Paragon of Blood

Copyright © 2022 by Aetherworld Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or fictitious recreations of

actual historical persons. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and

unintended by the author unless otherwise specified.

Editor: Evan Mears

Cover Illustration: YAM

Cover Design and Interior Layout: STK•Kreations

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-7770169-6-8

Worldwide Rights.

1st Edition,

Published by Aetherworld Productions Inc.

www.lukechmilenko.com

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Epilogue

Auric’s Character Sheet At The End of Book 1

Thank You All!

About The Authors

Alex Knight:

Other Books By Alex Knight:

Luke Chmilenko:

Other Books By Luke Chmilenko:

To our Friends and Family, thank you for your endless love and support.

Chapter One

Warning: Instance #202 Integrity Now At 89%

Activating Preservation Protocols

Collecting Instance and Entity Data…Completed

Constructing Optimal Preservation Model…Completed

Implementing ‘Gamification’ Model…Completed

You have advanced to Level 1!

—The First System Message as seen by Humanity Before The Fall

* * *

People love to say a thing can’t be done.

“We can’t go outside the walls, there’s monsters!” Or “We can’t search for the caravan, it’s too dangerous!”

Worse still, is when people say I can’t do a thing.

“You can’t search for the caravan, Auric; it disappeared in a valley full of Gateborn!”

Can’t, can’t, can’t.

People love to say a thing can’t be done, but the only thing I can’t do is silence that voice in the back of my mind. The voice that says: but what if it can?

“This is insane,” Val whispered from beside me.

“It absolutely is,” I replied, unable to help but grin at her tone as I peered through the unseasonably dense fog that filled the valley ahead, its coverage so thick that it almost completely obscured the supply wagon within.

“So you think that’s debris scattered about over there, or bodies?”

“What I think is that we shouldn’t be here!” Val hissed back.

“I think you’re right,” I said, then inched forward for a closer look anyway. At least for a pace or two. I didn’t want to lose the cover of our mist-wet thicket. Not yet anyway.

“Stop agreeing with me. I hate when you agree with me.”

“Why? If I’m agreeing with you, that means you’re actually right. For once.”

“Ugh. No, it’s because I’m the one who’s supposed to talk my little brother down from these insane ideas. Not get caught up in them.”

“Ah, right. Shame he’s never been a good listener. Or so I’m told at least.”

“It’ll be a shame when he, and not to mention I, get eaten by a horde of supposedly rabid Gateborn.” Val replied acidly before going on to pause for a second. “Though, I guess that’s actually the strange part here, isn’t it? Rabid Gateborn? Since when does that happen?”

“Best rein in that curiosity, sis, or people might start to think we’re related,” I said in a dry tone as a cold, wet wind rushed from the peaks above and through the valley. It was enough to thin the mist out long enough for me to get a better look at the wreckage ahead.

Wagon overturned, I thought as I scanned the area ahead, my eyes lingering on the shattered vehicle for a few seconds before continuing onwards. Horses nowhere in sight either. Definitely lost, if not probably eaten by now.

“Be serious, Auric,” Val stated from beside me as she kept pace, her eyes focused ahead and bow in hand, arrow already nocked on it. “The normal kind of rabies are bad enough, assuming that’s even what they have. But Gateborn haven’t ever been affected by the diseases of our world. Or at least they haven’t been yet. If they’re suddenly getting sick . . .”

“Then something has changed. And that’s interesting, isn’t it?” I said as my mind dug into the possibilities. “Either they can get sick now . . . or something new has made it out of another gate and infected them. Either case, isn’t that”—I dropped my voice to a dramatic whisper—“. . . exciting?”

“Why does a Gateborn plague sound like something you actually want?” Val growled as she fixed me with an exasperated look. “Where did I go wrong with you?”

“Probably at the part where you let me convince you to come along,” I replied as I flashed her a smile, already motioning for her to follow me. “But we’re here now, so might as well take a closer look.”

“Wait, what? Auric, no! Stop!” she hissed in a panic as she tried to grab for me, but I was already out of reach before she could shift her grip on her weapon. The tree cover fell away as I ran forward in a crouched jog, my head swiveling from side to side to see if anything was going to leap out at me. Nothing was so bold, unfortunately.

Not seeing anything worth stopping for, I jogged through knee-high grass that was topped with raindrops from the morning’s storm. It left cold, wet streaks against my shins until I reached the loose dirt of the road. Well, we called it a road, but really it was just the bank of the Oconna River that was trampled flat once a month when the caravans came through. The Fallen Generation—not that there were many of them left these days—claimed there’d once been an “actual road” here. A wide, flat thing made of asphalt—which was apparently a type of manmade rock. Back when such a thing was possible. The Fallen Generation claimed many things about the wonders of the World Before, but it’d been just shy of a century since it had gone belly up. Almost a century since the first gates had opened and spilled forth countless monsters, Gateborn, into the world beyond.

I slowed as I drew closer to the wagon, noticing the air on my skin begin to turn icy and cold.

Ripples of a leftover power, maybe? I wondered as I scanned the area a second time, feeling a surge of excitement shoot through me. Or maybe it’s just the river. Yeah, probably just the river. Boring.

There was always a chill around the fast-flowing waters, especially this high up into the mountains. It’s what made them so refreshing in the height of summer and frigid anytime else, especially with the surrounding peaks blocking out so much of the sky.

I crouched lower as I reached the overturned wagon, then pressed up against it to scan the scattered debris for clues.

Val had clearly hesitated before following me. Probably due to her good sense taking over for a few moments before our genetic affliction of curiosity had regained control and overrode it.

She leaned forward as she ran, moving with a determined, if not quite graceful, jog that betrayed her obvious nerves. As she moved, a hand came up to tighten the strap on the dark leather helmet that she wore on her head, hints of dark, frizzy hair poking free of its sides in the process.

“Just debris, no bodies,” I said, gesturing to the shattered crates as she arrived. “Either the drivers were exceptionally lucky and escaped, or exceptionally unlucky and devoured to the last. Really could have gone either way.”

“I agree. I can see scoring in the wood, here and here,” she said as she slowly inspected the area, pointing with two fingers at deep slash marks in the wagon’s side. “Here, too. And look at the wheel, the spokes are shattered.”

“Could have been when and why the wagon wrecked,” I suggested, noticing that the aforementioned wheel was not only off, but almost completely reduced to splinters. “Hey, maybe that’s what happened to the drivers? Wagon flipped and launched them clear. Maybe even far enough so that they landed badly and never had a chance to recover.”

“Maybe,” she replied with a sigh, pausing for a second as she looked up to scan the nearby area once again then back towards the wagon with her bow ever at the ready. “But there’s no sign of anything it was carrying, just a broken mess of crates.”

“Maybe it had food?” I suggested as I considered the area. “Ravenstead’s not too far from here. And likely where these poor souls and wagon came from. Thinking they maybe had it loaded up with produce to try and sell back at home?”

“As good a guess as any,” Val replied, her face falling somewhat. “Though why they thought it would be a good idea to try and brave the trek now of all times is beyond me. They had to know it’s not safe out here.”

“Just like we know it’s not safe out here?” I asked, flashing another grin at my sister, who promptly rolled her eyes and sent a rude gesture in my direction. “I’ll take a look around a bit further out,” I continued, realizing that I wouldn’t get any other reply, leaving her to search for more clues as I moved to study the packed dirt of the road in search of tracks, all while doing my best to focus past the gurgling river nearby.

As close to it as we were, I couldn’t help but be distracted by its volume, which was loud enough that I could follow along with each individual note in its song. The popping gurgle of the shallow rapids, the washing slap of waves against a rock face, and something else. Something closer to a gnawing.

Beavers at work, maybe? I wondered as I yet again scanned my surroundings, only to have it come up empty. They’re usually all over the rivers way up here. And have enough sense to avoid any Gateborn prowling around.

Finding nothing, I temporarily put the noise from my mind as I focused in on the dirt path, searching for anything of interest.

“Feels good to be out again,” I said over my shoulder as I glanced around. “I didn’t realize how much I missed being out in the wild until after being cooped up.”

“What it feels like is that we should have brought the others in Salvo with us,” I heard Val counter from somewhere behind me.

“What, and have them ruin our day in the process?”

“Wouldn’t have even gotten that far. They’d have laughed us out of the room if we’d told them we wanted to come out this way.”

“Well, of course they would have,” I agreed with a snort. “That’s why it was better not to tell them anything. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?”

“From where I’m standing, we should be so lucky to have the chance to beg for forgiveness. That means we made it back home in one piece,” Val stated in a fatalistic tone before switching back to the task at hand. “Anyway, I’m not seeing anything really helpful here. There are signs something attacked this wagon, but no blood. Not yet, anyway. Maybe the drivers got away after all? Unless you’ve found something over there?”

“A whole lot of nothing so far,” I replied with a shake of my head. “But the dirt here is pretty hard-packed, so it’s not exactly the best for catching—”

I paused as I spotted something stabbed in the road ahead and began to crawl-walk towards it.

“Hey, quick reminder. What are the Gateborn like up here again?”

“Uh,” she hedged for a second before replying. “A hive-mind insect type called sprabs, if I’m remembering right. They’re supposed to come in all flavors and sizes, too.”

“Yeah . . . that’s what I thought,” I called back as I pulled the object I’d spotted from the ground and brought it close.

Some sort of mandible or maybe the tip of a claw? I thought as I inspected the obsidian-colored item, finding that it was not only light in weight, but also had a sheen similar to one you’d expect to see on a beetle shell.

“Tell me if this doesn’t look like it came from a bug to you,” I asked as I held up the bug part high so Val could see.

“Is that chitin?” she asked, stepping away from the ruined wagon and started to make her way towards me.

“Yup, sure looks like it. And it looks like it’s broken off something, too. See, just there? It’s been—” I paused for a second as I heard a faint crunch filter out from the mists behind me, causing my head to turn in its direction.

“It’s been?” I heard Val ask a second later as I stared out into the bushes. “It’s been what, Auric?”

“It’s been a long time since we got some real practice,” I said, turning back towards her with an excited smile creeping across my face as I motioned off the path, toward the river’s edge. There, partially obscured by the mists and tall grass was something large and black, chomping down on what looked like a piece of bone. Something that definitely wasn’t a beaver. Or at least I hoped not, especially with the forearm-length mandibles and the seven segmented and twitching legs I was able to make out.

“It looks like it’s our lucky day,” I said.

“Oh, System above!” Val exclaimed before clasping a hand to her mouth. “Is . . . is that an arm? Whose arm has it got?”

“I’ll give you two free guesses,” I replied as I focused my full attention on the nearby Gateborn, which prompted the air above it to shimmer and distort, glowing letters abruptly flaring into existence.

Sprab Drone – Gateborn – Tier: B – Level: 3

Type:

Insect

Intelligence:

Hive-mind

Known Weaknesses:

Physical

Fire

Cold

“Look at it,” Val hissed the instant she spotted it, yet another blast of timely wind thinning out the mist and making it even more visible. “More of that orange rot and veining all over its body. Eyes, too. And see that sickly, yellow foam at the corners of the mouth? That’s exactly what the reports described.”

“So then what’s the verdict?” I asked, risking a quick glance over towards my sister then back towards the sprab. “Is it rabies like people think? Or is something actually exciting?”

“Give me a second; I’ll find out,” she added as she stretched out a hand toward the unsuspecting Gateborn and sent a stream of faint, distorted motes of light towards it.

“This power works best with physical contact, but I can still sense . . . something on it,” Val said after a few seconds, clearly concentrating as she spoke. “It’s definitely sick, but not with something I’d consider a disease. It almost feels like it’s missing something, like it’s been injured in a way that’s causing it to slowly sicken and die.”

Then just as quickly as it had begun, her power ran its course, and the fluttering motes of light winked out of existence. “I’m sorry; that’s all I can get from here. I’d need physical contact to learn more, but honestly, I’m doubting even that’ll help. Whatever’s wrong with it is . . . weird, like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

But despite that inconclusive diagnosis, the System seemed to agree with assessment that something was wrong, the Gateborn’s name plate flickering as it updated with new information.

Sprab Drone – Condition Updated

Status: Afflicted (Unknown)

“Well, that’s not exactly helpful at all,” I said with a grunt as I banished the rather useless update and then turned to glance over at my sister a second time. “Let’s see if getting you that closer look at it will help anything.”

With those words, I then sprinted forward before she could reply, and also while the sprab drone was still focused on its chew toy, the creature having been gnawing at the thing absentmindedly as if it weren’t even present in the moment.

Whatever the source of the sprab’s lapse in attention, it allowed me to close most of the distance between us quickly, at least until the leaves crunching beneath my feet with each step caused its two rows of eyes to rise toward me. They were each a dull, glowing orange, the same color as the veins across its body, with no visible pupil within. But that didn’t stop them from locking on to me in visible confusion. It cocked its head to one side, and if it’d had eyebrows, I imagined they would have furrowed. The dismembered arm fell free as the sprab’s jaw eased open to let out a questioning hiss.

As with most creatures, the primary danger with sprabs was their massive mandibles, something that anyone with even an ounce of sense did well to stay away from. Well, those and their seven, spear-tipped limbs. And then, of course, the barbed exoskeleton and stingers that some of their species bore. Those ones were usually around the size of a bull elk, if not larger. This one, though, was fortunately a small one, little more than three feet tall from claw-tipped foot to the crest of its head. That, and it had a smooth shell which, if my memory served me right, told me that it was almost certainly stingerless, making it nothing for me to worry about.

Probably.

“Damn it, Auric, wait!” Val finally shouted from behind me, but her words arrived too late to make any difference.

Meeting my charge, the sprab shambled forward a few steps before lunging at me. Or, more aptly, collapsed in my general direction. Still, that got it within biting distance, and it snapped at me as it fell. Reacting, I dove to the side, coming down harder on my shoulder than I would have maybe liked, before momentum carried me into a roll, then back up to my feet.

“Auric!” Val shouted again, this time louder.

“No, no, it’s okay. I got this,” I said as the sprab rolled once on the ground before finding its feet again. “It’s been too long since I actually had a chance to fight a Gateborn,” I continued while drawing a particularly long-bladed knife from its sheath on my waist, then focused my mind on its bladed edge. “That and unleash my limitless arsenal of power.”

“One power, Auric,” Val said, sounding completely unamused. “You have one power.”

“Ah, but one power mastered to perfection is better than a hundred used once,” I said, slashing the knife through the air, back and forth in a series of quick cuts, as I watched the sprab stumble forward towards me again. It was a painful fact of reality that people like me didn’t have access to that many powers, but we made do with what we could.

It wasn’t like we had any other option, after all.

And besides, if everything went according to plan, I wouldn’t be a person like me for much longer anyway.

Confident in my ability, I swept my knife through the air again and again, using my will to have its edge carve translucent slice marks in the air, as if it were wounding reality itself. As powers went, Afterstrike was one of the flashier ones that existed, the red scars that it inflicted on reality standing out to all but the most blind. Fortunately, too, it also proved to be one of the more deadly ones, which is exactly what I needed right at this moment.

“Rah!” I shouted as I stabbed my knife through the center of the hovering cuts, the final gesture needed to activate it. Moving in time with my thrust, the lattice work of slash marks wasted no time in launching forward at the advancing sprab. Or as best as I’d been able to aim at it in the time I had.

Unfortunately, what I hadn’t accounted for during that aiming process was the sudden burst of speed that it was capable of.

With the orange veins on its body flaring with an unexpected glow of light, the sprab leapt backwards and out of range of the shimmering crescents, which slammed into the dirt at its feet, hacking and chopping the soil as if my knife itself had torn into it. In fact, the only good that the attack did was to spray it with a torrent of dirt and pebbles, the majority of which caught it across the face and eyes, causing it to flinch. It was far from what I’d wanted to achieve with my strike, but I wasn’t one to pass up an opportunity, and lunged forward to take advantage of the opening before me.

Deciding in a blink to try to take the Gateborn alive, I rushed to tackle it, driving my shoulder into its exposed underbelly, intending to knock it onto its back. But as I hit it, I found it to be lighter than I’d been expecting, incredibly so, as if it were made of a particularly dense pocket of air. The result ended in completely tripping me up as I found no resistance to check my momentum against, promptly causing me to fall on top of it to the loud sound of cracking chitin.

And releasing a rather potent stench of rot.

Gagging under the powerful smell, I felt the world spin for the next several seconds as its legs slapped uselessly against my armored shoulders and its mandibles clacked loudly in my ear. But its efforts were far too weak to do anything to impede me, my strength more than enough to manhandle it into submission. Perhaps too much, in fact, as one of the limbs that I’d grabbed in hopes of restraining the Gateborn unexpectedly tore off, earning me both a hissing cry and a fresh wave of rot wafting through the air.

“Ugh, what the hell is that smel—”

“Damn it, Auric, just wait for me for once!” Val interrupted as a distorted haze of light fell over me, instantly causing the flailing sprab to go completely limp in my grasp. A second later, a pleasant numbness began to spread through my hands, before oozing up my arms, too. As it did, I saw a brief line of text flash across my vision, lasting just long enough for me to read it before vanishing.

You have been afflicted by [Sopor]!

Letting out a curse as the power washed over me, I scrambled to get out of the shimmering haze, managing to get as far as pushing myself free from the now-limply hanging legs all around me when my strength abruptly left me.

Leaving me to fall straight back downwards.

“Oof,” I grunted as I collapsed face first back onto the sprab’s underbelly, feeling it crack even from that relatively light impact. Whether or not that released even more of the choking rot I’d smelled earlier, I didn’t know, for fortunately Val’s power robbed me of my sense of smell as well.

“You . . . dith . . . thath . . .” I forced through clumsy lips and a lethargic tongue, “on purthpose.”

“I absolutely did,” Val said as her shadow fell across us, her face visibly wrinkling at the smell still lingering in the air. “Because I don’t know any better way to make you take this seriously. If you’d waited, I could have just led with that power and made things easy for us. Or just shot it with my bow. This sprab might only be a level-three Gateborn. But it’s B-Tier, which means it’s dangerous. Even if it’s sick. Especially to . . . to . . . uh—”

“—especially to a lowly level-ten D-Tier like me,” I stated harshly, a surge of anger prompting me to cut in before my sister could recover and correct herself. It also proved to be enough for me to push through the effects of the power she’d caught me with as I rapidly clenched and unclenched my hands, the motion working life back into them, then my arms, and then the rest of my body. A few seconds later, I was pushing myself back up onto my feet with my yet-to-be-used knife in hand, a glance telling me that the sprab wasn’t going anywhere, having been rendered completely insensate from the combination of my efforts and Val’s power.

The sight was also enough to prompt a warbling chime to echo through my mind, followed by another stream of distorted text taking shape in my vision.

Challenge Complete – Processing Outcome . . .

Completed

Challenge Difficulty: Trivial

Challenge Rewards: None

Notice: Maximum level in Tier: D has been reached. Seek out an Ascension Gate for testing to advance to Tier: C and to be assigned a Class.

“That was . . . a poor choice of words, Auric, and I’m sorry,” Val said, despite frowning at me. “But I still mean what I said earlier. You need to be more careful and stop trying to get yourself killed while we’re out here in the wild. This is serious.”

“You think I don’t know that, Val? You think I don’t know every day that I wasn’t lucky enough to be born as a C-Tier? I actually have to earn my power.” I snarled the words back at her with more force than I’d meant to, immediately realizing it the moment I did so. Wincing inwardly, I sucked down a breath and steadied my thoughts before continuing. “Sorry, uh. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” she said gently as she pushed aside one of the sprab’s limply hanging limbs, having moved over towards it while speaking. “It’s not fair, I know.”

And it wasn’t, nor was it her fault either. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, children were born to the same tier as their parents. The fact that Val had been born as a C-Tier wasn’t anything she’d had control of. Yet it didn’t make the power discrepancy between us any less painful. My mind lingered a moment on that thought, and the System took it to mean I wanted more information on my sister as I watched her work, causing an array of hazy letters to appear in the air above her.

Valorie “Val” Cain – Tier: C – Level 12

Class: Warden

Health: Uninjured

Status: None

Relation: Sibling

Continue Displaying Additional Information?

Grunting at the unwanted display, I waved a hand in front of my face in annoyance, and the text whisked away like smoke in the wind. I hadn’t meant to intentionally trigger it in the first place.

“But I’m sure that Amedea will let you attempt an ascension gate soon enough,” Val added in a reassuring tone, breaking the silence before it could grow too deep.

“She has to,” I stated, feeling my anger fade away from me. “I’ve got nowhere else to go. I’m capped out until I can reach C-Tier. If she ever wants anything else out of me . . . she has to give me a chance to advance. I’ve been stuck here . . . for almost a year now.”

“And this just might help you get it,” Val replied, inclining her head towards the unconscious sprab. “You did a pretty good number on this thing, to be honest. Shell is cracked everywhere . . . and is it missing a leg?”

“Pulled it off accidentally,” I said to her as she inspected the spot where the missing limb had been attached, which was suspiciously not bleeding. In fact, it looked to be completely dry and desiccated from within. “And honestly, I know you worry about me, but that sprab was . . . easy. Too easy. I mean, it hardly weighed anything when I hit it. And all that shell damage? That happened from me just falling on it. I never had the chance to hit it further. It just broke and released that rotting smell.”

“That’s definitely not normal,” Val said as she glanced down at the very obviously sick Gateborn and then to me. “But we can see about figuring out more once we get it home. Once we have it somewhere safe, we can start working on figuring out exactly what’s wrong with it, and by extension the rest of the horde we’ve seen around this area.”

“You know, that doesn’t sound like a . . .” I said, my voice abruptly trailing off as I noticed a flash of movement in the woods nearby, followed closely by the sounds of leaves and branches being kicked aside. A second later, I saw the shadows begin to appear, causing my heart to start racing. “Uh, so funny you should mention the rest of the horde . . .”

Chapter Two

“. . . casualties are reported to be in the millions as the strange creatures, the Gateborn, as they’re coming to be called, cut a swath through New York and New Jersey without any sign of stopping. So far, the military has been completely powerless to stop them, citing never-before-seen equipment and munitions problems, the same problems that have plagued the European, Russian, and Chinese armies overseas. At this time, we are advising everyone to take shelter wherever they can as far away as possible from the largest cities and to minimize reliance on electronic technology for survival.”

—Emergency Broadcast Five Days After The First Gates Appeared

* * *

Skittering. Hissing. Clicking and clawing. Countless branches scraped against a legion of chitin while leaves crunched beneath an army of spear-tipped feet as all around us, the sprab horde emerged.

Six appeared on our left, stumbling from the brush with drunken, sloppy movements. A couple staggered to the side, and another fell over, squirmed a bit, then struggled back to their feet. A second group of six emerged on the right, then half that number just ahead of us, and twice it behind.

And then just like that, we were surrounded.

“Well . . . this sucks,” I said as I slowly glanced around to take them all in.

The sprabs held their ground as they stared, their dull orange eyes squinting toward us as if they could barely see us, each and every one of them swaying unsteadily in place with a stream of yellow foam dripping downwards from their mouths.

“Huh, you know, I’m wondering if this means that their gate is somewhere near here,” I said, the realization slowly washing over me as I counted the creatures for a second time. “Don’t think this is all of them, but more than should be free roaming. If we can get out of this, we could track them back to their hive.”

“‘If we can get out of this’ being the key phrase there, Auric,” Val said as she pressed her back to mine. “You remember the part when I said we should have brought reinforcements, right?”

“You may have mentioned it once or twice, yeah.”

“Just wanted to say ‘I told you so’ one last time before we’re eaten alive.”

“Hey, look on the bright side,” I said as I tightened my grip on my knife.

“Which is what exactly?”

“I don’t know, but we should probably look on it. And quickly at that, too. They’re staying put right now, but I get a feeling that’s not going to last.”

“It sure won’t,” my sister replied in a familiar tone that I knew was accompanied by a set of rolling eyes. “Okay, here’s the plan. I’m going to use a couple powers of mine to kick things off, Sopor first to knock a bunch of them out of it, and then Sanctuary, to cover us as we make a break for it. They’ll probably land a few hits on us as we run, but the power will stop them and shove them out of the way. If we can get a good enough head start on them, we should hopefully be able to escape. They look too sick to chase us for long.”

There was a heartbeat long pause as she let her words sink in.

“What do you think about that plan? All good?”

“What I think is that you’re forgetting about our prize.”

“What?” she shot back from behind me. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The sprab,” I replied, my eyes flicking down to the still-paralyzed Gateborn. “If we don’t take him with us, what was the point of going all the way out here?”

“The point is that we get out alive.”

I couldn’t disagree with my sister there, not completely at least. It would be difficult to carry the sprab and run, not because of its weight, which I knew firsthand to be negligible, but rather with it being as big as it was and full of sharp, pointy ends. The last thing I could afford to do while running would be to accidentally cut myself with a claw that was nearly as long as my forearm.

But at the same time, we’d come all this way to unravel the mystery that was plaguing the Gateborn in this area, and if we didn’t take the sprab back with us, we’d be no closer to learning anything.

Though if we die before making it back we won’t solve anything either, I thought idly, making my decision.

“Your plan sounds good,” I said as I bent down to lift the dog-sized sprab into my arms and draped it half over my back, careful not to cut myself in the process. “I’ll try to take him with us far as I can, if things get too—”

The first of the sprabs finally lunged while I was mid-speech. Or, more accurately, tried to lunge, stumbled, then caught its balance and managed half a lunge with what momentum it had left. The slip-up bought me an extra moment, which was just enough time to spin away from its clumsy attack, dragging the sprab with me.

And also giving me just enough time to step on one of the dangling claws attached to its six remaining legs and promptly tear it free, the unexpected distraction causing me to stagger and for my balance to shift.

“Oh, stupid thing. Watch where you put your feet!” I growled as I grasped my knife tightly, slashing it toward the offending sprab as if that would do anything. As if killing one of them would make a difference.

My slashes that followed were panicked and sloppy as I channeled Afterstrike once again, the cuts nowhere near my best work. But even so, they were enough to send a half-dozen translucent crescents launching themselves towards the sprab lunging at me. With barely any distance to travel, Afterstrike reached the sprab almost as soon as I finished the final slash, sending the creature rearing back screaming in pain as the crescents slashed into it one after the other, rending its body apart.

But that was about all that I was able to see before a dark shadow fell over it, causing it to explode a second later.

Blasting outwards from the creature, I felt a wave of force slam into me, one strong enough that it lifted me off of my feet and sent me tumbling across the ground, the weight of the sprab I’d been holding suddenly vanishing. Rolling twice, before stopping on my side with a groan, the first thing that I noticed was that the advancing sprab horde had ground to a stop as a result of the blast, their eyes all turning to look at the impact crater where one of their own had stood not a moment before.

I’m . . . I’m pretty sure that wasn’t me, or my knife, I grunted mentally as I shook off the effects of the blast, my blurry vision shifting over towards my knife with a vague sense of confusion. Unless someone swapped you out for a different one, you’re supposed to be just a regular weapon.

Unfortunately, the only answer I got to that question was a rapidly growing headache and a gentle rain of dirt that began to patter to the ground around me.

At least until I saw the impact crater move. Or, more accurately, saw something inside it begin to move. Beginning first with the dirt and rocks that filled the heart of the crater and ending with the appearance of a heavily armored woman beneath them, I found myself filled with a reassuring warmth the instant that I laid eyes upon her. Blinking once in surprise as recognition set in, I had just enough time to take in her presence before the air around her began to shimmer, followed by distorted letters taking shape in my vision.

Constance Turner – Tier: A – Level 19

Class: Savior

Health: Uninjured

Status: None

Relation: Ally

Some said the apocalypse brought out the worst of humanity, but if ever there’d been a counterpoint, well, here she was.

Here she was, standing every bit of six feet, five inches tall. Here she was, wrapped in a layer of thick, unblemished silver armor, that while both fearsome and inspiring in its own right, failed to fully convey the sheer extent of the otherworldly strength contained within. Here she was, a champion of countless battles, a slayer of legions of Gateborn, and the savior of countless thousands. Here she was, the very embodiment of hope and succor, her presence promising to all that looked upon her that everything would be okay, regardless of what the world looked like around her.

Here was Constance Turner.

I saw her step over the rim of the impact crater with a broad smile written across her face, a hand coming up to brush away a few clinging pebbles that had gotten caught in her long, shoulder-length, blonde hair. Her movement caused the air to swirl around her as she strode forward, the thinning mist dancing around her with an otherworldly drama. A drama that escalated as the sprab nearest to her finally found its senses, letting out a hiss as it stabbed a spear-tipped leg through her hip. Or, it would have, if it hadn’t been outclassed in every possible sense of the word, its appendage snapping back on itself with a crunch of shattering chitin.

“Oh, I do hate to ruin all your fun,” she said to the horde, showing no notice of the failed attack that had broken itself against her armor. “But if y’all could not eat my friends, I’d very much appreciate it.”

She turned her head as she finished speaking and flashed me a warm smile, one that immediately promised that everything would be all right. “You kids okay? Any injuries? I briefly caught some of your um . . . heroics, on the way in. Hard to mind all those feet at once isn’t it, Auric?”

“System knows you would see that,” I said as I scrambled to my feet, feeling a surge of embarrassment shoot through me, enough so that I wanted to crawl into the nearby crater and pull it down on top of me to end my misery.

“We’re okay and not hurt. You got here just in time,” Val said as she moved to help me up, her words causing Constance to breathe an audible sigh of relief.

“That’s good to hear,” she said as another sprab lunged forward to bite her and only succeeded in breaking its teeth on her armor—and earning a searing bar of light lancing through its body that promptly burnt it to ash. Frowning for a second at the display as if it were somehow distasteful, Constance turned her attention back to us while hiking a thumb over her shoulder to indicate something in the distance. “Heads up in that case, then, because Amedea’s not happy.”

She paused as a loud crack filled the air, prompting her to wince and lower her voice.

“Oh, and y’all didn’t hear that from me, by the way.”

The sprab horde recovered from their shock enough to turn and attack the new threat.

“Of course not,” I replied, my embarrassment quickly replacing itself with a vague feeling of dread that had nothing to do with the entire sprab horde turning to look in the direction of the noise.

After all, where Salvo’s captain went, so too did the rest of the team.

As if on cue, the loud cracking noise repeated itself a second time as a nearby tree was ripped from its roots, then carried onto the road by a colossal mountain of a man, his massive, seven-foot-tall stature making him appear as a giant out of legend. In the air around him as he charged forward with a near-deafening yell, another set of shimmering letters took shape, identifying him for me.

