Movement, a black, segmented snake shot past his shoulder to bury its triangular head deep in the lower half of the other man’s face, punching through teeth and the back of his throat to burst out in a welter of gore and slam into the central column.
Both men went down, one with a scream, the second a gurgle, then Scorio collapsed against the wall, turning so that he’d not hit it with his arms, and slid to the ground.
“You all right?” asked the Nightmare Lady, her tail chopping at the fallen men again and again as she crouched before him, her focus total, her tail seemingly animated by a malevolent will of its own.
“Fine,” he said. “Though that may be…” He paused, blinked. Tried again. “May be aspirational thinking.”
“Your arms,” hissed the Nightmare Lady, taking him by the wrists and turning them about, so that the backs of his hands touched, and he could see the outside of his forearms. The black scales were melted, reduced to gray slag here and there, exposing burned flesh in ragged spots.
Scorio stared at the damage numbly. The pain was huge but somehow removed, as if it existed in another dimension, was locked behind a door deep within his soul. “Not good.”
“Not good,” agreed the Nightmare Lady, then set his arms down to press her taloned fingers gently against his side where a deep gash had slid past his guard. “This is deep but not fatal. We’ll bind you up.”
“The other two?”
“Fine,” rumbled Leonis, stepping out of the tunnel, Nezzar propped on his shoulder, immaculate of whatever gore may have stained it a second ago. “But you’re looking in rough shape, my friend.”
“Might skip my dancing lessons tonight,” Scorio said and forced a grin. “I’m fine, otherwise.”
“Ouch,” winced Lianshi, crouching beside him and reaching out hesitantly with her fingertips to his arms. “Can you work your hands?”
“Not this one,” he said, gesturing at his bad hand, its swollen wrist, the sausage-like fingers. “But this one? Let’s see.” And he raised his formerly good arm and worked the fingers slowly. “There. Good as new.”
The Nightmare Lady’s green eyes narrowed. “You’ll be playing it safe from now on.”
“Agreed,” said Lianshi. She’d not taken more than a scratch to the cheek, and though she appeared nervous she was thus far performing the best of them all. “We’ll take point from now on.”
“We’re only on the—what—eighth room?” Scorio wanted to spit. “I can’t already be out of the game.”
“You’re not,” said the Nightmare Lady, and with a wince, she rose and stretched her taloned hand out to him. Her robe bandage, he saw, had fallen away, and her wound was ragged and wide. How was she ignoring that pain? “Come on, before we all fall apart.”
He took her hand, stood, and then hissed at the stabbing pain in his side. Inhaled deeply, straightened his back, and did his best to put his wounds out of his mind. “The door?”
“In the column,” said Lianshi, stepping past him to where a black portal had appeared in the iron curvature. “Everyone ready?”
“A moment,” said Scorio, letting his scaled form drop away and focusing his mind on gathering mana once more. For a spell they stood thus in silence, everyone gathering their strength, and then he nodded to her. “Ready.”
“That was more than a Cinder challenge,” muttered Leonis as he rolled his head about his neck, causing it to crack several times.
“No,” said Naomi, who’d eschewed her Nightmare Lady form for a moment. “Think about it. None of us died. But that would have crushed a group of Cinders. We’re still on track.”
“Fine. Then I for one am growing less enthused about entering the Emberling rooms,” said Leonis.
“Me too,” said Lianshi, then took a deep breath. “Here I go!”
And she stepped through the archway, into the darkness beyond.
Chapter 74
The room beyond was large, square, pitch dark, but otherwise empty. Standing close to the entry wall, Scorio scoured the confines for signs of danger. The floor was made of large, neatly joined flagstones, which also lined the lower half of the walls. The upper half of the walls and ceiling were featureless. The far wall seemed a good distance away, perhaps… fifty yards? Maybe more?
“No obvious danger,” said Lianshi, voice quiet in the grim hush of the dark room. “Now that I hate.”
They stood in silence, scrutinizing the space, till Leonis let out a grunt. “The far wall,” he said. “Look. Four niches.”
Leaning forward, narrowing his eyes as he focused his darkvision, Scorio saw that his friend was right. Four small alcoves were carved out of the wall, equally spaced, at head height. No taller than a foot, they looked somehow both innocuous and ominous at the same time.
“Great. Completely enigmatic and obviously very dangerous.” Leonis rubbed at his jaw. “Thoughts, anyone?”
“The size of the room makes me want to run across it,” said Lianshi cautiously. “At least, I can’t imagine crossing it slowly.”
“Lianshi, you should go first,” said the Nightmare Lady. “Whatever happens, you can resist it at least once.”
“True. Argh. At this rate, if I ever earn a title like the White Queen or The Woe, it’ll be The Test Subject.”
She rubbed her hands together, crouched, then ran forward, out into the broad, featureless room.
Scorio watched, intent, and saw a dark shape flitter forth from one of the alcoves. “Watch out!”
Lianshi’s body immediately took on its translucent sheen, but she was able to duck the projectile, some sort of rapidly revolving shape that blurred just past her head. She ran on, glancing behind her, her invincibility lasting a few seconds longer.
But the blurred shape didn’t hit the wall. It instead slowed, came to a stop a few yards shy of it, curved around, then whipped back toward her in a tight, perfect parabola.
“Behind you!” bellowed Leonis just as her iridescence winked out.
Lianshi threw herself into a forward dive just as a second shape flew forth. The first buzzed right through where she’d been a moment ago.
“We have to go!” cried Scorio, realizing that soon she’d be facing four of those attacks alone. He ran out, going wide, aware that the second blurring shape was stopping, dipping low, picking up speed as it skimmed along the ground back to where Lianshi crouched on all fours. “Up, Lianshi, it’s coming!”
But the first was wheeling back around even as a third shape flew forth. This one thrummed through the air right at Leonis.
Even with his broadened Emberling darkvision, it was nearly impossible to keep all the attacks in sight; Scorio ran but kept glancing around, trying to keep track of the three flying shapes, expecting a fourth at any second. It was like swinging a bull’s-eye lantern from side to side, its illumination partial, incredibly helpful, but also making the darkness around its light even more terrifying in comparison.
Leonis summoned Nezzar and swung it two-handed from his shoulder, the huge club connecting with the blurring shape just before it hit him. There was a burst of light and the shape detonated into fragments.
“Scorio!”
He couldn’t tell who’d screamed his name—Lianshi? But he dove as she’d done, down and into a forward roll, and something whirred over his head. He came up sprinting even as he nearly blacked out from the pain in his arms, and raced drunkenly toward the room’s far side, glancing back over his shoulder to see the fourth shape pause at the rear wall and come back for him.
The first two were bedeviling Lianshi and the Nightmare Lady, who destroyed one of them with a whipcrack of her tail.
On he ran, the shape coming in low, and with a wild cry, he leaped up at the last moment, felt the shape brush against his calf as it passed, splitting skin and muscle, and then it was gone.