“You’re kidding me,” rasped Scorio, looking up and up as the fiend rose into view. How big was this thing?
Hundreds of feet long, at least, given the width and scale of that which had come into view.
Scorio’s ignited Heart burned with Bronze. Fear and fury tempted him: he could rise up into his scaled form, extrude his wings, give this thing battle. Fly through its head in his flame form, baffle its assaults with his Shroud and commands.
But he knew himself too weak. That kind of exertion might rupture his reservoir. Even if he switched to the Delightful Secret Marinating technique, he didn’t trust himself to fight such a fiend alone.
The colossal fiend shrieked at him, serrated flanges within its mouth vibrating.
Scorio raised his Shroud before its head and entered his flame form. He didn’t have time to embrace the egg. The moment he immolated he sucked the flames right back in.
The fiend dove forward and immediately hit the Shroud; it hadn’t had enough room to build up speed, but the power behind its huge neck still cracked the Shroud. It drew back, furious, swung down and low, then speared forward, the hundreds of bone swords sticking out of its dorsal ridges flaring as it flew toward Scorio.
Who cursed, kept his fire breath trapped within his chest, and dove aside.
Only to realize the fiend hadn’t been aiming for him, but for the egg.
Almost Scorio screamed “No!” and inadvertently spewed his fireball into the air. Instead, he summoned his Shroud right around the egg and reinforced it with everything he had, so that it formed a huge hemisphere, inches thick and obdurate as Scorio’s will to live.
The fiend smashed into the Shroud, jaws wide, and recoiled with another furious shriek.
Scorio scrambled around the other side of the boulder. The egg blazed before him, burning bright yellow like an ingot drawn from a furnace.
An idea.
Scorio breathed forth his flame even as he drew the Shroud down, shaping it so that it all but cupped the egg and formed a closed mound over it.
And into this space he breathed his fireball.
He’d never done this, and for a second panicked, convinced his own flames would devour his Shroud.
But instead, his curved shield formed a chamber in which his flames grew concentrated, unable to escape, the heat rising, rising, becoming a trapped inferno.
The fiend roared and dove down, clamped its jaws about the Shroud and strained to shatter it.
STOP! Scorio bellowed at it, his head nearly splitting from the pain. The world spun around him, and he had to grasp the boulder to remain steady. The fiend drew back, momentarily nonplussed, and still Scorio breathed, filling the hemisphere with his fury.
Then, the second he could breathe no more, he drew the Shroud down all the way, and trapped his flames completely against the boulder.
They roiled and filled his Shroud with ebon magnificence. The heat in there had to be fearsome, as the trapped bubble became a crucible.
The fiend decided that Scorio was the source of its woes, and flowed around the Shroud, more and more of its coils coming into view at the mesa’s edge.
Scorio gave a cry of panic and flung himself aside. The fiend shot by overhead, but curled around again, its own bulk preventing it from reacting too nimbly. Scorio scrambled to his feet, wanting nothing more than to lie down and close his eyes so that his stomach and head and the world would settle, but he dove aside again as the fiend shot through where he’d been.
But he couldn’t keep going. His reservoir trembled, its walls weak and pliable, and he felt the mana sloshing within like a belly full of Copperfire. Fire gouted up his throat, the taste of bile, and his body clenched as it fought the urge to vomit.
The fiend’s bone swords hissed and rattled as it came back around, maw opening to reveal its inner row of needle teeth. Blinking through his tears Scorio withdrew his Shroud from the boulder and flung it at the fiend.
Which impacted it at full speed and shattered his shield, sending gold fragments everywhere.
Scorio could only topple aside, arms wrapped around his head, and there lie, trying to find the presence of mind to fling a command at the fiend—when he realized that the huge monster had gone still.
Lowering his arms, Scorio peered up at it.
The fiend’s upper body, a dozen yards long, was slowly pulling back, its sword-frill rattling in alarm, its attention wholly fixated on the boulder. A moment later it recoiled altogether, pincer legs scrabbling, and flowed over the edge of the mesa to disappear.
Blinking, dazed, Scorio turned around to peer up at the rock.
A young girl knelt in its center, with skin of the purest ebon, overly large eyes that blazed red, and hair of the brightest orange that flowed past her shoulders, down her back and over her arms, and out across the boulder to run in rivulets of pure lava down the boulder’s sides.
Scorio gaped.
Her lips were a horizontal seam of fire. The tips of her ears poked darkly out through her flowing magma hair. Her expression was blank, her hands on her thighs, and as young as she appeared, perhaps nine years old, Scorio felt himself instantly and overwhelmingly awed.
“Hello,” said the young girl, quirking her head to one side. “I’m Xandera. Who are you?”
Chapter 48
“Hey.” Scorio sat up, heart pounding. “I’m Scorio. A Great Soul.” What should he say? The blazeborn queen stared at him curiously, her hair flowing like thick honey down the boulder and oozing into puddles upon the mesa proper. The heat was starting to grow. “It’s good to meet you again.”
“Again?” Xandera’s voice was light, untroubled. “But I’ve just been born.”
“Yeah. It’s a bit strange to me, but apparently you blazeborn queens give birth to yourselves? Your mother was an older version of you. Queen Xandera of the Fury Spires?”
The young blazeborn blinked, her blazing eyes’ flickerflash growing dark. “I gave birth to myself?”
“How much do you know, exactly? Or remember?” Scorio wrapped his arms around his knees. The nausea was still bubbling just under his ribs, but he fought it down. Puking before the newly born Noumenon queen was probably not the right impression to begin with.
Xandera frowned, considered. “I recall… fire. Streams of endless magma flowing through the veins of existence. Bright colors, bright burning colors, and myself… lost but at peace within those rivers.” Her frown deepened as she considered Scorio. “But this… this doesn’t feel right.” She turned her gaze to study the expanse of the mesa, and the Telurian Band around them. “I’m supposed to be… somewhere else. Amongst my own kind. I feel their absence. Where are they?”
Scorio took a deep breath. “If you were a real kid, I don’t think I’d tell you. It’s not a good story.”
“A kid?” Her frown deepened. “I am Queen Xandera. Young, yes, but I can feel…” She raised her palms and studied them. “I… this isn’t what I’ve felt before. This power. I feel…”
“Maybe a little overwhelmed? Trust me, I understand. Your mother… your mother-self? She told me to infuse your egg with mana. Gold, maybe Emerald if we got lucky. But I was attacked with Noumenon by a True Fiend.” Scorio felt as if he should wince with every revelation, apologize, almost. “And you saved me by absorbing the Noumenon. It’s the most powerful mana out there. I don’t think there’s ever been a blazeborn queen born with that kind of infusion before.”
“Yes.” Her tone was matter-of-fact. “It’s… I’ve never felt a heat like this. I want to scream, but if I begin, I’ll never stop.”
Scorio scrambled to his feet, palms extended. “Easy. You’ve just been born. Maybe it’ll become more manageable the longer you live.”