aside, then barreled the two large men back into the iron hub.

What followed must have taken place in only a couple of seconds. They formed a triangle, tightly pressed together, claws and knifes flickering and stabbing, Scorio using his bad arm as a wretched shield, simply waving it before each knife thrust to deflect the wicked points as he raked and slashed with his talons, each hit causing the flesh to bubble and cauterize.

Heavy gasping, his weight on his heels, then back on the balls of his feet, a side shift as he dodged a thrust, a wild parry with his arm, though somehow the blade cut through his scales. A grunt as he ducked, then a surge as he pushed forward, under the man’s arm to slam his talons into his armpit, through ribs, and into something soft and spongy.

Movement, a black, segmented snake shot past his shoulder to bury its triangular head deep in the lower half of the other man’s face, punching through teeth and the back of his throat to burst out in a welter of gore and slam into the central column.

Both men went down, one with a scream, the second a gurgle, then Scorio collapsed against the wall, turning so that he’d not hit it with his arms, and slid to the ground.

“You all right?” asked the Nightmare Lady, her tail chopping at the fallen men again and again as she crouched before him, her focus total, her tail seemingly animated by a malevolent will of its own.

“Fine,” he said. “Though that may be…” He paused, blinked. Tried again. “May be aspirational thinking.”

“Your arms,” hissed the Nightmare Lady, taking him by the wrists and turning them about, so that the backs of his hands touched, and he could see the outside of his forearms. The black scales were melted, reduced to gray slag here and there, exposing burned flesh in ragged spots.

Scorio stared at the damage numbly. The pain was huge but somehow removed, as if it existed in another dimension, was locked behind a door deep within his soul. “Not good.”

“Not good,” agreed the Nightmare Lady, then set his arms down to press her taloned fingers gently against his side where a deep gash had slid past his guard. “This is deep but not fatal. We’ll bind you up.”

“The other two?”

“Fine,” rumbled Leonis, stepping out of the tunnel, Nezzar propped on his shoulder, immaculate of whatever gore may have stained it a second ago. “But you’re looking in rough shape, my friend.”

“Might skip my dancing lessons tonight,” Scorio said and forced a grin. “I’m fine, otherwise.”

“Ouch,” winced Lianshi, crouching beside him and reaching out hesitantly with her fingertips to his arms. “Can you work your hands?”

“Not this one,” he said, gesturing at his bad hand, its swollen wrist, the sausage-like fingers. “But this one? Let’s see.” And he raised his formerly good arm and worked the fingers slowly. “There. Good as new.”

The Nightmare Lady’s green eyes narrowed. “You’ll be playing it safe from now on.”

“Agreed,” said Lianshi. She’d not taken more than a scratch to the cheek, and though she appeared nervous she was thus far performing the best of them all. “We’ll take point from now on.”

“We’re only on the—what—eighth room?” Scorio wanted to spit. “I can’t already be out of the game.”

“You’re not,” said the Nightmare Lady, and with a wince, she rose and stretched her taloned hand out to him. Her robe bandage, he saw, had fallen away, and her wound was ragged and wide. How was she ignoring that pain? “Come on, before we all fall apart.”

He took her hand, stood, and then hissed at the stabbing pain in his side. Inhaled deeply, straightened his back, and did his best to put his wounds out of his mind. “The door?”

“In the column,” said Lianshi, stepping past him to where a black portal had appeared in the iron curvature. “Everyone ready?”

“A moment,” said Scorio, letting his scaled form drop away and focusing his mind on gathering mana once more. For a spell they stood thus in silence, everyone gathering their strength, and then he nodded to her. “Ready.”

“That was more than a Cinder challenge,” muttered Leonis as he rolled his head about his neck, causing it to crack several times.

“No,” said Naomi, who’d eschewed her Nightmare Lady form for a moment. “Think about it. None of us died. But that would have crushed a group of Cinders. We’re still on track.”

“Fine. Then I for one am growing less enthused about entering the Emberling rooms,” said Leonis.

“Me too,” said Lianshi, then took a deep breath. “Here I go!”

And she stepped through the archway, into the darkness beyond.