IGS #4, Chapter 52

Scorio

Death.

Every minute, a new end.

With each restart, his body reacted of its own accord, filling his veins with fire, his muscles with the need to flee. He’d lost the instinct to fight back, and now could only wrestle with the prey mentality.

And yet.

He was no stranger to death. To futility. So where Myla would begin each restart by collapsing, Scorio would kneel. Take deep breaths, close his eyes, lay his hands upon his lap, and search for calm.

The pitter patter of approaching feet tested his resolve. He only ever had some sixty or so breaths in which to engage in this practice, and then he would die. The blockhead varied its methodology. Sometimes it was a searing blast to the face. Other times it was punishingly powerful blows to his unresisting form. Sometimes it would tear him apart.

Always it was shockingly brutal.

But each time Scorio told himself that the pain would be relatively brief. That reincarnation would end the agony. And each time he found himself standing once more, unharmed, breathing deeply from the shock of it.

And each time he would settle onto his knees, close his eyes, and seek his center. Search for calm. For peace.

Because he knew it was only through self-mastery that he had a chance at victory. Only once he’d found stillness would an idea occur to him, a means to escape this trap. Running, fleeing the blockhead, trying to fight it—all that would achieve was futile horror and an immediacy of thought that precluded strategy.

So again and again, Scorio knelt, sought stillness, and died.

His passivity infuriated Myla. She would scream at him, sob with self-pity, curl up into a ball. Scorio tuned her out.

Stillness. The powerful beating of his heart. All the might in the world resting in his reservoir, awaiting summons within his body. A great temptation that he resisted each time. His power was insufficient to the occasion. It was a trap.

So he knelt, sought to master his breathing, and allow his thoughts to stream through his mind like sand through his fingers.

It was easier said than done. His base survival instinct was ferocious. The moment the footsteps grew louder he yearned to open his eyes, to summon his Shroud, to raise his arms to protect his face. The need was primal, overwhelming. But it was one battle Scorio could contend with.

So he did.

Again and again, he forced his shoulders to relax, his spine to straighten, his breath to deepen. And between deaths, between the bouts of destruction, he began to build a chain of thought. He never had long to construct a continuous plan, but with each bout he was able to build upon the last.

This was a Charnel Duke test. Hence it must test the power unique to Charnel Dukes: Dominion.

His head was smashed clear off his shoulders, one of the quicker, more merciful deaths.

Dominion was the ability to control all the mana in one’s immediate region. Control it, claim it, and prevent another from using their power. It was what the blockhead did each time.

Fire erupted in the center of his chest, set his lungs aflame, caused him to fall over and cook to death from the inside.

The only way was to thus overwhelm the blockhead’s Dominion, to contest it like Sol did Imogen. But Scorio was no Charnel Duke. He hadn’t even mastered his vortices. Not that they would help—the blockhead would snuff them out the moment it claimed Dominion.

A blow shattered his arm and stove in his ribs. A stomp ended his agony by collapsing his head.

Scorio could affect all the mana in the great hall. He could cause it to swirl and burn, opening countless vortices in the process.

A forward kick to this head shattered his neck.

One’s reservoir was illusory. Vortices were a mental tool, but unnecessary. The Delightful Secret Marinating Technique allowed him to approximate that total control.

Death.

But while he was Igniting all the mana simultaneously, he wasn’t exerting Dominion. He wasn’t claiming it. Wasn’t preventing the blockhead from accessing the mana.

Death.

A Charnel Duke accomplished the very same—they accessed all the ambient mana simultaneously, but more, in that activation, they claimed. They made the mana their own. If that was an aspect unique to the tier of power, Scorio was doomed. But he didn’t think it was. It was question of philosophy, more than anything—

Death.

—which Charnel Dukes accessed as a result of natural growth in power. First they manifested their ferula. Was the ferula thus a pre-requisite, philosophically speaking, to understanding the fundamental nature of Dominion?

Death.

A ferula was a sheath of high quality mana around an anti-vortex. The Great Soul fed mana directly from their Ignited Heart into the core of the ferula, which then released the energy in the form of an attack. Thus to create a ferula one needed to shape mana into a scepter, a permanent artifact that they could then summon at will. Did this mean—

Death.

—that they stored the ferula somewhere, in their Heart space, perhaps, or reflexively recreated it each time they summoned it? No, it had to be made but the once, or they would always need the high quality mana as a new source. This implied the formation of the ferula itself involved a permanency technique. A newfound mastery of mana.

