“Can we trust him?” whispered Naomi as they followed.
“We’re about to find out,” said Scorio.
They made their way back to the square, and then to the collapsed burrow with its entrance to the underworld. Nox led the way, and one by one they dropped in after him, down into the darkness. Scorio sharpened his darkvision and warily followed the toad through the passages into his burrow, unchanged since their last visit.
“Imperial gel ready,” said Nox, moving to stand on the pit’s far side.
Scorio stepped up to the pool of white gel. It reminded him now of the Alben Worm’s blood, an association that caused his gorge to momentarily rise, but he forced it down and wiped his hands on his thighs. “So I just enter?”
The others clustered around them, gazing down into the small pool as well.
“Enter imperial gel. Acclimatize. Extrude mana, then draw mana back in, but cause it to miss. Begin cycle of falling mana.”
Scorio had debated the toad’s opaque instructions at length with his friends, and ultimately decided that his best bet was to improvise when he was inside. Further research into the Imperial Ghost Toads revealed their gels to be mildly psychotropic and of great value in the production of certain pills and elixirs; it was Scorio’s hope that it was the missing element in the vague equation Nox had tried to spell out.
He turned to Naomi. “Got the vials?”
She reached into a small pack she wore over the small of her back and pulled out the two. Their sapphire glow filled the burrow with a rippling, cool light.
Nox opened his mouth and licked his lips, again reminding Scorio of the Alben Worm, but made no further comment.
“Stay focused,” said Lianshi, her tone growing tense. “Remember you can climb out at any point. If you feel it going wrong, just get out.”
“See you soon,” said Leonis.
“I can’t believe I’m helping you do this,” muttered Naomi, taking the large jar of condensed Coal mana from Scorio as he pulled it out of his pack and unwrapped it. “Asinine. If you die—”
Scorio raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
She scowled. “I’ll kill you in your next life.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Then with quick, efficient movements, he undid his belt, dropped his pants, peeled off his socks, and moved to the edge of the pool.
Studied its pearlescent surface. Over a yard in diameter, it looked alien and uninviting. A deep breath. The moment had finally come. Everything had led to this. His last, desperate gamble.
Carefully he sat at the pool’s edge and slid his legs into the gel. It felt cool, oily, but not unpleasant. He pushed off the edge and sank in to his chest, arms raised reflexively, feet finding purchase on the slick stone floor below.
“Better than our pool back home?” asked Leonis, crouching with a grin.
“I’d not go that far,” said Scorio, and purposefully lowered his arms. The gel was causing his skin to tingle, again not an unpleasant sensation. He swirled his arms from side to side; the substance was thick and resistant, like jellied fruit jam. Experimentally he lifted his legs off the ground and found that he could hang suspended in the center of the gel.
“All right. Here I go.” He looked from one face to the next. “You guys are the best. See you soon.”
And before they could utter awkward goodbyes, he took a deep breath and ducked his head under the gel’s surface.
Eyes tightly closed, he felt the cool, creamy substance cover his face, sink into his hair. He pulled his knees up to his chest and allowed himself to simply float, held gently but firmly in place, arms coming in to wrap loosely around his knees.
Scorio summoned his Heart. There it was, pitted and fractured, the dark planes of its obsidian surface grown as familiar as the palm of his hand. With his senses opening, he reached out, but there was no mana around him. The gel acted as a buffer of sorts—he couldn’t even feel the mana that permeated the air of the burrow above. Just a cool void, yet somehow structured, orderly, as if the void were composed of a million tiny cells or hexagons, all perfectly and tightly fitted together, holding him in place and waiting, waiting, for something to happen.
Time seemed to slow. Or perhaps Naomi was just taking forever to pour the mana into the pool, but Scorio’s need to breathe lessened by the moment, and he felt the difference between himself and the gel begin to fade, as if his skin were being permeated, the gel bonding with his spirit. It was supremely relaxing and soothing, like a moist towel being placed on a fevered brow; his Heart felt nurtured, buoyed up, its dusty, cracked marrow eased by the gel’s support. Scorio’s sense of his body grew dimmer by the moment; his sense of self became focused on his Heart, which grew, the details magnified, the fractures all the more distressing for being made so plainly evident.
Was this imperial gel better than their pool back home? Oh yes. Scorio felt a fluttering wave of amusement and appreciation pass through him; it felt like being physically forced into a state of meditation, the gel gently enervating, soothing, and elevating his mind all at once. If there was mana here to focus on, to meditate on, he’d no doubt excel at working on his Heart, on applying all of Instructor Hera’s lessons—
And then the sky opened and poured itself into his void. Blue fire sluiced down into his consciousness, radiant and uplifting, so pure it made his teeth ache, so potent that his very being, his spirit, recoiled as if he were staring too blatantly at the sun-wire in Amber.
The Sapphire mana flooded the gel, and quickly saturated it; the concentration became evenly distributed, and then redoubled as more was poured in, the second vial, the density, the potency ratcheting up.
It was mesmerizing, surreal, beautiful—this was no ambient cloud, no sooty darkness of Coal, no quicksilver of copper, no obdurate defiance of Iron. This was artificial, a perfect blue canvas in every dimension, the Sapphire mana caught and held by the gel’s matrix, perfectly molding itself to his body, quiescent and still.
Rapt with wonder, Scorio went to exert his will upon it when even more mana entered his void; this, however, was crude oil, black and viscous, spoiling the peerless blue like mud splattered across a silk robe. The Coal mana, potent and toxic, oozed into the gel, an endless torrent as Naomi emptied the jar.
The black didn’t mix with the Sapphire; instead, it sank to the bottom of the pool to form a deep, impenetrable layer, distinct from the vivid cerulean blue. Yet the darkness called to Scorio in a way that the Sapphire did not. He knew that toxic, gritty black power. He knew that thick and turgid might. Felt an affinity to its impenetrable depths that he didn’t for the regal blue. Wanted to call to it, to summon it first and foremost to his Heart—and then realized that he could.
“Reach equilibrium,” he heard Nox say in his memory. So, carefully, he manifested his will, shaping it like his paddle, and dipped it down into the layer of blackness to swirl some up and around and into his waiting Heart.
A tendril floated around and around and then insinuated itself into his Heart. But the process felt entirely different; the imperial gel slowed and regulated the entry, removed much of the strain from the endeavor. Once the Coal began to enter his Heart, the gel seemed to ensure that it continued, acting as a perfect conduit for the mana to stream in.
Scorio ignited, and the flames that burst forth were less a conflagration and more of a controlled burn; the gel even regulated the wildness of the fire.
For a while, Scorio focused on finding that equilibrium, admitting just enough mana to keep the flames burning. The gel seemed to limit the amount of mana he vented through the fractures as well, like gauze bound over wounds. Controlling his elation with savage focus, he turned his thoughts to the next step: to cause the mana to grow, to fall around his Heart, and in doing so pull more after it.