Chapter 75

The room beyond was broad, low-ceilinged, and otherwise featureless. Pools of sterile white light slowly moved about the floor without an obvious source, bringing into stark relief the massive flagstones. The far wall was a stone’s throw away, innocuous, and all the more unsettling for being so.

“No niches, no alcoves, nothing,” said Lianshi, voice tense. “This Emberling trap’s got me all spooked.”

“One way to find out what they’ve got in store for us,” said Leonis. “Ladies first?”

“Joke’s getting old,” said Lianshi, pushing away from the wall and tentatively stepping forth. “Though the ground. Those big flagstones. Anybody else sense… something off about them?”

“Off, how?” asked Scorio, studying the flagstone immediately before him. It was roughly textured but otherwise looked to be made of solid stone.

“Just a feeling. Like… different densities in the air,” said Lianshi, hesitating. “Reach out with your Emberling sense.”

Scorio frowned, did so, and realized what she meant. Ahead of them, static and almost waiting for them, was a sense of weight in the air, hovering over some of the flagstones. As if the stone itself were pulling at his senses.

“Yes,” breathed Leonis. “I see what you mean. Avoid those, then?”

“Would have been hell to try this without our Emberling senses,” said Lianshi, moving out wide to avoid the first invisible source of weight. “Even now I can barely pick up on—”

The wall to her left bulged, a shape pushing through the stone as if it were a sheet of cloth, and then a gray, insectoid creature extruded itself and oriented on Lianshi. It was the size of a large dog, but its body was that of a spider, with a child’s torso emerging from where the head should be. The child’s face was featureless, a curved expanse of stone, but wavering snakes surrounded this blankness like a serpentine halo.

Lianshi froze, watching intently, but the spider-child made no move to rush her; instead, it rose to angle its abdomen at her, pointing what looked like spinnerets, from which it loosed a great, glistening stream of webbing.

“Lianshi!” roared Leonis, rushing forth.

Scorio ran forward as well, going out wide to avoid the area of density before him. Lianshi’s form went iridescent, making her invulnerable, but that did nothing to stop the webbing from wrapping around her, and immediately the spider-child began to haul her toward it.

Leonis raised Nezzar high as he reached the webbing and clubbed at the thick strands, but they only stretched beneath it, so that he pounded them to the ground without much effect.

Igniting his Heart, Scorio reached them a moment later and swiped his claws through the strands, slicing through with ease. Lianshi let out a cry as she staggered back, tearing at the webbing in desperation.

“Stand still,” shouted Scorio, moving to help her, but she was frantic, her eyes wide as she clawed at the filaments from within. Staggering, her body still glimmering with its invulnerability, she let out a strangled cry of horror, and then her feet went out from under her.

“No!” Scorio lunged forward, letting go of his scaled form so that he could clasp her wrist with his good hand as the flagstone behind her disappeared, becoming a funnel that led straight down into nothingness.

Worse yet was the pull it exerted on Lianshi. A terrible, unnaturally strong suction that brooked no denial. Lianshi stared at Scorio through the veil of webbing over her face, kicking her feet as she tried to find traction on the sloping funnel floor, but the surface was slick, and she only managed to scrabble within her torn cocoon.

Leonis was battling the creature behind them, and Scorio felt the burns and cuts in his arm begin to scream, the agony mounting as he fought to hold to his rim of normal ground just outside the funnel’s treacherous declivity.

Lianshi’s gleaming power flickered and disappeared. Her feet kicked uselessly at the depths of the funnel, and she fought to catch hold of Scorio’s arm. He let out a cry as his grip began to weaken, and then ignited his Heart again. Or tried to. He needed just a bit more mana, and in wretched horror set to sweeping more of the thick Coal that hung about them into his reservoir.

“Scorio!” Lianshi’s voice was breathless, terrified, heartbreaking.

“Hold… on…” he grimaced. Where was Leonis? He felt himself sliding forward, the funnel’s pull drawing him into its field. He was too hurt to hold on. But he couldn’t let go. Just a little more mana. Again and again, he tried to ignite, and again and again, he felt his Heart almost incandesce.

“I believe in you!” Lianshi cried as her hand slipped free of his own, and then she slid down the funnel and was consumed by its dark core.