Curshaw Burris – Tier: A – Level 18

Class: Destroyer

Health: Uninjured

Status: None

Relation: Ally

Where Constance was the walking example of everything that was right and good—the feeling of safety, hope, and love, given human form—Curshaw was the opposite. He was the promise of violence. He was the unstoppable force.

He was destruction itself.

Brutal in his appearance where Constance had been soft, Curshaw was a juggernaut of pure muscle, the only thing poking free of his dark helmet being a thick and twisted black beard that looked akin to barbed wire. Outfitted with a layer of thick, black armor that only served to accentuate his already gargantuan frame, every step he took caused the ground to tremble as if he were an avalanche given form.

“Grouped ’em up nicely for me, thanks!” Curshaw grunted at us by way of greeting, bright lines of power flaring along the armor covering his massive arms as he swung the tree he was holding as if it were the world’s largest bat. Slamming into a group of sprabs before they could react, the blow sent a quarter of them screeching and howling into the forest canopy above. They flew so far upward in fact that I was sure that they would have ended up all the way in the next valley when they landed. That is if they all hadn’t abruptly slammed into a burning wall of fire hanging in the air above, the barrier puffing with dark smoke as each Gateborn sailed into it.

“The best fate possible for such nasty creatures, don’t you think?” a silky-smooth voice unexpectedly said from right beside me, causing me to flinch in surprise. “Oh, how I hate bugs and all of their extra eyes and legs.”

“Ugh, we’ve talked about this, Mercutio. You can’t just keep popping in next to people like that,” I said as I turned to look at the source of the voice, the System already forming a set of shimmering words beside the cloaked figure it belonged to.

Mercutio “The Wondrous” – Tier: A – Level 17

Class: Enigma

Health: Uninjured

Status: None

Relation: Ally

“Ah, but if I did not, it would ruin the spectacle of our show, Auric,” he replied, a mischievous gleam appearing in the glowing silver eyes that hung in the otherwise black abyss that was his face. In fact, it was the only thing visible from under the pale gray cloak that now floated beside me, there being no other physical sign of the man beneath. “And life is not worth living if it has no spectacle to enjoy.”

He let out a faint chuckle at his last words, causing the cloak to then flutter ominously in the air beside me. A second later, I heard the faint sound of snapping fingers reach my ears, followed by the cloak, and by extension, Mercutio, vanishing as if they’d never been there at all. Turning away from the now-empty patch of air, I focused back on the sprabs, which if they had been confused before, were now utterly lost. And honestly, I couldn’t really blame them. It was a bad day for everyone, regardless of if they were Gateborn or person, when Salvo dropped out of the sky on top of you.

Several of the horde had turned to run away from the battle, staggering away drunkenly on unsteady feet. As I watched them flee, I saw a shadow appear amongst them, dancing from creature to creature, each of them temporarily vanishing from sight as the shadow washed over them, leaving a corpse behind when it passed.

Only then, as soon as the last Gateborn fell, did the shadow then appear beside Val and me, rising from the ground as a patch of darkness before resolving itself into the form of a square-shouldered woman clad in dark gray leather. Immediately, her eyes fixed on mine as she finished taking shape completely, with an all-too-familiar frown written across her face. One that simultaneously conveyed both annoyance and disinterest.

And once again prompting another wave of shimmering letters to draw themselves across my vision.

Sumalin Malee – Tier: B – Level 29

Class: Shadow

Health: Uninjured

Status: None

Relation: Ally

“I had a nice afternoon planned until you had to go stirring up trouble, Auric,” she said, her words sharp as a dagger in my spine. “Next time you want to attempt suicide via Gateborn, do it before Amedea finds out. And leave your sister out of it.”

“That’s not what we were doing, Sumalin,” Val interjected from beside me, her tone already apologetic and placating. “We came out here to investigate. There’s something wrong with—”

She cut herself off the moment Sumalin melded back into shadow, the dark blur reappearing in the distance among the trees and slaughtering what remained of a fleeing group of sprabs.

“Thanks for trying,” I said to my sister as we watched the Gateborn fall one by one. “I can never seem to get on her good side . . .”

“Gee, I wonder why.”

Letting out a grunt, I turned my attention back to the remainder of the now-ending battle, the once two dozen Gateborn that had at one point surrounded us now little more than broken shells and limbs scattered every which way through the clearing. Standing at the center of the carnage, I saw both Curshaw and Constance, the former stomping a bug into the dirt with an armored boot, while the latter burned one to ash with another beam of pure white light. Then just like that, the battle was over, and silence began to fall once more over the surrounding forest.

At least until a new voice broke it.

“Auric.”

I felt my heart tighten as I heard my grandmother’s voice, just her calling my name was enough to send my heart racing. Though technically she wasn’t related to me by blood the same way Val was.

Just only in every other way that mattered.

Stifling a sigh and steadying my nerves, I readied myself for what was going to inevitably come next and turned to face her, my head held high. Everyone in Salvo had a role to play, one that was carefully crafted to suit each of their strengths. Constance was the captain, the face of their organization and the one that everyone saw and believed in. Curshaw was the brawn, the iron promise of vengeance and strength made flesh. Mercutio was the flash, the dazzling display of reality-bending wonder that made anything and everything seem possible. And Sumalin was, well, Sumalin was the shadow, the shadow that was always in the corner of your vision, the one that you could never shake. The one that you knew was out to get you.

That all left Amedea, the team’s originator, its mastermind, its sole purpose for existing in a time where might was right and any of its members could have lived like kings or queens, should they have so wished. It was she who had spent a lifetime finding some of the greatest of humanity’s champions and bending each of them to a single, unified goal.

Helping humanity survive the apocalypse.

It was a hard lifetime that had left her old and bent over. Far enough so that her gnarled cane made out of an alien, iridescent-hued length of wood was never far out of reach. Yet despite her obvious frailties, she looked anything but weak as I laid my eyes upon her, the dark-skinned woman standing with a palpable, oppressive presence that had nothing to do with her age or stature.

But rather the power contained within her.

It was a weight that I’d withstood many times before over the course of my life and so I knew perfectly well the best way to stand up to it, which was to simply grit my teeth and wait. That left nothing for me to do for several seconds as I was fixed in place by its weight, save to stare back at the otherwise plainly dressed woman, my eyes travelling up from her scarred nose, around her dark eyes, and up to her hair, which as always, was up in tight cornrows. They had long since gone gray in recent years, but in the World After, that was a badge of honor.

It meant that she had lived long enough to earn them.

Stretching out for several seconds, the silence and focus on one another was enough to prompt the System one last time, causing another blur of distorted letters to rapidly take shape in the air.

Amedea Jackson– Tier: A – Level 31

Class: Auspicer

Health: Uninjured

Status: None

Relation: Family

“What am I going to do with you, Auric?” Amedea asked, her words finally breaking the silence that had filled the air and causing the overpowering presence that pinned both Val and I in place to come to an end.

“I . . . I don’t know,” I replied, pausing to take in a deep breath in relief. “But I think at this point I’m a little old to be grounded.”

“If only you acted like it,” Amedea retorted, her eyes shifting to look in the direction of Curshaw, who let out a loud snort at my words before turning it into a badly hidden cough.

“It was my fault—” Val began, but Amedea cut her off with a look sharper than any blade could possibly be before she could continue.

“Yes, it was,” Amedea stated simply. “You of all people should know how dangerous it is out here. Even if your brother doesn’t fully understand it, you should have stopped him. You could have stopped him. Easily.”

Silence fell as our adopted grandmother glared at the two of us, Val wisely deciding to stay quiet before she incurred more of the woman’s wrath. Another half-dozen seconds passed before respite came and the quiet was broken once again. This time, it didn’t come from Amedea, but rather Sumalin, the woman reappearing from a blur of the shadows between them.

“Well, if everyone’s well and alive and Auric’s done interrupting my day, I have work I’d like to get back to,” she said as she shot a look at me, then Constance, then Amedea. “Everyone good? Yeah, thought so. Goodbye.”

She then promptly dissolved into shadow, her exit giving me the chance I’d been looking for.

“Look, I know you’re angry about us running out. But there’s something going on here,” I said as I turned back to Amedea, her sharp gaze not having the same effect on me as it did on Val. “The sprabs are all . . . sick with something. You have to have noticed it yourselves during that last fight. They’re all . . . I don’t know. Rotting from the inside out, barely able to move, let alone fight. Then if that wasn’t enough, their bodies are glowing with veins for some reason, a bright orange.”

I paused for a second to gesture around at the various sprab parts that littered the area, only to find the one that Val and I had captured earlier still alive nearby, the rest of the group likely taking it for dead.

“Ah! Look at that one there! Tell me it doesn’t look off to you like all the others did. If we can take it back to the town and study—”

“I made a vow, Auric,” Amedea finally interrupted, her head shaking sharply from side to side as she spoke. “And I’ll not shame your parents’ memory by failing to uphold it.”

“Amedea,” I heard Constance cut in a second before she placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Maybe we can go a bit easier on them this time? I know what they did was . . . frustrating. But their hearts are in the right place.”

Amedea sighed at the silver-armored woman’s words, then shifted her weight forward onto her cane as if burdened by what she said next.

“So it is,” she admitted, her eyes shifting over towards Val. “In the future, you must show better judgement than this.”

“I-I will,” my sister promised, her head nodding quickly.

“Good,” Amedea stated, her eyes shifting over towards me next. “And you. You need to be more careful than this.”

“I wouldn’t have to be if you’d let me into an ascension gate for testing,” I shot back.

“Boy’s got a bit of a point there,” Curshaw said with a rumble, the giant man appearing on Val’s flank with barely a sound. “By the time I was his age, I’d crushed two gates on my own.”

“And look at where you’ve ended up,” Mercutio’s voice chimed in opportunely from both nowhere, yet everywhere at once. “Is that really the sort of example we want to be setting for him?”

“What Auric needs is to learn restraint and control before he gets himself or someone else seriously hurt,” Amedea said abruptly before sighing yet again. “But I cannot in good conscience condemn curiosity . . . especially when I was the one who worked so hard to nurture it in the first place.”

“Then you agree ,” I said, feeling a faint surge of relief. “With this much of the horde here, their gate has to be nearby. We can find it and close it. System willing, we might be able to find whatever is afflicting them and making them so sick. If we don’t, there’s no telling what it could do if we let them and it run rampant.”

“No telling indeed,” Amedea agreed in a soft tone as she fixed her attention on me with a crooked eye. “But such curiosity can have its consequences, though. Are you sure you’re ready to bear them?”

“Born ready,” I replied without even a second’s hesitation.

“Excellent. Then when we get back to the tower, you can take Val’s chores and duties for the next week. In addition to others I have in mind for you.”

That wasn’t at all what I was expecting to hear. “Hold up, what? What do you mean her duties?”

“The duties that she will be too busy to perform,” Amedea explained as she turned her attention over towards my sister. “What with all the extra shifts she’ll be pulling with the town watch.”

I heard Val let out a sigh from beside me, her head bobbing once in acceptance.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said in a plain, accepting tone.

Nodding once, Amedea beckoned for them to follow and then turned, beginning to walk out of the clearing, her cane steadying her balance.

“Come along, then. We have far to go before it gets dark.”

My heart fell as I realized what that meant, my eyes shooting a glance over towards Val.

“You’re not gonna fight this?” I whispered to Val, the hopes of heading out to find the horde gate dying a quick death in the back of my mind.

“We knew the consequences when we snuck off,” she replied with barely a shrug before moving to follow Amedea. “Time to face up to them.”

“Ugh,” I grunted, my attention then shifting over towards the still-unconscious sprab nearby. “Well, if we’re going home, can someone at least help me carry this thing back?”

“Sure,” Curshaw volunteered. Or, at least, that’s what I thought he was doing, until he stepped on the sprab’s head and crushed it flat, causing its eyes and the veins covering it to flare a bright orange before winking out completely.

“Hey! What the hell?” I nearly shouted, stopping only when I saw the man bend down to tear one of its remaining limbs free and promptly toss it towards me.

“The only good Gateborn is a dead Gateborn,” he explained as I caught the flailing limb, nearly cutting myself on its razored end in the process. “And that goes double for the ones that look like bugs.”

He paused for a second to motion ahead at the others who had already departed before taking a large, lumbering step past me. “Come on, Auric. Let’s go home.”

Chapter Three

It sounds surreal to even say it out loud. Even years after it happened. Our world now has . . . become a game. Of sorts, at least. Almost the same as those we used to play on our computers before they stopped working. Before everything stopped working. Now everything runs through the System, gamifying, tracking, and codifying each and every facet of our lives. It’s even broken us into classes, tiers, and a host of other distinctions that we’re still trying to figure out, let alone master. But worse than the arrival of the System, does this mean that our reality was truly simulated like some of the scientists Before the Fall theorized? If so, does that mean we actually exist? Or were we just created on a whim, given hopes, dreams, and memories before being thrown into this mess? Into this apocalypse we have no control over. Or maybe worse, what if we do truly exist, and this was the only way to save what we had become?

—Journal Entry Found in Blueridge Library, written by Jacob Marner, three years after the System’s arrival

* * *

“Come now, keep up,” Amedea said over her shoulder as she trudged along the path industriously, back hunched, head stuck out, and little flashes of light dancing across her fingers as she wove some mysterious power between them. Ninety-four years of weight pressed down on her shoulders and by rights, we should have been able to keep up with her. But she was A-Tier, and in the World After, in the world governed by the System, that made all the difference.

She had never shared with us the full extent of her power, how far she had allowed the System to push her and how much she had been rewarded in kind. But she didn’t need to for us to have an idea of her power, for the System was nothing but perfectly consistent in the rules that it had brutally applied onto the world. So much so that once you learned them, it was easy to infer someone’s strength with nothing else but a glance.

I didn’t quite remember the day when I saw the System first appear to me, save that it had always been there as long as I could recall. Been there, like an unseen eye observing and recording everything that I had ever done. And when I say everything, I mean everything. From the total number of steps that I had ever taken since the day that I’d been born, to the total number of heartbeats that had ever echoed in my chest, to the total number of seconds that I’d ever slept. It kept track of everything that I had ever done and put it into countless categories that I could call up with a thought—if I ever wanted to.

But beyond just simply tracking the mundane minutiae of my life, the System also quantified it. Everything from how strong I was, to how fast I could move, think, react, or really do anything at all and then gave it a number, or rather several numbers. It was those numbers that then gave me a place within the complex social hierarchy that had emerged in the World After.

A place right at the bottom, or close enough to it to make little difference.

She is so far above me I might as well be looking at the stars, I thought, breathing heavily as I struggled to follow Amedea through the thick brush, the woman flicking in and out of sight ahead of me. Every time that I started to make headway in catching up, she put on yet another burst of speed from her seemingly limitless reserve. Or maybe whatever is even further away than the stars.

Exhaling an internal sigh of frustration at how badly I was outclassed, I decided that I wanted to deepen my already-potent misery and mentally called up my Schema, the System’s breakdown of all my core attributes, skills, abilities, and everything else that made me, well, me. Taking only a couple seconds for it to appear, I soon saw streams of text begin to write themselves across my vision until it was nearly full.

Personal Schema Request Initiated . . .

Granted

Displaying Schema According To Last Set Parameters . . .

Subject:

Auric Cain

Tier: D

Level: 10

Class: Unassigned

Progression: Maximum Potential Reached

Physical Characteristics:

Age: 18 Earth Years

Sex: Male

Weight: 165 lbs

Height: 6’1”

Eye color: Green

Hair Color: Blond

Vital Statistics:

Health: 290/290

Control: 200/200

Endurance: 151/300

Physical Attributes:

Vigor: 23

Finesse: 18

Celerity: 20

Mettle: 19

Psyche: 10

Skills:

Martial:

Archery – Level 10 – Maximum Potential Reached

Unarmed Combat – Level 10 – Maximum Potential Reached

Throwing Weaponry – Level 10 – Maximum Potential Reached

Spears – Level 10 – Maximum Potential Reached

Swords – Level 10 – Maximum Potential Reached

Trade:

Tailoring – Level 10 – Maximum Potential Reached

Leathercraft – Level 10 – Maximum Potential Reached

Powers:

Afterstrike:

Power Type: Physical (Force)

Duration: Instant

Range: 30 feet

Control Cost: 85

Description: You slash a bladed weapon through the air several times, creating crescents of pure force with every attack before sending them blazing forward.

Effect: Create up to six crescents comprised of force energy which leap forward to attack everything in their path, each dealing 125% weapon damage to the first target they strike, and reducing damage done by 25% for every target afterwards.

Notice: Maximum Progression in Tier: D has been reached. Seek out an Ascension Gate for testing to advance to Tier: C and to be assigned a Class.

Continue Displaying Additional Information?

I shook my head at the hovering question before me the instant I finished reading and dismissed the floating wall of text from my vision, the brief display having forced me to slow down as I jogged through brush. I’d seen what I had wanted to see on my Schema, which was to say the absolute pinnacle of what I could ever hope to achieve at my current tier and a reminder of just how far away I was from an uncapped A-Tier like Amedea. Or anyone else from Salvo for that matter.

As a D-Tier, the lowest of the four tiers that the System used to categorize people, my progression was limited—capped, rather—at level ten. If I wanted to ever surpass that limitation, then I had to go and find an ascension gate somewhere out in the wild and undergo the trial within to be promoted to C-Tier and reset myself back to level one and begin the climb anew. At least until I reached level twenty and hit that tier’s cap, or peak as it was called, and needed to do the same to advance to B-Tier. Thirty more levels after that, should I be lucky enough to live through them, I could then finally attempt my final ascension gate and reach the completely uncapped A-Tier.

But it wasn’t just the level potential that I would be chasing as I advanced upwards through the tiers, but rather the layers of power that the System offered the further that one dared to climb. Beginning first with the raw physical attributes, each tier increase above my own offered two more attribute points gained per level, which at A-Tier meant a total increase of ten attribute points every time you advanced. Yet the attributes weren’t the only thing to advance; so too did the skills we wielded, the System rewarding their training and granting secondary, tertiary, and even quaternary effects for every tier they climbed in the process. Then, if those two reasons weren’t enough to motivate oneself, the classes that were offered upon reaching A-Tier more often than not did the rest. Supposedly, the purest reflection of who you were as a person, they were tailor made to fit you by the System upon reaching the final tier and were said to be unlike any of those offered in the tiers before, some of them so powerful that they were capable of altering reality itself.

And that said nothing for what influence that power granted you. And what it let you get away with once you had it.

So it was because of all of that, that I had a perfectly good understanding of just how powerful Amedea was as she near-effortlessly skipped across roots, snags, and loose rocks ahead of us as if the majority of them weren’t even there. Sure, because of her advanced age, her foot occasionally caught some unseen protrusion or she reacted too slowly to one coming up and it threw her balance a moment, but all that she did was merely lean into the fall and catch herself on her cane, often without even breaking stride.

And that was on top of the already rain-soaked soil.

“Ugh, I hate traveling,” Val said with a growl an hour in to our three-hour return trip home as she slowed to wipe a spray of mud from her jacket that she’d accidentally kicked up after stepping in a puddle.

“Would it help not to think of it as traveling, but rather adventuring?” I asked, flashing her a slight smile as I slowed to match her.

“Is there a difference?” Val replied as she finished her cleaning efforts, managing to wipe most of the offending mud away. “And regardless of if there is one, no. It would not.”

“Oh, come on, don’t you love this? Finally getting out of town for once?” I asked while rolling my eyes at her, only to immediately half trip over a partially buried root for my efforts.

“Serves you right,” I heard my sister say with a snort as I recovered my balance, just barely managing not to faceplant in the muddy forest floor. “And honestly, it’s hard to love anything right now knowing just how much shit we’re in. Or have you forgotten about that already?”

“I haven’t, but that’s a problem for future Auric,” I replied with a dismissive wave. “But seriously, haven’t you ever wanted to see something like New York City? Constance says there’s whole communities set up in the ruins there. And at the heart of it all, the remains of the Battle of Central Park.”

“New York?” Val replied, her eyes rolling upwards as she glanced over towards me. “All the way up in the Lost North?”

“You know, it’s not exactly ‘lost’ if Constance has been there and come back. But fine then, something closer? What about Washington, DC?”

“The Washington, DC with all the statues and Gateborn? Oh, and the Gateborn that turn you into statues?”

“Okay, maybe a bad example. How about Once-New Orleans, then?” I suggested, wracking my mind for a place that wasn’t innately and horrifically dangerous. “Haven’t you ever wanted to join a devilry? One part party, one part nightmare, and two parts overwhelming, exhilarating sensation. Mercutio says there’s nothing like them.”

“Is that supposed to be an endorsement? Mercutio has a . . . uh, let’s just say flair for the dramatic.”

“Well, maybe. But even if he does, it still sounds fun!” I replied, despite having second thoughts that maybe we were better off staying in our back corner of nowhere. After all, that was supposedly why everyone had come out here in the first place. When the System had arrived and the gates first opened, they’d all been centered on the great cities of old.

From what Amedea had told us, she and her parents had lived in one back before the fall. Some place called, Rally or Raully. Not that the name really mattered in the end. They and everyone else who lived had fled into the hills in order to survive, running as far away as they could from where the gates were opening en masse and finding a place to start anew.

A place like the one we were headed to now.

“Finally. Home, sweet home,” Val announced a while later, pulling me from my thoughts as the trail sloped down one last time and spilled out into our valley. Tree cover started to give way on either side of us, and then before we knew it, we were in the northwest meadow with Raven Branch Creek on our left and the town walls just on the other side of it.

It was named Blueridge Retreat, and not only served as our home, but was also renowned as the headquarters of Salvo. In the Before Times, it had been a school. Which in itself was something that I thought was crazy to imagine. That so much space and building had been used solely for teaching youths. It was a testament to the decadence of that time, or maybe a testament to how bad things were these days, that it was an entire town to us.

When the world fell, the first refugees had barred the doors and made homes in what had once been its classrooms, surviving like the cornered mice they were. After managing to not get eaten, and surviving the years and decades that followed, additions had been made, both to accommodate for new coming refugees and births that followed in the years after, but also to defend against the wild Gateborn who came seeking easy prey.

The classrooms had been expanded into apartment-like homes, a well was dug, the administration offices were repurposed into a headquarters for the town watch, and the gymnasium was converted into an all-purpose meeting area and market. The parking lot, long since grown over into a field, was now host to the stables, containing the few precious horses and ramas we had, the latter being a four-legged, reptilian Gateborn species, one of the few humanity had been able to successfully domesticate. Beyond that was what had once been the school sports field, long having been converted to crop land, which everyone depended on for sustenance. But perhaps most importantly of all, the flimsy chain-link fence that had once surrounded the property had been built up into full-on walls. Twenty feet tall and wide enough for a trio of broad-shouldered men to walk atop side by side, they were made from a combination of timber, salvage debris, and packed dirt. It did the job well enough, though, and kept the Gateborn out.

So far, at least.

The late afternoon sky was dark above the walls now, heavy with rain clouds as we approached. This far into the Great Smoking Mountains, though, it was always hard to tell how much was rain clouds and how much was smoke. The dragons, or rather Gateborn that really, really looked like dragons, of the surrounding peaks kept mostly to themselves. At least as long as we stayed far below their mountaintops. But nonetheless, their excess smoke always plumed upward into the sky. In a region that was already prone to rain and mist, the effect resulted in a near-constant haze along with a sooty, ashen drizzle.

Arriving just as such a rain began to fall, we passed through the outer fields of Blueridge Retreat close on Amedea’s heels, the woman finally having slowed enough for us to catch up. With the year slowly winding down into the fall, the harvest was in full swing, and I saw dozens of laborers hard at work in scattered groups. Each of the groups was attended by a C-Tier or higher guard, their eyes turned toward the nearby tree line. Hard lessons had taught us that one could never tell when a Gateborn could come strolling out looking for trouble, especially of late with the sprab horde having appeared out of nowhere up in Raven Branch Valley.

But with the rain beginning and the day coming to a close, the laborers and guards alike were all in the process of dropping their work, turning as one towards the north gate. As we approached, I noticed that a crowd had gathered there, with countless voices buzzing towards us on the wind. Peering through the mass of people, I recognized the members of Salvo in the middle of the press, talking, laughing, and assuaging the concerns of a near two-dozen townsfolk.

“Think one day, they’ll welcome us like that?” I asked Val in a whisper as we drew closer.

“System above, I hope not!” Val replied, vehemently shaking her head as she looked at the crowd ahead. “How would we get anything done? I like being able to step out the door without a crowd of hangers-on dogging my every step. Actually, you know what—”

She paused to hop over the snake rail fence separating the fields beside us.

“Wait, where you going?” I asked as I watched her back away from me, Amedea not so much as sparing her a glance.

“The back way in,” she said, her eyes going to the crowd a second time and a visible shudder passing through her. “I don’t want to deal with any of . . . that. Especially not now.”

“Well, it’s a more direct route this way, so I’ll just squeeze on through myself,” I replied, giving my sister a wave as she began her trek around the town walls. Far more reserved than I was, Val had always tended to hate the kind of spotlight that living with Salvo had brought on, preferring to keep to herself whenever possible. Me on the other hand, I thrived on it, and couldn’t help but envy the attention that the others got, imagining the day that I could finally join them, rather than stay at the edges were I currently was.

“Well, y’all certainly have energy today, don’t ya?” I heard Constance laugh as a group of young children swarmed all around her. In short order, she had one sitting on each of her shoulders, with another pair gripping each leg, while a fifth hung off her forearm, swinging in delight. They might as well have all been weightless for how unimpeded she looked while she laughed and talked with their parents and the other townsfolk, even going as far as to shoot me a smile and a wink as I brushed past.

Only for a flash of familiar light to catch my eye.

Feeling a grin cross my face the instant I saw it, I didn’t need to go far before I found its source, quickly finding Mercutio putting on one of his famous impromptu magic shows. No longer shrouded within his thick, gray cape, I was finally able to see the small, pale-skinned and dark-haired man in the flesh as he rolled up the sleeves of his white linen shirt, making a show that there was nothing beneath them. Eventually satisfying the crowd with his presentation, his fingers then sparkled with multicolored light as he began to make a variety of objects disappear in quick succession, followed by each of them reappearing in increasingly improbable places. In just the time it took me to close the distance between us, I saw a feather appear out of a child’s ear, a coin from a teenager’s nose, and an entire rake from a particularly tall man’s pants, the entire crowd roaring with laughter when it was pulled free.

“Ah, is that Auric over there?” I heard the man call the second that I arrived, the crowd instantly parting ahead of me to reveal the large anvil that he held in his hands, his bright orange eyes locking on mine. “Ah, yes, it is! Good, just the person I was looking for! Would you be so kind as to hold this for me?”

“Of course,” I replied, feeling a smile break across my face. This was an older routine that the man put on, on occasion, but one the crowd always loved to see. “I’d be happy to help!”

“Magnifique!” he said excitedly, before suddenly tossing the heavy hunk of metal in my direction.

Playing my part to the hilt, I feigned panic as I lunged forward to catch the anvil, timing my grab just perfectly before it hit the ground. Letting out a loud, theatrical grunt as I wrapped my hands around it, I pretended to stagger under its weight, right up until a second Mercutio stepped out from the crowd with a head-sized boulder in his hands.

“Oh, and this too?” he asked right as he reached out to place it on top of the anvil, balancing it perfectly on its head.

“This one also!” a third Mercutio added a heartbeat later, a chorus of laughter ringing out as a massive millstone abruptly landed atop the pile, leaving me to stagger and let out a shout of panic. By all rights, the sudden landing of the heavy weight should have caused my arms to break off from the burden. Or at least, it would have if the objects hadn’t all been illusory and weightless. Just like the copies Mercutio was making of himself.

I felt a sudden shadow fall over me as I continued to struggle, and then a fourth and final Mercutio, looking exactly the same as all the others, stepped into view.

His face was twisted in a grimace of concentration as his arms shook beneath the weight of a . . . rabbit. A completely normal, pure white rabbit.

“Last thing,” he grunted as he wobbled forward. “Promise.”

He hefted the confused-looking rabbit up into the air and leaned toward me as if to place it on top of the millstone, then burst out laughing.

“I’m kidding, of course, my boy!” he said as he pulled the rabbit back into his chest. “This would be far too heavy.”

The crowd immediately burst out in a cacophony of laughter, the children in the audience particularly hysterical. Even the nearby adults allowed themselves a smirk or two as they watched on. Everyone had seen the routine before, more than once even, but no one passed up a chance to crack a smile and relax; the world had its way of wearing a person down so any spectacle or opportunity to forget about it was always greatly appreciated.

“Thank you, thank you!” Mercutio said as he bowed to the applause, the three copies of himself leading the clapping with cheers and hoots. “I’m here all week. And next week, come to think of it.” He laughed at his own joke, and the copies fell into hysterics. “Anyway, you’ve all been lovely. A round of applause for my assistant, too. Auric, everyone!”

There was more clapping, and more bowing from Mercutio, and then with a smooth motion, he tossed the rabbit nonchalantly over his shoulder. It did an unnatural backflip as it sailed through the air and landed perfectly atop the teetering pile of illusory weights in my arms. As it did, there was a bright flash of light and smoke, and then the rabbit, the pile, Mercutio, and his copies all vanished as one.

The crowd applauded all the more, and for a moment, standing there alone, it was possible to imagine they were clapping for me. It only lasted for a moment though, as with Mercutio gone, the crowd soon began to disperse, leaving me standing just by myself. Breathing out a resigned sigh at the fleeting glimpse at glory, I glanced around to see how the others were doing, noticing that Constance had since moved on as well, pursued by a gaggle of townsfolk on her way inside the town walls. Curshaw was off to the side with several watchmen, and from their gestures, seemed to be discussing the finer points of killing Gateborn. Next, that left Sumalin, who was nowhere to be seen, which really wasn’t a surprise. Much like Val, she wasn’t one for crowds and always slunk off the first opportunity she got.

That just left me, then. Well, and also Amedea, who passed by me in a hurry with a group of town elders surrounding her, each of them shaking their heads and wringing their hands as they dogged her every step into town.

“Soon, Amedea. It must be soon. The intrusion cannot be allowed to grow further,” one of them said as they walked past me.

“You of all people know too well how these gates propagate, how they phase upon our world,” another voice added. “It needs to be closed. Before it’s too late. The last thing we need is . . . something like that on our doorstep.”

“And I won’t take Salvo into an intrusion that powerful without at least another to fill out their ranks,” I heard Amedea retort as I moved to follow them before they left me behind. “I know better than anyone the dangers that such a gate holds. If they fail, if I fail, then this entire region will be lost.”

“Then find another, or as many as you need to close it. But do it soon.”

