The hangman had stepped back, had his hand on the trapdoor lever. Sir Kuragin had turned to stare at Eberro. The crowd was poised, as if on a peak, ready for anything.
And in that hush, that momentary respite, Scorio heard himself roar, “People of Spurn Harbor, we save our own!”
And he ran forward, cresting through the crowd, shoving his way, but resistance was melting even as he met it. The crowd bellowed with one voice, a massive howl of fury that perfectly captured his own, and like a levee bursting, they pushed forward as one into the line of soldiers.
Sir Kuragin didn’t shout, but instead raised his ax up and behind his head then let loose a cry of delight and leaped off the platform to fall, ax descending, into where the crowd was thickest.
Scorio was a conduit, power and dread flowed through him like a flash flood, a rushing roar that drowned out the crowd, the screams of the dying, the shouts of defiance. Pushing forward, swimming through the press of bodies, he saw the hangman yank on the handle.
The trapdoor fell away, and Eberro dropped.
Scorio was screaming, reaching, but he wasn’t close enough.
His brother hung there, legs kicking, face growing purple.
Pain and madness, horror and denial. The rushing roar grew louder, grew overwhelming, and Scorio felt his heritage, his power, his birthright, erupt within him.
His right arm, flung forth to reach for his brother, changed. Black scales burst from his skin, swept around his forearm, and burnished his hands as his fingertips turned into wicked claws, easily six inches long. His whole body was changing, compacting, layering with denser muscle, thick, heavy scales covering his shoulders, sweeping up his shins, to send huge, horned spikes out from his knees, out of his elbows.
And the power. It was delirium-inducing. The bonds of the earth seemed to lessen, paling before his might, and with a roar that shook the air, he leaped. Exploded up and forward, bounding through the air as if hurled from a trebuchet, up and over the crowd toward the gallows. Sailed through the air, and as he flew, his claws glowed with heat, their bases cherry red, their tips pure white.
He swiped his hand across the thick rope and split it. His brother dropped to the ground below where he lay choking and grabbing at the noose.
Scorio slammed into the gallows itself, caused the vertical construction to rock, and gripped at it, latching on with his huge claws, which immediately began to blacken the wood and set it afire.
Kuragin, massive, untouchable within his armor, looked up from the bloody swathe that surrounded him to stare at Scorio.
And pointed his monstrous ax at him in a challenge.
One that Scorio was all too glad to meet.
The huge knight crouched and then leaped, somehow bursting into the sky despite the hundreds of pounds of metal that weighed him down.
Scorio roared again, the sound reverberating in the air, the sound bestial, frightful, impossibly loud, and he leaped, leaving the gallows to hurl himself at Kuragin, his claws swinging at the armored man even as Kuragin’s body began to change, even as he swung his ax to meet him mid-air.
High above the crowd, they met, the force titanic, and Scorio had the briefest glimpse of the knight’s ax skittering off his scaled left arm even as his right buried itself into the huge breastplate, which parted like butter before the white-hot claws.
And then it was gone, all gone, and he was back in the imperial gel, thrashing and lashing out at a knight that wasn’t there.
Scorio stilled, hung suspended, his Heart raging, the mana reserves almost entirely depleted, but the Delightful Secret Marinating technique was still in effect, and huge gouts of Coal mana were pouring down from the air above.
Enough.
Scorio lurched toward the pool’s edge, grabbed hold of the rim, and hauled himself out. Emerged in a great upheaval of gel, to turn and sit, legs still sunken into the pool, his shoulders heaving as he gasped and set to sucking in air.
People were around him. Crouched by his side, hands on his slick shoulders, asking him questions, telling each other off.
Scorio stared at nothing. In his mind’s eye, he saw Eberro falling to the ground, kicking, alive.
Was that what had happened in his past? What had happened next? How had he gone from that plain Scorio to Scorio the Scourer, Lord of Nagaran, Master of the Black Tower, The Bringer of Ash and Darkness, the Shadow of Spurn Harbor, the Abhorred, Quencher of Hope, and Unmaker of Joy?
What had happened next? Had he fought Kuragin? Had he saved his brother in truth? Had he raised banners against this king?
Heart pounding, he fought to emerge from that dream-like reality. His past. A past now almost a thousand years gone. Everyone he’d seen would be dead now, more than dead, dust blow away in the wind or absorbed by the worms into the soil.
Except for Kuragin.
The realization hit him like a fist to the chest. He’d find that bastard and see what he’d learned during his own Emberling challenge.
“Scorio?”
He blinked, raised his head, focused on Lianshi who crouched before him. She was wiping slime from his cheek with her thumb, her eyes wide and brimming with terrible compassion.
“Whatever you saw,” she whispered, “I grieve for you. I grieve for that old pain. I’m so sorry.”
“You had to make your own choice,” he said, voice a rough croak. “In your own trial.”
She nodded, pain glimmering in her eyes.
“And Leonis.” Scorio looked up, saw his friend’s grim visage. “You, too.”
“Yes,” said Leonis.
“Naomi?”
“This is my first life,” she said, and Scorio saw that she’d retreated to the side of the chamber, where she crouched in the deepest dark. “I had no trial.”
He didn’t understand but could only nod.
“Take your time,” said Lianshi softly. “There’s no rush.”
“How can you tell?” asked Scorio. “That I passed my trial?”
Leonis’s smile was tired. “You disappeared, friend. For ten minutes you were gone, and we but gathered around an empty pool.”
Scorio nodded then turned and gazed down at his hands. So common, so human, familiar, and tanned from the light of the sun-wire.
So unlike the world in which he’d stood, where a single disc of blazing gold hung in the blue sky and the breeze had smelled of salt. A world that had felt so right, so natural, so familiar, that he’d not even noticed the differences from Bastion while he’d been there.
“Friend Scorio well?” Nox shifted his weight.
“Well enough,” said Scorio. It was painful, wresting his mind, his consciousness, his focus, back to this strange cylindrical world. To put the past behind him, to forget the burning cause, his brother’s near martyrdom, the howl of the crowd, the sense of an entire countryside about to erupt into flames.
To return to Bastion, to the imminent Gauntlet run.
To Jova Spike and the truth she knew about him.
Jova Spike. Against whom he’d soon compete with his new powers.
And so thinking, he summoned his Heart. It appeared smoothly in his mind’s eye, still fractured and pitted. Into it, he swept the vestiges of mana that yet hung in the air and sought to ignite its form.
But he couldn’t. More mana was needed. His will, however, felt stronger, more refined. He gathered great sweeps of dark power about him and funneled it into his Heart, more and more till he felt as if he’d drawn in an ocean of ebon might. Only when he thought he was filled to bursting, much of it leaking from the cracks, did he seek to ignite once more.
And almost couldn’t. With a frown, he bent his will to the act, and finally, just as he was about to desist, his Heart lit up with black fire.
And with it an awareness of his new technique. Which required but the desire to awaken, much as one needed to but think of opening one’s eyes for it to be so. Scorio willed his power into existence, and his fingertips changed, distended, and became claws.