Chapter 74

The room beyond was large, square, pitch dark, but otherwise empty. Standing close to the entry wall, Scorio scoured the confines for signs of danger. The floor was made of large, neatly joined flagstones, which also lined the lower half of the walls. The upper half of the walls and ceiling were featureless. The far wall seemed a good distance away, perhaps… fifty yards? Maybe more?

“No obvious danger,” said Lianshi, voice quiet in the grim hush of the dark room. “Now that I hate.”

They stood in silence, scrutinizing the space, till Leonis let out a grunt. “The far wall,” he said. “Look. Four niches.”

Leaning forward, narrowing his eyes as he focused his darkvision, Scorio saw that his friend was right. Four small alcoves were carved out of the wall, equally spaced, at head height. No taller than a foot, they looked somehow both innocuous and ominous at the same time.

“Great. Completely enigmatic and obviously very dangerous.” Leonis rubbed at his jaw. “Thoughts, anyone?”

“The size of the room makes me want to run across it,” said Lianshi cautiously. “At least, I can’t imagine crossing it slowly.”

“Lianshi, you should go first,” said the Nightmare Lady. “Whatever happens, you can resist it at least once.”

“True. Argh. At this rate, if I ever earn a title like the White Queen or The Woe, it’ll be The Test Subject.”

She rubbed her hands together, crouched, then ran forward, out into the broad, featureless room.

Scorio watched, intent, and saw a dark shape flitter forth from one of the alcoves. “Watch out!”

Lianshi’s body immediately took on its translucent sheen, but she was able to duck the projectile, some sort of rapidly revolving shape that blurred just past her head. She ran on, glancing behind her, her invincibility lasting a few seconds longer.

But the blurred shape didn’t hit the wall. It instead slowed, came to a stop a few yards shy of it, curved around, then whipped back toward her in a tight, perfect parabola.

“Behind you!” bellowed Leonis just as her iridescence winked out.

Lianshi threw herself into a forward dive just as a second shape flew forth. The first buzzed right through where she’d been a moment ago.

“We have to go!” cried Scorio, realizing that soon she’d be facing four of those attacks alone. He ran out, going wide, aware that the second blurring shape was stopping, dipping low, picking up speed as it skimmed along the ground back to where Lianshi crouched on all fours. “Up, Lianshi, it’s coming!”

But the first was wheeling back around even as a third shape flew forth. This one thrummed through the air right at Leonis.

Even with his broadened Emberling darkvision, it was nearly impossible to keep all the attacks in sight; Scorio ran but kept glancing around, trying to keep track of the three flying shapes, expecting a fourth at any second. It was like swinging a bull’s-eye lantern from side to side, its illumination partial, incredibly helpful, but also making the darkness around its light even more terrifying in comparison.

Leonis summoned Nezzar and swung it two-handed from his shoulder, the huge club connecting with the blurring shape just before it hit him. There was a burst of light and the shape detonated into fragments.

“Scorio!”

He couldn’t tell who’d screamed his name—Lianshi? But he dove as she’d done, down and into a forward roll, and something whirred over his head. He came up sprinting even as he nearly blacked out from the pain in his arms, and raced drunkenly toward the room’s far side, glancing back over his shoulder to see the fourth shape pause at the rear wall and come back for him.

The first two were bedeviling Lianshi and the Nightmare Lady, who destroyed one of them with a whipcrack of her tail.

On he ran, the shape coming in low, and with a wild cry, he leaped up at the last moment, felt the shape brush against his calf as it passed, splitting skin and muscle, and then it was gone.

He fell, stumbled, caught his balance, and ran the rest of the way to the far wall, touching its side and stepping up onto the ledge at roughly the same time the others did.

“Damn,” gasped Leonis, releasing Nezzar and sweeping his hand back through his sweat-matted locks. “No more sprinting!”

“Gah!” Lianshi slid down the wall and leaned her head back. “Too close. That would have been a massacre with Cinder-level darkvision.”

“Almost was, even with ours,” said Leonis. “Scorio? You all right?”

“Another cut,” he said, studying his leg. A laceration across the belly of his calf. How had it cut the back of his leg, but not gone through the rest of it? “It’s fine.”

“You’re going to fall apart at his rate,” said Lianshi, pushing off the wall to crawl over and tear the lower half of his pant leg off. She bound it around the wound tightly, then rapped his knee. “Stop getting hurt.”

“Easy for you to say, Miss Test Subject,” he said with a tired grin.

“I’m just getting this far because you all are doing the heavy lifting.” She pushed herself to standing and turned to the next dark door. “All right, room number ten. Some kind of elite fight, I’m guessing. I vote we take a good ten minutes to gather our strength then press on.”

“Seconded,” said Leonis, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes.

