IGS #4, Chapter 32 (BONUS!)

Scorio

In the bowels of the Red Keep lay a great hall, long abandoned, devoid of furniture, and vast in scope. It was deep underground and reached by means of a winding staircase whose endless steps became mesmerizing as one descended for what felt like ages. Down and around, down and around, until at last they opened up into what felt like a twin of the cavern beneath the Silverine warren, but this one all of worked stone.

Aezryna met him there at what might have passed as dawn the next day. Such was the isolation and silence that Scorio grew uneasy; were it any other Great Soul, he’d have believed himself walking into am ambush.

But no. Aezryna turned to him with a smile in the light of the solitary scale lantern, her blue enameled armor glinting, her hair pulled back into her typical workmanlike bun.

“Good morning!” Her voice was cheerful, her gaze sharp, her focus total. “I thought this a fitting place for us to train. Outside we’d have been pestered to no end by Silverines, and I’m not one for practicing before a crowd of curious hangers-on.”

“I can agree with that,” said Scorio, leaving the steps to join her. His footsteps echoed. “What is this place?”

“Once the Red Keep was a major hub of activity,” said Aezryna, turning with hands on her hips to take in the huge hall. “Supposedly hundreds upon hundreds were stationed here as they held the Unfathom against a brutal race of fiends who ruled the Lustrous Maria. I think this space was hollowed out during that time. There are passageways that lead off from here into maze-like warrens of rooms, and more stairs going down. It’s all quite fascinating. Lady Krula no doubt has mapped the entirety of it, but I’ve only seen a fraction. That being said.”

Scorio raised a brow.

Aezryna’s smile turned confidential. “There’s a great door far below that’s impressively locked and reinforced. It reeks of secrets and power. When I asked Lady Krula about it, she requested that I not mention it again, and steer clear of it moving forward.”

“Now that sounds interesting.” Scorio hesitated. “You’ve got theories?”

“Of course. The Seamstress was also curious, and together we believe that the source of the Red Keep’s power lies beyond it.”

“The power that keeps the many planes collapsed into one on the Red Road?”

“The very same. But! Seeing as Lady Krula doesn’t want the matter probed, I’ve let it lie. Anyway. All quite fascinating, but mostly just ancient history. Shall we begin?”

“Before we do.”

“Ah yes. My apologies. The Seamstress’s interests are best served by my remaining here to keep an eye on Lady Krula and Dameon. Seeing as you’ve declared no interest in detonating a Silverine Sun and starting a new war against an entirely overwhelming group of fiends, I think I’d best stay close to those who might do just that.”

“Makes sense.” Disappointment caused him to hold his breath then sigh. “Of course. You’ll be missed.”

“Will I now?” Her smile was challenging. “For my personality or command of ice?”

“Can’t it be both?”

She relented. “Assuredly. But yes. I’d actually have liked to go. It’s been to long since I adventured for its own sake. Life has become…” She waved her hand vaguely. “A never-ending series of obligations. Such is the true weight of power.”

“Then maybe it’s for the best that I turned down your invitation to meet with the Seamstress.”

Aezryna laughed. “Maybe so! She’d have given you what you desire in such a way that you’d probably have been bound to her interests for decades to come. She’s earned her moniker a thousand times over. But, with that all being said, shall we turn our attention to vortices?”

“Yeah.” Scorio shook off the disappointment, an entire future in which Aezryna and her formidable powers led them into the heart of the Tomb fading before his eyes. “Where to begin?”

“Show me what you can do.”

“I can’t summon any.”

“No matter. I’ll watch your Heart. You manipulate your mana and do your best.”

Scorio set his jaw and opened his Heart senses. The vast room was turgid with slow-flowing Iron, though here and there streams of Silver slipped sinuously by. His reservoir was still full of Silver mana from the warren; he’d used Nox’s technique the whole way down to the Keep. The urge to continue doing the same here was strong, but he set aside that ability and instead began the Dread Blaze technique of pouring more and then less mana into his Heart.