Light footsteps, growing louder, then a particularly gruesome death.

It took Scorio too long to recover from that agony. He barely was able to pick up his train of thought before he was killed again.

But he regained his balance with grim determination.

Creating one’s ferula involved a mastery of mana. Mastery of mana was needed to claim Dominion. Thus the step of making a ferula was a prerequisite to claiming Dominion, a necessary lesson. One had to surely apply that mastery over all the ambient mana, and in doing so, claim it as one did the mana in one’s ferula.

Death.

Scorio had never experimented with shaping mana. Had never seen the point. Always he’d resolved every challenge with fire and claw. But it was time to change that.

Scorio Ignited his Heart for the first time in what felt like an eternity. Pouring mana into his Heart caused it to burn. So how did you extrude mana into a physical shape outside of one’s Heart?

“Myla.” He turned to where the girl sat staring blankly at nothing. “How do you shape mana into a physical object?”

She blinked. “What?”

The footsteps were growing louder. “How do you shape mana into a physical object?”

Her eyes widened and then she began to laugh. Her laugh rose in pitch, grew hysterical. “You want… you want to know… now? Now?! How to—are you—”

The blockhead entered the chamber and killed them both with a sweep of its searing light.

“Myla.” Scorio didn’t do more than sway now after each death. Gone were the restarts where he stumbled or staggered. “It’s important. How do you do it?”

She clutched at her head. “He’s mad. I’m stuck in here with a mad man—”

“TELL ME.”

Her head whipped around, eyes wide, and then she dry swallowed and nodded jerkily. “You—you source it from your reservoir.” She couldn’t stop glancing at the tunnel mouth. “With your Heart Ignited, you split the stream, so that a little goes around your Heart instead of into it. You then—oh, it’s coming, it’s coming!”

Scorio waited patiently as she cradled her head and turned away.

Death.

“Continue,” he pressed, tone inexorable.

“How?” Her eyes were filled with tears. “How can you focus on this right now, when it’s—”

“Continue.”

His tone calmed her. She stared at him for an aching moment, then gave a helpless laugh and did so. “You compress the mana that’s revolving around your Heart into whatever shape you want. The stronger your will, the more detailed you can make it. The higher the quality of the mana, the harder it is to mold.”

“I see. Thank you.” He knelt, placed his hands on his lap, closed his eyes.

“That’s it?” Her voice rose in pitch again. “That’s it? You’re not going to—what the Hell are you—”

He tuned her out.

Ignited his Heart. In the Crucible, he’d learned to split the stream of gold mana that had wormed its way through Ydrielle’s prism. He’d mastered the technique for feeding mana into a whaleship’s tanks. In comparison to those endeavors, this was simple. With a flexion of his will, he commanded a great mass of Bronze to peel away as it left his reservoir and encircle his Heart. For a moment it was muddied and chaotic, a haze instead of a stream, but then—

Death.

Damn it. Scorio slammed down to his knees, pressed his fists against his thighs, and Ignited. Split his Bronze, and now his anger girded his will, so that he immediately shaped the mana about his Heart into a slender rod. While it was easy to shape the diffuse mana into the right shape, it was incredibly hard to fuse it into a solid. He could hear the footsteps growing louder. Impatient, he discarded the Bronze, tried for Iron. There wasn’t much in the hall, but enough for his purpose. He willed it to bleed off, to form a rod once more, began to clamp it with his mind. The Iron resisted, but was strangely more malleable, subservient to his will.

Just before his head vaporized, he heard a series of distinct metallic clinks as the rod fell and bounced upon the stone floor.

Again. Scorio began a series of restarts that involved little more than imposing his will on Iron, on Copper, on Bronze. With practice came greater understanding. It wasn’t enough to desire the embodiment; he had to visualize it as precisely as possible even while clenching the mana into a singular whole. If anything, it was the visualization that proved more important; the process became simpler once he abandoned the rod whose length was abstracted in his mind for a distinct, palm-sized cube.

Again and again he commanded the mana to coalesce. Each time it happened a little more quickly.

But what part of that process was key? What was it that he had to extrapolate in order to create Dominion? Again and again he forged cubes, pyramids, spheres. The pressure of impending death did wonders for his focus: he almost cheered when he first managed to create two cubes in one restart. An eternity later, he was able to create three.

Visualization.

