IGS #4, Chapter 10

Scorio

Impatient, Scorio fell into a steep dive. The wind rushed about them as he half-furled his wings, and Kelona let out a whoop of excitement. The fog swirled and parted so that the ghostly ground resolved itself into pale sand dusted over rocky outgrowths. Most rose and fell without gaining much prominence, but here and there they suddenly speared up into the sky to form freestanding walls of white rock.

Jova, who’d pulled ahead, glanced back just in time to catch his descent. Her frown was visible even at this distance. Her plinth slowed abruptly, then simply reversed direction.

Scorio pulled out of his dive just in time to sink the last dozen yards and land heavily on the sand, his legs flexing as they took his weight. The stone ground crunched strangely beneath his talons, so that he sank almost a foot into what felt like porous rock.

Strange.

He gazed up to see Sybelleo hesitate, drifting into view over the top of a great curtain of stone, and then, after a single quirk of its head, dive down to follow.

Nyrix climbed down while Kelona abruptly pressed hard onto Scorio’s scaled back before disappearing altogether, only to land a good dozen yards away. Xandera scooted up to sit athwart his neck, legs hanging over his shoulders, her presence as warm as an ember.

For this Scorio would remain in his dragon form. It fit his current mood.

“Peaceful overtures,” called Sybelleo, coming to a stop a good twenty yards away. “And apologies for pressing my case. But I have heard it said that fortune favors the bold, and I possess an unseemly tolerance for risk.”

Jova slid to a stop a score of yards off to their left, but remained in the air. Scorio shook out his wings once, twice, then furled them down his length. He raised his head high and gazed at the now still Silverine, who drifted to one side as if by accident, their eyes large and enigmatic and dark. “I thought I made it clear that we wished to be alone.”

“Amply so. But I grow sick of those squabbling children, and wish to forge my own path. And you, yourself, a Pyre Lord! Magnificent. Intolerant. Brusque. How can I not but be intrigued? So I am intrigued. And hopeful. Already we are conversing in a pleasing and civilized manner. Sybelleo would be of service!”

“And what service can you provide us, exactly?” Scorio fought to repress his amusement. His hind left foot crunched deeper into the rock, forcing him to shift his weight and step to the side. “We’re heading directly for the Red Keep. What can you tell us that we won’t learn there?”

“Nothing much!” Sybelleo laughed, the sound crystalline. “But the Red Keep is a nexus of political machinations and vicious double dealings. Sybelleo is innocent of anything but naked desire for more mana. I am a known quantity. Avarice! A simple motivator. In the Red Keep, all knowledge shall come at unseen prices and with unforetold consequences.”

“Hmm.” Scorio swung his head about to gaze at Jova.

Who, mollified, allowed her plinth to lower down so both she and Leonis could step off onto the sand.

Nyrix was rubbing at his stubbled jaw. “I mean, there’s something to that logic.”

“Can’t hurt to listen?” suggested Kelona.

“If they even know what the words they’re speaking means,” said Leonis.

“I understand my own words,” replied Sybelleo, quirking their head to one side. “But if you wish me to use simpler words, I can accommodate you.”

“Oh,” laughed Kelona. “Ouch.”

“Leonis has a point,” said Jova. “Vill said you all were ‘baby’ Philosophers. That we should wait to take on the services of a more evolved version like Pashamylo.”

“Sybelleo does indeed have far to go,” allowed the Silverine, “but even Pashamylo began her journey as an eel. I am more advanced than those others that besieged you. Poised, I am, between native instinct and the highest planes of thought! Unless?” It drifted closer. “You wish the particular services Pashamylo provides?”

“Yes,” said Xandera. “What does she do, exactly? Why are Vill and Aken giving her mana? Does she protect the waystation for them?”

“Not quite,” muttered Nyrix.

“It’s a more basic exchange,” agreed Leonis, his smile dark. “Am I right, Sybelleo?”

“Indeed!” Sybelleo spun in a circle and let out a trill of laughter. “You Great Souls are fascinating in your strange means of procreation!”

“Wait,” said Kelona. “Procreation? They’re…?”

