IGS #4, Chapter 40 (Last Bonus chapter, for real)

Scorio

Scorio flew through the Silver Unfathom skies in a daze. His emotions were too mercurial, too powerful, changing from loss to grief to fury to helplessness at any given moment. Myla was a negligible weight upon his back. He barely thought of her. Instead, his mind replayed the last moments again and again and again, and tried to wrest some meaning, some purpose—something, from the catastrophe.

How had it all gone wrong so quickly? They’d been settling into the long journey. Establishing a rhythm. Training, eating, flight, growing camaraderie. Nyrix was discovering something with Kuragin. Leonis wrestling with his new sense of self. Jova mastering her Pyre Lady techniques with customary focus and discipline. In a few days’ time they were set to reach the Tomb. At that point they’d proceed with maximum caution as they unraveled the secrets of the Herdsmen.

It had all felt so… right.

And then?

Braxofitz with his lyrnxia vines. Dameon. His friends crushed and devoured by a horde of Silverines. Death. Devastation. Ruin.

Leaving him alone with Myla.

Myla, a former Herdsmen.

Who worked for Lady Krula’s sister. Who was rebelling against the senior Herdsmen. Who wanted… what?

Scorio could barely find the will to focus on the question. He wanted nothing so much as to land, stagger to a halt, and collapse. To cover his head with his hands and blot out the world. Acherzua promised nothing but misery, and that it delivered in spades. He’d thought—there’d been a sense of progress, of growth. Jova. Leonis.

Dead. Torn apart.

His thoughts reeled. His wings pushed them forward, but he flew without looking, without caring. Myla would occasionally lean forward to touch his shoulder and point out a course correction, but otherwise she stayed still.

Time ceased to have meaning.

What could he have done differently? Where had he failed? Dameon. He couldn’t have defied Lady Krula’s orders. Killing the man within the Red Keep would have resulted in his own death.

But his timidity had led to the death of his friends. Was this thus his fault?

Scorio clutched at his head, faltered, fell. Myla let out a cry of alarm, and Scorio caught himself, righted their flight path.

Should he search Dameon out now? Exact his vengeance? The need to see the man suffer and die was suffocating. But though it called to him, he knew that he needed greater answers instead.

The Lost Cube.

Myla.

An ex-Herdsmen.

What a coincidence that she alone had found him after Dameon had departed.

And how had she dismissed Braxofitz?

Slowly the questions began to percolate through his misery.

She’d made a gesture, hadn’t she? One the Philosopher hadn’t contested. In fact, the Silverine had simply flown off, without displaying any surprise.

He chewed on that fact for a spell, allowing implications to sink in. She’d claimed to have found him by luck. To have oriented on the crown of menhirs. On the face of it, that had made sense—but now, high above the Unfathom, gazing down upon countless rocky formations that littered the white sands, it didn’t pass muster.

She’d been in league with Dameon. That had to be the answer. She’d not suggested Braxofitz, but she’d commanded authority over him. Dameon had left him to the Silverine, but the Silverine had then waited—for what?

Myla.

They’d both been at the Red Keep together. They must have conspired to enact this ambush. Why?

Daemon to remove a threat, perhaps. To kill Jova and Leonis, and place him in the hands of the Herdsmen. Or… some other reward Scorio couldn’t fathom.

Myla?

To isolate him. To make him vulnerable with grief so she could manipulate him into going alone to the Lost Cube.

To use his notorious rage and powerful loyalty to his friends against him. But she’d sworn a Heart Oath. She couldn’t be a member of the Herdsmen. Couldn’t be acting in their interests. So perhaps her tale of Lady Krula going rogue was true, and their seeking to use him to force the main body of the Herdsmen also real.

But the fact remained.

Myla had engineered the death of his friends.

Scorio felt his emotions grow quiet. His grief and rage, which had flared like wildfire, closed and great concentrated.

He ceased to beat his wings and instead entered a downward glide.

“What’s going on?” Myla called into his ear.

Scorio didn’t answer. He picked the most open expanse of silvery sand that he could find, and a moment later he landed, ran a few steps, then turned as Myla hopped down. He furled his wings and stared at her.

She was small. Her shoulders hunched against the cold of constant flight. Her pale locks curled about her cute face, her eyes wide, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She looked young, too young for such nefarious plans, and innocent, too; he couldn’t see anything but helpless hope and fear and nervousness in her blue eyes.

“Scorio?” Her voice quavered. “What’s wrong?”

She couldn’t have done it. His instincts warned him against the possibility. She was small, innocent. She was just a Dread Blaze. She’d sworn the Heart Oath.

“I… I was thinking as we flew.” He kept his draconic form. It made him loom even more massively over her. “When you saved me. You made a sign that caused Braxofitz to fly away. What was that?”

“Oh.” She blinked. “The Herdsmen, we have an ancient pact with the Silverines. We helped them early on in their evolutionary cycle, and refined their powers so they could become, you know, dominant.”

Scorio nodded slowly, encouraging her to go on.

