“Good luck,” she said. “Descend to my rooms when you’re done. If I sense Davelos’s death but you don’t arrive promptly, I’ll climb up to see how I can help.”
Scorio watched her carefully, trying to sense any duplicity, but her freckled face was a genial mask.
Without a word, he turned and loped up the stone steps. Round and round, once, twice, only to fetch up against a narrow door.
Heart hammering, Scorio pressed his ear to the wood.
Silence.
She was using him. There was no question. Moira saw herself the queen and himself perhaps a knight that she could direct at Praximar’s pieces. No matter. If it meant he achieved his vengeance then he was willing to let her think herself in control.
Thus far, at any rate, she’d been honest with him.
For a moment Scorio just stood there, inhaling deeply.
Leonis. Lianshi. Naomi.
Pain twisted in his heart like a knife, a literal pang that caused his muscles to contract. Scorio grimaced.
What would he do, even if he killed the Dread Blazes? What would become of him without his friends, his—
No.
He straightened.
There’d be time to think of that later.
Calm befell him. He inhaled smoothly one last time and pushed the door open.
It was a large room, one side given to bay windows that looked out over the cliffs and magma plumes. Precious little furniture but for the massive table around which he’d once sat with his friends while making his report to the White Queen. Its obsidian surface was blank now, devoid of all reports and papers. High-backed chairs. Double doors to his right that led to the hallway.
Archway that led to the office beyond.
Two men in House Hydra robes stood in low conversation to one side of the table. One was balding, iron-haired, face long, scholarly. The other heavy shouldered, head shaved, hands beringed and gleaming.
They both glanced up curiously as he emerged.
His hood was low.
Their conversation stalled as he strode toward them.
“Here,” said the scholar. “What are you doing? Who are you?”
Scorio approached without breaking his stride.
Both men stepped back, shocked into confusion.
Scorio slammed his fist into the scholar’s face hard enough to knock him off his feet. Grasped the back of the bald man’s head and wrenched it down into the table’s edge. He released so that the man bounced off the obsidian, an arc of blood falling from his shattered nose.
He strode on even as they collapsed behind him.
Through the archway he saw an equally large room. High ceilinged, open on the same side to the lava lakes, columns separating a broad balcony. Davelos was rising from behind a rectangular table, his handsome features contorted into a frown, his athletic frame clad in a black silk robe with House Manticore emblazoned over his heart. The red light from without lit one half of his face and cast the rest into shadow.
“You’ve made a mistake, my friend,” said Davelos, and oh, his voice was so familiar, and without an ounce of fear. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to accomplish, but—”
Scorio pulled his hood back.
Davelos blinked, hesitated, then leaned forward. “Scorio?”
Who Ignited his Heart and surged up smoothly into his scaled form. In a flicker flash, he was massive. He’d not appreciated how much larger his Flame Vault form was than that of his Tomb Spark; he now stood nearly two feet taller than the Dread Blaze, his scales oily and thick, his body alive with the fiery need for violence.
Davelos’s reaction was just as rapid; his Heart Ignited with a blast of power and he flowed into his Iron form, growing ponderous and huge, reinforced plating emerging to wrap him like a suit of armor, his face disappearing behind a helm, his fists overly massive, his whole being rivetted and reinforced and powerful.
Scorio dove over the table, talons extended.
Davelos misted so that Scorio plunged through his outline and fell into a roll, came up smoothly and turned.
Davelos stepped back through the table and reformed. “How the hell did you survive?”
Scorio swung a claw at the heavy chair and flung it at the Dread Blaze who didn’t even flinch; the chair shattered across his iron frame but Scorio came right behind it and this time he blasted the man with his aura.
STAND STILL.
Davelos’s expression had already taken a slightly confused cast, as if he’d just recalled something of import; Scorio’s aura washed over him, his imperious command, and the Dread Blaze remained solid as Scorio vaulted over the table and crashed into him.
The impact was tremendous. Davelos was a Dread Blaze, his body tempered in some of the finest mana available, his bulk prodigious, his stance defensive.
But Scorio hit him like an avalanche, both heels driving into the iron eidolon’s chest and knocking him backward.
Davelos staggered, tripped, fell.
“What the—?”
Scorio fell upon him, one hand wrapped around his neck, the other slashing back and forth across the man’s helm, his talons tearing through iron leaving huge rents behind. Flicker flash, back and forth, pure rage fueling each strike.
Davelos’s head rocked back and forth and then he misted. Scorio dropped into a crouch as the Dread Blaze materialized behind him and slammed a ferocious punch across Scorio’s jaw as he turned.
Scorio’s head snapped to one side but that was all.
Slowly, lips writhing back from his fangs, he turned back to glare at Davelos.
The Dread Blaze’s astonishment was palpable. “By the ten hells,” he whispered. “What have you become?”
In response, Scorio stepped in and formed his Shroud just behind the Dread Blaze’s form a second before he punched him in the chest, slashed his claws across the man’s neck, across his ruined helm, and then slammed his knuckles into his chest once more.
STAY STILL, he commanded with all his fury.
Davelos was knocked from one side to the other then blasted back into the Shroud which he bounced off of and right back into Scorio’s attacks. Gold mana roared through Scorio’s Heart even as his modified Marinating Technique pulled Iron mana into his reservoir.
Davelos was like a doll. His massive iron form bounced off the Shroud again, fell back, rocked to the side, and then he misted. Staggered back through the Shroud, through the desk, and appeared just as he tore open a drawer.
Scorio was on him, diving over the table, but the Dread Blaze misted again as he raised an elixir to his lips.
Scorio sensed the Gold mana flood the other man’s Heart and then blaze.
With a snarl he waited, shoulders heaving, chin lowered, ready to spring.
The Dread Blaze’s outline shifted, grew more slender, solidified.
Scorio pounced but Davelos threw himself into a reverse handspring, his form elongated and lithe, svelte and made of molten gold. He landed on the far side of the desk, turned his momentum into a cartwheel and then came up running.
Scorio chased after. “Coward!”
The man dropped his Shroud in the office archway as he left, but Scorio roared and slashed his talons through it. Their tips left deep grooves and a second slash caused the Shroud to burst apart.
Davelos ran to the double doors, threw them open, and plunged into the hall beyond.
Scorio leaped, pushed off the edge of the obsidian table and landed before the doors. Ran out and saw a dozen people turn in confusion as Davelos raced through their number.
“Stop him!” shouted Davelos, his voice charged with fear and authority.
The men and women were wearing House Hydra and Manticore robes. That was all Scorio needed.
He ran at them, aura sweeping out like a blast from an opened oven door: FLEE!
The mental blast caused the Great Souls to hesitate, a few to step back.
The first, a heavily tattooed man with a mane of curly caramel locks and piercing blue eyes, leaped back and raised his palm so that a stream of blue beads flew at Scorio. These detonated as they hit, each successive blast growing stronger, but Scorio wheeled toward a disfigured man with red-gold hair and a burned face whose features had slurried into each other. This youth rose up and began to shift into a furred monstrosity, blood-blonde hide growing over his brutish musculature, face extending into a snout.