Then, just as quickly as before, the flames cut out, and Scorio gasped and sank back on his ass, his tail curling about his legs.
“Minimal control,” said the Nightmare Lady. “But there’s room to speculate that you can improve.”
“Minimal?” Scorio rubbed the back of his armored forearm across his muzzle. It was so strange - the muzzle felt normal, an intrinsic part of him, but his active mind kept forgetting it was there, so that he ended up banging his face with his arm as he sought to reach where his human lips would have been.
“You held the flame form for perhaps five seconds. Then had to breathe the fire after the same amount.”
“Your tail?”
She drew it around and held the great triangular blade in both hands. Its surface was pitted and smeared as if the black bone had begun to melt. “Your flame form is a weapon in and of itself.”
“So… if I moved through someone?”
Naomi raised an eyebrow. “Ouch. But can you? How did it feel when I struck you?”
“Strange, but not painful.”
“Can you pass through walls?”
“No.” He paused, considered. “Can I?”
She pointed at the caldera wall. “Find out.”
Scorio took a deep breath and marched to the entrance. If he hit the doorframe just a little to the left, he’d have to pass through a foot or more of solid stone to enter the tunnel.
He centered himself, and realized he felt nervous about engaging the process again. It wasn’t that it hurt, or that he was afraid of the flame body, but more that it felt so… intense, so viscerally different, that it was akin to nerving himself up to leap from the top of a tall cliff into the ocean below.
Exhilarating, but also… overwhelming.
Still. He refilled his reservoir, took a moment to collect his thoughts, then summoned the power forth.
That searing potential burst out of his core, enveloping him, consuming him, transforming him into living flame. His whole sense of self became fluid, violent, intangible, like a scream transformed into fire.
His Heart immediately began to drain as if it had sprung a leak, and he lunged forward, flowing through the air to impact the wall beside the tunnel mouth.
He spread out over the rock, curled around the archway even, but then returned to his humanoid shape just before it.
The sensation was disorienting. For a moment there as he’d been plastered against the rock his very sense of self had warped, his ability to think blanked out and become mere instinct, pure intention.
But Scorio couldn’t analyze it any further; he let out a deep, ragged gasp and inhaled the black inferno out of his substance, returning to material form, and building the pressure deep within his chest again.
“No passing through walls,” Naomi called out from the center of the room. “Try and hold the fire! I’m counting! Three! Four!”
The pressure built within him, terrifying, needing release. It felt like trying to prevent a crystal from shattering with his willpower alone.
“Six!”
Scorio leaped back and roared forth his flames, aiming them this time at the blank wall of the caldera.
Black fire burst against the smooth rock, billowed out in all directions, and superheated the air to shimmering.
Then it cut, but where he’d hit the wall glowing marks remained - not created by his flame, but revealed by the heat. Within the smooth curvature of the wall symbols, or perhaps parts of a greater pattern, now glowed a dull orange within the rock.
A moment later the glow faded, and the wall returned to its dull uniform surface once more.
“Did you see that?” he asked, glancing back at Naomi.
“Barely. But yes. This was where the blazeborns gave birth to their eggs, right?”
“Correct. They needed to draw the heat from the magma below. But this place is more than just a containment space for the heat. Those symbols… they looked… like runes.”
“Fiendish magic?”
“Something along those lines.” Scorio turned to take in the dark enormity of the cavernous chamber. “Do you think they lie inside all of the walls here?”
Naomi turned with him. “Probably.”
With a sigh, Scorio released his scaled form and sank gratefully back to being his natural self. He felt weak in comparison, diminished, lightheaded.
“Easy there,” said Naomi, stepping in to wrap an arm around his waist. “Did you overdo it?”
“Yeah,” grinned Scorio. “Of course I did. Maybe… maybe a rest is in order.”
“And some food. You look terrible.”
“Thanks.”
They left the caldera, walking slowly, his arm settled around her shoulders for support.
“Still.” She shook her head in wonder. “You’re a Dread Blaze. A Dread Blaze. You were a Flame Vault for how long?”
“It’s been five or six weeks since Praximar died, and I was a Flame Vault for a week or two by then, so… two months?”
“Rank insanity. If I wasn’t so shocked I’d hate you from sheer spiteful jealousy.”
“Though!” Scorio raised a finger. “If we can get Nox to teach you his technique, there’s no reason you can’t use it to make Dread Blaze like I did.”
“I need more than the technique,” said Naomi quietly. “It took you two years in the Crucible to apply it as you did.”
“Well, that was through trial and error. You’ve got me now to guide you.” Scorio blinked as his vision momentarily doubled. “But, ah, maybe tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” agreed Naomi, and then brightened up. “But you’re right. Your approach worked. I’ve never heard of anything like it.”
“Now I just need to make Pyre Lord already.”
Naomi’s glare was so venomous that Scorio chuckled, but then thought of what he’d learned from his Dread Blaze Trial. Saw himself seated alone, filled with such hatred that he’d barely recognized himself, and his humor subsided. What had happened to him? Who had the King’s Scepter been? What had he done? Where had he acquired that Black Tower?
So many questions.
Had he won the battle and killed the king?
“Naomi. There’s no trial to become a Pyre Lord, right?”
“It’s not a trial. You don’t make a decision. You’re given one last vision from your past, and if you can integrate what you are and the powers you’ve manifested into your sense of self, you ascend. For some, this results in their very powers integrating into an entirely new form. For others, they just solidify their current powers.”
“Oh.” Scorio considered, and felt the panicky sensation subside. “Good. Nothing.”
Chapter 21
Scorio slept deeply upon returning to their cluster, and when he awoke he remembered no dreams. Refreshed, starving, and still shocked at his sudden ascension in rank, he took a moment to simply sit on the edge of his bed and check in with himself, to reach inward and try to understand the new power that burned in his core.
Even with his Heart inert he felt the difference. A faint tremulous shiver in his essence, like a heat haze espied at the far end of a road beneath a baking sun.
Fire.
He could breathe fire now.
He still had trouble believing it.
More incredibly, he could turn himself into fire. His body, such a foundational and real aspect of his sense of self, could transform into something intangible. Held together by his power, his will, but no longer physical. A wavering, human-shaped mass of black flames.
Did that make him invulnerable to damage while in that form? Would all attacks pass through him like Naomi’s had done? Could he survive huge falls by shifting into his flame body at the last second? Could he continue to fly with wings of flame if he shifted midair?
So many questions, but all ancillary to the single and most important fact: he could transform himself into fire.
Scorio stared out at nothing as he struggled to wrap his mind around this truth. This new aspect of his being. He’d chosen to pursue his vengeance against the king and the King’s Scepter, and had been rewarded with the ability to become and breathe fire. What would he have manifested if he’d chosen to remain behind the lines and pursue an orderly battle?