IGS #4, Chapter 13

Scorio

Leonis still hadn’t woken up when everybody got into position.

Scorio did his best to not fret. The big man’s breathing was steady, his color wan but not corpse-like, and occasionally it looked like his eyes were moving beneath his lids. Were it not for the sticky gash in the back of his head, he might have been sleeping off a bout of festive drinking the night before.

But it had been a good stretch of time now. Impossible to tell exactly, how many, down in this damp, cool cave, but it wasn’t good.

Everybody’s mood was grim. The prospect of battle was welcome, and gave them something to focus on. The plan was simple. Nyrix would stand on the far side of the cavern with his crossbow and find targets if any somehow slipped by Scorio and Jova. Xandera would retreat swiftly upon opening the tunnel and scale to the ridge above the chosen cavern, ready to collapse everything in case of an emergency. Scorio was to take his huge dragon form and plant himself front and center before the cave mouth, while Jova would be at hand to manipulate her rocks.

Of which Scorio had furnished her with plenty. He’d flowed up into his massive draconic form and reared back onto his hind legs to swipe at the hanging spikes of stone, sending a dozen crashing to the ground, where they’d fragmented apart. She had scores of rocks to work with now, from finger-length fragments all the way up to a single huge spike that Scorio had carefully wrenched free of the ceiling to be used as the plug.

Everything was set.

Xandera stood at the mouth of the deepest cave, her eyes wide. “Are we ready?”

Scorio glanced around at the others. Only Kelona wouldn’t have a clear cut role, but he’d commanded her to watch over the helpless Leonis, which she’d accepted with an obvious measure of frustration. Jova and Nyrix nodded, so Scorio turned back to Xandera.

“Ready.”

She’d already spent several hours melting a tunnel through the backwall toward the closest pocket of fiendish activity. It had taken a good amount of work—the natural stone was far more durable than the lacy, worked rock that the fiends had influenced. But only a foot or so remained, she’d reported, so Scorio drank deep of the Silver mana and rose into his dragon form.

It felt so good to be massive. To take up space, to feel himself clothed in great sheets of muscle and layered over with armor plating and supple scales. His head felt infinitely more mobile, attached to his sinuous neck so that he could slide his vision across the whole cavern with ease, his tail undulating impatiently from side to side as he watched Xandera step into the depths of her tunnel and resume melting the stone.

His chest felt like a cavern unto itself, an oven into which he could summon flame. His talons dug into the smooth rock, chipping at the stone. He felt unstoppable, righteous, royal, even. This plan, he was certain, was going to work.

“Almost through,” called back Xandera. “And… there. It’s open!” The blazeborn ran back quickly and exited the cave, to begin scaling the wall to the ridge.

Jova’s rocks rose around her, a selection of the smallest and head-sized chunks.

Scorio inhaled deeply, settled himself, and watched the depths of the tunnel.

The rock had run like wax, and was already cooling, swiftly gradating down from white hot to sunflower yellow than searing orange and burgundy. Dollops congealed then froze and hardened in place.

Beyond, the corner of the next cave. His darkvision pierced its depths, and the song of the Instinctuals came through loudly, harmonious and interwoven with a complexity he couldn’t begin to understand.

To Scorio’s surprise, nothing happened at first. He’d expected the onrush to be immediate. But perhaps a minute passed before the texture of the song changed, rising into inquisitive chirps and trills and then the first Instinctual appeared in view.

Skull-blank head of polished ivory, a carapace sandwiching its purple, soft torso, many wizened arms clasping at the tunnel’s mouth. It peered in, curious, then skittered forward, shockingly fast, its tentacular rear propelling it forth.

He’d agreed with Jova to slay the fiends only once they emerged into the larger cavern. Otherwise they’d block the tunnel with corpses, and would have to wait as the others dug their way through.

But the Instinctual came so rapidly Scorio doubted he’d have been able to kill it right away regardless.

Jova’s rocks reacted faster than thought. Four large, jagged pieces flew forth to smash into the Instinctual, cracking its bone head and impacting its shoulders. The fiend keened, slumped to the ground, ichor jetting out, and then surged forth once more, its tentacles thrusting it forth.

Out of the tunnel, into the narrow cave, then out into cavern itself.

Scorio swiped at its with his foreleg, his white-hot talons slashing its upper body to shreds and sending it spinning off to the side to collapse and mewl and chirp as it died.