For a moment Scorio just lay there, eyes wide, shocked, his own hand outstretched, his blood staining the stone floor; then he willed his Heart to ignite, and this time it did, roaring into flame. His outstretched hand changed, became clothed in black scales, his long talons burning white-hot. What had he thought to do—bury his talons into her? Hook her like some fish, and prevent her from slipping away, no matter the cost?

Leonis gave a shout behind him, and Scorio snapped back to the present. Bounced to his feet, his wounds and pain belonging to another man, and wheeled to see Leonis wrestling with the spider-child, who’d snared his forearm and was now reeling him closer.

Closer to another flagstone of dark density, an illusion, Scorio realized, over another funnel-trap.

With a cry he leaped forward and slashed the webbing away, allowing Leonis to stagger back in relief, and then he ran around the huge flagstone. The spider-child oriented on him, but Scorio came in too fast and low; its next cast flew over him entirely, missing, and then Scorio reached the wall. He leaped up at the spider-child as it skittered higher up the wall, and slashed its head clear off as he passed, claws sliding through its featureless head as if it were made of cream.

The spider fiend fell off the wall to spasm on the ground, and Scorio landed heavily, staggered, then turned to where Leonis was staring, aghast, at the funnel that had consumed Lianshi.

“To the far side!” shouted Scorio, forcing his legs to move, running around the other traps, giving each area of density a wide berth. “Come on!”

Leonis forced himself into a limping run, and a few moments later they reached the far wall.

“She’s gone,” said Leonis, tone numb.

“I’m sorry.” Scorio couldn’t hold his scaled form any longer, sinking back into his human shape and its accompanying pain. “I tried to pull her free. I tried.”

“Damn it,” whispered Leonis, wiping a shaking hand over his brow. “I thought… I mean, I know it was irrational, but with her power, I thought she’d last the longest…”

“Didn’t help her,” said Scorio grimly, forcing himself to stand straight and suck in deep lungfuls of air. The urge to sit, to close his eyes, was intense. “Tripped her up, in fact. She relied on it when she should have dodged.”

“She did her best,” said Leonis, face flushing as he rounded on Scorio. “Don’t belittle her—”

“I’m not,” said Scorio, cutting his friend off sharply. “At all. You know how much I love and respect her. But that’s just what happened. Wrong reflex and it cost her.”

They stood thus in silence for a spell, then Leonis nodded reluctantly and rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry. You’re right.”

“One room down,” said Scorio. “Come on. I don’t want to linger. Let’s just press on.”

“Fine by me.” Leonis shifted his weight on his good leg. “Together, then?”

“Together.” Scorio swept more mana into his reservoir, pushing himself cruelly, saturating as quickly as he could, and refused to think of how he might have saved Lianshi if he’d been able to ignite quicker. For a moment he wanted to explain to Leonis, to castigate himself, but he crushed the impulse.

A deep breath, a second, and then he nodded. “Let’s go.”

They plunged into the darkness, and emerged into a rough, natural cavern, utterly without light, its walls close, the length of it narrowing into a tunnel. But there was no time for further study—a host of small forms swarmed immediately toward them, filling his field of darkvision.

He caught glimpses of bat-wing ears, ragged, fang-filled mouths so wide they nearly split the creature’s heads in twain, lash-like tails, talons, and claws. Scrawny to the point of emaciated, their eyes burning crimson, they fell upon Leonis and him in a flood, their high-pitched screeches conveying hunger, delight, rage.

Scorio bolted up into his Emberling shape, the ruined scales rushing over his arms, across his shoulders, and even as his claws emerged, he slashed them widely through the attacking creatures before him—the same fiends that Leonis had destroyed so easily in the second chamber.

But there had been four of those then; now they came at the pair of them without number, an endless swarm, racing out of a distant tunnel, streaming to join the crowd that pressed him and Leonis back against the iron wall.

Leonis shouted and swung Nezzar; the weapon shattered and crushed, knocked small bodies flying, but more lunged in the second the club had scythed past.

Scorio swung and lashed out with his searing claws, keeping his guard up, slashed at hideous faces, tore hands off arms, swiped through knees and thighs, occasionally side-stepped as a small fiend hurled itself bodily at him, only to crash into the iron wall and fall back.

Leonis was singing some desperate song, a battle chant that faltered again as he grunted or barked his anger, and seemed to be slowly moving away from Scorio. The press of bodies was pushing them apart.