“Good control,” said Aezryna, staring at him. “Not amazing, but good enough. Your rank is clearly benefitting you. Now. What do you know about summoning a vortex?”

Scorio ceased his manipulation. “That I just visualize the same manipulation but a few inches outside my Heart?”

“Sure. But let me refine that. Imperators have a truly profound understanding of mana and its manipulation. It’s what allows them to declare Dominion, and further, create their own pocket realms. Their insight, insofar as I understand it, is that our divisions of the world into ‘reservoir’ and ‘Heart’ and ambient mana are largely arbitrary.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I know. But the concept is important. Chars and Emberlings can understand and intuit the notion of drawing ambient mana directly into their reservoir, because they can visualize it. Everyone comes up with their own metaphor. Pouring milk into a bowl, stirring a stream with a ladle, swirling living fire around a bucket. All inelegant, but all understandable.”

Scorio decided not to mention his paddle.

“But as we grow in power, we have to outgrow those limited models. Pyre Lord is where we truly break with that intuitive world we exist in and move into a bizarre world where the laws of reality become impossible. It makes no sense for mana at the end of this hall to flow into my vortex and magically appear in my reservoir. How does it cross the intervening distance? Our minds can’t understand it if we remain trapped by our crude models. But obviously vortices work, and mana can teleport across the air. Our reservoirs can be directly fed by distant mana. That, according to the Imperators, is because our reservoirs are not bound as we understand them. Not truly. They can encompass as much as we can imagine. When Charnel Dukes and up contest for Dominion, they’re fighting for who can control all the ambient mana. Who can siphon it all into their reservoirs and Hearts.”

Scorio fought to understand, to keep up with her explanation. “So… my understanding of my reservoir is holding me back?”

“For now, the hurdle is slight. But as you continue to climb the ranks, you’ll have to continuously expand your understanding. I myself still wrestle with aspects of it that limit me to Blood Baroness. But the more you internalize this counter-intuitive truth, the easier these techniques will become.”

Scorio nodded firmly.

“So. A vortex.” Aezryna pointed, and one appeared at the far side of the hall, a good thirty yards away. “On one level, I can understand that to be a portal leading to my reservoir, which is—where?” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Inside my chest? Lodged between my lungs?”

“Beside your Heart?” hazarded Scorio.

“Does it need to be?”

“I… don’t… I guess not?”

She smiled. “We visualize it as close because that’s more convenient. And I can make the vortex send me mana by thinking of it simply teleporting across the space to where my reservoir is located, roughly, I don’t know, here somewhere.” And she gestured above her shoulder. “But what if I imagined my reservoir as being over there, where the vortex hovers?”

“Then it wouldn’t be magically flying through the air.”

“Correct. Simple enough. My vortex is there, my reservoir is there, too, and one drains into the other. But what if I create a vortex down there?”

And a second flew from Aezryna to the south end of the hall, to again hover a good twenty or so yards distant.

“Now your reservoir is in both places?”

“Hard to imagine, is it not? Unless…?”

“Unless you reservoir is huge? And stretches across the whole hall?”

Aezryna grinned. “That would be one explanation.”

Scorio frowned. “There’s another?”

“Imperators say there’s no such thing as a reservoir in the first place. It’s a heuristic we construct as a means to grapple with impossibilities.”

“No reservoir?” Scorio put his hand to his temple and grimaced. “But then what have I been filling and emptying and refining and working on all this time?”

“Apparently, your concept of a reservoir. The path from Char to Pyre Lord is one of strengthening our command over mana, and the reservoir is a particularly effective tool for helping us understand what to do. Now, I don’t yet truly understand this all myself, hence the fact that I’m not an Imperator yet, but apparently this whole time what we’ve been doing is not changing the properties of a distinct entity, a reservoir, but training our minds, our wills, to manipulate mana.”

“Then how do we carry mana around within our reservoir? I’ve still got Silver from the warren I fell into a few days ago.”

