Reaching out to her lunch tray, she took up the Sublime Purification pill, as large as the tip of her thumb and gleaming like polished jade. She’d won it after an improbable victory in the initial round of the tournament. An incredible treasure, but one she’d immediately set aside for Scorio.
So that he’d be able to catch up when he finally returned.
Was it a futile resolution? She studied the pill. Where was he?
Dead, a cold voice whispered from the depths of her soul. He’s three weeks beyond the Final Door. How do you think he’s doing?
Her chest tightened, and what little hunger still gnawed at her disappeared.
There had to be a way to help him.
She just couldn’t think of one.
Eat the pill, Lianshi, that same voice whispered. Stop being a child.
Blinking rapidly, she picked up another journal, a newer iteration, and turned the pages till she came to another of the mysterious torn-out sections. The next page was written in her looping, elegant hand:
Now I understand. Always I break this same oath: to put down in clear language everything pertaining to the First Trial, what I saw, how I passed it, and what it did to me. What mockery, to repeat the same mistake, over and over, and then be forced to correct it once I gain more understanding. Dear future self: do not be irate. And spare yourself this chagrin. Don’t make the same oath to finally break the cycle and write down the truth. I swear to you—and this is the only oath you and I inevitably keep—you’ll break it.
Like I just did.
Those pages are cinders now in my hearth. A cold wind blows through LastRock, and I can hear the howls of the Termin Beauties, which chill me more than the gale. How I loathe this place, with its hollowed-out granite hallways, its echoing stark beauty, and inhuman scale. It’s all too easy to remember the Academy on nights like these, my two fitful, glorious, painful years treading its halls, and the youthful vows I made and have failed to keep.
I wonder where Juniper is. What I’d say to her if I could see her now. Would she talk to me? Forgive me? Would I accept that forgiveness if freely offered?
Or would she seek her revenge and draw my blood?
Old thoughts. Old memories. Old wounds.
Lianshi sighed and closed the journal. She’d need a lifetime to read them all, and a room filled with scholars to correlate and make sense of every allusion, every reference, every name and location.
But one thing had become painfully evident: the hell outside Bastion was endlessly vast and varied. At times that prospect delighted her, awoke an itch to get out there and explore. At others, like now, she felt defeated, wearied by the prospect of revisiting locales that she had seen countless times before in previous lives.
She opened her journal to the last page.
The assault on Aegik tomorrow is doomed. I know this in my soul. Were I braver, I would abandon my friends, but alas, loyalty has always been a unique flaw of mine. No matter. It has been a joy discovering the hells with them. Brave Previc, delightful Mewui, and the ever enigmatic and brooding Rombelier. I pray that we reincarnate together again, dear friends! For one truth has become self-evident: all the wonders of hell are as nothing if you don’t have boon companions with which to enjoy them. Farewell, dear journal. I’m sending you back to Bastion by eel-sprite. Next I write in you, I’ll be a nauseatingly naive and eager Char once more.
~ Pyre Lord Lianshi, Thirdday of Eighth Month, 699 AE
Lianshi stared down at the faded ink, heart thudding, and for reasons she couldn’t explain to herself, her eyes prickled with tears and a terrible, lurching emotion arose within her chest. How to balance wonder with futility? How to check the cynicism that leached off these pages so that they didn’t sour her nascent joy?
She read again that salient line: All the wonders of hell are as nothing if you don’t have boon companions with which to enjoy them.
Her heart quavered, and she closed the book with a snap. The golden lanterns overhead flickered, indicating the end of the lunch hour.
Time to get back to class.
She rose, stashed the dozen journals into her pack, and took up the Sublime Purification pill once more. Held it up to the light so that it glimmered with fey power, and then dropped it into her side pouch.
She’d save it for Scorio.
A bubbling sense of relief arose within her, and with a smile that felt fatuous but which she couldn’t deny, she strode away from the studying nook with its rose window and perfect lighting, to rush to Mana Manipulation.
She’d see him again.
She just knew it.
Chapter 16
“Temper your expectations,” said Naomi, sitting cross-legged on the floor of Scorio’s chamber.
It was the following night cycle. She’d left him the moment the chalk’s barriers had fallen, promising to return, but clearly needing to collect herself before imparting any wisdom.
So he’d spent the remaining day pacing, collecting gruel, alternating between bouts of exhilaration and fear that she’d break her promise and murder him.
Second Rust had faded into Second Clay, and as the sun-wire had dulled to a burnished wire that did nothing to illuminate the city and sheets of spiraling rain had fallen across the ruins, Scorio had settled down to wait, staring out of the sole large window in his room over the ruins and the fiery glow that emanated from their depths here and there.
To sit and wait, willing the Nightmare Lady to return, or Naomi, as she’d reluctantly introduced herself before quitting his trapped corridor. Seeking through sheer determination to overwhelm any reservations she might harbor and compel her to appear.
When finally she appeared in his window, having scaled the massive blocks of stone that formed a natural staircase from the street below, she was still in her human form, a dark silhouette against the night’s velvety darkness.
And seeing her there, almost shockingly short after her gaunt monstrous form, her wet, dark hair framing her pale face, Scorio felt a sweet thrill of affirmation. She was going to uphold her end of the bargain.
“Given that I fully expected to die just this morning, I’d say they’re pretty damn tempered,” said Scorio, forcing himself to not smile.
Naomi frowned, her expression somewhere north of sullen anger and west of petulant resentment, then sighed and gathered her thick hair in both hands, twisting it into a wet rope and thrusting it back over a shoulder.
“I know very little.” Her tone was creeping toward defensive. “I’m not some illustrious trainer from the Academy, with a wealth of elixirs and pills and treasures at my disposal. I can reveal the basics as I understand them, and then you’re on your own.”
“Which will be infinitely more than I know now,” said Scorio, rubbing his palms on his knees, moving to sit cross-legged before her.
“The path you want to walk is a brutal one,” she said, glaring at him. “You’re asking for a lifetime of pain and frustration, with no guarantees that you’ll make it far.”
“Sure,” said Scorio, tone easy, accepting. “That much has been made abundantly clear to me. But I’m ready to work. To learn.”
She frowned as if disappointed that he’d not immediately given up, then sighed. “Fine. A deal is a deal. You can see your Heart?”
Scorio narrowed his eyes as he stared into the middle distance and summoned the glittering hunk of black stone.
“Yes. It’s about the size of my fist and hangs in darkness. It’s made of a black stone, maybe obsidian?”
“That’s right. Can you sense the mana in the air?”
“The mana.” He ran his tongue over his dry bottom lip. “You mean the black clouds?”