But there were more.

A second, third, fourth, all thrusting their way in, with an endless tide behind them. It was as if they’d poked a hole into the side of a mountainous waterskin, and now the jet of fiends coming at them was endless and rapid.

But controlled.

As much as they thrust at each other, shoved and fought for room, they could only squeeze through one at a time.

Scorio watched, supremely focused and poised. Jova’s rocks pummeled and tenderized them, break arms, shattering carapaces, pulping flesh, so that by the time the fiends emerged into the open Scorio had only to snap them up with his jaw or tear them apart with his claws.

But they came without end, and they were so fast. Fast enough that he ceased to bite them and started to pounce, crush them beneath his forefeet like a cat, then swiping aside so that they tumbled and rolled so that he could engage the next.

Nyrix began loosing bolts at the supposedly dead fiends, some of which fought to rise despite the damage and fight on.

Jova stood, arms crossed, chin raised, glaring into the tunnel. Her cloud of rocks hovered about her, the larger pieces held in abeyance, the rest already in play swarming about the tunnel mouth like huge, dumb bees.

But then she switched up her tactics. Instead of keeping the same rocks orbiting around each other at the entrance, she began cycling them in and out, sweeping them away once they’d hit once and back out into the cavern to swing around and come flying back, building up speed and destructive power before slamming into the fiends again.

Scorio tried to keep track. Fifteen. Sixteen. The seventeenth almost dodged Scorio’s swipe, but a bolt from Nyrix slammed into its chest and Scorio tore its head off. Eighteenth. The bodies were piling up, so Scorio had to take a moment to hurl them aside, leaving the cavern floor before him streaked with thick purple goo.

Jova’s moved bigger rocks into play as it became evident the smaller ones simply didn’t do enough damage. These she cycled in and out and around and then hurled back into the fray, the projectiles swooping around Scorio’s huge form to slide into the cave again and again.

The fiends screeched and died.

The sound, that infernal, discordant music, was only building in volume. More and more fiends were building up and the far side of the tunnel, a seething, impatient, furious crowd that shoved and fought to get through. The song had gone from that placed, complex melody to a frenetic shrill grinding scream, a panoply of chaos and fury that was turning Scorio’s gigantic dragon gut and building up pain and pressure in his head.

Thirty-five, thirty-six. His gorge was rising even as he swatted and pounced, shredded and hurled away. They were coming faster now, in rapid sequence, so that he had to kill them even more efficiently, the only reprieve coming whenever Jova hurled a particularly huge rock into the tunnel.

SLOW, Scorio commanded, pitching his command at the onrushing horde, and it worked, or almost did, for though the front two or three fiends faltered, such was the pressure from behind that they were simply thrust forward.

The rocks gleamed with fiend blood now, and the sound of their mulching the fiends was becoming a sickening constant, the wet, muscular thud, the snap of bones, the shrieks of pain.

Scorio’s headache was building. His stomach felt filled and sloshing with acid, his long neck convulsing with the urge to vomit, and his talons were caked with blood and fibrous flesh.

Forty, forty-one.

Unable to resist the urge, he turned his whole body into black flame, drinking deep of the Silver around them, and then inhaled the flame into his gut and blasted it forth, filling the cave and tunnel with blue, virulent fire that blossomed and became black oblivion, pouring out the far end and” causing the waiting fiends to keen and sizzle and pop.

Jova hurled her largest rock into the tunnel right after, slamming the great spike all the way home till it ground to a halt, and though it didn’t completely fill the space, the gaps around the rock were too slight for the fiends beyond to pass through.

Though, a few moments later, fresh arms were thrust through the holes, claws scrabbling at the rock.

Jova grimaced. “Xandera? Can you seal that for now?”

“Sure.” Xandera hopped down, almost slipped on the blood-streaked ground, then entered the tunnel cautiously to extend her hand. The rock around the plug began to glow, melt, and the gaps slowly shrank and then were gone.

The sound of the Instinctuals’ hellish song dampened down immediately.

“Urgh,” said Scorio, shrinking down to his human form and putting a hand to his temple. “That was surprisingly awful.”

Jova just nodded, nose wrinkled as if against a stench, then turned and spat on the floor.

“How many did we kill?” Nyrix walked up, dismissing his crossbow as he arrived. “And my head. I don’t know how you could focus right up front like that. My eyes were watering from the pain.”

