Chapter 9

The fiend charged right after him. Glancing back over his shoulder, Scorio saw its purple markings burning in the darkness behind him, surreal and terrifying and savage. It moved silently, so that when he looked forward once more it felt as if he sprinted alone, pushing for speed as he raced down the tunnel, the moss-lantern jouncing and swinging wildly in his fist.

A fork. He chose the left, ran down it, and glanced behind, saw that the huge beast was almost upon him, its bulk filling the tunnel, looming over him like a wave about to crest.

Desperate, Scorio pushed himself to run faster, his lungs burning, feet feeling as if they barely touched the rough ground. The blue light swung and bounced across the rough features of the tunnel walls before him, shadows leaping and retreating with each swing of his fist.

No time to think, to calculate, he had to turn around. Perhaps if he smashed the lantern across its face, blinded it—no, wait—there! A shadow that remained solid, a crack in the wall. Scorio was running so fast that he nearly passed it, tried to stop, leaned back, and crashed to the ground.

Just as a huge claw swiped through the air above him, the talons trailing purple flame.

Scorio lurched into the crack, racing on all fours, scrambling into the depths. It was just wide enough for him to squeeze into. Turning sideways, he shoved himself in deeper, the tight walls scraping his chest and back. Deeper he wormed, breath loud in his ears, head turned back to the mouth of the crack where the beast had paused to lower its head and gaze at him with one malevolently burning eye.

Gasping, Scorio realized he couldn’t go in any deeper. He was wedged in as far as he could go. He could only watch as the monster slowly inserted its hand and probed for him, burning talons scoring the raw rock and leaving shallow grooves behind.

Carefully, experimentally, the monster pushed its huge hand in, claws rippling, but then it slowed. Stopped. Scorio had managed to slide in just outside its reach.

For a moment the beast simply stood there, contemplative. Scorio waited for a roar of fury, but none came. Instead, it tapped its claws upon the rocks, the sound rhythmic, then withdrew its arm.

It stood outside the crack for a spell, studying him with one baleful eye, and then it turned and was gone.

A trick? Definitely.

So he remained still. Waiting. Watching the crack, the darkness beyond that his moss lamp failed to illuminate.

His entire world reduced to its tight, radiant-blue confines.

Eventually, body growing stiff and sore, unsure if he’d been standing there an hour or three, he eased himself back toward the entrance. Stepped past the point where the beast’s claws could reach, slowed, and listened.

Nothing.

He moved forward again. Envisioned, over and over, the massive hand darting into the crack, claws sinking into his flesh, hooking him and hauling him out.

Saw again Havert’s legs dancing as the maw crunched down upon his body.

Nothing happened.

He reached the very edge of the crack. The glowing radiance of his moss lamp would have given his approach away. But when he finally risked a quick glance out into the tunnel, he saw that it was empty.

Scorio sagged with relief and rested his brow against the stone. The fiend was gone. So vividly had his imagination painted it in the hallway, hunched and ready to strike, that he could scarcely believe it had left. But eventually, he stepped out, shivering, and swung his lantern back and forth.

Should he return to the Brass Door and see if he could find the others? Or head in deeper by himself, without a pack, without water, and without a weapon?

He considered. It was feasible that he could return quietly. He’d taken a variety of turns, but he thought he could retrace his steps. And fetching a pack would go a long way toward improving his odds of survival.

But that would be pressing his luck. The monster had clearly opted to return to the Brass Door to feast on Hestia and Havert. It would no doubt be there now. And if it sensed Scorio creeping close, that would be it.

Scorio sighed. His odds of surviving alone down here with nothing but a lantern were dismal. But still slightly better than creeping back to the Brass Door, where other fiends would be drawn to with every passing minute.

So he turned, frowned at the extent of tunnel before him, and resumed walking.

The tunnel wound back and forth, narrowed, then widened to become a large, high-ceilinged cavern. The floor was interrupted by large stalagmites, slick and glistening in the mosslight, while massive fang-like stalactites descended from the shadowed ceiling.

Scorio picked a path between the columns, taking in the eldritch beauty of the stone formations, the way they glittered in the mosslight. He moved slowly, unsure as to where this meandering cavern’s exit was, only to pause at the sight of something sticking out of the floor.

It was a metal buckle, nearly swallowed up by silt, the iron badly rusted. Scorio crouched down to examine it, considered working it free, then sighed. Of what use would it prove?

