He hobbled across half the room to loom over her. “I won’t let people discard me like trash. I won’t let them decide my worth. I won’t watch as they do it to others, or pull them into these rotten systems while they don’t know any better. I’ll fight!” And blinded by his fury, he hammered the base of his fist into the wall.
Pain lanced up his forearm, sprang bright across his wrist. Grimacing, he shoved his hand into his armpit.
“Maybe it’s pointless. Maybe you’re right, and we’ll get nowhere. But if I had thought that from the beginning, I’d already be dead. Instead, I’m here. With you. On the verge of igniting my Heart, which I’d thought impossible until just a few days ago. So yes. I’m going to keep trying to pull off the impossible until it kills me. Because there’s no saying how far it’ll get me, and I plan to use the entirety of my pathetic life trying to find out.”
Naomi’s eyes were wide, her face pale.
With a curse, Scorio turned and limped over to the window and gazed out over the jumbled ruins. For a spell, they remained thus, in silence, until at last Scorio sighed and lowered his head.
“You agreed to train me for a week. Just do that much. But do it right. Maybe you think you don’t know anything, but you’re a walking encyclopedia compared to me. Teach me everything you know, and when the week’s up I’ll get out of your face, and you need never see me again. Fair?”
“Fair,” she said, voice quiet.
“Thank you.” Exhaustion rose to grip him like a great claw, making his knees feel weak and his head ponderously heavy. His forearms throbbed, his knuckles were raw, and he wanted nothing more than to lie down and let oblivion steal away his mind.
But he couldn’t rest. Instead, he hiked himself up to sit on the windowsill.
“You said that Bastion is mostly Coal, with pockets of Copper and Iron mana. But those blue vials are better stuff.”
Naomi looked to have coiled in on herself, knees pressed to her chest, arms wrapped around her shins. “Sapphire. Very rare.”
“So there’s better mana out there?” He waved his arm vaguely toward the north. “Out in hell?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Coal is the default in Bastion, and Copper the standard in the Rascor Plains. The closer you get to The Pit, the richer the mana.”
“Then let’s get out of Bastion. Let’s catch a ride to some place with the best mana, and train there.”
Her smile was little more than a bitter quirk of her lips. “Would that it were so easy. If it were, don’t you think the Academy would be located as deep into hell as the Houses could place it?”
“Then?”
“There’s a thing called the Curse. You don’t feel it here in Bastion, but the closer to the Pit you get, the stronger it is. If you as a Char went out into the Plains, you’d get a taste of it. Mild impairment of your thinking abilities, your reasoning. A sense of euphoria. That’s what all the regular folk in Bastion have to deal with when they work in the plains. Why there are so many accidents over time. But the farther you go, the worse it gets. Beyond the plains, you’d start having delayed responses to the world, make calculation errors, become fixated on random ideas, become overconfident, perhaps start laughing uncontrollably. If you kept pushing through, you’d develop hallucinations, mental confusion, and eventually fall unconscious and die.”
Scorio blinked. “Damn.”
“Yeah,” said Naomi softly. “It’s why only the greatest of the Great Souls can even attempt to reach the Pit. As an Emberling, I’ve more resistance, but I’d not get far past the Rascor Plains before I started feeling it, too.”
“So then we get out on the plains. Are there pockets out there of Iron and better?”
“Sure. You can even find areas of Bronze mana out there.” Some of the fire seemed to have gone out of her, her voice becoming flat. “But they draw all kinds of danger to them. Danger we’d be hard-pressed to avoid for any length of time.”
Scorio frowned, determined to find an answer. “Then we settle for Copper, for Iron, even. It’s better than working with Coal in these ruins.”
“It’s possible,” she allowed. “We’d have to fake papers to allow us to exit Bastion, and then find a way to both survive on the plains and evade notice from the House overseers.”
“Great. Then that’s a plan we can work on.”
Her gaze sharpened. “But you should ignite your Heart first. You should be a Cinder at the least, or the Curse will slowly but surely addle your mind.”
“You said I’d ignite a weak Heart if I did it here.”
“And you would. But better a weak Heart than a scrambled brain.”
“I don’t know about that.” He drummed his heels on the wall. “But since you’re no longer trying to get me to quit, what’s your honest assessment of my being able to ignite a decent Heart out here?”
“It’s… good.” She rested her chin on her knees. “You’ve got a ridiculous amount of unspecified ambition. You managed to figure out how to work Coal by yourself to the point of activating treasures. Plus you’re an obvious talent; you made Blood Baron in a previous life, which shows you have the capacity for greatness. I’d wager your Heart is naturally deep and no doubt very reactive. With some honest work and training, you could probably ignite within a month or two.”
“All right. A month or two. That’s a doable time frame. And once I make Cinder, what happens?”
“You gain low-level immunity to the Curse for one. The ability to see in the dark—”
“Wait, what? You can see in the dark?”
Her bitter smile crept back across her face. “How do you think I tracked you so easily?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Darkvision was part of it. But most importantly, you begin the path toward your first trial, after which you’ll develop your first power.”
“Tell me more about that. What does it take to make Emberling? What’s this first trial?”
She raised both palms to forestall him. “No. You need to focus on the basics. The worst thing you can do is start thinking about future steps, and allow that to muddle your training. Trust me on that.”
“Fine. But say I ignite my Heart and become a Cinder. Would you be willing to escape Bastion with me, to find a way to train with better mana out on the Rascor Plains?”
Her expression became inscrutable. The silence drew out, and he was about to ask again when she finally answered. “You don’t know me.”
Scorio paused. “What? You’ve told me all I need to know. We should work together on this. We should—”
“You don’t know me,” she cut in, voice sharp, “and I don’t know you. I only stopped wanting to actively kill you yesterday.”
“See? Huge improvement.”
“You—you know nothing about the world. Your ignorance is terrifying. You don’t even know what you’re asking!”
She’d sat up, her face going pale, then mottled with emotion.
Scorio spoke slowly. “I do know what I’m asking. I’m asking that we start something here. A beginning. And see where it goes.”
Naomi gaped at him, then practically snarled. “Don’t toy with me.”
“I’m not. Damn, Naomi. All I’m asking is that you consider it. If by the end of this week you want me gone, I’ll go. Remember? So what do you say? Will you at least think it over?”
The silence stretched out between them, and then she looked away. “Maybe.”
“Maybe. All right.” He grinned. “I can work with that.”
To which she laughed. “You are one of the most obnoxiously confident men I’ve ever met.”
He grinned. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You do that.” Naomi stood. “Good. But first, get some sleep. Looking at you in this condition is starting to make me feel guilty, and I don’t like that feeling.”