“Fair enough,” said Leonis, gathering his long hair back into a ponytail. “I have to say, at first I thought I’d lucked out by teaming up with the pair of you.” His smile was wry. “Now I know I’m with the right pair of criminally insane murderers.”
Scorio chuckled softly and pushed away from the bier. The vertigo was getting better, though his insides were still trying to reconcile themselves with—well—still being inside of him instead of out. “Meeting you both was the best thing that happened to me.”
“Aw,” said Lianshi, tears coming to her eyes. She slid clumsily off the bier and staggered up to him, where she fell into a tight hug. “I’m feeling so emotional,” she said, clinging to him tightly.
“It’s because you just died five times,” said Leonis.
“Perhaps.” She didn’t release Scorio, however. “This world. Bastion. Our terrible fate. The fact that nothing awaits us outside but endless hell—it’s so much, you know?”
She pulled back, tears still glimmering in her eyes. “It keeps me up at night. Not knowing who my parents were, who I was, what I liked, what I’ve done. Sometimes it feels like too much. But then I think of you both, and I don’t feel alone, and it…” She trailed off, wiping the tears from her cheeks and smiling widely. “It means more to me than I can say.”
Scorio matched her smile, and when Leonis stepped up to join them, they roped their arms over each other’s shoulders, forming a triangle, and hung their heads into the center, brows touching.
“We’re going to get through this together,” said Scorio softly. “It’ll be hard. But I know we can do it. And when we’ve achieved the power we need, we’ll set things to rights.”
He felt their wordless support, could imagine the questions they might have. But in that moment, wrung out, in pain, they simply stood silently with him, and he drank deep of their support.
They separated at last. Leonis glanced up at the windows. “Time we got back. Let’s hurry and check our old coffers. With a little luck that toad will have stayed gone.”
“Oh no,” moaned Lianshi, clutching at her hip. “I can’t fight again. Even if it’s a real fight.”
“We’ll have to stay alert,” said Scorio, walking through the assembled biers toward the great doors. “We’ve a long stretch of ruins to cross, and they get more dangerous at night.”
“Shouldn’t we have left earlier?” asked Leonis. “So that we wouldn’t be racing against fiends in the darkness of the ruins while already exhausted?”
“After careful consideration, I think the answer is yes,” said Lianshi.
“I thought we’d get through that room,” said Scorio, chagrin rising within him. He stepped into the base of a stairwell that led up to the balconies. “I know you did, too. We came so close.”
“Close is a very flexible term,” said Leonis, following him up the steps. “But yes. I know what you mean.”
It galled Scorio that they hadn’t passed into the third chamber. Each time they’d entered the second, three different statues had come to life. The variety made it impossible to plan; once they’d faced three blade-wielding warriors who’d advanced in lockstep, another time they’d faced three ranged fighters, with one, in particular, proving to be deadly with his thrown knives. They had to improvise each time, and on their fourth attempt, they’d come so close. Two of them against the assassin lady, and it had just barely managed to defeat them.
Scorio had been convinced they’d make it to the third room. Had insisted on one last run.
Only for them to suffer their worst defeat yet.
Still, he knew that each run had benefited them. They’d improved as a team, had grown more decisive, had developed tactics that they could call out depending on what they’d faced.
Another run or two and they would have made it through.
They checked each of their coffers, but all of them spoke the same tale: long looted or cleansed, they all were bare of anything but dust.
Scorio tried not to feel disappointed. Searching the coffers would have been an obvious first choice for any looters after the Academy was abandoned. Still. It wouldn’t have minded a lucky break.
Descending to the main floor, Leonis led them through the chambers and hallways, over the mounds of rubble and around collapsed chambers till at last, they emerged outside the ancient Academy.
The sun-wire was a filament of burning rust across the sky, with wisps of mist rising in great curves from the canals to burn off halfway up, forming an ethereal, partially completed pattern down the length of the city’s cylinder, all of it tinged in salmon pinks and deep oranges by the dying light.
The three of them stood shoulder to shoulder, gazing out over the ruins, over the city, and then up to where Bastion wrapped around them. The sight was marvelous, strange, surreal, and felt at once beautiful and wrong to Scorio.
“This doesn’t feel like home,” said Lianshi, tone muted. “But I don’t know what should.”
“We’ll make it our home,” said Leonis. “After all, we’ve done so hundreds of times before.”
“Some of us,” said Scorio.
Leonis looked sidelong at him. “True. Sorry.”
“No apology necessary.” Scorio stretched out his shoulder, arm pressed across his chest, and then took the first step down. “Let’s get you both back to the Academy before you’re forced to spend the night on the streets.”
The toad hadn’t returned, and Scorio was growing sufficiently familiar with the ruins to navigate around the dangerous areas; occasionally they realized they were being tracked, once had to climb frantically to avoid a massive cobalt-blue crab which erupted from a crevasse to come charging at them, claws snapping, and twice nearly ran into traps set by cunning insectile predators. But each time, Scorio was able to guide them quickly to safety.
They traveled in silence, each sunken into their own thoughts, and when they finally reached the border where the living city of Bastion began his friends turned to face him.
“We can take it from here,” said Leonis firmly. “There’s no need for you to walk all the way to our ward and back.”
“Are you sure?” asked Scorio. “It’s no bother.”
“We’re fine,” said Lianshi, smiling. “The walk eased the worst of the pain anyway. You get home. Rest.”
They stood in silence.
“Listen,” said Lianshi at last. “Promise me you won’t attempt the Gauntlet without us.”
“What?” Scorio flushed and gave an involuntary laugh. “What makes you think I’d do that?”
Lianshi set her jaw. “Scorio.”
Leonis crossed his arms and widened his stance subtly. “Swear it, my friend. We want you to be in one piece come next Eighthday.”
Scorio looked away from them, scanned the buildings that loomed over the street, and tugged at the hem of his robes. “You’re asking me not to train?”
“That’s not training,” said Lianshi sternly. “Or, more accurately, that’s not the kind of training you should do alone. Promise us.”
Scorio dragged his hand through his hair. “And what should I do while you both benefit from the Academy’s largesse, huh? Sit and manipulate Coal mana?”
Leonis lowered his chin. “I’m sorry you don’t have access to the same resources we do. That doesn’t make it all right for you to kill yourself.”
Scorio ground his teeth as he forced his emotions down. “I don’t blame you, my friend. But I need to use what options I have at hand. I don’t get to be selective.”
“So you were going to go back,” said Lianshi, eyes widening. “You were planning to enter the Gauntlet alone?”
“No!” Scorio threw his arms out wide. “I hadn’t even thought that far! But now that you mention it, why shouldn’t I? What’s the worst that can happen to me? I already live in the ruins. It’s not like crossing them’s going to get any worse. And if I enter the Gauntlet, sure, I’ll die. But it’s the best way to apply tension to my soul, right? Why shouldn’t I make use of it?”