Scorio beat his wings and hurled himself like a spear at the fiend, which now scuttled higher, raining a shower of rocks upon him. Its tail came swinging around, remarkably fast, but Scorio was wise to the move. At the last minute, he summoned his Shroud and blocked its attack completely, flying up and past its lethal end to come in close and slash at its length.
The fiend’s shriek was pitched so high that Scorio barely heard it. It flung itself away from him after the first blow, leaping a dozen yards higher into the ever-narrower crack, and Scorio gave chase, throwing his Shroud in the tail’s way each time it swept at him.
His mana was running low, but he’d had enough. His Heart, obscenely perfected as it was, would ensure that much.
Again Scorio slashed at the huge tail, cutting through chitin, then again, and six yards worth of it fell free in a gout of black ink.
The fiend shrieked once more and dropped upon him, its dozen blade-legs working into a flickering, furious frenzy.
There was no way to evade it.
Scorio screamed, dismissed his wings so that they’d not be shredded, and set to slashing right back.
Legs shattered around him, joints bursting, but just as many hit home. His scales deflected the worst of the blows, but pain lanced through him again and again and again. They fell together, Scorio’s world a storm of slashing edges and heaving segments above him, only for the fiend to suddenly arrest its fall as it wedged itself in the crack once more.
Scorio summoned his Shroud directly beneath him, landed upon its curved surface, and sprang straight up, ignoring the pain, the fear, the panic.
There was only rage.
He slammed through the fence of broken legs and punched a fistful of burning talons into the fiend’s chest. It shrieked but misunderstood his intent; that first blow was just to find purchase, and as he closed his talons upon its shattered armor, he hauled himself up a final yard to rake his other hand across its face.
His white-hot talons cut through its head and the fiend died. Its whole body went slack, its grip on the walls went loose, and its huge body dropped.
Scorio fell with it, holding to its insectile body till they plunged into the World Worm’s tunnel, and only then did he kick away from the corpse and summon his wings anew.
It hurt to fly once more, but he paid the pain no mind. Instead, he set his focus on the ledge above, rose into the upper reaches of the chasm, and gasping for breath flew over the lip of the ledge and landed beside Naomi.
She lay where she’d fallen, tossed and tumbled, fetched up against the raw rock wall. He dropped to a crouch beside her, hesitated, then released his scaled form to slowly turn her over.
Please, please please please -
She was alive.
For a moment Scorio couldn’t breathe, was so suffocated with emotion that his eyes filled with tears and all he could do was gather her in his arms and hold her close, his face buried in her dusty hair.
She moaned, stirred, and he lowered her to study her face. Her eyes flickered behind her eyelids, but she didn’t awaken.
What had that tail attack done to her? Carefully, he reached out with his senses and studied her Heart.
These was nothing there. No sense of mana about her, no intimation that she was a Great Soul. Was her Heart gone? Could fiends do that? Steal a Heart altogether?
He turned and sat with his back to the wall, moving Naomi so that her head rested in his lap. He checked her limbs, ran his fingers down her legs, but nothing seemed broken - her Silver-tempered body had protected her from such simple injury.
But her Heart. Again and again he searched her spirit, sought some flicker of power.
Nothing.
He wanted to scream for Druanna, to immediately set out for help. But the Pyre Lady would be well on her way to Nightsong by now, and as desperate as he was Scorio didn’t think he could fly all the way back without collapsing.
Not with the wounds he’d barely healed from the razor wind, and now the deep cuts that lacerated his torso anew.
“Fuck,” he whispered, fighting a wave of nausea. He leaned down, cradling Naomi’s head, and squeezed his eyes shut before they could flood with tears. “Fuck!”
For a long while he remained thus, utterly still in the darkness, far underground and miles upon miles away from the closest friendly soul. He was hundreds of yards above the tunnel floor, hidden on a ledge only a few yards wide, and unable to help his friend.
All he could do was comb her hair back from her face with clumsy fingers.
“Wake up, Naomi.” It wasn’t so much a demand as a prayer. “Come back to me. Wake up. Be alright. Please. Be alright.”
Chapter 4
Time dwindled down to an eternal present. Scorio held Naomi close, alert for the slightest change.
The tunnel below remained silent. With his Heart burning so as to heal his wounds, he waited. Never had he felt so alone. Not even during his moments of greatest despair while interned in the Crucible. For now, the prospect of losing Naomi filled him with a terror of truly being alone in hell, devoid of all boon companions, and in the darkness his imagination painted an endless existence of solitude amongst crowds.
For ages he remained thus, and to pass the time he experimented with controlling his rate of mana burn. It was surprisingly difficult; he could recall doing so instinctively during combat, tapping his reservoir for extra power in moments of panic, or trying to reduce his burn as he was doing now so as to heal. But doing it on purpose?
He felt awkward and ham-fisted. He squeezed off the supply of Iron mana to his burning Heart to reduce it to a smolder, but his fine control was off. The flames would abruptly die away altogether only to come raging back as he overcompensated and opened the channels too wide.
Back and forth he went, always drawing on more Iron with the Delightful Secret Marinating technique so that he never ran out, back and forth like a drunken man trying to walk a fine line.
Finally he felt the faintest of stirring from the woman in his arms, and he jerked upright to study her anew.
“Naomi?”
She moaned softly, frowned, then pressed the base of her palm against her brow. “What… what happened?”
Tears burned in his eyes and he fought the urge to crush her to his chest. Instead, he inhaled raggedly and forced a smile. “You decided to make friends with the wrong fiend.”
“Fiend…” She struggled to sit upright and blinked blearily around herself. Raised her hands as if blind and groped at where he sat. “Scorio?”
“You can’t see?” Fear came rushing back. “Can you sense your Heart?”
“I can’t make myself see in the dark.” She frowned, closed her eyes, and then gave a sharp nod. “But I can sense my Heart. It’s… it’s not responding to me. I can sweep mana around it, but it’s like trying to pour water into a rock.”
“The fiend did something to you. It’s tail, when it hit you, you immediately reverted to your Naomi self.” Scorio forced his tone to remain calm. “Do you remember what that felt like?”
Again she pressed her hand to her temple. “It all happened so fast. I was falling? I cut myself free, and then there was this bright flash of light, as if I’d been struck by lightning, and then… nothing.”
Scorio waited, watching, till Naomi gave a sharp shake of her head and looked in his direction. It was eerie, how she stared just off to his left. So fundamentally wrong. “I can’t sense my Heart, but it’s still there.”
“Then perhaps it just needs time. What matters is that you’re alive. I’ll take care of you while we get out of here.”
He saw her reflexively go to rebut him, to announce her independence, then to his surprise she simply nodded.
“Come.” He rose smoothly to his feet. The Iron mana flowed cleanly up here in the cleft, and having sat with her with a burning Heart all this time had allowed him to heal. “I’ll fly us down, and then see how far I can go before I have to land. I want out of this tunnel as soon as possible.”