Discovered numerous vents that allowed him access to the underworld, but which he shunned for fear of never returning.
Twice he returned to Bastion proper, as he’d come to think of the civilized two-thirds of the city, and hunted for food, not daring to enter in conversation with anyone or even to beg. Instead, he watched, he waited, and when the lines were shortest stepped in to wait and fill one of his large buckets with dark, chunky green gruel that was dispensed by large, ponderous fountains that spewed the thick liquid into a huge basin from which countless people drew sustenance. The lines were continuous and at all hours, such that the basin never filled more than an inch at its base.
After that, it was easy to fashion a cowl from a stolen sheet hung out to dry, and enter in line, head bowed, a stolen bucket in hand. Nobody questioned him, though he caught more than one curious glance sent his way.
The water fountains were similarly busy, and after finishing his gruel, he’d swing by them to wash the remains of his meal down his gullet before heading back into the ruins by means of a tortuously circuitous route, buckets of water and gruel sloshing by his side, pausing frequently to hide and watch to see if he was followed.
He wasn’t.
And at night, lying in his dark room on his stolen sheet, he would hold up one of the blue vials and allow its light to play softly over the walls. For its siren call to tug at his soul, begging him to pop the cork, to inhale its pelagic substance, to risk it all out of desperation and wild hope.
He’d reason—what if this was exactly what he needed to progress? What if he was wasting his time laboring with his dead Heart, when the means to ignition lay at hand? He’d hold the vial, his thumb pressed to the stopper, poised to flick it open, and stare down at its swirling beauty for ages, frowning, arguing with himself, going back and forth, until at last caution won out and he’d put it back.
There was always tomorrow. Always another day in which he could open the vial if he made no progress. But if he did so now? He might lose its potency forever.
Fifteen days. He’d dedicate himself to his barren Heart for fifteen days, and if by then he’d achieved nothing, he’d open the vial.
The days came and went. He became familiar with his little neck of the ruins. The strange court filled with toppled statues, their cracked bodies and stylized faces strangely haunting. The hall whose ceiling still bore traces of a startlingly vivid fresco, one which depicted heroes in battle against a huge, squid-like monster descending from the skies, its form wreathed in black clouds, lightning bolts flying from its eye, easily the size of a city. Narrow streets choked with huge mussels, their shells shiny and tightly shut, but which opened in concert at random times to extend wavering feelers into the air. A small chamber in a random home in which a wooden cradle had survived the years, the wood sere and pale. He’d considered breaking it up for kindling, but some vague sense of pity stayed his hand.
And every day he wrestled with his impatience, his ambition, his need to ignite his Heart, and his constant failure to do so.
Until one night, as he lay in his room, a vial of swirling blue in hand, he had a visitor.
The sun-wire had darkened the equivalent of two cycles ago. The ruins outside were silent. The sun-wire never truly darkened, but instead reduced its glow to a smoky-red refulgence that did little to hold back the night other than faintly illumine outlines and cast the faintest of blood-hued light across the world.
Silence, darkness but for his vial, and a bank of frustration from another day without noticeable progress. Solitude, perfect and still.
And then somebody was there.
The awareness prickled at the edge of his senses, a vague intuition that caused him to glance aside without turning his head, and there crouched in the window was a dark shadow.
Fear slid into his chest like a clear, razor-sharp blade, and he jerked up, almost dropping the precious vial to the stone floor, hand snatching up his chalk as he stared, wide-eyed, at the figure who stepped slowly down into his room.
A woman, possibly. A massive, skeletal tail floated about her, looking to be made of ebon vertebrae, its tip ending in a foot-long triangular blade. She was tall but stood hunched over, as if ready to leap. In the darkness, it was hard to make out what was wrong with her head, but it appeared elongated, perhaps horned, her eyes burning with a noxious, inner green light. Her legs were reverse jointed like those of a wolf, and black hair hung in long, greasy locks about her hidden visage.
His breath locked up in his chest; he couldn’t move, couldn’t scrawl a line of chalk in the stone before him.
He could only watch as she twitched her head to one side and then the other, like a bird examining its prey, and approached slowly, her movements dream-like, her tail gently probing at the air as if knitting an invisible skein.
“Who are you?” Her voice was shockingly normal; that of a young woman, harsh perhaps from disuse, accusing and stern. “What are you doing here?”
Scorio blinked, some of his sense returning. “Scorio. I… I’m not doing anything. Just hiding. What… who are you?”
Her head ticked over, her burning green eyes never looking away. “That vial. Give it to me.”
Scorio closed his fist about the blue light. “It’s mine.”
“Give it to me and I won’t cut you to bloody ribbons.”
Scorio reached back without looking away from the… thing… and took up the velvet satchel. Sliding the vial home, he looped the satchel closed, then placed it inside his robe. He drew forth the chalk and bridge as he removed his hand, and held them at the ready.
“It’s mine,” he said again. “I won’t let you have it.”
“Are they worth dying for?” And with this she took a sudden step forward, causing him to jerk back, chalk held at the ready. “It’s of no use to you. Give it to me. Live.”
He licked his dry lips. Her voice. That of a sullen young woman. It was so at odds with her horrific appearance.
“Who are you?” he asked, playing for time.
“That’s none of your business,” she snapped, temper flaring. “I’ve been merciful thus far. Asked nicely. But try me and I’ll just take what I want.”
“And I already told you,” said Scorio softly, climbing up into a crouch. “I’m not giving it away.”
Her eyes narrowed, the twin green flames turning into slits, the huge tail growing more agitated. “Fool.”
And she leaped at him.
Scorio had been desperately envisioning his Igneous Heart, and now reached for the turgid black smoke, but there was none in the air; it was as if he’d been activating the bridge and steel rod all day and used it all up.
Still, there was barely enough to catch up, a wisp of darkness, and this he hurled into the bridge even as he aimed it up and at her.
He didn’t need the bridge to last six seconds. Just one would suffice.
It burst outward toward the leaping fiend, swelling to its full size in a second.
Yet somehow the creature pulled herself up onto the ceiling, evading the bridge’s destructive expansion, her talons sinking into the stone, burning green eyes opened wide.
“How did you do that?”
Scorio drew forth the iron rod. Began to retreat to the opposite door. “Just a trick I know.”
Again her head canted to one side, the movement almost mechanical. “I don’t sense any power in you. Yet… are you a Char?”
He paused, steel rod raised in the air, ready to activate it and run, though that would mean abandoning both it and the bridge. “What if I am?”
She shoved off the ceiling at an oblique angle and leaped to the far wall. Scorio turned with her, trying to keep up, but she shoved off that with impossible speed to blur in behind him, the huge tail wrapping around to place its bladed tip at his stomach, pricking the skin.
He couldn’t see her, but felt her breath on his ear as she leaned in close. “Answer the question before I decide I’m not really all that curious.”