“Thirded,” said Naomi, who’d shrunk back to her human form, and lay down on her back where she draped an arm over her face. “Maybe make that an hour.”

“How are you holding up?” asked Lianshi, moving alongside her.

“Blood loss, is all.” Naomi didn’t shift her arm. “Feeling a little light-headed. And it hurts, obviously. And my leg is starting to act up on me. But otherwise doing great.”

“She must be worse off than we thought if she’s being funny,” said Leonis, tone grave. “Perhaps we shouldn’t wait that long.”

“Five minutes.” Scorio rested his badly burned arms gently atop his knees. “Just a moment to catch our breath. Then the next fight.”

Again they rested, the silence broken only by their breathing, and when Scorio realized how tempted he was to doze he forced himself to stand. “And that’s plenty of time. Up, everyone. We’ve random horrors to slaughter.”

“I miss our apartment,” said Lianshi. “Our bathing pool. My bed.”

“I miss the ruins,” said Naomi, slowly climbing to her feet, voice a little slurred. “How hospitable and lovely they are. The charming wildlife.”

“All right, now we really need to hurry,” said Leonis, staring at her in concern.

“What?” protested Naomi. “I’m… I’m being funny.”

“Exactly,” said Leonis.

“I’ll go first,” said Lianshi. “But this will most likely be a big fight like the end of the Char series. Don’t take long coming after me.”

“We won’t,” said Scorio, pouring Coal mana into his reservoir again. “Play it safe till we’re all there.”

She nodded, gathered her hair, flipped it behind one shoulder, then strode through the archway, chin lowered.

“I’m next,” said Leonis, tone weary, almost mechanical, and with Nezzar appearing in his hand, its runes burning brightly, he strode after her.

“You go last,” said the Nightmare Lady, who towered over him again, tail whipping from side to side. “Bad off as I am, you’re worse.”

“How about we go together?” And before she could protest, Scorio stepped into the darkness.

After the stark spaces they had fought through with their bleak illumination, the next chamber was startling. A mass of plinths filled the round chamber, each bedecked with an identical golden statue, slender and with articulated joints, a curved blade in each hand. The lighting was rich, roseate, seeming to come through invisible drapes so that some areas were suffused with warm illumination, others gradating to velvet shadow. The ceiling was high above them, barely visible, and the ground between the plinths covered in layered carpets that muffled their steps.

They all stood, frozen against the iron segment of curving wall through which they’d stepped. Too many statues, though Scorio in alarm. We can’t fight that many.

There had to be nearly fifty of them on the plinths of assorted height. They stood in different poses, some attacking, others in deep, defensive crouches, some lightly balanced on the balls of their feet as if in readiness, others in postures of all-out runs.

None of them moved. All of them gleamed like sunken treasure espied through murky water.

Each and every one of them was identical: perhaps five feet tall, their forms vaguely feminine, their heads topped with an ornate diadem in which rubies were embedded. A central emerald was placed in their brow, but their eyes were lost to curling latticework that swept down from their temples to flank their noses, the dark spaces between the filigree revealing their heads to be hollow.

And they weren’t entirely made of gold, either; their joints shone with steel parts, from their shoulders to their segmented fingers about the hilts of their blades. They stood like dancers awaiting the first strains of music that would sweep them to life, into a balletic performance that could only result in blood.

“Thoughts?” asked Leonis, breaking the silence.

“Reminds me of the Old Gauntlet,” said Scorio. “Where only a few would come to life, or as many as the number of contestants.”

“Yes.” Naomi had crossed in her Nightmare Lady form. “I think you’re right. This would be a surprise to any who hadn’t done what we’d done.”

“Then…?” Lianshi sighed. “I guess I’ll walk through and wait to get attacked?”

“Take point,” said Scorio, “but don’t go so far that we can’t come to your aid.”

“Sure.” Lianshi pushed away from the wall and passed, hesitatingly, between the first plinths. The golden statues, ornate and imperial, lithe and strangely horrifying, remained utterly still.

Scorio watched, breath bated, as Lianshi did a slow loop about the plinths closest to them, her gaze flickering from side to side, her breathing light, rapid, superficial.

“A little deeper, then,” said Scorio when she returned. “We’ll all press in a bit with you.”

Which they did; leaving the wall, they took a dozen steps into the large room, and then waited as Lianshi did another lap, a broad curve which brought her close to the center of the room.

“There!” shouted the Nightmare Lady, pointing off to the side. Scorio barely had time to catch an uncoiling of limbs, one of the statues bending its knees slightly before it flicked itself up into a preposterous leap like that of a grasshopper, sudden, blurringly fast. Lianshi spun, searching for the opponent, but raised her iridescent shield regardless, and that saved her life.