“Yeah,” said Scorio. “You notice how feminine Pashamylo looked?”

“Oh…” said Kelona. “Oh!”

“What?” Xandera was glancing back and forth. “Procreation? Like making eggs?”

“Something like that,” agreed Scorio. “But… not. Silverines and humans can’t… make eggs together.”

“Actually,” said Xandera, “how do Great Souls make children? Do you make children? Our records at our hive never indicated seeing any of yours.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard of Great Souls having kids,” agreed Kelona. She looked to Scorio. “Right?”

“I don’t know. Never really thought about it.”

Xandera looked fascinated. “But if fiends and Great Souls can’t make eggs, then…? Oh! She pretends to mate with them? Why?”

Kelona stifled a laugh.

Scorio felt an abyss open at his feet. How to explain this? Xandera didn’t seem scandalized, or affronted, just… confused. She might look young, but she was a young blazeborn queen, not a human child.

“Humans—Great Souls—enjoy the act,” he began. “Even if it doesn’t lead to, you know. Eggs being laid and turning into young.”

Also, mating very rewarding activity. Good exercise.

Scorio had to control the wild urge to repeat Nox’s words.

“With Silverines, especially so,” agreed Sybelleo, drifting a little closer. “The transference of mana from Great Soul to Silverine can be an ecstatic experience for both parties.”

“But…” Xandera blinked. “I mean…”

“Wait,” said Kelona. “You don’t even look… human?”

Sybelleo shrugged. “We can shape ourselves to match what Great Souls find attractive, especially if given cause. We are mercurial, malleable, when motivated. I could begin changing as you desire, if we forge a partnership.”

“Let’s focus,” said Jova. “What Vill and Aken wish to do with Pashamylo is none of our concern—”

A rumbling sound from deep underground caused her to cut off. Everyone listened intently, but it faded away.

“Earthquakes?” asked Scorio. “Those happen around here?”

“No,” said Sybelleo, its little mouth pulled into a pensive frown. “Though then again sometimes, yes.”

Jova remained focused. “Those two are weak and unwilling to help with the greater war. There. We don’t need to ever think about them again. The question remains whether we should let this Silverine guide us.”

“Right,” said Scorio, grateful that the tremor and Jova’s rescue had distracted Xandera. “And what are you asking from us, anyway? We don’t have any Silver mana. And why do you even need us for it? We’re in the Silver Unfathom. Why don’t you just absorb it from everywhere around you? There’s plenty all over, right?”

Sybelleo quirked their head to one side, the movement made dramatic by their sweeping horns. “Is there? Wait! There is some here indeed!”

Scorio reached out with his Heart sense, and again felt the currents of Bronze sweeping by, the turgid Iron, the effervescent Copper high above. But there was some Silver, slender ropes of which slipped across the ground to dive into cracks and disappear.

“See, there’s some Silver here,” he protested.

“Rare, strange, disturbing, delightful!” Sybelleo turned in a circle, studying the sandy ground. “This must be an oasis. Silver must pool below. Once common, now rare beyond belief, but ah! That we found it together indicates our synergies are pristine and worth deepening! A truly auspicious omen.”

“An oasis?” asked Nyrix.

“A rare pooling. Or so I assume. We should leave quickly, however. Such concentration of mana will draw Instinctuals.”

“Let’s wrap this up, then,” agreed Scorio.

“So this is really rare? Then where’s the rest of the Silver mana?” asked Nyrix, concerned.

“Caught at the southern edge of the Unfathom,” laughed Sybelleo, rising up once more as they spread their arms. “Neatly, nicely, efficiently, effectively. All harvested as it flows into the Unfathom. But those of us who are not part of the integral chains? We are left to fend for ourselves!”

“All of it?” Scorio stared up in shock. “All the Silver mana?”

“As good as!” Sybelleo spun about, strangely exhilarated. “A recent perfection of our final domination! The Silverines are majestic and capacious, and our capturing of all Silver is the latest attestation of that might! Alas. Though we all glory in the achievements of our kind, as dictated by the Abstractions, our very success leaves many of us Philosophers to scavenge and sell our services if we are to grow. Not to mention the poor starving Instinctuals.”

