IGS #4, Chapter 62

Scorio

A perilous headlong rush right into the face of death. There was no doubting the power that manifested at the tip of Dameon’s ferula. Scorio could sense the pinprick of light as a blight upon his Heart senses, a flaring of power far beyond what Dameon should have been able to manifest. Was that Emerald, was that Diamond—?

The bolt flashed down, quick as thought, and in pure bloodyminded determination Scorio decided to brute force it, to test his Shroud against the attack.

Wise?

No. But Scorio was drenched in bloodlust. He felt nothing but a desire to crush the other Great Soul, to not just kill him but humiliate him, break him, show Dameon how weak he was, how his every advance could never be enough, would always fall short, and in that moment of horror Scorio would—

The bolt of colorless light hit Scorio’s Shroud which flared golden across its entire front. Three feet deep, the Shroud held, at least, at first, for the glittering star of hissing power carved a path into the great shield, not phasing out, not dying away.

Scorio glared at it, the hissing bolt a mere handful of yards away from him even as he powered ever upward, the Shroud bearing the attack before it. How? How was the ferula blast simply persisting, as if Dameon were fueling it still, as if it were tethered to his Heart—

The bolt burst through Scorio’s Shroud. Reflexively he dismissed it at the last second, then fell away into a barrel roll, sail-like wings furling on his back as he rotated and dropped, the bolt flashing out harmlessly through where he’d been a moment ago.

Dameon’s laughter rang from high above. “Run, Scorio! Run! At long last I—”

His exclamation was cut off as a torrent of rocks flowed into him, an impossible avalanche of boulders, fragments, shards. These slammed into Dameon’s Shroud, which encased him perfectly, but even as they bounced off they recovered to circle and slam home again, endlessly impacting like an eternal waterfall with Dameon at its center.

Jova passed by just below, her face upturned, Leonis crouched behind, Fionna held before her, one arm across the other girl’s chest. Then a second plinth with identical passengers passed by behind and to one side, and this Jova cried out, “Dameon! We have Myla! Recall your oaths!”

Scorio came out of his fall, huge wings stabilizing him, and came up with muscular strokes, abusing the wind with each downbeat. High above, backed by roiling clouds and the perpetual lightning storm, Dameon cursed, his visibility limited, then he ceased to hove and dove, blasting the largest boulder apart with his ferula as he flew toward both Jovas.

“Myla!” His voice was exhilarated, near manic. “How delightful to see you again!” And even as he flew he aimed his ferula at the trio.

Not on my watch, thought Scorio, and focused on his form, his power, his burning Heart, and sought to manifest his own ferula, unsure what that would even mean. A huge stave that his dragon claws could clutch, or—

No.

The nature of his gullet shifted, became lined with Coal and Diamond, even as that fleck of Noumenon manifested at the back of his throat. Elongated to sheathe the entirety of his throat, the moment is coalesced Scorio roared and unleashed his own colorless flame.

Dameon sensed it, spun so that he faced Scorio, flying backward, and summoned his Shroud.

The colorless flame flitted through the air, an insignificant spark, and passed clear through the Shroud.

Scorio caught a glimpse of Dameon’s eyes bulging in alarm and then he grew opaque, hidden behind his own forcefield, his Flame Vault power, a second layer of defense that had stymied him and Naomi back when they’d attacked Dameon on his flying island.

The fleck of fire hit the forcefield, which flared brightly, cracks spidering across it. For a moment Scorio sensed his ferula blast digging deeper, but it was if Dameon was creating fresh layers of force behind each last layer by the moment, an endless onion that refreshed itself even as the blast consumed.

Until Scorio’s attack ran out of power and the forcefield repaired itself, pristine in moments.

Frustrated, Scorio roared and surged toward the Charnel Duke, and from within the opaque globe he distantly heard: “I claim Dominion!”

The mana storm around them stilled, began to align itself with the Dameon. This was death. Death for all of them, so Scorio reached out and reflexively imagined the world filled with Imperial Gel, superimposed the latticework of cells over the mana, and wrenched.

