IGS #4, Chapter 61

Scorio

“First things first,” said Plassus, peering at the panels on either side of him then frowning at the armrests. “Let’s get this Cube righted.”

Scorio tore his gaze away from the translucent wall to stare at the older man just as Plassus Ignited his Heart. The blaze was bright, a deep and stout flame that Scorio could almost understand in a novel manner—was there an element of… richness? Of density to the flames? He’d never been able to understand mana along those lines, but studying Plassus’s Heart, he realized there was so much more to mana than he’d understood.

“Now.” Plassus took a deep breath. “I have Dominion.”

And his power washed out to claim the room, the mana, everything. His presence was pervasive, total, his authority without question. The man himself took on a more august appearance, his features ennobled, his mane of iron gray hair stirring, his eyes sheened in Silver-mana.

What the hell? Scorio had never seen Dominion manifest in such a visible manner before.

Jova had moved to stand before the great screen on which the Sun and approaching figure were so vividly displayed. “He’s approaching fast. It’s Dameon, isn’t it?”

“’Course it is,” said Leonis, tone grim. “Bastard’s like a roach. You need to stomp on him at least ten times to make sure he’s actually dead.”

“Reminds me of someone I know,” smiled Jova, glancing back over at her shoulder at Scorio.

“Really? Our tearful reunion and that’s how you choose to express your feelings?” Scorio leaped down from the dais to approach the two. “It’s good to see you.” Emotions suddenly broke free of their constraints, and he wiped at this eyes as he took a ragged breath. “Damn good.”

Leonis put his hand on Scorio’s shoulder. “We never doubted. Well. Jova may have had a moment of doubt that you were still alive, but she got over it.”

“Nah.” Jova crossed her arms and rocked back on her heels. “The roach analogy is apt. The moment I heard the Herdsmen had nabbed you I felt little more than pity for their mistake.”

“Actually—” Scorio twisted about and caught sight of Myla where she’d melted away to near hide behind the dais. “Myla and I have reached an understanding, haven’t we?”

Myla stepped out uncertainly into view.

“Myla.” Kuragin’s growl was rife with warning. “Tell me you were a victim in all this. Tell me you’re not a Herdsmen.”

“Sorry, Kuragin.” She shrugged one shoulder, and Scorio felt her power infiltrate his thoughts, making her seem vulnerable and guileless and in need of protection. But it didn’t sink in as much as it had; no doubt due to his making Blood Baron. “Despite all appearances,” she continued, “I’m not a nice person.”

Kuragin’s brow lowered and he bunched up his fists. “I trusted you. We fought together. You saved my life back in Weveedo’s Gulch—”

“I know.” She raised her palms to forestall him. “This isn’t the time, I’m afraid. You can and should yell at me later. If there’s a later.”

“Oh,” said Scorio, snapping his fingers. “I should mention that I’m a Blood Baron now.”

“You what?” Plassus cracked open his eyes to stare at him. “You’re what?”

In response Scorio summoned his ferula. It manifested in his fist in all its ebon glory, the dragon’s head exuding power, the faint traces of Noumenon like flecks of fire spat forth from a bonfire.

“You rank bastard.” Plassus shook his head in wonder and disbelief. “You… wait.” His eyes narrowed. “That Noumenon?” His face darkened in outrage. “You got Noumenon in your ferula? How in the fucking—” He clenched his jaw and cut himself off. Grimaced, turned his head away as if forcing himself to swallow something bitter, then twisted his lips into a rictus smile as he turned back. “I’m so happy for you, Scorio. Well done. Let’s have a little chat after so I can punch in your face while I still can.”

Scorio couldn’t help but smirk, and as Plassus bent to his task once more, he turned to his friends.

Jova was just glaring at him.

“How?” she demanded.

“Guys.” Leonis’s tone was concerned. “Dameon’s getting closer. And he’s flying. He shouldn’t be flying.”

“You know, I thought I’d been Pyre Lord long enough,” said Scorio lightly. “What’s it been, a month? Two? Who keeps track. Anyways, I just, you know. Put a little effort into it, and—there you go.” He turned his ferula back and forth as if mildly surprised by its presence. “It’s not hard when you—”

Jova glided forward so quickly, with such vicious intent that Scorio danced back, half-laughing, half-on guard, but she caught herself and grimaced and then hung her head. After a moment her shoulders began to shake. Laughter? Had to be laughter, right?

“You bastard.” She looked up, and was that tears in her eyes? Then she stepped forward and hugged him, the movement catching him by surprise so that he just stood there, arms out to the sides, staring at Leonis who looked equally shocked. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”

Scorio hugged her back, uncertain, then with greater confidence. His chest felt expansive, and warmth infused him as he held her tight, her brow briefly resting on his shoulder.