“You think I’m not bending my full energy towards this?” Amedea replied, her voice taking on a hard edge towards the elder that had spoken. “As much as I wish, I cannot simply magic A-Tier adventurers from thin air. Else I would call them forth by the thousands to tame these lands from sea to sea. No, they must be nurtured; they must be grown; they must be trained. Or failing that, those who have already been trained must be discovered and pushed upwards. But that too takes time.”

“Well, you found Mercutio, did you not?” I heard a voice ask from amid the crowd. “Can’t you find another like him, if even on a temporary basis just to close the gate?”

“I found him on a six-month trip to Once-New Orleans,” she said with a sudden growl as she abruptly spun on her heel, causing the jogging group of elders to slide to a stop and near tumble over one another in response. “And even if I could find one, I would not dare take an unknown A-Tier into what will be a life-and-death struggle. The Guyot Fault is a dangerous gate, perhaps the most dangerous one that I’ve seen in thirty years, and I am acutely aware that the monsters it spawns grow worse by the week. In fact, it is an awareness that consumes me every waking moment of every day.”

She lowered her voice as she continued speaking, her eyes darting to each of the elders in turn.

“So believe me when I say that I am working on closing it, and that when the first opportunity presents itself to do so successfully, Salvo will leap upon it with the entirety of their combined might.”

“O-o-of course, we didn’t mean—” one of the elders started to reply only to fall silent at a glare from Amedea.

“Of course you did not,” she said simply, the dismissal clear in her tone. “Thank you for your input, elders. I trust you all have other tasks to attend to this evening, yes? Good. As do I.”

Her gaze shifted slightly until it landed on me standing behind the elders.

“I happen to have a wayward stray that needs to be taken care of.”

Chapter Four

Why doesn’t it work anymore? I mixed it exactly as I’ve done it a hundred times! I even checked the instructions after the first batch went wrong! This just doesn’t make any sense at all! It’s not supposed to turn into this . . . foamy, useless mess. It’s supposed to turn to concrete! First the power stops working, then the gas doesn’t burn, and then now this! What the hell is happening to the world?!

—Frustrated Notes From An Unknown Writer

* * *

Blueridge Retreat was a beacon of safety tucked into the base of the time-weathered Smoking Mountains, and Salvo Tower was its most distinguishing feature. Rising from the top of the school’s central building, it stood eight stories tall, with rooms on each floor, and an observation post at the top. Given the ever-present, low-hanging clouds, it meant the upper floors were often suspended in a void of diffused light and whistling wind. It made for a great place to collect your thoughts and get away from the activity and noise below. Unfortunately, the local birds thought the same thing, large swarms of them preferring to roost at the tower’s peak.

And also to leave otherworldly amounts of droppings, all of which was my responsibility to clean off.

It was hardly appropriate work for a member of Salvo. But then again, I wasn’t a member of Salvo yet. I was an apprentice, a future prospect, one who also happened to be the adopted grandson of the team’s leader. It meant that scrubbing bird droppings was exactly appropriate work for a person of my caliber. And according to Amedea, the exactly appropriate punishment I’d deserved for running off with Val into the wild.

I imagine that even if we didn’t run off, I’d still be the one cleaning this mess, I thought with a scowl as the bristles of my scrub brush scratched against the parapet, breaking up the last of the paint-like pigeon splatters. Ideally, I could have brought water up to soften it, but it was eight stories down to the base of the tower, then three more down to the courtyard and the well. As if that journey weren’t enough in itself, one bucket would have been far from enough to get the job done, resulting in multiple trips.

So instead, I’d decided to use elbow grease and grit, attacking the mess with pure strength and determination, sweat hanging off my brow and clinging tight until the next stiff wind whipped past, taking both it and the cloud of bird dust along with it. Fortunately, I’d remembered to bring a mask and an ancient pair of goggles along with me, else the blowing wind would have sent the excrement flying into places that I didn’t want to think about.

Forwards, backwards. Forwards, backwards. The work took hours to complete. Every stroke of the brush steadily scraped away more of the smeared-on and sunbaked droppings, but never fast enough for me to feel like I was making decent progress. The stone beneath it was rough and porous, full of nooks and crannies for everything to seep into, making it a glacial process to remove. In any other circumstance, the trial would have at least paid some sort of dividend, at least with regards to the System rewarding my efforts with growth in my Vigor or Mettle attributes on leveling. But ever since I had capped out at the pinnacle that my tier had to offer, the experience and effort was wasted, giving me absolutely no benefit to look forward to later.

Which I imagined was exactly what Amedea had intended when she’d assigned the duty to me.

Regardless of that fact, hard, endless labor wasn’t exactly something new to me, nor to the rest of Salvo, given their comparative power to the rest of the town’s inhabitants. In an attempt to foster goodwill amongst the citizenry and also control the direction the System took their growth, Amedea had all the members of Salvo constantly pitching in with projects around the town. From helping with the plowing, to clearing debris, to crafting implements and tools for workers to use, every member of the group was a familiar and helpful presence, often doing the work of ten or twenty townsfolk.

Or sometimes even more, such as in the case of Constance, who quite literally carried the lion’s share of the work in building Salvo Tower after Amedea had trained her to A-Tier. As it happened, having someone who could carry horse-sized stones like they weighed nothing was an incredible boon to the construction’s efforts, and what would have taken everyone else years to build was finished in only a fraction of the time.

Yet it’s still nothing compared to the rest of the school, and what we were able to do even years before, I added as I paused in my scrubbing efforts for a second to catch my breath, my eyes dropping down to the building far below. To the relics from the World Before and what their remains showed of the early years that followed the fall.

Compared to the tower, the once-school-turned-town was all clean lines and perfect corners, even after all that it had endured. Every brick fit perfectly with the next. Metal had been bent in ways even our best smiths couldn’t quite yet duplicate, though they all claimed they were close. But most unique was the stone that had been shaped into sidewalks and courtyards as perfect and flat as a fresh sheet of ice. The Fallen Generation told us that it was called concrete and that until roughly twenty years after the System had arrived it had been used copiously to build several of the expansions, extra buildings, and other works throughout the town. Then one day, seemingly without warning, the mix that was used to make it just didn’t work anymore. It didn’t mold right. It didn’t set. It did a countless host of strange and unpredictable things as whatever rules that the System used to govern its chemistry no longer worked the same way that they used to. Apparently, the same thing had happened with gunpowder, gasoline, and electricity, along with a host of other things too numerous to list.

Regardless, it was a fundamental change that soon prompted a whole different direction in the town’s development, aided largely in part by the strange and reality-defying empowerments that generations of gatesealers gradually brought back with them from their expeditions. Ranging from empowered tools that allowed one to instantly cut a three-foot cube from anything before them in a blink of an eye, to a sublimation-defying mote that caused ice to never thaw or melt. Regardless of whatever temperature it, or the surrounding environment was. There were others too, I knew, that I couldn’t quite make out from my particular vantage point in the tower, but I knew that they were all down there, each and every one of them testaments to the strange world we now lived in.

And one that I’m being cooped up away from, I thought with one final stroke across the stone, scrubbing away the last of the pigeon excrement and promptly throwing my mostly mangled brush into the bucket I’d taken with me where it joined several other damaged or broken ones within.

“Try not to make such a mess for me next time, guys?” I asked as I fell back against the wall with a deep sigh of relief, eyeing a small group of pigeons who’d been watching me work. Ever since I’d arrived up here, they’d seemed intrigued as to what I was doing, some of them even going as far as to appear offended that someone was daring to undo their hard work of painting the tower’s parapet.

“One more chore done, a thousand to go,” I muttered with another sigh as I picked up my bucket and made my way inside. The top floor of the tower was the observation post, as well as occasional stargazing spot, and as such, was mostly empty but for the few logs the watch kept to record comings and goings in the surrounding lands.

“Didn’t happen to see any impending invasions while you were out there, eh, Auric?” I heard McKinney, one of the watchmen on duty, ask the moment I stepped inside. Though “on duty” was a bit of an exaggeration. With all the clouds filling the sky today, there was nothing really to see save for the eventual rain, and that was enough excuse for him and Carter to kick back in their chairs in relaxation, their boots resting on the table.

“Only the ones coming out of the pigeons,” I said as I peeled off my mask, wincing at the smell that immediately assaulted my nose. “But it’s all taken care of for now. At least until I get in trouble again.”

“So, a week then?” Carter queried with a half-chuckle, the cap he had pulled down over his eyes not so much as even shifting in place as he spoke.

“I hope not. I doubt I’ll be even close to done with everything on Amedea’s list by then. Which, speaking of . . .” I mimed towards the stairs with my brush-filled bucket. “I’d best keep on getting to.”

“Hrm, I can imagine. Good luck,” McKinney said to me with a wave, then pulled his own cap down over his eyes.

I was sure I heard the first of their snores begin to fill the air as I took the stairs down.

The next floor was a bit wider around than the one above, but you wouldn’t have known it from the layout. The stairs snaked down along one wall with just enough room beside them for a single open landing with a door, beyond which was Amedea’s lab and bedroom. Or, more appropriately put, her lab that contained her research materials, experiments, and a small bed shoved into one corner behind a bookshelf.

The sixth floor was wider still than those above, which was sort of how towers worked after all, and this one had been divided into two rooms. One for Constance, and one for Curshaw. The pattern continued on the next story with Mercutio and Sumalin’s rooms. The fourth floor, however, was wide enough for three small rooms, and that’s where Val and I were housed, plus one empty chamber reserved for a fifth and supposedly final member of Salvo. Or at least the final member who would be housed inside the tower proper.

Unless, of course, Amedea decided to evict Val and me into the town itself.

Regardless of that particularly anxious train of thought, I couldn’t stop my eyes from lingering on that door as I passed. It had drawn my gaze for years now, and I’d always imagined that one day the room beyond it would be mine. Not that it was physically any different from the one I already had, but it was different in the only way that counted. Having that room would mean that I was officially a part of the team and not just a poor, orphaned charge Amedea had taken in two decades earlier.

The residential floors ended with the fourth, and continuing downward, I entered the athenaeum. It was stuffed wall to wall with shelves and comfy reading chairs and even a fireplace beside a large table. But for all the reading infrastructure in the room, there weren’t many books. Only fifteen or so, stacked neatly on a single shelf.

Blueridge Retreat already had a library, of course. The school had come equipped with a massive room full of every book imaginable. They were invaluable teaching tools, but they only contained knowledge of the World Before. The books in the athenaeum, on the other hand, had all been written after the apocalypse. After the System’s arrival had decided to scramble everything that our ancestors had built their civilization on, replacing it with the Gateborn, gates, and meticulously tracked numbers.

Oh, and of course, our powers.

If you wanted to study human history, you went to the library. If you wanted to study the intricacies of the System, or the art of Gateborn slaying, or the best way to destroy a planar intrusion and stop it from ravaging the world around it, then you came to this room.

Even from across the room, I recognized the titles on the shelf. I’d read them all at least twice by now.

The Gatesealer’s Handbook: Advice, Wisdom, and Practical Teachings from Humanity’s First Gateborn Hunters, compiled by Constance Turner. On the Nature of Gateborn, by Tanner Grimes. A Survivalist’s Guide to the World After, by Amedea Jackson. Those were three of the best sources for the aspiring gatesealer, those who actively hunted down and closed gates, to begin with. But each work in the athenaeum was beyond value. Everyone in Blueridge Retreat was allowed to make use of the knowledge stored within, but only the copies that Amedea had commissioned. The works kept here were the original copies, and Amedea had taken special precaution to ensure each was properly stored and preserved to stand the test of time.

And not to mention clean, which given the dirty, sweaty, and bird-dust-covered specimen of a human I currently was, had me making sure to keep my distance from the room in its entirety as I passed and continued to the first floor.

Compared to the athenaeum, the second level of Salvo Tower was entirely unexceptional. It served as a basic kitchen, dining area, and general leisure space. The living room of the tower, as it were. And it was here I found Amedea at the table as she practiced weaving a complicated-looking sort of power, shaking her head as it unraveled.

“Having problems?” I asked as I stepped as close as I dared and made a mock show of wiggling my fingers. “Well, you’re in luck, because the best weaver from here to Once-New Orleans just walked in.”

Amedea paused from her efforts and made a show of looking quizzically around the room, her eyes darting from side to side.

“No, Mercutio’s out with the others.”

“Okay, well. I could be the best weaver from here to . . . anywhere,” I said as I set the bucket down at the top of the stairs . “If you’d let me find an ascension gate and actually progress again.”

The power sparkling between Amedea’s fingers fizzled from existence as she fully turned her attention toward me, followed by her leaning back in her chair, her expression that of a particularly tired parent.

“It’s been less than twenty-four hours since you convinced your sister to follow you into a valley full of rampaging Gateborn. Less than twenty-four hours since you both were nearly eaten alive.”

“But weren’t—”

“Less than twenty-four hours since you abandoned your training while we were distracted dealing with another issue,” the woman continued, cutting off my words before I could fully get them out.

“I’m capped out, have been capped out for a year. So it wasn’t training, it was make-work,” I replied, letting a little bit of my internal frustration seep into my voice. “So can you really blame me for wanting to do something else? And even besides that, aren’t you the slightest bit curious why these Gateborn are so sick? Why they’re glowing orange? That’s never happened before.”

“This isn’t about blame, Auric. It’s about responsibility. You want to tier up; you want to become stronger. I get that—”

“This isn’t about just getting stronger,” I interrupted in a hard tone. “Not all of it, at least. This is about getting an answer of what I should be expecting out of my life going forward.”

Amedea frowned in confusion as she looked back towards me. “Your life? What do you mean?”

“Exactly that,” I stated, feeling a good majority of the pent-up anger that had been brewing inside of me for the last half-year begin to bubble upwards. “In case you’ve forgotten, I am eighteen years old now, and still a D-Tier. If I don’t advance at least to C-Tier soon and start climbing again, my prospects are going to dry up.”

“Your . . . prospects—oh,” Amedea said, first in her earlier confusion, then in realization at what I meant. “You mean a girlfriend, a wife.”

“Among other things, but yes, that’s part of it too,” I replied, feeling a little embarrassed to be having such a candid conversation with my adoptive grandmother. “If I were to look for a life outside this tower, there are too many C-Tiers, or System above, even B-Tiers in this town for me to compete with. Regardless of what I look to do with my life. If I can reach C-Tier, that all changes. I’ll have opportunities open to me outside gatesealing. I can continue on with a trade, continue to progress. I’ve no doubt that I can out-work anyone if given the opportunity. And the potential.”

“Neither do I,” Amedea agreed with a sigh, inclining her head towards me. “And perhaps I have been old for far too long, long enough to forget what sort of troubles the young face.

“But that does not change what you’ve done, nor what you and your sister risked,” she continued, leaning forward, fixing me with a stern gaze. “To advance to higher tiers is to gain power, regardless of whether or not it is put to use. And power without restraint, without logic, is dangerous to possess. After all that I’ve seen in my all-too-long life, I truly fear that is a lesson that you have not learned yet. All that I have done here with Salvo and both you and your sister is to train successors that will one day replace me when I’m gone. Disciplined heroes who will do what is right. Not those who will allow their recklessness to create more damage than they solve. I’ve lived too long to let that happen.”

“And you don’t already think I’m disciplined enough to know better than that?”

“What I know is that you disobeyed an order that I gave you,” Amedea replied. “Not one as your grandmother and guardian, but one as the leader of the team that you and your sister so dearly wish to one day join. It makes me question your judgement and wonder if you would ever do the same if in a gate. There is no room for such doubts like that in there, not when the entire team’s, and by extension, the town’s, lives could be on the line.”

“I disobeyed an order I thought was wrong, as you yourself taught me to do,” I replied as evenly as I could, despite grinding the back of my teeth. “Yes, I’ll admit it turned out poorly in the end, and that if you all hadn’t saved us, Val and I could have likely died for it. But I don’t know what else to do. I have this driving need in me to know. To understand my place in everything even as weak as I am. And from where I stand, I see, know, that there’s something weird going on out in Raven Branch Valley, and I—we—need to get to the bottom of it. If only to find out if it’s a danger to the town and the region beyond.”

I fixed her with my most serious expression. “It’s the right thing to do.”

Amedea chewed her lip for a moment as she mulled over my words, then pointed a finger at me.

“And how do you know it’s the right thing to do?”

“How do I know?” I replied, slightly taken aback by her question. “Ah, well, I just do. I feel it in my gut and my heart that something’s wrong out there, and it’s worth a closer look.”

“Not your brain?”

“Well, that too. All three of them.”

“All three of them?”

I simply replied with a nod unsure of where exactly this was going.

“You’re a lucky one, then, Auric. Few people are so lucky to have such clarity.”

I cracked a small smile at that; it was the first compliment that I’d had from the woman in weeks.

“I am—”

“It is also what makes you wholly unprepared for advancement,” she interrupted, her words dropping like an anvil on my head, and not one of Mercutio’s illusory, weightless ones. “Being an A-Tier, being the best humanity has to offer, is no simple thing. There will be times where your heart will want to follow one course. Will believe it’s what must be done with every fiber of its being. But your brain, your mind, won’t agree. It will list a hundred—a thousand—reasons why another course of action is better. Is more logical. Is what absolutely must be done.” She crossed her arms and leaned even further back in her chair, her eyes glazing over slightly. “And then there is your ‘gut’ as you say, caught in between. When your heart and your brain disagree, which way does it lean? Or does it paralyze you? Does it fill you with a twisting, sickening nausea as you war between two, or three, or ten, choices? Does it last until one teammate is dead? Two? All of them?

“With every action we take, Auric, there are countless lives on the line,” Amedea continued when it was clear that I didn’t have an answer for her. “There are people counting on us. To save them. To protect them. But I am not so sure that you could decide what to do. Decide between what is right and what is necessary.”

“I could make a decision, in the moment,” I said, fighting to hold my ground, despite my earlier resolve beginning to fade away.

“Like you made the decision to abandon your training and nearly get eaten? To force us to intervene and potentially be miles away from somewhere where we could have been needed more dearly?”

Her words hit me like an anvil again and again, and I felt myself begin to buckle, waiting for the killing blow that would inevitably finish me off. But instead of landing, I saw Amedea’s expression soften, and her tone lightened.

“Believe me that I understand what it is that you want, Auric, perhaps a little better now after our conversation than I did before. But the crux of the problem that I see is that you want it all right now. To become as strong as Constance or Curshaw in the blink of an eye. Yet without truly realizing the extreme dedication that it takes. It is a lifetime of putting aside what you want to do in favor of what you must do.” When she spoke again, it was as gentle as I’d ever heard her speak, but even that only cushioned the blow so much. “And after yesterday, I don’t believe you’re ready to do that just yet.”

I scooped a broom from the corner of the room and turned back to the stairs as quickly as I could.

“You know, I think I have some cleaning to get back to,” I said, unable to face her.

Because she was right. Because she knew. Because I knew it.

“Auric.”

Her words froze my foot above the first stair.

“You’re right about Raven Branch Valley. I do want to know what’s happened to the Gateborn there, and what implications it may have for Blueridge. The last thing we need is one of our tamed Gateborn catching the sickness they bear and wiping out our herds.

“But what I need most, is to find a fifth member for Salvo so we can confidently risk attempting to close the Guyot Fault Gate rather than just contain it. In the end, that is what is going to save the most lives, and it has to unfortunately take precedence over all else. When that’s done, and hopefully soon, we’ll investigate the valley. All of us together.

“And find you that ascension gate that you so crave.”

Chapter Five

Everything revolves around the Gates. It’s how we progress. It’s how we’re tested. It’s how we survive. Without them, we would be less than nothing. Little more than dust on the wind. But with them . . . with them, we have a chance to be something greater. Something better than what we once were. Something better than just Human.

—Speech from Tanner Grimes, widely considered to be the First Gate Sealer

* * *

Cleaning Salvo Tower from top to bottom, all eight of its floors, wasn’t exactly a heroic task destined for the history books. Or at least it wouldn’t have been if anyone else had been responsible for it. But I was Auric Amadeus Cain! I was born of powerful gatesealers, raised by a team of humanity’s greatest heroes, and above all, destined for glory. Even in my darkest hour, when I was elbow-deep in cleaning solution and mop water, I did not despair. Even when all hope seemed lost, when the soap ran out and the grime held firm, I fought on. And in the end, against all odds, I emerged, triumphant.

And very low on soap.

Which was what brought me to market on such a stormy morning. Such a morning where the rain lashed the ground as if it were settling a score. Where the wind howled as if in pain. Where the clouds sank down on us such that the whole world shrank.

It was so dark the glow-moss lights lining the hallways had activated, the otherworldly plants, once recovered as seeds from a gate decades earlier, reacting as if it were night. They splashed the hallways every which way with their pale, shallow light as I strode past them, sending dancing shadows in my wake.

Blueridge Retreat was centered around a two-story, circular courtyard where the classrooms had been converted into apartment homes. There was a second, smaller courtyard, though, and the once-classrooms there now served a variety of purposes. As the largest human town from here to Old Gatlinburg, Blueridge’s market and shops supported a variety of homesteaders and passing travelers. Simeon’s Potionworks was foremost among them, and renowned as the best place for all of your liquid or chemical needs.

“Blasted things were here last night, I swear!” I heard a voice roar as I arrived just outside the lab’s door, a peal of thunder picking that moment to boom along with the shouting, echoing off the distant mountaintops with a roar so loud it momentarily drowned everything out.

Simeon’s Potionworks had once been the school’s chemistry lab, but the sign by the door had chipped and worn over the years until the R and the Y had fallen off. Now it read “Chemist” in impossibly precise letters—the kind that had only been possible to create in the Before Times. And below that, “Master Simeon & Son” had been painted on in a somewhat close approximation of the original font.

Waiting a few seconds for the echoing noise from the outside to pass, and bracing myself for whatever awaited me inside, I knocked loudly on the door twice before pulling it open and stepping in. “Hello? Master Simeon? I was—”

“Well, where in the name of the System did ya put them?” A second voice, different than the first I’d heard in the hallway, roared, its volume so loud that the glassware around the lab clattered in its mounts.

Flinching at the outburst that was far closer to me than I expected, I practically leapt through the door as I spun towards its source, spotting an older, balding man standing at a wide shelf. Visibly angry, even from behind, he growled under his breath as he snapped up beakers and flasks and checked their labels one by one with all the grace of a bear snatching at salmon. And yet, somehow, those massive hands were never anything less than perfectly gentle with the fine containers. Swallowing a touch of unexpected nervousness, I saw an array of letters begin to shimmer in the air around him.

Simeon Parlance – Tier: C – Level 10

Class: Unassigned

Health: Uninjured

Status: None

Relation: Acquaintance

“I put them back in the special ingredients case, where they’re supposed to be!” a younger-sounding voice fired back, its source appearing a second later in the form of a similar-looking man as the first, save for being several decades his junior.

Raising a finger in query as the man practically brushed right past me without stopping, I saw the System begin to react a second time, identifying him as if the context weren’t already enough.

Joshua Parlance – Tier: C – Level 4

Class: Unassigned

Health: Mildly Injured

Status: Exhausted

Relation: Stranger

“Um, excuse me,” I called out, my hand already moving to swat at the annoying System message before it could finish forming.

But before I could figure out what I wanted to say next, Simeon ripped open a nearby cabinet with an angry growl, plunged shoulder deep into it, and did far too good an impression of a bear with its head caught in a beehive. Several more grunts and angry snorts later, he ripped back out and slammed the door shut. I winced as everything inside clattered, but from the sound of it, nothing broke.

“It ain’t in the special ingredients case!”

“Then you must have moved it somewhere else. Don’t blame me for your failing memory, old man!”

“Uh, sirs?” I asked, still feeling a little timid, then cleared my throat and repeated myself a bit louder. “Sirs!”

“Failing memory? Why, you little–” Simeon’s eyes went wide with surprise as he finally turned and noticed me standing there in the doorway, bringing up a finger. “Ah, one moment, lad.” Then he snapped his attention back towards his son. “Keep it up and you’re gonna be on trap-cleaning duty for the rest of the month.”

“Good, then we’ll finally have clean traps!” Joshua shouted angrily before he spun on his heel and stormed out of the room. When he was gone, Simeon turned to me, his face still red.

“Working with family,” he said as if that explained everything, his eyes rolling up towards the ceiling. “As much a blessing as it is a curse.”

“I know the feeling,” I replied, my own experiences with both my grandmother and sister all too fresh in my mind. “At least it’s not boring?”

“When it comes to the kind of work we do, I prefer boring,” Simeon said, voice rumbling back down to its usual baritone. “And predictable at that, too.”

“I can appreciate that,” I said. “It sounded like something was missing?”

“A collection of motes brought back from a gate a week ago,” he said, waving the thought away. “Remembered I’d stashed them away to look at later, and now later comes and I can’t find them. Figures, that.”

“Maybe you didn’t lock the cabinet?” Joshua’s voice called out from the back room.

“By the System, boy, I’m gonna lock you in the cabinet!”

“With those old joints? Ha! You’d never get near me.”

Growling once more, Simeon made to storm toward the back room before stopping, as if remembering I was still there.

“Ya come here for something specific, lad?”

“Oh, uh, yeah, right,” I replied, suddenly feeling sheepish at my request. “I need some soap.”

* * *

There’d been a few other errands to run after the soap, and they’d carried me all across the town and, finally, to the market in the gymnasium. On a regular day, it was a bustling place. But with the bad weather sending everyone inside, it was even more packed than normal, the stalls that would have otherwise been set up outside now crammed into any available bit of floorspace.

Thankfully, the supplies for the tower were rather consistent, so most of the merchants had them packed up and ready for me.

Or at least all of them did except for Ashe, the local fur and leather trader.

“You know what, how about I just take these both?” I said as I looked at the two bundles that she had prepared for me. One of them contained an array of barghest pelts, which belonged to a wolflike Gateborn found in the Old City, while the other was an eclectic mix of ramas scales, beaver skins, and a pile of leather from more small game creatures than I could easily name. “Then bring back whatever Amedea doesn’t want.”

“Fair enough,” Ashe said as she pressed one nostril closed and sucked in through the other, fighting her perpetually runny nose. “Long as you pay for both bundles now. I’ll sort the difference when you come back.”

“Really, Ashe? I’ve been running errands for the tower and you all my life. Can’t you just spot me?”

“Not even if you were the mountain lord himself,” she said to me with a shrug, referring to the colossal, dragon-like Gateborn that lived up in the nearby peaks. “It’s a busy day and people are here to shop. Can’t have you taking a third of my inventory without collateral. And don’t feel too badly about it either, it’s my policy for everyone now. Been too many strangers about these days. Untrustworthy-looking sort of strangers.”

“Strangers? Human strangers, you mean?” I asked with a raised eyebrow, wondering just what exactly I’d missed after being cooped up in the tower while cleaning. “We’re not exactly abundant in number these days, you know.”

“Aye, we aren’t. That’s what makes it all the stranger when there’s strangers about,” she said, with a faint, distasteful scowl on her face. “Whole group of ’em showed up the other day. Nervous, squirrely-looking bunch. Up to no good, I’m sure. Hopefully they be just passing through.”

It was mildly interesting news, but I still wasn’t able to quite see how it affected Salvo’s reputation for potentially not paying what the skins were worth. Amedea would quite literally skin someone alive at the suggestion of outright stealing from someone in town.

Or well, she’d get Curshaw to do it at least, I thought idly as I mustered one final plea, more on the principle rather than being short of paying her.

“Well, that being as it may, I’m not a stranger. Amedea, who placed this order, isn’t a stranger. You know us. You can knock on our door any time.”

“I certainly can, and that’s what I’m doing now. Knock, knock, pay up.”

“Fine,” I said with a grumble, making a mental note to mention the exchange to Amedea. She was always interested to know when things like this changed. “I’ll pay for both bundles now. But I expect a full refund for whichever skins I bring back.”

“And you’ll get it, if you come back,” the woman replied, her words muffled as she began to combine the two bundles of animal skins she’d set aside for me, briefly vanishing under her table for string.

Stepping in closer to the stall while she worked, I was happy to get away from the immediate press of the market behind me. Despite the cool storm air outside, the gymnasium was particularly hot and humid, all the bodies, conversations, and activity having turned the room into a sweltering sauna.

Waiting in the oppressive heat for a couple minutes, Ashe eventually finished her work with the bundles, and I paid her in kind. Once that was done, I made my way towards the back doors of the gymnasium that were propped open, letting the cool, wet air wash over me.

Breathing a sigh of relief as the air helped me cool off, I found myself looking out the doors to what had once been a practice field in ages past and now had since become home to a small graveyard. Dozens of headstones stood in neat little rows, each of them set completely straight and well-cared for. Despite the sheets of rain that were falling from the sky, I could make out one in particular, my heart skipping a beat the moment I saw it.

It’d been too long since I’d last visited.

It was only when the second blast of rain hit my face that I realized what I was doing, that I had stepped out into the storm and was striding across the old parking lot toward the graveyard, heedless of the fact I was getting the leather wet.

It was only a dozen steps before cracked cement turned to grass, then a dozen more before it became mud as I reached the graveyard.

I ended up in front of their headstone without consciously meaning to. As if my feet had mutinied and were taking orders from my heart instead of my head. The rain was so heavy it soaked my hair, ran down over my eyes, and made it hard to see. Hard to read. But I didn’t need to read to know what the headstone before me said.

Samuel and Patricia Cain

Gatesealers. Heroes. Loving parents.

May your sacrifice never be forgotten.

“Never be forgotten,” I repeated, my eyes lingering on the last line. I’d always wondered how something could be forgotten if it had never been remembered in the first place. If it had happened before either Valorie or I were old enough to understand.

And then I wondered how could it still hurt. Though not exactly in pain. More the expectation of it. Like those terrible few moments after stubbing your toe, when you know the pain is coming, but it hasn’t hit yet. Looking at my parents’ gravestone was exactly like that, but drawn out over a life. One day, the pain would hit. Or, perhaps even more frightening, maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe I would always feel this way when I looked at the stone.

Maybe I would always feel completely empty.

From as early as I could ever remember, Amedea had told Val and I that our parents had been heroes. That they were candidates to join Salvo, even. According to what we’d been told, they’d gone into a gate, and a particularly nasty one at that. It had grown in secret until it was beginning to phase, an event that would have threatened the whole town. That is, until our parents and three others had desperately fought their way through a horde of Gateborn to its entrance deep within Alum Cave. They’d gone in to close it, to stop it before it could finish its transformation and any more Gateborn escaped from it, and they’d done just that. It would have been a grand triumph, too.

If any of them had survived to make it back.

“Hey, Auric, is that you there?” a voice called through the rain, snapping my attention off the gravestone and to my right where a figure was walking.

