Chapter 77

Scorio rose to his feet and stared at his palms. His darkvision had expanded even further, to the point where it now encompassed nearly his entire field of vision; only the very peripheries remained opaque.

But it was his hands that fascinated him. Though they remained streaked in blood and dirt, they were… fine.

No wounds.

He closed his previously broken hand into a fist and squeezed tightly. No pain. Gripped his wrist. Nothing. The bones were repaired, the swelling gone. His forearms were healed as well, the deep burns disappeared, the gash in his side, the cut in his calf, the countless lacerations and slashes.

Scorio restrained the urge to yell for a quivering second, but the cry tore itself free: “Yes!” It was a victory cry, a bark of delight, of something, finally, going his way. No wounds, anywhere. He felt hale, whole, healthy, fit, practically bursting with energy.

But more than that. He stilled. Blinked, then summoned his Heart. Studied it closely, then cursed under his breath.

Still fractured.

But within it, he felt his reservoir, compact, sleek, requiring far less time to fill than before. Experimentally, he reached out with his will and worked Iron mana into his Heart, drawing it in with great, purposeful scoops, and though the mana immediately began to vent through the fissures, he felt his Heart saturate in what felt like record time.

He flexed his will, and his Heart leaped into translucent, silvery flame. Scorio took a deep breath as power washed into him, exalting his sense of strength even further. He’d never felt this fit, this on fire, this capable.

Breathing deeply, he raised his hand and willed his technique to manifest. Immediately black scales erupted from his hands, appearing down the length of his arms, across his shoulders, but they didn’t stop there—black scales swept down his back, and he felt stubs erupt from his spine, protective and angular. Scales emerged across his thighs as well, and his talons extended to their six-inch length, glowing with fell, white heat.

But more than that—from his brow, twin curving horns emerged, the bone warping, extruding, the two horns rising with a shorter, flanking pair growing just beside them.

Eyes wide, Scorio reached up and gently touched the horns. They were subtly striated, their points wicked, and he felt as if he were wearing a mighty crown, as if he’d been anointed by whatever dark power was fueling his powers and marked for greatness.

Lurking just within the realms of his mind, however, was an awareness as to another gift. Something that went beyond his physical form, the increased defenses he’d manifested, the heightened strength and speed.

He couldn’t quite pin it down, understand it, so instead he inhaled till his chest creaked and then willed the power to manifest.

The air around him shimmered as if suddenly superheated, a great sphere that extended at least five yards away from him in every direction. Scorio stared, wide-eyed: was it an attack, a weapon?

Not quite. Though the air glimmered, there was no actual heat. Instead, he felt his very presence pouring forth, his will, his might. As if he were taking in the hemisphere around him and making it part of his being.

What effect might that have on an enemy? He’d no idea. He blinked and released the field, which faded quickly from sight. Jova’s Tomb Spark ability had affected Ravenna at a great distance; Scorio’s seemed to have a limited range. Was it the same power? No—everyone manifested different abilities.

Mystified, he pondered the field, then felt another aspect of himself arise within his consciousness, a potential, an ability he’d never sensed before.

My shroud, he thought with a shiver of excitement. Composing himself, he extended one burning claw and willed the shroud to coalesce before him.

The sensation was incredible, a rush of power for which he seemed but a crude channel; might coursed through him and manifested in the air before him as a translucent shield, a yard tall and a few feet wide. It hovered before his outstretched claws, intrinsically connected to him, part of his very spirit. Mana flowed from his Heart to the floating shroud, and he realized just how much of a drain it was. Holding his scaled form and sustaining the shroud reduced his ability to keep his Heart burning to moments; with a gesture, he dismissed the shroud, released his scaled form, and staggered back, awed and overcome.

Yes, there was frustration. Jova had held her Tomb Spark abilities for the duration of her fight with Ravenna, while he’d barely be able to maintain them for ten, fifteen seconds. But that aggravation was swept away before the wonder of his state. Tomb Spark. Unless others had transcended during the Gauntlet run, that meant he was only the second in their entire cohort to have done so—and that without the patronage or guidance of the Houses or the Academy.

Better yet, he was completely healed; the pain and despair that had nearly crushed his will were gone. Now he felt sharp, focused, ready to tear through whatever the Gauntlet threw at him, to destroy any and every obstacle.

Calmly, methodically, he swept more and more Iron mana into his reservoir until it was bursting at the seams. Paused to consider the spot on which Leonis had died, and bent one knee to rest beside it.

“I’ll make the most of the time you bought me,” he swore, voice fervent, low. “Thank you, Leonis. I’ll never be able to repay this debt.”

Then he rose and entered the narrowing tunnel, made his way to its far, cramped end, where the black archway awaited him.

Without hesitation, he stepped through.