“That’s crazy,” said Kelona. “So there’s no Silver in all of the Unfathom?”

“Some slips by,” conceded Sybelleo. “And accumulates here in the northern reaches. But that is greedily devoured by the starveling masses. And the Silverine eel-web is ever refined and tended to.”

Scorio tried to wrap his mind around this revelation. “But… that’s so much mana. Where does it all go?”

“Engorged web-eels are fed to ever larger Instinctuals until they come unto bursting and evolving into Philosophers. Then, by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, these are fed to the Abstractions.”

“Can we see these web-eels?” asked Xandera eagerly.

“A guide! You need a guide, a confidant, a trusted and loyal ally.” Sybelleo’s tiny mouth widened into a smile. “Yet fortune favors you, for Sybelleo is here, ready and eager to answer your every question in exchange for mana!”

“We only have access to what’s around us,” said Scorio. “Copper, Bronze…”

“Great Souls are admirably resourceful and capable of acquiring Gold mana or better when motivated,” said Sybelleo confidently. “But beyond that, mana processed through a Great Soul’s Heart is delectable, and sweet upon the body. We can reach an agreement with terrible, horrific ease.”

Scorio studied the Silverine. “You’re not like those others outside the waystation, but also not like Pashamylo. Why is that?”

“Those you met at the keep were mewling children, barely self-aware. Pashamylo is an advanced Philosopher, having gorged for over a year now on Great Soul mana. She is grown dense and purposeful, her thoughts elevated, her nature approximating divinity. Soon she shall leave the waystation in the hopes of becoming an Abstraction, or, barring that, to feed herself to an Abstraction of her choosing.”

Kelona shook her head slowly as if trying to sort this all out. “And you…?”

“Of middling stance, of sufficient advancement to be intelligible, but no so far developed that I am become intolerant of your lack of sophistication.”

Kelona snorted. “Well that’s kind of you.”

“I understand the importance of clothing, the reason Great Souls sleep, and why you prefer to be clean. Conversely, I am still at times mystified by Great Soul morality, spiritual beliefs, or your terror of death. But I have consumed sufficient mana to be an ideal companion. All you need do is take advantage of me.”

“Sure.” Scorio glanced at the others. “Thoughts?”

“We clearly have a lot to learn,” said Nyrix. “Fiends capable of capturing all the Silver mana flowing into the Unfathom…? That’s beyond anything I’d imagined.”

“You said this was a new thing?” called Kelona.

Sybelleo drifted down some more. It was now only a few yards above them. “An ever refining process. When we consumed the last non-Silverine predators and fiends in the Unfathom, we were finally able to devote our attention to the perfectioning of the net. Perfectioning?”

“Perfecting,” said Nyrix.

“Thank you.” The Silverine bobbed where they hovered. “The perfecting of the net. Advancement has been rapid.”

“You Silverines…” Scorio closed his eyes and gave a slight shake of his head. “So it’s true. You ate all the other fiends in the Unfathom?”

“And now all is Silverine!” Sybelleo laughed again and spun in the air, skirts flaring out wide. “Harmonious and undisturbing. Our minds bend to ever greater works, and soon we shall all be Illuminated.”

“This is beyond what I was told,” said Jova darkly. “Not that I was privy to the highest councils, but this… this sounds far worse than I imagined.”

“I’m not ready to take on your services,” said Scorio. “Not till I speak with the Twilight Lady—”

The ground rumbled underfoot again, and now a hissing filled the air, as fine sand began pouring into opening cracks underfoot, the rock shifting and splitting all around them.

“Fly!” trilled Sybelleo, rising rapidly. “You stand on a warren! Arise into the sky!”

Chaos erupted all around them.

Entire pockets of the ground gave away altogether, sand pouring into ragged holes as fiends erupted from the depths. Dozens, no—hundreds of them, swarming up in shapes at first incomprehensible. Scorio got an impression of white bone carapace around dark purple and flesh-red torsos, clawed arms like purple branches scrabbling for purchase on the collapsing ground, their lower halves devolving into a mass of octopoid tentacles. Each as large as man, with a smooth, bone-helm without features for a head.

