Perhaps, on some mad level, he wished to pursue the Blood Ox himself.
Scorio drew out a strip of cured meat and shouldered his pack. Taking a deep breath, he resumed heading northwest. He forced himself to chew on a hunk of meat, fought down his stomach’s protests, and eventually managed to swallow.
And took another bite.
* * *
A day and a night passed before Scorio felt himself ready to attempt ignition. He’d finally left the badlands behind, entering a more temperate rocky desert, and skirting pools and noxious lakes, made good speed. The Dead Ridge had drawn ever closer, but Scorio had seen no obvious ways to cross. But the exercise itself did him more good than anything else; he tapped his reserves of stamina, and found to his relief that his Gold-tempered body was capable of recovering even from whatever the Blood Ox had done to him.
Not willing to risk another beetle incident, he walked slowly through the night, pack on his chest, and when the distant sun began to rise once more, he laboriously climbed atop a broad mesa with a table-like boulder in its center, and on this he sat so as to attempt his ignition.
Throughout the night he’d fed slender rivulets of Bronze into his Heart. To his surprise he found himself yearning for Coal; that old, tarry mana that had seen the birth of his powers. Something about that crude power called to him, felt perversely healing and safe.
But all he could sense streaming north was Bronze shot through with slow seams of Iron. High above he could detect faint, fickle flickers of Copper, but nowhere did he feel Coal.
Still, he gradually filled his reservoir, pausing every so often to simply breathe through the raw pain and urge to vomit, and now, seated cross-legged on the flat boulder, he was half-filled.
Good enough.
Scorio set the egg atop the stone before him, using pebbles so that the tapered end of the oval pointed upward, and placed his pack behind him on the mesa proper.
He took a moment to simply study the sky. Fiends winged their way east a mile or so away. Strange, bulbous plants like jellied eggs atop fern-like legs were surreptitiously moving toward the mesa’s far edge.
No sign of overt danger.
Time to ignite.
Scorio closed his eyes and reached out to his reservoir. He could have attempted to ignite immediately, but something bade him be careful. Instead, he reached purposefully into his reservoir, eschewing the Delightful Secret Marinating technique, and directed a thin stream of Bronze into his Heart.
He gagged, wrestled with his stomach, and finally unleashed a titanic and fetid burp before feeling himself ready to continue.
Friction. Time to bring that mana to its incendiary point. Applying his will, Scorio focused on the Bronze, on the very substance of his Heart, and then ignited.
He immediately keeled over, vomiting what meat and water he’d subsisted on over the past day and night.
Gasping, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and sat up again. It took a while for his stomach to settle, and he fought the urge to drink some water. He’d barely a few tablespoons left, and didn’t want to spit it all out over the rocks.
Deep breaths. Firm control. He could do this.
Scorio repeated the process, silently cursing the Blood Ox repeatedly as he did so.
Ignition.
Again he felt his body spasm, but this time he fought it, clamped down on his gorge, clenched his jaw, and focused his mind on his burning Heart. It felt awful, but the longer he held it the more his Heart’s own power compensated for the pain; just like at the old Academy, when igniting had helped him, Lianshi, and Leonis recover from dying in the old Gauntlet far faster than they’d managed alone.
Soon he was breathing smoothly, his body drinking deep of the Bronze, the power flowing through him like a calming balm. It still felt wrong; his reservoir felt delicate, ready to rupture, and he’d hate to have to draw on it strenuously, but like this, gently, patiently, it… was alright.
But he needed fire.
Scorio considered the egg.
A blaze of black flame.
There was only one way, but his spirit recoiled from the ordeal.
Scorio scowled.
Damn his weakness. He’d done far worse in his time.
So he reached deep into his core, found the essence of flame that seemed to have always been there once he sought it, and brought it forth.
Scorio’s scream merged with the roar of flame, and a moment later he was a fiery shape, Bronze fueling his burn.
Curious, Scorio placed one flaming hand upon the egg, and then the second. The black fire washed around it, covering it, and Scorio felt the Noumenon resonate, grow gradually brighter.
Such power.
How could anyone, anything, take so potent a source of power into their Heart? It would be akin to dropping a white-hot poker into a snowbank.
Scorio moved forward and bowed over the egg, allowing it to sink into his burning chest, completely covering it with his flames. He remained thus for as long as he could, but his ability to remain in this form was desperately short; unable to hold it, he pulled back and with a ragged gasp at last inhaled all the flames from himself, returning to his human form.
His chest swelled up. He felt the incendiary intensity bottled up within him, demanding release.
So Scorio rose to his feet, hopped down from the boulder, and backed some seven or eight feet from the egg.
When he could hold it no longer, he leaned forward, hands clenched into fists, and blew.
His fireball roared forth, the first five or six feet little more than superheated blue air, only to billow into a great roiling mass of dense black flame. For as long as he could he breathed upon the egg, scorching it with everything he had, until at last he gasped and reeled back, heart pounding, brow drenched in sweat.
Blinking away stars, Scorio stared at the egg. Its stippled surface had lightened to dark gray, though the depressions were still jet black.
“Hmm.” Scorio wiped his forearm across his brow, climbed back onto the boulder, and sat once more. “Looks like this is going to require work.”
It took him some ten minutes to feel ready once more, but then he repeated the process, igniting, assuming his flame form, and embracing the egg. Only once he couldn’t hold it any longer did he inhale, leap down, and unleash his fireball upon the boulder once more.
This time it lightened to ash gray, and it seemed as if the pulsations from within were coming more rapidly.
Another ten minutes, another round. Again and again he breathed flame on it, some eight times all told, until, reeling and with his robes completely soaked through with sweat, he saw that the egg had lightened to a luminous pale yellow, like a small fragment of the sun.
Eyes slitted against its brilliance, Scorio climbed wearily one last time onto the rock. The pulsations were coming so quickly now as to be a staccato blur. Scorio’s head spun. He felt weak and disoriented.
But one more time.
He was so close.
That’s when he heard the rattling sound of hundreds of talons scratching rock.
Twisting about, he saw a royal Tokalauth rising up the side of the mesa. No, not a Tokalauth, at least, not like any he’d seen before. This one was as large as a royal, but its segments weren’t clearly defined; along the top of its serpentine body they fitted together like light gray puzzle pieces, dusty and rock-like, and both sides of its body were flanked by hundreds of bone swords as long as Scorio’s arm. Beneath those its body darkened to slate, with clusters of six pincer-tipped legs appearing every so often down its length.
Except for the first ten or so yards of its body; this reared up like a sinuous cobra, swaying from side to side as its fearsome maw opened wide to reveal a bank of needle-sharp teeth behind an outer rank of huge stone fangs. A flaring shield of bone protected its neck just behind its skull, and twin horns curled, ram-like, from just above its tiny black eyes. A bone spike protruded from its chin, and another ran down the top of its head, forming a fearsome ridge that made its skull look unbreakable.