IGS #4, Chapter 55 Edits

[Here's some key excerpts to show how Fionna's experience in the Outer Gauntlet changes her interactions with Scorio. Throughout Chapter 51 where Scorio creates his ferula, and Chapter 52 where he fights his way to the golden key, Fionna is more focused, more helpful, and while still terrified, clearly acting from a place of wishing to be of assistance. Scorio notices this change, but continues to doubt her. Once they get out of the Gauntlet, they have the following exchange.]

“What is this?” asked Scorio softly, trying to take it all in.

“The Fortress of Symmetry,” said Fionna, tone hushed. “I grew up here. Ages past, it was supposed to be full of Herdsmen. But our numbers have shrunk to just a handful. This may seem large, but it’s but a fraction of what’s contained in the cube. There are entire wings given to forges and laboratories, along with endless warehouses of equipment, gathered resources, ore, and tools. It’s—it doesn’t take up the entire Cube though. The livable part. Most of that is for—well. The batteries.”

“Batteries?”

Fionna bit her lower lip as if deliberating some decision, then straightened up and gestured around them. “All of this is powered by mana, right? The lights. The Fortress’s constant levitation and automated journey. Its defenses. The Gauntlet. The crucibles, the… everything.”

“Right.” Scorio considered the sheer amount of mana this all had to take to operate. “That’s got to be an enormous amount. Because the Cube’s been around for—what—seven hundred years?”

Fionna nodded numbly. “Something like that. And maybe in the beginning there were Great Souls here who could help power it, but now?” Her smile was despairing. “Now it’s just me and Anseline and a handful of others, living like ghosts amongst the echoes of the past.”

Scorio felt a minor urge to comfort her, but that instinct died quickly. Fionna was no innocent. Rippling his fingers along the haft of his ferula, he frowned at the gleaming fastness of the Cube’s interior. “You grew up here?”

“Yes. It was… I…” She studied his face, expression plaintive. “I don’t want to sound like I’m seeking pity. After what you’ve been through. Being a Red Lister. All your trials. Just… my years here weren’t… they weren’t happy ones.”

Scorio nodded slowly. “Must have been lonely.”

“It was…” She considered. “It was a life. One I didn’t think I had any say over. But maybe…” She looked down and away. “Well. You’ve shown me what a lie that was.”

Scorio didn’t know what to say. Was she manipulating him? He didn’t think so, but that was her specialty, wasn’t it?

“In the Outer Gauntlet—that’s where we were trapped—I wanted to, well.” She grimaced. “I wanted to give up. I thought we were done for. We should have been done for. But you…” She glanced up at him. “What I’m trying to say, and clearly making a mess of, is that… thank you. For not giving up. We’d be there still, otherwise. And I know you can’t trust me. I wouldn’t, if I were you. But I decided in there that if I could help, if I could…do any small thing to repay you, because of what I learned in there, from watching you, about my own life, oh, by the gods.” She turned away and covered her face.

Scorio stood still, feeling at once awkward and some measure of impatience. But instinct bid him hold his tongue and wait.

“I’m making such a mess of this.” Her shoulders slumped. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry, and I’ll help you in any way I can. If you even want me to.”

“All right.” He didn’t know how he felt about that. Again, she seemed sincere, but… “Why don’t you just tell me where we go from here?”

Fionna turned back around. “Anseline—Lady Krula—is probably expecting us in the throne room. Through there. It’s her favorite place, and where controlling the Fortress and its engines is easiest.”

Scorio considered the key. “Will this actually help me control anything?”

“It’s the Warden’s key. You need that to access the powers of the throne.”

“Which I can only do once Anseline is dead?”

“She’ll demand you kill her. But—did you actually gain Dominion in the Outer Gauntlet?”

“No,” said Scorio. “Something close, maybe, but not the real thing.”

Fionna studied him, expression fascinated. “I don’t know what that means, but you’ll need Dominion to take control of the Fortress. Anseline will demand you establish Primacy.”

“And if I don’t?”

Fionna laughed. “She’s mad. I can say that openly at last. These past years she’s only grown worse, but now? I don’t know. I know what she’ll do if you refuse her.”

“Is it refusal if I just can’t?”

“In her eyes? Probably. Maybe she’ll try to force you, or call you a liar, or… I don’t know. But she’ll kill you before letting you go.”

Scorio tongued the inside of his cheek and considered the gold key. “Well. I might have to ruin her plans, then.”