Still, it was a sign that others had passed through here before. Raising his lantern, he stared all around.

A light scratching sound came from above. Scorio jerked the lantern up higher and stared into the dark depths between the stalactites. Was that movement? The whispery sound came again, but this time from various places across the ceiling.

He rose to his feet and turned in a circle, lantern raised high.

The darkness seethed, alive with hidden movements that he couldn’t quite make out.

Maybe there was a reason that a previous traveler had dropped his buckle here.

Hurrying now, Scorio strode on, rushing between the stalagmites, eyes raised as the sound followed him, seeming to track his passage in a great swathe across the ceiling. The very air was alive now with a terrible scritching and scratching, and Scorio was about to break into a run when he saw why.

Large insects. Hundreds of them, grub-white and with the long, angular legs of a grasshopper, each easily the size of a small dog, articulated feelers waving in the air, pincers as long as his forefinger opening and closing as if in anticipation.

Then Scorio did run, and as if that was the signal the insects had been waiting for, they sprang down after him.

The air filled with their falling bodies, several of them landing on him and clinging to his filthy white robes with the clawed tips of their feet.

They were light, as if hollow, and he beat them off, punching and waving them away. They tore great holes in his clothing as they fell, pincers working furiously, seeking his flesh.

Swinging his lantern about his head, he ran blindly toward the cave’s far side and saw that there was no far wall, but that rather the floor sloped down and away into darkness, damp and shining in the lantern light, smooth as if polished and interrupted here and there by slender stalagmites.

Pain lanced in his shoulder as one of the insects dug deep, and the air was alive with them now as they leaped after, bounding higher than his head, most missing him as he ran, but more and more landing on his shoulders, his back.

Scorio didn’t hesitate. The lantern failed to illuminate the depths, but staying up here was certain death. With a cry, he leaped forward to crash down on his back, crushing a number of the insects under his weight, and began to slide down.

The white death crickets leaped after him at first, but as he picked up speed, they ceased their pursuit.

The floor fell away quickly. His moss-lantern lit the low ceiling as it rushed by. He tried to catch hold of stalagmites as he passed, but their surfaces were too slick, too broad for him to do more than just slap them and turn onto his side.

The drop became nearly vertical. Down he flew, and then the floor dropped away altogether, and he fell.

Stomach plastered to his diaphragm, limbs swinging, he fell within the blue globe of his lantern light, certain that he was going to die, only to crash down onto a loose scree of rock.

It knocked the air right out of him, wrenched his left knee as his leg twisted, and shattered his moss lantern.

He lay there, dazed, staring up at the darkness that drank the faint blue light, and let out a low groan. Finally, he rolled onto his side, winced as pain flared from numerous cuts and scrapes, and sat up.

Only to realize just how lucky he’d been. Around him were dozens of stalagmites, their tips sharp enough to have impaled him through and through. If he’d fallen a little to his left, he’d have been impaled on one easily two yards high.

There was no telling the extent of the cavern. The mosslight was spilled all around, and by the soft glow he made out a shape draped across a stalagmite only a few yards away.

A corpse, held together by sinew and clothing and little else, the spear of rock jutting up through its chest.

Scorio crawled closer. It was impossible to tell much about the corpse. The scalp showed wisps of dark hair, the eyes were gone, the lips pulled away to reveal yellowed teeth.

Scorio grimaced. A moldy leather belt was wrapped around its waist with an empty dagger scabbard at the hip. Scorio raised his fistful of mosslight higher. A dagger lay amidst the remains of the skeletal hand.

They must have tried to arrest their fall by slamming the dagger into the rock. The tip was gone, after all.

A pack lay not too far away. Scorio edged over and saw that the leather was badly rotted from the damp. A buckle was missing from the flap, and with a sad shake of his head, he opened it to examine the contents.

The foodstuff was putrid and reduced to slime. There was a coil of rotted rope, a rotted blanket or bedroll, tightly rolled, a badly rusted tinder box, and—

Scorio froze at the sight of the miniature bridge. It was about six inches long, gently arched, and untouched by decay. Cunningly wrought, it lay lightly on his palm, innocuous and plain.

Scorio glanced back at the cadaver, then rummaged further in the rotten pack. He next drew out a steel rod, some eight inches wide and snug enough to fit in his hand. Turning it over and over, he found that it was inscribed with flowing runes, but nothing that he could understand or read.