Then she stepped back, the moment broken, and smiled wryly at him, as if they were complicit in mocking that brief moment of sincerity. “Gods. I swear though, if you make Charnel Duke in the near future, I will bury you under a hundred tons of rock.”

“No promises,” grinned Scorio. “But—” A realization hit him. “Xandera? Druanna? Kelona?”

“Xandera is outside,” said Jova. “The Cube has wards that prevent her from entering. All fiends, probably. I can sense her now.”

But he could see it in Leonis’s expression. The pain. The loss. That expansive feeling in his chest abruptly became tight, and his stomach grew heavy, as if he’d just swallowed a large, smooth river stone. “No.”

“I’m sorry,” said Leonis quietly. “They claimed Dominion. We were defenseless.”

Jova reached out to touch his arm.

“Damn it,” he hissed. He squeezed his eyes shut for a brief moment, took a shaky breath, and saw Kelona as he’d first seen her back in the war camp, her reckless energy, her bright smile. The second time he’d lost her. And Druanna?

That loss hit even harder. Somehow, having her with them, had given him a sense of invulnerability. Foolish, but—

“There.” Plassus’s voice was rich with satisfaction. “She’s all mine.” He straightened where he sat in the throne and fixed them with a pleased stare. “This is a fancy toy. I’ve never seen the like. Nor can I even conceive how one would go about constructing it. But now it’s mine.”

“How is it holding up?” asked Scorio, shoving his grief aside.

“Not good. From what I can gather, being right next to a rupturing Sun as it dumps Imperator-loads of scalding mana into the atmosphere is bad news.” Plassus passed his hand over his stubbled chin. “Not ideal, one could say. But I’m holding it together. Takes effort, though.”

Kuragin gave an up-nod to the screen. “Dameon’s getting close. What do you think he wants?”

“Dameon?” Myla let out a half-panicked laugh. “He wants power. To make Imperator. That’s pretty much it.”

Scorio eyed her. “That’s right. You planned all this together.”

“Actually, he came to me. Swore Heart Oaths for no reason I could understand.”

“What Heart Oaths?” demanded Jova.

“To not reveal the Heart Oaths to anyone, by any means, and to not let on that he knew who or what I was. To act always in my personal best interests, and to enact the plan I laid out for him so that we’d capture you and deliver you to Anseline.”

Plassus eyed her. “You’re a nasty little thing, aren’t you.”

Myla deflated. “I suppose so, yes.”

Scorio turned back to the screen. “Myla was a tool. Anseline betrayed her. Doesn’t make what she did all right, but we can figure out her fate later. Now? We finally kill Dameon.”

“I’d help,” said Plassus, “but that’d come at the expense of this Cube. If I withdraw my attention, she’ll fly apart.”

“We can handle Dameon,” said Jova. “Maybe. He was just a Dread Blaze last time.”

“He’s more than that, now.” Sal was still working at his panel. “I’ve never seen anything like it. His signal is all over the map. I can’t even get a reading on his reservoir. The mana crystal just keeps oscillating across the entire spectrum.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” said Leonis. “Plus he’s flying. Means he’s a Charnel Duke at the least.”

“Or he got himself a treasure,” said Myla.

Scorio studied the wall. “Does he even know we’re in here?”

Nobody responded.

“Regardless.” Scorio felt certainty solidify within him. “He dies today. This has been a long time coming. He’s spilt too much blood. For Leonis and Lianshi’s sake, he dies.”

Leonis gave him a freighted look, then gave a slow and purposeful nod.

“Myla.” Jova snapped her fingers. “You’re with me.”

“You’re going to use me to shield you?”

“Correct,” said Jova. “We’ll distract and occupy him. Scorio, do you think that ferula of yours can take down a Charnel Duke?”

He glanced at Anseline’s corpse. “I reckon there’s a chance.”

“What do we do?” asked Leonis.

Scorio hesitated, unsure as how to turn down his friend, but again Jova cut in.

“You’re also with me. He made Dread Blaze, Scorio. And his power.” She shook her head in wonder. “It’ll make a huge difference.”

Leonis just fair lit up.

“Can you drop me off on top of the Cube?” asked Nyrix. “I’ll take potshots if he gets close.”

“I’ll join you there,” said Kuragin. “Not much else I can do.”

“Go on, go on,” said Plassus, waving his hand dismissively as he frowned off into the middle distance. “This ship—sorry, Cube—she’s… damn, where’s the release valve for this thing?”

