The toad ceased its backpedaling, its chest heaving, the ropey muscles along its large limbs straining. Oriented its blind face toward him and Scorio felt the cone of its attention fall upon him like a mantle.
“Release my friend,” said Scorio deliberately, climbing up to his knees and then standing. “I’m going to count to three—”
“Can’t,” said the toad awkwardly around its outstretched tongue. Its voice was gravelly and low, just shy of a croak.
Scorio froze. “So you can speak.”
Coal mana was slowly trickling into the air as it regenerated, and Scorio felt a blaze of pressure from Lianshi. She must have ignited her Heart. With a cry that was half-panic, half-outrage, she tore Leonis off the tongue, long strands of gluey ooze stretching in thick ropes from him to the great blob at the end of the tongue as it dropped to the ground.
Thinking quickly, Scorio swept more Coal mana about his Heart, but instead of igniting he restored the quickly expended amount within the rod, renewing its duration.
“Make leal,” croaked the toad, edging closer to remove some of the strain.
“Leal?” Scorio hesitated, knife still pressed firmly to the tongue.
“Wileathe tongue and I go,” it responded, taking another few steps closer.
Scorio glanced at Lianshi, but she had Leonis propped up on her lap, his expression still dazed, eyes staring unblinkingly at nothing.
“How can I trust you?” It felt like a stupid question to ask, but nothing else came to mind.
“Thwear it,” croaked the toad, tone growing increasingly distressed. “Thwear on heartthtone.”
Again Scorio swept Coal into the rod. He rippled his fingers on the handle of the blade. If the creature was lying to him, it’d attack the moment he withdrew the rod. But with Leonis down and it able to drain the air of mana, how much of a fight could they put up against it anyway?
And something about its tone. The anxious way it was waddling forward, hesitant, half-panicked.
“Fine,” said Scorio, taking hold of the rod. “I’ll hold you to your oath.” And when the rod’s mana burned away, he pulled it up and back.
The toad’s tongue shot back into its maw, its lips sealed tightly, and its soft throat worked several times as if it were swallowing or working its tongue about.
Breathing heavily, Scorio watched it, chalk held at the ready.
But then the huge toad turned slowly, tensed, and leaped away, its leap carrying it completely over the tumbled house of fallen blocks, to fall out of sight on the far side.
“Leonis?” asked Scorio, hurrying to where Lianshi was pouring water over the large man’s face.
“Why’s it always got to be me that falls first?” murmured Leonis, blinking his eyes in a daze.
“He’s fine,” said Lianshi. “Let’s get him up and out of the open.”
“Agreed,” said Scorio, and together they led him, stumbling and dragging his feet, into the closest building.
Again Lianshi poured some water over Leonis’s face, and he reached up with clumsy hands to wipe it away.
“I’m all right,” he said, voice still thick. “Feeling’s coming back quick.”
“Talk about quick,” said Lianshi, “that was some good thinking out there with your steel rod.”
“Thanks,” said Scorio, still feeling jumpy and on edge. He moved to the doorway and peered out over the street. “No sign of the toad. You think it’ll honor its oath?”
Lianshi shrugged one shoulder. “We should move before we’re forced to find out.”
“I’m ready,” said Leonis, struggling to his feet. “Aurgh. That was disgusting.” He studied his slime-saturated robes and grimaced. “What a tragedy. Let’s go.”
They emerged cautiously from the building and examined the immediate environs. There was no sign of the toad. After careful scrutiny, Scorio led the way, moving at a lope along the catastrophized street till it gave way to another gulf, upon which they scrambled up onto a rough rubble-strewn field of a rooftop. He darted from boulder to eroded spire, up onto ledges and along the facades of gutted towers, till at last, they dropped back down before the Academy itself.
It loomed above them, dour and forbidding, its massive domes cracked and pitted with holes. The walls rose thick and mighty, pierced by windows whose depths defied the light of First Bronze. Here and there a buttress had collapsed, or an entire hall folded in upon itself, but it had survived the ravages of time with grim dignity.
Scorio drew a deep breath. “You ready? Naomi told me not to expect much within. That it would have been picked clean centuries ago.”
Leonis punched one hand into his other palm. “I’ve already received my day’s work-out from the toad. Everything after this is gravy.”
“And you never know,” whispered Lianshi, clearly awed by the grandeur of the soaring edifice. “Perhaps everyone’s been telling themselves the same things for centuries.”
“One way to find out,” said Scorio. “Here, Lianshi, hold onto the steel bar. You’ve got the bridge, Leonis?”
The large man nodded, patting his robe where the bridge no doubt safely lay.
“Then let’s see what we can find inside,” said Scorio, moving forward. “Let’s see what treasures may have been forgotten and await us within.”
Chapter 31
They entered through a rent in the wall, a tear that had spilled blocks of stone larger than wheelbarrows across the hallway within. The air was still, as if the ancient Academy were holding its breath, and great shafts of First Bronze light sluiced in through cracks high above, illuminating the buckled flagstones and the huge columns that stood like adumbrated giants within the gloom.
“Feels different,” whispered Leonis, turning in a circle as he went, gazing about with avid interest.
“Shocking observation,” said Lianshi from behind Scorio.
“No—I mean, the whole place, the atmosphere. The Academy proper feels alive, but this… this place feels drained. A husk. You feel it?”
And Scorio did. The ubiquitous gray of the ruins was present, of course, the walls cracked, the floor covered in detritus and large flakes of stone—but there was a sense of it being a cadaver, of walking through the bones of a giant long dead.
“Do you think the new Academy has the same floorplan as this old one?” asked Scorio as they drifted across the hall, careful not to dislodge any rocks or make noise.
“If so,” whispered Leonis, “then we’d be in the northern part. The domes at least looked the same, if larger.”
“Do we have a goal?” asked Lianshi, glancing into the rooms and narrowing her eyes over and over again. Belatedly, Scorio realized that she was summoning her darkvision as she peered into the gloomier corners.
“Let’s go to the lockers,” said Scorio. “Maybe there’s something left in our old ones worth revisiting.”
“Good idea,” said Leonis. “The main basilica would be directly ahead, if so. Follow me.”
The air was rich with Coal mana, but it was unsettled, swirling as if in a draft through the great rooms, the broad hallways, and up from the half-collapsed basements. Several times they were forced to turn back when either the flooring became too precarious, or they entered an area that was completely caved in.
They weren’t alone; crab-like creatures the size of Scorio’s fist scuttled away, hiding quickly whenever they entered sunlit rooms; great ferns grew from the naked rock, their delicate fronds waving gently back and forth as they drank of the mana streams. They backed out carefully of one chamber in whose depth a great, hissing serpent coiled, and Scorio never quite shook the feeling that they were being followed.
But by dint of sheer determination, they made their way deeper into the complex, igniting their Hearts when they had to leap over broader cervices or deploying the bridge when they came across completely sunken rooms. The interior of the old Academy didn’t map perfectly to the new one, but near enough that Leonis and Lianshi were able to guide Scorio ever onward, commenting quietly to each other how eerily similar certain segments were, pondering what new rooms could have been, arguing quietly about the value in trying to visit the vaults and off-limit areas that aroused their curiosity so back home.