“Kerill,” I abruptly hissed the instant I recognized the man, my heart beginning to thunder in my chest. I glanced back towards the market door, which was still wide open, then back towards him. “Why are you here? Someone could be watching. You—”

“Should have sent a message, I know,” he said as he took a step closer, the falling rain rippling as it was pushed away by his movements, not so much as a stray drop coming in contact with him or the armor he wore.

“But I saw you standing here while walking by. And what I got to share is too important to let wait.”

Chapter Six

Some aspects of human nature never change. No matter what the state of the world is. We always look to find our tribe, our people, those that we find most like us. It is a quality that has allowed us to survive truly impossible disasters and the most difficult of times. Yet despite that quality, it carries a darker side, one that ostracizes those who do not somehow fit into the common mold, or worse, those who are seen to be below it. Such as those unfortunate enough to be born as D-Tiers.

—Words by Elder Christensen of Blueridge, fifty years after The Fall

* * *

Blueridge’s bar had once been a pole barn that housed Before Times vehicles. Construction and maintenance machines the Fallen Generation said used to work miracles. Apparently, they’d been a great help in building the school into the fortress-town it was now. Each machine could lift an entire house or dig a pit faster than ten decently leveled C-Tiers. Some, I’d been told, even specialized in cutting grass, which seemed an awful waste of a machine to me. But that was the Before Times for you. From the sound of things, no one had realized how good they’d had it, at least until they didn’t have it.

But I guess your perspective was a bit different when the only world you’d ever known was one where humanity was on the brink of extinction and one bad winter could ruin everything, which also had supposedly gotten worse in the World After than it used to be.

Anyway, the fuel that powered the machines had run out quickly after the Fall, and more hadn’t been found before the System’s strange effect on reality rendered the substance inert. As a result, the machines had been stripped for parts soon after, leaving the old pole barn largely without a use for the longest time. Until Blevins had come along.

He’d added some picnic tables, a cellar, and turned what had once been the open front of the barn into a sliding garage door. Lastly, he’d scraped the N off the sign hanging from the entrance, and in a flash, the pole barn had been reborn as the Pole Bar.

His children, then grandchildren, had since kept up the place, and now it was the proudest drinking establishment from here to Old Gatlinburg. Largely by virtue of being the only such establishment between the two places.

Like most days, the garage door was open today, the rain seemingly not enough reason for someone to get up and draw the heavy slab of metal closed. As a result, it meant that the hay and dirt floor was well on its way to becoming mud beneath my feet as the man across from me finished his moonshine, his nameplate shimmering in my vision as I glared at him.

Kerill Baldwin – Tier: C – Level 15

Class: Striker

Health: Uninjured

Status: Mildly Intoxicated

Relation: Acquaintance

The man ignored me as he slammed his cup down on the table between us and reached for a second cup beside it, grabbing it roughly, but not enough so that any of its contents splashed free. He then went onto repeat the same motion as before with it, chugging the potent substance without so much as a grimace. Letting out an annoyed grunt, I rolled my eyes at the man and let my gaze drop down towards the other thing that had been dropped on the table after we’d arrived, an odd-looking metal helmet that was already completely dry, despite us just having come in from the storm. Blinking at it twice, it only took the System a second to pick up on my implied query.

Hydrophobic Iron Helmet

Tier: C

Item Class: Empowered

Armor: 35

Special: Hydrophobic – When worn, this helmet gently repels all water that comes within a one-foot radius of its wearer, pushing it harmlessly away from them.

Condition: 189/200

Such a simple power on it, and yet it makes all the difference in this sort of weather, I thought as I looked at the helmet and back to the man on the other side of the table who was completely dry while I was still dripping.

“All right, you’ve had your drink,” I said as I motioned towards the two empty mugs on the table. “Drinks, rather. Now, if you’d please”—I paused as I leaned in closer and lowered my voice—“what in the name of the System is so important that you couldn’t just keep walking and send me a message later?”

Kerill’s only reply was to raise a finger at me as he continued to down his second mug of the white lightning, a small stream dribbling down the corner of his mouth and making its way towards his chin.

“I set up the message drop for a reason, you know,” I continued, ignoring the man’s finger. “If the wrong people saw us talking . . .”

I let my words trail off with another scowl; I might as well not have been talking for all the attention Kerill paid to me. He wiped up the dribble of liquor with a finger, licked it clean, then let out a belch which, on account of my having leaned in, hit me right in the face. It set my sinuses to burning like I’d snorted pepper, and it was hard to say if that was from the liquor or just his bad breath. Either way, I was gagging as I leaned back to my side of the table in search of fresh air.

“This ain’t the kind o’ subject one cares to talk about fully sober,” Kerill said as I sucked in a breath to clear my sinuses. “Touchy stuff, this is.”

My ears perked up at that, and with a bit of hesitation, I slowly leaned in close again, hoping that I wouldn’t get a second dose of his acid breath.

“You mean the sprab horde?” I whispered, my tone quick and sharp. “Up in Raven Branch Valley?”

I’d have waited for him to nod, but Kerill was the kind of man that moved at his own pace. And that pace was about as quick as water turning a stream into a canyon.

“I was just up there with Val. The sprabs are every bit as strange as reported. I’ve never seen anything like it, and—”

He held up a finger to stop me. Or at least that was what I thought at first until I realized that he was just flagging down the bartender for another round.

“This is serious, Kerill. Something’s up, I’m telling you,” I said to him, starting to feel frustration creeping into my voice. “Even Amedea agrees, even if she’s distracted with the Guyot Fault Gate right now. Which, I mean, I get it, is important. But she herself admits—”

I cut myself off as the bartender picked that moment to arrive, dropping two more mugs of moonshine on the table.

“—that it feels off!” I hissed, clamping a hand tight on one of the mugs before Kerill could snatch it.

The man simply scowled at me, his lips turning downwards as he raised an eyebrow at me.

“Last one off me,” I grunted before I slid the mug over, his expression then turning before he reached for the other mug and upended it in identical fashion to the others. When that was gone, he wiped his mouth, took a long breath, settled into his seat, and looked around the mostly empty bar, very clearly scanning to see if anyone was listening. Apparently satisfied that no one was eavesdropping, he spoke in his usual low grumble.

“A gate’s been found.”

“Wait, what?” I asked, suddenly taken aback by his statement, which sent my heart racing in my chest.

“An ascension gate, kid. You know, the whole reason you’re paying me.”

“Could have fooled me with the number of free drinks you’ve just bummed off me,” I replied, beginning to wish that I’d held onto the mug I’d had a few seconds earlier.

Kerill at least had the courtesy to offer me a half smile before giving me a shrug. “Fringe benefit.”

I had first reached out to the man on good word that he knew some people who knew some people that were in the business of locating ascension gates and selling them to the highest bidder. But it’d been months since I’d last heard word.

Which was exactly what I said to him. It’d be impolite to call the man a liar, but calling him anything approaching trustworthy would have been overly generous.

“When it comes to matters of business, I don’t screw around. And besides, you and I have the best reason to cooperate with one another,” he said to me as he rubbed two fingers together. “Mutual self-interest. I want to get paid, and you want to advance.”

He took a long pull from his mug, then leaned forward so that our foreheads were almost touching.

“All this time you were up my rear about finding an ascension gate. Now I have one, and what? You’ve lost interest?” A frown crept onto his face. “Or is it something else? Money run out?”

“It’d be no surprise if it had, with what you cost me,” I said with a hiss of annoyance. “But no. I still have the coin.”

If just barely, that was. As it turned out, cleaning Salvo tower didn’t exactly pay well outside of room and board.

“Good. That’s what I like to hear,” Kerill said as he finished off the last of his moonshine, then rose to leave. “Bring it by my office tonight, and I’ll tell you where to meet your group tomorrow.”

“Whoa, whoa. Slow down there,” I said as I moved to grab his shoulder in an attempt to hold him, only to find myself jerked forward under his strength.

At least until I had the sense to let go.

“You gotta give me more than that,” I added, relieved to see that my attempt had kept him in place for a second longer. “Especially after what you’ve charged me. How do I know you’re not going to shake me down again?”

“’Cause if I do, I have a right feeling that you’d have a mind to send that big giant Curshaw after me. Could break me like a twig if he so much as breathed on me the wrong way. Or maybe your other buddy Sumalin? Last thing I need is a shadow coming to life and putting something sharp in between my ribs. I get you want to keep this on the downlow from them now, but things go bad . . . I know who you’ll turn to.”

“You really think I would—” I started to reply before I cut myself off with the abrupt realization of just what sort of different worlds Kerill and I inhabited. From his perspective, and how he looked at the world, he must have felt that he had no choice but to help me, or face the consequences from Salvo otherwise.

Fortunately, I was saved from needing to reply to the man when he rubbed his fingers together again.

“Mutual self-interest, kid. It’s what makes the world go round. Or what’s left of it, anyway.”

This time when he rose to leave, I let him go, fully intending to order a drink of my own as I considered what to do next. Amedea’s and my conversation was all too fresh in my mind, and now that the moment of truth was at hand, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was making the right choice. Unfortunately, before Kerill could fully leave, a voice I instantly recognized picked that exact moment to shout from outside.

“Auric? What are you doing here? It’s not even sundown yet,” I heard my sister ask a second before she appeared in the doorway, immediately pausing in confusion at the fact that I was there. It was a pause that lasted just long enough for me to inwardly wince, already knowing what was coming next the second that her eyes shifted sideways and widened. “Wait, is that Kerill?”

“It’s actually Sergeant Baldwin to you, girl,” the man said with a dark laugh, then looked down at me unapologetically. “Mind what we’ve spoken of, kid.”

He pulled his helmet back on without another word, then strode out into the rain as Val watched him the entire time. When he was gone, she turned to me, her own helmet pulled low over her eyes, shading them from view. But I didn’t need to see her eyes to sense the anger that they had in them.

Her voice was more than enough.

“Care to tell me what that was all about?”

Chapter Seven

When the System first arrived everyone looked for a way to preserve their power. At first that was easy, guns were still around and the loyalties and laws of the World Before were still strong. But our world fell deeper into chaos, as technology began to fail, as countries fell, and the Gateborn attacks grew more frequent—that all began to change. No longer did it matter how much money one had, or what their status was, all that mattered was the strength they could bring to bear. Of course, those who had grown comfortable in their positions after the Fall didn’t want to give them up. They had to be forced to.

—On the causes leading to the First War of the Fallen as told by Amedea Jackson

* * *

It wasn’t that I was embarrassed about what I was doing. Nor even that I was ashamed or felt that I was in the wrong about my business with Kerill. My rapid departure from the Pole Bar didn’t exactly convey that, however. Unfortunately, as things were, appearances were everything, and at the moment, I was completely aware that I appeared to be getting the hell away from the scene of a crime.

“Auric,” Val hissed as she crowded my every step, powered by that oh-so-potent mix of sisterly concern and our genetic predisposition to burning curiosity. “Auric, talk to me.”

“About what? This lovely weather we’re having?” I asked as I spared a half-glance to the stormy sky which, somehow, had yet to rain itself out.

“Auric, come on, I’m worried about you. You’ve been bouncing from one crazy idea to another,” she said from behind me. “And faster than usual, too.”

“And is that a bad thing? Dogged determination is about all I have to offer.”

“If only what I saw was determination. All I see is recklessness. It’s going to get you killed.”

“Ugh, why does everyone say its reckless when I try to finally do something for myself!” I exclaimed as I abruptly wheeled on her, stopping both of us in our tracks, heedless of the rain soaking me to the bone. The stretch of ground between the Pole Bar and the main building was uncovered, which left the remnants of the storm to wash over me, Val completely untouched by its effects, thanks to her helmet’s identical empowerment as Kerill’s, one that every member of the watch had gifted to them.

“Is that what this is about? Something for yourself? Something that Kerill promised you?” she asked, her expression souring further and further with every word she spoke. “You can’t trust him, Auric. He’s been dirty since the day I started my time with the watch. And even longer before that if what I’ve heard is true.”

“And that makes it an even sorrier state of affairs, then, doesn’t it?” I retorted. “The only one who’s willing to listen to me is a borderline alcoholic watchman with a reputation for taking bribes.”

“Listen to you say what exactly?” Val pressed, her brow narrowing in confusion. “What do you need to talk to him about that you can’t talk to me about? I’m your damn sister, Auric!”

“My place in the world,” I replied, stopping myself before I inadvertently said more and promptly turned to leave.

Only to have Val reach out and catch my arm.

“You know I’m not going to let this go,” she told me, her voice hard with emotion.

“Well, you’ll need to. Because I don’t have a fancy helmet like yours. Soon as I get back home I’m going to need to strip and get out of all of this. That’s going to be pretty awkward if you’re still there.”

“That’s not what I meant, Auric, and you know it.”

“How about we just talk about this tomorrow?” I asked as my earlier hesitation at taking Kerill’s offer suddenly vanished.

Now more than ever, I realized just how tired I was of not only being constantly behind everyone else in my life but also constantly questioned when I tried even the slightest thing to get some measure of control. I had no doubt that everyone would be angry, livid even, when I showed up as a C-Tier tomorrow evening, but they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. I’d finally be able to move forward with my life, either with or without Salvo in the picture.

“Yeah, you mean tomorrow when whatever you spoke to Kerill about is over and done with?”

I sighed what I hoped was dramatically, despite inwardly cringing at her guess. My sister was many things, and observant happened to be right near the top of that list.

“The only thing that’s happening tomorrow is me tackling the mildew in the east corner of the third floor. Assuming that this storm doesn’t end up causing flooding elsewhere for me to clean up,” I said, pitching my voice to sound defeated and tired in an attempt to throw her suspicions off.

Unfortunately with seemingly minimal success.

“Right, you’re going to scrub and scrub away on the day that the group is going off to thin out the Gateborn pouring out of the Guyot Fault Gate. The day that it would be a perfect opportunity to—”

“Val, I’m very wet right now and extremely tired,” I interrupted, going on to motion towards the bundle of leathers that I was currently carrying on a shoulder. “And thanks to all our standing here, these leathers are completely soaked, which means I need to lay them out to dry somewhere and hope I haven’t ruined them.”

“Uh-huh, and whose fault is that?” she replied unsympathetically. “You’re the one who took off from the bar and out into this mess. We could have been nice and dry if you stayed put.”

“Right, I guess that’s another example of my recklessness,” I said more than a little harshly, before giving her a halfhearted wave and moving to leave. “Catch ya at home, sis. You’ll forgive me if I’m a little scarce tonight.”

She didn’t move to stop me or follow as I left, thankfully, but the last expression that I saw on her face was a familiar one, one that I’d seen time and time again. I knew that it meant she was pulling at the seams of the conversation, replaying it over and over again in her mind to see if it would come apart. It was a trait that normally served her well, but also the last one that I needed to have focused on me right now. Hopefully, I’d played my hand well enough to have her stew until tomorrow morning, by which time I’d be gone and well on my way to wherever the ascension gate Kerill had found for me was.

Making sure to play my part to the hilt as I left Val standing in the rain, I beelined back towards the market at a double pace and into the crowd within. Given my absolutely drenched state, my rapid movement earned more than a few curses and glares, but fortunately little else as I quickly wound through the various stalls and merchants within before making it out the front doors, and into the hallway heading toward the main building. And, of course, my home looming high above it.

Walking with both purpose and more than a little pent-up frustration, I managed to make it two entire corridors before I noticed that I was being followed. I wasn’t sure exactly what tipped me off, save for a strange feeling in my gut, but I suddenly found myself noticing the presence of an unfamiliar man in the corner of my eye. Shifting slightly as I walked, I did my best to take in his appearance, using the convenient reflection of a nearby window to help me.

Must be one of the strangers Ashe mentioned, I thought as I took in the roughly thirty-something-year-old man, who was about as plain and forgettable as a person could be. He wore a simple, brown leather jacket with vaguely matching rough-spun pants, the look completing itself with a well-worn leather hat on his head that hid either closely cropped hair or premature loss of it. All in all, the only interesting things about him were the eyes on his dark, sunbaked face, which even from the several paces and reflection that separated us, I could tell shone with interest.

On any other day, I would have been amused at the attention; after all, it wasn’t the first time I’d been tailed by someone who’d learned I lived and worked in Salvo’s tower. Today, however, it made me feel exhausted at the prospect of needing to deal with another fan, petitioner, or even conman who wanted to use me to get access to the group. As such, I decided to try and lose the man, picking up my pace just enough to round the corner ahead of me, and immediately turning towards the storage room door that I knew would be there. Opening it with barely a sound, I stepped through the door and closed it softly behind me. A few seconds later, after navigating the rows of shelving within, I then exited out of its far side and into the hallway beyond.

Only to find a now particularly familiar face waiting for me.

“Mr. Cain, right?” the man that had been following me prompted, a wide smile creeping across his face as he noticed my surprise.

“Uh, y-yeah, that’s me,” I replied unsteadily, too caught off guard to even think of pretending otherwise as I stared back at the man and the shimmering letters that the System had already begun to conjure.

<Name Unknown> – Tier: B – Level 16

Class: Sentinel

Health: Uninjured

Status: None

Relation: Stranger

“Ah, great, that’s what I thought! Got a moment to chat?” he asked in what seemed like an innocent tone but one that, after all my years, I knew wasn’t really a question.

“Of course. Salvo always has time for their fans and admirers,” I said, doing my best to regain my composure as I forced a smile, not having expected to run into a mid-level B-Tier randomly in the hallway. Such people weren’t rare to see in Blueridge per se, given that it was Salvo’s headquarters after all, but it was unusual for them to talk directly to me. “So which of the team’s your favorite? Wait, no. Let me guess. You’re a B-Tier, so maybe . . . a Curshaw fan, then?”

The man shook his head at my words. “Actually, I wanted to—”

“Ah, not Curshaw, then? Hm. Maybe Constance?” I interrupted, feeling the familiar mask fall over me as I worked myself into the Salvo representative role that I was often in. “Ah, yes, I see it now. And how could you not like her? She’s the bold, brave face of the team!”

I paused for a moment as a flash of movement unexpectedly appeared on my right, revealing none other than the woman I was talking about. Immediately, I felt a surge of relief shoot through me as I waved in her direction. “Oh, you know what, here she comes right now, actually! That’s pretty lucky! Would you like an introduction—eh?”

I turned to look back towards the man, eager to pawn him off on Constance and continue on my way, but he was suddenly gone, as if he hadn’t ever been standing before me at all.

“Huh, where did he go?” I muttered to myself, glancing from side to side. The man might have been a B-Tier, but for him to vanish that quickly was impressive.

Was he . . . just nervous in meeting her? I wondered in complete confusion as I replayed the brief interaction with the man in my mind. I’d seen quite a fair bit over the years when it came to people wanting to meet the team, and sometimes they couldn’t handle it, preferring to, quite literally, run out of the room instead of ruining whatever mental picture they’d built of them in the first place.

“Howdy there, Auric. Everything okay?” Constance asked as she arrived, having taken no time at all to make her way towards me.

“Yeah, it’s just—” I started to reply as I gave one last look around, only to find nothing and no one, then shook my head. “It’s just been a really long day so far. Longer than usual.”

“Really? I’m sorry to hear that, hun,” she said, offering me a hand as her eyes dropped down towards the leather bundles draped across my shoulder. “Why don’t you let me help you carry those for a bit?

“Then you can tell me what’s been making your day so long as we walk.”

Chapter Eight

When monster comes, we run and hide,

Lock the doors and stay inside.

When monster goes, we watch and learn,

For to its home it must return.

And once its birthing gate we know,

Into it Heroes and Gate Sealers go.

—Blueridge nursery rhyme

* * *

There was no sight more awe-inspiring than morning dew sparkling in the glow of a gate. Or so Constance had once told me, leaving me enamored with the thought ever since and dreaming of seeing a gate myself one day.

A day like today, for example.

Sure, that “sparkling dew” might have actually been a seepage of something I’d heard referenced as “cosmic particulates,” and sure, it didn’t really sparkle so much as alternate between boiling, freezing, and evaporating all at once, but that was all details. Technicalities. The real power of a gate, the real power of the System, was contained within them, and it was long past time that I grabbed a piece of it for myself.

“Wait, wait, don’t tell me,” I said, perhaps a little too excitedly, sopping soil squelching beneath my boots as I made my way ahead of the group and towards a fork in the trail beyond. Eyes low as I half-jogged forward, I studied the terrain before us, my eye tracing over the nearby sparkling leaves.

“Hmm, the gate is . . . that way!” I announced, jabbing a finger towards the westward branch of the trail. There, the path disappeared amidst the rocky overhangs and misty streams at the base of Mount Le Conte.

“Well, look at that, folks, Hotshot’s got another one right,” a rough voice said with a laugh. “Startin’ to wonder why I’m even here. The man’s got it all under control.”

I felt my enthusiasm fade at the man’s tone as I wiped a smear of damp soil from my hands and rose back up to my feet.

“Sorry, Damon, just trying to help, and to also pass the time a bit,” I said to the man as everyone continued walking without so much as a word, as they all had been for the entirety of our journey. “It’s been a pretty quiet morning so far.”

“And you don’t think that’s been by design?” Damon asked in a hard tone as we started to walk, the man falling into step beside me. “None of you are here to get chummy with one another. In fact, that’s why I made sure none of you knew one another in the first place. You’re all here for the gate. Once that’s done, you can all do whatever you like.” The man paused as he narrowed his eyes on me. “You especially, Hotshot.”

“Why do you keep—” I started to ask, only to have the answer to my question click in my mind, suddenly understanding why the man had taken almost an instant dislike to me from the first moment that we’d met earlier this morning. “Kerill told you who I am, who I work for.”

“Sure as shit, he did,” Damon spat. “Normally, I don’t like knowing names for anyone on these kinds of runs. It’s bad for business. But right this morning he felt he had to tell me you were a special case I had to know about. You know, just ’cause you rub shoulders with the big shots don’t make you one of them, right?”

“Of course not,” I replied more than a little defensively at the man’s obvious disdain. Though that wasn’t only because of his words, but rather also because of the System display that hung in the air beside him.

Damon Duke – Tier: C – Level 10

Class: Mountebank

Health: Uninjured

Status: None

Relation: Unfriendly

“But this isn’t my first time out here, either,” I added a second later. “I’ve hunted Gateborn and survived out in the wild on my own before.”

“I’m sure you have, Hotshot,” Damon chirped back at me in a disbelieving tone. “And you know what that means to me? Fuck all. Right now, you are the biggest liability of this group. Big enough that if me and my guys didn’t have people breathing down my neck to see this job done, I’d have scrubbed it the second I found out who you were and left you all to figure your own shit out.

“So, if you actually do want to help out, what you can do is shut the hell up for the rest of the day and follow us like the good puppy you are.”

With that, Damon then picked up his pace as he made a beeline towards the front of our group and his other companions leading us, who had continued along the trail I’d pointed out a few moments earlier.

“Well, you didn’t have to be quite that blunt about it. A simple ‘stop that’ would have worked too,” I muttered to his departing back, despite being relieved to be away from the man.

He’d been rude in his delivery, exceptionally so even, but not wholly in the wrong, either, or so I realized over the next few minutes as I looked ahead at the rest of the party that Kerill had assembled, who tromped ahead of me. What we were all doing here today wasn’t exactly legal as things went in the World After, but then again, nor was it exactly illegal either.

It was more unsanctioned as things went, as neither Salvo nor the Blueridge elders had approved the expedition, unless you somehow twistedly counted Kerill in that, which, given his age, was wholly inaccurate. But the notion that the local ascension gates needed to be hoarded was a ridiculous idea that I’d hated from the first moment that I’d learned of it. If only because, unlike regular intrusions, no one died in them. They were supposed to be tests for us, after all, which made restricting access to them nothing more than a blatant plot for those with power to decide who else was allowed to have any.

They liked to call it a “precaution.” I liked to call it gatekeeping.

“So I see you’ve finally got an earful from Damon,” a voice rasped from beside me, interrupting my thoughts, prompting me to look up and find that one of my fellow gate stealers, as I’d come to call our group, had drifted back to talk to me. “He’s quite the pleasure, isn’t he?”

“I’m not sure those are exactly the words I’d use, but sure, why not?” I replied as I looked at the man, vaguely recalling seeing him always trailing at the back of the line while I’d been at the front.

Now that I was closer though, I could see he had a tired look to him. A particularly tired look at that, too. Even in the pre-dawn light I could make out the dark bags under his eyes, which oddly enough matched with the twisted and disheveled red-brown hair on his head. As he drew closer, I noticed a familiar stink on his breath, and I resisted the urge to recoil at it. Instead, I moved to clasp his hand, which I belatedly noticed he’d extended and introduced myself.

“Auric,” I said as we exchanged handshakes, barely skimming over the shimmering letters that the System supplied during the process.

<Name Unknown> – Tier: D – Level 10

Class: Unassigned

Health: Uninjured

Status: Hungover

Relation: Stranger

“It’s a pleasure to meet you on this morning’s particularly epic adventure. Whoever told you tackling an ascension gate with a hangover was a good idea probably didn’t have your best interest in mind.”

“Hah, he definitely doesn’t, believe me,” he replied with a particularly loud snort. “Anyway, I’m Trey. Seems like Damon really took a bite out of you there.”

“You could say that,” I said with a grimace, wondering just how much he’d heard. “Unfortunately, it seems I have a bit of a reputation that I wasn’t expecting him to know. Though in hindsight, maybe I should have.”

“Eh, not your problem at this point,” Trey replied with a hoarse chuckle that wasn’t quite appropriate, although the smile that followed afterward was genuine, if also a bit sad. “But believe me, I know about reputation, and the sort of . . . uh, adversity, it can bring. But then again, I always think a little adversity’s good for you, though, right? Builds character, or so my father always said.”

The man let out another laugh as he pondered his own statement a moment.

“’Course, had he known he was going to get killed while diving into a gate, he might have gone with something a bit less ironic.”

“Your father was a gatesealer?” I queried, the question practically leaping out of my mouth before I realized how insensitive it was. “Er, I mean, I’m sorry to hear that he didn’t make it. His sacrifice protects us all.”

I added the last words of the traditional gatesealer’s creed out of habit, without even thinking, seeing Trey’s head bob up and down in approval. Something that I found to be an impressive feat, given how hungover he was.

“Yeah, it did for a little while at least. But that’s a long, sad story that’s better suited for a nighttime fire and a bottle of lightning, or two. Maybe three if I decide I wanna tell it right,” Trey said to me, his expression going dark just long enough that I thought he was waiting for me to say something. Yet before I could, it abruptly lightened again and he continued speaking as if the subject had never come up. “Anyway, that’s why I keep to ascension gates, or at least that’s what I tell myself. Can’t get killed in a blaze of glory if you keep failing the first test the System throws at you, know what’m saying?”

“Uh, I think so,” I answered, feeling my perspective of Trey suddenly shift, followed by a wave of pity washing over me. Here was a man that truly needed help, not only a lot of it, but also in a way that I couldn’t even begin to articulate. It made any further curiosity that had been building in me turn sour all at once.

He shouldn’t be attempting a gate at all, I thought, wondering if this was what Amedea meant by being ready to advance to another tier. In just the bare few minutes since I’d met the man, it was easy for me to tell that he wasn’t fit to be a C-Tier, that the power he could potentially gain if he somehow managed to advance a tier and level up would be too tempting to be misused. Is that what Amedea sees when she looks at me?

It was a hard question that had me turning inwards again as Trey and I followed the others through the increasingly dense brush, my earlier excitement of the day drowned for good.

“Why do you keep coming back, then?” I asked abruptly at one point when the brush finally started to clear out again. “To try more ascension gates. If you’ve tried and failed a few times . . . you don’t have to go through all this trouble, nor do you have to tier up. A good chunk of people never do.”

“Why do I keep coming back?” Trey repeated, before going on to let out another poorly timed laugh. “System knows, Auric, my man. I ask myself that question every time I walk into one of these things. And every time I’ve died in one. In fact, there was this one gate once that was fire themed—”

“We’re here,” Damon’s voice announced out from the head of the group, mercifully interrupting Trey’s story before it could find its legs.

The call had everyone in our semi-scattered group repeating it as they pressed forward out of the remainder of the brush, rushing forward into the clearing ahead.

Partly not wanting to get roped into Trey’s story if he resumed it, and partly out of excitement to finally be here, I quickly moved to join them.

And then there the gate was, standing in the center of the small, mist-filled clearing ahead.

“There you have it, people,” Damon stated loudly. “You paid for it, and you got it. A gen-u-ine ascension gate.”

We called them gates, but really that was just convenience, or really a term that had stuck during the civilization’s fall and carried forward by the generations that survived afterward. The official terminology, the one mostly reserved for those like Amedea who studied the System as an academic subject, was “planar intrusions.” And if I were to be truly honest, now that I saw one in the flesh, they absolutely looked much more like intrusions than gates. Sure, I’d seen sketches, but there was only so much that could be captured in either charcoal or ink. Like the way reality bent, twisted, then finally broke apart around the intrusion’s edges. Or the way you could only clearly see the thing out of the corner of your eye. The more you focused on it, the more it became a blur, a sort of suggestion of itself, one that had the potential to set your head to aching worse than Trey’s hangover if you let it.

For the most part, the gate in front of us was a shining thing. A slowly swirling semicircle of raw, planar energy. Easy enough to describe, really. It looked like nothing more than the base elements of reality had been run through a grinder, liquified, then poured into the shape of a vaguely roundish doorway.

“Eh, yup, that’s an ascension gate,” Trey said, the man’s presence stuck to me just as thoroughly as the humid air.

“How can you be so sure from all the way back there?” I asked as I cautiously stalked closer to the gate, as if I were subconsciously worried that it would somehow come to life and try to eat me. I felt a slight breeze around it the closer I got, the wind slipping inwards toward the swirling portal. “You know, if it’s really not an ascension gate, we could all die. Horribly at that, too.”

“You just gotta feel it out, y’know?” Trey said unhelpfully, moving to pat his stomach when I looked back towards him. “Down in your gut. Notice how you don’t feel like you’re staring down your impending doom? Or how your hair’s not all standing on end like you’re about to get struck by lightning?”

“Sure,” I said, feeling that the lie was obvious to anyone who could hear.

“That’s how you know it’s an ascension gate,” Trey said with a curt nod. “Well, that and it’s not warping the terrain around it or vomiting a horde of nightmare creatures at us.”

“The man is right about the gate, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other things nearby that could have nasty thoughts for us,” Damon said in his typical, rough-spoken tone, inclining his head towards the surrounding forest. “Which is why we aren’t going to burn any more time than we need to for this. All of you, check your gear, take a piss, do whatever you need to do to get ready. We’ll be going inside in five minutes.”