“The Silver mana is real. Your ability to carry it with you is real. But the limitations and location of your reservoir itself is, apparently, fictional. Imperators can steal your mana directly from your reservoir because it isn’t actually a bound and secret space; it’s merely twinned with your Heart and hidden from view as a result to low-ranked examination. But its boundaries extend as far as your philosophy allows.”

“I’m sorry.” Scorio spread his hands apologetically. “This is all beyond me.”

“Some of it’s beyond me, too.” Aezryna’s smile was sympathetic. “Just because I’m parroting what I’ve heard doesn’t mean I’ve yet mastered it. Understood it. Internalized it. Some tools, some visualizations, are just too useful, too intuitive, to be discarded because we’re told to. But the fact remains, as a Pyre Lord, you will be able to pour distant mana into your reservoir without it having to stream through the air to where you stand.”

Scorio stared at one of her distant vortices. It was barely discernible, made visible more by the way it affected the mana around it then because of its own shape. “Right. So if I focus on the fact that my reservoir is actually without border, it’ll make it easier to summon vortices?”

“Correct. Those who still labor with the reality of what they’re doing will summon a vortex within themselves and then send it flying out to where the mana lies. The true masters, however? They open vortices directly where they desire.”

“Because their reservoirs are everywhere.”

“Correct. Despite everything I know, I still have trouble not originating mine where I stand. But if I focus really hard?”

Scorio watched as Aezryna frowned, and then sensed a disturbance close to the archway that led to the stairway. A third vortex had appeared there.

She smiled. “That takes real effort. There are prodigies that can manifest eight vortices at a distance simultaneously. It’s said Iulius the Golden could summon fifteen as a Flame Vault.”

“What?” Scorio scowled. “That’s…”

“Ridiculous?” Aezryna laughed. “Who knows if it’s true? The legends around that man have only grown the longer he’s stayed away. But the fact remains. The key to mastering mana manipulation lies in unlocking these truths. So.” Her vortices disappeared. “Back to you. Since you were an Emberling, you’ve manifested your will just outside your reservoir, and guided local mana into it with some manner of visualization. Correct?”

Scorio nodded.

“But that’s all arbitrary. With clarity of focus, you can manifest that same will wherever you like. So attempt to discard your visual tool, and instead imagine your will as omnipotent, appearing wherever you need it to appear. And instead of imagining yourself funneling the mana into your reservoir, imagine that your reservoir is already there.”

Scorio frowned. Aezryna’s explanations felt at once too technical and too abstract, but he thought he understood the gist. His tools were limiting him. He had to expand his reality, to understand that he had more control over mana than he’d thought possible.

To draw mana into himself without bringing the mana to his reservoir.

He frowned, trying to wrestle with the concepts and put them into practice. Extending his Heart sense, he took in the room, the great lumbering masses of Iron, the fluid Silver here and there swirling north.

No paddle. No drawing the mana to himself.

He was already there.

His reservoir was everywhere.

But his mind still reached for an image, a metaphor. No paddle, sure, but then what instead? A hand? A hand tightening around the mana, squeezing it like a fist? Not pushing it, not guiding it, but…

Scorio’s frown deepened.

“You’ve got it,” said Aezryna quietly. “The mana is yours. Your will has been refined by all your prior practice. Your reservoir is vast and dense and focused. Your presence extends outwards around you, invisible, a weak form of Dominion. All you need do is understand your own power. Draw the mana into yourself, with your self already where you need it to be.”

Scorio’s frown turned into a grimace. The mana flowed on, unconcerned with his fumbling attempts.

He visualized a great fist around a large column of Iron. Closed it tight, squeezing against the Iron’s resilient power. He was there. His reservoir was beneath it, around it… inside it?

He thought of Sol combating Imogen for primacy. He thought of Plassus extending Dominion across the Bone Plains. It wasn’t just power that separated them from Scorio, but understanding. They’d transcended the basic tools, the crude metaphors, and pierced the veil of logic to the comprehensive power that lay beyond.

