Alain sat up. “Hey, Moira’s talking to me. I’m going to tell her what we said.”
Scorio exchanged a glance with Naomi.
“Well, she’s happy we’re alive, and really excited that we’re going to the Fury Spires. She’s not happy that I’m keeping obvious secrets from her, but, well. Nothing she can do about it.”
“Does she have any updates about the Imperators?” asked Scorio.
“Yes.” Alain paused, stared at nothing, then grinned. “Oh, that’s great! They were literally about to head back to the Twilight Cradle. Since the Blood Ox can sense their presence, they can’t draw him out by getting too close, and reinforcements from the Fiery Shoals were going to take several days to arrive. So they’d decided the whole situation was a loss. But now Moira’s asking them to hold on, because she’s telling them we have a plan.”
“A plan,” said Naomi, deadpan.
“Yes. Wait.” A pause. “Oh. She wants to know what our plan is.”
Scorio raked his fingers anxiously through his hair. “Tell her we’re going to kill Bravurn.”
“Alright.” Another pause. “She said that’s a good start, despite it being pretty impossible for a Dread Blaze and two Flame Vaults -”
“Two Dread Blazes,” corrected Naomi.
“Oh, right.” A pause. “She says that doesn’t really change the equation. But anyway, she wants to know what we’re going to do if we manage to kill Bravurn. We still have to draw the Blood Ox out, and there’s over a hundred Gold-ranked fiends to deal with.”
Scorio’s mind raced. He didn’t have an answer.
Alain was watching him intently. “If we don’t convince Moira, she won’t bother convincing the Imperators. They’re itching to go home.”
“Damn it. Alright. Lie to her. Tell her we’re going to take control of the Iron Vanguard, and that…” Scorio hesitated. “What else? Tell her…”
Naomi cut in. “Tell her we’ve managed to trick the Gurlocks into attacking all at once. They’re going to hit the fiends because they think they’re attacking the Iron Weald.”
Scorio and Alain stared at her.
“What?” She stared back. “Nobody understands the Gurlocks. And Scorio’s known to be friends with fiends. She’ll buy it because she wants to believe we can do something. Anything.”
“The Gurlocks. Alright.” Alain sounded bewildered. “I’ll let her know you both are confident, even though I have no idea what’s going on.”
“Good thinking,” whispered Scorio.
“She said… that sounds exactly like something Scorio would do.” Alain grinned. “I don’t think she really believes me, but it sounds like she’s willing to bet on us pulling something off. She’s going to try to convince the Imperators to wait another day or two. Even if she can convince them there’s no way they’ll wait any longer.”
“Great. Awesome. Tell her we’re going to deliver.”
“And… she’s gone.” Alain blinked. “So. Can we actually get the Gurlocks to help?”
“Uh…” Scorio winced. “No.”
“Oh.” Alain blinked. “So… our back-up plan is…?”
“In the works,” said Naomi, tone confident. “First we assassinate Bravurn without rousing the Iron Vanguard. Then we convince them to do as we say, and then…”
“And then we destroy the Blood Ox’s army, somehow,” finished Scorio.
Alain nodded dubiously. “Despite Charoth and Plassus and Aezryna not being able to do that themselves.”
“Right.” Scorio nodded firmly. “We’ll… we’ll figure something out.”
“Absolutely,” said Naomi. “And if we don’t?” She shrugged. “Everyone can just yell at us while we run away into the depths of Acherzua.”
“I can’t do that,” said Alain. “I have to go on a date with Fyrona.”
“All the more reason for you to help us pull this off,” grinned Scorio. “Right?”
“Right,” agreed Alain weakly.
More time passed. Scorio fought for calm, to keep his breathing still, but just as he was about to start exploring ways to contact Xandera the egg shuddered, changed direction and somehow picked up speed. The shivering of the walls caused sections to flake off, the whole of it shivering and vibrating with increased violence until suddenly it peaked, sank back, and began bobbing around calmly.
“I’m going to be sick,” moaned Alain.
Naomi shifted up into the Nightmare Lady form and slammed her tail against the wall. It shattered outward, and dirty red light filtered in, heavily tainted with fumes.
A few more blows from the Nightmare Lady’s tail revealed that they were still underground, the lofty heights of the cavern lost to a miasma of smoke. Their egg floated in the slow oozing of a great magma lake, its surface scorched to darkness that broke where it eddied to reveal the glowing light of the molten rock just beneath. Huge talons of black stone rose all about them, rough and raw. The space felt vast, the heat tremendous, and all around them the magma bubbled and geysered up as if whatever had brought them here was still disgorging the remnants of their transportation stream.
“Whoa,” said Alain, stepping up alongside the Nightmare Lady. “Amazing. Where are we?”
“It looks familiar,” said Scorio. “There were huge caves just like this under the Fury Spires. It’s where we saw the enhanced Titans. Maybe… is this the same cavern?”
“I can’t tell.” The Nightmare Lady looked about. “It might be. The islands of rock are high enough to block my line of sight. Maybe?”
“Where’s Xandera?” Alain looked out over the lake of magma. “She could probably tell us, right?”
The egg was slowly tilting back toward the side that yet retained its wall. Scorio briefly considered knocking that down, too, then simply shifted up into his scaled form and extended his wings. “Come on, Alain. Let’s get to safer ground.”
The Nightmare Lady sprang from the rocking egg to a nearby horn of stone, and from there leaped again to a flat spread of rock that rose only an inch or two above the lake’s molten surface. Scorio leaped up, beat his wings powerfully, then clasped Alain’s upraised arms to carry him toward the Nightmare Lady’s evident goal, a massive outcrop of craggy black rock that rose some twenty yards above the lake.
No fiends. The air was rich with Iron, turgid and heavy. After so much Bronze, it felt like poor fare.
They landed. Scorio moved to stand at the outcrop’s edge and stared out over the lake. Several rivers of glowing magma wound their ways between many islands, but now he could see the cavern’s far walls.
He couldn’t be sure if this was the same place as before.
And again he felt himself drawn to the molten rock. Scorio tried to puzzle out the sensation. Was this the strange instinct Taron had warned him might emerge? An impulse that revealed something about his Pyre Lord self?
And if so, should he… dive into the lava? The thought was absurd, but he couldn’t tear his gaze from the burning rock. To dive in head first, to drink that heat in, to sacrifice himself to the fire…
Why did that feel so right?
The Nightmare Lady stepped up beside him, tail lashing. “Where is she?”
Scorio took a deep and steadying breath and studied the lake and its immediate environs. Xandera had to be close by. This wasn’t the right time to risk experimenting with lava. If it went wrong—which it surely would—he’d remove himself from play just before they attacked Bravurn.
Another day, then. He’d descend here after they were done, and… experiment.
But where was Xandera? He wished he could sense her presence as she’d sensed Naomi and Alain, but his Heart senses weren’t that finely tuned.
“Close. She has to be. She wouldn’t have guided us to this lake if she’d been killed, or…”
They stood in silence, scanning the lake and its tributaries, until the magma close to where the broken shell of their egg yet floated bubbled, rose up into a dome, then burst apart to reveal Xandera.
Who had changed. Grown. Gone was the slender twelve-year-old girl, and in her place rose a young woman of perhaps twenty. She rose from the magma and flung her head back, and her hair, a crown of long fiery tendrils, arced through the smoky air like streaks of crimson, leaving fat droplets and ropes of lava in their wake. The movement was primal, vigorous, and the air hissed and spat as the droplets flew into the darkness.