The sun cycle was already darkening as they climbed up onto the peaked roof, and there sat and gazed rimwards toward the circuit, passing Naomi’s water bottle back and forth.
They didn’t speak. When night fell Naomi inched closer so that they sat shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, and both kept their gaze trained on the murky distance.
One of them remained always on watch through the cycles that followed while the other either hunted or did exercises below. Scorio was working his way through one of the Forms one dusk when Naomi called down softly to him.
He extruded his wings and flew up to land neatly beside her and look where she was pointing.
A faint glimmer of lights had appeared in the distance, a necklace of pinpricks above a smudge from whose base descended a waterfall of burning golden mana.
“There it is,” whispered Scorio. “Azurith.”
“Dameon will leave before reaching the valley mouth,” said Naomi. “The island won’t wait for him. So he’ll leave early to reach Evelyn and then turn around to catch the island late.”
Scorio knew what she meant. “Time to go. We can reach it by the end of this night cycle if we go fast.”
They moved with purpose. Together they dragged The Sloop back out of the barn, ropes creaking, the mast cracking through the doorway’s lintel. But the damage was minimal and they climbed up the ropes as The Sloop rose. They turned the craft around and Scorio strained to catch every whisper of wind; the sails filled limply and they crawled toward the distant floating island.
Night darkened. The Farmlands below became a quilt of wilderness, abandoned fields and overgrown roads.
They sailed in silently on the growing wind, through the stroke of true darkness and then drew close as dawn approached.
Azurith was indeed massive, a molar of gray, scabrous rock whose uneven plateau was drenched in greenery and the impressive remains of a once grand castle. It rose high above them, the golden cascade of mana surging up from the Circuit to spatter into its core, and Scorio felt eddies of Copper mana encircling the island like waves.
He skimmed The Sloop along the ground right up to the Circuit, alert for shouts or other signs that their approach had been noticed, but the island was too massive and the castle too far above.
Just before the golden deluge Scorio released Iron, and The Sloop rose on a cushion of mana, drawing perilously close to the aureate curtain and rising, rising into the great stalactites that hung like inverted peaks from the island’s underside.
It was shadowed and cool, and Scorio raked his dark vision across the rocky sides for an inviting nook or grotto in which to hide the ship. Here and there he saw the remains of rusted catwalks bolted to the rock, windows bored into the ancient stone, and realized that once this underworld must have bustled with its own activity.
No longer.
Naomi called out soft directions as they ascended into the inverted ravines, until at last, a score of yards from the golden mana, they came to a stop in a hollow. The Sloop’s mast cracked against the rocky ceiling, and Scorio quickly released a jet of Coal to bring them back down a few yards.
Naomi shifted into the Nightmare Lady and leaped onto the railing at the prow, rope in hand. Scorio buffered The Sloop from banging against the rocks; the island continued its inexorable procession around the Circuit, forcing Scorio to continuously release puffs of Copper just behind them to keep them in place.
Naomi leaped; a moment later the rope grew taut, and Scorio ceased to nudge The Sloop along. He moved to the fore and saw the Nightmare Lady tying off a knot around a protrusion of stone.
“It’ll keep in place,” he said once she returned, “but there’s no preventing it getting beaten up. We’ll have to be quick so that it doesn’t get too badly battered.”
He rose into his scaled form, extended his wings, and leaped overboard, falling into a smooth glide. The sensation was still exhilarating; he doubted he’d ever grow tired of flight.
The Nightmare Lady climbed the rock face with skill, and together they rose through the pre-dawn gloom, up and around and out to the Island’s exterior, then up the sheer cliff to where vines hung down, then grassy ledges.
They passed several tunnel entrances that had been filled with large rocks mortared together; Scorio was tempted to try and force an entrance, but crumbly as the mortar was, it would have been too costly and loud a labor.
Up they climbed, higher and higher, till at last, they reached the main plateau’s edge.
Carefully, slowly, they made their way up a bush-choked cleft and peered across the plateau.
The ruins of the castle covered most of the island; a massive gray curtain wall wrapped around the level ground’s edge, almost nowhere straight as it followed the contours. Most of it was badly dilapidated, with wiry trees growing from cracks and creepers engulfing the battlements, and here and there entire sections had cracked or fallen apart, providing easy entry to the grounds within.
Two large buildings rose in prominence amongst the numerous wall towers; one was a great keep, a huge donjon tower rising from its back, a second, narrower spire from its side; while on the castle’s opposite side a triple-towered building guarded what looked to be the main entrance that opened up to an overgrown expanse of meadow and light forest that might have once been a clearing leading to a half-collapsed dock.
They studied the walls and tower tops with their dark vision, and pointed out sentries to each other in whispers. There were many. One figure stood atop the donjon, six more walked the walls in a desultory fashion, while an eighth stood guard upon the foremost of the gate building’s towers.
After absorbing the castle’s extent, then climbed back down, found a ledge beneath an overhang, and sat, gazing out over the morning Farmlands.
“They look like they expect trouble,” said Scorio.
“Dameon probably warned them. His Dread Blaze power, remember? He’s probably sensed a threat to his plans. But no matter. He won’t know what form the danger will take, and by the time he figures it out it will be too late.”
“Right,” said Scorio. “Still. I don’t like him being in a state of heightened paranoia.”
“Nothing we can do about it. Now, Dameon will have claimed a room in that back fortress,” said Naomi. “Probably at the top.”
“There are supposed to be forty Manticore trainees here.” Scorio ran the tips of his white-hot talons over his chin; he was inured to both their sharpness and heat. “If it gets messy we’ll rapidly be overwhelmed.”
“If it gets messy, we jump off the island and you fly us to safety.”
“Some half of them should have ranged attacks.”
“Then we’d best not botch our plan. He’ll have taken a skeleton crew with him to the Chasm camp. So say there are thirty-five left behind.”
“You want to infiltrate while he’s gone? Claim a hidden spot in the donjon tower and wait for him there?”
“Or we could descend on the tower from above once he’s arrived.” Naomi pursed her lips. “Though once he hears that Evelyn was killed by a flying fiend, he might double the number of guards.”
“The guards will be less attentive with Dameon gone. Possibly. We could work our way around the island to where the donjon is part of the curtain wall and examine it for a way in.”
“This place won’t be filled with secret passages and abandoned storage rooms. It’s not like the Academy. There won’t even be corridors or hallways. Just rooms that open up into each other. The keep may look big from here, but try and put twenty people inside it and you’ll quickly think otherwise.”
Scorio frowned. The rising sun was burning off the low-hanging fog that had spread out from the Chasm valley entrance, and cast long shadows across the wilderness. Birds flew below, and in the distance he saw a pack of smaller fiends coursing after a larger beast and nipping at its heels.