Time passed. The darkness in the tunnel was absolute, and Scorio settled in to wait. Finally Alain appeared, and Scorio congratulated himself on noticing him right away.
“All clear.” Alain grinned nervously. “The Emberling didn’t want to go, but I both leveraged dirt and promised to cover for them. So, ready?”
“Lead on,” said Scorio.
Alain did so. They emerged into the broad hall that curved around the caldera, and a moment later stood before the grandiose archway that led into Queen Xandera’s quarters.
“I’ll wait out here,” said Alain. “If any trouble comes, I’ll, ah… hoot like an owl.”
Scorio chuckled. “Perfect. Nobody will ever notice. Thanks, Alain.”
“Just doing my part to help with whatever mysterious mission you’re on.” Alain drew out a cheroot. “Good luck!”
Scorio passed into the series of low-ceilinged natural caverns. The air was baking hot, the silence absolute.
“Queen Xandera?” he called softly. “Are you there?”
Having seen more of the spire by this point, he could better appreciate the stunning artistry of the rock and gem patterns that adorned the walls. Sinuous and alive with energy and movement, they made the other hallways look dull and unimaginative. They were different from the maze of freestanding walls far below. However, up here, they seemed… more ornamental, with great swoops and dazzling displays. The walls in the basement were far more complex, purposeful, somehow.
There was no response. Scorio emerged into the large, sunken chamber and stared out over its floor of live coals. The air shimmered, and his brow immediately pricked with sweat.
“Queen Xandera?” He sounded breathless in his own ears. “My name is Scorio. My apologies if this is… inappropriate, but I wanted to speak with you without Bravurn being present.”
The coals stirred, swirled, and the fiendish queen arose sinuously from its depths to tower over him. Her presence was potent; had not the heat already had its effect, he was sure his mouth would have dried out, his throat clamped close.
The queen fixed her burning white eyes upon him, her expression neutral, her great horned head canted to one side inquisitively. The coals about her still stirred, rose and fell, as if huge coils yet roiled in their depths.
“Scorio,” she said, her voice rich and low, tinged with amusement and light curiosity. “You honor me greatly with your interest, but it is unseemly for us to speak without Bravurn’s permission.”
Scorio couldn’t tear his gaze away from her smoldering beauty, her alien majesty. “I understand, and I apologize for not getting his permission. But… I don’t think he’d have let me talk with you if I’d asked.”
“Then perhaps we shouldn’t speak. I don’t wish to upset Bravurn. He is kindly to a fault, but even so generous a man as he shouldn’t be taken advantage of.”
Scorio hesitated. She sounded utterly sincere, but… “A friend of mine is traveling here by means of the underground channels and the labyrinth. I wanted to greet him, but your Titans blocked my passage.”
“A Great Soul travels the veins?”
“I’m sorry, not a Great Soul. An Imperial Ghost Toad.”
The queen narrowed her eyes. “You call an Imperial Ghost Toad your friend?”
“Not my friend.” Scorio couldn’t help but grin. “My favorite friend.”
The queen’s black-iron mask stilled, revealing nothing of her emotions, her thoughts. Her eyes, twin holes to her molten core, blazed and smoldered but were equally inexpressive.
“That is rare,” she said at last. “Most Great Souls declare all fiends to be either tools or enemies.”
“Most Great Souls don’t seem to know much about Acherzua,” said Scorio. “I don’t either. But I’m open to learning. And Nox is below. I’d see him if I could.”
“How do you know he is under the spires if my Titans have blocked your passage? One of your Great Soul powers?”
“No.” Scorio scratched the back of his head. “Nox, ah, taught me his Delightful Secret Marinating technique. I immersed myself in his jelly pool, and because of it was able to become an Emberling. He said, later, that that made us clutchmates, and he’s been able to find me because of it. Just recently, I’ve been able to sense him as well. It’s what brought me here. I was injured trying to travel toward him, and took shelter in the Fury Spires to heal.”
“Clutchmates,” said Xandera, tone completely neutral. “That’s the same term we blazeborns used for those hatched together in a caldera firing.”
“That so? I think with Nox it’s more of a toad thing.”
Queen Xandera was staring at him with such intensity that Scorio had to fight the urge to dry swallow. Was she about to attack? The air crackled between them with the rise in tension.
“I’m sorry. If my request has offended you, or put you in a difficult position, then obviously I’ll take my leave -”
“Tell me about yourself, Scorio.” Her tone grew soothing, and the tension melted away from her frame as she sank slightly back into the coals. “Unless you must leave soon?”
“No, I have a little time. I don’t know too much about myself. We Great Souls -”
“Don’t recall your previous lives, I know. But you must have walked an interesting path if it led you to becoming clutchmates with an Imperial Ghost Toad.”
So Scorio told her. Of awakening as a Red Lister, being cast through the Final Door, of meeting Naomi in the ruins of Bastion and how he’d trained against all reason to ignite his Heart. How he’d met Nox while exploring the old Academy so as to use its Gauntlet, and then helped Sol fend off Imogen the Woe with his interruption.
Queen Xandera listened without interruption or expression until this last, at which she drew closer. “You claim to have affected a fallen Imperator of your kind while only a Cinder?”
“Well, not really. She knew me from my past lives. I think she believed me an ally, or a friend. Someone sympathetic to her desire to open the way back to Eterra. When I struck her Ferula, I think it was my betrayal that distracted her just enough for Sol to win the fight.”
“Your betrayal,” said Xandera.
“Yeah. Seems like I’ve done a lot of that in my past, but I swear to you, in this life at least, I regret no action of mine. Well.” He paused, thinking of Jova. “Almost none.”
“Surprisingly honest. Continue, if you will.”
So he did, speeding through the rest of his stay at the Academy, winning the final Gauntlet run, fleeing Bastion for the Rascor Plains, warning the White Queen of the people’s oppression under Praximar.
“You cared for the regular humans? I’ve been led to understand they exist just to enable your Great Soul lives.”
“A lot of folks seem to think that.” Scorio shrugged. “I don’t know. Being an outcast from the first day made an impression on me. Plus Naomi is a natural born Great Soul, and together we’ve got nothing but contempt for a lot of the House systems.”
“I would like to speak further with Naomi.”
“She’d love to talk to you, too.”
“What happened next?”
“More betrayal. Manticore, the group that had offered to sponsor us, used me to… well. It’s a complicated story, but Praximar and Manticore used me to break the Queen’s Accords and cripple House Kraken. I was trapped for two years in the Crucible - a place full of Gold mana. But when I broke out, I got my revenge.”
“This ‘Crucible’… this would be the Fiery Shoals?”
“You’ve heard of it?”
“Oh, yes.” Xandera’s smile turned dark. “We used to send raiding parties there long ago to harvest Gold mana.”
“This had to have been before the White Queen, then?”
“A queen?” Xandera rose a foot higher out of the coals, the belly of her serpentine length glowing with heat. “I didn’t know your kind had such.”