Dameon’s efforts immediately stalled, the mana becoming sluggish as mud. It wasn’t that Scorio was truly contesting him; he couldn’t actually best the man, couldn’t win Primacy. The best he could do was mud up the works, make the mana intractable, and buy them all time.

Then, with a flexion of his own will, he commanded the Iron mana that surrounded Dameon to solidify.

A great dodecahedron manifested all around the globe, consuming it, enveloping it, and with a muffled shout Dameon began to fall.

Scorio flew after, knowing that Dameon would liquify the mana, and when he did—there! He shifted into his black flame form, the process near-instantaneous, then inhaled it into his barrel-vaulted chest with flame, and blew it through the air, a vicious stream that glimmered with Silver flecks, the first six or seven yards near invisible, the the whole of it blossoming into a black plume that washed over Dameon’s revealed globe just as a Jova let out a distant, thin scream and dropped a dolmen the size of a three story house from the heavens above down upon Dameon’s forcefield.

The huge rock drove the Charnel Duke down below it, Scorio angling his head to keep it bathed in flame, then dropping to follow it, exhaling, ever exhaling an inferno onto the man.

Dameon’s forcefield vanished, revealing the man, who screamed as he was enveloped in flame. A bolt of Diamond mana flew up to shatter the huge boulder, fragmenting it even as Dameon swept a Shroud back into existence before him and loosed a bolt from his ferula at Scorio.

Who curled away, the bolt flashing by just below his belly. A second bolt sizzled and snapped at it flew past his head, and then Scorio brought up his Shroud and roared down at Dameon, “DIE!”

Dameon’s eyes widened, causing him to hesitate for a moment, but then he laughed, shaking off the effects, and hurled himself toward Scorio.

Who blasted him with his internal ferula once more. Dameon spun about as he came on, the flashing spark of colorless flame just barely missing, and faster than Scorio thought possible closed the distance. One moment to the next he was before him, fist drawn back, and then with a cry he swung and shattered Scorio’s Shroud, punched clear through it and crashed his fist into Scorio’s saurian jaw.

The blow was tremendous.

Scorio’s vision blanked out, his head whipping back, and he lost control of his flight, tumbling and falling away into the gusts of storm wind, wings wrapped around himself, thoughts scrambled.

Desperately he sought for control, to raise his Shroud, to collect himself. Any second now a ferula blast could catch him, tear him apart—

Dameon screamed in frustration.

Finally catching his balance, Scorio opened his wings, abandoning his huge dragon form to shrink into his humanoid draconic one, ferula appearing in his fist. He spung about, over and over, but extended his wings and steadied, came out of the fall into a swoop, and saw that Leonis had extended his ring of Nezzars around Dameon even as Jova continued to pummel him with hundreds of rocks, slamming him again and again.

They had to keep the pressure up. Scorio raised his ferula and loosed a bolt, flew after it. The bolt cut through Dameon’s Shroud once more, embedded itself in his forcefield, but again lost penetrative power as the forcefield endlessly renewed itself.

How?

Scorio loosed again, but now he studied Dameon more closely with his Heart senses, and Sal’s words came back to him: The Sun. He’s… He’s drawing it out after him.

A great plume of mana was endlessly flowing into Dameon, Silver and Bronze and Copper and even flecks of Gold streaming into his back. A variation of the Delightful Secret Marinating technique? Something like that, but it wasn’t just ambient mana, it was being funneled across the skies from the Sun itself, as if Dameon had a direct tap upon the exploding Silverine god.

Which meant Dameon was never going to run out of mana. And no doubt that he could endlessly enhance his techniques, force them into their ultimate expressions by supercharging them with the Sun’s very essence.

Dameon was still clawing for Dominion. Scorio fought him for every inch, but the other man’s intrinsic ability, his intuitive knowledge as a Charnel Duke had him outmatched.

A flash of colorless fire flew forth, aimed precisely at one of the Jova’s as she curved above them in the sky.