“Not fun,” agreed Scorio, then belched as his stomach roiled some more. He pressed the back of his wrist against his mouth and repressed a shudder. “I’m glad we didn’t eat before doing this.”

“Forty-four dead,” said Kelona, also walking up. Her tanned face was waxen with nausea. “I didn’t have much to do, so I counted.”

Scorio looked at the corpses. They were piled haphazardly in a large mound, most of them to the cave mouth’s left where he’d tossed them with his right forefoot. Some still stirred, tentacles reaching up and flopping around, but none looked ready to attack.

“We should put them out of their misery,” he said, the forlorn sight pathetic and awful.

“Don’t burn them,” said Jova. “You’ll fill the cavern with smoke and the stink of blackened fiends.”

“She’s right,” said Nyrix. “We need to preserve the air quality in here. It’s already feeling a little stifling.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

Jova licked her lower lip. “We could entomb them. Put all the bodies in a cave and seal it off.”

“Love it,” said Kelona. “Out of sight, out of mind, out of my nose and ears.”

“Fine.” There were plenty of the small caves off the main ones. “I’ll take care of it.” He Ignited his Heart, rose to dragon form again, careful to not shove his bulk into his companions when he grew, then got to work tossing the corpses into the cave next to their tunneled one, scooping and hurling. The fiends that were still alive he killed with a merciful swipe.

Forty-four corpses in all. They filled the cave, and he had to shove at the piled mass to topple the bodies into the back to make room for the last ones.

When he shrank back down, Jova focused deeply on the ridge above the cave mouth, and then with a grunt of effort she willed it to collapse. For a moment nothing happened, and then seams raced through the stone, dust sifted down, and then the whole thing toppled in a great thunderous crack.

Xandera stepped up, raised her hands, and the pile of rubble and boulders began to soften, to glow, to run like mud. It took her some time, but eventually the entire cave mouth was sealed over.

“Phew.” Kelona wiped her forearm across her brow. “I didn’t do a thing and I feel worn out. That music of theirs is terrible.”

“We could have kept going if they didn’t make that sound,” said Jova, tone disgusted. “But I felt like I was going to vomit.”

“So, forty-four dead.” Scorio blew out his cheeks. “Do you think that’s a tenth of them?”

“Who knows?” Jova’s disappointment was clear. “But I don’t want to do a second bout just yet. I need to let this headache go away. It’s manageable now, but if we let the pain compound…” She grimaced. “All it would take is losing focus for a moment for them to wedge enough numbers in here to become a real problem.”

“Agreed,” said Scorio. Hands on his hips, he stared out at nothing, his frustration riding high. “Worse, didn’t Sybelleo say something about Instinctuals being drawn to mana? Or was that Vill?”

“Vill said they’re roaming in packs over a thousand strong,” said Nyrix, tone numb. “We killed… forty-four?”

“That’s right, he did say that.” Kelona linked her hands behind her neck and stared up at the ceiling with a scowl. “If there are a thousand of them out there, and we do, what? Two bouts a day?”

“Over twenty days to kill them all,” said Jova, tone flat. “And that’s if they don’t receive reinforcements.”

Nyrix shook his head. “What would we even do with, I don’t know, eight hundred corpses? They’d fill this whole cave.”

“I could ash them,” said Scorio, but he already knew that wasn’t a good idea.

Jova clearly agreed. “And get ash in the water? In the air? You’d make this cave impossible to live in.”

“Well!” Scorio tried to affect some fake heartiness. “Xandera! How do you feel about digging us a tunnel out of here?”

“I can do it,” said the blazeborn queen. “But it might take me some time. The bad rock extends in all directions as far as I can sense.”

“How far is that?” demanded Jova.

“I… I’m not sure how to express it in a way you would understand?”

“How long would it take you to walk it?” asked Scorio.

“Oh. Maybe… if I walked?” The blazeborn queen thought it over. “I could… maybe ten minutes?”

“Ten minutes?” Nyrix did some quick calculations. “So about a mile?”

“A mile?” Kelona groaned and dropped into a crouch. “No. No no no. She can only burn through rock at a rate of—I don’t even know, but not fast.”

“I’m sorry,” said Xandera, growing crestfallen. “I can’t control what’s around us.”

