“No?” She canted her head to one side, the gesture somehow inhuman. “Because you can’t, or because you refuse?”
“Can’t. Magma, lava, it has a bad effect on me.”
“Then I would protect you. Magma is mine to do with as I wish.” She stepped forward and dropped neatly off the boulder, her hair so heavy that it didn’t flare at all as she fell. “I would fashion an egg for you of black stone. Thick so that the heat wouldn’t cook you alive. Then I would draw you after me as we swam home, faster, much faster than a Great Soul can run.”
“I see.” Scorio wasn’t sure he did. “And, ah, how would we get down to that lava?”
“That is trickier.” She moved up alongside him on the mesa’s edge and gazed out over hell, hands on her hips. “I could summon the magma that lies deep beneath us. Coax it up, parting and melting rock, but that would be… very destructive. It would hurt Acherzua to birth a volcano here.”
Scorio stared at her. “You can birth a volcano?”
Again she extended her hand, and again the column of air beneath her palm shimmered with heat. “Yes. It would be a relief. To release some of this power. I could call up the heartblood of Acherzua, flood this land with fire. But that would be wicked of me. Acherzua must be tended, protected, loved.” She glanced at him, her eyes of solid gold glowing. “That is, after all, why we blazeborns were created.”
“Sure.” Scorio stared at her, mesmerized, then gave himself a shake. “So what’s the alternative.”
“We find a deep place. A ravine. A canyon. As deep as possible, and there I open a passage.” She played her hand back and forth over the superheated currents, puffs of which escaped to waft over Scorio, each one immediately causing his sinuses and eyes to dry out as his skin stung and prickled.
“But even if we get to the Fury Spires before the Blood Ox, Bravurn is still there. He’s followed by the Iron Vanguard. We can’t fight them all. There’s a hundred of them or more.”
“Is that so?” Xandera considered Scorio, her smile enigmatic. “I feel like once that argument might have given me pause, but now…” She inhaled deeply. “Now I’m not so sure.”
And so saying, she stepped off the cliff’s edge.
Scorio reflexively reached out for her, but she dropped too quickly. He stared, part-fascinated, part-horrified, as the young woman fell to the distant ground, her luminous hair rising slowly around her, only to impact the stone at terminal velocity and drop into a crouch.
The puddles that lay amidst the depressions about her instantly evaporated and became steam. The ground itself, out to a radius of several yards, cracked and became a slurry of lava and stone, as if only a thin patina of rock had covered a molten layer beneath the surface all along.
Xandera glanced about herself, then up at Scorio, and smiled.
“Well then.” He ignited his Heart carefully, extruded his wings, and leaped out into the air. “Guess we’ll see where this goes.”
He spiraled down, around and around, to alight a respectful distance from Xandera’s landing spot. She walked toward him, her first dozen steps leaving behind glowing footprints in the naked rock, but by the time she reached him she had returned to only a merely baking heat.
“Do you know what you can do?” he asked.
“Vaguely.” Again she extended an arm to admire its length, then looked down at herself. “This is all so very new, yet strangely familiar, too. I suppose that’s what it feels like to be reborn. Like a Great Soul. Did you know your powers when you awoke in the Gauntlet?”
“No. I had no idea. We all fumbled toward figuring out what our powers were. I guess that’s why the Academy is there, to shorten that process.”
“The same, I imagine, with my hive. But I can sense… potential. Ways that heat and fire and stone can mingle and obey my will. Did my former self ever say anything about her powers?”
“Other than her ability to give birth to new blazeborns? No.”
“A pity.” Xandera turned back to her impact site and stared at the already cooling stone. “But I’m sure I’ll work it out.”
Scorio nodded briskly. “Yeah. I can believe that. So: a canyon?”
Again she smiled brightly, the expression joyous, innocent, and filled with impish charm. “The deeper the better! Did you come across any on the way here?”
“Sure. This whole place is cracked like old mud. Let’s see.” He pointed southeast, the direction from which he’d come. “A few hours that way I came across one particularly massive canyon. I had to walk alongside it for a long time till I came to a natural stone bridge.”
“That sounds perfect.” Xandera rose to the balls of her feet as she stretched, her hair momentarily glowing brighter, then linked her hands behind her back and began skipping forward. “Come on!”
Scorio watched her go, momentarily bemused at her childlike glee, then shook his head and followed.
Xandera had no trouble traversing the broken landscape. She seemed weightless, capable of dancing across sharp rocks and leaping effortlessly over deeper cracks. Scorio fought to keep up, his nausea and essence drain making him lightheaded and occasionally dizzy, but he bit back any urge to complain. Each moment that passed allowed the Blood Ox and his fiends to draw closer to the Fury Spires.
His mind circled that revelation again and again. He couldn’t fathom the Iron Tyrant’s motivation. The man was a cruel bastard, a selfish egocentric and a coldly ambitious monster, but what did he gain from dealing with a True Fiend? The Blood Ox would devour his Gold mana reserves, and give him what in exchange?
Scorio worked at that problem as he went, unable to stop probing but equally unable to furnish an answer. Did it have something to do with what Endergrast denied him? Could the True Fiend give him that coveted goal? But why would the Blood Ox bother? That terrible being seemed above petty deals. What could Bravurn have said that would entice the fiend to parlay? What could he have offered that would cause the Blood Ox to agree to kill Scorio?
A thought struck him: had the Iron Tyrant betrayed them all to get revenge for losing Xandera?
Scorio’s heart pounded as he considered the possibility, but then he reluctantly dismissed it. No. The Blood Ox had called her a “toy”; he’d made it sound like his agreeing to destroy Scorio was incidental to their main deal. A favor thrown in for the hell of it.
Then?
There was too much he didn’t know. For the first time he truly regretted not having allowed Moira to touch him. If he could relay his discovery, she could inform the others, the Imperators…
Anxious, he scanned the horizon.
No sight of them, just a few flocks of winged fiends, and to the north a great hazy swarm of fiendish insects that moved like a fluid cloud, rising and falling and moving away.
Xandera hummed happily, swaying from side to side as if to an unheard song, her feet light and dancing out the steps.
Weary, mouth tasting of bile, Heart battered and worn, Scorio stumbled after the blazeborn queen till suddenly she came to a stop.
“What is it?”
“Up ahead.” She leaped atop a crag and leaned forward, hands still linked at the small of her back, her balance incredible. “A pair like you approaches.”
“What?” He stared ahead, blinking away the sweat. “Two people like me? Or much more powerful?”
“One of your Imperators? No, nothing like that. They are moving quickly. As powerful as you, I think.”
“Walking? Directly toward us?”
Again Xandera focused, then shook her head. “No. They will pass perhaps half a mile to our left.”
Scorio bit his lower lip, pondering, then glanced around. The mesa rose up far behind them, the Dead Ridge mountains providing it with a backdrop. “Wait here. I’ll go take a look.”
“Alright. If you think it best.” And Xandera dropped into a crouch, still perched on the balls of her bare feet atop the crag, arms wrapping around her shins, to lay her temple upon her knees. Her lava-hair began to flow and slide down to form a rich golden waterfall that nearly reached to the ground, its ends a cherry red.