Finally, he drew out a thick roll of oiled cloth, within which was a stick of chalk the size of his thumb.

Curious, hesitant, he leaned down and drew a slender line across the ground. The air above it immediately shimmered and undulated like haze caused by baking heat. Scorio extended his palm and pressed forward, only to be met with a cool and utterly solid form of resistance.

Scorio laughed, then ran his hand along the sheer pane of nothingness till he found its edge, which corresponded with the limit of the chalk line. Rising carefully to his feet, he reached up, and found that it extended beyond his ability to touch the top.

Sitting back down, he examined the chalk within the diffuse light of the moss, and saw that fresh scratch marks had registered upon its tip. A finite resource, then. It’d wear down eventually and be gone.

Trying to control his excitement, he wrapped the chalk up in its oiled cloth and took hold of the steel rod. Havert had said it would remain locked in place once activated, but he saw no means of doing so. Was the script perhaps an incantation? He pressed and prodded for a few minutes longer, then set it down and took up the miniature bridge.

There was no obvious means of activating its powers. No catch, no trigger, nothing that he could find.

Some of his excitement abated. One treasure out of three was still enormously good luck, but he still felt a little cheated by fate.

“You’ve my thanks,” he said, looking back at the corpse, but the sound of his own words unnerved him.

Carefully he gathered as much of the luminous moss as he could cup in his hands, and formed it into a rough pyramid, sufficiently removed that he didn’t need to gaze upon Radert’s remains. Then he sat cross-legged, back to the stalagmite that had nearly impaled him, and placed the treasures in his lap.

No food, no water, and a labyrinth of passages filled with fiends. A sufficiently deadly place that even so well-armed an explorer as Radert had fallen to his death.

The urge to hobble on, to let his desperation control him, was strong. Instead, Scorio settled himself, pursed his lips, and reviewed all that he knew.

Which wasn’t much.

Sal had said that you had to descend before you arose once more to the city of Bastion. Well, this drop could count as some of the descent already. But how to proceed? He’d need water soon enough. The humidity in the air teased him, but he’d yet to see a puddle or trickle he could drink from.

The treasures. They were his means of escape. Assuming they weren’t props used to trick Sal into doing whatever Radert wanted.

But say they were genuine. How might someone like Radert have used them? Gotten them to work? The chalk was simplicity itself, but the other two objects clearly required something more.

What?

A burning Igneous Heart? Had Radert progressed from Char? He’d entered the warren, not been cast into it, and carried this assortment of treasure with him, so it was likely that he’d powers of his own.

If having a burning Heart was required, then Scorio was out of luck. But he was a Great Soul, with the potential to grow in power and access… what exactly? He’d been told so little before being cast into the dark.

Closing his eyes, he forced himself to breathe slowly and think. The hanging chunk of obsidian within his breast was his Igneous Heart. There was a way to light it, but he’d yet to figure out how, and none of the other Red Listers in the warren had managed to do so even after years of imprisonment. Nothing obvious, then.

What else was there?

For a long time he simply sat, gently frowning as he searched his memories, and then, as if whispered to him from the memories of another life, Lianshi’s words returned to him: “A current of air passing around us.”

What had Asha called it? An invisible breeze. And said that it had been connected to the Heart, somehow.

Scorio raised his hand, eyes still closed, and strained to feel it once more. First, he concentrated on his palm, his skin, seeking to actually feel something, a physical sense of air. Nothing came. Then he sought to relax, to open his mind, to attempt to sense the breeze by not focusing on it directly.

He didn’t know for how long he sat there. The act caused his heart, or his spiritual core, his very sense of self, to ache painfully. Whatever Praximar had done to him, it had wounded him deeply in ways he couldn’t yet understand.

But Scorio had felt that invisible breeze once before, so he knew it could be done.

Resolute, he sat and focused, but it took eternities for his mind to quiet and lose that sense of urgency. Memories flickered against the inside of his eyelids, images of the recent past, but he let them go, tried not to engage them, to examine them closely.

He tried to sink deeper into his state of relaxation, hand still held before him, opening himself to the world, to the potential of what might be flowing around him even now.

Deeper he sank into his trance, his mind drifting, his back slowly bending, head lowering. Fatigue crept over him, and he entered a liminal state, half-awake, drifting toward an uncomfortable sleep. The pains that plagued his body grew numb and distant, and he thought he might lie back, just rest on the damp, gritty floor, to try again in a little while…

A prickle played across his palm and his eyelids fluttered. He fought back the surge of excitement and tried to focus on that sensation. A prickle? Not quite. More like a rough cloth being rubbed against his skin.