“It’s not your fault,” said Kelona, covering her face with both hands. “Nyrix, can you figure out how long it would take her to dig half a mile?”

“Plus going down first,” said Jova, tone tight.

“Well. Let’s see.” Nyrix walked to where Xandera stood, then walked away counting to a distance of some twenty yards. “How long would it take you to dig this far?”

“That far?” Xandera canted her head to one side. “Um. That’s about how deep it was to the Lost Library. That took me about a day. Though that rock was broken up, collapsed upon itself, not true rock, good rock. But if I pushed hard? A day.”

“All right. So about twenty yards a day. There are about eighteen hundred yards in a mile.” Nyrix hesitated, waggled his head from side to side. “So about eighty days? Ninety?”

“Three whole months,” said Scorio. The number felt like a blow to the chest.

“We don’t have food,” protested Kelona. “We can’t go a week, much less three months!”

“We can eat the fiends,” said Jova coldly. “Try to eat those pink bushes if we have to. Xandera. Are there any breaks in the bad rock? If you find a gap between them, you could just tunnel straight up and not have to go all the way out.”

Xandera nodded, clearly unhappy about the tone of the conversation. “True. I can’t sense with any real accuracy that far out. I just get a vague sense of it. So it’s possible I could find a shaft to dig up through before reaching the edge of the bad rock.”

“All right,” said Scorio. “Stands to reason there’d be seams of natural rock like this cavern. If you focus for awhile, do you think you could sense any?”

Xandera nodded swiftly, clearly eager to please. “Also… also I could just… grow. Into my more powerful form. As an adult queen, I could tear this…” She gestured around the cavern. “I could just tear this all apart and force a way up.”

“But that would make you an adult for good,” said Scorio gently, holding her burning gaze.

Xandera nodded miserably.

“And you said that would change you. Make you want to go home, start your own hive.”

“Yes,” said Xandera quietly. “But if that’s what I need to do…”

Scorio rubbed vigorously at his face. “Let me think on it. We’ve still go options.”

“Options?” asked Kelona.

“Yes. Let me think.” Scorio took a deep breath and walked away. Hands linked behind his back, he tried to puzzle the situation out. Anything they planned would need to take effect after Leonis awoke. Because he was going to wake up. They couldn’t execute a mad escape plan while carrying his comatose form. So say Leonis awoke and was hale enough to fight his way free. They could open a chimney in the ceiling through which Scorio could fly in his burning form, and then he could simply incinerate everything up there—but they’d have to close the chimney behind him so that the Instinctuals didn’t flood down into this cavern. And how would he return? They could arrange a set amount of time, and then—

Scorio grimaced, discarded the idea.

Or Xandera could open a small hole in the back of a cave, and he could place his dragon snout close once the fiends had gathered, and just torch them all in their own cavern.

Huh.

Scorio stopped, considered.

But that would still take forever. His flames burned them badly, true, but they didn’t just curl up and die like fiends in the Telurian Band. They were Silver-ranked, too tough to die immediately.

So he could just breathe flame onto them again and again…

He considered a moment, but then shook his head. Wouldn’t they learn to just stay clear of the burning hole? And if there were thousands of them, it would still take months. Even if you assumed the flame hole wouldn’t get choked with charred corpses.

Scorio blew out his cheeks again and continued walking, pausing only to drink from a puddle. He swished the water around in his mouth to clear away the last tastes of his nausea and spat.

Jova could take her nightmare form and he could use his command aura to force a way through their ranks, both of them using their shrouds to… no. They’d not be able to protect the rear of the group, and his command aura only staggered them.

Damn it, these fiends were simply too resilient to be easily overcome.

Scorio let his hands hang between his knees and remained crouched, releasing his darkvision so that he was plunged into absolute darkness. His thoughts roiled as he considered one plan and discarded it for another even more ridiculous one.

What if he found a way to make Blood Baron? With a ferula he could—

Scorio sank his head into hands.

They were trapped.

Any plan he could devise ran the risk of going horrible wrong and people getting killed. Especially Kelona and Leonis, who simply weren’t strong enough to handle these Instinctuals with any ease.

Annoyance flared within him. Had Moira been right about everything? Had he pushed too hard, been too reckless, and taken on Great Souls who had no business coming this far south?

No.

Kelona and Leonis were Flame Vaults, and while the Silver Unfathom was the farthest they could go before suffering the Curse, it was within the scope of their power.