Realizing this, Scorio began to force his way back, but he had precious little control over the battle; each second was its own distinct thing of horror, one of the endless flashes of darkvision-fueled moments filled with grinning maws, burning eyes, lunging claws, the press of wizened bodies.

Again and again, he cut, and even in his Emberling form, he felt his stamina begin to wane, his strength to flag. The stench of burned meat filled the air, and a mound of bodies began to form before him, becoming a ramp off which the reinforcements hurled themselves at him.

Scorio ducked toward Leonis, who had ceased singing and was now just crying out in rage. Didn’t even have time to glance in the big man’s direction. The nicks and cuts were adding up, the small creatures wounding him over and over. No single attack was devastating, but the toll was debilitating, and Scorio knew he’d not be able to hold his Emberling form for much longer.

This was it. Any second now he’d resume his human form, and die.

Desperate, sweat and blood blinding him, Scorio snarled in defiance, swung, slashed, tore—

“Scorio! Hold on!” A tornado smashed through the assembled ranks before him, Leonis roaring as he swung Nezzar, bulling his way through the crowd as a half-dozen fiends clung to him, rode his back, their fangs buried in his shoulders, his neck.

Nezzar destroyed them. That one terrible swing alone must have sent a score of them to their death, but Leonis couldn’t maintain his momentum. More fiends leaped atop him, clung to his legs, and with a cry, he dropped to one knee, using Nezzar as a support to keep from falling over altogether.

But his charge had broken the overwhelming press; Scorio plunged forward, stepping over the wounded and dying, and set to murdering the fiends clinging to his friend with vicious, efficient swipes of his claws. Flesh parted before his talons, the last fiend taking a chunk out of Leonis’s back as it died, and then Scorio reeled back, gasping, blinking sweat from his eyes, to realize that there were no more.

Leonis gasped, released Nezzar, and fell to all fours. Unable to hold to his Emberling form any longer, Scorio sank back into his human guise and dropped beside his friend. His robes were so torn that they hung off his frame in ribbons, while blood poured from countless gouges, lacerations, and bite wounds.

With a grunt, Leonis toppled over onto his side, rolled onto his back, and lay there staring at the ceiling, blinking in a daze as his chest labored.

Scorio glanced across the cavern floor. Just how many of the fiends had Leonis killed? But each mortal sweep of his hexagonal club had cost him, opened his guard, and it looked like he’d suffered a wound for every fiend he’d killed.

“Damn,” said the massive man, finally focusing his gaze on Scorio and forcing a smile. “Look like the little bastards got me again.”

Scorio felt his throat swell up and took Leonis’s bloody hand. “You got ‘em first, though. They’re all dead.”

“And,” began Leonis, but then his breath caught and he struggled to clear his throat. He turned his head, spat blood, and looked back to Scorio. “And I got a room further than… Lianshi. She’ll never live it down. I won’t let her.”

Scorio felt his eyes burn as he stared down at his brutalized friend. He might even have survived the countless small wounds were it not for two deep bites into his neck; one had torn a chunk of flesh away, and from that deep wound pumped dark arterial blood.

“Room twelve,” said Leonis, blinking and looking straight up again. “Not too bad. I’m… sorry, though. I wish…”

“Don’t apologize,” said Scorio, squeezing Leonis’s hand. “You’ve got nothing to apologize for.”

“Wish… could have helped you go… further,” said Leonis, voice growing light, whispery. “Wish… I could have honored… Golden King. But you know…”

“Damnit,” hissed Scorio, wishing that death would claim Leonis already and absolve him from this lingering agony. “Rest easy, my friend. I’ll see you soon.”

Leonis blinked again, but then his eyes glazed over. The tension went from his massive frame, and his grip on Scorio’s hand went limp.

A moment later he was gone, and Scorio was left kneeling amidst the countless corpses of the fiends who slowly began to disappear as well.

“Damn it,” hissed Scorio again, pressing the base of his palms against his eyes, and then dropped his hands onto his lap. Looking down over his body he saw that he’d suffered his fair share of fresh wounds as well; his arms were slashed up, and the sides of his thighs and his ribs had been scored with numerous cuts.