Bizarre, terrifying, overwhelming.

He shifted up into his scaled form, his wings bursting forth, and rose into the air as the rock beneath his taloned feet fell away, taking with it a dozen fiends who’d been reaching for him with their wizened purple arms. Turning in a circle, he tried to figure out what to do, for his companions were scattered and shouting, fighting off the swarm, summoning their powers.

Jova had leaped atop her plinth and risen up, but four fiends clutched at the edge of her great rock and were hauling themselves up to tackle her.

Kelona gleamed bright gold as she shouted her defiance and horror, shoving at a fiend that had latched onto her front, tentacles wrapping around her legs.

Nyrix’s blazing bolt flashed forth to impact a distant ridge where a portal opened, but the Dread Blaze chose not to step through, turning instead to loose a second shot at the fiend on Kelona, detonating half its skull.

For the briefest of seconds Scorio saw again the Bone Plains, the swarming Tokalauths and okoz, heard the screams of dying Great Souls, and panic swept through him, made him want to inhale a chestful of black fire and breathe it out over the wriggling, terrible shapes, to burn them all where they stood.

But his companions. They were caught in the midst.

LEAVE US ALONE! He roared with his command aura, and the closest dozen shied away from beneath him, suddenly skittish.

Abruptly a great snake of searing lava burst forth, curving in a line as Xandera swung her palms to the side, washing over the fiends with the consistency of thick mud. They screeched, reared, drew away. Leonis was roaring in fury, swinging Nezzar in a two-fisted grip as he cleared the immediate area around him, six other Nezzar’s having sprung into existence around the perimeter. Jova had somehow shaken off the fiends on her plinth, and with a fierce cry tore rocks from the closest outcropping and hurled them with devastating effect into the melee.

Catching his breath, the horrors of the Bone Plains receding, Scorio dove down and became living flame, so that he passed through writhing fiends and burned them from within. In his heart sprang hope: they could get out of this, they could drive them back, they could survive.

He rose up, sucking the fire deep into his chest, only to see to his dismay that many of the fiends they’d attacked had been hurt but not killed.

Damn it. They were far tougher than the army they’d fought on the Bone Plain. Silver mana fiends, they shrilled with eerie musicality, even the ones he’d burned somehow remaining in the fight, portions of their bodies blackened but still capable of movement.

And then an enormous chunk of the ground simply gave way with a sloughing roar, and fell into the depths, taking a hundred fiends with it along with Leonis and Xandera.

Scorio didn’t think. He furled his wings and dove down with his great Shroud before him, into the yawning black chasm that had opened up, past the fiends that clung to its sides and reached for him, into the darkness beneath.

Darkvision revealed the nightmare into which he’d flown.

They’d been standing atop a hollowed out complex of weblike rock. A cathedral space across whose open expanse stretched organic strands of pale stone, their surface honeycombed with traceries of rock, so that each was more a lattice than a solid buttress. The walls seethed with fiends like the inside of a beehive, and the huge chunks that had fallen from the surface had plunged through a number of those delicate white struts, smashing them apart as they fell all the way to the ground far below.

It felt like diving into an alien world. Ridges were carved into the actual cavern’s walls along which grew pink fungus-like trees, continuous growths that flowered up into spherical canopies.

But it was the sound that nearly caused Scorio to lose all control, to simply cover his ears and close his eyes tight and try to blot out the pain. Every fiend in this vast space was shrilling, singing, screaming their complex song, a sound so layered and fluted and strange and disconcerting that it made it hard to think, pain jabbing into his mind and causing his gorge to rise.

Only extreme effort kept him on course, diving down and veering around the soaring struts that carved through the void, down to where Xandera and Leonis had fallen and now lay amidst the shattered rocks and rubble.

Xandera had already risen to her feet and was spraying lava about her, loosing great waves that sent the swarming fiends scuttling back on their tentacular appendages, but Leonis lay prone, arms outflung, head lolling to one side and with no sign of Nezzar.

