The faces of those marching were defiant, furious, alert. Instinct urged Scorio to leap back into the alley from which he’d just emerged, and then to hurry back down its length to circle around.
This was Ward 7, the neighbor to the Academy’s Ward 9. Scorio stood with his back to a wall, staring out at nothing, listening to the pounding drums. What was going on? Nobody in the Academy, not the instructors nor the servants nor the guests or administration had spoken about the escalation in the streets.
Eventually, he stepped away and found another route toward the ruins. Putting the sight from his mind, he plunged into the ruins once more, hewing to the safer routes, and finally reached the monolithic bridge without any misadventures.
Nox was awaiting him, perched high upon his favorite boulder, head cocked to one side as Scorio came close.
“Favorite friend Scorio.”
“Nox. I’ve got the seeds. You found a place to plant them?”
“I have.” The toad sounded impossibly pleased with himself. “Follow.”
Scorio had expected the toad to lead him back out into the wilds of the ruins, but instead, he scrambled into his burrow and down the tunnel. Nonplussed, Scorio followed after, and together they navigated down a ways, then along a broad seam in the rock that finally opened up into a broad cavern that was more a gash in the raw stone than anything else. Only some four feet high, it was as dark and hermetic a space as Scorio had ever seen, lost to the skies and buried some twenty yards beneath the ruins’ surface. Its sloping floor was covered in thick, wet dirt, from which sprouted what looked like a thousand mushrooms that glowed with soft lavender hues.
“Here?” asked Scorio, forced into a squat by the low ceiling.
“Is perfect. Taste mana.”
Scorio summoned his Heart, extended his senses to the ambient mana, and startled. The Coal here was so thick as to be an almost cloying blanket, turgid and heavy to the point of oppressiveness.
“Perfect,” breathed Scorio. “And you’ll defend this point?”
“One entrance.”
“Makes your job easier,” agreed Scorio, unshouldering his sack. “These mushrooms are in the way, though.”
“Tasty,” said Nox, and began to shuffle forward. Wherever he went, his tongue lolled out and swept up a mass of the mushrooms, his body crushing the rest down into the loam.
Scorio watched, shrugged, then got to work planting the quartered seeds in the toad’s wake. Time ceased to have meaning; he simply crawled after, dragging his sack behind him, poking holes into the dirt, and dropping each quarter in after. Back and forth they went, row upon row until at last, they’d planted every one.
“Well,” said Scorio, rising to sit on his heels. “It’ll take two weeks for the plants to grow. I’ll come back then to insert the reeds. A week after that we should have our first batch. You sure you can defend this place? That much physical mana will be a powerful draw.”
“No problem. Now, read Quantic treatise.”
Scorio chuckled. “Sure thing. Let’s head back up to the air, though. Darkvision isn’t the best for reading.”
1
Leonis made Emberling a little over two weeks later. Each Eighthday, they’d abscond and train in the old Gauntlet, and halfway through their second jaunt he disappeared after their customary fight with the stone statues, simply vanishing the moment he kicked in the axman’s knee and then pounded its head into fragments against the wall.
Gasping, rolling away from the archer he’d just finished wrestling into submission so Lianshi could stomp its face in, Scorio sat up and looked around the dark chamber.
“Leonis?”
He sharpened his darkvision, scoured the length of the hall, the corners of the room, probing the impenetrable darkness, but the large man was gone.
Lianshi stood, hands on her knees, and then grinned. “He must be in his trial.”
“Now?” Scorio wrapped his arms around his knees. “Halfway through the Gauntlet run?”
Lianshi straightened, swept her dark hair over an angular shoulder, and shrugged. “The trials don’t care. Plus Leonis said he was having trouble igniting, remember? That all this practice was making it nearly impossible to take in enough mana.”
“Sure,” said Scorio, wiping the sweat from his brow. “But…”
“But what?” The question was innocently asked, and then Lianshi understood. “Oh.”
“I’m not jealous.” Stiffly, Scorio rose to his feet. “Just… frustrated.”
“Of course.” Lianshi stepped in and gave him a tight hug, resting her chin on his shoulder. “It’s not fair.”
Scorio stood stiffly for a moment, then hugged her back. “Fair’s got nothing to do with it, though, does it?”
“No.” She stepped back, lips scrunched up into a sideways pout. “Doesn’t stop it from stinging though.”
“No,” sighed Scorio. “No, it doesn’t.”
“How is your, ah, project coming along?”
It was the first time Lianshi had brought up his Black Star plan. On Leonis’s advice, Scorio had avoided discussing it, and he and Lianshi had fallen into something akin to their old camaraderie, though the unspoken plan seemed to hang between them.
“It went well. Reeds are in. Three hundred and eighty-seven plants have grown. Nox is taking his part of the bargain seriously. I’ll collect the first batch next Seventhday.”
“You can’t keep skipping the tournaments,” said Lianshi. “Someone will notice, and you could get expelled.”
“I don’t want to use our Eighthday for farming, though.” Scorio rubbed at the back of his head and stared around the chamber. At all the silent statues, all of whom had killed him at one time or another. “Especially since, well. You know.”
“Since you thought I’d grow upset if you brought it up?” Lianshi sighed, blew a lock of hair out of her face, then shook her head slowly at him. “I am upset. But it’s not like I’d prefer you to be expelled. Let’s harvest the mana together next Eighthday. It’ll take much less time that way, and we can enter the Gauntlet right after.”
Scorio hesitated. “You sure?”
Lianshi smiled ruefully at him, and then socked him in the shoulder. “Yes. Of course. Might as well enjoy your company while you’re around.”
“Hey, I’m not going to—”
“Kidding!” Lianshi laughed, rocking away from him in amusement. “Honestly. I know you’re going to be fine, because if you’re not, I’ll kill you myself.”
“Now you’re just not making any sense.”
“Yeah, I know.” She leaned back against the wall and blew away the same lock of hair that had fallen before her face again. “It’s hard to be both funny and coherent when dealing with you and Leonis. A girl’s got to make sacrifices.”
“Speaking of which.” Scorio rose to his feet with a groan, his numerous bruises and contusions complaining as he did. “Shall we?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” she said, taking his hand and rising as well. “I’ve a new idea I want to try against that ogre. I’m getting sick and tired of his tearing my arms off.”
“Can’t wait to hear about it,” said Scorio, leading the way to the door. “But first, my favorite room.”
1
Leonis was strangely somber when they appeared atop their biers once more, sitting with his lips pursed and staring distractedly at his interlaced fingers. Scorio ignited his Heart to help dispel the pain of having his skull crushed by a flying block, and after a few moments sat up, eyes tearing up from the pain, to wince and glance at his friend.
“So?”
Leonis’s frown didn’t disappear. “Guess I’m an Emberling now.”