Scorio wanted to gasp. To pant, to cry out, to shout for help. But he lay immured in that gentle white light, locked into the pose of surprise in which Ydrielle had trapped him.
The coffin was subtly sinking and tilting to the left.
As if he lay upon a bed of thick, viscous honey.
His stare tracked down the cavern wall. It was pockmarked with tunnel entrances. On broad ledges more lizards lay, torpid and asleep, some as large as The Sloop, their backs ridged, their mouths extending into great toothy snouts. Gold stripes smoldered across their crimson hides.
So many of them. And the cavern ceiling was easily as high as the wall that surrounded Bastion, several hundred yards at the very least—how would he climb out?
For that matter, for how long would this stasis last?
The coffin continued to tilt.
Now he saw in what he lay.
Gold magma.
It glowed like regular lava, that deep, effulgent smolder that filled the air with the aureate light he’d noticed.
The entire floor of the cavern was filled with molten gold. Here and there islands of rock emerged upon which more lizards lay; these were uniformly smaller, fitting on the islands without regard for each other, gorged on the mana and asleep.
Scorio ached to move his limbs. To struggle. To right the coffin as it continued to tilt. He was almost completely on his side now. Would the Gold magma melt the prism? Would he fall straight into the fire? Could he survive long enough if so to climb out?
The magma before him swirled then erupted into a huge, saurian maw. Jaws clapped around his coffin, massively fanged, and drew him under with shocking swiftness.
He was plunged into a world of glowing Gold.
The magma was so thick he couldn’t even make out a shadow of the fiend that had him. Just the huge teeth where they raked across the coffin’s glowing white surface.
The magma swirled. He got a sense of descent. Then the magma rippled and undulated in violent curlicues. Scorio felt nothing, but he thought perhaps the fiend was whipping him back and forth. Trying to tear him apart?
It failed.
The jaws released him. Scorio saw nothing but burning gold till at last several ridges appeared along his left side, emerging from the magma to press against the coffin.
The floor.
He’d sunk to the bottom of a huge lake of Gold-infused magma in which Gold-level fiends swam at their leisure.
Scorio wanted to sob, to laugh. He was so screwed. The second the prism gave out he’d be immediately immolated, and even if he somehow managed to swim up through literal magma infused with mana so powerful it would torch his Heart, he’d be snagged by one of the ship-sized saurians and torn apart.
“We were asked to make you suffer.”
The words played over and over again in his mind. We? Ydrielle and… or all of Manticore?
His mind recoiled from trying to piece together what had happened. He wanted so desperately to close his eyes, to curl up into a ball. But he was utterly and perfectly trapped.
In his mind, Scorio screamed. Soundless, formless, his rage and panic and terror swirled through his thoughts like a destructive tornado. Each time it abated he’d simply consider his situation and rage and panic would erupt once more.
Not being able to move was its own exquisite torment. Never had he appreciated how his body helped him process emotion. The act of clutching at his head, striding, lashing out, the sheer visceral pleasure to be had in roaring his rage, the sensation of expelling air, clenching his fists, tightening every muscle.
Instead he lay there in cool, hideously fake tranquility, protected from the horrific heat of the magma by Ydrielle’s gift. Only his mind could react.
So he screamed in its depths. An empty, soulless cry without power.
For how long he lost himself to his emotions he couldn’t say. Nothing changed about him. Even the magma down here barely swirled. It was just a uniform golden glow about six inches from his face.
Get a grip, he finally commanded himself. Had it been two minutes? Half a cycle? He’d no way to tell. You’re still alive. This isn’t over.
It took every ounce of his will but he cast around for something to latch onto, some hook that could trap his spiraling thoughts and mind.
Naomi’s face arose, followed immediately after by her teaching him the first form back in the ruin.
He saw her with perfect clarity, superimposed on the gold. Dressed in her threadbare robes, her hair dusty and unkempt, pacing out each step, each strike, each block. How he’d marveled at her intensity, her perfect focus. Turn to the side, downward block, step forward and throw a punch. Turn completely around to block a strike at your back, step forward and throw another blow. Turn to your left, block, then advance, strike, strike strike.
Her face had been a mask of ferocious presence. He’d ceased to exist in the room. She’d been surrounded by enemies, and one by one she’d destroyed them all.
Scorio tried to close his eyes, failed.
Tried to relax his shoulders, failed.
So instead he visualized the first form. He stood, feet shoulder width apart, relaxed, hands locked into fists before his belt. At peace. He began no fights, he was no offender. He was a man standing his own ground.
Woe to the foe that trespassed upon his might.
The first attack came. Scorio had never consciously considered that the first move was a block.
Philosophically that spoke volumes.
With exacting, trembling precision Scorio worked his way through the form. He couldn’t even cry. Attempted to visualize each block, snapping it out so that in truth his defense was in and of itself a strike. The foes were nondescript and wore House Kraken robes. One blow was all it took to shatter them into crystalline fragments.
Back and forth he worked his mind, repeating the form over and over.
Jaws closed about the coffin, smaller than the first set, and the floor ridges disappeared.
His form fell apart as Scorio stared helplessly out into golden infinities. Again the swirls and swoops of magma thrashing about him, and again he was dropped.
He sank.
The floor embraced him.
All was still.
The very fabric of Scorio’s soul trembled.
He grasped for the first form. Was able to visualize snatches of robes, of punches being thrown, but he couldn’t embody it.
So instead he thought of Naomi’s face. Fierce, sullen, beautiful. Her defiant stare, her natural suspicion, her thick hair falling down like a partition between her and the world.
It was easy to imagine her working through the first form, so he did so, watching her destroy foe after foe, over and over again.
Scorio didn’t know how many repetitions it took until at last he felt himself, if not calm, then feverishly still.
He ached to take a deep, steadying breath.
Where to begin?
First he opened his Heart senses. His Heart had a few vestiges of Copper mana yet within it; the mana wasn’t venting though his Heart was as cracked as ever. Why not?
The prism. It was holding his mana in. Made sense. Ydrielle’s power wouldn’t be of much use if the trapped Great Soul could attack her through its shielding.
He turned his attention to the coffin proper. It was pure, ethereal, complex stuff. He couldn’t tell with what mana it had been crafted, so he looked beyond it. His Heart senses were dimmed by the glowing white light, but not blocked.
He probed at the glowing gold light.
And recoiled as if his hand had been seared off at the wrist.
Pure Gold mana. Toxic in the extreme. Were it not for the prism’s protection his Heart would be ashed.
Panic threatened to swamp his thoughts again, but he thrust it down.
Where to begin?
For a while, the moments simply replayed themselves in his mind’s eye. Druanna summoning her eidolon. Captain Thorne emerging to greet him. Ydrielle guiding The Sloop down in a great arc to the dock.