That was the key. His will was the engine, but his ability to visualize what he desired was allowed his will to act. Just as he’d visualized the mana around the whale ship floating into the battery tanks, or the gold mana he’d redirected in the Crucible to emerge from his Heart to pierce the prism from within, visualizing the mana as a cube or sphere or whatever was what allowed him to claim it and mold it and make it his.

Did the thus have to visualize all the mana in the hall as his? No. Plassus could claim dominion over entire square miles of mana in the Telurian Band. He obviously couldn't see it all.

Frustration.

Scorio ceased forging mana objects for an unspecified span of time and simply meditated once more, seeking to calm his anger and find the clarity in which an answer could suggest itself.

The blockhead never grew bored with its willingness to kill them. If anything, it grew more inventive.

Myla went through a period where she’d sprint away the moment she coalesced. This lasted for ages. She’d run screaming into a tunnel, the sound of her hatred and horror fading.

Scorio tuned it out.

Control. Visualization. There was no reservoir. Not as he’d been taught. All mana could be accessed. Ignited.

Nothing.

Scorio wrestled with despair.

Simply in order to stave off nihilistic panic, he began experimenting with manifesting ever larger objects out of mana. To his surprise, it wasn’t hard. Perhaps it was because of the perfect shape of his Heart, or his own desperation, but with each restart the size of his cubes grew. At first a foot in width, then several feet.

It took greater effort. Ever more of his will.

He began to find his limit when he was creating cubes larger than he was tall. They’d crash down onto the floor, only to dissipate whenever the blockhead claimed Dominion.

But there should be no theoretical limit on how much he could coalesce, should there? Only that imposed by the amount of mana available, his ability to visualize, and the power of his will to compel it into existence.

Myla entered a new phase. She took to attacking him, venting her fury with wild swings of her fists and insults. One of her powers, he discovered, could cause him to levitate; an effective and neutralizing attack on anyone who didn’t have wings. But he ignored her. His Gold-tempered body largely made him immune.

This phase luckily didn’t last long.

Again and again he crafted items from his mana, and slowly, gradually, with the clarity brought on by this being a matter of mortal importance, he realized that increasing the size of his mana objects and Igniting all the ambient mana at once were related. To coalesce mana into an object he had to originate it from his reservoir. But his reservoir was an illusion.

Which meant…?

In his next restart, Scorio didn’t even bother kneeling. He gazed out with his Heart sense at the great hall, and took in the great eddies of Silver and Bronze, the ripples of Copper and the turgid masses of Iron. Even the Coal where it lingered in the corners.

Heart pounding, pounding, he visualized the Imperial gel matrix. Imposed it upon the mana. It was everywhere, dividing the hall into discrete and tiny cells. All the mana was his.

He Ignited.

He felt light headed, dazed, half-mad.

Stretched out his hand, and then abruptly clenched his fingers into a white-knuckled fist.

The mana responded as before, beginning to swirl lethargically around him, responding to his will.

But this time, instead of willing it to fall into his Heart, he commanded it to solidify. He visualized the empty space in the hall, the air, the high reaches, the domes up above, the alcoves, the cracks between the flagstones, all of it, turning into a multi-hued solid.

The blockhead burst out of the tunnel and instantly slew him from across the hall, the beam of red light annihilating Scorio’s head.

Coming to, Scorio put his hand to his brow.

That was new.

Never had the blockhead sought to kill him so swiftly. The fiend had seemed almost… panicked.

Scorio allowed himself a grim smile, and set to work.

It wasn’t easy.

But the principles, as far as he could tell, were sound.

The trick lay in the visualization. He had to imagine the obverse of the chamber. To ignore the walls and create a solid that flowed around them. Not only that, but he had to command multiple types of mana at once.

It was a ludicrous endeavor. He’d never had tried were he free. Never have dreamt it possible.

But his mind was warping under the strain.

He could feel the first whispery touches of madness stealing through his thoughts.

So he bent his prodigious will to the task. The same will that had allowed him to crush rocks alongside Naomi for months on end. That had allowed him to escape the solitary asylum of the Crucible. That had seen him rise to every challenge he’d met thus far.

His impossible will.

His impossible Heart.

On his sixth attempt he managed to make a tangible fog appear.

On the eleventh he coated the walls in a sheen of opaque metallic swirls.

“What are you doing?” demanded Myla, her own madness pushed into abeyance by his efforts.

Only his fifteenth he caused entire clouds to manifest and crash down to the ground.

On his thirty-something he filled the vast hall with ragged columns of his own, each connected to the other by spiderwebbings of tangible Silver and Bronze.

