He hit the deck, rolled, came up running.
Reached the prow and didn’t hesitate. He leaped, placed one foot on the railing beside the figurehead and then hurled himself forward and out over the drop to the lava lake hundreds of yards below.
For a second he flew, arms windmilling, legs kicking, and then he dropped to the docks and again fell into a forward roll. He spilled out, rolled onto his side, but he was aflame with a single urgent need that drove him up to his feet and back into a sprint: reach Druanna.
Chaos was enveloping the dock. Ydrielle and her crew had run into the side of the House Kraken reinforcements. Behind them, Scorio saw a seriously large number of House Hydra Great Souls disembarking from their whale ship.
The eidolon stood abreast The Coffer, swinging its blades across the deck. It had taken heavy blows, however; cracks spiderwebbed across its chest, and one arm was already missing. House Kraken guards were either scaling the side of the ship or fighting their way up the gangplank, while some hung back and lobbed ranged attacks and others moved forward to raise defensive shields.
Too much was happening.
He’d lose his chance if he slowed down to take it all in.
What mattered was that out here there was yet mana. Copper. He swirled it into his Heart as he ran out wide, curving around the back of another detachment of House Kraken guards, to come in behind Druanna.
Who laughed at the sight of him and clenched her fist.
Scorio felt the shudder of mana ripple through the air. Instinct kicked in. He Ignited and leaped into the air just as a dozen glass-black blades speared up at crazy angles from the dock in his path, each a yard long, some serrated, all lethally sharp.
Scales swept over his form, horns erupted from his brow, and his talons turned into burning prongs of searing heat. He landed neatly, bolted on.
Druanna frowned, glanced at the ship, then began to back away.
Scorio put on more speed, only to feel the ground tremble. He looked to his right just in time to see the eidolon charging toward him in an all-out sprint, five arms flashing back and forth.
Scorio’s eyes widened. How was it so fast? He turned and had time to raise his arms in a block just as the golem swung a fist the size of a pony keg and caught him dead center.
The blow lifted Scorio up and hurled him across the esplanade, his arms nearly broken, the world spinning. He crashed to the ground, rolled, came up on his knees then fell back over, losing his scaled form.
He’d fetched up against the Golden Cupola.
Blinking, dizzy, arms numb, he grimaced and pushed himself upright. Before his five months sledging stone he’d never have survived such a blow. But now he was able to rise, his breath knocked clear out of him, to sway and stare as the eidolon came for him.
A Pyre Lady’s construct.
He had no hope in hell of stopping it.
Then Ydrielle was there. Slender, delicate, expression fierce, she reached him just as he pulled his chalk out of his robe.
“Here,” he gasped. “Get behind.” The eidolon pounded toward them just as he raked the chalk over the ground in a long sweep.
A shimmering wall of force immediately sprung up in an arc before him.
The eidolon stopped, didn’t bother swinging.
“There,” gasped Scorio. “That’ll hold it back for a moment. We need to get somewhere safe.”
“You poor idiot,” said Ydrielle. “You still don’t understand, do you? How sad.”
“What?’ Scorio whirled on her just as she reached out to tap his chest. He felt a huge surge of power and then he froze as a coffin of white light appeared around him.
Ydrielle glanced around the esplanade. The eidolon was already powering toward the block of House Hydra guards that were racing toward the fight. Druanna made eye contact with Ydrielle, who nodded, touched the coffin, and lifted it off the ground with her fingertip as if it weighed nothing.
Nobody stood guard over the entrance to the Cupola.
Scorio wanted to scream. Demand answers. It had all happened so fast. Was Ydrielle colluding with House Kraken? Was this Dameon’s plan? The cup, how had it—
They entered the small building. Its primary function was to house a stairwell that wrapped around the sides of a large shaft that plunged into the levels below. The walls were adorned with ancient mosaics framed in gold. A massive winch was set over the shaft, huge chests and lockers were set against the back wall, all of it was dim, poorly lit—
Ydrielle held him out over the center of the shaft. The coffin adhered to her fingertip like an eyelash. For a moment she simply studied him. He couldn’t move. Wasn’t even breathing. He was utterly frozen, panic bursting in his mind like fireworks.
“We were asked to make you suffer, so I made sure this prism’ll last for a good long while.” She cocked her head to one side. “Give you plenty of time to figure out how badly you screwed up. Oh, Scorio. I’ll bet you have no idea even now. Ah, well. I hope you figure it out before the prism dissipates. Or maybe you’ll just die ignorant.”
Scorio’s mind thrashed even as he remained perfectly still. The white light of the coffin was serene around him, the sensation cool, as if he sat in the shadow of a tree by a riverbank on a hot summer’s day.
Ydrielle extended her arm. He couldn’t even look down.
But he knew what lay below.
The Golden Cupola housed the shaft to the Crucible far, far below the fort.
The Dread Blaze flicked her fingers.
“Goodbye, Scorio. What a waste.”
She released him. He couldn’t even howl in fury.
The coffin fell.
Ydrielle and the Cupola vanished from sight as he plummeted into the bowels of Hell.
Chapter 43
Scorio fell.
Released from Ydrielle’s finger the coffin had an all too real weight. They plummeted down the shaft. Scorio’s head was locked in place; even his eyes couldn’t swivel.
A great conveyor belt was looped vertically about huge rollers, buckets attached to its side. Or Scorio thought they were buckets. Each held a crystal the size of his forearm.
He fell alongside this contraption. Past floors that opened up to different chambers, some with people laboring in them, illuminated, others dark but with a sense of space.
The coffin touched the edge of the shaft, a corner hit a ledge, and the whole glowing mass exploded into a horrific tumble, spinning as it went head over heels, bouncing across the shaft, bouncing back, its graceful fall turning into a riotous descent.
Scorio felt nothing.
He was perfectly inured from all sensation within the glowing white light. Not even the momentum of the fall. It was as if he were watching this all take place through another’s eyes.
The levels ceased all too quickly, the coffin still spinning, and the shaft’s smooth walls became unworked rock. It widened swiftly, became a gullet, then the top of a cavern.
Still he spun, the motion dizzying, details blurring, but he saw glowing gold far below, whipping around into his view over and over again. A sense of enormous space, larger than the Academy’s basilica, rock walls, darkness, around and around, and then he hit the ground and all went still.
It was supremely disorienting to not feel any shock from the landing. He’d fallen mercifully on his back. His gaze was locked staring straight up. All around him was the soft, diffuse glow of gold light. Far, far above him was a tiny hole in the roof of the cathedral-like cavern. The entrance to the shaft. Colossal stalactites descended from the ceiling like an inverted mountain range, and about those rippled cones of rock he saw shapes moving, lizard-like, tails wrapped around the rock, their bodies striated with glowing patterns of gold.
What had he landed on? Not enough peripheral vision to tell.
His heart wasn’t pounding. He wasn’t breathing. Pure stasis. The shock was limited to his mind alone.