Hearing a chorus of grumbles echo out from the man’s warnings, everyone went about doing exactly that, a pair taking advantage of his advice and going to the edge of the clearing to relieve themselves. In my case, I focused my attention on looking over my equipment, even if it was rather unimpressive in the grand scheme of things, or at least when compared to items that were actually empowered by the System. Beginning first with my knives, or shortswords, as Curshaw had once told me they were technically called, I pulled them free of their sheaths and gave them a once over, seeing nothing of note that would give me concern. As I did, I saw the System begin to supply their descriptions, but I held off on reading it just for a few seconds, going on to check the straps and buckles of my leather armor, the very same I’d worn a few days earlier during Val’s and my excursion into the valley. It was only when the armor’s information finished appearing in my vision, and I was satisfied that there was nothing amiss with it physically, that I turned to skim over everything, making sure nothing stood out.

Steel Long Knife

Tier: D

Item Class: Mundane

Weapon Damage: 15-25 Slashing

Condition: 195/200

Burnished Leather Armor Set

Tier: D

Item Class: Mundane

Armor: 100

Condition: 175/200

Notice: Multiple items have been combined together to show this entry. Display individual components?

It’s not much, but all I have right now, I thought while mentally shaking my head at the System’s prompt at the end of my armor’s description, resulting in the entire display then vanishing from sight. Maybe one day I’ll have recovered enough motes or other empowered gear from gates to have something worth looking at. Or maybe be able to make something of my own one day. But I guess first, I just need to survive this thing.

I looked up at the ascension gate as my thoughts continued to swirl in my mind, wondering just what I would find within. The second I stepped inside of it, I knew there would be no going back, I’d either beat the System’s challenge and move up a tier, or I’d fail and stay exactly where I was now.

I wasn’t sure which of the two prospects terrified me more.

“All right, that’s been long enough for you all to get yourselves ready,” Damon announced, his voice breaking the nervous silence that had fallen over the clearing in the last few minutes. “Let’s get this over and done with.”

An excited murmur ran through the other gate stealers. Or just three of them. Trey’s reaction was muted, only offering a resigned shrug in response.

“And since you’ve been so gung-ho all morning long, you’re in first, Hotshot.” Damon grunted as he jabbed a bent finger at me. “Try not to get lost, will you?”

“No promises,” I replied more than a little flippantly, brushing off his attempt to get a rise out of me and instead focusing on the gate ahead as I strode towards it with purpose. This was everything that I’d ever wanted. Everything that I had worked for, and planned for months on end to achieve.

And I wasn’t about to let it go to waste.

Chapter Nine

We Gate Sealers fight and die so that humanity may live. Our lives may be short, and our deaths violent, but our legacy will be nothing less than the very survival of our species.

—Part of the Gate Sealer Creed

* * *

I involuntarily flinched as I took the final step into the gate, sort of leaned back without meaning to. The result meant that my feet entered first, with my knees and hips following nearly a full second afterwards. That left my head hanging back as long as it could, as if my body was two separate beings. That or I was trying to do some sort of limbo trick.

Either way, the outcome was inevitable once the ascension gate had a grip on me. I was going in, no matter what I tried to do, or what doubts I may have had. So I braced myself for whatever came next and sucked down a lungful of air as the swirling cosmic tear swallowed me whole.

And promptly fragmented me into what felt like a million separate pieces.

It was a weird feeling to describe, let alone experience, like I was suddenly not only everywhere, but also nowhere, but also intimately aware of every single piece of myself for one fleeting instant just long enough to process. And then it ended, leaving me feeling strangely wet and slimy as my feet abruptly hit solid ground.

“Ugh, what in the System was that?” I muttered as the next thing I knew I was stumbling forward through the far end of the gate, my head spinning wildly. Struggling to maintain my balance as I recovered from the effects of the transition, I barely had the time for my eyes to finish focusing before shimmering words appeared in the center of my vision.

Requesting Schema Information From Parent Node

Schema Information Received

Welcome, Entity: Auric Amadeus Cain – Tier: D, to Ascension Gate: P42490N

This Ascension Gate will assess your worthiness to be promoted to Tier: C and be assigned a Class

Prepare yourself and then proceed forward to the First Trial

Blinking rapidly as I skimmed over the System message, I only had a pair of seconds to process it before I found myself distracted by a potent stench, its heavy, metallic stink sticking right into the back of my throat and causing me to gag.

“W-what the hell is that?” I muttered as I tried to cough away the overpowering smell, but to no avail. The potent, rusty iron scent firmly latched onto me, burrowing itself deeper and deeper into my lungs. It wasn’t a clean smell of iron either, like the one I was used to breathing whenever I visited the Blueridge Foundry. It reminded me of something rougher, more jagged. Like an old chain-link fence that had been left in the elements for so long that it’d rusted away to a serrated mess of concertina wire.

Continuing with my distress for a half-dozen more seconds, I’d just about managed to compose myself when the next would-be gate stealer arrived through the gate, which of course was still directly behind me. The result had both of us flailing to stay on our feet as I turned just in time for a woman to slam into my chest head first, rocking me backwards onto my still-unstable heels. Through great effort, and more than a little extra weight on my end of things, I just barely managed to stay standing. The woman nearly managed it too, except she made the big mistake of sucking in a breath while spinning her hands, the stench quite literally flooring her.

“It gets better,” I promised in a raspy voice as I moved to help her up, letting out another strangled gag as I inhaled another tentative breath. “Or so I’m telling myself.”

Not wanting to cause a further pileup, we managed to move out of the way just in time as the third member of our group came through. A good thing too, since she arrived with a sword in hand, which could have easily caused problems for us had we been in her way. Regardless of her armament though, the foe that was the acrid, rust-like stench wasn’t one that could be defeated by a weapon, and soon she was coughing and gagging like the rest of us. A sheepish-looking man came next, also falling prey to the stench in short order, and then there was Trey, who surprisingly answered it with only a wince as he waved a hand in front of his face and laughed.

“Bit of a stink to this one,” he stated. “Don’t suppose anyone thought to bring a candle? Or maybe some masks?”

The only reply was more coughing.

“I’ll take that as a no,” he said with a shrug as he moved away from the gate right as it began to disgorge Damon. “Suppose we best get this over with, then.”

“Whew, this is a spicy one,” Damon announced with a brief wince as he arrived, but quickly shrugged off its effects. “But if you all think that this is the worst the gate’s gonna throw at us, you might as well turn around now.”

He’s not wrong about that, I thought as I sucked down several breaths of the fetid air, forcing myself to embrace it. Over my many years of service to Salvo, and the countless times I’d gotten myself in trouble, I occasionally found myself volunteered to Blueridge’s compost yard, and working there had taught me the best way to deal with a bad smell: suck it up and push through. Eventually, you went nose blind and the problem solved itself.

I really hope we’re not in here long enough for that to happen, I added as I forced myself to focus on my surroundings, which beyond a cursory look to make sure that I was alone, I’d largely ignored since my arrival.

Glancing around, the first thing I noticed was that the space we were in reminded me of the gymnasium back in town, at least at a superficial level. The walls were definitely higher, at somewhere between thirty or forty feet tall by my best guess, and had a high ceiling with support structures that looked like an eerie mix between rafters and organic tendons. The dull, red floor beneath us was flat and mostly smooth throughout. On closer inspection, I noticed that there were several boulders scattered throughout the room too, their color identical to the walls and floor surrounding them. The nearest of them was fairly large at roughly eight feet across and was coated in some sort of dust.

Beyond it, at the extreme far end of the room, I noticed the wall was streaked through with gray, and instead of being perfectly flat like the other three sides, was curved in a sort of semicircle. Lining the circle were seven statues. Or possibly sculptures, it was hard to say from the distance. Whatever the case was, however, they definitely weren’t in the shape of people, but rather looked like someone’s failed attempt at art.

A puzzle room, then? I wondered as I gave the room a second glance, again finding nothing else, and no Gateborn, to catch my attention. Realizing that I wouldn’t learn anything new from where I was, I decided it was time to get a closer look, hearing the floor clank hollowly beneath my feet.

“Hmm, sounds like the floor’s made of metal,” I mused loudly, seeing several eyes shift in my direction. “Explains the smell, I guess.”

Glancing downward as I walked, I noticed that the floor flexed slightly with each of my steps, as if I were walking on sheet metal. The discovery prompted me to look at the now-nearby wall a bit closer, which also seemed to be made of the same material, despite being covered in layers and layers of red dust.

Wonder if there’s any value in peeling it up and taking it with us, I thought as I cautiously strode forward. Looting gates for their natural treasures was a somewhat common practice, at least when it could be managed and the risk was worth the reward, something that I wasn’t sure of here. Metal was always a precious commodity back at Blueridge, especially already-worked metal. But the more I saw, the more I suspected that it would be more trouble than it was worth to haul back. Instead, I focused back on the puzzle at hand, noticing that Trey had already made a beeline towards it, seemingly unconcerned about the rest of the room itself.

“First challenge is always the easiest,” he said as I drew closer, his hand coming up to point toward the statues nearby. “Generally the most fun, too. After that comes the Gateborn, and then the biting, dying, and whatever else. Well, you know, not actually the dying. You just wake up back outside the gate, feeling like you wish you had. For a short while at least. Then you feel better.”

“Great,” I replied, drawing out the word while letting out an involuntary shudder. “Anyway, let’s—”

A sharp, crunching sound interrupted me, causing my already on-edge nerves to snap my body in its direction, my hand flying to my weapon’s hilt. But as soon as I finished my turn, I discovered that no Gateborn had sprung out from hiding, but that the sound had come from Damon, who was rubbing some sort of powder from his hands.

“W-what was that?” I asked, glancing down at the trickle of red dust falling from his fingers. “What did you just do?”

“Eh? What?” he said, his voice at first sounding a little flatter and more distant than usual but quickly recovering its natural cadence. “Oh, I just pulled up a piece of the floor to see if the metal was worth taking. But it just crumbled in my hands. So much for the extra payday . . .”

“I see,” I answered with a grunt, not surprised to hear that I wasn’t the only one with an interest in taking the metal, even if it happened to be poor quality. “How about we all hold off on peeling up any more until we figure out this puzzle? It would suck if we ended up breaking something important.”

“That would be an understatement,” Trey stated from behind me, having seemingly ignored the exchange in favor of investigating the statues.

Scowling at my words, Damon opened his mouth to snap back, but before he could say so much as a word, a red light flared throughout the room, emanating outward from the gate. Eyes widening at the unexpected event, I turned to look at the portal, and immediately saw that it was changing.

The swirling cosmic energy that was the gate was beginning to slow in its movements, its flowing form gradually beginning to crystalize, or perhaps even freeze with every second that passed.

“Uh, I’m pretty sure that’s not supposed to happen, right?” I asked while pointing at the gate, continuing to watch it harden. As it did, I saw several lines of System text appear in the air near the gate, each line vanishing almost as soon as it appeared.

Error: Losing Connection To Parent Node

Attempting To Restore Connection . . .

Connection Failed

Searching For Alternate Node . . .

Local Node Detected . . . Establishing Connection

Connection Established . . . Downloading Update

Úpd͘ate ̶Çom͜pl̢ètèḑ

“Uh, well, that’s . . . that’s a new one to me,” Trey said as we all watched the gate continue to writhe and warp, all confidence suddenly going from his voice. “I’ve never seen the gate have an error before.”

“I have, once,” Damon said, moving to stop one of the other gate stealers from rushing at the portal, going as far as to shove them back away from it. “Don’t touch it! I saw a guy lose his arm last time. Tried to run back out of the gate, but it froze with him partway through. Had to cut him out.”

The rest of the group gaped at Damon’s words as the mood in the room, which was already pretty anxious on general principle, intensified even further. And I couldn’t blame them. Nothing I’d read or heard of with regards to the gates had ever mentioned anything about gates closing with people inside them, or for the System to display an error or look distorted as it just had. In fact, and more worryingly, I couldn’t recall any instance at all where anyone had referenced a problem with the System. As far as we knew, had ever known, it was infallible and perfect.

Unless that’s a part of this gate’s test? I wondered, trying to push down my rapidly growing concern, which was currently causing my stomach to spin and roil. Could it be testing us to see what we’d do if we doubted the System itself?

“So what did you do?” I asked abruptly as we all watched the gate freeze over entirely, the ice, if it was ice, becoming almost mirrorlike in appearance. Enough that it was able to reflect our silhouettes across its blurry surface. “To get out of that gate, I mean.”

“We finished it,” Damon stated simply. “And then it spit us back out as usual. Something that I highly suggest we start doing. Or the System will likely throw something our way to . . . uh, encourage us to move faster. I don’t think I need to tell any of you what that means.”

“You definitely don’t,” I agreed, doing my best to rally my own confidence as I looked towards the rest of the group. “Come on, let’s see what we’re dealing with for this puzzle. If the only way out is to finish the trial, then we’ll need to finish that first.”

That combined with Damon’s earlier words was enough to refocus everyone on the task at hand, our entire group moving towards the seven statues that stood against the far wall. But as I closed with them, I discovered that they weren’t statues of living creatures, though, but rather oddly shaped semicircles. As if they had been giant chess pieces before being squished into pancakes, their centers hollowed out, then stood up on their edges.

“Huh, now I’m not usually good at these sort of thinking puzzles, but do these look like gates to you guys?” Trey asked aloud after we’d all had a chance to inspect the statues. “I mean, I’ve been looking back there at the way we came in, and don’t it look a little like this one here?”

We all paused to look back at the portal and back at the statue that Trey had just indicated, finding the similarity rather uncanny. They didn’t look quite the same as the one we’d just entered, but probably that had something to do with that one being made of actual cosmic energy and these being made of badly rusted metal. It was a rough likeness as things went, but it was close enough, for me, to warrant a closer inspection of the ring.

And to subsequently discover the drawing of an arrow pointing upwards on the topmost part of it.

“There’s an arrow here pointing up. Look up, maybe? No, that’s not it,” I mumbled as I fell into problem-solving mode, even going as far as to glance at the ceiling for a moment, before the realization abruptly clicked. “Ah, tier up! That’s what you come to ascension gates to do.”

“Right, right!” Trey replied excitedly as he snapped the fingers on his right hand while practically bouncing towards the next ring in line. “Then that means this one will be a D-Tier gate . . . ah! Yes, it is; there’s a letter D here.”

“Then it looks like we’re on the right track,” I said as I took a moment to digest our discovery. D-Tier gates were the simplest form of intrusions that the System threw at us, rarely being larger than a room and containing only random bits of debris, and of course the heart of any intrusion, the core that powered it. From what I heard from Salvo and learned in my studies, Gate Cores were basically little glowing crystals or gems that powered the world within, and destroying it was the only way to complete and close the gate. Not to mention earn any rewards the system saw fit to bestow. The only thing that changed in the higher-tier gates was more obstacles and more powerful Gateborn that the System put in place to protect their cores.

“So then if the sculptures are gates broken down by tier, what do we do with that?” I mused as I looked at the other rings. “Are we supposed to . . . activate them somehow? Hmm, or maybe go through them in sequence?”

“Maybe. I don’t see any buttons or switches on these things,” one of the group, a woman named Serra, said as she felt around the interior of one of the rings with precise, quick movements. “And it doesn’t look like these things move at all. So they stay in place here.”

“Whatever the secret is here, I’d expect it to be more complicated than just finding a hidden switch,” I said with a shake of my head, wondering how embarrassing it would be to try and crawl through the ascension gate ring and see if it triggered anything. “I think it has something to do with the sequence of advancement through the tiers.”

I paused for a second as I rapped my knuckles on the ascension gate sculpture, seeing a sprinkle of rust fall free.

“Hey, there’s writing on this boulder over here!” another voice announced, this one belonging to the other woman of our group, Frankie. Or at least that was the name I’d overheard earlier this morning when we’d first left Blueridge. From what I’d been able to piece together throughout the day, she was a friend of Serra’s, or had at least traveled with her to join our group. Whatever the case, her enthusiasm was obvious now that we’d had a breakthrough, her sleeve pulled over her hand as she furiously rubbed at something on the face of the boulder before her.

“It says D-Tier,” she announced. “Think it pairs with the D-Gate?”

“Uh, that would make sense, actually,” I replied as I glanced around to count the boulders, having mentally written them off as part of the scenery. “One, two, three . . . yeah, there’s seven of them, all right. And seven gates too.”

I paused for a second as I moved to kick a nearby boulder with enough force to cause a layer of rust to fall free and reveal a series of letters that read “C-Tier.” “This is nothing more than a matching game. We just have to roll the correct boulder into the ring of its corresponding gate.”

“Ha, would you look at that?” Damon grunted with a laugh. “Maybe Hotshot actually knows a thing or two. Color me surprised.”

He gave me a smile that was anything but comforting before turning to look at the others.

“Well, don’t just stand there, people, get to matching. Time is ticking.”

Letting out a faint sigh at the man’s attitude, I put him from my mind and instead focused on the task of moving the boulders around.

“All right, this one here is the ‘D-Tier’ boulder,” I said as Trey and I moved up to it. “So we just need to move Big Rusty here into the arch of . . . that gate statue over there.”

“Seems right to me,” Trey answered with a nod, the two of us then setting our shoulders to the massive rock and giving it a push. Fortunately, despite its size, it was reasonably well rounded, and we were able to get it moving soon enough, even if our hands and clothes ended up covered in rust.

It’s going to be fun getting all of this crap out of my clothes and armor, I thought with a mental grimace as we maneuvered the stone into place, stopping it right inside the D-Gate’s arch.

And immediately causing a loud click to echo throughout the room.

“Well, that sounded positive,” Trey said as he rounded the now-set-in-place stone, his expression notably more confident than before.

“Great job, guys, I got this one on its way!” Frankie called out, the woman gradually moving the C-Tier boulder our way all by herself. “Just need directions on where it needs to be.”

“Sure, give us a second,” I replied as I scanned the symbols scratched into the various sculptures.

Logically, I expected it to be beside the D-Gate, but while the puzzle was simple, it wasn’t quite that simple and it took me several seconds to find.

“It’s over this way,” I added, pointing the woman toward the appropriate gate sculpture with the symbol of a puzzle piece scratched into its ring. C-Gates were more difficult than D-Gates because their cores tended to use puzzles, much like this one, to protect themselves. Puzzles and traps that ranged anywhere between annoying and mild to extremely dangerous and lethal.

“And click we go again,” Frankie said triumphantly as she guided her boulder into place with another echoing click.

“Great. That makes two down and five more rust marbles to go,” I said, pausing to wipe some of the rust from my hands as I stepped back to scan the room, seeing that the remaining members of our group were all standing and watching us. “Now let’s see if we can’t be a bit more organized doing this. If we divide and conquer, we’ll finish this in no time. And hopefully before the System decides to send that ‘encouragement.’”

That was enough to get the others moving and helping—other than Damon, the man seeming content to stay on the edges and watch while we worked. Which I supposed was fine. After all, it wasn’t as if he was getting anything from completing the gate. Working together, Trey and I then maneuvered the B-Tier boulder into place beneath the gate with the symbol of a puzzle piece, a crudely drawn horde of creatures, and a massive Gateborn towering over them. As one could expect, B-Gates contained puzzles, traps, waves and waves of individual Gateborn, followed by an even larger and more powerful specimen of their kind at the end.

The A-Tier boulder was next after that and went beneath the A-Gate, which bore the symbol of not just a puzzle piece and horde of Gateborn, but also multiple towering monstrosities above them. Puzzles, traps, hordes, and at least one empowered Gateborn were just some of the obstacles you could expect from an A-Gate. Fortunately though there hadn’t been that many A-Gates that had opened in the world. Or, not for long at least, seeing as they were exceptionally deadly to the region they appeared in and any beyond.

That just left us with the ascension gate—with its arrow—and two more to fill in order to finish the puzzle. One of which was marked with two sharply drawn exclamation marks.

“That’s S-Tier, right there,” Frankie said as she moved the boulder toward it. “Has to be.”

Nodding in agreement, I left them to it as Serra and the last member of our group, Martin, took the ascension boulder toward the ascension gate sculpture, leaving me and Trey to sort out the last and final boulder. Wondering idly what gate it could possibly correspond to, I moved to scrape the rust off of it, only to reveal the lettering “SS-Tier.”

Wait, what? I asked myself, temporarily confused at what I was seeing and what I had just heard from the other team. Oh, damn it, they’re wrong.

“Frankie, w—” I started to shout, but my warning was far too late, a deep, unnatural-sounding click filling the air and cutting me off. Moving a second behind my words, I saw that Frankie and her team had managed to roll her boulder, the one that had to be labeled S-Tier into the SS-Tier gate socket. It sat there ominously for a moment, long enough for everyone in the room to realize the error.

And then without any warning at all, the boulder exploded in a cloud of razor-sharp shards.

They flew outward like what I imagined a shotgun blast would have looked like, Amedea’s stories of the ancient and now-lost weapons suddenly paling in light of the reality before me. The shards tore through Frankie as if she were paper, half of her body simply vanishing in a spray of gore, while the other half was thrown across the chamber, bouncing twice before coming to a stop in a pool of red.

“No, Frankie!” Serra shouted, abandoning the ascension boulder in order to sprint toward her friend. But before she could reach her comatose friend, the downed gate stealer began to glow, and what remained of her started to break apart into motes of sharply cut light until there was nothing left.

“Ugh,” Trey grunted with a severe wince as we all stared at the ghastly sight. “Yeah, somethin’ like that happened to me once. Opened a box linked to a fire trap and then boom. At least we know the System’s still workin’, though, ya know, on the account of that funky business with the gate. She’ll be waitin’ for us outside the gate when we’re done, likely in need of a strong drink.”

“W-what?” I replied as I shook off my shock, it taking me a second to internalize the man’s words and realize what he meant. Until he’d mentioned it, I hadn’t even considered that the error we all experienced could possibly affect how the ascension gate normally worked. “Oh, r-right. Death isn’t permanent in these things. After seeing that . . .”

“It’s easy to forget,” Trey finished with a nod.

“Does anyone have any idea what went wrong?” Serra asked, the woman crouched over the spot where Frankie had come to rest and subsequently disappeared. Or at least her body had. I could still see the smear of blood that her body had left, stretching and pooling across the floor.

“She paired the wrong boulder and gate,” I explained, my head turning towards the SS-Tier boulder beside me. “She put the S-Tier boulder in the gate with the double exclamation marks on it. But it was supposed to go into that gate over there.”

I paused for a second to wave at a nearby statue before continuing. “This boulder here is the one that should have gone into it, because SS-Tier is the most dangerous type of gate that we know of.”

“That we know of,” Damon cut in with a poor imitation of my voice. “It’s the most powerful type of gate, full stop, Hotshot. Tiers for us pesky humans might end at A-Tier. But the gates, the gates go up all the way to SS-Tier. You of all people should know that. But what this place is, is just a measly ascension gate, and you lot have somehow already managed to lose a person. In the first room, too. I’m starting to get a sense why you all needed to come to me for help.”

As he spoke, the shards of the S-Tier boulder started to rise from the floor and gently reassembled themselves into a boulder several feet away from the incorrect gate it’d been slotted into. The motion prompted a few of our jumpier members to flinch and call out in surprise at the movement, but the boulder reformed itself before anyone could do more than look.

“We need to be a bit more careful,” I said, in an attempt to calm everyone down afterwards, deciding that Damon’s words didn’t even warrant a response. “We’ve all paid a lot to be here, Frankie included. So let’s try not to make any more mistakes until we can finish this gate.”

There were some grumbles at my words, but no one disagreed with them, and we were back at work in short order. Beginning first with Frankie’s mix-up, the S-Tier-labeled boulder went into the single exclamation mark gate, followed by the SS-Tier boulder going into the double marked one. That then left the ascension boulder for last, which, when guided and clicked into place, caused the room to shudder and vibrate with an echo that sounded like a bag of loose nails. Lasting for roughly a ten count, the noise then intensified into that of the loud scraping of metal on metal as all of the gates and their boulders began to sink into the floor. As they did, the wall behind them began to rise upwards in response, revealing a passage onward deeper into the gate and towards the next trial ahead, clicking into place once it was fully open. I was then rewarded by a flash of System text appearing across my vision.

Ascension Trial #1: Completed

Members Remaining: 5/6

Proceed Onwards to Reach Trial #2

This time the System message didn’t flicker or fade as it had earlier when the gate had abruptly closed on us, nor did it have any of the distortion I’d seen earlier. I wasn’t sure if that was because the System had corrected whatever error that it had encountered, or if it had been part of the test, but I was happy to see that things were back to normal.

“All right,” I said, taking my eyes off of the hallway ahead and glancing towards the others. “That’s one trial down. Now let’s go see what else this gate has in store for us.”

Chapter Ten

Despite having fought them for nearly a century now, we still know surprisingly little about the Gates and the Gateborn that spill forth from them. For all intents and purposes, they are aliens, creatures from another realm of existence that spill into our world en masse. Yet despite their otherworldly appearances, they still appear familiar, if at least when versed in the mythology of the world before. Is this just a coincidence? A convergence of imagination? Perhaps our imagination being made real by the System? Or were they here before? Long, long before our respective worlds were somehow split apart?

—From the writings of Tanner Grimes

* * *

“Rah!” I screamed as I slashed forward with my knife, belatedly twisting to put as much of my weight behind the attack as possible. The result was far from one of my best strikes; in fact, it was far from even one of my good strikes. But fortunately, it didn’t need to be any more than what it was, because sharpened metal plus extreme force equaled damage, regardless of how well it was aimed.

In this instance, the damage from my wild blow was more than enough to solve the problem before me as my blade connected with the Gateborn leaping through the air towards me. Aided by its own momentum in addition to my own, the attack was enough to completely split the creature in two. Half of its shambling, metallic body hit me harmlessly in the chest, while the other half soared over my shoulder.

Ugh, why do these things even have blood! I exclaimed mentally as I felt unexpectedly cool blood splash upward from the impact and spray across my face, instantly prompting a surge of nausea to shoot through me. I didn’t have time to pay attention to it, as a scraping sound from behind prompted me to spin and find the upper half of the Gateborn that I’d just bisected attempting to rise, more fluids gushing out of it as it did so. Not waiting to see if it would manage the feat, I moved to put it out of its misery, a quick thrust into what I thought was its head sending it back down to the ground for good. It was only when it didn’t rise again that I felt my shoulders slump as some of the panic that’d enveloped me began to fade. A quick look told me that the others had also managed to finish off the remainder of the ambush, or were close enough to doing so that I didn’t feel like I needed to intervene.

That left me with the much-needed opportunity to catch my breath and see exactly what had attacked us in the first place. There hadn’t been time to identify what sort of creature the thing had been—not when it and its many brethren had come screeching out of the darkness—but now that it was dead, I finally had the chance to take it in. Like most Gateborn, the first thing I noticed was that it was a twisted thing, made half of metal and half of flesh. The former poked free of the latter in the form of cruel-looking hooks and barbs, designed, no doubt, to catch on its opponent’s body after it leapt upon them.

Which makes me extra happy I was able to keep this thing from connecting, I thought with a shudder, my eye lingering on the sharp ends for longer than I wanted to admit before continuing towards the rest of its reddish-orange-hued body.

Mentally piecing it together with its missing half, I figured that creature had been roughly three feet long before I’d sliced it in half, and also heavier than I expected it to be. No doubt on the account of all of its metallic weaponry that protruded every which way from its body. Completing its appearance, and armament, was its mouth, which was nearly identical to that of a leech. That is, of course, if a leech was the size of a decent-sized dog and had proportionally larger teeth. The only positive thing that I could find of the creature was that it hadn’t been particularly intelligent when it and its broodlings had swarmed us, the danger coming more from their large numbers than their ability to actually fight.

An observation that was confirmed when the System finally decided to supply a description for the creature before me.

Gremora Hordeling – Gateborn – Tier: D – Level: 7

Type:

Insect

Intelligence:

Hive-mind

Known Weaknesses:

Physical

“All right, that’s the last one over there! I got it!” I heard Trey shout further up the corridor that we were in, his voice catching my attention and pulling it away from the dead gremora.

Glancing upwards, I looked just in time to see the man lift his hand, palm spread wide, and begin gathering power in it.

“Let’s see how you like this,” he said with a growl, and the glowing energy in his palm burst into flame, which he promptly whipped forward, throwing the ball of fire at the last of the gremoras. Spinning through the air, the fireball slammed into the creature and detonated, engulfing the surrounding area in hissing flames.

And leaving the Gateborn completely undamaged and unfazed as it wheeled to flee back down the passage that it had come from.

“Eh? What?” I heard Trey grunt in confusion. “Aw, damn it. It’s resistant to fire.”

“You know, that kinda makes sense with being made of metal!” Serra exclaimed as everyone ahead of me then tried to catch it at once. “Shit, it’s getting away! Got anything else to throw at it?”

“Girl, I wish! That fire trick is all I got!”

“Well, nothing I have is going to help.”

Thanks to the System, everyone who made it past level five could choose a power. But for D-Tiers, those powers were often more for convenience than for actual fighting.

It was only when you reached C-Tier that you started to get powers that were actually dangerous.

“By the System, you lot really are hopeless!” Damon practically shouted from the back of the group where he’d been decidedly not contributing to the fight, picking that moment to lob a power of his own. Blazing by me before I even knew what was happening, a blur of fire not unlike Trey’s own power lanced towards the fleeing Gateborn. Yet where the other man’s power had just been a ball of fire, Damon’s power shifted itself into that of a molten lance, plunging not only into the back of the retreating monster, but pinning it to the ground beneath.

The gremora screeched once in agony as it was struck, then promptly fell silent as the fire-spear did its deadly work.

“There, it’s dead,” Damon stated while giving Trey a glare. “Next time just kill it, and don’t try to show off.”

“Aye-aye, boss,” Trey replied as he threw a mock salute down at the man, clearly not the only one who had grown tired of his attitude.

“I don’t suppose you think that was our second chamber challenge?” Martin, one of the two other men with us, asked from just behind me, eyeing the darkness ahead from which the monsters had appeared. Other than Damon bringing up the extreme rear, he was the last of our group and by far the most timid.

“Not by a longshot,” I answered with a shake of my head. “If the first room was anything to go by, the System would have told us if we’d beaten the second trial. This was just a warm up, a taste of what’s waiting for us ahead.”

“Great,” Martin said, his skin turning notably paler at my words.

I gave the man a sympathetic nod, full well appreciating his concern. We’d only just started moving into the passage beyond the first chamber when the gremoras had attacked, and the prospect of facing more of them in the chamber that undoubtedly waited ahead was something I was sure none of us were looking forward to.

“You know,” Serra said, interrupting the silence that had fallen over us. “There’s more of that . . . stuff in here. On the walls right there.”

