“There you all are,” said Naomi, looking worried and cross. “I was about to head out and scour the hallways for you.” Then she paused, peered closer to Scorio’s face, and frowned. “What happened? Scorio, your arm!”
He glanced down at it uneasily. His wrist and knuckles had begun to throb as if a large spike had been driven into his forearm, and he didn’t want to study how mangled his fingers looked.
“Scorio learned more of his past,” said Leonis heavily. “He paid a price, and it wasn’t to his liking.”
“No,” said Lianshi with fierce emphasis. “More like it lacks the context to make sense.”
Naomi leaned in. “He cornered Kuragin?”
“You could say that,” said Leonis.
Scorio walked past Naomi and down the stone path to the steaming azure pool. Climbing up the steps to the wooden platform, he slowly sank into a cross-legged sitting position to stare out over the waters.
He could hear his friends speaking in muted tones from the common room, but he tuned them out. He’d betrayed his brother? Who’d proven insufficiently… what? Zealous? Extreme? Brutal in their war against the king? Could he do such a thing? Kuragin confirmed that he’d previously rescued his brother from the first execution. Did that mean his emotions and beliefs from his own trial had been authentic, real to what had actually happened? It felt real.
Footsteps. He didn’t look around but could tell that it was Naomi approaching. She hesitated at the base of the steps, then climbed up and sat down beside him.
Scorio frowned, glanced down at his swelling wrist and disjointed fingers, then squinted back over the waters as if toward some distant horizon.
“Let me see your arm,” she said with quiet authority.
Wincing, he held it out to her, and she hissed at the sight of it. “You’ve broken your wrist, looks like. What did you do, punch a wall?”
“Something like that.”
“I’d wrap it and set it, but you’re going to have to spend as much time in your new form as you can to heal up. Even then, you’re going to be in bad shape for tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” Bitterness washed over Scorio, but he refused to complain.
“I spent a few years at the Academy before quitting it for the ruins,” she said. “You know this. And that I overheard and learned things during that time.”
He waited, silent.
“It was always a source of constant conversation, the trials, once people made Emberling and beyond. Were the memories real? How could they be if they were branching? Surely one set of choices were what had happened, and thus the rest had to be… lies? Fabrications? Alternate versions from alternate realities?”
Scorio looked sidelong at her, wary. “You’re saying that future trials build off the decision of the first?”
“Yes. If you make one decision to reach Emberling, your next trial will follow the consequences of that decision. But in some lives, Great Souls choose with their hearts, in others with their minds. And each choice causes cascading versions. There are a potential sixteen versions of your past life that you’ll relive by the time you make Dread Blaze.”
“So what are you saying?”
Naomi sighed and looked out over the pool as well. “The Academy official position is that you accept your current life’s version of your past as the one that is real for you now. It’s recommended that Cinders learn none of this, and some go so far as to recommend not even keeping journals about your trials, so as to not… cause conflict with your future selves.”
“So Lianshi? She might have records of her other choices in her journals?”
“I imagine so.” Naomi sighed. “But what use does it do her? The Lianshi of today chose what she chose because it felt right, and that makes it her current reality. Learning what her previous selves chose will only confuse or ruin her current choices.”
“But Kuragin’s trial touched on my own life. Doesn’t his experience confirm what I truly chose? Since he had his trial first?”
Naomi sighed. “It might. Or perhaps, in a previous life of his, one where you weren’t incarnated, his initial trial turned out differently, and it was you that was betrayed. Nobody can say with certainty.”
Scorio pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is giving me a headache.”
“Which is why we’re counseled to not take what we experience literally, though of course, that’s easier said than done.”
Scorio sighed and dropped his hand to his lap. “What about you? If you don’t mind my asking? Your trial can’t have referenced a first life.”
“No, it didn’t.” Naomi’s expression turned bleak as she looked away. “I… I didn’t have a trial. I didn’t go to the place with four doors. I simply manifested my power.”
“You what?” Scorio stared at her. “No trial? Does the Academy know?”
“I’m sure they do, though not from me. Way I figure it? I came into my power the old-fashioned way. The way you must have during your first life. The doors, the trials… they’re artificial. I think they were created here in hell, but I’ve no way of knowing. Perhaps to make sure you Great Souls always ascend, given your lack of memories.”
“That’s wild,” said Scorio softly. “Huh. I guess it makes sense. Then who made the doors?”
“Nobody knows. Just like no one knows who made the Archspire, or the biers, or the Gauntlet, or created the wards that guard certain areas or hide important books in the library. We just inherit them.”
Scorio blinked at her. “I thought… I mean, that can’t be right. Somebody has to have made them.”
“Someone did.” Naomi sighed and looked out over the pool. “But I’ve never heard of anybody today who can make magical items like that. Alchemists can make pills and elixirs, even regular folk can use mana traps to generate mana light, but that’s about the extent of it. Whoever made those wonders died and never came back.”
Scorio frowned and stared off into the middle distance, deep in thought. “Huh.”
Naomi sighed. “But anyways. Was it worth it, what you learned? Worth the ruined arm?”
“I don’t know.” Scorio stared at the swollen knuckles, the puffy wrist. “The answer wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but… I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.”
“I can’t pretend to empathize. My past is all clear to me, every aching moment. But I think I can understand. The need to…” She trailed off, seeking the right words. “To know who you were. Where you come from. But none of that is who you are. And the Scorio of today must enter the Gauntlet now with a broken arm. That was a high price for all of us.”
He had no words.
She placed a hand on his shoulder and levered herself up to standing. “You’d best ignite your Heart and assume your scaled form. Any healing you can muster will be to our advantage tomorrow.”
“Right,” he said softly.
Naomi slipped away, leaving him to his dark thoughts. Had he betrayed his brother? Even if he hadn’t, did he have the capacity for such an act? Scorio the Abhorred. Scorio the Quencher of Hope. What if he had earned those names fairly? What if, within him, were the seeds for eventual destruction and ruin?
He shuddered and forced the thoughts away. Summoned his Heart instead, and began the laborious process of sweeping Coal mana into its reservoir. Everything, every effort, every sacrifice, every risk, had been made for tomorrow’s run. And on the eve of his greatest trial, he’d imperiled his already minute chances out of a desperate desire to learn more about his past.
Bitterness, anger, and resolve curled within him. With bloody-minded determination, he packed his vast reservoir full, and then ignited his Heart. A moment later black scales emerged over his broken wrist, down the lengths of his arms, across his shoulders. His very body changed, growing taller, leaner at the waist, broader at the chest. Vitality coursed through him, and he felt that strength roil in his broken wrist as if personally affronted by the damage. The pain began to recede.