Damn. Its injuries were clearly painful, but not nearly enough to hamper it meaningfully.
Scorio and Naomi climbed to their feet as the Ferric Drake breathed black flame all over his Shroud. It flared bright and broke a few moments later.
“We fight,” snapped Naomi, and her Heart ignited. She immediately rose into her harrowing Nightmare Lady form. “This environment suits me. I’ll tear it apart.”
Scorio fought to catch his breath. His Heart hadn’t felt this abused since he’d forged it anew in the Crucible.
Black, inky clouds began to form around the great hexagonal chamber, drifting in midair or smothering ledges and platforms.
The Nightmare Lady crouched, her segmented tail lashing back and forth, one clawed hand gripping the edge of their platform as she glared at the Ferric Drake.
It had paused at the edge where the tunnel opened out into the chamber. Below it roiled the great pool of magma. It opened its wings wide. The hot updraft here would only serve to its advantage.
“Come on,” hissed Naomi.
It sprang up at them, swift as a loosed arrow.
The magma lake erupted.
Great gouts burst upward, volcanic in their ferocity. The was already committed to its spring; it twisted, shrieked in alarm as gobbets of burning stone flew up around it, and then a giant figure in the center of the eruption clasped the beast about the center as a man might awkwardly clasp a hound to its chest.
Scorio’s eyes widened.
A burning giant of living magma seized the Ferric Drake, pinning its wings tight, and together they fell back into the broad pool.
The Ferric Drake keened as it hit the surface and was dragged down. Its tail lashed at the burning surface, its claws fought for purchase, but the gigantic figure sank and pulled it below.
The Ferric Drake’s whole body sank. For a moment, its sinuous neck undulated as its keen became a rusted croak, and then that, too, head and all, sank beneath the slow, large ripples that spread across the lake’s surface.
The Nightmare Lady and Scorio both stared in horror at the now still lake.
All that could be heard was the endless spattering of the magma falling into the lake.
Naomi’s taloned hand was clamped tight around Scorio’s arm.
“What…” she rasped, “what by the ten hells was that?”
Chapter 6
Large crimson bubbles formed and burst below them, releasing noxious gases that swirled up past their ledge.
Scorio felt frozen. It had happened so suddenly and he was so exhausted that his mind felt stuck, unable to process what he’d seen.
The Nightmare Lady wasn’t so hampered.
“We need to get out of here,” she hissed. “Before that thing comes back for us.”
“Did a giant magma fiend just grab the Ferric Drake?”
The Nightmare Lady cast around, examining the dozens of hallways that opened into the chamber, each identical to their own. The majority were in what might have been the northern wall, but others sluiced in at the sides like the earlier corridors had done.
“Which way?” Her tail cut back and forth. “This is a labyrinth!”
Scorio’s attention was fixated on the lava below. More bubbles arose and burst, and then something new emerged into view.
The upper half of a giant head, craggy with chunks of darkened stone, its blank eyes of perfect burning yellow staring up at where he stood.
Scorio had never seen anything so ominous. Instinct kicked in and he surged into his scaled form, wings extending, and without warning he seized the Nightmare Lady and leaped aloft.
The ceiling of the chamber narrowed to a dark rectangle, and the updraft of heated air fairly carried them both toward it. Higher he flew and then they shot up into the warm darkness. It was just wide enough for his wings to beat, and he climbed and climbed, insensate to his Heart’s strain, to the burn that went bone-deep in his muscles.
The Nightmare Lady shrank back to Naomi, perhaps to lighten his load, but it didn’t matter. The sight of those twin huge eyes had triggered some terrified reaction in him that he couldn’t control. Perhaps it was his borderline pain, his fatigue, his having been on the run for too long.
Only one thing was now paramount: getting away.
Higher they climbed, the flue rising straight and true. Heated air still carried them up so that it felt as if they rose upon a great cushion, and then Naomi gasped.
“Light!”
Above them a pinprick.
Heartened, Scorio pushed on, through the pain, through the bleak horror. The pinprick grew, steadily, at first imperceptibly, and then all at once it was upon them and they burst out into the chill evening air.
Scorio managed one more downbeat of his wings and then collapsed sidelong, falling beside the narrow opening that was all but hidden amongst the cracks and ridges that scored this valley floor. Naomi tumbled free as they fell, and then promptly dragged him away from the opening over the rough rock.
Scorio’s thoughts whirled, but his relief washed away the pain. Gazing around, he saw another identical valley falling under the cover of twilight. The great cliff faces, the dark sky, the rough, mostly flat valley floor.
Elation ashed and became bleak despair.
Yet another damned valley.
“Look,” whispered Naomi, her voice tinged with awe.
Scorio twisted about and froze.
To the north, filling the entire valley, arose a dozen or more mottled spires. Like nobbled fingers they pointed at the heavens, rising higher even than the cliffs, and their vertiginous heights were riddled with portals or windows that burned brightly as if with some interior fire.
They were connected, Scorio realized. Each tower rose from the same, continuous broad base, castle-sized but smooth and without distinguishing features, boasting the same mottled gray and brown exterior like petrified mud. It filled the valley from wall to wall, and looked to be as deep as it was wide, for more towers arose further up the valley, barely visible behind the others.
“What is that?” he whispered, and then an answer presented itself by descending smoothly from the black skies above: a whale ship, gaunt and massive, its skeletal exterior stark against the timber of its frame, great sails lashed and filled with mana as its pilot guided it down to a tiny exterior dock.
“The Fury Spires.” Naomi sank down beside him, one hand cupped to her mouth. “It has to be.”
“Druanna said they were six or more valleys over. You think we’ve come that far?”
Naomi raised an eyebrow at him. “Need I answer?”
Scorio closed his eyes and reached for the signal he hoped was Nox. It was closer. They had traveled perhaps half the distance necessary to reach it, but Scorio’s resolve suddenly crumbled within him. Even if it was Nox, he no longer had it in him to search for a means to traverse the valleys.
He needed rest.
Healing.
An end to the terrors that had plagued them, if only for a night or two.
“And to think we went through all this effort to avoid the Iron Tyrant,” said Naomi wryly.
Scorio frowned at the Fury Spires then cast his gaze south toward the Telurian Band.
Movement.
“Hey. Down there. Do you see people approaching?”
Naomi stepped up beside him. “Yes. Looks like a small group. Less than twenty? They’re probably heading up to the Fury Spires.”
“From the Telurian Band? So Great Souls.”
Naomi gave him a flat look. “Of course, genius.”
Scorio looked around. They’d emerged close to the eastern cliff, high up amongst rough ridges. With the air as gloomy as it was, the odds of being seen by the passing band were unlikely.
He crouched and studied the group. At this distance they were little more than motes of shadow traveling together. “Thoughts?”
“Comes down to whether we want to enter the Fury Spires. My instinct tells me no, that we should avoid everyone and anyone so they can’t betray us, but…” She considered him again. “You’re looking pretty hurt.”