With relief Scorio exhaled the black flame that had been curdling in his chest, spewing forth his incendiary plume that blasted through the ranks of fiends rushing toward Xandera. The first dozen feet of fire were of the purest, lightest blue, and then it blossomed into a roiling ball of flame that torched and cindered scores of fiends.

A bolt of light slammed into the ground beside Leonis. A portal opened, through which Nyrix and Kelona emerged, both looking overwhelmed and terrified, their Shrouds shimmering before them.

Scorio banked hard, came around a vast column of embroidered stone and again lashed out with his command aura, bellowing silently for the fiends to run away.

An entire flank shivered and ground to a halt, transfixed by his command, but they didn’t flee.

Kelona hurled herself headlong into the thickest knot of fiends, hitting them like a catapult and breaking ivory carapaces and arms, while Nyrix pivoted, loosing bolt after bolt from his crossbow.

Leonis. They had to get him out. Scorio glanced up at the holes in the distant ceiling, only to see Jova riding her plinth almost straight down, a cloud of stone fragments in tow. Her gaze was pure fury, and abruptly the cloud blasted past her to rain down upon the fiends, hundreds of rocks and pebbles and shards decimating their ranks.

“We have to get out of here!” yelled Scorio, landing beside Leonis. They had but moments as more fiends were pouring down the walls and boiling out of side tunnels.

“I need a target to shoot!” Nyrix yelled back, and Scorio understood his plight: without a visible target to hit with his bolt, he couldn’t open a portal to the outside world. Which meant only he and Jova could get the rest of the crew out.

But there wasn’t room to grow into his dragon form down here. There were too many of those struts and bridges of strangely wrought stone crossing web-like across the cavern. He’d not have the clearance to beat his wings, to climb for air.

“The stone is so strange here!” shouted Xandera, her body so heated that steam was rising from her black skin. “There are caverns in every direction!”

It was so disconcerting, so wrong, to somehow be able to hear them over the tapestry of keening and chaotic song that filled the air, that still stabbed daggers into his mind. As if the fiends’ terrifying music were a backdrop that filled every crevasse of his mind, but against which his friends’ shouts could still be plainly heard.

His nausea was rising, a queasy, greasy feeling within his mouth and throat and gut. The walls of the giant cavern were closing in, and the growing symphony of discordant beauty was making it impossible to think.

Fiends were hurling themselves against his mighty Shroud, scrabbling and clawing at the curved golden surface in fury.

Jova let out a cry of frustration. “The stone here doesn’t listen to me!”

But she’d brought enough rocks with her that these yet obeyed her power, lifting up and swirling around the battlefield to thresh the ranks of the fiends, or at least batter them back. They were too tough to be killed outright.

Moira had been right. The fiends in the Unfathom were far more formidable than he’d expected.

A great keening filled the air, a trumpeting cry, and a huge fiend lumbered into view, emerging from a cave mouth to wave its tentacles high overhead. Easily eight yards in height, it was massive in every way, its body extending back into the shadows behind it. It was some kind of mollusk, its white bone shell whorled encompassing its rear half, while its claws and tentacles seethed in the air before it, a score of them as thick across as Scorio’s thigh and dozens of yards long, some tipped with hooks, others with blades, others with suction pads.

“This way!” cried Xandera. “I sense a good cavern!” And she ran into an oncoming wave of fiends, blasting them with a gout of lava that caused them to hiss and shrill and dance away, opening up a corridor.

Nyrix and Kelona raced after her, desperately swinging their Shrouds about them to fend off attacks, so Scorio scooped up Leonis and gave chase, Jova bringing up the rear, her flying screen of stones and shards forcing the fiends to stay back.

Xandera raced to the cavern wall and there trained her flow of lava against one spot. The knitted white stone boiled away easily, opening into a narrow circular tunnel whose surface hissed and steamed and led steeply downward.

“Where are we going?” cried Kelona. “We need to get out!”

“A safer cavern!” Xandera descended into the tunnel, carving it out with her power.

“Take Leonis!” Scorio handed the huge man over to Kelona, who in her golden form was able to carry him without difficulty. Then he turned back, stepped up alongside Jova, and turned back into living flame.

