If having a burning Heart was required, then Scorio was out of luck. But he was a Great Soul, with the potential to grow in power and access… what exactly? He’d been told so little before being cast into the dark.
Closing his eyes, he forced himself to breathe slowly and think. The hanging chunk of obsidian within his breast was his Igneous Heart. There was a way to light it, but he’d yet to figure out how, and none of the other Red Listers in the warren had managed to do so even after years of imprisonment. Nothing obvious, then.
What else was there?
For a long time he simply sat, gently frowning as he searched his memories, and then, as if whispered to him from the memories of another life, Lianshi’s words returned to him: “A current of air passing around us.”
What had Asha called it? An invisible breeze. And said that it had been connected to the Heart, somehow.
Scorio raised his hand, eyes still closed, and strained to feel it once more. First, he concentrated on his palm, his skin, seeking to actually feel something, a physical sense of air. Nothing came. Then he sought to relax, to open his mind, to attempt to sense the breeze by not focusing on it directly.
He didn’t know for how long he sat there. The act caused his heart, or his spiritual core, his very sense of self, to ache painfully. Whatever Praximar had done to him, it had wounded him deeply in ways he couldn’t yet understand.
But Scorio had felt that invisible breeze once before, so he knew it could be done.
Resolute, he sat and focused, but it took eternities for his mind to quiet and lose that sense of urgency. Memories flickered against the inside of his eyelids, images of the recent past, but he let them go, tried not to engage them, to examine them closely.
He tried to sink deeper into his state of relaxation, hand still held before him, opening himself to the world, to the potential of what might be flowing around him even now.
Deeper he sank into his trance, his mind drifting, his back slowly bending, head lowering. Fatigue crept over him, and he entered a liminal state, half-awake, drifting toward an uncomfortable sleep. The pains that plagued his body grew numb and distant, and he thought he might lie back, just rest on the damp, gritty floor, to try again in a little while…
A prickle played across his palm and his eyelids fluttered. He fought back the surge of excitement and tried to focus on that sensation. A prickle? Not quite. More like a rough cloth being rubbed against his skin.
Gone now.
Taking a deep breath, he settled again.
Clutching at straws, he lowered his hand and instead focused inward. Sought to concentrate on his chest, on the darkness within it. Breathed slowly, in and out, trying to lower his awareness to that void, that great hollow within him which Praximar had so callously raided.
Slowly, painfully, it revealed itself, a dark mass, razor-edged, faceted, and gleaming in some subtle light.
Scorio fought to keep his mind still. To not force the moment. To drift, like a feather borne by idle currents, his focus coming closer, the image becoming clearer. Time had ceased to have meaning. The Igneous Heart hung before him, inert and cold.
How did one set stone on fire?
Thoughts began to crowd in, conjectures, and the heart faded from view, till he was left sitting alone once more.
Grimacing, he sat up straight, took a deep breath, held it, then slowly released. Sank back down into that void, seeking out the Heart, seeking to sink into his sense of self.
There. Gradually it appeared once more, and this time he thought it required a little less effort. He held it in his mind’s eye, and with it present, sought once more to sense that invisible breeze.
And this time, hovering in that dark space, he felt it quite easily. Like a cloud, amorphous, all around him, hovering in the air, ambient. But responsive, as well; his focus seemed to stir it to life, as if by concentrating he became some manner of vortex.
Scorio focused on the Igneous Heart, as if it were a handhold on a cliff face, and then, with part of his mind latched onto it, reached out to this ambient cloud, and sought to stir it.
It felt like clutching at fog. It was there now, a constant presence, but illusory, impossible to actually grasp. Instead, it twisted about him, evading capture, passing through him and around him, thick and heavy and cloying.
Scorio let out a gasp and opened his eyes. The pile of lantern-moss was growing a little dimmer. How long did he have before he was plunged into absolute darkness? Bottling up that fear, he stared down at the three treasures in his lap once more. Progress. He’d been able to envision the Heart and then sense the wind, both of which he’d been unable to do before.
Not that it had gotten him anywhere, but it was a beginning.
With a groan, he rose to his feet, and clutching the chalk in one hand and a fistful of moss in the other, he returned to Radert’s corpse to search it more carefully. He walked all the way around it, and this time he espied an old metal canteen affixed to the man’s belt. He untied it and gave it a shake; water sloshed within.
Fingers trembling, he unscrewed the cap and took a sip. The urge to gulp was overwhelming. The water tasted cool and fresh. He allowed himself three swallows before screwing the cap back on.
Until he found another source of water, he’d have to make this last.
Scorio returned to the treasures and sat once more. There had to be something he could do with his Heart and this wind. Something that would give him an edge in the darkness.
Closing his eyes, he sank deep into that trance-like state. He took his time, not rushing, allowing the gravitational pull of his dark core to gently pull him down. The Igneous Heart materialized before him, and once again he became aware of the ambient fog that filled the cavern.
Grasping at it had availed him nothing. There wasn’t anything to grasp with, anyways: his sense of reaching with an invisible hand was a heuristic tool that hurt him as much as helped.
It’s connected to my Heart. Somehow, I have to use that to draw it in.
The fog was all around him, but did not penetrate the inner sanctum in which the Heart hung. To affect his Heart he’d have to draw it in. He’d felt it pass through him back in the Gauntlet—perhaps he could do so purposefully, this time?
Again he focused on the Heart, and on that sensation of being a vortex. A void into which he’d draw the world.
The thick, cloying fog began to slowly whirl, its motion sluggish, resistant. Not knowing quite what he was doing, he focused on drawing it in, using the Igneous Heart as an anchor point, and stirred the fog with his mind, with his very being.
Around and around it went, drawing ever closer, pressing against him, and then, as if overcoming the slightest of resistances, it oozed into his interior space and continued to circle there, around his Heart.
And he could see it. Dimly, as if through smoked glass, but he could make out a black, choking cloud fitfully oozing around and around, like a miniature cyclone in slow motion.
Fierce excitement gripped him—was he on the verge of lighting his Heart? Unsure as to what else to do, he kept trying to draw the fog into this inner sanctum, seeking to pull ever more into that constricted space.
The fog grew ever so slightly more condensed, its movement more sluggish as it became thicker—but nothing else happened.
The Heart glittered with perilous beauty, inert and cold and still.
Scorio fought not to feel frustrated or impatient, but the extended bout of concentration was taking a toll on him. He gripped the steel rod in his lap tightly in one hand, the bridge in the other, and as he did so, he sensed them in a way that went beyond the physical.
They were—what, exactly? Funnels? Receptacles? In his mind’s eye, everything was choked with the thick, black fog, but the treasures exerted their own magnetic pull on him.
Scorio kept swirling the fog within his sanctum, not knowing what else to do, but felt his strength, his resilience growing weak. Unsure, growing desperate, he tried to move the pull of his vortex from the Igneous Heart to the steel bar in his lap.