IGS #4, Chapter 53

Scorio

The fiend rushed into view. Cloak draped over one arm, garbed in ornate black finery, a consummate courtier but for his geometric nullity of a black rectangular head, it entered the hall at a full sprint and came to an abrupt stop.

It could sense the nature of his ferula, Scorio surmised, even as he fought his way up to his feet.

“Scorio?” Myla’s voice was a ragged whisper. “What is… how did you…?”

Scorio kept his ferula trained on the fiend. Its scaled length seemed more real than anything else in the Gauntlet, even Myla. It seemed to drink in the light, as if it were a gash cut into Hell itself that revealed the night that lay behind and beneath everything.

The fiend took a wary step out to the side.

Why was it hesitating?

No matter. His own fascination had stayed his hand, but no longer.

Scorio willed Silver mana to flood into the ferula.

The sensation was exquisite, strange, fey, incredible. For the briefest moment his Heart surged with flames, and then that power was within the ferula, surging down its length as quick as thought along the core of solid Diamond to where the fleck of Noumenon hovered.

A beam of colorless light flashed across the great hall and hit the fiend’s rectangular head. Which fractured, a chunk disintegrating such that bright, arterial-blood red light flooded out from the hole even as it staggered and twisted back.

Scorio could only gasp in wonder as he felt the kickback in power. What even—for a moment his Heart senses had been blinded by the ferula’s explosive might. Amazement made him sluggish. His mind, already turgid from countless excruciating deaths, was slow to react.

The fiend raised its gloved hand.

The gesture snapped Scorio out of his reverie. He willed power into the ferula, felt the whipsnap of explosive energy, and this time the ray of bleak grayish light took the fiend square in the chest.

It left a tiny hole right over its sternum, but blew out what looked like most of its back, chunks of glossy rock and cloth exploding out to clatter against the wall.

The fiend staggered, that translucent crimson light still flooding out in wild eddies from its ruined head, then collapsed.

A moment later the light died with it.

“How…” Myla gaped.

Scorio was too overwhelmed to even laugh. Instead he raised his ferula to study it. The Diamond teeth, the Coal length, the feeling of intense, world-annihilating power from the maw where the Noumenon had sunk back out of sight.

His ferula.

He’d done it.

Blinking, he looked about the giant hall. Nothing else happened. Shouldn’t the trial end with the fiend’s death…?

Oh. He’d forgotten. Of course not. He had to find the key.

“That’s a ferula,” said Myla, rank disbelief in her voice. “You fashioned one? While… but… the mana it’s loosing—how?”

“We need to get to the Key.” Scorio wasn’t sure he cared whether Myla followed or not. On some level, the humane, righteous part of him didn’t wish to leave her trapped in this Gauntlet, but it was almost outdone by his disgust and indifference. “Where do you think it would be?”

“There,” said Myla, pointing with a shaking hand at the far end of the room. Up past the broad shallow steps, past the giant pillars, to a solitary archway big enough for a castle entrance. “Through there.”

“Then let’s get out of here.” He began striding purposefully down the hall, footsteps muffled on the drifts of sand.

He felt… victorious. Shook. Uneasy. The weapon in his hand. He hadn’t even wrapped his mind around what he’d done. What he held. A Noumenon-forged ferula. Had anybody ever created its like?

“Does that mean you’re a Blood Baron now?” asked Myla, hurrying to catch up.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“If so, your other powers should be affected. Enhanced. I… is that…?”

Scorio ignored her. Footsteps. The black-clad fiend still lay on its side, but now Scorio could hear others approaching. From all sides.

“Run!” he barked, but it was already too late. They reached the base of the steps, began leaping up them, when ten or so new blockheads emerged from the various side exits and tunnels. They were identical to the first, each a perfect copy of the next, all radiating deep anger.

But Scorio’s gaze locked on the new fiend that emerged through the great archway ahead of them. Or construct. It had hints of the human to it, but only hints. Its torso was that of a muscular man flensed of all fat, the skin a chalk white so unhealthy it tinged toward gray. Great black metal plates shaped like triangles hung from its belt, overlapping to form a pointed, martial skirt, but beneath which no feet or legs showed. It was levitating in place, eddies of Silver mana burning in a column beneath it. Similar black iron plates formed huge paldrons over its shoulders, each plate progressively smaller till they reached the elbow from which black iron forearms extended to black gloved hands.

But it’s head.

A fluid black neck rose to support the lower half of a black face, the cheeks sunken, the nose aquiline, the jaw pointed, the expression one of consummate disdain. But only the lower half. It was cut off just below the eyes, across the bridge of its nose, and a red triangle of that same ghostly crimson light extended on that severed plane, the legs of the triangle extending out past its shoulders, the third point just past its nose.

The cumulative effect was one of terrifying power and dominance, of alien might and martial nature.

Scorio stopped on the uppermost step, ferula in hand.

Myla cringed and slunk up to his side.

Ten blockheads, and this new, fantastical leader.

Scorio dry swallowed.

Nobody moved.

The room was perfectly still. Perfectly silent but for Myla’s sharp, shallow breaths.

Then all was chaos. Scorio raised the ferula and loosed a bolt of colorless fire even as the fiends claimed Dominion.

The ferula winked out of his hand as his Heart guttered, but the bolt was already cast. It flitted across the room to impact Red, who turned just at the last moment to interpose his massively shielded shoulder between the spark and itself.