“She can slow down time. In here, especially. If she wills it, we’ll be practically reduced to statues. If you want to catch her off guard, you’ll have to be fast.”

“Just like her sister, then. Can she change memories, too?”

Fionna nodded.

Scorio considered his ferula. “Well, perhaps I have a few surprises of my own.”

“I’ll do what I can to distract her, when the time comes.”

“You will?”

Fionna flushed and looked down. “I’ll try. It might not change anything, but.”

“Because she betrayed you?”

“That, yes. And… other things. A lifetime of other things. But I don’t want to bore you.”

“All right.” He took a sharp breath. “Guess we’ve nowhere to go but this throne room.”

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[Later in the chapter, Scorio with Fionna's aid go about approaching Lady Krula quite differently.]

Eventually they wound their way to a smaller, golden arch that led into a circular room. Fionna approached this arch from the side though, as if intent on their not being seen, and gestured for him to take a peek.

Moving up carefully, Scorio glanced beyond. The floor within was tiled with ivory, and a single bronze balcony ran around the circumference of the room halfway up. The ivory walls were inlaid with bronze pipes and complex machines whose bronze surfaces lit with great panels of golden light, but the upper third of the chamber was one vast glass dome whose thousands of small, composite panes glowed with opaque white light.

Three slender trees grew from the center of the room, their trunks weirdly elongated and their branches reaching for the huge dome, their delicate canopies blossoming some fifty yards above them, and centered between their trunks rose a circular dais of cobalt blue and gold. There Lady Krula sat upon a great bronze seat, twin panels on either side glimmering with lights and buttons and levers, her eyes closed.

Of course she’s on a throne, thought Scorio to himself.

A decision, then: to enter and converse, and deal with Anseline’s madness, or attempt to end the problem here and now. There were so many variables, so much he didn’t understand, but could he risk her using her powers on him?

Better to risk chaos then place himself in her power once more.

He caught Fionna’s eye, pointed at his ferula, then indicated with his thumb at what lay around the corner within the chamber.

There could be no doubting his intent.

If Fionna was going to betray him, now was the time.

Her face paled, but instead she simply nodded jerkily.

Scorio took a calming breath, raised his ferula so that it was pointed at the seated Charnel Lady, and unleashed its power.

Lady Krula’s eyes snapped open as time slowed to a crawl.

His colorless flame flew slowly through the air, aimed perfectly at her chest, but she had ample time to erect her Shroud, which proved as formidable as any Charnel Duke’s.

The mote of flame dug deeply into the Shroud’s curvature, causing it to glow brightly, and then burned itself out.

Lady Krula beamed, as if the attack on her life were a sign of good character. “Welcome, Scorio! Welcome to the future you shall soon fashion, that you shall create once I am gone. But not so fast. First I must inform you of a few particulars, though I applaud your eagerness.”

[Then, after their conversation, Scorio reveals he can't claim Dominion, and Anseline decides to force his hand. This ensues.]

Scorio’s thoughts raced. What to do? If he summoned his ferula she’d block him with her Shroud or claim Primacy once more. And even if he killed her, how long would it take the Silverine Suns to evolve? What would happen then? Could the Great Souls manage dozens of whatever emerged from such vast conglomerations of power? Would the Cube even be of use to him and everyone else if it crashed into the silver sands below?

He didn’t know.

“Don’t hesitate,” whispered Fionna urgently, only to sag by his side and collapse. At the same time, a second version of her appeared before Anseline and touched the Charnel Duchess’s elbow.

Anseline lifted up off the ground. She didn’t appear concerned, merely confused. “Fionna, what is the—”

Scorio summoned his ferula and loosed his colorless flame.

The second Fionna collapsed, corpselike, as Anseline glared abruptly at Scorio and summoned her Shroud, exerting Dominion simultaneously so that she dropped to the dais. Scorio suddenly felt mired in mud, and even the other Herdsmen who were reacting with shouts and alarm seemed to slow as if in a dream. But not before his ferula’s blast hit home.

It punched neatly through Anseline's nascent Shroud, passed through Fionna’s back, and disappeared into the Charnel Duchess's chest.

Scorio felt himself abruptly freed of her power. Horrified at the speed of his own reaction, unsure if he’d chosen wisely, he could only stare as Anseline staggered, tripped over Fionna’s second corpse, clutched at the arm of her throne, then collapsed to the ground.