Its bite shattered his shield.
Scorio felt a pulse of satisfaction. Room to grow.
Time passed.
His Heart healed up. Scorio watched the last of the fractures heal over. The pitted holes smooth out. Then one day he realized it was completely fixed, a perfect sphere four or five times the original size of his Heart.
The coffin, however, was in terrible shape. Even though the Gold flowed almost exclusively through the established channels, the pressure and the inevitable waning of Ydrielle’s power had worked in concert to structurally weaken the prism.
Scorio pondered the problem. The moment the coffin fell apart he’d be assailed from all sides by Gold mana. His Heart no longer felt any strain, but how would it handle that assault?
One way to find out.
Scorio began to pour more of the Gold into the stream that he Ignited.
His Heart didn’t miss a beat. It burned with perfect purity, torching the mana.
Scorio hesitated for what felt like days and then made his decision. He cut the third stream altogether and poured it into his Heart.
Immediately the flames whooshed even higher and the strain and pain wracked him. Scorio returned the stream back to the outside world. He couldn’t process that much Gold. Even his new Heart had its limits.
So then?
Scorio couldn’t think of a solution.
The moment he emerged from the coffin he’d be soaking in the mana. But that didn’t mean he had to draw it all into his Heart. He could simply try to… what? Exist in its midst.
Impossible. It was too concentrated.
But what choice did he have? Scorio again cut the third stream, but instead of pouring it directly into his Heart, he allowed it to suffuse the space taken up by his body. He was ready to cut the flow the second he began to burn, but instead he felt… nothing.
Pleasantly warm.
Scorio marveled. That made no sense. No—wait. He was starting to feel something. To his surprise it felt like being mildly inebriated. A wave of euphoria passed over him, and with it came a brash sense of confidence as well as a loss of focus.
What the…?
It took him a surprisingly long time to realize what was going on. The Curse. He was a Tomb Spark, which meant he could go as far as the realms washed by Bronze, the Telurian Band. But Gold was far beyond his ability to exist in. It would impede his judgement, make him intoxicated, prone to taking risks, to become obsessed with ideas or develop heightened anxiety.
Scorio rerouted the third stream and the feeling gradually faded.
So he’d be experiencing the Curse when he emerged from the coffin, but not burning up.
Why?
The answer came to him all at once: he’d tempered his body in Gold.
The realization made him want to laugh. All that work squeezing out the Coal had left him an empty cup. He’d done a couple of weeks meditating in Bronze, but had gone to the Fiery Shoals still in a state of utter desaturation. And over the past… however long he’d been here processing Gold, he’d completely tempered himself in the highest grade mana he could possibly hope for.
What had that done to his body? Crush had been tempered in Iron and Bronze. Even Jova had only absorbed Bronze. Only. For him to be completely steeped in Gold meant….
Scorio had no idea.
But it meant he could survive without the protection of the Crucible.
He’d just have to wrangle with the Curse and the Gold-fiends. And finding a way out of the caverns. Perhaps through the tunnels? The climb to the shaft far above was nearly impossible: he’d have to not only scale the walls, but then cross the ceiling to the hole.
A problem for another day.
The question was, when should he allow the coffin to collapse?
Four burst fiends later, the matter was decided at last.
After what felt like seven lifetimes trapped in the same position, unblinking, unmoving, at long, long last, the coffin fell apart. At first it was like ice cracking underfoot, panes and panels being outlined by jagged cracks, and then the whole rotted mass of it simply fell away and vanished.
Scorio dropped six inches against the rocks he’d been propped against and took his first ragged breath.
His body was his again.
He was free.
Chapter 46
It was disorienting to move once more. To be able to turn his eyes, to blink. For a dangerously long while, Scorio did just that: he fell into a crouch, pressed his knuckles into his eyes, and drank deep of darkness.
His body shook and sobs rose up in his throat. In his moment of victory he felt undone. To be free. Himself at last, to be able to breathe, feel his chest expand, feel the baleful heat of the Gold-infused magma, the press of rough rocks against his back, it was heart wrenching, overwhelming, almost terrifying.
But he forced himself back into the present moment. Dropped his hands and opened his eyes. Blinked rapidly and stood.
The sensation was so weird. It felt as if the world around him were delicate, made of stained glass, a static image that would shatter if he moved too quickly, if he disturbed it with movement.
How long had he remained frozen? Scorio grappled with the problem, time made tangible once more now that he could measure it with breaths. Months, perhaps? Five? It felt like an eternity, but he knew better than to trust that instinct.
He stood on an island. Around him lay the burst and broken bodies of saurian fiends. Most had been devoured by their brethren, but enough chunks and viscera remained to make it look like a slaughterhouse. The stench of the half cooked flesh was thick, sour, but mostly lost in the sulfurous tang of the magma-warmed air.
Scorio flexed his hands and checked in with himself. He stood in a sea of ambient Gold. By all rights it should have been torching his body, his Heart. But he felt… normal.
No, better than normal. For all his bewilderment and rawness, he felt amazing. Rested, strong, and brimming with energy.
And his Heart. He’d kept it Ignited this whole time without realizing it. Scorio again visualized it, summoned the great polished sphere so that it hung in his mind’s eye, gold flames raging about it. He’d never had such mastery. The fugue of being interred in the crystal coffin retreated and he felt fresh appreciation for all that he’d done: he gazed at his Heart and marveled at its utter absence of cracks or fissures, holes or even pock marks.
It was smooth to the point of glossiness, and burned the Gold mana effortlessly. Some part of him directed the mana to burn, but after countless weeks or months or… years? He no longer had to think about it overtly.
And his body. Scorio extended his arms, turned them about. He looked the same as before. Lean and muscular, the tracery of his veins obvious down the back of his forearms. But there was a density to him that felt strange, almost ponderous, that was new. Not heavy, exactly, but more… real. More there.
Scorio looked up.
The saurians had taken notice of him. His movements. A half dozen had moved to their ledges to observe him with their great aureate eyes. Another was swimming in his direction through the gold magma, undulating as it came, unhurried.
Scorio gazed the great fiend in the eye and summoned his mastery aura. It’s range had grown; he was able to project it out a good ten, fifteen yards, and flood the fiend with his commands.
Leave me be.
The fiend slowed, resistant. Before Scorio had cajoled them to attack him which had been within the compass of their desires; for the first time his command was contrary to their nature.
Yet after a few more sluggish strokes of its tail the saurian dipped under the magma’s surface and was gone.
Scorio looked about. It was startling to take in the whole of the cavern, to focus on what he willed. Ledges all the way round. The ceiling was far above him and with no obvious path to reaching the shaft. Wanting to see more, Scorio leaped atop the pile of rocks upon which he’d leaned forever. A single bound took him to the apex of the rocks, and he landed lightly.