Scorio could viscerally understand the challenge Plassus faced. Even moving away from the Sun now at all speed, the batteries were being supercharged, and the—he didn’t even know the names for the parts—were overheating, conducting too much mana, and mana that was wrong. They’d probably have already dropped from the sky if not ruptured in midair without his intervention.

“Bring him in here,” said Plassus distractedly. “I’ll sort him out.”

“Whatever you’re going to do,” said Sal nervously, “you’d better do it fast. He’s bringing the storm with him.”

“He’s what?” demanded Jova.

“The Sun. He’s…” Sal shook his head in confusion, distaste, surrender. “He’s drawing it out after him. Not the Sun proper, but like pulling on a sheet, it’s… that Charnel Duke’s not going to settle the Cube till he goes away.”

“Then let’s give him a send off,” said Scorio. “Myla, show us the way out.”

They quit the chamber. Ran down gleaming halls, through the splendors of the Cube, and only then did Scorio realize that the large translucent wall hadn’t been a window—it had been a projection, an illusion, of the outside world that was hundreds of yards away.

What wonders did this Cube hold?

In short order they reached a large bay whose face was open to the skies. The wind moaned beyond, and the air was charged with the viciously activated mana, so that it felt in some sense heated and sharp even though Scorio knew that was just his Heart sense.

Xandera hovered just outside the bay, hunched and ashen in the wind, her trident in one fist, gaze turned toward the Sun.

The sight of her evolved queen-form sank Scorio’s heart. She must have sensed him, because she turned back and they locked eyes, her burning gold ones bright even as the rest of her form darkened, her disconnect from the ground already having an impact.

Whatever had happened had driven her to this extreme, and though she was here with them, Scorio knew in some fashion that she was already gone.

A great raft of stone lay upon the gleaming metal floor of the bay. Jova jogged over to it. “Everyone close. I’m going to—”

A blast of light eclipsed all reason. It was akin to a lightning strike, colorless and total, and it split the air, banished all color, reduced the world momentarily to monochrome as the explosion of might seared the air just outside the bay.

Scorio had flung up his arm in reflexive self-defense, but the blast faded, color restored, and he stared out at the whorling, distorting sky.

“Whatever that was, he missed,” said Myla.

Wait. Scorio straightened. “Where’s  Xandera?”

“My platform’s gone. Just gone,” said Jova.

“No!” Scorio broke into a sprint. No thought, no planning. He saw in his mind’s eye her resigned smile, the sadness mingled with victory, the bitter of acceptance of what had to be.

No.

He shifted into his draconic form as he reached the bay’s edge. What lay outside reminded him of the Rain Wall back in the Rascor Plains, but this was a spiritual tempest, huge fluxes of mana bulging and cutting across the air, collapsing and expanding, whorling and curling about themselves.

He leaped into the void, wings furled on his back, ferula yet gripped in one fist, and dove.

They were four hundred, maybe five hundred yards above the desert. Below, fragments of rock and a serpentine body fell, twisting and turning as they dropped. Scorio banished all fear, all horror, and focused on one thing alone: speed.

Down he shot, arms by his sides, perforating the winds and sky as he arrowed down after Xandera’s blasted form. She’d taken grievous damage. An arm was gone. Chunks from her tail. Molten blood beaded from her wounds to rise into the air and there rapidly cool into dark blobs.

He willed her to be alive. With ferocious, dumb determination, he projected his absolute refusal for her to be anything else, and speared down, faster, faster, fastest.

Scorio snagged her from the turbulent air perhaps ten yards above the sands, his arms sliding under blazing hot body to scoop her up, wings snapping out to capture the air and yank him upward, up and into a soaring glide that took him over the dunes. Even at her coldest and most wounded, Xandera burned like a living coal, and when she stirred in his arms, his heart surged and he let forth a cry of victory, of vindication.

No more losses.

His heart, his world, his soul, couldn’t take it.

He dropped to the sands and quickly laid Xandera down upon an outcropping of fragmented boulders. She was too large, sinuous, and unwieldy for him to cradle to his chest.

“Xandera, can you hear me?” He moved up to her torso. By the gods she looked exactly like Xandera Prime, Xandera the first Queen he’d first seen. Was her, in ways he couldn’t tease apart, and yet not, was her own self. “Xandera?”

She blinked, smiled, lolled her hugely horned head to one side. “Hello, Scorio. You’re alive.”

“You’re the—” He bit back his words. “Your wounds. How bad are they?”

“I’m alive. I will heal. Already I’m calling the heat from the depths to salve my wounds.”

“Thank the gods,” whispered Scorio.

“Go.” She reached across her chest with her good arm and wrapped her talons around his scaled arm. “Do what needs to be done. Don’t let any more of our friends suffer.”

