Heedless of anything, needing simply to dispense his own power, Scorio flew past the crouching Charoth right at the giant fiend.
“No!” roared the Blood Baron, but it was too late.
A field of crimson sprang into existence just before Scorio could close, and he slammed into it at full tilt.
It was like flying straight into a cliff face.
Scorio tucked his head at the last second so that he hit the red light with his shoulder.
He bounced off, tangled in his own wings, and crashed to the floor.
Lay there, blinking, and focused just in time to see the crimson Nethercoil plunge a metallic fist the size of a cart at where he lay.
Only for a meteor of orange fur to slam into the arm, rending and biting, shredding the coils with such force that the arm swung wide and hit the ground beside Scorio, cratering the rocks.
The Nethercoil swung its limb, seeking to dislodge the tiger, but Charoth sprang free to punch through the crimson field and lodge himself in the fiend’s chest.
Dazed, feverish, Scorio sat up. He shook his head, trying to clear the ringing, but then saw a smaller Nethercoil come charging toward him, sinuous and fluid over the rocks, traversing the badlands without difficulty.
Scorio flipped up into a crouch, readied himself, then entered his flame form at the last moment.
The Nethercoil somehow darted aside so that Scorio missed, reversed direction, and came sprinting after him.
Scorio inhaled his flames but he’d misjudged his leap; trying to twist midair and aim at the fiend proved to be too much, for he hit a ridge of rock and flipped over to sprawl out onto the ground.
The Nethercoil appeared above him, fist drawn all the way back for a smash, and that’s when Scorio unleashed his fire.
Green-flickered flames roared up to engulf the fiend, which leaped away, half its body charred, and only then with that burst of power did Scorio feel the delirious power within his Heart begin to abate.
Rising to a crouch, he glanced around drunkenly, and saw that the main body of the battle had strayed a half-mile away, fiends and Great Souls slamming and hurling each other across the rocks and canyons.
Heaving for breath, dripping with sweat, bleeding and raw, Scorio rose to sway on his feet and seek out another target.
A flicker of awareness passed through him. A sense of identity. It was when he flew and breathed flame that he felt most aligned with his truest self. When he employed his Shroud and command ability in unison with this talons and wings that he came closest to being… what?
For a brief second he felt the answer arise within him, an image, a sense of his truest self, and then Jova hurtled through the air to hit the ground before him, bounce, roll, then impact a boulder and come to a brutal stop.
Turning back, Scorio saw three Nethercoils pounding his way. They came like an avalanche, almost faster than he could track, and Scorio raised his talons, trying to time the moment he should enter his flame form, when their limbs went out from under them and they crashed to the ground in a jumble of tentacles and snarls.
“Move!” shouted Taron, his left arm broken and hanging limp. “Get out of there!”
Scorio rushed to where Jova lay, no longer scorched from the previous Symmetron’s blast, but still badly broken and her limbs askew. He hefted her over a shoulder and ran just as the Nethercoils regained their feet.
A curtain of ice shards swept across the world behind him with such force that the ground cracked, boulders shattered, and the Nethercoils were slashed apart.
“Don’t need… your help,” groaned Jova through her broken jaw.
“I know.”
A slab of rock tore itself free from the ground, long as a coffin, and floated up alongside her. Scorio lay her upon it, and it rose up into the sky, carrying her away.
The Nightmare Lady approached, shoulders heaving, her bladed tail dripping ichor, her eyes glowing sulphurously. The battle raged around them, but they seemed to have found a moment of calm; together they turned, surveying the violence. The scale was either so beyond them that they couldn’t envision helping, or so far-flung and rapid that they’d not reach each conflict in time.
This was no battle. It was an endless number of duels unfolding simultaneously in the same location.
Plassus strode into view. He wielded a yard-long staff, its length made of twisted bronze. He was unhurried, his manner calm. A Nethercoil tore itself away from a fight with Eorox and came galloping in his direction.
Plassus raised his Ferula and loosed a pulse of Copper light. The bolt hit the Nethercoil in the chest and the fiend fragmented, turning into a thousand burning coals that collapsed and scattered across the ground.
“You two doing alright?” called Plassus, spotting them both.
“Doing great,” Scorio shouted back, the moment surreal.
“Lovely, lovely.” The Charnel Duke rose up into the air, simply levitating without any manifestation of power, closed one eye, and loosed another Copper bolt at a Symmetron that was charging toward a handful of Pyre Lords.
The Symmetron fell apart in like manner.
“Any moment now,” Plassus said, though Scorio wasn’t sure if he heard him correctly. “He approaches.”
The Imperators? The Blood Ox? Scorio searched the horizons, but other than the Dead Ridge rising high in the distance, his view was mostly blocked by broken hills.
“You feel that?” The Nightmare Lady’s voice had a quaver to it that Scorio had never heard before.
“No, I—” He cut off as a sense of wrongness washed over him, subtle at first, then growing in intensity, as if his very vision were trying to rebel and turn askew. Scorio had envisioned the Blood Ox hiding underground in some capacity, hidden there from view, but that feeling swamped him from all sides.
“What do we do?” The Nightmare Lady grabbed hold of Scorio’s scaled arm. “Scorio! We need to go!”
“It’s too late.” He knew it to be true even as he spoke the words. Mouth dry, heart pounding, he stared at a pinprick of crimson that had appeared some twenty yards up in the sky. When he reached out to it with his Heart’s senses, he felt himself near blinded, as if he’d willingly pressed his naked eye against the glowing tip of a superheated needle.
Around them the Gold-tempered fiends crowed and roared. The Great Souls fell back in disarray, arms raised as if to ward off a blow.
Plassus turned to sight south. “If you’re coming, you tardy bastards, now would be the time!”
Nobody responded.
“Come on,” hissed Scorio, taking the Nightmare Lady’s hand and darting across the ruptured landscape to the ravine in which he’d dropped his pack. He dropped inside, opened the flap to check on the egg, then slung it over one shoulder.
That’s when the Blood Ox finally arrived.
The crimson speck tore itself asunder, flaring out wide to form a burning oval through which a man emerged.
The very sight of the True Fiend caused the rest of hell to writhe and fall away as if he were simply too real for the Telurian Band, as if his presence were a candle flame held wickedly close to yellowed parchment.
Scorio hadn’t known what to expect. Some grand fiend, something bestial, a creature of horror and gore. A giant, perhaps, a minotaur, an eidolon of blood.
But the reality was far more prosaic. The man wore the ragged remnants of a beautiful robe, the strips swirling about him, revealing his bare and muddied feet. His dark hair hung lank and dark over his face and shoulders, and his head in turn lolled on his neck, as if he slept, cheek turned away, eyes closed. Skin tawny beige, his build unremarkable, his hands empty. He wore no weapons, carried no pack, no rings, no adornments of any kind.
But not Sol nor Imogen even had struck him with such dolorous power. The longer the Blood Ox hung there the more he refracted the light around him, as if his presence were a growing lens that distorted the very air. Curving gleams of gold slid liquidly about him, flaring out wide and then narrowing to disappear.