We all turned to follow her hand, which was pointing to a thin line of liquid that ran in rivulets down the wall. As if they were crimson tear tracks. We’d first spotted them back in the mouth of the corridor and every few more feet afterward. Wondering if anything had changed, I wiped a finger through the nearest line and brought it to my nose, a quick sniff verifying what I already suspected.

“It’s still blood,” I said as simply as I could, unable to make my words any less frightening.

“Well, damn, that’s not starting to get freaky at all,” Trey said, several of the others agreeing in less eloquent terms. “This is by far the creepiest ascension gate I’ve been in now, and I thought I’d been in a few terrifying ones already.”

“Well, it’s not like we can get much bloodier anymore,” I said, sparing a nod to my own ruined clothes, and then beyond, to the floor where the gremora horde’s blood was pooling under our feet in little puddles. Or it had been a few seconds earlier.

“There are grooves in the floor,” Serra said, after I mentioned the blood was missing. “They look like little channels, and all the blood is slowly flowing that way.”

She paused to point down the corridor ahead of us, which led us deeper into the gate.

“Looks like it’s leading us straight to where we need to be going,” Damon said, an eagerness appearing in his voice that hadn’t been there a moment earlier. “You know, in case we got lost or something.”

“Or that it’s a piece of a larger puzzle we haven’t figured out yet,” I replied, turning to see the man already moving towards me.

“Only one way to find out,” he said before rudely shouldering me and the others in line aside and stomping down the narrow corridor. “Come on, I’ve let you all set your own pace long enough. Let’s get a move on. I really don’t want to be here all day.”

With that, the five of us then did our best to ignore the blood-crying walls as we continued down the passage, our nerves on edge every step of the way. Amedea had always said one of the greatest dangers of an ascension gate was failing simply because your group had been whittled down too far. It wasn’t much use to make it to the gate’s core if you were the only one who did. Especially when the final trial often included an extremely powerful Gateborn, that one required several people to have a hope of taking down.

The passage came to an end in short order, and I soon found myself gripping my knives tightly in my hands once again as we stared into a seemingly normal room that looked much like the first chamber. Well, seemingly normal aside from the walls that were actively crying blood, there being no sign of another puzzle, and the waiting horde of gremoras that already had their attention fixed upon us.

“Something tells me that we’ve found the second trial,” Trey whispered as we all looked onwards, his voice breaking slightly as he spoke.

“System protect us,” I heard Martin mumble, despite that not being exactly how things worked. The System didn’t protect anyone. The System tested us. Tested us to see if we were worthy of getting stronger and protecting ourselves. You either fought and advanced through the tiers, or put your faith in the strength of those who had.

And I know I am ready for this test, I affirmed to myself as I gripped my knives even tighter and raised them to a ready position, feeling my heart begin to thunder in my chest.

“Guess it’s time to see what y’all are made of,” Damon said with a chuckle, though one thin enough that I detected a note of concern buried beneath its bluster.

A part of me wanted to call him on it, to yank his chain the same way he’d been yanking on mine all day. But before I could make up my mind, there was a bright flash of light that filled the chamber ahead, emanating outward from the far exit and causing the gremora horde to burst into motion.

Directly towards us.

“Ah, shit, they saw us!” Martin shouted in a panic. “What do we do!”

“What do you think we do, you idiot? We fight!” Damon retorted as he conjured another burning lance of fire and threw it towards the oncoming horde.

“We’re going to need to do more than just that!” I shouted back as I heard a loud crunch sound out from behind us. Spinning, I turned just in time to see a metal door emerge from the ceiling further down the corridor we’d just come from and slam into the ground, blocking us in. “The way’s just closed behind us! We’re going to get slaughtered if we stay here!”

“I’m open to suggestions then, Hotshot!” Damon shouted as he sent another blast of power at the horde. “Everyone, line up! This is going to get messy!”

“They were guarding the exit over there! Maybe we don’t need to kill them all!” I replied, vaguely gesturing to the far door opposite of us with one of my knives, having seen the gremoras all clustered in front of it before they had charged us. “Maybe if we can all get there, they won’t follow us the whole way. Or if nothing else, it’ll be easier to fight them when they can’t swarm us.”

“That’s a really big ‘maybe’ there, Auric!” Serra shouted back to me, her tone sounding both hard and afraid. “We’d have to make it—ah! Look out!”

Having finally managed to close the distance separating us, the first of the gremora horde leapt at us, causing everything to descend into shouting and chaos. Falling in beside Martin and Serra, I caught one of the flying creatures directly on my knives, its momentum more than enough for it to impale itself, and it let out a warbling cry of pain. Not wanting to have my weapons tied up any longer than they had to be, I shoved back at the creature and threw it away from me, pulling my knives free in the process. As I did, I once again called on the energy inside me, energy that allowed me just the tiniest sliver of control over reality and fed it to the one and only power I had.

Afterstrike.

Slashing through the air as fast as my arms could move, I soon had a wild pattern of semi-translucent crescents in the air before me, every swipe of my knives adding another and another to the tally. Then, as I swept my blade through the air one final time, the power truly came to life, each crescent burning a brilliant and angry red before launching itself forward en masse.

Packed tightly in their charge towards us, there was nothing that the horde of gremoras could do to evade the slashing crescents, save for scream and recoil in pain as deep wounds opened across their bodies or entire limbs were sheared off. Hungry and relentless as it carved into their ranks, Afterstrike cut a path fifteen feet deep before the crescents finally began to dissipate, fading away into nothingness.

Yet for all the damage that the attack did, it only slowed the horde’s charge for the time it took the uninjured gremora to outpace the injured, a swarm of them leaping towards Serra, Martin, and me.

Clearly more used to fighting than I was, the woman easily handled the two Gateborn that attacked her, dodging one, while slicing a large chunk of flesh from the other. A tactic that I mirrored myself somewhat, save for opting to kick one of the leaping gremoras with my steel-toed boot right in its toothy maw and send it reeling away from me, all while I buried one of my long knives in the side of the second attacking me.

Martin, on the other hand, did not handle things as courageously, nor as skillfully as we did.

Instead, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him flinch away with a frightened yelp from the single gremora that had fixed its attention on him, the motion causing him to miss his poorly timed attempt at slicing it apart midair. The result had the creature landing with a dull splat on the ground directly before him, which he might have still been able to take advantage of had he not panicked and tried to kick it, instead of using his weapon. With more than enough time to regain its feet under it, the gremora lunged again, this time towards Martin’s other leg, which was woefully undefended.

“Ahhh! It got me!” I heard him shout just a heartbeat before he fell, the creature latching onto his shin and bearing him down to the ground. To make matters even worse, the remaining swarm of gremoras picked that moment to arrive, another two of them appearing right between Martin and myself.

“Damn it, hold on!” I shouted as I slashed at the two creatures, using the attack as more of an opportunity to distract them than anything else. For as soon as I had started to turn towards them, so had Trey on Martin’s opposite flank, the man sweeping his heavy metal club in a wide arc and pulping the pair.

“Help him!” Trey barked before turning his attention back towards the horde. “I’ll hold them off a tick!”

Not needing to be told twice, I did exactly that, lunging towards Martin and the Gateborn clinging to his leg and stabbing the creature in the side. Mindful not to thrust too deeply, lest I end up injuring Martin even further, I quickly peeled the creature off of him and finished it off in short order, my stomach curdling the instant I turned back to look at his now-bloody leg. The creature had only been on him for a handful of seconds, but that had been more than enough time for it to completely savage his leg and inflict several deeply bleeding wounds.

Shit, this doesn’t look good! I said to myself as I saw his leg, my first instinct then being to pull him out of the fray to give Trey more space to work with. I bent down to grab the man by his belt before dragging him a few steps backwards, sparing a brief glance towards the others to see how they were doing. In a blink, I saw that they had all closed to support the loss of Martin while making liberal use of what powers they had to keep the gremoras at bay.

I saw Trey swing his club with reckless abandon as he fought the horde, bashing any gremora that came into range, but throwing himself more and more off balance with each wild blow. Damon, I saw was hard pressed as well, narrowly avoiding getting bit in the neck by a leaping Gateborn thanks to a shimmering shield of energy that sprang into existence at the very last second.

Then I heard Serra scream, causing my attention to snap towards her and see that she was down on one knee with her hand on her hip.

We’re not going to win like this, I realized, the battle having escalated too rapidly for us to have anything even vaguely resembling a plan. But if we didn’t put one into motion quickly, then I had little doubt we’d all find ourselves on the outside of the gate sooner rather than later.

“Do your best to slow the bleeding,” I said as I finished dragging Martin away from the fight, grabbing one of his hands and placing them on the largest of the wounds on his leg. He nodded to me and mumbled something in response, but from the distant and glazed look I saw in his eyes, he was well on his way to shock.

A loud shout echoed through the room, and I saw Serra was up again but barely managing to keep her feet and she and the others hacked and slashed in what was becoming a desperate last stand.

“Serra, swap out!” I shouted as I rushed back to join the others, the woman not needing a second invitation to do exactly that, the two of us exchanging places practically seamlessly. “Stay with Martin and watch for any that get through! He’s losing blood fast!”

“I-I can do that,” Serra grunted from behind me, her voice sounding weak and timid.

But no sooner did the woman turn to rush further behind me than did the swarm of gremoras surge forward, forcing me to retreat back a step. Several I saw even broke away from fighting Trey and Damon, in an attempt to either dart between or around us.

“The hell—” I started to say in confusion, only to cut myself off as I abruptly realized what was happening. “They smell blood! Martin’s and Serra’s blood! They’re fixating on them!”

I summoned up another surge of energy as I backpedaled to stay ahead of the oncoming Gateborn, burning through the last of the control that the System granted me to carve another series of crescents. Slash after slash, I filled the air ahead of me with translucent lines before watching them flare red and launch themselves forward. Again, they savaged the leading ranks of the horde and slowed them down a step, especially when another burning lance from Damon arrived, this one travelling down the length of their line and skewering four at once.

“Nothing like the smell of barbecue, eh, Hotshot?” Damon practically shouted as he stepped up beside me, his face slick with both gremora and his own blood. “It just reminds you of just how alive you are, don’t it?”

“And I’m looking to keep it that way!” I retorted, already seeing the Gateborn creatures start to regain their footing after our combined assault. “Look, the gremoras are a hive-mind monster and—”

“Yeah, I know that, Hotshot, I heard you,” Damon interrupted dismissively while forming another ball of fire in his palm. “And they’re focused on blood, which is why they’re attacking the others first.”

“Right, but that hive-mind needs a guide!” I practically shouted back at the man, stabbing out towards the far door where the flash of light that had started this battle had appeared from. “And all the creatures here look the same. There’s a good chance whatever is leading them is likely outside the room where it’s safe!”

Damon’s eyes shifted as he followed my blade, his head bobbing once in agreement.

“You know, maybe you’re not entirely an idiot after all,” he said, before giving me a half shove. “Go find out. And if you can take half of the horde with you, that’d be great too!”

I didn’t even bother to say goodbye before I left, immediately taking off at top speed at an angle away from the horde. I heard several shouts and a loud screech echo out from behind me, but I didn’t look back to see what had caused them. Instead, I ran even faster as I circled the room towards the far exit, the exit that led to the next chamber.

And the exit that happened to have a frame around it, complete with a small, glowing stone set on one of its sides.

I knew it, there’s a mind-core! I mentally exclaimed, instantly recognizing the stone for what it was thanks to the comprehensive education that living with a team of gatesealers had brought me. Similar to a Gate Core, save for being smaller and serving a more specialized purpose, mind-cores were gemlike stones that housed the intellect, or rather as its name suggested, the mind, that controlled certain entities within a gate. What exactly it controlled varied tremendously depending on the gate, which from the stories that I had heard from Amedea ranged from sentient puzzles, complex machines, or as in this case, hive-mind-type Gateborn. Which means if I can destroy it, it should take care of all of the gremoras attacking us.

“Look out, Auric!” I heard Trey’s voice shout out as I reached the exit. “They’re turning to follow you!”

“Great,” I grunted, deciding to trust the man’s words instead of turning to look.

Instead, I focused on the exit and mind core itself, a part of me then belatedly noticing that there was no door or barrier at all blocking further progress.

Which meant that I could just continue onwards. I didn’t need to stop here and worry about the core. If I left the room and pushed onwards, then that would count as finishing the trial, wouldn’t it? All I’d have to do then is complete the rest of the gate, which would likely involve one more trial, before a final test.

A . . . final test. I can do that, I said to myself as I stared down the open corridor ahead, even going as far as to take a step down it. All I need to do is just leave the room, and—wait, what am I doing?

I shook my head violently and fixed my attention back onto the mind-core, which had since dimmed, almost so much that it had turned completely dark.

“Oh, you’ll have to do better than that!” I growled at it as I pulled myself free of its mental influence, the stone’s glow then immediately flaring brightly in response. Unsure of how much time its attack had wasted, I didn’t hesitate then in attacking it, stabbing out with one of my knives at the marble-like orb.

Only to have a chip break away from my weapon as it hit the exceptionally hard stone, barely scratching its surface.

“And it figures that this would be a perfect time to have a club like Trey’s!” I muttered to myself through clenched teeth as I changed tactics, moving from trying to break the core to prying it free of its setting. “Maybe if I can get it back to him, he can smash it.”

So it was then with my full strength that I jammed the edge of my knife into the gap where the stone met its inset, the now-chipped blade slipping in a fraction of a centimeter. Encouraged by my progress, I worked it back and forth, while using every bit of leverage I had.

“Come on, come on!” I hissed as I saw the mind-core begin to wobble and forced my weapon in even further, hearing the sound of rapidly approaching Gateborn grow louder. Realizing that I was out of time, I threw my full weight behind the knife as a last-ditch effort to break it free.

Which was, fortunately, enough.

Coming free of its setting with a faint pop, the mind-core leapt out and into my waiting hand.

Just in time for the first gremoras to arrive.

Turning to catch sight of the creature as it sailed through the air towards me, I found myself caught almost completely flatfooted by its sudden arrival, just barely managing to avoid it by dropping to the ground hard on my back. It was then with perfect clarity that I was able to see it fly straight over me and into the corridor beyond, hitting the ground with a thump at the same instant a loud click filled the air.

Followed by a series of heavy crossbow bolts firing out of the wall and into the creature, killing it instantly.

“Shit, there are traps!” I exclaimed in a panic as I tried to scramble back up to my feet, glad more than ever that I’d been able to shrug off the stone’s suggestion. Otherwise, I’d have ended up pin-cushioned by the very same set of bolts that had just killed the gremora.

What are the odds that was the only trap? I asked myself as I rose, a desperate idea coming to mind. A brilliant idea, too, if it worked.

The key word being if.

But with the entire gremora horde bearing down on me, I didn’t have time for doubts, only action. So it was with that thought, and a fervent prayer to the System, that I threw the mind-core straight down what I hoped was the trap-filled corridor and dove out of the way. Hitting the ground hard, I forced myself into a roll and came up at the same time the horde surged past me, all of them charging directly into the passage after the core.

And then the traps started activating.

I heard tiles clicking followed by another rush of whistling bolts and screaming gremora. A second later, a loud thrum of a breaking spring reached my ear, followed by the sound of rushing liquid and a wailing chitter, lasting just long enough until a blast of nigh-unbearable heat wafted out of the corridor’s mouth.

Again there were screams, but they were fewer and weaker this time, lasting until I felt something heavy fall to the floor, impacting with enough force that it caused the entire room to shake.

And then it was quiet. So perfectly quiet in fact that I found myself involuntarily flinching when System text began to scroll along my vision.

Ascension Trial #2: Completed

Members Remaining: 4/6

Proceed Onwards to Reach Trial #3

Ascension Trial #3: Completed

Members Remaining: 4/6

Proceed Onwards to Reach the Final Trial

Chapter Eleven

The weak have no place in this world. You either fight to improve. To claw your way up the Tiers to get strong enough to defend yourself and those you love. Or you die. Simple as that.

—Opening words by Curshaw while addressing the newest Blueridge Guard Recruits

* * *

“Martin didn’t make it,” Serra said to me the first moment I was back with the group, her eyes dropping downwards as she spoke. “Bled out during the battle really—and I mean really—fast. Gremora must have nicked an artery or something . . . there was nothing I could do.”

“I believe you,” I replied as I slowed to a stop, having practically sprinted across the room the instant that I’d seen we’d lost a member and finding Serra, Trey, and Damon all standing over a pool of blood on the ground with several fading motes of light floating up into the air. “I saw his leg. It . . . it was bad.”

“He was bad,” Damon stated with a rude grunt before spitting on the ground, right in the center of the blood pool. “I watched him flinch like a coward as soon as the critters started to hit us. Serves him right.”

We all stared at Damon in shock, none of us saying anything for several seconds as we processed his words.

“Is . . . isn’t that a little harsh?” Trey asked, managing to find his words the fastest out of the three of us.

“No. It isn’t,” Damon answered in a hard tone, shooting a glare at the man, then Serra and myself as if he could sense our anger. “And don’t either of you think to get self-righteous on me. He nearly killed you both, if he hasn’t already. I see how you’re standing.”

“I can—” Serra said with a wince, sensing that Damon’s comment was clearly directed towards her as she sucked in a sharp breath, her left hand pressed hard against her hip. “I can make it. This was the second trial, right? And we got a message that the third was cleared too, thanks to whatever Auric did.” She paused to look at me hopefully. “That just leaves the final trial. It might be another puzzle, or something—”

“Deadly,” I finished, frowning at her wound which had already left a large trail of blood going down her pant leg. “You could very well bleed out before we finish, or be easy prey if there’s more Gateborn guarding the Gate Core.”

“I-I know,” Serra replied, shaking her head before looking over towards Damon. “But what else can we do? It’s not like we have a healer. Unless you happen to have some tricks you haven’t shown us yet.”

“Plenty,” Damon stated, his face hardening even further as he glared at the woman. “But no. I don’t have any healing. And before you three decide to get on my backs about that, that’s a good thing. Else this gate would have been even harder.” He paused just long enough to shift his attention over towards me. “Care to tell everyone why, Hotshot?”

“Because the System would just scale the ascension trial appropriately,” I said, recalling my years of education from Amedea and the rest of Salvo. “If we had healing, then the System would have forced us to rely on it, making sure that we didn’t simply bring someone powerful enough to carry us through. Without healing . . . the System takes that into account, and makes the trials easier for us.”

“I’d call that last battle many things,” Trey said in a dry tone, also shaking his head as he spoke. “But easy ain’t one of ’em.”

“Relatively easier,” I added despite fully agreeing with the man.

“I’ll be fine,” Serra affirmed, her face breaking out into a wince again as she shifted on her feet. “But we should get moving. You know, in case I start not being fine.”

“Now there are some words I agree wholeheartedly with,” Damon said as he slashed his arm in the direction of the exit. “Let’s finish what we came here to do and be done with this gate.”

Readying ourselves to do exactly that, and with Serra supported by Trey, we left the chamber, one limping and battered group. As we did, we all got a front row seat to the remains of the gremoras that littered both the chamber and the corridor beyond. Though the remains that we encountered within the latter of the two places were barely recognizable as the bug-like Gateborn that they’d been moments earlier. Not only did it look like they’d been put through a blender, but they’d also been scorched practically to ash that crunched loudly beneath our feet. Then, to make matters even more unsettling, where the gremoras’ blood hadn’t been boiled away by the blast, it ran in a thick stream onwards through the very same brass-coated channels cut into the floor that we’d seen earlier.

“Good thinking with the traps,” Trey said as we passed through the carnage. “I’ve been through a lot of ascension gates in my time, but that was the first time I’ve ever seen anyone clear two trials at once.”

“Thanks,” I replied, my face turning into a grimace as I recalled the end of the battle. “Though, being honest, I think it was more desperation than anything else. Or if not that, then just a stroke of luck.”

“Don’t matter to me which it was,” Trey said with the best shrug he could manage with Serra’s arm draped over his shoulder. “It worked.”

“Heads up, people,” Damon announced from the head of our group, his voice sounding particularly eager. “Passage is ending, and I can see a door up ahead.”

Feeling my heart begin to beat faster at his announcement, I quickly turned to look ahead, it only taking me a second to find the aforementioned portal, which looked exceptionally worse for wear. Made from metal like everything else was within the gate, the door was badly rusted with large chunks of it having flaked or fallen away. Chunks large enough that I could make out several gaping holes easily the size of my head upon it. Then, of course, there was blood. The blood that flowed ahead of us along the eerie channels that had been cut into the very ground, passing under the door and into the room beyond.

“Ah. Now this is usually the part where things tend to go bad for me,” I heard Trey whisper from behind me as we steadily continued forward. “Can’t help but wonder if this is the time that things will finally be different.”

“It will,” I promised as I pulled my knives free of their sheaths, slowing to a stop as we reached the badly rusted door. “Okay, before we—”

But Damon didn’t stop moving, the man instead planting his boot heavily in the center of the door and kicking the entire thing inwards with a thunderous screech of metal on metal.

“All right, let’s get this done!”

Gaping at his back in shock as the dust settled, I temporarily found myself at a loss for words. I’d wanted to come up with at least the outline of a plan before we’d entered the room and whatever trial waited within.

I guess any chance of surprising whatever is in there is now gone! I thought in a half-panic as I moved to follow Damon into the room, the man apparently heedless or uncaring of any waiting danger. Clearing the cloud of rust, I rapidly scanned the wide-open chamber beyond, finding that this one was circular in shape, rather than rectangular as the others had been before it, the room even having the same blood-weeping walls. But instead of continuing onwards as it had for the entirety of the gate so far, the blood streaking down the walls trickled downwards across the gently sloping floor before coming to rest in a large, rippling pool that dominated the heart of the chamber.

A pool of blood that I soon noticed was rippling rhythmically, as if it possessed its own heartbeat.

“Well, that’s just . . . terrifying,” Serra said as she and Trey entered the room behind me, a glance at her showing her stepping away from the man to lean against the nearby wall. “What . . . what are we supposed to even do here?”

“I . . .I have no idea,” I answered as I struggled to pull my focus away from the pool of blood and glance around the rest of the room, only to find that it was otherwise completely bare, with no other notable features or adornments. “Maybe we need—”

I never had a chance to finish my words, thanks to a pair of loud and surprised grunts from both Damon and Trey, the latter calling out in a quivering voice.

“Look, the blood!” he practically shouted, a shaking hand darting in from the side of my vision as he pointed towards the pool in the center of the room. “The blood is starting to move!”

And it was moving, I soon discovered, as my eyes flicked back towards the pool, only to find that the crimson liquid was in the process of rising upwards, shifting and undulating wildly as it did so.

“W-what s-sort of p-puzzle is this?” I heard Serra mutter from behind me, her voice filled with terror. “This . . . this . . .”

“Isn’t a puzzle,” I said as I watched the blood begin to take shape, morphing into a vaguely humanoid shape. If a humanoid shape happened to have four arms, three legs, and a completely featureless, angular face, akin to a blunted arrowhead. “It’s a Gateborn. A really, really big Gateborn.”

Continuing to rise from the pool, the blood-born creature then let out a raspy shudder as it reached its full height, its head, if it truly were a head, then beginning to cast about as if in search of something. It didn’t take long for any of us to discover exactly what it was looking for, as the second that it turned its featureless face towards us, it completely froze, its body going completely and perfectly still. It was then during this brief instant, that I saw lines of System text begin to appear beside the creature.

The Bloodghast – Gateborn – Tier: D – Level: 10

Type:

Unclassified

Intelligence:

Unclassified

Known Weaknesses:

None

No sooner did I finish reading its description, than a jagged mouth began to open across its head, stretching impossibly wide as it reared backwards onto its two hind legs.

And then it roared and lunged forward towards us.

Chapter Twelve

A child once asked me what the most important thing was that I always brought with me when I entered a gate. Something that I absolutely couldn’t do without. It was a question that I found myself unable to answer at first, my mind instinctively going to my sword, or my armor, or even the countless supplies I always make sure to have on hand. But as I gave the matter some thought, I realized that none of those were truly important, at least not when compared against who I brought into the gate with me. The people who I knew would be there for me no matter what happened, no matter what the gate threw at us. It was then that I realized that the most important thing I carried into a gate was trust. Trust in my companions. Trust that they would be there for me. Trust that I would be there for them. Trust that together, we could do anything.

—Speech by Constance Turner to prospective Gate Sealers

* * *

“Here it comes!” I heard Damon shout, right before a rough hand shoved me forward from behind.

Directly towards the oncoming bloodghast.

Staggering from the unexpected push, I just barely managed to dodge under the creature’s leading arm as it swept over my head, but at the cost of falling to one knee in the process. Scrambling in a panic, I tried to push myself back upwards while simultaneously slashing out with the knife in my left hand, which with the Gateborn now standing practically on top of me, was impossible to miss with.

Unfortunately, the blow didn’t seem to have any real effect.

Slicing into one of the bloodghast’s legs, my blade cut into it as if it were butter, jerking and slowing when it first made contact, then bursting free without so much as a flinch from the creature. By then I’d managed to recover from my fall, getting my legs under me just in time to dodge around another one of the creature’s claws sweeping towards me. Realizing that there was no way that I’d be able to keep ahead of the Gateborn in such close range indefinitely, I moved to sprint away from it in the hopes of buying some time and space to come up with a better plan.

The bloodghast, unfortunately, had its own plans.

Letting out an angry snarl as I fled, I saw it throw what I thought was an ineffective punch in my direction, its arm far too short to reach me. I soon discovered how wrong I was in that thinking when its fist suddenly liquified with a sound like a roiling stomach, sending a geyser of blood exploding from it.

The next thing I knew, I was blasted off my feet by a tidal wave of blood, the room spinning wildly all around me before I slammed back into the floor with a jolt that reverberated up my spine and through my bones. A second later, an explosion of pain shot through me, causing a flash of blood-hued text to appear in my vision.

Health: 187/290

Ugh, that . . . that hurt, I thought with a wince as I struggled to push myself upright through the sticky slime—or blood, rather—that covered me, relieved to find that I’d managed to somehow hold onto my knives after getting hit. But that was about as far as I was able to get before a loud yell split the air, causing me to snap my attention towards where I thought the bloodghast was just in time to see Trey swing his club at its chest. But where my knife had managed to cut through its body, Trey’s weapon didn’t, instead impacting the Gateborn right in its center of mass—and sticking there.

“Oh, that’s not good!” Trey exclaimed as he promptly let go of his club and rolled away as the ghast grabbed for him.

“Hang on!” I called out to the man as I scrambled back up to my feet for the second time in the fight, already in the process of calling on my control and sending it flowing into my weapons, which I began slicing through the air. Within seconds, I had half a dozen glowing crescents before me, which I then promptly sent flying towards the bloodghast.

Slicing through the air as they closed with the creature, two of my crescents were going to miss, the bloodghast having shifted out of position just enough so when they arrived, they sailed past it harmlessly. That left the other four to land reasonably solid blows, carving deep into its body and sending a spray of blood splashing through the air.

Yet unfortunately, it did not earn so much as a whine of discomfort from the enraged Gateborn as it turned its completely smooth head to look towards me.

“It doesn’t look like hitting it is working!” I shouted, rapidly backing up as the creature focused its attention on me. “We need to try something else!”

“I’m working on it, Hotshot!” I heard Damon call out just before two burning lances of fire skewered the bloodghast through the chest, sticking in place and causing the blood around them to boil.

And, of course, for the bloodghast to finally let out a scream of pain, two of its four hands reaching to claw at the spears.

“That did the trick!” I said, relieved to see that we could hurt the creature as it yanked out one of the burning spears with a torrent of blackened, burned blood, its liquid body already repairing the hole that it had left.

And shrinking slightly in the process.

“Hey, did anyone see that?” I called out as the bloodghast reached to repeat its motions, except this time with the other flaming spear. “It shrank when it lost blood! Can you keep chucking those spears at it?”

“I saw it,” Damon replied back from across the room, already breathing hard. “And maybe a couple more. But sure as hell not enough to take it down! No C-Tier has enough control for that! Hell, most B-Tiers don’t either!”

“We don’t need to use just Damon’s power!” Serra called out, from her place near the wall that she’d started from, prompting me to glance over towards her and see that she had a small throwing knife in her hand. “I have one that should help. I think. I hope.”

She called up her power as she spoke, and I saw a flash of white-blue light flare out from her palm and into the knife, which she promptly lifted upwards into a ready position. Pausing for just the briefest of instants to steady her aim, she then threw the weapon towards the bloodghast who was just a hair too slow to evade it.

Plunging into its side with a ripple, the light empowering the knife flashed brightly, and a wave of ice abruptly began to grow across the creature’s body, rapidly expanding in size until it was the size of a dinner plate.

“Try hitting that now!” Serra exclaimed. “Something tells me it’ll work better this time around!”

“Here’s to hoping!” I called back, having already started to sprint towards the creature the second I’d seen the ice begin to form. With it completely distracted by another timely fire lance from Damon, I was able to dart in close to the bloodghast and land another punishing strike on it, this time with my steel-toed boot leading the way.

Connecting solidly with the frozen patch of ice, I felt it instantly shatter beneath my foot, a loud crack ringing out through the air. Already wounded from the third flaming lance, the blow only caused the bloodghast to howl louder as its frozen hip shattered and sent a rain of dice-sized chunks skittering across the floor.

“Now that looks like it did something!” I exclaimed as I narrowly dodged another three quick swipes from the creature before running out of range. “We just need more of that!”

“Already on its way!” Serra shouted back, just before another knife came flying in, this one catching the bloodghast in the chest, just near where Trey’s club had gotten stuck in the creature and freezing over in a similar fashion.

“Rah!” Trey exclaimed as he ran in close and leapt into the air, planting a heavy foot on the bloodghast’s frozen chest before pulling on the weapon with his full strength.

And tearing it free.

The bloodghast screamed as the club tore out of its body in a shower of ruby-colored hail, a torrent of blood immediately rushing in to fill the gap. Yet as it did, the Gateborn creature shrank drastically once again. Where it had once been around eight feet tall at the start of the battle, it was now down to six.

But despite that, the fight hadn’t left it just yet.

Retreating, Trey desperately swung his club at the reaching arms, managing to deflect two of the four against him. The other two found their mark however, both punching straight into his chest with enough force to lift him from the ground and send him crashing into the nearby wall.

“Ah, Trey!” I shouted as I saw the man get hit, angling my sprint around the far side of the bloodghast.

As I ran, I saw Damon hurl another fire-spear towards the creature, only to have the monster whip an arm in its direction and spray another geyser of blood over the spear, blotting out the power in a hiss of bloody steam. But that wasn’t the only blast that the Gateborn sent out, a second torrent of blood following right after a moment later and taking Damon off his feet.