He felt so tired. The pain wasn’t even that bad anymore. It was an overwhelming, distant force, but so generalized now that Scorio simply felt a deep need to sleep. To rest, for just a moment. He’d regain his strength, and then rise and continue fighting. Was that such a bad idea?

Instead, Scorio grimaced, bowed his head, and forced himself to banish the thought. He’d rest when he was dead.

Scorio took a deep, shuddering breath, and tried to stand.

His body didn’t respond.

Blood seeped from countless wounds. He felt light-headed, his vision narrowing to a tunnel.

“Get up,” he whispered. “Get the hell up.”

But his legs felt as if they belonged to someone else, and a terrible weight pressed down upon him, holding him to the spot on which he knelt.

Again he tried to rise, and he felt his muscles tense, but again he failed to move.

The pain. It might be distant, but it was overwhelming his ability to command his body. It was all he could do to hold onto consciousness. To remain lucid, in the moment, and not surrender all volition.

It felt like only a few moments ago that they’d all stood together. Naomi, Lianshi, Leonis. How had they fallen so quickly? Had they done well, compared to the rest of the cohort? Surely they had.

But Scorio knew with cold, blasted certainty that even if they’d performed well compared to most of the class, they’d fallen short of what Jova would have accomplished. If she were in his place right now, her power would allow her to rise and resume walking.

Whereas he could only kneel here, shivering, in pain, and alone in the dark.

The profound unfairness of it all grated at him. If he’d only been able to ignite his Heart a second sooner, he’d have been able to save Lianshi, who’d have made a difference in this chamber, perhaps acting as a shield for Leonis so that he’d not have had to sacrifice himself for Scorio.

Of course, he’d have been able to ignite without a problem if his Heart hadn’t been so fractured.

It all came back to Praximar and his wretched bias. That one, single moment when he’d irrevocably changed the direction of Scorio’s life by casting him through the Final Door. Everything had led with its own terrible logic to this moment, here and now in the dark, where Scorio lacked the strength to rise and continue.

It was Praximar’s fault.

The world’s fault, even. The deck had been stacked against him from the very moment he’d drawn his first breath.

Shame and helpless fury consumed him, so that his eyes prickled and his hands bunched into fists upon his bloody thighs.

And then, unbidden, from the depths of his mind, a memory bestirred itself. He heard his own words, offered up, half in desperation, half in hope, to the Imperator who had come to destroy them all in her madness: “It’s not your fault. What happened to you. You didn’t deserve this. None of it. All your pain, your outrage. I might not be able to understand it, but because of who I am, I can respect it. I can respect what you’re doing, and why.”

Scorio stilled. Why had he remembered those words now? He’d been manipulating Imogen, playing to her weaknesses, trying just to survive.

Something dark within him curdled and recoiled. But… could those words not now be spoken to him?

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t deserve this.”

But he didn’t deserve this. Had never deserved to be treated as Red Lister, to be cast out—

Another memory, Imogen’s response, which in the moment he’d ignored, glossed over: “Your titles were always well earned.”

He went to refute that, but a second voice spoke in his mind, Kuragin’s, these words fresher, laced with scorn: “It was you that betrayed your brother and caused his execution.”

Scorio’s lips writhed back in anger, in disgust. Nonsense.

Jova’s voice, joining the chorus, cold and cruel: “You’re a Red Lister, Scorio, which means you have proven in every reincarnation that you imperil those around you, bring danger to our most sacred institutions, and care nothing but for your own goals.”

His heart ached and he felt dizzy. It wasn’t his fault. He’d been forced to react.

Even his original life? Or the lives of which Imogen spoke?

He’d have secured patronage from House Chimera if Praximar hadn’t gone after him, never even had to steal for Dola if Praximar hadn’t sentenced him to die—

No more voices spoke in his mind. His protests were cast forth before an empty audience hall. The spirits, the memories, having spoken their part, returned to the depths of his mind.

Leaving him panting, alone, aghast, and wretched.

Was it his fault? That Praximar had sentenced him to die? That was grotesque, made no sense. But Praximar hadn’t made him a Red Lister, had he? Praximar had simply reacted to the actions he’d committed in past lives. Actions committed by another Scorio, to be sure, but still himself, his own soul.

Scorio began to thrust the thought away. Would have done so, locked it away, and dropped that line of inquiry if one last thought hadn’t impinged itself upon his mind: he’d betrayed his own brother.