His reservoir was vast. His Heart was perfect. He was a Pyre Lord.

The mana would obey him.

He clenched his jaw and willed the fist to tighten around the Iron.

Enter my damn reservoir, he hissed in his mind. You are mine.

The Iron slowed its advance.

Scorio imagined his reservoir. Always it had been an inky black space, like a grotto glimpsed from afar, its size hard to grapple due to its feeling distant, a hundred yards away from him, reduced to the size of a small barrel, but in truth huge in its own right.

A strange vision, now that he thought about. Something big seen from afar, so that it actually felt small and thus easily encompassed by his mind.

But those were arbitrary measurements. Distant. Large. Small. Close.

Just his mind’s crude attempts to understand what Aezryna had been trying to explain.

That his reservoir was everywhere.

He imagined himself small in comparison to that grotto. Made the grotto the size of the hall in which he stood. Vast so that if he called out, his voice would echo.

A great dark space through which the Iron and Silver were wending their way.

And if that was the case, then he simply needed to shift the mana from flowing in the hall, to flowing inside his reservoir.

His brow was prickling with sweat. It was just a different point of view. The grotto, vast. The mana, small. Himself, irrelevant. The mana, his. The reservoir, hungry.

He thought of Nox’s words.

Use imperial gel, break equilibrium, become mana hole. Mana fall toward you, never hit, always miss, circle toad, pull more mana in.

Everyone had called Nox’s Delightful Secret Marinating technique a version of the Pyre Lord technique. It was a variation, because it drew mana directly from the atmosphere into his Heart, skipping his reservoir.

But whether it skipped his reservoir or not, the point was he could draw the ambient mana with just his will, and direct it as he desired. The heart of the technique lay in the ability to break the equilibrium, as Nox put it, and cause mana to siphon into his Heart.

The Imperial Gel had stabilized the mana and insulated Scorio from its worst effects. But that stabilization was just a supplement to his own weak will as a Flame Vault. He didn’t need it, hadn’t needed it since the Crucible.

In fact, if he imagined this vast hall to be filled with Imperial Gel, he could imagine all the mana here as falling directly into his Heart.

Or into his reservoir.

Scorio felt his expression smooth out.

He relaxed his jaw.

He filled the hall to the brim with Imperial Gel. Imagined himself surrounded by the matrix. The matrix of his will. All the Iron, all the Silver, it moved through the matrix and was under his control.

Scorio willed it to fall into his Heart.

“What the fuck,” said Aezryna.

The mana in the entire hall responded to his will. The vast masses of Iron, the flowing tongues of Silver. Instead of flowing north toward the Bastion, all of it, the entire mass, began to curve, with Scorio at its center.

“What are you doing?” whispered Aezryna. “Scorio?”

He felt himself light, as if he might lift up off the floor. A rushing roar filled his ears. The entire hall was under his control, for the entire hall was Nox’s marinating pool.

And it was his to burn.

Vortices opened everywhere.

Not one or two.

Not three or four.

Dozens upon dozens.

Everywhere.

And Scorio felt mana engulf him, wash over him, his Heart Igniting with a cacophonous explosive roar, burning so bright he couldn’t even see its spherical form, so lost did it become within the flames.

“Scorio!” cried out Aezryna. “Stop!”

He was screaming. Screaming because he was trying to Ignite all the mana in the hall at once.

All of it was falling into his Heart simultaneously, his vortices budding new ones with each passing second, so that in a trice there were a hundred in the hall, and every single one of those trying to bud another.

His Heart blazed so bright he felt his mind char, felt impossible power suffuse him, felt as if his eyes were burning out, his tongue a river of flame, his heart bursting, his blood molten, and then he was rising into his draconic form, the vortices doubling and doubling—

A titanic blow smashed him across the face, his head turning so violently that his neck wrenched as he was lifted off the ground to spin in the air, and all went dark.

*

Scorio blinked.

