“A pity this lesson in humility will go to waste,” said Plassus, tone conversational. “But better you die enlightened than a crude, ignorant brute.”
And now Plassus reached into Scorio’s reservoir and tore the mana therein free. Scooped it out with such invasive violence that Scorio’s entire being vibrated in protest, his inability to scream summoning horrific flashes of traumatic memory from his time in the Golden Crucible.
Scorio fought Plassus. Fought to keep his mana, to maintain sovereignty over his reservoir, but his defenses were feeble. For a few moments he felt the Charnel Duke’s might fumble, but then his reservoir emptied out and his Heart guttered.
His scaled form slipped away, his wings, his ability to command or summon his Shroud.
He hung before Plassus in his human form, chest heaving within his prison, trapped and helpless.
“Let me help you down, Boy,” said Plassus, and somehow he disengaged from his own sphere of power; Scorio and his three flame attacks remained locked in place as the Charnel Duke stepped forward and caught him by the foot. With ease he drew Scorio down, placing him so that he hovered at ground level.
“There,” said Plassus, dusting off Scorio’s shoulders. “Much more civilized, wouldn’t you say?”
Scorio snarled silently at the man, reaching out over and over again for the banished mana.
“You’ll note I never even established dominion,” said Plassus, tone conversational. “Nor did I bother with my Ferula. Oh, what’s that? Here, let me show you.”
And a rod as long as the man’s arm appeared in his grasp. It was a deep slate blue, twin ridges intertwining as they ran up its length to cup a great black gem at its head the size of Scorio’s fist.
“It’s not often that I bring her forth.” Plassus turned his Ferula from side to side. “She’s a bit too much for most foes. Obviously she’s failed against the Blood Ox, but all else?” Plassus’ grin was murderous. “Overkill.”
The Charnel Duke extended his Ferula so that its gem pressed against Scorio’s knee. “Recall my promise? That I’d tear off your limbs, one by one? You didn’t think I’d use my hands, did you?”
The silence in the caldera ached.
Scorio never stopped fighting. He’d never had a chance, everyone had said as much but it was so painfully clear now. The Charnel Duke fought on a completely different level.
But still Scorio fought, reaching for that Iron mana, reaching, straining.
A flash of movement from above as something dropped from the great funnel in the ceiling.
Plassus jerked back, eyes rising.
The Nightmare Lady froze just a yard above him, her great bladed tail caught in the act of slashing down to decapitate the man.
Scorio felt his heart blaze with emotion, a cascade of shock and delight and fierce love sweeping through him.
The sight caused Plassus to flinch; for the briefest of seconds his control over his powers wavered, enough that the three plumes tunneled a few inches closer, enough that Scorio was capable of turning his head just enough to gaze past Plassus at where the drudge stood, ignored and hidden in the shadows.
He’d no way to signal, but he stared at the blazeborn with wide eyes, trying to signal with his desperation.
Xandera had bid him signal. But if she was watching, might she recognize the moment as having come?
Plassus laughed. “What’s this? Your bonny friend? She’s more of a savage than you are, Scorio! At least you gave insult to my face, while she? She falls upon me like a brigand, violating the term of our duel -”
The Charnel Duke frowned and abruptly ended his tirade.
Scorio strained, leaning into the hold, his muscles writhing as he fought the implacable grip.
A dull rumble sounded from far, far below them.
“What the fucking fuck is that?” asked Plassus, turning around to glare at the Iron Tyrant high up on his balcony. “Bravurn! What are you doing?”
“Not I,” called the Iron Tyrant, tone so repressed with anger that it seared the air.
The rumble grew. Not a physical sensation, but a spiritual earthquake. Scorio’s vision blurred. The very walls seemed to shake, his innards jellying.
“What the hell!” Plassus scowled. “Very well! I establish my dom -”
The world erupted.
Bronze and Iron mana exploded up from the ground in a deluge so potent, so thick, that Scorio instantly felt himself submerged. The eruption was volcanic, total, and the mana roared up to hit the top of the caldera and there remained penned in by a hundred bands of suddenly glowing metallic runes that blazed to life from within the stone itself.
All around them the walls came to life, the gray-brown stone turning translucent to reveal the complex patterns hidden within their substance, patterns that caged the mana, concentrated it, caused its density to increase at a terrifying rate as more and more poured in without end.
Screams.
Panic.
Scorio’s vision blurred as everything shimmered into silhouettes, reduced to dark vertical lines before the mana onslaught.
“The Blood Ox!” he managed to scream, mangling his throat as he forced the words out. “The Blood Ox!”
Plassus whipped around, staggering as if suddenly drunk.
The Charnel Duke was fighting to keep the mana at bay, to maintain the void around Scorio, and it was a testament to his strength that he almost managed. But the effort was akin to shielding a child from an avalanche with your body alone; the sheer violence of the eruption overwhelmed Plassus’ void, and Scorio found himself suffused.
But not with Iron or Bronze.
With streaming ribbons of Silver and the purist bands of Gold.
With a cry he directed the mana directly into his Heart and ignited.
Plassus was shouting his defiance, sounding drunk and terrified. The Nightmare Lady yet hung above him, the three plumes of fire, but the man’s focus was broken. All of them were gradually sinking toward the Charnel Duke, sinking as if through honey, but mobile once more.
Scorio summoned his scaled form. He rose in height, shoulders broadening, body sheeting in scales and plate armoring, horns sweeping back, his mouth broadening and filling with fangs.
Gold burned across the great curvature of his Heart.
Gold called to the tempering of his body.
Reaching into his very depths, summoning every last reserve of his primal strength, Scorio strained and broke free.
The shouts and horrified screams from a hundred throats blended with the basso profundo roar of the endless mana upsurge. The mana was roiling within the caldera, growing denser, more potent, more overwhelming by the second, the pressure head-splitting, the runes and patterns blazing now within the walls so that Scorio felt himself within a latticework of magma.
Time seemed to slow.
He lunged for the Charnel Duke.
Plassus wheeled around, his face indistinct in the mana field.
Scorio’s scream slurred as he raked his burning talons toward the man’s face.
He felt as if he were trying to bore through rock. To snap a thousand chains that constrained his every limb.
The Charnel Duke cried out a word of power and his control slammed back into place. Scorio locked up, utterly paralyzed, and the explosion of mana dulled and dimmed as the eruption was quelled.
Plassus’ will crushed the caldera like an iron gauntlet. He seized the ocean of mana, braided it faster than Scorio could understand, formed it into a complex pattern and then slammed all of it back through the ground, sending it hurtling into the depths.
And just like that, the caldera was cleared.
The void left behind was shocking in comparison.
“I,” rasped Plassus, shoulders heaving, mane wild, gaze burning into Scorio, “have dominion.”
Only then did the Charnel Duke glance down.
The farthest tip of Scorio’s longest talon had sunken half an inch into Plassus’ chest.
The man’s eyes bulged in fury, and Scorio’s Heart instantly guttered as all his mana was torn from him, not in scoops, not through some contest of wills, but simply evacuated instantly. His plumes of flame vanished as their very structure unraveled, and the Nightmare Lady shrank to Naomi whom the Charnel Duke caught with a snare of mana and deposited a score of yards away.