So he summoned his Shroud, made it huge and densely thick, an immediate drain on his mana, but it wasn’t enough.
His Heart billowed and then glimmered down to nothing, roared back to life and then ebbed to the weakest of smolders.
It was too much. The surfeit of power combined with the feeling of a filled reservoir made him feel nauseous.
So he exhaled raggedly, released the ambient mana, and set about burning his reserves. He resumed his cycling, but where before the rise and fall had felt fluid, now his control felt like a series of staggered sprints and fumbling stops.
“What happened?” asked Naomi. “Why did your control change?”
“Burning off reservoir,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “Too much power.”
In his impatience, he abandoned the exercises and just pulled as much mana from his reservoir as he could. His Heart thrilled with the massive influx of crude strength, and his body practically vibrated, his muscles swelling, his vision turning red around the edges.
STOP, he bellowed with his command aura, burning off his excess authority. STOP.
Over and over he roared out the spiritual command, all the while maintaining his immense Shroud, his scaled body practically steaming, until his reservoir was nearly depleted.
Only then did he shut off his reservoir access and return to his ambient draw.
“Scorio.” Naomi was by his side. “This is too much. Rest. Try again later.”
“No,” he growled, staring fixedly off into nothingness. “Now.”
He resumed the great cycle of ebb and flow, but now he slid into each extreme almost recklessly, pushing his Heart’s limits with callous indifference. Again the power began to torment his body, and he was about to begin blasting his command aura when he saw the Nightmare Lady step before him.
“With me,” she rasped, and struck at him.
Scorio blocked reflexively, then again.
Her blows were methodical, rhythmic, and he realized with an almost absurd delight that he knew what she was doing: the very first exchange of blows that she’d taught him back in Bastion, a sequence of strikes and blocks that had become as natural as walking.
It would have been impossible to accomplish if it weren’t so ingrained in his being. The nearly automated ritual of the exchange allowed him to remain fixated on his Heart and the ambient draw, but slowly the Nightmare Lady increased the pace of their strikes, gradually but inexorable.
Scorio growled with pleasure and leaned into the rhythm. He picked up the pace and she matched him, her black, carapaced arms and fists slamming into him with bone-crushing force.
Faster and faster. Scorio closed his eyes. His arms moved of their own volition, anticipating each blow, each strike, and blocking before it could land even as he tore ambient mana from the seemingly endless reserves in the room.
His Heart roared with power, dwindled to nothing. Screamed its fury, then died down to a whisper.
Burning up, Scorio stole the exchange from the Nightmare Lady and reversed the pattern, striking at her now, his eyes still closed. Each of his blows was deflected or blocked cold, so that it felt as if he struck at a wall.
But he was still burning up. Having a near empty reservoir made all the difference, however; he felt rangy and half-starved. The urge to refill his reservoir was almost overwhelming, but he ignored it with callous indifference.
His Shroud blazed behind him, and in an excess of energy he extruded his wings, making them massive. He struck at Naomi, faster, ever faster, with ever more punishing power, and now she was giving way before him, too weak, unable to match his strength.
His Heart raged. His Heart died. And now it began to shiver, to shimmer with a new energy, its spherical surface rippling again and again until the disturbance became constant.
There.
With a scream, Scorio opened wide his arms and drank in all the mana he could encompass even as he threw open the gates of his reservoir and poured what remained into his Heart.
It was akin to dumping an ocean of oil onto the magma lakes far below them. His Heart exploded into a crescendo of hellish glory, its flames writhing out in every direction so that it became a ghostly sun -
—then it all fell away.
The caldera, the Iron mana, his raging Heart, the Nightmare Lady—all of it disappeared, the pressure and pain, the mania and fever-bright delirium.
And Scorio found himself standing on a gray slate platform from whose edge arose a solitary freestanding portal, the void beyond starless and infinite.
The final door.
His Dread Blaze Trial.
Scorio felt a thrill of savage success, and with grim resolve, he strode through the portal and into his last vision of his past.
Chapter 19
Scorio stepped through the white light, and became himself, or entered his past self, a Scorio that sat before a massive round table made of gleaming black stone set in the center of a hexagonal chamber. A dull drumbeat of emotion pounded within his temple, a mixture of sullen fury, grim determination, and fierce, icy hatred.
He inhaled raggedly as the shock of the emotions washed over him, profoundly aware of all the missing context that he couldn’t grasp. Arrow-slit windows allowed pale dawn light into the chamber, whose floor and walls were made of the same ebon stone, all of which radiated a piercing cold that he’d become inured to.
Where was he? Not imprisoned, but alone, seated on a great throne of identical jet, clad in thick furs, a finger tracing the seam of his lips as he stared pensively at a map carved deep into the surface of the table.
Tokens were placed across its breadth. Cities and towns were represented by identical markers, while what had to be armies were portrayed as either crimson soldiers or green.
Scorio fought to adjust to the immensity of his previous self’s anger. He felt clouded by it, overwhelmed, like a man striving to remain afloat on storm-tormented waters.
Hatred. Loathing. Numbness. Icy fury. Resolve. The desire to bring pain, to have vengeance, to break his foes upon any improvised altar and sacrifice them up to the legions of the innocent dead.
Mist curled along the floor.
Footsteps sounded, coming up a narrow stairwell, but Scorio didn’t pull his gaze from the map.
“My lord.” A formal yet hesitant tone. A slender man had ascended into the room, one clad in a motley of black and white diamonds, his face hidden by an ivory mask carved into the caricature of a grinning fool. A tri-cornered hat was tipped with bells, but these made no sound. “The time is nigh.”
Scorio kept his gaze on the map.
The man stepped gingerly around the table, tracing a gloved finger across the black stone. “Have you made your deliberations?”
“You know my desire.” Scorio was shocked by the sound of his own voice. It was little more than a broken rasp, as if he’d spent untold nights screaming.
“And one that couldn’t be nearer or dearer to my own parched heart,” said the jester. “But the means of executing it remains in doubt.”
Scorio made no response.
The jester hesitated, then withdrew his hand and linked them both behind his back. “Our forces are mustered. They teem upon the field, sordid with hope and driven half-mad with lust for blood. The king’s army gathers on the far ridge. I would not say he doubles our numbers, but the difference is academic at best.”
“Tell me of the rumors.” Scorio resumed passing his finger back and forth between his lips. “His Legendaries?”
“No fresh word. They remain missing. Parcival the Green entered his tent and nevermore emerged, while Kuragin is said to have vanished while on patrol. One by one they have all disappeared, all seventeen, though the King’s Scepter yet remains. She alone stands prominent by the king’s side, as resolute as ever.”
“Word reached me last night,” whispered Scorio. “Our own are all but gone. The Flayer of Men has vanished.”