Each time the blockhead emerged from the tunnel it established Dominion, dispelled his efforts, and slew him with greater prejudice.

He was upsetting it.

His mind grew refined, his will bloodthirsty, his focus maniacal. Again and again he wrested the enter chamber of mana into obedience. Shivering, sweating, straining, he sought to master the vast clouds, and finally, on his sixtieth, hundredth, who knew what restart, he managed.

The mana that saturated the air, that filled every crack and crevice of the hall swirled, congealed, and turned solid.

It became his.

He could sense the varying density, the swirls of each type, the way it pressed against the walls. From the peak of the highest dome to the farthest extremity of the hall, everything became unyielding.

Trapped within a mold of Bronze and Iron, unable to move, Myla’s muted screams barely audible, Scorio laughed.

His mind reeled. His body was burning up. His Heart blazed.

It was his.

Would it be enough?

He could vaguely sense the exterior shell of the mana block, as if it allowed his senses to work through it, and intuited when the blockhead drew close.

I claim Dominion! Scorio exulted.

But the fiend tore his hopes apart. It banished his construct, returning the mana to its gaseous form, and slew Scorio with a blast of power that began at his gut and tracked him to the ground, incinerating and roasting him as he contorted and screamed.

Blink.

He was back on his feet, gasping, heart racing, unable to think.

Not Dominion.

Not yet.

But.

He dropped to his knees.

Think.

Myla was demanding, crying out questions, furious, but hopeful now, completely beside herself with what he’d done.

Think.

He’d mastered the ambient mana. Had forced it all to coalesce. But that hadn’t equaled Dominion. Of course not. When Sol and Plassus had claimed it, they hadn’t turned all the ambient mana solid, either.

So?

Think.

Instead his thoughts ran to Naomi. To his friends. To the lush greenery of the Farmlands. Naomi’s chamber atop the tower in Bastion, her lopsided bed. To his quartets in the Academy, the shared pool, the sound of Leonis’s laughter as he teased Lianshi.

No. Focus.

His mind wanted to escape. To find refuge so badly. To run away from this predicament, this impossible task. This was too much. Nobody should be asked to accomplish this feat, not as an incomplete Pyre Lord.

But he had no choice.

Think.

Sweat beaded his brow. His jaw was clenched so hard his teeth felt like they might crack.

THINK.

The sound of footsteps.

Death.

Again Scorio crashed to his knees. Again he bowed his head.

There was some fundamental aspect he was missing. But even he couldn’t keep going like this for much longer and remain functional.

He had to figure out an answer now, while he still could, or become lost forever.

This time he didn’t immediately begin shaping mana into a solid. Instead, he bowed his head and tried to tease out the connection between mana mastery and Dominion. It involved the power of his Heart. His will. His mind. Perhaps instead of being a literal expression of control, like commanding the mana to coalesce, it was a spiritual parallel. Which meant he had to issue a different command to the mana once he exerted control over it through the Imperial Gel matrix visualization.

But what?

Scorio studied his Heart as he’d never done before. Did the answer lie deep within it, was it connected to its shape, or size, or…?

He was grasping at straws. But with his newfound power, he scrutinized his Heart, peered as best he could into its depths… and saw something glimmer at its core.

A fleck of colorless light.

A single star blazing in the depths of an endless void.

Scorio blinked.

Noumenon.

The residue of the Blood Ox’s attack. The very same that Lady Krula had sensed.

He didn’t have the time or understanding to learn Dominion.

But perhaps… perhaps he didn’t have to.

With newfound purpose Scorio visualized the different ferulas he’d seen in his time. He cycled through the images, interrupted briefly by a horrific death as his body was torn asunder, and immediately renewed his quest.

He had to select his own design. It had to be his.

A vision came to mind.

It sprang fully formed as if awaiting this moment.

As long as his harm, slender, and subtly scaled. Its top was a dragon’s head, maw parted, teeth bared.

Yes.

He shaped it from Silver to get a sense of it, and opened his eyes as the scaled rod fell into his palm. He hefted it even as the blockhead emerged into view.

Yes.

But he’d get only one attempt at forging it. So he had to get the anti-vortex right. But was that the correct way to think of it? It was to be a conduit, a means to transfer mana directly from his Heart into the ferula without thought—

He died.

Frustration boiled up within him, but he immediately quenched it.