“No,” he agreed, purpose and resolve settling about his shoulders like an iron mantle. “I won’t. I’ll be back for you as soon as I can.”

“Don’t fear for me.” She squeezed his arm and then closed her eyes. “Exact vengeance in my name for his daring to wound royalty.”

“I’ll be your vengeance,” said Scorio, and rose to his feet. He stared up at the heavens, searching out his foe.

And what a sight it was. The Lost Cube hung in the air above him, its multifaceted faces of iron and steel, silver and bronze afire with the reflections of the burning Sun. The heavens were grown choked with smoldering, fulminous clouds, great anvils that towered into the sky, all of them painted purple, lavender, smoke gray, but for where they gleamed gold as they reflected the glory of the Sun.

A Sun haloed in gold and quicksilver lightning, an ever expanding network of flashing, coruscating fire that lanced at the clouds, that arched out overhead as if to rib the sky, to scaffold the collapsing reality as torrents of mana flooded Acherzua. The spheres’ black face raced, swarmed, and boiled, black melting and surging into purple, and such was the violence of the light that burned the sky that the desert below was scored with purple and black, great shifting ridges of shadow that made the land itself feel alive, protesting the violence being done to it by the sky.

Where was—there. Jova had taken to the skies and was already sliding around in a great curve, Leonis and Myla clustered close, her stone plinth reduced in size, stone sidings grown to keep her passengers safe. A thick cloud of boulders surrounded them, and beyond those huge rocks hovered a dozen Nezzars, and even from here, even against the tapestry of power run mad, Scorio could sense the influence of those clubs, as if they branded the world and somehow blazed in his Heart senses even brighter than mana run wild.

And there. The center to Jova’s carved circle.

Dameon.

No matter how Scorio felt about him, there was no denying that the man was resplendent. He hovered, arms outstretched, one knee raised, his blond hair tousled by hurricane winds, his eyes blazing with white fire. In one fist he held a scepter—no, a ferula—and he radiated strength in a way Scorio had never seen before.

He was ascended. There was no doubting that.

But Scorio had also learned some new tricks.

With a great leap he surged into the sky, wings beating powerfully, Heart burning bright, and then willed himself to grow.

Using the Delightful Secret Marinating technique, he drank liberally of the swirling, enmaddened mana banks, causing them to fall directly into his great golden Heart as he grew into his dragon form.

Might.

Sheer, impossible strength. It flooded his frame as his bones thickened, lengthened, his chest deepening, huge slabs of muscle enclosing him, his wings stretching out, his tail lengthening. His neck extended out, his head growing massive, and great kite-shaped plates burst forth down the length of his spine even as huge spikes emerged from the tip of his tail.

He was vengeance given form. Never had he felt so strong, so indomitable. The desert below erupted into sandstorms as he powered up into the sky, and unable to restrain at long last his rage, his fury, his fierce anticipation of justice delivered, he let loose a roar, the sheer reverberation causing the air to shudder and shimmer as heat emerged from his gullet.

At long last. At long last he could let slip the constraints that had girded his fury. Ever since LastRock he’d buried his anger deep. Had fought for wisdom and restraint. Even within the Cube he’d reached for logic, for rationality, to turn horror to his advantage, to weaponize every aspect to increase the chances of success.

But now.

Now he could finally let the fury engulf him. This was his truest foe. The manipulator, the liar, a monster worse even than the Herdsmen. Anseline and Bravurn had labored, on some twisted level, toward some grand ambition. Dameon harbored nothing but selfish greed. His path was cobbled with skulls, and now, here, his propensity for wriggling free of fate would come to an end.

Scorio would end him.

Up he flew, surging toward the distant Charnel Duke, and even as he used his dragon form he realized that he’d grown more massive still. His chest was deeper, his shoulders broader, but his hips had narrowed even as his length had grown by nearly another half. And his forelegs, when they entered his field of vision, were sheened with the faintest glimmer of Noumenon, so subtle he could barely discern it.

Now.

Dameon oriented on him.

Scorio summoned his Shroud. The same Shroud he’d made massive while surviving in the Crucible, the same Shroud that had become abnormally dense and unyielding through the later stages of his evolution.

It appeared as a great curved disc before him, easily a three feet thick. Scorio sensed how he could stretch it out to encompass his entire form, but doing so would greatly thin it out, so he left it there before him, obscenely powerful and as huge as a set of double barn doors.

Dameon lifted his ferula, and even at this remove Scorio could discern the flash of his charming smile.

Light blazed at the tip of his foe’s ferula.

Scorio opened his maw and roared his defiance, his hatred, his bloodlust, and hurled himself headlong into the fight.