Hope and horror filled Scorio as he pressed his arms to his side and committed himself fully to the dive. Tears were torn from his slitted eyes by the rushing air, and he willed himself to drop ever faster.
He drew close to the wall so that the band slid by just below his chest, following its infinite descent into the gloom. It glowed with a steady, almost peaceful light, radiant in the absolute darkness, and then a great shelf opened across the wall and the band dipped into this huge recess so that only perfect darkness lay below.
Scorio let out a cry, snapped open his wings, and tore into an upward curve as he slid into the huge recess. Everything was lit here by a diffused golden glow, but such was the speed of his drop that he failed to pull up in time. He slammed into the smooth stone floor and slid across it, his veering momentum carrying across a dozen yards as Naomi bounced off his back to roll away.
Dizzied by the impact, Scorio raised his head, the tips of his claws digging into the sandstone-like texture of the ground.
He couldn’t make sense of what he was looking at. Perhaps it was the blow to the head. An entire lateral seam was cut away to form another cyclopean space, geometric in nature, all straight lines and corners.
The Ferric Drake followed them in and landed heavily upon the edge.
“By the hells,” rasped Scorio, forcing himself to rise.
The Ferric Drake was maleficent and glorious, , its body angular and long, its wings shaking out before furling down the length of its sinuous body. Its shovel head jutted forward, eyes bright and alive with cunning, its snout wide and saurian, its horns spiraling back like a profligation of flames turned to bone.
But no, it wasn’t covered in scales. Instead it was a mass of living Iron, organic and fluid, mostly silver and lead but with whorls of charcoal mixed in, and in the crevices burned a crimson light as if its core was molten.
It took a few tentative steps forward, its head weaving back and forth as it took in the environs, considered Naomi who was pushing herself up to all fours, and then focused its attention on Scorio.
“You don’t want to do this.” Scorio spread his arms and wings wide, instinctively trying to make himself as large as possible. “If you come at me, I will take you down. I will tear you joint from joint and paint this place in your blood.”
The Ferric Drake hissed, a low, sibilant sound, and to Scorio it sounded pleased, as if it would have been disappointed if he’d offered anything less.
“Very well.” Scorio inhaled deeply and wafted Iron mana into his Heart - only to stop as he realized that the area was rich with something new, something even more potent, something that filled his true heart with hope and set his blood afire - Bronze mana.
It gleamed and undulated slowly through the air, burnished and glorious, ductile and sensually willing to obey his commands. Scorio parted the Iron and drank deep, pouring the Bronze into his massively spherical Heart.
The Ferric Drake snarled and curlicues of black flames played about its snout, its chest beginning to glow with a nebulous and inky black light.
“Watch out!” Naomi cried. “It’s going to flame!”
“I’m not afraid of fire,” said Scorio, and with a flexion of his will he ignited his great Heart.
Bronze flames of his own leaped forth and immolated the source of his power, and a newfound strength coursed through his sinews, caused his muscles to grow taut, his body light, his mind delirious with feverish anticipation.
“Come on then, you bastard,” Scorio hissed. “Let’s see what you can do.”
Chapter 5
The Ferric Drake parted its maw and a black conflagration poured forth. Scorio laughed and snapped up his Shroud. A hemisphere of his power burst into being before him, and the black flames enveloped it, blocking his sight of the fiend and causing his Shroud to flare almost white.
But Scorio wasn’t content to hide behind his defense. He leaped, the power in his thews hurling him up, and with a laugh he saw the Ferric Drake pouncing at his Shroud, the great fiend leaping through the air with feline grace.
Scorio snapped out his wings, keeping them small and angular for maximum maneuverability, and beat them once to change his trajectory to forward.
The Ferric Drake snarled and twisted, coiling about Scorio as it sought to evade his claws. It was sinuous, unearthly in its grace, and its tail came sweeping around to batter at him midair.
Had he not spent so many days sparring with the Nightmare Lady he’d have been taken by surprise. Instead, he laughed and slashed at the incoming tail with both claws.
Their white-hot tips scored deep grooves into its living metal hide a fraction of a second before the tail slammed into his chest.
The blow was tremendous. It knocked him clear out of the air, sent him hurtling back to slam against a block of shaped stone which cracked behind him as he impacted.
Scorio bounced, his wings breaking, and fell to the ground.
For a moment he lay still, blinking away stars, and then he looked up, blood unspooling from his mouth to puddle on the floor.
The Ferric Drake landed lithely and began to close, coming at him from an angle, its eyes burning crimson.
“Nicely done.” Scorio rubbed his wrist against his mouth, wiping away the blood, and climbed to his feet.
To his surprise he wasn’t broken. His Gold-tempered body had taken the punishing blow and absorbed it. He hurt, would pay for this later, but the strike that would have killed him as an Emberling had merely slowed him down as a Flame Vault.
“Scorio -!” Naomi had been in the midst of screaming, but at the sight of his grin she cut off.
Scorio craned his head to one side, eliciting a series of pops, then shook out his arms and began striding directly toward the creature. “Now it’s my turn.”
The Ferric Drake drew back, rose to its rear legs, then flooded forward so violently in a series of undulating curves that, for a moment, Scorio lost track of where its chest was, its head even. It was just an avalanche of living metal shot through with burning seams.
He leaped.
Bronze gave him wings even without summoning his own. The drake flooded past beneath him and Scorio reached down to snag a wing, his talons closing around the metallic edge and hauling himself around and down to crash upon its back.
It was like trying to ride a landslide. Scorio plunged his talons deep into the fiend’s back and held on.
The Ferric Drake screeched and bucked, jerked back, then turned and slammed itself into the same monolith into which Scorio had impacted. Scorio leaped away at the last second and landed just in time to see the top of the monolith shatter before the blow.
The monstrosity swept itself over the rubbled top and came spearing around the base of the monolith, fresh black flames curling about its snout.
Scorio threw forth his Shroud and flung himself after it.
The fiend slammed snout-first into the shield, shattered it, then Scorio was there, taking advantage of its momentary confusion to slash his talons across its muzzle, once, twice, three times.
Bloody grooves opened up, its upper lip shredded to reveal huge fangs, and the Ferric Drake snarled in livid fury and blasted him with flame at point blank range.
Scorio crossed his arms before himself and summoned his Shroud again, but it was too little, too late.
Pain.
He felt as if he’d been dipped in boiling water, scalded across the forearms, chest, and the top of his head.
Black flames wreathed him, melted his scales, slagged them into a slurry.
But he didn’t fall.
And on some perverse, impossible level, it felt… right.
The flames died away and Scorio raised his chin.
The Ferric Drake was but a yard away, staring at him with widened eyes.
By the ten hells it hurt. Moving felt like breaking calcified branches, and his armored hide cracked and fragmented where it had already begun to congeal into a single mass.