Then Scorio crashed down to his knees. He drew the knife free with a wrenching jerk and fell face forward.
He was dead before he hit the ground.
1
Scorio awoke atop the bier, a permanent spasm wrenching his body and rendering him unable to breathe. Every muscle was clenched. He lay there with only the back of his head and his heels touching the bier’s jeweled surface, seeing stars as his heart throbbed and jerked, trying to find its rhythm, going long seconds without beating and stuttering violently before seizing up again.
The shock, the pain, was eternal while it lasted. He stared up, unseeing, at the basilica’s distant dome, yearning for breath, straining, locked up.
His vision was swarming with black and red when he finally felt his heart’s erratic beats change into a stampede, pounding like a herd of wild horses across a plain. He fell to the bier and lay there gasping, massaging his chest, lost in the primal immediacy of his psychic wound.
Slowly he became aware of sounds around him. With great effort, he forced his head around and saw that Lianshi had curled into a fetal ball atop her bier and lay there shaking, while Leonis moaned in a low, tortured voice somewhere behind him.
“You guys with me?” Scorio’s voice came out more of a wild cry than a reassuring question, and he took a deep, shuddering breath. “How are you holding up?”
“Wretched,” moaned Lianshi, voice muffled. “Like I just died.”
This somehow drew a laugh from Leonis, immediately followed by another moan of pain. “The damn statue cut off my head.”
Scorio couldn’t imagine how that must feel. Instead, summoning his will, he forced himself to sit upright. His heart was still pounding, as if so relieved to be beating again that it meant to race forever. Shaking, shivering, he slid off the bier and stood upright.
“We almost did it.” His voice was husky. “We destroyed two of them before the assassin got me. That’s…” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “That’s fantastic.”
“Doesn’t feel fantastic,” said Lianshi, slowly uncurling. Her face was blotched and her eyes wild. “She scrambled my insides. I feel like… never mind how it feels. It’s not good.”
“I can imagine.” Scorio forced himself to stretch, then bent down to touch his toes. Rising, he pulled a knee to his chest and squeezed, then the other.
“Still, we did great.” He wasn’t sure they had, but he wanted to believe it. Needed them to. “Excellent work.”
Lianshi sat up, hair hanging before her face. “I know you’re trying to cheer us up and get us excited about another run. And I’m not saying it’s not working. Just… can you give me at least two minutes to feel properly awful?”
“And I’ll take a new head,” said Leonis, who had also sat up. “This one feels… all wrong now. Never thought I’d say that about my peerless visage.”
Scorio hiked himself back up onto the bier and sat cross-legged. “Take your time. I’m going to cycle mana, see if that helps.”
Closing his eyes, he envisioned his Igneous Heart. It gleamed before him, faceted and dark. Was that—? Scorio scrutinized it more carefully. It looked like spider-thin lines were drawn about the Heart’s surface. Had they been there before? They looked familiar, somehow. He wasn’t sure.
The mana in the basilica was thick—not nearly as powerful and dense as that within the Gauntlet, but still rich with power. Focusing his will, he swirled it about, and was pleased to find that it seemed to obey his desire slightly quicker than he remembered.
With a great inhalation, he pulled it into his Heart and ignited it, and immediately the tremulous pain in his chest lessened.
“Ignite,” he said, voice low and intent. “It makes all the difference. Trust me.”
Closing his eyes, he focused on swirling mana and drawing more into his Heart just as it was about to gutter, so that he was able to limp along until the last of the pain in his chest faded away. He didn’t know how long it took, but when he glanced up it had become First Bronze.
His Heart guttered out, and he pushed off the bier, leaping up to his feet. He felt battered but whole, rough but ready for more.
The other two sat cross-legged still, though Lianshi’s eyes were open, her lips pursed.
“You all right?” he asked.
She gave a curt nod. “Better, yes.”
“Ready for more?”
Her lips twisted into a smile. “Does it make me a masochist for being eager?”
Scorio laughed. “No. It makes you an exemplary Great Soul.”
“I’m of the opinion,” rumbled Leonis, “that exemplary Great Souls are all masochists.”
Scorio looked over to him. “You exemplary, then?”
Leonis sighed deeply. “No. I am but a handsome, virile warrior with regrettable amounts of loyalty to his friends. Let’s go at it again.”
As one, they activated the gems at the foot of their biers. Laying back down on the jeweled surfaces, they closed their eyes. Scorio felt exultant, at once anxious about the pain to come and yet ferociously determined to overcome it.
This was his way to advance. This was his way to overcome the odds.
This was his way to do better than even the Academy Great Souls.
Heart pounding, Scorio awoke once more into a tomb of beaten copper.
Chapter 33
It was Second Rust when they finally called it quits. Groaning, rising at last from his jeweled bier, Scorio waited for the memory of his viscera spilling out over his lap to fade before sliding off it to his feet.
His heart refused to settle. His body felt uncomfortably cold, and a strange sense of vertigo kept seizing him whenever he raised his eyes to the heights of the basilica. Stomach churning, throat parched, he forced himself to stand upright, willing himself not to sway.
“Can I just stay dead?” asked Leonis, rising shakily from his bier. His skin was pale, his eyes sunken, his face gleaming with sweat. “I haven’t felt this bad since… since…”
“It’ll pass,” muttered Lianshi, draping an arm over her eyes, hand slowly massaging her hip where it had been torn out. “Just give it time.”
Leonis swung his legs over the side of the bier and propped himself up on both arms, staring down at the ground. “When did Lianshi turn into a monster?”
Scorio forced himself to inhale deeply, seeking to ease the tightness in his chest. It didn’t work, so he closed his eyes and focused, working on his breathing, until at last, he felt the pressure begin to ease.
“It’s hard,” he said, voice trembling slightly, “but we’ll benefit.”
“So you say.” Leonis loosened his hair from its bun, shook it out, and allowed it to hang damp and free before his face. “But this bears no resemblance to any training that I’ve ever heard of. It’s just endless brutal death.”
Lianshi still hadn’t moved. “We’re applying tension to our Hearts, not training. The moment before death is when you call upon your power with the greatest force.” She paused as she forced down her gag reflex, throat working, then just lay there looking sickly, her words cut off.
“She’s right,” said Scorio hoarsely. “Every Great Soul out there gets just two attempts at the Gauntlet. Just today we got five.”
“And failed to pass the second room,” groused Leonis, forcing himself to rise to standing and square his shoulders. “Don’t listen to me. I just hate being brutally murdered repeatedly by emotionless statues.”
Scorio snorted. “I don’t blame you. It takes a particular kind of person to go into the Gauntlet five times in a row.”
“Idiocy is not to be ruled out,” said Lianshi, then she forced herself to sit up. She looked almost green in the face, her eyes bloodshot. “But we’ll see how we’ve progressed over the next seven days. See if this hasn’t helped us leapfrog ahead of where we were.”