He heard snippets as if they were whispered in his ear.
Evelyn’s initial sales pitch: “No hoarding treasures. No withholding secrets. No dangling incentives before the lower ranks to get them to do the drudge work. We’ll do whatever it takes to advance as long as we advance together.”
Dameon’s many empty promises. His ringing sincerity when it came to Manticore’s philosophy of doing whatever it took for them all to reach the Pit together. His many assurances to Scorio that he’d make every treasure necessary available for Scorio to advance.
In the depths of his mind, Scorio gave a broken laugh.
On that front, he’d not lied.
Scorio was surrounded by more Gold mana than he could use in a hundred lifetimes.
Too bad it would destroy him the moment it got through the prism.
What was happening up above? How long had it been? A day? Ten? Had his friends heard yet? Were they grieving? Coming to find him? If so they were out of luck: nobody less than a Pyre Lord could come down here and survive.
Time passed. Occasional saurians played with his coffin, tossing him about, trying to crack it.
Fury gave way to remorse. Guilt became regret and then brash hatred. He vowed revenge a thousand times over and only felt all the more pathetic for it. Cursed himself, cursed Dameon, Nissa, all of them.
And always he came back to the solitude of his mind.
His thoughts became hazy, slurred. Fear coursed through them all. He tried over and over again to meditate, to focus on Naomi doing the first form, but after a thousand repetitions it no longer served.
What if this coffin lasted for years? He’d go mad. He knew it with cold certainty. He’d lose his mind and lie here, perfectly healthy and raving.
The gold took on a hateful hue.
He had to get away from it.
But he was helpless.
Or was he?
The next time jaws closed around his coffin he Ignited and hit the beast with his aura.
Take me to the surface, he roared at it with all his being.
Did the saurian notice? Its teeth sure didn’t react, which was all Scorio could see. He was thrashed through the magma. Over and over again he screamed his command, and then his Heart guttered.
All his Copper was gone, forever and ever gone.
Then he breached the surface.
Was flung.
For a second he flew, tumbling, the world vivid, gorgeous, real, only to land back in the golden expanse.
Scorio wanted to shriek his denial.
He began to sink.
Feet first, down into the Gold.
Only to stop when he was two thirds submerged.
Reclining as if in a hot pool in the Shoals, chest, shoulders, and head above the magma in the shallows.
Success!
It went to his head, made him giddy, and he greedily drank in everything he could see. The stalactites, the precipitous walls, the cavern entrances, the lazing lizards, all of it bathed in golden light.
Glory.
For an endless expanse of time he just stared. Watched. Gave names to different saurians. Came to know the ones who resided on that stretch of ledges, a good twenty of them, each subtly different. The largest was as big as The Sloop and slept for massive expanses of time. The smaller they were, the more active.
Scorio watched with feverish intensity. Worked out their relationships, though they were subtle and he wasn’t sure how much he was projecting. Tried to divine the logic behind their stripes, and realized that they dulled just before the creatures roused themselves to slip off the ledges and dive into the gold below. Once satiated they’d rouse themselves and climb ponderously up the vertical walls, talons clinging to the rocks, bodies dripping gold that dropped off them in gobbets.
Why didn’t the magma harden?
For that matter, how was the Gold mana harvested? Nothing came into his field of vision from above. Was the Crucible inoperable? Did they siphon the Gold in some other manner?
But slowly the sight of the torpid lizards and the cavern wall grew stale. He watched them dive a hundred, a thousand times. Saw them occasionally squabble, snap at each other, retreat into the caves, then emerge.
They were enormously dull and he began to loathe them.
Time crawled by.
Scorio never got to blink once.
Madness.
He began to sing, to craft poems about his fate, his fury, the lizards themselves. He told a rambling tale involving them all that lasted forever, that encompassed treacheries and love, brutal murder and the eventual genocide of the entire species. Retold it with another saurian as the hero, then again, until he couldn’t stand the sound of his own inner voice.
He fell into a cycle of self-abuse and hatred.
Tried over and over to meditate, to work on his Heart, to advance in some way, to use this time to inch closer toward Flame Vault.
But deprived of all mana he could only envision his shattered Heart and no more.
Voices from his past rose and fell, melded with each other, mocked him, insulted him, and he welcomed their every castigation.
Deserved it.
Just before he lost his mind altogether a vision came to him.
A pile of rocks. Huge boulders embedded in clay, all of it covered in ferns and moss.
The size of a house. Some of the rocks as large as a cart.
Scorio’s mind grew still.
He knew this pile like the back of his unseen hand. Better, even.
He imagined the pile as they’d left it, half torn apart, surrounded by fragments. Moved it around in his mind, inspected it from every angle, then summoned his plan for its final destruction.
Peace washed over him.
The meditative trance he’d entered over those five months returned like a comfortable coat.
For long cycles he refused to think about the rocks. Held off, his mind trembling in pleasure.
Like a man delaying the best part of a meal, hunger sharpening his anticipation, hands shaking as he stared at the delicacy.
Then, with great deliberation, he envisioned the pile as it had first been. Rebuilt it. Replaced every rock, every shattered boulder. Covered it in clay, regrew the ferns, then stepped back.
At first, he and Naomi had attacked it without a plan or philosophy. They’d swung their hammers like idiots.
Now?
No, no no no. He’d first replay their mistakes. Then he’d do it right.
He felt the hammer in his hand. That smooth grip. The grain, the curve, the strength of the handle. Envisioned his first swing, saw the hammer strike, fragments fly.
Lost himself in the act. For hours he attacked the boulder, absolutely refusing to hurry.
For if he accelerated this mental exercise, if he hurried through it, reached the end, he knew what awaited him.
Madness.
So he worked on the imaginary boulder pile in his mind.
It gave him endless relief.
What had been torment now became escape.
Slowly he chiseled away. Removed blocks. Loaded them on the sled and envisioned himself hauling it to the cliff. Felt the heft of each rock and tumbled it into the Chasm.
Time passed.
He ceased to actively think. His whole being bent itself toward envisioning the destruction of the rocks. He didn’t hurry. He knew in his bones how long it took to crack a stone, how much work each step required.
He replayed it all with exacting precision.
Time passed.
Occasionally he’d pull back and examine the pile anew. See where he’d gone in real life, how he’d wasted weeks attacking the wrong stone, failed to find the fault lines.
Time passed.
His mind stretched, trembled, occasionally fell into fits of shrieking.
Always the boulders saved him.
They became totemic. A spiritual oasis. Sometimes they taunted him, rose up to tower as if he’d shrunk to the size of an ant.
But always he raised his hammer and struck.
Finally he reached the point he’d achieved with Naomi. The pile was half demolished. Jova’s stone plucked free. Sockets gaped in the clay like an empty jawline.