He lay upon the flagstones of the hall. All was silent. All was quiet. His head was upon someone’s lap. The side of his face smoldered as if someone had bound a white-hot brick of iron to his cheek and left it there to cook his cheek and brow and jaw.

“There you are.” Aezryna’s voice, low with concern and relief.

“I…” He reached up to touch his temple. The skin was puffy and smooth and hot to the touch.

“I’m sorry. I hit you with a blast from my ferula. You were ignoring everything else. I had to stop you before your Heart ruptured.”

“My Heart…” Scorio winced and sat up. “What happened?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.” Aezryna remained cross-legged beside him. The hall was coming into focus. All was dark and still. “One moment you were focusing on your Heart, the next…” She shook her head. “Everything went mad. Vortices started opening everywhere as all the mana began to fall into your Heart. It was… it was like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

“Damn.” He winced, steeled himself, then summoned his Heart so that he could inspect the damage.

It appeared before him, a great polished sphere, massive and perfect, unblemished, unmarred.

“But my Heart… it’s not…?”

“I know.” Aezryna shook her head in wonder. “I can’t explain it, other than perhaps its durability being beyond anything I’ve witnessed due to its perfect shape. I’ve never seen its like. No Crimson Earl, no Imperator has its equal. More powerful, in distinct ways, of course, but so perfectly shaped at such an early rank?”

“I… it felt like I opened hundreds of vortices.”

“Again, impossible. I would laugh in your face if I hadn’t seen it myself.”

“What does it mean?”

“I honestly don’t know. Perhaps someone more advanced could tell you, but it goes far beyond what theory I’ve been taught. We’re told that the more spherical and smooth the shape of your Heart, the more capable you are of receiving mana from every direction. Each ridge, each rough angle, makes it channeling mana from that quarter more difficult. It’s why smoothness is so prized, why people seek to shape their Hearts as they advance.”

“So its spherical nature makes it…?”

“Perfectly suited to absorb mana from everywhere and anywhere at any time. Traditionally that would lead me to think you could generate more vortices, say fifteen, or the fiends wept, maybe twenty. But what you were doing…”

“Hundreds,” he whispered.

“I don’t understand it.” Aezryna’s tone had become sharp and brittle at once. “Charnel Dukes and higher can exert their will upon all ambient mana by means of Dominion, but that doesn’t mean they can draw it all at once. Not as you were doing. Dominion allows one to claim ownership, to lock all mana so that no other can use it, and yes, when you reach the higher ranks, to absorb as much as your Heart can burn as if through the use of as many vortices as might be needed. But you were far exceeding your own capability. You were simply trying to burn it all in one go.”

Scorio grimaced as he touched the swollen side of his face. His head was pounding. His dark vision was strangely affected, so that everything looked flat and without depth. “Well, I won’t be doing that again any time soon.”

“Can you recall what you were thinking, what you were doing, just before it happened?”

“I…” Should he share? He trusted her, but he knew that trust had to be circumscribed by how much he trusted the Seamstress. Word of this would get back to her. Aezryna was staring intently at him, concern writ large on her face, but something held him back. “I was just trying to do what you said.”

“I see. Well. Perhaps it’s a side effect of your unique path to power. Your perfect Heart. I don’t know. But I would recommend you speak with Lady Krula before you depart.”

“I think I may have exhausted her generosity.”

“That’s a pity. In which case, I would advise you to experiment very, very carefully with this power. I was blasting you with ice and you hardly noticed. It took a direct attack from my ferula at its lowest power to break your concentration.”

“Right.” Scorio winced as he gently palpitated his swollen face again. “Trust me. I won’t be doing that again any time soon.”

Aezryna rose to her feet and extended her hand. “Well. Wonders never cease. If you ever master that technique—whatever it was—I don’t think Hell will know what hit it.”

Scorio snorted as he allowed her to haul him up. “If I survive the learning.”

“If you survive the learning.” Aezryna grinned ruefully. “By the ten hells, Scorio. You never cease to amaze.”