It took him a moment to understand what he was looking at as he emerged into the next chamber. Before him arose a massive set of steps that stretched from wall to wall, at first quite steep and then leveling out as if arching up over a hill. The wall to the left was slashed with regularly spaced cuts from which a pale, frosty light entered to fall on the other wall in bright slashes.

Scorio frowned, dropped to a crouch, and considered the room. Nowhere to go but up. And yet something was off. He extended his senses and felt—like the room that had claimed Lianshi’s life—strange, invisible densities in the air. Pit traps? Were the steps lethal, or perhaps only some of them?

But no; as he pondered, he felt those densities move, gently floating up and down or along the steps as if free of them.

Invisible foes? There was no intent in their paths. Were they biding time till he stepped forth?

Keeping his Heart saturated, Scorio rose and placed his foot on the first step. The invisible presences didn’t react.

Wary, he climbed to the second, high step. One presence was directly before him; almost it seemed to warp the air, so that he felt that if he squinted just right, he’d be able to determine its outline.

But it passed before him, allowing him to hurry up the next few steps and leave it behind. On he climbed, the light from the left playing over his body, climbing the arching steps and avoiding the floating, invisible presences until he reached the top; there he saw the steps descend on the far side to a black archway set in the wall across from his point of entry.

Nonplussed, he moved smoothly down, giving the presences wide berth, pausing occasionally to let them pass by or when their paths intersected. Slowly, carefully, he navigated his way past them, and at last, reached the archway. Turned to consider the steps, and wondered how he might have fared if he’d tried to assay them as an Emberling. Might he not have been able to pick out their paths so distinctly? What would have happened if he’d come too close to one?

He was happy not to know.

Taking a moment to sweep more Iron into his reservoir to replace that which had naturally vented forth, he stepped into the darkness and emerged into the fourteenth chamber.

A low ceiling, and him at the top of a tight cylinder of a room, all of it consumed by the spiraling steps that began right at his feet and curled tightly down and around. Great steps swept around the central axis through six complete revolutions, the floors below looking like a dead centipede that had coiled upon itself. A great beam of light speared down the central axis to illuminate the barren floor at the bottom, leaving the steps themselves in a deep darkness that completely failed to foil his darkvision.

Again there were no obvious foes. Scorio tongued the inside of his cheek as he considered the ceiling, the air above the steps, the central column of light itself. No floating presences, but… narrowing his eyes, extending his senses once more, he thought he felt a strange twinge coming from the third step down. Crouching, he stared at it. There was nothing unusual about it, but the third step felt more… ponderous? Alarming, in some subtle manner?

Scorio looked past it and sensed further collection of similar sensations from random steps as they curved down and out of view.

He considered. Then, seized by impulse, he stepped right off the edge of the step into the central shaft, into that searing white light, and plummeted down the axial core.

Wind tore at his slashed and ruined robes, pulling at his hair, and his stomach pressed itself up against his diaphragm. The winding steps flashed past him, and at the last moment, he exerted his will and ignited his Heart, embracing the rush of power and summoning his enhanced form so that he was wreathed in scales when he landed lightly upon the bare stone, dropping to one knee and placing a taloned palm on the rock as he caught himself neatly.

Other than the jarring shock to his body, he felt no pain, no dizziness, nothing but grim satisfaction in his form’s new ability to handle such acrobatics.

Talons scoring the rock, he turned to the dark archway before him. This time he didn’t spare a glance for the spiral staircase that rose above him; he swept Iron into his Heart, the turgid mana responding more freely to his will than ever before, and when his reservoir was once more saturated, into the archway.

The fifteenth chamber was a crude cavern, roughly circular, the floor strewn with sand. No illumination; there was a sense of stillness, of calm, and then a section of the far wall moved, seemed to animate, and unfolded itself to face him.

Scorio took a step back, eyes widening in alarm as he gazed at his monstrous foe. He’d seen it before, once. At the very beginning of this life.

He took a slow, uneven inhalation. He heard again the screams, Nissa yelling in horror, Havert’s cries as he was torn apart.

The fiend was wider than it was tall, its hide an eruption of igneous stone, like huge spars of lava cooled to black. It leaned forward, knuckles pressed to the floor, each forearm as large as Scorio, each fist massive enough to crush his head with ease. Its head hung low and center, a mass of segmented rocks, its maw filled with saurian teeth. Incandescent eyes fixed on him.

But it was the deeply carved and ragged lines of burning purple flame that Scorio remembered best. Riotous like lightning trapped within the rocky hide, the purple light smoldered in patterns about its face, contoured its body, elevated it from some rocky horror into an eldritch force of nature. The trapped lines of flame surged and burned as if venting from an inner furnace, perhaps in time with its pulse or some deeper, more magical rhythm, but with each flare, the light left after-images in Scorio’s eyes.