His ferula’s blast punched clear through the plates of black iron and then through its pallid chest, right above where its heart should have been.

Red floated backward as if buffeted by terrible winds, its sneer turning into an almost comical ‘O’ of surprise, but then Scorio saw no more: red flashes of searing light cut him down from all sides, his death instantaneous.

“Damn it!” He came to, already on his feet and back where he’d begun, the intense pain that had cut through him along a dozen planes vanishing swiftly.

He immediately Ignited, summoned his ferula, and began racing toward the steps.

“Wait!” called Myla, voice desperate. “How are you going to stop them? You can’t defeat so many! What are you going to do?”

He ignored her and instead shifted up into his draconic form.

Myla had been correct. He must have made Blood Baron, because he felt somehow more perilous, his armor more dense, his might and agility greatly enhanced. His tail swung behind him, his head shifted into that of a dragon, and when he gazed down at his clawed hands, his scales had taken on a subtle sheen, as if the faintest wash of Noumenon now lay over them.

Huh.

He was more grown more powerful. His mastery over mana more complete. His Heart, already perfect, now had in some strange manner more presence, more… authority, than it had had before.

Which meant Scorio had only one plan, and that a barbaric one.

His victory would be savage and total, or not at all.

The sound of running feet from all sides. He almost flinched, trained by countless deaths to associate that sound with pain. But he bore on and leaped up the steps before the enemies flooded into the chamber.

Again, some nine or ten blockheads, freezing in place the moment they appeared in tunnel mouths or between columns in the galleries far overhead.

And there, emerging from the central arch, Red, as disdainful and masterful as ever, his triangle of murderous crimson light ever so lightly tilted as if he stared down his gleaming black nose.

No words. No bluster.

Scorio extended his Heart sense and took in all the mana that surrounded them. The layers of Bronze, Iron, and Silver, grown so familiar after countless restarts. This time his need to project the Imperial Gel matrix was flickerflash fast: he envisioned it, made it so, and exerted his will upon the mana.

Only to be immediately contested.

The blockheads established dominion as one.

Or tried.

The mana slowed its nascent rotation around him, began to fade from his view. But Scorio wouldn’t relinquish his grip. His authority, newfound and potent, latched onto the mana and fought to wrest it back.

Not through Dominion. This was no Sol versus Imogen.

This was brute, Gold-tempered, perfect Hearted, Noumenon-enhanced stubbornness. This was crude strength against perfect technique.

But he didn’t need to win.

He just needed to stall them.

Stall them long enough to raise his ferula and begin his reign of carnage.

He willed mana into his ferula, the instinct swift and sure, and colorless fire flew forth to blast into Red, who this time erected a crimson Shroud before it, thick and perfectly spherical, encasing it completely with foot-thick light.

The ferula’s blast punched through with ease and vaporized its head. The triangle of red light flared, lost coherency, flashed out wide into a coruscating arc that carved stone and disintegrated columns within five or six yards, and then Red crashed to the ground.

Scorio wasn’t done.

Even as he clenched his teeth and fought for control over the mana, he wheeled and loosed spark after spark of colorless light at the blockheads.

Who seemed unable to comprehend what was happening: they remained stock still and were knocked down one after the other, their battle for the mana lessening with each loss, until at last the final one collapsed into a twisted heap.

“Holy shit,” murmured Myla in profound, reverential awe. “You did it.”

“Not yet, I haven’t.” Scorio didn’t waste time. He raced down the hall, past the titanic columns, to finally reached the deeply scored mess that Red’s death had left before the archway. This he leaped, soaring over the twisted figure, to land within the archway and pass beyond.

A golden key hung inside a column of light. It was archaic and large. The room was otherwise bare, and felt small after the soaring heights of the main hall.

Scorio studied the key with his Heart senses. It was suspended by coiling Silver mana. A trap? Possibly. The room was otherwise filled only with Silver, all of it slowly curling around the key like a vortex of honey.

Scowling, anticipating failure, Scorio stepped forth and took the key.

Or tried.

His clawed hand passed clear through it.

“More coming!” called Myla from where she stood in the archway.

This was a Charnel Duke test. He had to take control of the mana. Scorio inhaled deeply, held his breath, and reached for the Silver vortex. It was thick and powerful and resistant to his will.

“Hurry!” called Myla.

The mana was his. It just didn’t know it yet. Propping his ferula over one scaled shoulder, he focused on his burning Heart. He stood within his reservoir. Engaging the Delightful Secret Marinating technique, he willed all the mana to fall into his Heart at once, to burn, and lit the vortex on fire.

Silver incandesced.

Scorio reached through the burning vortex and seized the key. His talons closed around metal and he plucked it forth.

The room and key and the sense of growing danger vanished.

He and Myla stood at the end of a broad hallway, a wall at their backs. Panels of soft Bronze light illuminated its length, with closed doors on both sides, until it opened into a large room.

“You did it,” croaked Myla, sinking to her knees. She abruptly laughed, a sound which became a sob and then cut off as she clamped her hands over her mouth.

This wasn’t over yet. If anything, the real trial was just beginning.

He might be done with the Gauntlet, but now, at long, long last, the time had come to deal with the Herdsmen.

Remaining in his enhanced draconic form, and with his Noumenon-enhanced ferula over one shoulder, he began striding down the hall.

He’d never been more ready to wreck death and ruin upon his foes.