“The Fury Spires are cracking?” asked Scorio, trying to hide his alarm.
“From what I’ve been told, yeah. They used to be like ovens. All the heat would be trapped below in the caldera, and then released to flow up here, and that heat kept the rock supple, though I don’t know how that could be so.”
“Thank you, Amity,” came a dry voice, and a man emerged from the darkness. He was clad in heavy robes of slate and burgundy trimmed in gold, and walked with his hands linked behind his back. His angular features were cadaverous, his hairline receding, his manner patrician. His eyes were sunken, his mouth lipless, his gaze dolorous.
The Iron Tyrant.
“Of course, my lord.” Amity inclined his head to the Blood Baron, gave Scorio a wink, then returned down the ramp.
“Scorio. Naomi.” The Iron Tyrant inclined his head. “Thank you for attending me. I asked that you be brought here for a reason. Can you divine it?”
Scorio glanced up once more. From how small some of the flecks of red were, it was clear that the drudges were far, far above. The contrast to the warren of tunnels below was extreme; the golden light around them served only to emphasize the extent of darkness that pressed down upon them.
“You wanted us to see the full scope of your domain?” asked Naomi. “To impress us with all the dark and empty space you rule?”
The corner of the Iron Tyrant’s mouth quirked upward. “Hardly. Rather, I wish to impress upon you that everything I do is deliberate. Walk with me.”
The Iron Tyrant walked back into the darkness.
Scorio turned on his darkvision and followed. The scope of the chamber was sufficiently cavernous that he couldn’t make out the walls; the spire above widened as it descended to a broad conical base, and that had to meet the ceiling of the main structure far above them.
The floor was unworked here, smooth and organic in feel. It sloped gradually in the direction they were walking, shaped and worked as if by a hundred different streams that had eroded their own overlapping beds toward their destination.
Everything I do is deliberate. Scorio watched the Iron Tyrant as he led them unhurriedly on. Scorio and Naomi had sufficient notoriety to warrant an audience. Before, in Bastion, the Iron Tyrant had sought to recruit them into his service to deal with the Gurlocks. Was that still his desire? If so, how did he think this display would change their minds?
The slope grew more severe, and up ahead, Scorio saw that they approached a great well of darkness, easily a dozen yards across.
“Once,” said the Iron Tyrant, tone clinical, “that aperture blazed with a fire so bright it would have blinded us to gaze upon it. The queen of this hive would release the heat from the caldera below, and flames would climb hundreds of yards into the sky, scorching and sealing the interior of the spire even as a hundred hidden flues drew the white-hot temperatures outside and dispersed them. The vast majority of the Fury Spires are given to this sole purpose: dispersing the very heat that was purposefully built up below. The visible portion was, effectively, the least important. It was what was hidden that mattered.”
The Iron Tyrant crouched, his stiff robes bending around him, then leaped to fall neatly into the center of the sinkhole and disappear below.
“I think we’re meant to follow,” said Scorio.
“He didn’t make that clear. What do you think would happen if we returned to our rooms?”
“We’d get a second summons. Probably a lot less friendly.”
“Ah, well.” Naomi eyed him. “Wings?”
Scorio ignited his Heart, feeding it Iron, and rose into his scaled form. Formed short wings that would allow him maximum maneuverability within the chute, and turned so Naomi could climb onto his back. Then he ran down the ever steeper slope until at last he, too, leaped, and sailed into the air.
He pulled into a tight corkscrew, banking hard as he flew around, then furled his wings to drop after the Iron Tyrant. The funnel remained roughly of the same diameter, the rock flashing by quickly, and they dropped ever faster through what had to be the core of the complex, the air growing scorching hot, the wind baking, until at last Scorio sighted the floor and Iron Tyrant below.
They fell into a giant chamber, roughly spherical, and large enough for a small fort. The space was pitch dark, but even so, Scorio’s vision picked up faint glimmers that ran along the inside of the glassy walls, which were perfectly, eerily smooth, their surface patterned subtly in a manner his darkvision couldn’t make out.
The air in this great chamber was arid and Scorio felt his eyes dry out, his mouth and throat grow desiccated, so that he had to continuously swallow to keep them from growing parched. He circled around once then descended to land beside the Iron Tyrant.
“There are twelve of these calderas within the entirety of the Fury Spires,” he said, as if they’d never interrupted his lecture. “Each one a church and sanctum to the blazeborns. Here, the queens gave birth to their endless progeny. Here, in the central spire, the greatest of their number decided what their hive needed, and then stoked the flames below, ordered the very magma to rise or fall, so that she could forge the destiny of their race.”
The Iron Tyrant lifted one hand to gesture to the tomb-like stillness. “And now, it is as you see it.”
“By your doing,” said Scorio.
“By my doing.” The Iron Tyrant looked over his shoulder at them. “The blazeborns were our greatest foes in the Iron Weald for centuries. Too numerous to be permanently defeated, but too weak to warrant an intervention by the more powerful of our kind deeper in hell. At constant war with the Gurlocks, and happy to slaughter our kind whenever and wherever they could. Before I laid my eyes upon them they were a gauntlet that every Tomb Spark and Flame Vault had to run, and for every nine that passed through to the Telurian Band, one of our kind was murdered by these fiends.”
“Are you asking for our gratitude?” asked Naomi.
“Hardly.” The Iron Tyrant turned now to face them fully. “What was deemed too difficult by those who ruled the Rascor Plains and unworthy of attention by those deeper in hell I remedied. Can you guess why?”
Scorio frowned. “The trade in Gold mana.”
“There was no trade in Gold mana before I struck an accord with the Fiery Shoals. Before my intervention, whomever ruled it dispersed the mana to their followers, or hoarded enough till they believed themselves ready to abandon the Fiery Shoals and strike into deeper hell.”
The Iron Tyrant’s deeply set eyes bored into Scorio. “I am aware of your friendship with the fiendish toad. It fought by your side when you struck at Praximar, and proved instrumental in your flushing him out of his place of strength so you could pursue and kill him. Thus it’s entirely possible that you harbor sympathies for the fiends of hell. Perhaps you think what I have done here,” and again he waved his hand at the swarming darkness, “as a crime?”
Scorio remained silent.
“Come.” The Iron Tyrant strode across the caldera floor.
Again, Scorio could only exchange a glance with Naomi and follow.
The Iron Tyrant led them to a curve in the rock wall that shielded the opening of a narrow passage. This curved back tightly several times and then opened into a broad hallway of great ostentation.
Great orbs of bright golden light were set high along the walls, illuminating intricately patterned stone that ran along the hallway. Obsidian had been interwoven with iron and ruby to create an ongoing and mesmerizing tapestry of alien artwork.
At the hall’s end was a gold-rimmed archway, and through this the Iron Tyrant led them into a low-ceilinged series of natural caverns so closely connected that they were more fluctuations of a seamless whole.
“Xandera,” the Iron Tyrant called, tone peremptory. “You have guests.”
The walls were draped in silken tapestries that betrayed more of the beguiling abstract patterns, and everywhere Scorio saw precious metals and gems worked into the floors, ceiling, and columns. The air here throbbed with Bronze mana, with faint whisps of Silver darting to and fro.