The statue dropped down soundlessly behind her, the carpets absorbing the sound of its golden feet, and stabbed Lianshi in the side with one blade as it hewed the other across her neck.

Lianshi recoiled, unhurt, and the golden face registered no emotion at its attack’s failure. Instead, it leaped again, a sudden, mechanical burst of flight that carried it somersaulting into the air to land deeper in the room amidst the other plinths and statues.

Scorio rushed up beside Lianshi, breathing deeply, the pain in his side throbbing, his arms feeling like their flesh had been replaced with live coals. Leonis held Nezzar at the ready, while the Nightmare Lady leaped atop a tall plinth close by and hung off the immobile statue, peering in the direction their foe had gone.

“I can probably see her,” she said. “But she’s standing still. There are several empty plinths. All she needs to do is stand on one and she’ll blend in.”

“Great,” said Leonis. “Given how fast it moves, how are we going to catch it?”

“Here’s an idea,” said Scorio, stepping to a low plinth with its accompanying statue. He placed his hand on its shoulder, painfully aware of the twin blades, and shoved.

The statue was surprisingly light; it rocked back, easily knocked off-balance, then fell to the carpeted ground, form stiff, maintaining its posture.

“I approve,” said the Nightmare Lady, and shoved the statue on her own plinth. It fell easily and lay upturned against the neighboring plinth, legs extending into the air.

“Careful,” said Lianshi. “We don’t know that one of these won’t animate as well.”

“Then let me do the work,” said the Nightmare Lady, and with a whipcrack of her tail knocked the next statue clean of its pedestal. “You watch for the next attack.”

Scorio held his Heart at saturation, every once in a while sweeping in more mana to replenish his reserves, and watched for signs of movement as the Nightmare Lady set to toppling statues.

None of them moved to defend themselves. Soon over a dozen lay haphazardly strewn over the carpeted floor, somehow pathetic for their awkward and vulnerable postures.

“Let’s move deeper,” said the Nightmare Lady, breathing deeply. Which was odd; this amount of activity shouldn’t have winded her already. “Don’t want to leave you all behind.”

They stepped toward the center of the chamber, and the Nightmare Lady knocked statues off as they went. Still nothing, and Scorio began to fear that the statues could animate at random; what rule stated that it would always be the same one that attacked them? He searched the air above them for a hint of a falling figure and saw nothing.

Another clang rang out as the Nightmare Lady’s tail impacted a statue’s chest, knocking it clean off the plinth. “This room should have been dark. That would have made these surprise attacks all the more dangerous against Cinders.”

“Still plenty dangerous,” said Lianshi, eyes scouring the dark space above them. “I never saw those attacks coming.”

The Nightmare Lady turned to her, her monstrous expression taking on a mocking cast, even as she swayed on the uneven carpeting. “And how much damage did that attack do—”

Then she stiffened as a curved blade emerged smoothly through her chest, its steel length marbled with black blood.

Scorio ignited his Heart faster than he’d ever done, not even thinking about the act. His angle of approach was wrong; the plinth and the Nightmare Lady were between him and the assassin, so he ran out wide to come around the pedestal even as he heard Leonis’s roar and Lianshi’s cry of anguish.

The golden statuette had stepped back, its movements wary, head turning rapidly in minute shifts from side to side. It flexed its knees and Scorio leaped, clawed hand snaking out as the assassin leaped for the skies.

He was just in time—his fingers closed around its slender ankle, more by luck than design, and he felt his arm nearly torn from his shoulder by the force of the leap. Still, he hung on, and the statuette crashed back down to the ground, suddenly writhing and lashing out like a tipped-over praying mantis.

Scorio lost his grip on its leg, but then Leonis was there, charging into view, to bring Nezzar down with punitive force on the statuette’s flailing limbs.

Gold warped, distended. The statuette made no sound, sought instead to slash at Leonis who clobbered it straight in the chest, caving in the hollow cuirass.

The damage didn’t affect the statuette; it slashed again, this time at Leonis’s ankles, forcing him to hop back.

Scorio lunged, timing his attack just right, and brought both sets of glowing claws down upon the assassin’s regal, disinterested features. The gold melted as his claws punched through, and with a wrench, he tore the head clean off.

Immediately the statuette collapsed and lay still.

“Watch out for other attacks!” barked Leonis, turning in a rapid circle, but no other foes moved to engage them.

“Naomi,” hissed Scorio, rising to his feet to hurry to where she lay, head on Lianshi’s lap, shrinking down into her human form.

“Damn,” said Naomi, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. “Stabbed in the back while lecturing. Not… not the best…”

Lianshi’s eyes glimmered with tears. Leonis stood guard over them, leaving Scorio to drop to his knees beside her. He wanted to take her hand, but his own would have slashed her to ribbons. Instead, he clenched his jaw and studied her waxen features.