The fiend twisted its head to one side, regarding Scorio with something akin to quizzical interest, then smashed a fist down into the ground, cracking the rock, and let out a roar so powerful that Scorio felt the sound in his chest cavity more than heard it with his ears.

“Come on, then,” he said, lowering himself into a crouch. He raised his arms and willed his form to emerge. Black scales slid out over his arms, coalesced around his knuckles, swept over his shoulders, down his back, over his thighs. Light, flexible, supple armor that hindered him not at all. Searing white claws emerged from his fingertips, their light equal to the burning purple, and Scorio allowed himself a dark smile as he stared at the rock fiend on the cavern’s far side. “I’ve grown a little since we last met.”

Again the fiend pounded the cavern floor, then it took three or four loping steps forward, knuckling as it went, only to hurl itself at Scorio, its strength such that it came flying right at him, claws burning as it brought a titanic fist around to clobber Scorio where he stood.

But Scorio leaped aside at the last moment, a sweetly executed dive that should have brought him up at the creature’s flank—but the fiend pivoted with alarming speed, a forearm the side of a door ripping through the air to try and backhand his head off.

Scorio’s impulse was to duck, to retreat, but a part of him, cold and impersonal, told him that to dance and bob and weave would be to expend his reservoir and leave him defenseless.

No.

With a cry, Scorio summoned his shroud. The air shimmered as his mana poured forth, and the fiend’s fist crashed into the translucent barrier. The blow was powerful enough to split rock, but it crashed into his shield, and it was the fiend’s fist that splintered, as if it had struck a wall of steel with all its force.

Scorio lunged in and thrust his burning claws into the beast’s side; slashed at the massive, corrugated black rock armor, and though he tore deep grooves he failed to penetrate deeply enough.

The rock fiend leaped back, shook out its fist, then lunged forward and tried to snatch at Scorio with its other hand, intent on scooping him up between its talons.

Scorio ducked under and threw a wicked uppercut at the fiend’s elbow, slamming his talons into the joint.

The white burning points sank deep, and this time the fiend roared in pain. It swept its arm around to batter Scorio away but missed; Scorio leaped over the arm that came at him like the boom of a ship, landed lightly right before it, ready to tear its face apart, but again his foe’s speed shocked him.

Before he’d fully landed, the rock monster drew back and punched him with everything it had.

Scorio barely had time to cross his arms before his face and summon his shroud once more before the fist the size of a barrel crashed into it. The force was such that Scorio was thrown back, shroud and all, heels sliding on the uneven floor, forcing him to stagger and catch his balance.

Victorious, the rock fiend threw its arms open wide and roared at him again, spewing ropes of spittle and causing its lightning flames to flare as if oil had been tossed into its depths.

Scorio dismissed his shroud, took a deep breath, then bellowed right back. And in that moment, he summoned his Tomb Spark power, that shimmering hemisphere whose purpose he hadn’t yet divined.

The air around them burned, swirled with force as Iron mana streamed from his rapidly depleting reservoir. Scorio felt his presence suffuse the air, his might, his rage, his intolerance to defiance.

The hemisphere caught the rock fiend’s front half within its curvature; Scorio felt his power wash over the beast and saw it freeze, shrink in on itself, then back away.

Its change in attitude was shocking; its flames diminished, it shook its head as if wanting to sneeze, looked uncertain. Knowing he had but moments before his Igneous Heart guttered and died, Scorio took three steps forward and leaped, causing his aura to wash completely over the rock fiend.

It raised its huge head to stare, small eyes flaring bright as it watched Scorio fall upon it like a bolt from the heavens.

Still screaming, Scorio smashed his fist through the beast’s head, talons shearing through rock and bone and brains in one terrible strike, removing a third of the fiend’s skull and splattering it against its own chest and forearm.

He landed in a crouch before it, breathing heavily, just as his Heart died. For a moment the loss of power was shocking; he gasped, rose to his feet, saw that he stood within the twin forearms as a man might within the sides of an archway.

The fiend rose before him like a hill. It swayed, ichor pouring from its shattered head, and then with a gargling groan, it collapsed to the side, back legs giving way, massive forearms toppling sideways. It crashed to the ground and lay there, splayed out, monstrous and huge, its burning purple flames flickering and then dying out altogether.

A black archway appeared in the far wall.

“Damn,” whispered Scorio, looking at his hands, then back at the dead fiend. What had his aura done to it? The beast had looked… stunned. Overwhelmed. And there was no way Scorio could have defeated it as an Emberling. Even with his companions, this would have been a grievous battle.

But as a Tomb Spark, he’d destroyed it alone.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” he whispered, and punched one hand into the other palm. Fierce resolve burst into him like a flash flood into a slot canyon, and he strode to the distant archway.

“Watch out, Jova,” he said to the darkness about him. “I’m coming for you.”