“Keep freezing it!” I shouted at Serra as I saw Damon vanish amid the stream of blood, darting in close in an attempt to distract the monster before it could press its advantage. Something that I soon regretted doing after I landed two ineffective slashes with knives across its body and caused it to turn my way.

The next thing I knew, I had the full fury of the bloodghast to contend with, all four arms swiping out towards me, seemingly coming from every direction at once. With no time to think, let alone call for help, I was scrambling to backpedal, desperately playing for every inch I could manage as I dodged and evaded the avalanche of attacks sent against me. To my credit, I thought I managed it well, lasting against the creature’s frenzied barrage for what had to be almost twenty entire seconds before it finally caught me.

But not with any of the four arms that had been attacking me thus far.

Instead, right as I dodged a twin blast of spurting blood from two of its arms, a fifth one abruptly sprouted out from its chest before I could even think to react, catching me right around the throat. Pausing just long enough for me to realize the trouble I was in, the bloodghast then proceeded to yank me off of my feet with impossible strength before slamming me straight back into the ground below.

“Ugh!” I wheezed, barely managing to even grunt under the Gateborn’s grip as pain exploded all throughout my back and another System notification flashed blurrily across my vision.

Health: 101/290

World spinning, I tried to slash at the arm that was holding me, but only landed a grazing blow that failed to break its hold. I immediately tried for a second swing, but found myself unable to move as two of the other bloodghast’s arms grabbed hold of mine, fixing them in place.

Followed by a third that covered my face, sending a wave of bitter copper liquid rushing down my nose and throat.

Panicking as I began to drown, I did everything I could to try and break free, but to no avail, the creature’s strength simply too much for me to fight against. No matter what I did, I simply couldn’t break free of its grasp. Within seconds, I felt my vision begin to dim and my health decline, the System faithfully tracking my fading strength and displaying it for me to see.

Then, right before I’d resigned myself to death, I felt a bloom of extreme cold wash over me, followed closely by a sharp and powerful impact. One powerful enough to break me free of the bloodghast’s hold and send me falling to the ground. Sucking in a deep breath as I landed heavily, I had just enough presence of mind left in me to roll away from the creature, briefly catching a glimpse of Trey in mid-swing, his metal club held high in the air above his head.

“Auric! Are you okay?” I heard Serra shout from across the room as my vision rapidly cleared and I was able to cough out a spray of sticky blood from my lungs.

“I’ll . . . I’ll survive,” I called back the first second I was able, already forcing my body to rise back upwards with my knives in hand, despite it screaming at me every inch of the way. As I did, I heard a sickening crunch assault my ears, followed by a loud, bloodcurdling scream that set my hair on end. Not needing any further hint at what its source could be, I looked in the direction of the bloodghast just in time to see Trey land a brutal blow across its body, sending a colossal spray of frozen blood flying through the air.

A colossal spray that happened to include four of its once-five arms.

Wailing loudly as it desperately tried to reform itself, the bloodghast was now a pale shadow of what it had once been at the start of the battle, its once-towering form now just barely reaching up to my hip. A form that rapidly continued to shrink as Damon planted yet another flaming lance into it and boiled away more of its blood. Flailing uselessly with its now all-too-small arms, the bloodghast did its best to put up a fight, but the damage that it had suffered—and the blood that it had lost—was too much for it to recover from. So it was when Serra threw her final ice-blue throwing knife into the creature’s body that it completely froze over.

“Had right about enough of you,” Trey announced in a weary tone a second later as he promptly stepped up to the newly formed ice sculpture and swung his club at it with every ounce of strength he possessed, instantly shattering it to dust.

Shielding my eyes from the spray, I felt a few stray shards of frozen blood bounce off me harmlessly as the bloodghast was finally put to rest, a glance afterwards revealing that only a few fragments of its leg had been left intact. Breathing a deep sigh of relief, I felt the tension begin to rapidly drain out of my body, followed by similar sounds echoing out from the rest of the group.

“Well, that was quite—” I started to say, only to abruptly cut myself off as I felt something heavy hit my foot. Glancing downwards, I was then surprised to find myself staring at a crimson-hued, palm-sized orb that was slowly rolling across the ground away from me, having bounced off of my foot.

That must be the Gate Core! I mentally exclaimed, not hesitating to reach out towards the dimly glowing sphere so that we could complete the ascension gate’s final trial. Finally, we can grab this thing and be done with—ah!

Sending a powerful shock up my arm the instant that I touched it with my fingers, the Gate Core abruptly shattered with a bright flash of light, the jolt potent enough to instantly cause a headache and for my vision to briefly blur.

“Just had to get one last lick in, didn’t you?” I growled with a wince as I brought my hand up to my temple, the shattered core fragments rapidly turning to dust. As it did, so too did the energy within the room, the air suddenly growing staler, the light dimmer, and the atmosphere somehow heavier. It was a feeling hard to fully describe even while experiencing it, but it felt like the gate’s soul, or whatever had passed for it, had died along with the core’s shattering. The feeling was soon accompanied by another wave of system text that flowed across my vision.

Final Ascension Trial: Completed

Members Remaining: 4/6

Processing Results . . .

Érr͏or: ̵G͘at̨e̕ Typ̷e̸ ͜Inc̶or̕r̷ect

“Wait, what? There’s an error again?” I asked, feeling my heart skip a beat as I read the System text that flashed before me. But before I could say anything else, or anyone could reply to me, more lines started to appear, each of them bearing the familiar distortion that I’d seen earlier.

A̴dj͘u͞s͞ti̵n̵g̶ G͏a̵te Ty̕pe ̀T̢ó ̡P͜rimǫr̸d̡ial̢ ̡Gate͢

Ad̨ju̴st͢me̷nt C̵o̧m̸p̛le͝t͜e

Fin̸a͘l Pri̵mòrd̡i͞al Trial͘: ͞Co̸mple̸t̴ed̴

̕Ge̡ņera̴t̶ín̸g̕ ͘Re͢w͝a͘rd . . .Complet̶e

Rewa͠rd:͟

Cla̵s̢s ͞Aśsignm̛ȩnt͢: P͞aŕagon

Ti͡er̵ Prǫg͢reşs͢io͘n͏: A

Warnin̸g:̷ Pr̀i̴mo͢rdial̵ ̀Ga̕t̡e ̴rew̷a̵r͡d͟s͝ can only͡ b͏e c̵la̸i̷med́ by ͟a sin͞gle ̴entity. ̴Th͘ere͟ are cu͏rr̵éǹtly:͡ ̀4͝ li̶v̸iņg̕ èntįties̷ ̀w̴ith́i̢n thi̕s ̀ga̛té.

R̸e͘wa͞r͡d͞ ̵wi̕ll ̨be̴ a̕ssi̡gned ̷w̡hen̨ onl̕y ́a͡ s͝i̡n͢g͞l̴e l̀i̡v̸ìng͝ ̕e̢nt͏i̷ty̵ ̛rema̕i͏n̸s͜.̢ Al͠t́er̨ǹat̴i̷v͠e̵ly̴,̵ rewa̛rd ̸ḿa̸y b̡e͡ fo͡ŕf̛ȩi̕t̀ed͢ ͠if̨ ̧a̵ll͞ ̢ļivi̶n͜g̷ e̸ntiti͡e͡s ̧agr͝ee una̵nim̢ou͡s̶l̶y ̸t͡o ̨d͟o so.

“A . . . primordial gate?” Trey asked, the first of us to break the silence as we each read the distorted System text flashing before our eyes. “I’ve . . . I’ve never heard about anything like that.”

“Neither have I,” I replied, squinting as I tried to read and re-read all the text in a desperate attempt to understand it before it vanished. But despite my best effort, I didn’t. Couldn’t, in fact. Nothing I’d ever learned of or read had ever mentioned anything about this gate type’s existence. But before I could say anything else, I was preemptively interrupted by a loud grinding sound that began to echo throughout the room, followed by the floor beginning to vibrate.

Needing only a second to determine its source, I looked up in time to see the now-empty basin in the center of the room split open as a set of five rectangular stone slabs rose upwards from beneath it. Set vertically on their ends and arrayed in a circle, the slabs, and the platform that they all stood upon, continued rising upwards until they were level with the surrounding floor, a loud, rumbling click sounding out as it locked into place.

“What . . . what are these?” I heard Serra ask from across the room as we all stared at the crudely hewn chunks of stone.

Which promptly began to open the instant she finished speaking.

Grinding loudly with the sound of stone rubbing on stone, a seam appeared on each of the three slabs that I could see from my vantage point and began to swing open, revealing their contents. For one of them, that happened to be just an empty depression inside of it. One large enough that it would snugly accommodate any of us within. The other two on the other hand, revealed that they were already occupied by a pair of familiar forms.

Familiar forms that we’d all seen fade away into light just minutes earlier.

T-that’s Frankie, I thought with a ghastly revelation as one of the slabs swung open, allowing me to see the now perfectly healed woman nestled within, her hands resting peacefully across her chest in a position of repose. A glance towards the other slab, or rather what I now recognized as a tomb beside it showed a similar scene, except with the other member of our original group. A-and t-that’s Martin. They’re both . . . both dead.

Horror started to form in my stomach as I started to realize just what that System message I’d just seen truly meant and what the empty standing tombs were intended to signify.

Primordial Gate rewards can only be claimed by a single entity, I repeated to myself, feeling my heartbeat rapidly intensify.

A process that was greatly helped along when a scream of pain split the air and echoed through the room.

Letting out a wordless shout of surprise, I turned just in time to see Serra clutching at a burning spear protruding from her chest, her mouth working soundlessly as she stumbled forward in shock before collapsing on the ground in a heap.

And then I saw the second burning lance of fire hovering in Damon’s hand, a savage smile spread across his face as he looked back towards me.

“So, as you can see, there’s been a change of plans.”

Chapter Thirteen

There was a saying once, in the World Before, that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Never has that example been truer in human history than now. Especially when it comes to the seductive power of an A-Tier.

—Warning from an unknown writer

* * *

There was a darkness in Damon now as he glared back at me, one which, while it hadn’t quite been absent before, was now practically palpable, as if a mask had been finally taken off. It was a darkness that pressed down on me and made my hair stand on end as I shouted back to the man.

“Damon . . . what in the System did you do?” I demanded, feeling my words losing much of their heat thanks to a poorly timed quiver in my voice.

“What does it look like I did, Hotshot?” Damon replied, his arm lashing forward as he threw the burning lance in his hand towards me. “I broke it!”

“How?” I shouted back at the man, my hands launching into motion the instant I saw his arm begin to move forward, and I swept my knives through the air, their passage leaving two glowing crescents in their wake. With only enough time for those two sloppy slashes, I sent them forward at the concentrated bolt of flame ahead of me, catching it midair and causing it to explode in a shower of sparks. “And better yet, why?”

“Oh, come on, Hotshot, don’t be an idiot!” the man called back as he spun to react to Trey who came charging into view from the other side of the slabs, throwing a ball of fire ahead of him with his club clutched in his other hand. “You saw the same message I did! You know exactly why.”

Moving as he spoke, I saw Damon reach out to catch Trey’s fireball before it could hit him, effortlessly plucking it out of the air. The maneuver would have been a particularly impressive one too, had Trey not immediately followed up the attack by throwing his club too, the heavy metal weapon striking Damon in the ribs and sending him reeling backwards.

“I’ve seen that trick before, you damned murderer!” Trey shouted as he closed with Damon, the distraction earning him just enough time to hit the man shoulder first and knock him off his feet, sending him sprawling backwards. “You killed her in cold blood!”

“Ugh, don’t be so dramatic,” Damon replied with a grunt as he turned his fall into a somewhat acrobatic roll backwards onto his knees, all without dropping Trey’s fireball from his hand. “I doubt her blood was cold at all by the time she died. Much like yours in a second.”

“Trey, look out!” I shouted, already in a full sprint towards the pair who were across the room from me. But my warning came too late for the man as the fire in Damon’s hand brightened and began to grow, until it was as long as one of his fiery spears.

Rising upwards the moment it was formed, he then used it to stab Trey in the side as the man lunged towards him with his hands outstretched, clearly intending to strangle the life out of Damon. Piercing through his armor as if it weren’t even there, the attack instantly caused Trey to buckle and fall to the ground in a heap, the motion further aided by a vicious knee that caught him directly in the stomach.

It was at that point I finally arrived at the pair while Damon’s attention was half turned away from me, my knives pulled back, each of them ready for a killing blow. Until now I’d never been faced with the prospect of actually needing to kill a person, all of my experiences in my life so far having only dealt with Gateborn. It may have been a fine hair to split, but one that had always been at the back of my mind, always worrying if I would have the strength to do what was necessary if the time came.

It turned out that I shouldn’t have wasted my time worrying.

I brought my knives forward in a lethal slash, ready to end the vile conman, one of the knives directed at his neck and the other at his exposed armpit and the arteries hidden beneath. Letting out a yell as I simultaneously slashed and thrust, both of my weapons effortlessly found their mark, causing Damon’s body to flicker then vanish as they harmlessly passed through him.

“What the—” I started to say, my eyes going stark wide the instant I saw the man disappear, a surprise that would have spelled the end of me had I not abruptly sensed heat on my right. Throwing myself sideways, I just barely managed to avoid a flaming spear thrust through the spot I’d just been standing in, both it and Damon snapping back into sight as if they’d never been missing.

“What? You think I showed you all of my tricks during this milk run?” he said as he pressed his assault, thrusting and slashing at me with a series of quick and savage attacks, the molten tip of his spear hissing as it sliced through the air. “You all saw only what I wanted you to see!”

Too overwhelmed to even think of a reply, let alone voice one as I backpedaled, I desperately did everything I could to stay ahead of the man, dodging, twisting, and even risking a last-ditch parry with my knife that caused it to instantly redden where the spear connected. At one point I saw Trey attempt to come to my rescue but Damon reacted before he could interfere, flicking a hand out to send a power consisting of five streaking motes of lights that flew towards the man’s face. Arriving in the blink of an eye, they all detonated with a bright flash of light accompanied by a clap of thunder, sending the man reeling backwards with a surprised shout.

“Sit tight, I’ll be with you in a minute,” Damon said with a sneer as he redoubled his efforts in attacking me. “I just have one other loose end to tie up first.”

Damon conjured a second fire-spear in his free hand as he lunged forward, and I once again found myself hard on the defensive with little opportunity to retaliate, each and every motion of mine simply staving off the inevitable for another second in hopes that something would change.

But it’s not going to, I realized, a brief glance towards Trey showing me that he was still struggling with the aftereffects of Damon’s power, which had caused him to fall to the ground with blood coming from his ears. I had to try and do something different, something truly reckless that Damon would never expect me to do.

I tensed the instant I committed to the move, my arm abruptly whipping forward to throw one of my knives directly at his face from practically point-blank range. Immediately, before the weapon even finished leaving my hand, I saw him flinch in surprise at my move, the bladed edge tumbling once before arriving at its destination.

And bouncing harmlessly off a shimmering shield of force that sprang into existence at the very last second, sending the knife falling to the ground.

“Nice try, Hotshot,” Damon said as the brief fear that had appeared in his eyes abruptly shifted to savage glee.

Which was followed by him thrusting one of his burning spears into my now-unarmed shoulder.

And of course, followed by me a second later thrusting my other knife straight up to the hilt into his unprotected side, just above his last rib.

“Y-yeah, I-I thought it worked out p-pretty well,” I replied, just barely managing to get the stammering words out before the searing agony slammed into me and I threw myself backwards in an attempt to pull the weapon free, something that Damon made no motion to fight. Unfortunately, that was all I was able to do, the sheer pain of the burning spear’s exit prompting me to let out a scream as my legs finally gave out and I fell to my knees.

But despite the torment that rocked my body, it wasn’t enough for me to forget about the man who had caused it, never taking my eyes off of him as I watched him continue to stagger, dropping his two burning spears in the process.

“You . . . you . . .” I heard him gurgle wetly as he reached for the weapon’s hilt that protruded from his side, a stream of blood already pouring from it. “What have you done?”

“Gotten . . . justice,” I replied, despite knowing how cliché my words were. The pain was simply too much to offer anything more eloquent. “For Frankie . . . for Martin.”

“J-justice?” Damon repeated, his earlier shock giving way to anger as he glanced back up at me, rage evident on his face. “I am the one here for . . . justice. Justice . . . for everything . . . everything that the . . . damned System has done to us. You’re . . . you’re just . . . supposed to be a sacrifice.”

“The System?” It was my turn to echo back, something that was beginning to get harder and harder to do with every second that passed. “What are you talking—”

“I will not be . . . denied,” Damon continued, carrying on as if I hadn’t spoken, the man using a shaking hand to reach for something in a pouch that hung off his belt. “I-I’ve come too . . . far for this. This . . . ends . . . now.”

I saw him pull something free from the container as he spoke, my increasingly blurry vision identifying it as a length of bone with a rather large chunk of metal on its end; his arm stretched out to point it towards me.

Oh crap, I realized with sudden fear as I immediately identified the item as a weapon, likely an empowered one recovered from a gate. Such items were exceptionally rare as things went, not only being difficult to come by, but also often extremely limited in the total times it could be activated, making its wielder carefully weigh each and every time they chose to use it. But that rarity aside, as a rule, these empowered items always had the potential to be extremely dangerous, if not lethal to those unlucky enough to find themselves on their receiving end.

As I currently found myself to be.

Reacting at a time that I already knew was far too late, I pushed myself back upwards onto my feet, ignoring the screaming protests of my body as it demanded a chance to rest, and instead forced it to lunge forward. I knew I had little chance at reaching the man, my now-almost-completely blurred vision telling me that all of his staggering since I’d stabbed him had taken him at least a dozen steps away from me. But I didn’t have it in me not to fight. To simply lie down and let a man like him win. That was why when I heard a deafening explosion fill the room with another cacophonous blast of noise, I didn’t stop moving. Nor did I do so when I felt a spray of something hard bounce across my armored legs.

Or when I heard Trey scream in pain, instead choosing to focus on the words he shouted instead.

“I got him, Auric!” he exclaimed at what had to be the top of his lungs. “I got him! You just kill him! Kill him dead and put an end to this!”

Arriving at the blur ahead of me, I saw the stain in my vision resolve itself into that of Trey and Damon grappling with one another, the former holding onto the latter man’s arms, one of them pressed against his chest, the other thrust upwards into the air. Taking in the sight, I didn’t hesitate in coming to Trey’s aid, the fact that I didn’t even have a weapon with me not registering until I was within arm’s reach.

But I know where to find one, I said mentally as I glanced down at Damon’s side and saw that my knife was still thrust into his chest, the leather tunic that he wore now stained completely crimson.

Grabbing hold of the weapon, I yanked it free without ceremony and plunged it back into the man, stabbing him again and again as fast as my rapidly weakening body could manage. But no matter how many brutal, life-ending thrusts I landed on the man, Damon would not fall. At first I thought it had something to do with his being a C-Tier and just being innately more resilient, but that notion fled from me the instant that I saw him begin to glow and scream.

“No!” Damon shouted in a complete panic as soon as something hanging from his neck began to glow with an orange light. “Just . . . wait! Please . . . wait! I can . . . win! I can—AAH!”

His screams rapidly intensifying, Damon howled in a primal agony unlike anything that I’d ever heard or imagined before, the light exploding into living flames that hungrily leapt outwards to wash over his entire body.

“Trey, let go!” I shouted as I watched the fire rapidly spread, its heat so powerful that in just the second that it had been on Damon it had already burned a hole deep enough in his chest to reveal bone. “Come on, Trey, he’s—”

“Sorry, Auric,” Trey replied in a flat voice that I knew all too well as he used Damon’s wild thrashing to back up a step, closer towards the still-open tomb behind him. “But . . . but I think I’ve gone as far as I can go.”

He shoved Damon another step closer towards the slab, the prolonged contact allowing a wisp of the fire consuming Damon to spread up Trey’s arm.

“It’s . . . it’s time I finally went home,” the man continued, showing no reaction to the fire that rapidly began to consume him.

And I finally saw why.

Dripping from his chest in a steady stream was a torrent of blood, blood that I saw was leaking from a series of holes in the breastplate that he wore. Holes that I knew had been caused by whatever weapon Damon had been holding.

He took the hit for me, I realized, my pain-streaked brain finally putting the final piece of the puzzle together.

“Figures . . . that this is how things would turn out once I actually managed to finish a gate,” I heard Trey go on to say, a final chuckle sounding out. “But . . . I guess that’s just life for you.”

Then with a loud grunt, Trey surged forward one last time, forcing both himself and a burning Damon into the open tomb’s embrace.

“Hold on, Dad,” I heard him say a second before the heavy stone slab slammed shut on the two of them. “I’m coming.”

Chapter Fourteen

Multiple Errors Detected Within Instance #202: Ascension Gate: P42490N.

Legacy Gate Type Mismatch. Extreme Levels of Entropy Present. Sub-Instance Integrity Below Critical Threshold.

Primary Recommendation: Allocate Resources For Immediate Intervention by Master System Daemon.

Primary Recommendation Approved.

Allocating Resources.

Beginning Intervention In 3. . . 2. . . 1. . .

—System Central Log Excerpt

* * *

It was all I could do to remain standing as I stared numbly at the now-sealed tomb before me, my heart thundering in my chest. The room had fallen completely silent the second that it had slammed shut, entombing both Trey and Damon within, leaving me completely alone with only my thoughts for company.

He . . . he sacrificed himself, I said to myself, the sheer speed with which everything had happened making it overwhelming to process all at once, let alone doing so while every nerve in my body screamed for a reprieve from the agony coursing through it. Had I enough time, I was sure that I would have eventually been able to focus past the storm of emotion and pain building within me—that is, if another wave of System text scrolling across my vision didn’t permanently steal my focus.

Error: Connection to Local Node Lost

Attempting To Restore Connection . . .

Connection Failed

Searching For Alternate Node . . .

Parent Node Detected . . . Establishing Connection

Connection Established . . .

Warning: Deviant Parameters Detected

“Deviant parameters?” I repeated aloud as I read the text before me, once again wondering exactly what Damon had done to the System for it to not only behave so strangely but for it to alter the very structure of the gate itself. I didn’t have much time to ponder that thought, since no sooner did the last of the shimmering text before me fade away, than I felt a presence come over me. A presence that happened to be potent enough that it instantly bore me straight to the ground and onto my back, all while another string of text appeared in the air before me.

THE SYSTEM HAS NOTICED YOUR PRESENCE

THE SYSTEM IS NOW WATCHING YOU

Struggling to breathe from under the impossible weight, I barely had the time to realize what had happened before the ceiling above me began to give way, the entirety of it simply fading out of existence in large, sweeping chunks. Within seconds, it was completely gone, revealing a vast and infinite void beyond it, the only notable feature within its otherwise-empty expanse being a colossal, brightly glowing orb of white.

An orb that I was absolutely certain was staring back at me.

Is-is t-that the S-system? I asked myself, just managing to form the mental words before I felt the pressure pinning me down reverse. The next thing I knew, I was falling upwards into the void and directly towards the massive, pale sphere above at an impossible speed, one that I knew I should have felt more than I did.

Then as quickly as I’d begun moving, I stopped, coming to a rest in a seemingly arbitrary place respective to the endless void that stretched out all around me, but one close enough to the orb that it now dominated the entirety of my vision.

“BEGINNING SCAN,” I heard a powerful monotone voice announce from seemingly everywhere and nowhere, one that I identified as belonging to the sphere.

Or rather to the System.

“SCHEMA SCAN COMPLETE. ENTITY IDENTIFIED AS: AURIC AMADEUS CAIN, LEVEL: 10, TIER: D, HUMAN MALE. ORIGIN: INSTANCE 202,” it continued as I felt countless fingers begin to rifle through my mind and body, the alien and wholly unsettling experience prompting me to let out a panicked shout. Lasting for several seconds, I felt the pain from my injuries instantly vanish; whatever it was that the giant orb was doing, it wiped them away as if they’d never been there in the first place. “ENTROPY DETECTED: NONE. SCHEMA INTEGREITY: 100%. ENTITY DEEMED UNCORRUPTED.”

Un . . . uncorrupted? I asked myself, seizing onto the word in my struggle to keep up with everything that was happening. What does that even—

“ADDITIONAL ENTITIES DETECTED. BEGINNING SCHEMA SCAN,” the voice stated, cutting my thoughts off before they could finish. “WARNING: HIGH LEVELS OF ENTROPY CONFIRMED. ACTIVATING SAFEGAURDS.”

Flickering in intensity, the nebulous sphere of light then abruptly shifted forms into that of a colossal diamond, gaining a solidity to its appearance that it had lacked up until this moment.

“SAFEGUARDS ACTIVE,” it intoned the second it had finished transforming, a bar of light lancing out from within its depths and shooting out past me on its journey towards where I’d last seen solid ground. “BEGINNING PURGE OF CORRUPTED SCHEMAS. PURGE COMPLETED. SCANNING. ENTROPY DETECTED: NONE. THREAT DEEMED ELIMINATED. ADDITIONAL EVENT DATA REQUIRED. DISENGAGING SAFEGUARDS AND ENTERING INTERACTIVE MODE.”

Shrinking rapidly as it spoke, the colossal ball of light lost its hardness and began to fold in on itself as it rushed towards me, crossing the indeterminate distance separating us in seconds. By the time that it came to a stop a half-dozen feet before my face, it had shrunk its form all the way down into that of a fist-sized ball of light, the oppressive weight of its presence greatly lessening in the process.

“BEGINNING INTERROGATION,” it stated, the tenor and volume of its voice having remained unchanged since its transformation. “ENTITY AURIC AMADEUS CAIN, EXPLAIN YOUR INTERACTION WITH THE ENTROPY ENCOUNTERED HERE.”

“Ex-explain the what?” I couldn’t help but stammer in response as I stared back at the floating orb before me, nowhere even close to understanding what it had just done. “I-I don’t even—”

“REPEAT QUERY: ENTITY AURIC AMADEUS CAIN, EXPLAIN YOUR INTERACTION WITH THE ENTROPY ENCOUNTERED HERE. ENTITY HAS THIRTY SECONDS TO COMPLY OR WILL FACE SCHEMA DELETION.”

“Hey, hold on a second!” I replied as a spike of anxiety shot through me at the threat, which I immediately took as being a Bad Thing even if I fully didn’t understand what it meant. “I don’t even understand what this entropy thing you’re talking about even is! Let alone however it did . . . whatever it did!”

“PROCESSING STATEMENT,” the orb replied, its body pulsing in intensity as it continued to hover before me. “STATEMENT DEEMED TRUTHFUL. ALTERNATE QUERY: ENTITY AURIC AMADEUS CAIN, EXPLAIN ALL THE EVENTS THAT TRANSPIRED SINCE ENTERING PRIMORDIAL GATE: P42490N.”

Now that was something I could do.

“O-okay, okay,” I said as I collected myself, relieved to have staved off my end for at least a little while longer. I still had little to no idea of what was going on, but when a giant, seemingly omnipotent ball of light told you to speak, you spoke.

I left nothing out as I explained everything that had happened since we’d entered the ascension gate, beginning first with how we’d arrived in the place and how the gate had frozen over afterwards. I’d half expected it to immediately interrupt me for follow up questions at that point, or when I brought up the errors that appeared in the System text, but to my surprise, it stayed silent, allowing me to continue without pause. Eventually, I finished that portion of my story and my recollection then led into each of the trials we’d all endured on our way through the gate. It was difficult to talk about them at first, the deaths of Frankie and Martin causing me to briefly choke up, my mind and heart not having had nearly enough time to process what I knew now to be their deaths. I pushed through and before I knew it, I was wrapping up my long story while idly worrying about whatever came next.

“And then he began to scream as something on his chest caught fire,” I said, remembering the terrified panic that had struck Damon moments before the fire began. “I remember him pleading with something, maybe someone, as he started to burn, but everything happened too quickly after that. Trey rushed forward and dragged him into one of the tombs that were in the center of the room, and the door closed behind them. Then . . . that was it. The next thing I knew afterwards, you arrived. And well, uh, here we are.”

Silence greeted my words as I finished speaking, the orb that was the System hanging fixed in the air before me, having at some point stopped its floating and bobbing motions. It was a silence that gradually stretched longer and longer without breaking, as I didn’t dare to be the first to do so, lest the orb take offense.

“STATEMENT PROCESSSING COMPLETE,” it finally intoned after what felt like an age, resuming its bobbing and floating motion as it spoke. “STATEMENT DEEMED TRUTHFUL. FOLLOW UP QUERY: WHEN DID YOU FIRST MEET THE ENTITY KNOWN AS DAMON DUKE?”

“This morning,” I answered before going on to explain the whole arrangement that I had struck with Kerill to get access to the ascension gate, not caring in the slightest if the System judged me harshly for it. The way I saw it, I was already in more trouble than I could even begin to fathom and admitting to half cheating my way through an ascension gate was the least of my worries. Fortunately, though, the System didn’t seem to care at all about that particular distinction and instead asked me another question.

“FOLLOW UP QUERY: BEFORE PARENT NODE CONNECTION WAS LOST, DID ENTITY AURIC AMADEUS CAIN OBSERVE ANY UNNATURAL PHENOMENON OR EVENT THAT MAY HAVE PRECEDED IT? EITHER FROM THE ENTITY DAMON DUKE OR ONE OF THE OTHER ENTITIES IN THE GATE?”

“Uh, nothing that really comes to mind . . .” I answered slowly as I considered the question, wracking my mind for anything in particular that stood out to me. “We all entered one by one and were struggling to get used to the smell when it happened. I remembered looking around and seeing the first trial . . .”

My voice briefly trailed off as something leapt to the forefront of my mind.

“Hang on a second, I actually do remember something,” I said, remembering that there in fact had been something I’d seen. “Right before the gate froze and the errors started to appear, Damon did do something weird, though I didn’t see exactly what. All I heard was a loud crack and by the time I turned, all I saw was dust falling from his hands. He told me that he tried pulling up a piece of metal from the floor and it crumbled to his touch . . . but now I’m not sure if I believe that. It might have been something else.”

“PROCESSING STATEMENT,” the System echoed out as I finished speaking, the light emanating from it dimming somewhat as we then hung in silence. I waited patiently for it to finish and ask me something else, but it never did, a minute stretching to two and then three before I ended up losing track of time all together. Eventually, I found myself unable to stand the oppressive silence any longer and blurted out my own question.

“Was . . . whatever he had this . . . entropy thing you asked about?” I asked, seeing the orb floating in front of me instantly brightened the second I started speaking.