“We’ve made it ten rooms in,” said Naomi, voice growing fainter. “You need at least another five, Scorio. Lianshi. Leonis. Make sure… make sure he…”

“We will,” said Lianshi, reaching down to curl Naomi’s hair from her brow. “Rest. We’ll see you soon.”

Naomi’s gaze settled on Scorio, and she forced a smile, her teeth outlined in red. “You can do this. I know you can. See you… soon.”

She blinked several times, lids growing heavy, and then seemed to sag, her breath stilling. For a moment they remained thus, a frozen tableau of grief, then Naomi faded away, leaving only a sopping stain in the carpets beneath where she’d lain.

“Damn it,” said Scorio, biting back the irrational grief and fury. She wasn’t dead, but her loss still hurt him worse than he could have imagined. “Damn it!”

“Come on,” said Leonis, voice rough. “Door’s appeared. That was the only one.”

“Give me a moment.” Scorio let his scaled form disappear, and with its departure felt the pain and weakness come crashing back. “Just need to gather… gather some mana back in.”

“We have time,” said Lianshi softly. “Now more than ever we need to be careful.”

Leonis relinquished Nezzar and then sat against a plinth, thick forearms resting over his knees. Together they rested in silence, catching their breath. Scorio stared at the bloodstain. Without Naomi, their chances of proceeding deep into the Gauntlet had dropped precipitously. He felt lost without her, bereft; only now did he realize how much he’d come to depend on her authority, her assertiveness, her incredible powers as the Nightmare Lady.

“Emberling-level rooms next,” said Lianshi softly. “Things are going to get really hard now.”

Leonis was grimly replacing the bandage on his thigh; the first had grown completely saturated with blood. “I’m trying to think of something positive to say. Give me a moment.”

Scorio snorted and studied his own ruined forearms. His bad wrist and hand joined the insistent drumbeat of pain that throbbed with each beat of his heart, and became part of the larger tapestry of wounds formed by the cut across the back of his calf and the gash in his side.

Lianshi was studying him soberly. “Don’t lose heart, Scorio. We’ve still got a ways to go.”

He wanted to protest, say that he wasn’t losing courage, but the pain was sapping his will. His arms felt as if he’d plunged them briefly into boiling water. He wanted nothing so much as to close his eyes and fall asleep, to drink heavily of some numbing alcohol, anything to place a distance between him and the wounds. But only his Emberling form offered him any solace. “I never thought I’d complain about being an Emberling, but I could use a much faster rate of healing right now.”

“Come on,” said Leonis, getting to his feet with a grunt, wounded leg stiff. “I’m ready to be positive. Want to hear a short speech?”

“Sure,” said Lianshi, unable to resist a smile.

“Then here it is: we’re doing far better than we know. We’re about to enter the Emberling rooms with three of our number, one of whom is completely unharmed. We’ve tactics that work. We’ve wills that won’t break. Naomi sacrificed greatly to get us here, and now each room we pass is one we defeat in her name, for her honor. So no complaints. No weakness. The greatest challenges lie before us, and we’ve spent every waking minute—well, almost every waking minute—preparing ourselves for just this moment.” Leonis grinned at them, somehow making Scorio feel complicit in the large man’s humor, part of the joke. “After all we’ve survived and overcome, will we lose heart now? No, my friends. We won’t. For I am the Golden King, and I will do honor to my ancestors at any cost. Let’s show this Gauntlet what we’re made of and crush every obstacle it throws our way.”

“I like it!” said Lianshi, rising smoothly to her feet. “That was actually pretty good. I’m feeling cautiously optimistic.”

“Only cautiously?” Leonis scowled. “I was hoping for cheers by the end of it.”

“Hurray,” said Scorio and Lianshi together in mock enthusiasm, and when Leonis rolled his eyes and turned away, they shared a look of genuine mirth.

“Here,” said Lianshi, extending him a hand. “Get up, old man.”

“Show more respect,” said Scorio, accepting her help. He limped a bit on his wounded leg, then carefully put weight on it. “Reincarnated Great Souls these days, I tell you.”

Leonis had moved up to the black archway that had appeared in the far wall. “Next room should be a trap, right? First room in a new level?”

“And an Emberling level trap at that,” said Lianshi, moving up beside him. “I’ll go first. Probably best to immediately sidestep or the like when you go through.”

“Agreed,” said Scorio, refilling his reservoir with Coal mana. “See you on the other side.”

Lianshi took a deep breath, raised both eyebrows as she pursed her lips, then stepped through before exhaling.

Leonis gave Scorio an affirming nod, then followed after.

Scorio exhaled shakily, was about to step through, but then paused to look back between the plinths and fallen gleaming statues to where Naomi’s dark blood still stained the rugs. He felt his resolve harden, then plunged into the darkness.