But all of that he’d experienced while running his perimeter route, staying roughly the same distance from the edge of the civilized city, and never straying more than a dozen blocks into the ruins proper.
This time he sighted upward, getting his bearings from the sun-wire and the fiery gaps that littered the ruins in the sky, and set off at an oblique angle, moving deeper into the ruins, his nerves growing ever tauter with each step.
It was a tricky line to walk; head too quickly into an obvious area of thick mana, and you risked running into a trap or patient predators; remain too circumspect, and you could spend all night running down barren streets, glimpsing nothing but the hollowed-out remains of old mana-mollusks.
So Scorio ran cautiously, and when he saw a street scalloped with dormant stone shells, he eased into it, slowing down and scanning the rooftops as he went.
Nothing moved.
On he ran, footsteps sounding painfully loud in his ears, chalk clasped lightly in his right hand.
The clams that cluttered the walls weren’t overly large or densely grown, so the Coal mana had to only wash through here sporadically. He followed the street down till it reached a chasm over which extended a brutal bridge like a toppled monolith.
A deep red glimmer illuminated chasm walls covered in serried ranks of large barnacles, over whose rough stone bodies milky-white spidercrabs the size of ponies picked their way, the edges of their armored bodies lit a soft pink by the chthonic glow.
He paused, considered. Summoned his Igneous Heart, and with it hovering before him in his mind’s eye, opened his attention to the sweeping clouds of rank mana.
The chasm below him was absolutely saturated with Coal.
Scorio studied the descent. The walls were architectural in nature, a series of ledges, balconies, rough walls, and protruding buttresses. It was an easy matter to drop to the first broad ledge, only five yards below, and from there he could drop to the second. It arced around a promontory, and then there were some four stories’ worth of dark windows, their pocked blackness against the gray stone making it seem like a hive of some sort, before another broad ledge showed the first of the barnacles.
Was it worth descending? Exploring? The climb back would be arduous but possible; the stone was so decayed and cracked that he’d not be at a loss for handholds.
Scorio glanced back down the street, over the bridge, then sighed in resignation and wished he still had his other treasures. He hopped off the street to the sunken curb, moved to the edge, grimaced, then turned over to lower himself down to his stomach and drop to the ledge below.
Carefully, slowly, he descended, always making sure he could see a way back up, and after ten harrowing minutes of climbing down past the hollow windows, he dropped the rest of the way to the final ledge and there peered over at the fiery depths below.
The Coal mana was as thick as tar here.
A river of fire was washing slowly past far below, great plumes unfurling as if in slow motion, a never-ending gout of virulent orange overlaid by a startling yellow. The very rock seemed to glow with heat, the gray gradating to a cherry red like a long bar of metal whose end had been placed in a fire.
No coming back from a drop into that.
In the center, however, rose an island of rock, a towering column whose top was some twenty feet out from him and some thirty below. A couple of Black Star flowers grew far out there, and Scorio crouched down, rubbing at his chin, as he pondered how he might reach it.
Wait—
There.
Scorio stared down at a protruding corner several yards below, nestled between the barnacles whose delicate fronds waved back and forth through the air. A slender flower grew amidst them, its petals a soft, velvety black, the heart a softly glowing blue.
No need to leap out to that isolated column. He’d happily settle for the one below him.
Sucking on his teeth, Scorio considered how he might reach it. He’d have to lower himself off the ledge, catch the toes of his sandals on the uppermost barnacle, then trust that it would hold his weight as he reached for a crack several feet above it.
And if it didn’t?
He’d drop some six yards to the next ledge.
Not letting himself consider the danger, fixating solely on the plant, he once more lowered himself to his belly, eased over, and felt with his toes till he found the rough ridges of the barnacle.
Put weight on it, then some more, then eased all the way off, hands holding tight to the edge, to reach down and shove his fingers into the crack, desperately taking hold.
The barnacle had retracted its frond and snapped up tight. Worse, the closest spidercrab had stilled, its eyestalks orienting on him.
“Hello,” murmured Scorio, forcing a cheery smile. “Just passing through. Don’t mind me.”
The spidercrab shuddered, then turned around completely to face him.
“Okay, got the message.” Scorio worked his way down the barnacles, moving carefully but still cutting his fingers on their razor-sharp edges, till he was able to put the ball of one foot down on the protruding corner.
The spidercrab began to pick its way toward him, each leg as long as he was, their tips looking more like weapons than anything else.
Scorio leaned down, pulled up the flower, and shoved it into his robe.
A dozen barnacles around him retracted their fronts with a snap, and two more spidercrabs froze and twisted around to stare at him.
There was no time to hesitate. Scorio leaped up, clasped the shell of the uppermost barnacle, and heaved himself aloft. Scrambled higher, reached his ledge, and hauled himself atop it.
The spidercrab had closed the distance with unnerving speed, its mouthparts vibrating, its eyes catching the red light from below. It darted toward him, forelegs raised like spears, and Scorio knew they’d come down with punishing force and speed once it was in reach.
Reaching down, he drew an inch-long line of chalk on the side of the ledge, then stashed it in his robe and leaped for the lowest window.
His whole body tensed in anticipation of a blow, a terrible strike that would pierce robes, skin, muscle, and bone, pinning him to the wall.
Instead, he heard a hissing, bubbling sound, then two cracks below him.
Scorio climbed, panic giving him renewed strength, hurling himself from windowsill to windowsill, ascending in moments what it had taken him ten minutes to climb down.
Only once he reached the ledge above did he glance below him to see three of the spidercrabs on the ledge he’d vacated, waving their forelegs about as if cheering him on, their attention focused on the invisible beam of the chalk wall, against which they clacked their legs as if trying to figure out what it was.
Gasping for breath, Scorio climbed higher, till at last, he stood at the foot of the bridge once more. He took out the Black Star plant and held it up to the sun-wire’s dead light, studying its bioluminescent core in the gloom and touching one of the thick, velvety petals.
It felt like soft mud and left a dusty residue on his skin.
“One down,” he said to himself and tucked it back into his robe. “Forty-nine more to go.”
Chapter 20
Neither Scorio nor Naomi mentioned the end of the stipulated week. At the end of the seventh day, she failed to show for their end of cycle conversation, and Scorio feared that their training had finished; but the next morning she was there to guide him through his meditation, her expression hard, her tone terse, giving him no time or room to comment on the continuation of their training.
So Scorio kept his mouth shut.
The first week became two, then three. Slowly Scorio noticed improvements in his abilities. His stamina rose quickly, fueled by long training bouts in the afternoon and even longer runs. His ability to guide the Coal clouds became ever more intuitive, and slowly his grasp of how to engage and pull them into his Heart grew smoother, more powerful, more instinctive.