“In exchange, they’ve protected some of our holdings. Like the Tomb we were going to. It’s an old alliance, and the Herdsmen are taught the signs and phrases of power that enforce the alliance. So.” She shrugged one shoulder, still clearly nervous. “I used one to make him leave.”

“There’s a symbol that means just that? Go?”

She hesitated. “Yeah. Kind of. It’s a, how to put it, more of a displeasure, leave, stop what you’re doing sign. I mean, I also told him to leave. So he left.”

Scorio cocked his head to one side as he studied her. “He didn’t seem surprised to see you.”

Myla laughed then abruptly cut herself off. She hugged herself tighter. “I mean, Braxofitz never showed much emotion anyway far as I ever saw.”

“Why was he waiting there with me? Once Dameon left, he just stood around.”

“Oh.” Myla considered. “I don’t know. Maybe he was waiting for others to come help carry you? You’re pretty dangerous.”

“Huh.”

She quirked a brow. “What?”

“You weren’t surprised when I said Dameon was there.”

“You told me before?”

“No.” Scorio considered, reviewed their conversations. “I didn’t.”

For the briefest moment she froze, eyes narrowing just a fraction, and then shrugged. “Well, I saw someone running away as I came up. Like, in the distance. I guess they reminded me of him?”

“Did they, now?”

Her eyes widened in fear. “Yes—they did. And—I’m on your side, here, Scorio. I saved you from the Silverines. I—I’m going to give you all the answers you want.”

“Do you?” His voice had grown soft as he took another step toward her.

She backed away again, and cast a fearful glance around the empty white sands around them. Nowhere to run. “Please. Stop. You’re scaring me.”

Her voice was raw, on the verge of tears, and it plucked at Scorio’s heart, made him falter. What was he doing, threatening a Dread Blaze like this? She looked ready to collapse into tears—

Scorio clenched his jaw. “TELL ME THE TRUTH.”

His power washed over her like a deluge, empowered by the Silver mana in his Heart, enforced by the perfection of his Heart.

Her eyes widened in shock. “I arranged—” Then she clamped her hand over her mouth and a moment later collapsed to the ground, eyes rolling up in her head.

Scorio froze. She’d fainted? Was it a ploy? She wasn’t moving. More than that, she wasn’t breathing.

He reared his head back. Had she just died of fear?

For long, aching seconds he stared at the corpse. Her mouth was half-open, her face pressed into the sand, her right eye unblinking where it brushed the ground.

He nudged her with his taloned foot. Nothing. Suddenly impatient, he shifted down to his human form and pressed his fingers into the side of her neck.

Nothing.

No pulse.

She was dead.

“What the actual fuck?” he hissed, and sat back on his heels to gaze around the sands. The wind caused a veil of dust to hiss by, but otherwise all was still.

It had to be a power of hers. Something defensive. She triggered it the moment she realized she was going to blurt out something damning. Biting his lower lip and scowling, he turned in a slow circle, pivoting on the ball of one foot. No movement anywhere.

But.

He rose to his feet.

He’d chosen this expanse of sand in particular for its lack of features. A small shadow lay in the distance, unmoving. A small rock?

He rose into his draconic form once more, seized the dead Myla by the nape of the neck, and leaped up to fly powerfully toward the shadow. He landed beside it, and dropped Myla’s corpse next to a second one.

Two dead Myla’s.

He scowled in profound confusion. This second body was a good distance away. Not covered in sand at all. She’d just died here a moment ago.

The two dead Myla’s lay still beside each other.

Heart pounding, he again scanned the environs. Nothing but bleak, desolate sand extending into the near distance, but for an eruption of black boulders some six hundred yards away.

This time he left the two corpses and leaped to the sky to fly over to the rocks. Landed atop the tallest one, and saw a third Myla corpse wedged into the cleft at their heart.

He glanced back to the two corpses. Some six hundred yards, maybe. Again he searched the area, but the ground became rockier out here, the empty stretch of sand interrupted more frequently.

Impatient, he leaped up into the air and beat his wings strongly, fighting for altitude. Up, up, and then he entered a slow glide, moving out to radius of some five or so hundred feet to scan the ground in the vector the line the three bodies had created.

Nothing immediately apparent.

Say it was some kind of teleportation technique. Its range was limited. The location of the third corpse was the center of the circle. He’d assumed she’d keep traveling in a straight line, but maybe she’d guessed he would and change direction to throw him off.

He widened the curvature of his search, and some ten minutes later found a fourth corpse that had stuffed itself purposefully under an overhang.

Scorio crouched before it, clawed hands hanging between his knees, and stared at the body. This Myla had crawled in as deep as she could before dying. She’d tried to hide herself.

He glanced back at the outcropping of rocks that hid the third corpse. Again, about five or six hundred yards. Something like that.

He took to the skies.

She’d doubled back for the fifth corpse, then struck north for the sixth.

But there just weren’t that many good places to hide a body. Scorio remained aloft and searched the near distance for signs of movement.