The sensation was sublime and helped deafen the terrible sound that was driving him mad. For a moment he simply flowed forward, swimming through fiends that raked and tried to tear at him, burning and searing them where he went, only to return to the tunnel mouth and reform into his scaled form, inhaling the black fire deep.

The vast Silverine was hauling its way toward them, but its tentacles were extending faster, reaching across twenty, thirty yards. Another trumpeting sound, and a second huge fiend appeared in another cave mouth, causing the ocean of lesser Silverines to fibrillate with joy, the volume of their song rising to unconscionable levels.

“Go,” he managed to grunt to Jova, who nodded and backed into the tunnel.

Scorio leaned forward and unleashed his flame breath, dragging it across the army of fiends that were trying to swamp him.

Tough as they were, his black fire drove them back, killing those he’d already burned before, warping and cindering those who’d replaced the fallen.

The fiends—Instinctuals?—fell back a good dozen paces, pushing into their rear ranks with outraged shrills and cries.

But the huge tentacles from the vast fiend snaked in toward him, singed but undeterred by his attack.

The moment his flame died out, Scorio turned and darted after Jova.

Xandera had burned a tunnel some twenty yards deep down into a lower neighboring cavern. But this one was devoid of fiends, and the last yard of her tunnel gradated back to normal looking stone, smooth and cold and solid.

Scorio stumbled out into the new space, saw that Xandera and Jova were right there.

“Close it!” Xandera cried, and Jova clenched her jaw. A great chunk of stone tore itself free from the ground and flew forth to wedge into the tunnel like a cork, great chunks calving off and splintering as Jova rammed it in as deep as she could, slotting a good three or four yards of rock into the tunnel.

Silence.

Almost. In the far distance, almost more intuited than actually heard, came the Instinctual’s song, barely echoing through the walls.

Scorio backed away, watching the stone plug, but it seemed to be holding. Warily, he turned in circle and saw that they’d emerged into a smaller version of the first cavern, its sides wrapped with sloping ridges upon which grew the pink fungus bushes, the ceiling tapering to a dome from which spikes of sharp rock descended.

No obvious way out, then.

What looked like tunnels embedded within the ridges proved to be little more than shallow caves or alcoves. Water dripped from the stone spikes above to plink into pools that dotted the sloping ground.

“Oh,” breathed Kelona, who’d crouched to lower Leonis to the ground. “There’s so much Silver mana!”

Scorio reached out with his Heart sense and realized she was correct—the air was supple and thick with great rippling strands of Silver which interlaced and surged through the air.

“Are we safe?” Nyrix had his crossbow still at his shoulder, and was turning in a slow circle to scan the ridges. “Can they get in here?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” said Jova, hands on her hips, her face carved into a scowl.

“They can’t.” Xandera lowered to a crouch and placed her hand on the damp floor. She looked subtly different. A little taller, perhaps, a little older. “I can sense… this is good stone, but we’re surrounded…” She quirked her head to one side as if thinking. “Yes. What we came through, there are caverns just like it around this one.”

“Around us?” Scorio felt his skin crawl as his sense of safety rapidly grew brittle. “As in, all around us?”

“Above, to the sides, yes.” Xandera’s tone was pensive. “This was the only safe space I could sense. Everywhere else the stone is wrong.”

“Great,” said Jova. “Just great. So we’re trapped?”

“We’ll figure something out.” Scorio tried to sound more confident than he felt. “Between all our powers, Xandera’s ability to work with stone, yours, my dragon form, we’ll figure something out.”

“Did you see how many fiends there were?” Jova arched a brow. “And they’re strong. I was having to exert myself to just drive them back, much less kill them.”

Scorio had nothing to say. She was right.

“It’s the Silver mana,” said Kelona softly. “It must be. They’re here to consume it. Like a nest built around their food source.”

“Given how little we sensed on the surface, this must be like a goldmine for them,” agreed Nyrix. “Well. Silvermine.”

“Just great.” Jova blew out her cheeks and stared down at where Leonis lay, his great chest rising and falling gently. “So what do we do, Pyre Lord?”

“I don’t know.” Scorio hated to admit it, but what else could he say? “We’ll rest. Take stock. And then we’ll figure something out.”