He just needed to be a better leader.

Where had he gone wrong?

Not landing on the Red Road to speak with Sybelleo, for one.

Not taking Moira and Villo’s warnings seriously enough for two.

Footsteps. From the gait he could tell it was Jova. He activated his darkvision and pivoted to see her approach, expression grim, thoughtful.

“Any solutions?” she asked, moving to stand on the far side of the pool, arms crossed, weight on one hip.

“Nothing rational. I’d slipped into a constructive bout of self recrimination.”

“Worthwhile use of your time. Then again, it looks like we have time aplenty.”

Scorio outlined the least wild of his ideas, but even as he described them their faults were patently obvious.

“What I end up running into,” he said at last, “is the realization that none of these plans are foolproof. The odds of someone dying are incredibly high. And that’s if Leonis wakes up.”

“He’ll wake up,” said Jova confidently, and Scorio felt a burst of gratitude for her surety. “He’s strong, and his breathing has stayed steady. I’m choosing to believe he’ll be fine.”

“Good.”

“But you’re correct in your assessment. Kelona’s golden form is moderately durable, but Nyrix is terrible at close quarters combat. He can portal himself around, but if every ledge is swarming with Instinctuals, he’ll be overwhelmed.”

“Right. We could flank him, use our Shrouds…?”

Jova shook her head slowly. “It’s like you said. A very high risk of death.”

Scorio dipped his hands in the pool then washed his face. Ran his fingers through his hair, then dropped his arms to his thighs again.

They remained in silence for a moment.

“You know.” Scorio sighed. “Perhaps… Perhaps there’s a silver lining to Xandera taking three months to get us out of here.”

“Nobody dying?”

“Assuming the pink bushes are edible and whatnot. But yes, there’s that. But I mean… Moira suggested before we left LastRock that I take some time to train Leonis and Kelona. Maybe even help Nyrix break into Pyre Lord. Three months is a good amount of time.” He turned the idea over in his mind even as he suggested it. “We could… I don’t know. Xandera could open some gaps to the other caves for fresh air. We could let in fiends as we grow hungry. And we could train.”

“Train.”

Scorio nodded, warming to the idea. “Make every day count. I know I need help with my vortices. And the reason we’re in this predicament is because I refused to slow down, pushed too hard perhaps when Kelona and Nyrix and the others weren’t ready. If we could get them up to Dread Blaze, if you and Nyrix hit Pyre Lord—we’ll be a completely different force when we emerge.”

“Given your track record, you’d probably make Blood Baron.”

Scorio laughed. “I’d settle for figuring out how to be a Pyre Lord. But… yeah.” He considered, surprised at how right the idea suddenly felt. “What do you think? Three months of leaving nothing on the table?”

“We’ve plenty of Silver mana,” said Jova slowly, clearly considering the idea. “And your suggestion has the benefit of being our only viable course of action.”

Scorio laughed softly. “There’s that, too.” He glanced back across the cave to where Kelona and Nyrix were talking with Xandera, who stood with her head hanging, clearly feeling guilty. “And I don’t want to push Xandera to grow if our lives don’t depend on it.”

“Again, this is assuming we can find food, and that the water replenishes faster than we drink it.”

“True.” Scorio stood. “But we all stand to benefit. And if we emerge that much stronger, the odds of something this… unfortunate happening again will drop dramatically.”

Jova considered him. “You’ll share your secret for making Pyre Lord?”

“Sure. If you share your technique for controlling your rate of mana draw.”

Jova tongued the inside of her cheek, considering, then extended her hand. “I guess you’ve got a deal.”

“A deal, then.” He shook her hand. Her grip was strong, confident. “Three months. Three months to train as hard as we can, and then we get the hell out of here.”

“I train pretty hard.” Was that amusement in her voice? “You think you can keep up?”

“You forget my time smashing rocks with Noami?” He couldn’t help but smile wryly. “I think you might be surprised.”

“One way to find out,” said Jova, and now she returned his smile. “Don’t get mad if you find yourself falling behind.”

“All right, Bronze-tempered Dread Blaze.”

Her eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

Scorio laughed and turned to walk away. “You heard me.”

For a moment he could just feel the intensity of her stare burning into his back, and he wondered if he’d gone to far.

But then he heard a low, rueful chuckle, then footsteps as she followed his back to the others.