Had gone from risking everything to save him to turning him over to the king.

The impossibility of that connection rankled, and Scorio’s soul screamed in outrage against the possible plausibility of that deed.

How had he gone from that loving brother to betraying the man he’d risked everything to save?

How had he earned his titles? The very ones that had earned his place on the Red List? What if those Scorio’s had felt equally wronged? What if their heinous actions had been reactions to perceived injustices?

Did they make the crimes he’d committed any less evil?

Scorio stared down at his blood-stained hands. How far back did he have to go before he’d find an action of his own that he could take responsibility for?

It was Praximar’s fault, he thought, but the thought now rang hollow, gave him no comfort. The old rage was banked. Naomi, Leonis, and Lianshi had sacrificed so much for him, for his cause, at the altar of his rage. Sacrificed their own hopes of advancing as far as they could go to protect him, to help him.

His mouth tasted sour, and his shoulders shook. He raised his bloody hand and pressed his knuckles to his lips. Tears stung his eyes again.

It was Praximar’s fault, he thought one last time, and then with a wrench, he tore that excuse, that critical fragment of the architecture of his soul, out of his being and cast it aside.

It’s my responsibility. The words sounded alien, and he wanted to reject them, but they sank into his sense of being with a powerful sense of rightness. A deep and awful tension he’d not realized he’d been carrying relaxed; he felt a knot within his spirit undo itself, and said again, realizing the truth of the words: it’s my responsibility.

The old anger guttered and died. The outrage slipped away like a dismissed shadow. The strength it had given him evaporated, leaving in its place a quiet, sober calm.

He was 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.

He couldn’t remember what he’d done to earn those titles, but it had been him that had done those deeds. He was paying for that legacy today. And like a criminal who has had a change of heart in jail, he’d been furious that he still had to pay for his original crimes.

Scorio’s shoulders settled, and he raised his face, closed his eyes as tears ran down his cheeks, and felt a deep and alien peace settle over his spirit.

Fine.

No more excuses. No more running away from his past, remembered or not. But if his past had been dark, there was no saying his future couldn’t be different. That he couldn’t change. Be worthy of the friends who believed in him so, and strive to atone.

And with those thoughts, a profound determination entered his soul, replacing the fevered need to prove himself powerful, to prove everyone wrong. He felt his will swell with power, his mind growing sharp and focused, and a tremor of excitement passed through him. The upswell of mental strength took him by surprise, but he recognized the value of the moment.

Setting aside all his concerns, he focused on his Heart, fractured and pitted, and on the wisps of mana that remained within it.

Reached out with his will, and for the first time eschewed the Coal to purposefully work with the Iron that filled the room.

He flexed his will, and instead of visualizing a paddle, he imagined a great hand scooping up the Iron as a man in a boat might lean out and scoop up the glittering water at sunset. Freed of his rage, of his brittle need, he found the Iron respond more smoothly, more quickly than it ever had.

With great deliberation he packed the Iron into his reservoir, and found that it required less condensing, being so fraught with power in the first place. More and more he scooped in, his will inexorable even as his body weakened, and when his reservoir reached the point of saturation, he lowered his chin, furrowed his brow, and focused intently on its gleaming mass.

Slowly, with great intensity and force, he willed his vast reservoir to grow compact. To condense. It resisted, the Iron strong and proud, but in this moment of enlightenment and clarity, it could not resist him.

Slowly but surely, he forced the Iron to shrink, his reservoir to collapse upon itself, grasping the whole of it as if between his hands, and returning it to its original shape and size.

He trembled. Pain besieged the fortress of his mind. Sweat and blood ran down his brow. His body swayed.

Just when he thought he could force it no more, when motes of darkness began rising to cloud his vision, he felt something akin to a spiritual click; his reservoir returned to its original form, and once more occupied the center of his Heart as it once had done.

Wonder seized him by the throat. He raised his hands and studied his hands, over which burned a spectral fire, translucent flames that immolated him without pain.

Then the pressure, the agony, the mania, and fever-bright delirium—all of it fell away and disappeared.

And Scorio found himself standing on a gray slate platform from whose edges arose three free-standing portals, the void beyond starless and infinite.

Two of the doors were sealed shut, but the third stood open.

Stunned, shaking, resolute, he approached it. Studied its copper frame, then stepped through and into his second trial.