“It’s like it rose up in a panic,” said Naomi from behind, words tight as she controlled her breathing. “Does anything eat World Worms?”
“Not in the Iron Weald, I hope. Actually, let me correct that: I refuse to believe anything around here could scare one. Maybe it just got bored.”
“Just got bored,” muttered Naomi as they resumed climbing.
They soon discovered why the World Worm had ascended so sharply: the tunnel broke into a natural cave system, a complex series of chasms and shallow depressions. Each time the tunnel opened into a new cavern,, Scorio reminded himself how massive the original caves had to have been; even with a hundred yard-wide tunnel driven through their center, they yet retained enough depth to drop to a rubble-strewn floor below the tunnel’s circumference.
But it was the veins of Iron mana running through the rock that drew their attention.
“How do we harness it?” whispered Naomi, kneeling down and wiping gravel and chunks of rock away from the glowing metal seam.
Scorio pressed his palm to the vein and felt the incredibly pure and condensed mana contained within. He closed his eyes and sought to draw it into his Heart, but his visual metaphor of a paddle failed him utterly; how did you stir rock? Instead, he tried to simply inhale the mana, but that proved equally futile.
“It’s right there,” groaned Naomi in frustration. “There has to be a way to get it out.”
“It’s ore.” Scorio sat back on his heels. “Probably needs to be mined and melted.”
“Or for us to be more powerful. Reminds me of that mana desert just outside of Bastion.”
“The Ash Belt, sure.” With a groan he rose to his feet. “Well, I guess the World Worm didn’t have this problem.”
“Must have been a feast.”
They set to climbing again, but now the slope tapered off and became comparatively level. The tunnel began to zigzag, the sheer bulk of the World Worm making its turns slow, but still it had bored its way left and right, up and down, no doubt chasing the richest veins.
But so rich was the Iron mana in this area, even depleted and hollowed out as it was, that veritable lakes formed in every depression. Scorio and Naomi drank deep, and soon their reservoirs were filled once more.
“Ready to run?” asked Scorio.
“Let’s go.”
Together, they ignited and took off. Iron mana filled his body with a sturdy strength that cooled the burn in his thighs and filled his lungs with a deceptively inexhaustible energy.
“Remember when I first ignited?”
Naomi grinned at him. “How could I forget? You ran off as giddy as a sweet-sick child.”
That moment had been delirious, feverishly glorious, and he’d felt as if he could race forever. In truth, his Heart had guttered after only a score of seconds, but while it had lasted he’d felt invincible.
Now? Now he could race in the same way for what felt like ages. His Heart was immensely deep, perfectly spherical, and remarkably efficient at burning mana. Even the Crimson Earls who’d judged him after Praximar’s death had been taken aback.
But Naomi’s was still normal. Her Silver-tempered body allowed her to race for longer than most, but soon she slackened the pace.
Scorio reluctantly slowed as well.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped, wiping at her sweaty brow. “Do you want my Heart to gutter and leave me depleted?”
“Of course not.” He considered apologizing and realized that would only make her more annoyed. Should he tease her? No, not right now. Best to just keep moving. “Let’s find more mana.”
“It’s obscene.” To her credit, she was trying to keep her tone light. “Gold-tempered, and a Heart that’s nearly twice the size of mine and much better at just about everything. Why did we kill Ydrielle again? We could have forced her to drop me into the Crucible.”
“And leave me waiting for two years?”
“I waited for you.”
“True.”
The World Worm had passed through a series of broad chasms here, forcing them to leap over terrifying cracks that knifed down into the depths. They finally reached one that was easily some nine yards wide.
“Want a ride over?” asked Scorio.
Naomi clucked her tongue. “I can leap this easily.”
“If you fall, I’ll have to dive down and fetch you, and then you’ll really be mad.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to be funny? Because -”
A huge wad of glistening black goo spattered against her shoulder blades. It flowed around her neck and almost encased her upper arms. Naomi cried out even as she was yanked straight up into the darkness.
Scorio’s reaction was immediate. He exploded up into his scaled form, wings bursting from his back, and leaped, scanning the air above with his darkvision.
No, was all he could think. No no no -
There. Naomi had already shifted into her Nightmare Lady form, high above, suspended at the end of a thick strand of webbing. Her tail whipped around, its triangular blade severing the glistening rope -
And above her -
Scorio’s eyes widened at the sheer scale of the fiend.
It was insectile, a mass of segmented blade-like legs holding it in place high up within the chasm that opened in the tunnel’s ceiling. Burning crimson eyes stared down at them from a vaguely humanoid head atop its pear-shaped body, all black exoskeleton and carapaces. Its tail was two-thirds of its length, as alive and muscular as the Nightmare Lady’s was skeletal and swift. The whole thing was some twenty yards or more long, but the speed with which it shifted about, the horror of its profusion of legs, each twice the length of a man and bent nearly double at the knee -
The Nightmare Lady contorted as she fell, twisting as she sought something to grab on to.
How the hell had it pulled her up so quickly?
Scorio barked out a cry of pure rage as he fought for altitude, beating his wings furiously, but he was too far below.
The fiend’s tail twisted about. It culminated in a mass of prongs, each as stubby and blunt as a forearm. When the prongs slammed into the Nightmare Lady, she screamed in agony.
“No!” Scorio hurled himself aloft, flying faster than he’d ever done, but all he could do was watch as the Nightmare Lady shrank into Naomi, her human form so small, so vulnerable as the tail latched on to her, arresting her fall, and the fiend began to scuttle higher up into the chasm, disappearing from view.
In that moment he would have changed his perfect Heart, his Gold-tempered body, all of it for a single ranged attack. To hurl rocks like Jova, to throw a bolt of lightning, anything.
Instead, he let out a low roar that grew louder and louder with each wingbeat. He shot up as if he were his own ranged attack, and exploded into the chasm, furling his wings at the very last second so that their edges scraped rock.
The fiend was an undulating mass of armored plates and gleaming legs, Naomi a ragdoll whose limbs shook with each jerk of its tail. It sensed him coming and contorted about, gazing down at him with its crimson eyes.
In that moment it had to realize that there was no escaping Scorio, for it flung Naomi to the side and hurled a wad of black gelatinous goo at him from an aperture in its abdomen.
“Naomi!” Scorio rolled away, trying to go after his friend, only to see her land roughly on a ledge and disappear from view.
The fiend had tossed her aside for later.
The wad of black goo hit his shoulder and upper arm, and yanked Scorio into the chasm wall with bone-jarring force.
Scorio barely felt it. He snapped open his wings, shrank them down for maximum maneuverability, and slashed at the mass of black goo with his claws. Noxious, stinging smoke billowed forth from the wad, but though it tried to trap his claws, they were simply too sharp, too hot. He slashed again, and when the fiend jerked on the cord to hurl him to the side once more, it instead simply tore most of the wad away.