He had no control over the vortices he opened with Nox’s technique. So he considered Aezryna’s explanation: he had to imagine his reservoir wherever he wished his vortex to appear. If that were the case, then he simply needed to do the reverse with the vortex in his ferula—it would come into existence already within his Heart, his reservoir. It might be a distinct object, but if he thought of it as part of himself, if his sense of self encompassed the ferula, somehow, then… then he wouldn’t need to send mana into it. He’d simply burn the mana in his Heart, and express the result through the ferula.

Right?

Scorio pinched the bridge of his nose as he scowled in frustration.

One shot.

He’d only get once chance.

Crafting the ferula would be key. He had to truly identify with it. It had to feel like a natural extension of himself.

He died.

This time he did stagger, not from physical disorientation but from mental overload. He couldn’t keep doing this. He couldn’t maintain this focus for much longer.

It had to be now.

He wasn’t ready.

But he didn’t have a choice.

Scorio knelt, Ignited, and fashioned the ferula. He went to reach for Silver, but at the last moment changed his mind, and sought Coal.

The dense, dark, treacly mana so disdained by everyone, so toxic and crude and low.

It felt so familiar, so right, like an old friend. And it responded effortlessly to his will. Within seconds it formed perfectly according to his desire: just over two feet in length, perfectly scaled, the dragon head at the top crafted with minute detail to resemble his own.

The rod fell into his palm, and with the other he reached into his robe and from a pocket in the inner lining drew forth the lead tube that the Seamstress had gifted him. There was no time for hesitation. He unscrewed the cap, and drank the Diamond mana.

Had he not had several compressed lifetimes just now in handling mana, the Diamond would have no doubt shattered his Heart. It felt like drinking lightning. Living light. It made the hall, the Gauntlet, Myla, everything fall away. For a second he was transfixed, overwhelmed, but then he willed the Diamon to flow not from his reservoir into his Heart, where it would destroy him, but straight into the hollow rod in his hand.

It felt like pushing at a snack made of living razor blades. Where his will touched the Diamond it burned and lacerated him. But hesitation would only prolong and weaken him further; with a shout of anger and pain he forced the Diamond to slide into rod, to form a living core down its length, perfectly encased within the Coal.

Now.

Now he could bring it to life. He could try to imbue it with a vortex, to—but no.

Not yet.

Madness it might be, but if this was his one chance at freedom, he had to give it his all.

He reached deep, deep into his Heart, and summoned the Noumenon.

He couldn’t feel it. Sense it, even. Only infer where it hovered from the numbness it caused, the blindness that struck him. He couldn’t grasp it.

Footsteps in the distance.

If he died without accomplishing his goal, he’d lose the Diamond. Or would he? Would the Gauntlet reset it? He couldn’t begin to guess, but the risk was too high.

With a cry he speared the dragon head into his Heart. He didn’t know how he did it, what metaphysical rules or laws he was breaking or obeying, but if he couldn’t bring the Noumenon out, then he really had no choice.

The pain was sublime.

He fell onto his side, his whole body rigid, and still he strove, pushing the dragon maw as deep as he could into his own Heart, which began to crack and fissure.

A little more.

A little… there.

He couldn’t even breathe. With the last of his strength, he pushed the maw down so that the jagged teeth encircled the speck, and willed the Noumenon to affix itself to the rod.

The fleck leaped up from his Heart and lodged into the dragon’s gullet.

With a cry he tore the rod free and collapsed, sobbing for breath, upon the floor.

He could sense Myla’s stare upon him, her confusion, her wonder.

But there was no time.

He gazed at the ferula. Its length gleamed like wet obsidian. The dragon’s teeth and eyes, he saw, were fashioned from Diamond. And in its throat, just out of sight, hovered eternity.

“Mine,” he rasped. “You are mine. You are… me.”

He closed his eyes and grasped it with both hands. Examined it with his Heart sense, and then realized that he’d already accomplished the deed.

He’d never have been able to thrust it into his own Heart if it wasn’t already a spiritual part of him.

A nexus opened within the ferula, a burning channel that mirrored the flames that blazed about his Heart.

It was his Heart. An extension of it. Or a spiritual overlap.

He didn’t tell, nor did he have time to figure it out.

The footsteps were getting louder and louder.

Any second now the fiend would appear.

With shaking arms, Scorio pushed himself up to sitting, then one knee.

He raised his ferula and pointed its maw at the tunnel mouth.

Drank deep of the ambient Silver, and poured it into his Heart.

“Come on,” he rasped, voice ruined and torn. “Come try me now.”