Gone now.

Taking a deep breath, he settled again.

Clutching at straws, he lowered his hand and instead focused inward. Sought to concentrate on his chest, on the darkness within it. Breathed slowly, in and out, trying to lower his awareness to that void, that great hollow within him which Praximar had so callously raided.

Slowly, painfully, it revealed itself, a dark mass, razor-edged, faceted, and gleaming in some subtle light.

Scorio fought to keep his mind still. To not force the moment. To drift, like a feather borne by idle currents, his focus coming closer, the image becoming clearer. Time had ceased to have meaning. The Igneous Heart hung before him, inert and cold.

How did one set stone on fire?

Thoughts began to crowd in, conjectures, and the heart faded from view, till he was left sitting alone once more.

Grimacing, he sat up straight, took a deep breath, held it, then slowly released. Sank back down into that void, seeking out the Heart, seeking to sink into his sense of self.

There. Gradually it appeared once more, and this time he thought it required a little less effort. He held it in his mind’s eye, and with it present, sought once more to sense that invisible breeze.

And this time, hovering in that dark space, he felt it quite easily. Like a cloud, amorphous, all around him, hovering in the air, ambient. But responsive, as well; his focus seemed to stir it to life, as if by concentrating he became some manner of vortex.

Scorio focused on the Igneous Heart, as if it were a handhold on a cliff face, and then, with part of his mind latched onto it, reached out to this ambient cloud, and sought to stir it.

It felt like clutching at fog. It was there now, a constant presence, but illusory, impossible to actually grasp. Instead, it twisted about him, evading capture, passing through him and around him, thick and heavy and cloying.

Scorio let out a gasp and opened his eyes. The pile of lantern-moss was growing a little dimmer. How long did he have before he was plunged into absolute darkness? Bottling up that fear, he stared down at the three treasures in his lap once more. Progress. He’d been able to envision the Heart and then sense the wind, both of which he’d been unable to do before.

Not that it had gotten him anywhere, but it was a beginning.

With a groan, he rose to his feet, and clutching the chalk in one hand and a fistful of moss in the other, he returned to Radert’s corpse to search it more carefully. He walked all the way around it, and this time he espied an old metal canteen affixed to the man’s belt. He untied it and gave it a shake; water sloshed within.

Fingers trembling, he unscrewed the cap and took a sip. The urge to gulp was overwhelming. The water tasted cool and fresh. He allowed himself three swallows before screwing the cap back on.

Until he found another source of water, he’d have to make this last.

Scorio returned to the treasures and sat once more. There had to be something he could do with his Heart and this wind. Something that would give him an edge in the darkness.

Closing his eyes, he sank deep into that trance-like state. He took his time, not rushing, allowing the gravitational pull of his dark core to gently pull him down. The Igneous Heart materialized before him, and once again he became aware of the ambient fog that filled the cavern.

Grasping at it had availed him nothing. There wasn’t anything to grasp with, anyways: his sense of reaching with an invisible hand was a heuristic tool that hurt him as much as helped.

It’s connected to my Heart. Somehow, I have to use that to draw it in.

The fog was all around him, but did not penetrate the inner sanctum in which the Heart hung. To affect his Heart he’d have to draw it in. He’d felt it pass through him back in the Gauntlet—perhaps he could do so purposefully, this time?

Again he focused on the Heart, and on that sensation of being a vortex. A void into which he’d draw the world.

The thick, cloying fog began to slowly whirl, its motion sluggish, resistant. Not knowing quite what he was doing, he focused on drawing it in, using the Igneous Heart as an anchor point, and stirred the fog with his mind, with his very being.

Around and around it went, drawing ever closer, pressing against him, and then, as if overcoming the slightest of resistances, it oozed into his interior space and continued to circle there, around his Heart.

And he could see it. Dimly, as if through smoked glass, but he could make out a black, choking cloud fitfully oozing around and around, like a miniature cyclone in slow motion.

Fierce excitement gripped him—was he on the verge of lighting his Heart? Unsure as to what else to do, he kept trying to draw the fog into this inner sanctum, seeking to pull ever more into that constricted space.