Nothing.

She was picking her destinations carefully.

But he had nothing but time and determination. This technique had to be mana intensive. She couldn’t simply travel this way forever.

It took him far longer to find the seventh corpse, and it was already cool when he touched it, but the eighth was warm.

She’d waited, watching, to see if he’d find her, and only jumped when she had no choice.

He was close. He leaped to the air, rose a little higher, and again circled. This time, when he thought himself at the right range, he bellowed: “SHOW YOURSELF!”

It reminded him of his fruitless hunt for the Shadow Petal.

But this time it worked.

Myla stepped out from behind a rough rock, eyes wide, then keeled over, dead.

Scorio ignored the body and immediately searched again for movement.

There.

He speared down rapidly, crossing the hundreds of yards in a few seconds, and the tenth Myla broke into a run, quitting the poor cover she’d chosen hastily to race over the sand, gazing over her shoulder in horror.

That’s when he noticed them.

Vortices.

They were flung out around her, some six or seven, draining the local Bronze mana.

His eyes widened.

But he had her on the run. She looked ahead, scanning the broken rocks and rising hills, and just before he reached her toppled to crash face first down upon the rough rocks with brutal indifference to her wellbeing.

Scorio pulled up just enough to follow the direction of her line of sight, and saw a blur as someone ducked down behind a rock.

“STOP!” he roared as he drew closer. His authority, his power, augmented by his tremendous will and grief, washed out before him.

He landed on the rock and gazed into the nook contained between it and the next. Myla shivered below him, hunched over. He plunged his hand down, seized her by the neck, and tore her free.

Only for her to shift into a haze of red mist. It caused the black plates and scales of his arm to sizzle, and when the crimson cloud surged to move over him, he hopped back off the rock to land on the sand.

The mist seemed to hesitate, and then shifted back into Myla’s form. She stood, fists clenched as she glared at him, and then she let out a dramatic sigh and sat upon the rock. “Fine. I won’t run any more.”

And somehow, despite everything, she still managed to look pitiful and put upon and overwhelmed.

“Tell me the truth,” he rasped. “Or I’ll kill you here and go tear it from Dameon.”

“The truth?” She eyed him. “What’s funny is that I’ve mostly told you the truth thus far. Lady Krula’s sister, her rebelling against the Herdsmen, my following suit.” She shrugged. “It’s all true. But I did arrange to have Dameon lead a Silverine force against our party to isolate you.”

“Why?” He fought the urge to seize her. “Why didn’t you just talk to us?”

“Why?” She arched a dark brow. “Have you heard what you’re like when you’re talking about the Herdsmen? You’re not entirely reasonable. If I so much as gave a hint of having been part of their organization, you’d have torn my head off. Too much is at stake for me to trust in your being open-minded. The entire fate of our kind. If we want to get back to Eterra, if we want to survive the destruction of Bastion, we needed to make sure you’d come to the Fortress with an open mind. We just couldn’t risk it.”

“So you killed my friends.”

“I’d apologize if doing so wouldn’t provoke you to tear my face off.” Her expression turned grave. “If anything, that should just indicate how serious the stakes are.”

“Your face isn’t safe yet.” His body trembled. She’d killed everyone. She was right there. Three steps and a claw swing—

“I’ll swear a new Heart Oath,” she offered, sitting upright suddenly as if the thought had just occurred to her. “Look. Uh-- I swear our most ancient oath.” Her voice swelled with that unique power as her Heart ignited with Bronze. Again he saw it in his mind’s eye, of moderate size, rough edged, oval.

“My name is Myla, I’m a former Herdsmen, I wish that there had been another way to get you to listen other than what occurred, but I was so frightened, and I just had to be sure, and I swear it, upon my Heart, that I—I loath myself for having to do this, I wish—but I’m sincere in wanting to help all Great Souls get to Eterra, I want you to help bring the truth to all Great Souls, and I swear that I’ll be loyal to you, in both spirit as well as the letter of this Oath, I’ll put your life and your interests and your—your needs above my own, above even Lady Krula’s.” Her eyes glimmered with intense emotion. “Anything you need, I’ll do it. I swear it.”

Scorio felt her words sear themselves upon her Heart. Felt the power, the truth, the veracity of her oath. If she broke it, she’d be undone. She’d no longer be a Great Soul. A moment later, and her Heart hadn’t shattered. What she’d sworn was true.

But.

“I appreciate the oath,” he said.

She smiled nervously. “Of course. It’s the absolute least I could do after—after everything.”

“But there’s just one problem.”

She raised a brow. “I can swear anything else that you want. Just say it.”

“No, that oath covered everything I’d want to hear. It’s just that you swore it on your Heart.”

She frowned in confusion. “Right?”

“And my powers as a Pyre Lord may be growing slowly, but I know enough to recognize a Dread Blaze Heart when I see it.”

She froze.

“And you, Myla.” His voice grew leaden with lethality. “You are a Pyre Lady.”