“Watch out!” roared Scorio, not knowing if that was his friends or Plassus’s illusion.

The bolt flew right at Fionna where she stood before Jova. The slender girl’s eyes widened and she shifted into crimson mist even as Leonis shoved Jova back, his golden armored form huge so that he could step in and tuck one shoulder, taking Dameon’s attack full on.

The entire plinth spun about as Jova both fell away and kept it beneath her, Fionna’s mist form floating free, Leonis losing his balance and plummeting into the sky.

Scorio had to trust that Jova would catch him, couldn’t himself move in to assist. If his concentration broke, Dameon would tear Dominion away and that would end their hopes completely.

“STOP!” roared Scorio even as he honed in, loosing bolts from his ferula again and again as quickly as he could. The bitter realization struck him: he wasn’t using his ferula to its fullest extent. It could do more. It could output far greater damage. But his grasp was limited to that of a muddied Blood Baron, and—

“Come on, then!” roared Dameon, who dropped his Shroud and flew forward to meet Scorio. Scorio also dropped his Shroud, and in mid-air they collided, slamming into each other with such violence that they spun away, locked together, both losing control over their flight.

He was there, right there, in his grip, his handsome face sneering, blond hair windtossed, eyes alive with power. Scorio gripped his left arm with one claw, and sought to dig the tips of his talons into the man’s side with the other.

“I can’t tell you how good it feels,” cried Dameon even as Scorio’s talons made contact with his ribs. “To get to tear you apart with my own hands!”

Scorio didn’t waste his time on words. The other man was wrestling for Dominion still, and winning: the mana around them was growing thick, unresponsive, beginning to orient completely on the other man.

“Did I ever tell you I killed Lianshi myself?” Dameon laughed, then screamed, then grinned as Scorio’s talons began to dig into his side. By the Hells, what had happened to the man’s skin? It felt like trying to score gashes into the side of a granite cliff. “She was nearly dead by that point, of course, and begging for mercy. Just crying for it. Pathetic. I mean, I could barely understand her words, her jaw was broken you see—”

Scorio roared and became flame, passing clear through Dameon who screamed anew and spun about just as Scorio became flesh once more and exhaled a plume of black fire right into the man’s face.

Such was the force of his exhalation that Scorio was pushed back by his own attack. Dameon opened his arms and took the blow, only raising his Shroud toward the last, to reveal himself scorched and blistered, his flesh cooked, his hair gone, his clothing cindered—but his grin remained, and even as Scorio watched he began to heal, the Sun-mana pouring into his wounds.

“I’m invincible, Scorio, don’t you see? I’m still attuned to the Sun, part mana, I mean, even I don’t quite get it, but right now? You can’t defeat me. You simply cant!”

Scorio hesitated, and in that moment of horror lost control of his grip of the mana. Dameon greedily asserted himself, and nearly assumed total control before Scorio clawed back some authority of his own.

“This is rich! You know, I’m not the vindicative type, I swear, I’m deeply pragmatic at heart, but I think I actually will make a point of hunting down all your friends and killing them just as a metaphorical way to piss on your grave.” Dameon inhaled deeply, his skin already healing to a smooth, reddish pink. “Maybe I’ll seduce Lianshi this time round. Won’t that be sweet? To kiss the mouth and kicked in the last go round, to have her use her mouth in other ways—”

Fury. Scorio tore back a whole mass of the mana from Dameon’s dominion and flew up, burning talons outstretched.

The other man projected his Shroud just right, angled so that Scorio’s claws bounced away, and then he darted in to slam his fist straight into Scorio’s face.

Such power.

Scorio felt the bones in his cheek give away, tasted blood, lost all sense of sound and sight. He tumbled back, and the last of his ability to control the mana was lost.

And into that void of his loss stole Dameon’s will. Absolute, it seized the ambient mana that surged and burned about them both, and ordered it according to his desire.

As Scorio fell, he heard his hated foe cry with savage jog, “I have Dominion!”