“Probably not,” said Naomi, grabbing hold of Scorio’s arm and hauling him toward the great crack in the Academy’s wall. “She’s an Imperator. Sharess is—what—a Dread Blaze?”
“Can she open the Portal?” asked Lianshi, hurrying after them. “Is that even possible?”
“What she can do is wreck it,” snarled Naomi over her shoulder. “That even I know. You tear the sun-wire free, you haul the capstone out of the wall, and it’s broken forever. We die in darkness, those of us who aren’t seared to death by the loose sun-wire.”
“But what if she can open it?” asked Scorio, scrambling over the fallen blocks into the cool dimness of the Academy’s interior. “She’s an Imperator, right?”
“You think there haven’t been any of her kind before?” Naomi angrily thrust her hair back. “That over the past nine hundred years nobody of her power hasn’t looked at the Portal? You think she’s the first to try?”
Scorio scowled but didn’t reply.
“To the Archspire,” said Leonis. “Though what we’ll do when we get there, I’ve no idea.”
“I sensed her drawing the Archspire’s power,” said Scorio, jogging alongside his friends. “Did you feel it, too? Just before Praximar arrived? And that power seemed to come from somewhere deeper. It’s not just contained in the spire itself.”
“Felt like the spire was a conduit,” said Naomi from the front. “And that wasn’t just any kind of mana. I’ve never felt or heard of anything like it before.”
“The highest level of mana is Noumenon,” said Lianshi breathlessly from the back. “It can only be found just outside the Pit. Diamond is next, and that’s meant to be colorless, but Noumenon is the very stuff of creation. Only Imperators can tap it.”
“Where’d you learn that?” asked Scorio, glancing back at her.
She grimaced apologetically. “School?”
“What would happen if we tried to draw on Noumenon?” he asked, slowing down to run alongside her.
“At a guess? Our Hearts would immediately explode?”
Leonis slowed as he climbed up a slope of scree and tumbled chunks of ceiling. “Even Gold would be too much for us, and that’s just Dread Blaze level. We need to steer clear of anything like that.”
“Are you listening to them, Scorio?” snapped Naomi, leaping to the top of the mound and turning to glare at him. “There are real limits to what even an insane Cinder can do.”
Scorio scrabbled up next to her. “Got it. Don’t try any Imperator tricks.”
Naomi’s scowl deepened and she leaped down to the far side, landing in her Nightmare Lady form. The shift was so smooth, so fast, that it was little more than a blur.
“Damn,” said Leonis, drawing back as he saw her for the first time.
The Nightmare Lady’s tail rose as if it had scented prey and oriented on Leonis. “Problem?” she asked.
“No problem,” he said, raising both hands. “You just look… intimidating.”
“Fantastic,” said Lianshi decisively, sliding down the slope’s far side into the next hall. “Absolutely amazing. I love it.”
“You… do?”
Scorio had never seen the Nightmare Lady so flummoxed.
“Yes,” said Lianshi, taking her in. “You look lethal and strong and just… I don’t know. Everything I want to be one day.”
“Oh.” Her tail drooped and then rose again. “Well, that just means you’re weird.”
“Come on,” said Scorio, running past them both. “We’re almost at the Aureate Hall.”
Just then the entire building shook. Curtains of dust sifted down from the cracked ceiling, and a moment later they heard a sliding, shuddering roar as some part of the Academy gave way.
“Watch us die under a cave-in while everyone else fights,” said Leonis, hurrying to catch up with Scorio. “How ignominious.”
“We’re not dead yet.” Scorio put on speed, and a moment later they burst into the grand Hall. Weak light filtered in from the cracks above to illuminate the white trees, almost insufficient to navigate with his natural eyes.
Scorio took the lead, but had only taken a few steps when a chunk of the vaulted ceiling above burst inward as something came flying through. A woman in white slammed into the base of the trees’ stone planter with sufficient force to embed herself in the rock, which shattered in an explosion of carved stone and dry earth, causing a cloud to rise about her.
Lianshi grabbed hold of Scorio’s arm tightly as the others staggered to a halt beside him.
Nova, the White Queen, lay half-buried in a crater of her own making. Blood ran shockingly red from her nostrils and her limbs were askew, bent at impossible angles. Her white hair was plastered across her alabaster visage with dust and sweat, but she was clearly alive, her eyelids flickering as she visibly mustered the strength to start prying herself free.
Scorio was about to dash forward to help her when a second shape descended through the same hole in the ceiling.
Imogen, her gaze focused on the White Queen, darkness trailing her down like a living shroud.
Chapter 40
“We need to run!” hissed Naomi, but Scorio could only stare, transfixed, as the Imperator descended through the dusty air, completely unharmed despite all the attacks she’d suffered. Her gaze was pensive, he thought, perhaps touched with melancholy as she studied Nova, her manner unhurried.
The White Queen gritted her teeth, and in her hand a white scepter blazed into existence, refulgent and momentarily as searing to gaze upon as the sun-wire at Amber. Then it solidified into an ivory wand as long as Scorio’s forearm, intricately carved and terminating in a swirl of carved strands that looked like a vortex caught in stone.
The scepter pulsed and the White Queen’s limbs straightened, her body lifted from the mangled hole into which it had crashed, and she, too, rose to float in the air before Imogen. The dust and sweat disappeared from her face, and her hair flowed freely once more, cleansed and untangled.
“I’m impressed,” said Imogen, her tone casual. “I didn’t think a mere Charnel Duke could survive one of my shadow blasts.”
Nova inclined her head regally. “I’m honored to have surprised you. And would willingly take another if it meant we could continue our conversation.”
Imogen lowered her chin, and her dark hair weaving about her face as if she were underwater. Scorio sensed the power concentrating within her as if she were stealing the very air from the room; his chest tightened, and every instinct urged him to run.
But he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the two women, one dark, the other light, both belonging to a realm of power he couldn’t even comprehend.
“You’re not worth the effort,” said Imogen, tone growing curt. “None of you are. Your understanding is too limited, your intelligence circumscribed by your lack of experience. You have taken up too much of my time already. Goodbye.”
Nova spun her scepter before her, fingers dexterous and sure, and a sphere of white pearlescent light appeared about her hovering figure. “Why don’t we wait a little while longer?” she said, “I’m sure someone will arrive soon who is worth your time indeed.”
Imogen’s smile was pitying. “A lovely shroud. But I, too, possess a Ferula. Let us see how your shroud fares when Mordecholio presses it.”
And Imogen extended her hand into which a black counterpart to the White Queen’s scepter appeared. This one gleamed as if freshly dipped in oil, was more staff than wand, and its end was a ragged profusion of shards and twisted metal, as if something had been torn away from its tip.
Scorio stared, eyes wide. Even Naomi had gone silent, but when he saw the White Queen’s expression grow slack with dismay, he realized he had to do something. Had to distract Imogen somehow—
The Aureate Hall’s wall exploded inward as a massive brute came charging through, swinging fists the size of barrels as he crashed into Imogen. In the sudden haze of dust and flying rock, Scorio saw Grunsch, grown to the height of some twenty feet, his tattooed form so massively muscled as to appear deformed.