Madness. Pincers and feelers. Bands of armor shattering, ichor spraying. Scorio laughed, yelled, cursed, laughed again. His talons glowed in the dark. He slashed and scored, hammered and kicked.
His back crawled with a wall of frustrated fiends. The Shroud shivered but held.
Attacks got through, pincers closing on his forearms, his shins. But his ebon scales shimmered and mostly held off the Gold-powered slashes at bay; what should have severed his hand off at the wrist merely opened a laceration.
And all the while the Gold mana burned in his heart, a private kiln that translated power into glory. His blows were thunderous, his talons exquisitely sharp, and though he swayed and fell as if drunk, it was easy to give into the murderous intent, the sweet simplicity of trying to tear things apart.
The ground grew treacherous with corpses.
Again and again, Scorio bellowed the command that the grubs retreat. It was just enough to slow them, confuse them, and so they died, half turned away.
But it was when Scorio discovered the trick of flipping them onto their backs and plunging his claws into their milky white stomachs before they could curl up that the tide of battle changed.
Time grew fluid. The grubs boiled out of their burrows, fell from overhead as they crawled over each other, seeking to surmount the Shroud. His arms were scored with terrible wounds, his shins slashed, and one particularly gruesome attack lopped off all the toes of his left foot.
Still Scorio fought on, driven by inexhaustible energy, each blow as powerful as the first, his body dripping custard-like gore, his eyes wide, his shoulders heaving with deep breaths.
And then… there was nothing left to kill.
Scorio turned in a ragged circle, studying the walls. He was knee deep in corpses.
Stillness.
His Shroud glimmered in the dark. Steam rose from the ichor sizzling on his talons. His own blood ran down his legs, dripped off the points of his elbows.
Scorio laughed, weak, delirious, and then felt a strange, convulsive shiver in the air as if all of Hell had shrugged.
For a moment Scorio didn’t understand, but then Jova’s words returned to him: “To make Flame Vault, you have to heighten that reactive point till ignition becomes reflexive.”
Scorio allowed his Heart to go dark. The flames rose once with a great whoomph then disappeared, leaving his Heart hanging in space, huge and perfect, dark and ominous.
Ignite, thought Scorio, and it immediately roared into flame.
“Your will is bolstered by your confidence, your trust in your own strength and integrity, your faith in your ability to accomplish your goals.” Jova’s voice was painfully clear.
Scorio gazed at his taloned hand. After surviving all those months in stasis, he no longer had any doubt about his powers. His ability to wield them. His Shroud, his aura of mastery, his scaled form.
They were who he was. They were part of him.
Scorio summoned his Shroud. It appeared before him effortlessly. He closed his eyes and focused on his aura. It hung about him, weightless, diffuse, awaiting his will to grow directed.
Stillness descended on him, a sense of self that defied the Curse’s delirium.
Scorio felt himself whole.
In his mind’s eye, his huge Heart burned. He gazed into its depths, its immensely dense reservoir of Gold mana, and felt a powerful and abiding sense of self-knowledge, of confidence, or focus.
Whatever he had lost, whatever mistakes he’d made, he now longer had any doubt as to his unity of self, of purpose, of resolve.
Then the pain of his limbs, the mania of the Curse, and fever-bright delirium—all of it fell away and disappeared.
And Scorio found himself standing on a gray slate platform from whose edges arose two freestanding portals, the void beyond starless and infinite.
One of the doors was sealed shut, but the second stood open.
Deep satisfaction washed through Scorio. For a long, aching moment he simply stared at the portal, its iron frame, its massive reality. Then, with calm purpose, he stepped through and into his third trial.
Chapter 47
“We’ve received word.” Sir Oyster stood at the grand cabin’s door, his lined and stubbled features looking all the more worn for the three days of continuous naval battle. “Harkan and his army’s camped out on both the King’s Road and the Western Way. There’s no retreating for the bastards.”
Scorio rose from the heavy captain’s chair to study the map of Spurn Harbor. The great bay was occupied by his three stolen royal galleons and seven frigates. The Sea Baron’s ships littered the bottom of the bay and the flotsam from their shattered masts and torn rigging yet bobbed in the waves.
Waberly took up the red markers of Harkan’s army and placed them on the two main roads departing from Spurn Harbor proper. “That’s all we needed, sir. The city is ours once more. They’re like pigs in a pen.”
Scorio frowned at the two gold markers placed square in the port’s center. Sea Barons Uln and Pothos.
Sir Oyster moved up alongside the table to join the small group of officers and trusted men. “They must know by now the king’s forces won’t reach them in time. They placed the rope around their own necks when they refused to flee.”
“We can set the terms,” continued Waberly. “Dictate them as we will.”
“Terms,” said Sir Oyster with disdain. “Did Uln give the port terms before they hung every suspected leader of the rebellion and drove the people out into the countryside to starve?”
“No,” agreed Waberly uncomfortably, “but we are not the Sea Barons. If we occupy the port the king will cease his advance. He’s equipped for battle in the field, not for a siege. He’ll realize that our forces will harry his flanks while he tries to build siege engines. This is an unrivaled opportunity to demonstrate to all and one that the king’s lies about our nature are precisely that: vile slander.”
Scorio returned to his chair, thoughtful.
Garvis, white-haired and face puckered by a dramatic scar, stared angrily at the former king’s man. “What are you suggesting, lieutenant? That we slap Uln and Pothos on the wrist, tax them for their slaughter, and let them go?”
“The Sea Barons are split,” said Waberly quietly. “Uln and Pothos for the king, the Ivory Jester and Tegram hewing to neutrality, and Kiln considering throwing in with us. If we release Uln and Pothos we can convince the whole league to join us.”
“Pah.” Garvis brushed his fingers under his chin in Waberly’s direction. “Scorio’s own brother courted the bastards for months and got nowhere. No. We need to teach ’em a lesson. There are consequences, even for the wealthy. This is no game. They bloody their hands, we’ll bloody their necks.”
“Scorio?” Waberly’s voice was calm but his expression tense. “Which way do you incline?”
Scorio frowned at the map. He could hear the calls of sailors on the deck. The creak of the rigging. The hushing sigh of the sea against the hull. “The king is four days march away?”
Sir Oyster nodded. “So says Velos, and his scouts are rarely wrong.”
“How many Legendaries march with them?”
“That we’re not sure. Parcival the Green, assuredly, and Miranis, the King’s Scepter. Gerbaine was seen with the army two weeks ago, which means the Bear and the Blind Healer.”
“There will be more.” Scorio tapped his lips. “The king knew I’d be leading our fleet. Cut the head from the snake and the threat’s ended.”
“Four or five Legendaries can’t take an entire port,” said Waberly.
“But ten could. Kuragin, for example.” Scorio’s thoughts turned dark. “I split with my brother, Waberly, because I chose not to court the lords of the realm. It’s a fools game. The Sea Barons had ample opportunity to throw in with us before.”