The fog grew ever so slightly more condensed, its movement more sluggish as it became thicker—but nothing else happened.

The Heart glittered with perilous beauty, inert and cold and still.

Scorio fought not to feel frustrated or impatient, but the extended bout of concentration was taking a toll on him. He gripped the steel rod in his lap tightly in one hand, the bridge in the other, and as he did so, he sensed them in a way that went beyond the physical.

They were—what, exactly? Funnels? Receptacles? In his mind’s eye, everything was choked with the thick, black fog, but the treasures exerted their own magnetic pull on him.

Scorio kept swirling the fog within his sanctum, not knowing what else to do, but felt his strength, his resilience growing weak. Unsure, growing desperate, he tried to move the pull of his vortex from the Igneous Heart to the steel bar in his lap.

He felt the choking fog wash over the treasure, pass through it.

Nothing happened.

Gritting his teeth, Scorio visualized the bar. Saw in his mind’s eye the swirling script. Imagined it a glass into which he was pouring water, a receptacle for the fog.

Felt the faintest breath of it enter the rod, sink into its essence, and there… bind? Conjoin? The black energy melded with the rod’s fabric. Scorio felt the enigmatic script blaze to life, and a portion of the sooty cloud simply burned away and was consumed.

Fierce joy surged within his breast, and he went to pump his fist into the air only to realize it was trapped, pressed tight against his thigh by the rod itself.

Scorio opened his eyes and stared in wonder. The rod was pinning his hand to his thigh. He yanked but it remained frozen in the air. The script was alive with a black flame, the lettering perfectly traced by an inner radiance.

He’d done it. He’d activated the bar.

Scorio drew his fingers free and then worked his leg out as well. The rod remained floating some six inches off the ground. Scorio wanted to laugh, to—in a fit of delirium—call out to Radert and tell him what he’d done.

Instead, he took hold of the rod and pulled. Stood, and stomped on it.

There was no give whatsoever.

His smile slowly faded. What if he couldn’t undo the activation? What if it was stuck there, and he’d have to leave it behind—?

The blue light from the script faded, and the steel bar fell to the stone ground with a clink.

Oh.

Scorio picked it up and turned it about in his hands, but the script was now barely visible. Had it burned through all the cloud essence he’d pushed inside it?

Again he sat and sank into that dark space where his Igneous Heart floated. Again he opened his perception to take in the heavy, ambient cloud that hung all around him, and this time he focused his attention on the rod in his hand.

Which felt like a funnel once more, its core empty, hungry.

Huh.

Taking measured breaths, Scorio set to swirling the cloud about himself, feeling like a man stirring a huge vat of mud with a wooden paddle, and again brought the cloud into his sanctum. Again he directed it down to the rod, focused on filling that hunger, on pushing as much of the black cloud into its core as he could.

It felt like trying to stuff cushions into a drinking cup.

He felt the script flare to life, and once again the rod froze in the air. This time Scorio didn’t stop; he kept stirring the sooty black cloud, swirling it about himself, and into the rod. But now it passed around and refused to enter, like falling leaves drifting down past a pole.

Scorio opened his eyes and set to counting as he stared at the rod. It hung at chest height, gleaming softly in the mosslight, the script illuminated. He watched carefully and had reached six seconds when the script dulled and died, and the rod fell into his waiting palm.

Tonguing his cheek thoughtfully, Scorio set the rod aside and took up the bridge. If it functioned in the same manner, directing the sooty cloud into its—funnel? He didn’t know what else to call it—would cause it to activate.

And having a bridge explode into full size in his lap was a precarious proposition.

Scorio set the bridge a good six feet away, placed so it would expand to his left and right, then returned to his seat.

Closing his eyes, he focused on bringing his Igneous Heart into view, then once more stirred the sluggish clouds into action. Were there fewer of them now? They felt as if they’d thinned out some. He formed that vortex-like pull around his heart, and when he had the clouds streaming about him as quickly as he could manage, he searched for the bridge’s own pull.

And could barely sense it. The faintest of pinpricks in the far distance. With sweat prickling his brow from effort, he tried a half-hearted attempt to direct the dark clouds toward that pull, but it was like casting sand into the waves. The moment the clouds left the space around his Heart, they stilled and became inert.

Eyes clenched tight, he crawled toward the bridge. The Heart slipped from his focus, but he brought it back through sheer determination, and reached out to the bridge, fumbling across the damp stone till he touched it.

