But he wouldn’t just sit here moping. The first order of business was to explore this cavern and see if there were any exits.
Reaching out with his hand, he pressed his fingertips to the door and began walking to the left, brushing the wall as he went. His steps were slow, hesitant. The ground was rough, with natural dips and the occasional chunk of rock waiting to catch his boots. More than once, he tripped and crashed down to his knees. The wall itself undulated as it went, bowing in then falling away, but slowly it curved around.
He forced himself to breathe quietly. To listen. But all was silent.
The wall suddenly disappeared. He froze, groped around, found a corner, paused again. A tunnel? And if it was? Should he follow it, or keep going around the cavern?
He’d follow it. Keep taking every left he came upon.
Heartened by his own plan, he set off down the tunnel, which proved narrow enough that he could reach out with his other arm and touch the far wall. It meandered, turning back and forth so that he soon lost all sense of direction. The air tasted stale. The walls began to close in, and before long he was insinuating himself ever deeper into a crack, turning sideways, the rocky walls rubbing against his chest and back.
Another dozen paces and he stopped. There was still a way forward, but he’d have to really wedge himself in there to keep going. And if he got stuck?
Heart hammering, he considered.
No. He’d see if there were any other options before forcing his way farther. The thought of getting trapped, held tight in a claustrophobic and absolutely dark space, was too grim to imagine.
Back he went, hand on the other wall now, only to find another tunnel splitting off from the first. He went down it, jaw set, staring balefully out at nothing.
The act of walking soon became monotonous—the turns of the tunnel, the occasional opening.
His mind began to wander, to consider everything he could remember. He played the events in the Gauntlet over in his mind. Asha’s death. The nature of each chamber. Lianshi’s wry smile. Awakening in the basilica. The chancellor’s words. The information he’d imparted.
Scorio stopped, still lost in complete darkness. Was there anything he’d learned that he could use now? An Igneous Heart. The chancellor had to have been referring to the block of black stone he’d sensed before. He’d spoken about lighting it, and upon doing so discovering his powers.
Scorio sat down, brow gelid with sweat, back to the rough stone wall, and closed his eyes. He inhaled deeply, then slowly released his breath. Igneous Heart. His Igneous Heart. All right. Time to try and set it on fire.
But his focus kept slipping away. Whatever the chancellor had done to him seemed to have banished that floating chunk of black rock. All Scorio could feel now was a dull, throbbing ache within his soul.
Had the bastard consumed his Heart?
Scorio dismissed the thought before the anger and fear could consume him.
If he was so dangerous, why hadn’t they just killed him? Why give him the chance to wander around down here?
Was there some kind of monster in here that they fed with Red Listers to? Or were they too high and mighty to deign to kill him themselves?
Scorio frowned and tried to focus again. The Igneous Heart. He tried to visualize it. To picture it hanging within his chest, dark and gleaming, vitreous and sharp-edged.
Almost… he felt it just outside his reach, but each time he thought he was getting close, it slipped away, and the pain in his core would redouble, till he was left bent over and wheezing, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose and soaking into his robes.
Eventually, he sighed in disgust and climbed to his feet.
Which way had he been going? For a second, he hesitated, then clamped down on his fear. That way.
On he walked. Tunnels dead-ended, others grew too narrow, a few plunged too precipitously into the ground for him to follow without falling. Occasional cracks opened treacherously underfoot, so that he nearly plunged into them before catching himself, and he soon adopted a gliding step to avoid further perils.
How long had been down here? An hour? Three? His throat was growing dry. The air was damp, which meant there should be some water around here somewhere, but everything he touched was gritty and slick. No puddles underfoot.
Nothing but the need to go on.
One by one every tunnel ended in some fashion or another until at last, he emerged into what he thought might be a cavern but which a few cautious steps revealed to be a wider tunnel. He kicked some manner of light branch that rolled away from him, and thoughts of creating a torch danced in his mind. He dropped to his knees and groped around till his hand closed over it.
Not a branch. Too smooth, with a slight curvature to its length, porous, and ending in a strangely knobby protrusion.
Bone, he realized, and dropped it quickly, skittering back to the wall.
Made sense. Made sense that he’d come across the corpses of other Red Listers down here. It was called the Final Door for a reason, right? They wouldn’t call it that if everyone escaped.
To be expected, really. Nothing to get excited about.
Scorio didn’t know for how long he sat there, fighting to control his emotions, but eventually, he stood, breath shaky, and resumed walking the perimeter. The tunnel grew broader, or so he thought from the subtle echoes, and then opened up into a large cavern or the like.
Scorio stopped. He could hear a distant, thready sound. The wind? It was constant, a susurrus that seemed more echo than anything else.
An underground river?
Moving quickly now, he continued along the wall and passed a tunnel mouth in order to keep moving in the sound’s direction. He accidentally kicked his way through another mass of bones but pressed on, determined.
The ground began to slope down, and the wall grew ever damper. Was that a light ahead? No, his eyes were playing tricks on him. On he walked, struggling to maintain his caution, then decided that there was a light ahead, a vague, bluish glow that looked like a cloud.
He moved faster, striding now, breathing powerfully, until at last the wall ended and he stood upon the rounded stone banks of a stream, rushing past under the soft, cerulean glow of moss that grew across the ceiling.
Scorio wanted to rush forward, drop to his knees on the wet stone bank, and drink deep of that rushing water, but forced himself to hang back. That Gauntlet had taught him that much. So he waited, listened, and to looked around.
The river was less than a yard wide and ran along a channel it had carved into the pale rock. It looked to have been larger once, for it had carved a broad tunnel that intersected with Scorio’s—or perhaps it was prone to flooding. There was a high ledge on the far side, with what looked like a trail leading up from the far bank along the steep wall to it, though perhaps that was fanciful thinking on his side.
No movement. The light from the moss was constant and soft, a gentle, candlelight glow that caused the wet rock to glimmer with star-like flecks. For how long would the moss glow if he harvested some?
Then he saw that someone had obviously thought along the same lines, for the moss along the upper end of the river was scraped down to the rock, revealing flaking dirt and ashen strands of roots.
Other people, perhaps? Or the grazing of some chthonic beast?
Scorio licked his dry lips. Edged forward, moving carefully on the slick rock. The ground sloped down treacherously, and soon he was forced to sit and slide forward, bracing himself on the occasional bulge of stone.
Again he paused and scrutinized the shadows. No movement. Nothing from the shadowed region above the ledge. Looking up and down the narrow river, he saw that it curved out of sight in both directions after only a dozen or so yards, the blue moss continuing to grow in a thick canopy above it.