There. The sense of its being a funnel became distinct. Drawing on the clouds once more, he channeled their darkness down and into the tiny bridge, seeking to fill it to the brim.

At first, nothing happened, but then the treasure must have passed a threshold, because it blazed in his mind’s eye, and he felt it jerk beneath his hand, crashing outward and jolting upward.

Startled, Scorio fell back, eyes snapping open, and he saw a large, arched bridge trapped between the stalagmites, turned half on its side, and rising into the air.

He marveled.

It was easily eight or ten yards long, perhaps two across, and built of stout timbers that were tightly lashed together with thick rope to reinforce the bolts driven through the beams. Railings rose on either side, and the planks were fitted closely together, making for a secure and smooth path from one end to the other.

Just as quickly as it had formed, the bridge shrank, sinking to where its far end touched the rocky ground, losing itself in the shadows.

Scooping up some moss, Scorio hurried over and picked it up. It had taken no damage despite bursting its way forth between the rocky spires.

He turned it over in his hands. It had extended away from the starting point, not out in both directions. Searching its miniature planks, he found a little metal triangle embedded in the left-most beam, its tip pointing across the rest of the bridge. The direction of expansion? And then it shrank down on the far side, which made sense. What use leaving your bridge behind on the wrong side of a chasm?

Cheered, he made his way back to his other belongings and considered them. Neither the bridge nor the bar lasted long—a handful of seconds at best. Curious, he went back to the chalky line he’d drawn and tested the air above it. Still firm. So at least that lasted a good amount of time.

They gave him options, though. A chance to escape this lethal labyrinth and out into Bastion.

At last, even his excitement proved unable to resist his exhaustion. Manipulating those dark clouds of energy had depleted him more than he’d expected. He lay down, propped his head on his arm, and closed his eyes. He slept uneasily and had no way of telling for how long he lay there. But Radert’s unmolested cadaver indicated this place wasn’t frequented by scavengers, so he allowed himself to feel a tenuous sense of confidence.

When he awoke, he was stiff and sore. His leg barely held his weight, and though he couldn’t see them, he knew he’d suffered cuts across his back and shoulders from the death crickets.

Taking a sip from his water, he gathered his meager belongings. The lamp-moss was now at half its previous radiance, limiting his sphere of vision to six or so yards before him, and even that was a ghostly half-light.

Not ideal.

But without any choice in the matter, he tucked it all inside his robe, held a large wad in one hand and Radert’s dagger in the other.

He paused by the cadaver, unsure what he should say or do. If Lianshi had been here, she’d no doubt have wanted to honor the dead. Feeling a connection to her through the memory, but unable to bury the body or say anything meaningful about the man, Scorio simply inclined his head in gratitude and respect and moved on.

The cavern was a bowl drained by narrow grooves he couldn’t fit into. He did a slow circumference of the chamber, and by holding up his moss got a sense of other tunnels opening in the walls high above. Was he in some manner of central drainage area?

The walls were slick, smooth, and utterly defied any attempts to be climbed. Instead, he spotted what seemed a promising ledge some six or seven yards above and set the bridge upon the ground. Gauging the angle carefully, he propped it up and aimed its far end into the air.

Scorio closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and summoned his Igneous Heart. The sooty clouds in the cave seemed to have replenished themselves while he slept, and with strong, muscular sweeps of his spirit, he stirred them about himself once more, around and around and then down into the treasure.

It filled and then jerked to life.

Snapping open his eyes, Scorio saw the bridge erupt upwards, the effect almost immediate, its far end disappearing into the darkness. He gave it a push, speeding its fall, and it dropped down to bounce against the ledge.

With only five or so seconds remaining, he had no time to waste. He scampered up the planks as quickly as he could, gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg.

One, two… he did his best to count slowly, lunging up to grab at cracks in the timbers. Three, four…

There, the ledge. Not knowing how many seconds he had left, he surged up and to the side, leaving the bridge to catch hold of the rocky lip.

The bridge shuddered and contracted upwards, recoiling and then dropping down from the shadows to bounce upon the ledge.

Scorio levered himself up, and let out a defiant, “Ha!”

It’d worked! He’d used his… dark cloud manipulation abilities… to activate a treasure and accomplish the impossible!

Taking up the bridge, he limped into the oblique tunnel, a fistful of moss held high, heart pounding, and felt the first hint of confidence since being thrown through the Final Door.