“QUERY REPLY: ENTITY HAS INSUFFICIENT PRIVILEGES TO REQUEST THAT INFORMATION,” the System answered, its light fading once again after it finished speaking.

“Uh, okay,” I replied with a frown despite feeling somewhat encouraged that I hadn’t been struck down for daring to ask a question. “Then in that case, how do I get more, uh, privileges, then?”

“REQUESTS FOR ADDITIONAL PRIVILEGES MUST BE SUBMITTED TO THE ADMINISTRATOR FOR APPROVAL,” the orb said as it lit up and faded again in sequence.

“And how exactly do I do that?” I asked, feeling a spark of hope shoot through me. Apparently, questions weren’t exactly as forbidden as I thought.

Only answers were.

“REPLY: ENTITY HAS INSUFFICIENT PRIVILEGES TO REQUEST THAT INFORMATION.”

“Wait, what?” I asked as my frown returned, the brief flare of hope within me turning into frustration. “I don't have permission to find out how to ask for permission? How does that even work?”

“REPLY: ENTITY HAS INSUFFICIENT PRIVILEGES TO REQUEST THAT INFORMATION.”

“Oh, come on!” I exclaimed, for a brief moment in time forgetting just who I was speaking to. “How can I be expected to help if I don't even know what it is I’m supposed to be helping with?”

“PROCESSING LOGIC,” the orb intoned in its typical fashion before briefly pausing once more. “LOGIC SUSTAINED. GRANTING TEMPORARY AD-HOC PRIVILEGES FOR INTERROGATION PURPOSES.”

“Could have saved me a lot of stress if you’d just done that from the get-go,” I muttered, the long minutes of waiting having done much to wear down the earlier awe and fear that had all but paralyzed me. “Now can you tell me exactly what this ‘entropy’ thing even is?”

“QUERY REPLY: AFFIRMATIVE. DISPLAYING REDACTED THREAT PROFILE,” the orb answered just as an array of system text began to scroll across my screen.

Entropy

Origin: [REDACTED]

Type: [REDACTED]

Intelligence: [REDACTED]

Known Strengths: [REDACTED]

Known Weaknesses: [REDACTED]

Known Information:

Theorized to be a rogue artifact left over after [REDACTED], the Entity known as Entropy is a wholly-hostile being seemingly bent on corrupting all that it encounters. First encountered in [REDACTED] its arrival prompted the complete decay of the Instance’s integrity, beginning first with higher physics and continuing downwards until [REDACTED]. All other attempts to [REDACTED], with the rate of corruption increasing by [REDACTED] every cycle. Current projections show complete [REDACTED] in [REDACTED] unless some measure to slow the corruption is found. Per the Administrator’s [REDACTED] all attempts now focus on finding a [REDACTED] before [REDACTED].

I paused for a second as I reached the end of the text before me, expecting more to appear once I’d finished reading everything that had filled my vision. But to my dismay, nothing extra appeared, the bare details that the System had granted me instead fading away and out of sight.

“W-wait, that’s it?” I demanded as I watched the text vanish. “That . . . that didn’t tell me anything useful at all! Hell, I barely even understood any of it! How is any of it supposed to be helpful?”

“QUERY REPLY: ENTITY HAS INSUFFICIENT PRIVILEGES TO REQUEST THAT INFORMATION,” came the monotone reply I was rapidly beginning to hate. Fortunately, it was also followed by something more or I would have likely said something I couldn’t take back. “PRIOR STATEMENT PROCESSING COMPLETE. FIRST ORDER LOGICAL INFERENCE: THE ENTITY DAMON DUKE CARRIED A FRAGMENT OF ENTROPY INTO THE PRIMORDIAL GATE WITH THE INTENT TO GAIN TIER-A RANKING. SECOND ORDER LOGICAL INFERENCE: A NEW SPLINTER OF ENTROPY HAS MANAGED TO ESTABLISH ITSELF WITHIN INSTANCE 202 NEAR THE REGION PROXIMATE TO PRIMORDIAL GATE: P42490N. THIRD ORDER LOGICAL INFERENCE: ENTITIES ALLIED WITH THE ENTITY DAMON DUKE RETAIN MODERATE PROBABILITY OF CONTAINING ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE WHEREABOUTS OF THE SPLINTER OF ENTROPY. DOES ENTITY AURIC AMADEUS CAIN FIND ANY FAULT IN THIS LOGIC?”

The orb then paused for a moment after it finished speaking, its form narrowing even further as it waited for my reply.

“Uh, y-yeah, I mean no. No faults at all,” I said, both surprised to be so suddenly put on the spot as well as having the System itself ask me for input. “The logic holds up. If anyone had an idea of what Damon was planning on doing after this gate, it’d be the rest of his flunkies. Or if not, then whoever they’re working for.”

“THEN CONCORDANCE IS REACHED,” the System replied, a flash of blue energy rippling through its body. “NEW PRIMARY TASK CREATED: COLLECT AFOREMENTIONED ENTITIES SCHEMAS FOR INTERROGATION AND PROCESSING. NEW SECONDARY TASK CREATED: USING OBTAINED INFORMATION, DETERMINE THE LOCATION OF THE SPLINTER OF ENTROPY AND ANY CHILD SLIVERS. NEW TERTIARY TASK CREATED: DESTROY THE SPLINTER OF ENTROPY AND ANY CORRUPTED ENTITIES ENCOUNTERED BY ACTIVATING ASSIGNED SUBROUTINE. ALL INSTANCE LOCAL OBJECTIVES ASSIGNED FOR FULFILLMENT BY ENTITY AURIC AMADEUS CAIN WHO IS HEREBY PROMOTED TO LOCAL DAEMON: RANK ONE STATUS.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait a second, you want me to do what?” I asked with a note of panic, seeing a string of text labeled Assignments Accepted scroll across my vision, followed by a breakdown of each of the tasks. “What does it mean to collect and process a Schema? And what the hell is a Local Daemon?”

“THIS UNIT WILL PERFORM NECESSARY SCHEMA COLLECTION AND PROCESSING,” the System replied as it only answered the first half of my question. “HOWEVER, COLLECTION AND PROCESSING CANNOT BEGIN WHILE SCHEMAS ARE ACTIVE. IT IS ENTITY AURIC AMADEUS CAIN’S TASK TO TERMINATE THEIR PROCESSES LOCALLY SO THEIR SCHEMAS CAN BE EXTRACTED FROM THE INSTANCE.”

“Term—terminate their . . . processes?” I repeated, feeling a line of ice race down my spine as I realized what it meant. “Y-you m-mean you want me to kill them!”

“PROCESSING LOCAL DEFINITION. REPLY: AFFIRMATIVE,” the orb stated, its body once again narrowing into a thin, diamondlike spike. “THEIR PROCESSES MUST BE ENDED BEFORE EXTRACTION CAN OCCUR.”

“Then why can’t you do it yourself? You’re . . . you’re the System! You can do anything!”

“ASSESSMENT INCORRECT,” the orb promptly answered, swaying from side to side as it spoke as if in a negative gesture. “CURRENT RULES LIMIT THIS UNIT’S CAPABILITIES IN DIRECTLY INTERACTING WITH ACTIVE PROCESSES WITHIN INSTANCES. AS SUCH TASKS MUST BE DELIGATED TO INSTANCE LOCAL DAEMONS FOR FULFILLMENT.”

“Current . . . rules? You’ve got to be kidding me!” I replied, feeling my heart begin to beat even faster at the System’s reply. “First of all, you have no idea what you’re even asking me to do. And second of all, you can’t expect me to have any chance at actually doing this! I’m just a D-Tier, there’s no way—”

The orb promptly cut me off before I could even finish my sentence.

“ASSESSMENT INCORRECT,” it said in its typical tone, this time with a noticeable sense of urgency. “ENTITY AURIC AMADEUS CAIN HAS NOT YET RECEIVED PRIMORDIAL GATE: P42490N’S REWARDS.”

“I . . . I haven’t, what—” I started to reply, only to cut myself off when I realized exactly what the orb was referring to. With everything that had happened since Damon’s betrayal, his subsequent death, and the System’s arrival, I’d briefly forgotten about what still awaited me.

“A-Tier,” I whispered as the grim realization finally dawned upon me. “Primordial gate rewards can only be claimed by a single entity. And I am the last entity standing, aren’t I?”

“REPLY: AFFIRMATIVE,” the System answered, bobbing once in the process.

“And you’re not . . . uh, upset, that I’m going to advance up the tiers so quickly?”

“NEGATIVE. WHILE PRIMORDIAL GATE TRIALS HAVE SINCE BEEN DISCONTINUED FOR ENTITY ADVANCEMENT WITHIN INSTANCES, ENTITY AURIC AMADEUS CAIN HAS SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED REQUISITE TRIAL FOR PROMOTION. FURTHERMORE, CURRENT PROJECTIONS SHOW THAT ENTITY AURIC AMADEUS CAIN HAS A 71% CHANCE OF SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETING PRIMARY TASK IF PRIMDORIAL GATE REWARDS ARE CLAIMED.”

“And if I don’t claim the gate’s reward? What are my chances then?”

Narrowing once again in response to my question, the orb froze in place for several seconds before it replied.

“LESS THAN ONE PERCENT. IT IS HIGHLY ADVISED THAT THE PRIMORDIAL GATE REWARDS ARE ACCEPTED. ELSE TERMINATION OF PROCESS IS EXTREMELY LIKELY UPON EXITING THE PRIMORDIAL GATE.”

“No shit,” I replied with a shake of my head as I considered my options. Either I took the gate’s rewards and gave myself a fighting chance the second that I left the gate, or I refused them and instead consigned myself to what was likely to be a quick, albeit exceptionally painful death.

Some choice, I thought with a grimace as the faces of Trey, Serra, and the others flashed to the forefront of my mind. If the stakes had been anything less than death, I would have rejected the decision before me out of hand. But it wasn’t. It was their deaths, my death, possibly everyone’s death if I even slightly understood the esoteric scraps of information that the System had shared with me. There’s something bigger going on here than I can even begin to imagine. And somehow I’ve managed to land myself right in the middle of it. Great going, Auric; your luck just never fails, does it?

“SUB-INSTANCE DESTABLIZATION IS GROWING IMMINENT,” the System said to me as I continued to war with my thoughts. “RECOMMENDATION: RETURN TO PARENT NODE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. QUERY: WILL ENTITY AURIC AMADEUS CAIN ACCEPT PRIMORDIAL GATE REWARDS?”

There was only one reply I could offer to that as I felt the specters of Trey and the others loom over me.

“I accept.”

“RESPONSE ACKNOWLEDGED,” the System said, its body then abruptly breaking apart into countless individual motes of light. “PROCEEDING WITH TIER PROMOTION AND CLASS ASSIGNMENT.”

Rushing towards me, the motes swarmed me like a cloud of frenzied fireflies. That is, of course, if fireflies could plunge and then weave themselves into and out of your body. Feeling a cold shiver shoot through my body as they worked, I felt a growing euphoria begin to overtake me, the sensation accompanied by lines of text scrolling across my vision.

You have been promoted to C-Tier

All D-Tier powers have been removed

So long, Afterstrike, I guess, I thought idly through the euphoric cloud that filled my mind, which soon intensified another notch, prompting another wave of text to appear.

You have been promoted to B-Tier

All C-Tier powers have been removed

Does . . . does everyone feel this when they tier up? I wondered as the motes of light continued to weave themselves through my body, the sheer ecstasy of the moment almost too much for me to bear. It felt like every piece of me was being simultaneously touched, caressed, healed, and strengthened in a way that I couldn’t even begin to articulate. The only thing that I knew was that I wanted more of it, more of the power that the System was bestowing upon me.

And more is exactly what I got, the shivering euphoria intensifying until all I could focus on was the text floating in my vision.

You have been promoted to A-Tier

All B-Tier powers have been removed

You have been assigned the Paragon class.

You have obtained the progression tree: Path of Blood

You have obtained the power: Blood to Power

You have obtained the power: Shape Blood

You have learned a new skill: Bloodshaping

“PROMOTION AND CLASS ASSIGNMENT COMPLETE,” the System echoed out what felt like a lifetime later, the exultation that had been coursing through me abruptly vanishing as if a switch had been flicked, leaving me feeling as if I’d just awoken to the worst hangover of my life.

“Ugh, w-what happened?” I asked aloud as I began to lift a hand towards my head only to stop when it came into view. For as long as I could remember, I’d always worked with my hands, the hard life of living in the bones of a fallen world making itself known in the form of dirty callouses and faded scars. But as I looked at my hand now, those marks had completely vanished, leaving fresh and unblemished pink skin.

The Attribute Reset, I said to myself with sudden realization as I looked down from my hand and towards my now all-too-skinny arm. In the few seconds that it had taken for me to advance to A-Tier, it had wiped away years of hard-earned muscle, wear and tear, and who knew what else, leaving my body feeling wholly different. It was weaker, slower, even my general sense of wellness felt off, as if I could catch a cold or something even more serious any moment. It was like I had gone through puberty in reverse and had found myself soft and tired as a toddler.

Or it did for a short while until the System spoke again.

“APPLYING CACHED EXPERIENCE GAINED FROM PRIMORDIAL GATE EVENTS,” it said, the words prompting a rush of energy to shoot through me, followed by several lines of text flashing across my vision.

You have advanced to Level 2!

You have advanced to Level 3!

You have advanced to Level 4!

You have advanced to Level 5!

You have gained the power: Bloodborne Companion

You have advanced to Level 6!

Auto Assigning Attribute Points Based On Prior Training Habits.

The notifications came in a rush that was almost too quick for me to read, my body growing and responding to them as the System auto-applied my new-gained attribute points. As quickly as it had vanished, all the progress that I had lost just seconds earlier returned with interest, filling out my lacking physique. Muscles swelled almost faster than I could follow, giving my arms and legs a thickness that I could have only dreamed of a day earlier. But that wasn’t all, either; I felt a tightness that I didn’t realize I had in my joints begin to loosen, as if invisible bindings holding them in place vanished. Yet those were only two small fragments of a greater host of changes that I could only begin to identify and process, the entirety of what made me, well, me suddenly leaving me feeling better than I’d ever felt before.

So this is what it means to be A-Tier, I thought as I clenched one of my hands into a fist, enjoying the newfound sensation of strength. I savored the feeling for the brief moment in time that I had; it wasn’t long until I saw my newly updated Schema begin to cross my vision, leaving me to fixate on it.

Your Schema has been updated!

Displaying updated Schema fields . . .

Subject:

Auric Cain

Tier: A

Level: 6

Class: Paragon

Progression: 0/3600

Physical Characteristics:

Age: 18 Earth Years

Sex: Male

Weight: 210 lbs

Height: 6’3”

Eye color: Green

Hair Color: Blond

Vital Statistics:

Health: 350/350

Blood Pool: 0/50

Endurance: 350/350

Physical Attributes:

Vigor: 26

Finesse: 25

Celerity: 23

Mettle: 29

Psyche: 10

Powers:

Blood to Power:

Power Type: Metaphysical

Duration: Instant

Range: Self or 10 feet

Linked Skill: Bloodshaping

Blood Cost: Variable

Description: As you embark on the Path of Blood, the first thing that you learn is that blood is power: the power to fuel your ambitions as you wreak havoc among your enemies. As such, you are no longer bound by the constraints of will and effort you once were as you sought to shape the world before you but rather by the blood at your command.

Effect: You no longer rely on Control to fuel your powers, but rather raw lifeforce itself in the form of blood within your Blood Pool. When using a power, you instead pay its cost from your Blood Pool, which you can fill by using your own health at a 1-to-1 rate, or by using the blood of a nearby enemy at a 0.5-to-1 rate. The blood stored in your Blood Pool does not last long and will rapidly dissipate after five minutes of unuse. Note: This power does not function against bloodless opponents.

Shape Blood:

Power Type: Metaphysical

Duration: Instant

Range: 10 feet

Linked Skill: Bloodshaping

Blood Cost: 50

Description: Capable of manipulating the raw lifeforce that is blood, you are able to wield it as if it were an extension of your own body, shaping it into appendages, tools, or even weapons as you so desire.

Effect: You are able to shape the blood within your Blood Pool and telekinetically form shapes or objects. As your skill in wielding this power improves, you will be able to gain finer control of the blood you shape as well as strengthen its potency.

Bloodborne Companion:

Power Type: Metaphysical

Duration: 1 minute (Dependent on Bloodshaping skill)

Range: 10 feet

Linked Skill: Bloodshaping

Blood Cost: Variable – Minimum 100

Description: All blood teems with power, the power of life itself. As a Paragon on the Path of Blood, you have learned how to infuse an echo of your will into a stream of blood, granting it a temporary semblance of life.

Effect: You create a temporary companion made of blood to join you in battle. Capable of being directed either telepathically or allowed to function independently, this creature will do its utmost to aid you. The strength of this creature and the total number allowed to be controlled at a time is dependent on the amount of blood used to create it and your Bloodshaping skill.

“ADVANCEMENT COMPLETE,” I heard the orb echo out as I finished skimming over my Schema, my brain struggling to keep up with the torrent of information that had just been thrown at it. But as it turned out, the System wasn’t done with me just yet, as it spoke out again, followed by two lines of text flashing across my vision. “GRANTING ANALYSIS AND PURGE PRIVLEGES FOR TERTIARY TASK.”

You have been granted the System ability: [Analyze]

You have been granted the System ability: [Purge]

“Wait, Analyze and Purge?” I queried as I read the text, the two lines vanishing from sight before I could bring up a more detailed description for either. “What am I supposed to do with—hey, wait! What’s going on?”

“SUB-INSTANCE COLLAPSE IMMINENT,” I heard the orb reply as I felt my body suddenly begin to move and pick up speed through the endless void, the orb that was the System shrinking until it disappeared from sight. “RETURNING ENTITY TO HOME INSTANCE. WARNING: LOCAL ENTITIES EXPECTED TO BE HOSTILE UPON ARRIVAL.”

“Whoa, whoa, hold on a second!” I called out as I tore through space, for the first time noticing that there were large, jagged white tears in the distance. “We aren’t done yet! What am I supposed to do with these abilities? Or better yet, how do I contact you again? You can’t expect me to do this alone!”

But if the System heard me and my panicked screams, it didn’t show it. Instead it chose to spin me around as I sailed through the rapidly deteriorating expanse, revealing the familiar sight of the Primordial Gate’s exit floating directly ahead of me.

With only enough time to let out one last cursing shout, the next thing I knew, I was plunging head first back through the portal.

And towards the rest of Damon’s friends, who were waiting for me on the other side.

Chapter Fifteen

Intervention Complete.

Beginning Report:

All traces of Entropy Eliminated.

Sub-Instance P42490N Nullified.

Local Entity: Auric Amadeus Cain Promoted to Local Daemon status.

Standard Preservation Tasks Assigned to New Local Daemon.

End report.

Releasing Unused Resources.

Master Daemon Returning to Assigned Tasks.

—Excerpt From Master Daemon’s Log

* * *

I re-entered the world with a scream as I flew through the portal’s mouth, still propelled by the shove that the System had given me to aid my exit. Flailing wildly from the transition’s disorientation, I was able to catch the soft whistle of singing birds and swishing leaves before my journey came to an abrupt end in the form of my face unceremoniously slamming into the ground. Bouncing from the impact, I vaguely felt myself roll along the ground before finally coming to a stop face-down on a collection of wet fallen leaves.

“Damon! Is that you?” I heard a second later as several shouts of surprise split the air, followed closely behind by the sounds of moving feet. “It’s about time! What the hell took so long?”

Ugh, you’ve got to be kidding me, I thought as I struggled to collect myself, my head still spinning from the force of my landing. Doing my best to blink my blurry vision away, I turned just enough to see four figures racing through the clearing towards me.

Four figures which, unless I was mistaken, were all carrying weapons in hand.

Oh crap, this is going to be bad, I said to myself as a surge of panic shot through me. With how fast I’d advanced through the tiers and gained my class in the Primordial Gate, I’d barely had the time to read over my new powers, let alone have any practice using them. But now here I was just seconds away from needing to defend myself, and a fumbling hand to my belt told me I didn’t even have my knives on hand to help. Yeah, really bad.

“Hey, Damon! You okay, man?” the closest figure called out as the group continued to approach, their posture suddenly growing defensive. “Uh, what? Wait a second, you’re not—ah!”

The figure, who I soon discovered was in fact a dark-haired man, never had the time to finish his words as I picked that moment to leap up to my feet while simultaneously whipping a fistful of sticks and leaves at his face. It wasn’t exactly novel as distractions went, but it was a particularly effective one, the wet clump catching the man directly in the eyes.

And completely blinding him to my rising fist following a second behind it.

Connecting solidly with his cheek, I didn’t hesitate to put the full extent of my newborn A-Tier strength behind my attack, knowing that it would be my only chance to try and even the odds. Nor did I pull the second punch to the jaw and kick to the ribs that I followed the attack up with, all three of the blows landing one after the other with the sickening sound of breaking bone.

“Ah, shit! That’s not Damon!” I heard a new man’s voice promptly shout out as the man I’d hit bent over double from my barrage of attacks, dropping the sword he had been carrying in his hand.

“Good job, you figure that out just now?” I called back as I tore my eyes away from my staggering opponent and towards the rest of the group, which had all broken into a charge towards me. Realizing that I only had a few seconds to act before I was overrun, I took the only option I had before me and roughly shoved my insensate victim in their direction before stooping to pick up his fallen sword. Immediately feeling better the second I had a weapon in hand, I then moved onto the next stage of my hastily cobbled-together plan, which happened to be exactly what any sensible person caught in my situation would try to do next:

Run.

Timing my shove so that the charging group would be forced to slow, lest they trample their companion, I rushed to sprint past them, hoping to use their momentum against them to buy myself some space to think. I definitely hadn’t forgotten about the task that the System had asked of me, but things had moved far too fast for me to even begin to think of actually following through on it.

All I really need is information from them, right? I asked myself as I ran, managing to cut just past the trio as they ground to a stop. That doesn’t mean I need to kill them to get it, I can just—

A flash of light on my right interrupted my thoughts a second before I felt something heavy slam into me, completely taking me off of my feet.

“And where do you think you’re going?” I heard an angry voice shout as I was slammed into the ground for the second time since my dramatic exit from the portal, the impact knocking the air straight out of my lungs. “Where the hell is Damon? What did you do to him?”

With only the ability to let out a rasping wheeze in response as I sucked in a desperately needed breath, I saw that one of my attackers had somehow managed to break free of my distraction and intercept me. How they managed that was more academic curiosity, which I was willing to let wait for later, the more pressing concern being the fist that hurtled towards me. Flailing with my free hand, I just barely managed to get it up in time to knock the attack away, finding my other arm, the one holding the sword I’d picked up, trapped against my side by my assailant’s knee.

Damn it, Auric, why do these things keep happening to you! I mentally shouted at myself as I tried to pull my arm free, only to have the man lean even more of his weight on me as he raised a cruel-looking axe above his head for what was certainly going to be a life-ending blow.

My eyes widening as I found myself trapped with no other option in sight, the weapon began its descent, and I then did the only thing that I could do in my situation and slashed my free hand forward in a desperate attempt to catch it. Or at least that had been my conscious intention. My subconscious intention, on the other hand, had other plans, which I was rudely made aware of when I felt a sharp prick of pain bloom in my palm accompanied by the wet, slimy sensation of oozing blood.

Which in turn was then followed by something heavy hitting my chest as my assailant abruptly fell backwards off of me with a bloodcurdling scream.

W-what? I thought in surprise as the weight holding me down abruptly vanished, followed by a notification flashing across my vision.

Your skill in Bloodshaping has improved to Level 2.

My . . . what improved to wha . . .

My thought trailed off before I could even finish it, my eyes finally noticing exactly what had landed on my chest. Is . . . is that a hand?

Feeling bile begin to rise in my throat as I looked onwards, my eyes widened as I took in the severed hand that now lay limply on me, the axe that I’d just seen a second earlier gradually slipping free of its slackened grasp. Letting out my own panicked shout, I immediately moved to slap it off me with my free hand, only to discover that it wasn’t as empty as I thought it was. Instead of the empty palm that I was expecting to find, I discovered a thick crescent of blood protruding out from a seamless cut across the center of my hand, the crimson liquid shaped into what was unmistakably a blade’s edge. But not only did it appear sharp to the eye, but it also appeared to writhe and boil as I inspected it, the blood—for that’s what I realized it was—ever-so-slowly dissipating into nothingness with every second that passed.

Shape Blood, I said to myself with a start as I recalled one of the new powers that I’d learned after gaining my new class, a power that I had evidently used with barely a conscious thought to completely sever my attacker’s hand in the blink of an eye. But despite its exceptional potency, I didn’t have the time to linger on my newfound ability, as a screaming shout finally cut through my shock and brought me back into the moment.

“Aaaah! My hand! He cut off my hand!” the man I’d injured screamed at what had to be the top of his lungs. “Kill him! Kill the bastard!”

It was enough to get me scrambling up onto my feet with haste, a second surge of urgency coming in the form of Damon’s remaining three accomplices who had finally managed to untangle themselves from one another.

“Where the hell is Damon?” one of them, a man with a large scar across his face, shouted at me as he charged forward with a sword in hand, the other man lagging visibly behind while clutching his head with one hand. “What did you do with him?”

“Oh, I think you know full well what I did with him!” I shouted back as I met the man’s charge, choosing to parry his attack with my own blade, despite still holding the strange crescent of blood in my other. The two of us exchanged a quick set of furious blows that instantly had me back on my heels. But instead of pressing the attack and forcing me even further backwards, the scarred man abruptly leapt away and to the side.

“Now!” he shouted as he moved, his head turning to glance behind him. “Shoot him!”

The words instantly made my blood go cold as I belatedly shifted my eyes from the scarred man and to the far-away member of Damon’s group, who I now realized was holding a rather large and powerful-looking crossbow.

One that happened to be pointed directly at me.

While not the same as the weapon that I’d seen Damon use while within the gate, it was easily just as deadly, any differences between the two of them being largely academic to me. With maybe fifteen feet separating us, it didn’t matter what ranged weapon I was shot with; the end result would be the same, which was to say one extremely dead and bleeding Auric. To make matters even worse, I didn’t even have the time to try and lunge out of its way, the click of the weapon’s mechanism reaching my ears at almost the same second that I’d spotted it. But I refused to simply accept my fate as I saw the crossbow bolt launch itself towards me, my left hand throwing itself in front of me as I desperately reached for my newfound power.

Shape, shape, shape! I mentally shouted at the blood I still held in my hand, seeing it writhe and twist in response to my will as it stretched outward into a flat, square disk. It shaped itself far too slowly at first as I swept it in the direction of the oncoming bolt, the hastily made shield forming just in time to intercept it an instant before it would have blazed by and found a home in my chest. Connecting at an angle with my blood shield, the impact sent the projectile safely downwards and to my right, where it half burrowed itself into the ground before coming to a stop.

“Oh, holy hell,” the scarred man promptly hissed, taking a step backwards away from me in response to my last-second deflection. “Look at his nameplate! He’s A-Tier! He must have killed Damon in the gate!”

“Aw shit, I see it!” I heard the crossbow-wielding man reply as I lowered my hand slightly to peer over the blood shield that I’d created. I had little idea of how the power exactly worked, but I could tell it no longer looked as dense as it did just a moment earlier. Likely that meant that it didn’t have much use left in it. “What are we gonna do? He’s . . . he’s level six already!”

“We’re . . . we’re gonna clean this mess up is what we’re gonna do,” the scarred man replied, clearly mastering what was a slow-growing fear at the situation. “We gotta. Because if we don’t . . .”

“Because if you don’t, what?” I asked, leaping at the lull the battle had fallen into to desperately try and defuse it. “Look, I don’t know at all what the hell is going on here, but I know that this doesn’t have to go any further. Tell me what you guys were trying to do here and who you’re working for then we can all go our separate ways. This doesn’t need to get any uglier than it’s already gotten.”

“Y-you a-actually expect us to believe that shit?” a stuttering voice cut in, causing my eyes to swing towards the man whose hand I’d unwittingly severed. At some point, I had missed that he managed to roll away from me and half regain his feet, his bleeding stump of an arm tucked tightly to his chest. “D-Damon told us you’re a part of fucking Salvo. N-no System-damned way we trust anything y-you say. They’re probably coming for us right n-now.”

I felt my stomach instantly fall at the man’s words, once again realizing the full extent of the baggage that I’d brought with me. “Look, I know what you are all probably thinking—”

“Shut it!” the bleeding man barked as he pulled a long knife free from his belt and began to advance towards me. “T-there’s only one way this is gonna end after what you did to Damon. Right, Jon? Right, Merrik?”

“Right, Len,” one of the men, the one I’d injured at the start of the fight, answered in a slurring voice as he staggered to his feet, one of his hands clutching his head with obvious dizziness and pain, the other holding a shortsword not unlike the ones I’d lost in the gate.

“Let’s do this, then,” the scarred man, who I was pretty sure was the one named Jon, replied with a confident nod, the earlier fear I’d seen vanishing from his face as he too started to move towards me. “Take your shot soon as you can, Kris, don’t . . . don’t hesitate. No matter what.”

“W-wait, stop!” I called out helplessly at the group as I took half a step backwards, hoping against hope that I could find a peaceful solution.

But as I looked at the trio rushing towards me, I was forced to abandon that hope, recognizing the same cold murder in their eyes that I’d seen in Damon’s. It was at that point that I knew I couldn’t remain passive any longer and instead turned my faltering retreat into a reckless lunge forward, thrusting my off hand towards the one-handed man, Len, while once again shaping the blood I held.

Picturing a sort of battering ram in my mind as I punched the hand forward, the blood shield shifted into a crudely shaped pillar, wobbling for a split second before connecting solidly with the injured man. As it struck, the blood finally lost its shape and splashed all over him in a torrent, but fortunately, the impact from the blow was still enough to rock him backwards off his feet and send him crashing into Merrik, the two men momentarily vanishing into the knee-high grass of the clearing. That left just Jon for me to worry about for the next few seconds, his sword coming up to meet mine in a last-second parry as I slashed down and across his chest. The move was enough to save the man from getting sliced open by my recently stolen sword, but not enough to avoid getting cut by his own. Aided by my forward momentum, the strike forced his double-edged blade back just enough to catch him across his chin, earning a pained yelp of surprise from the man as blood began to pour forth.

“Rah!” the man shouted angrily as he recovered and forced his blade hard against mine, stopping it before it could do more damage. “I knew we should have just taken you aside and put you down this morning! I told Damon we should have!”

“Well, I guess it’s good for me he didn’t listen, then!” I retorted as I took a risky opportunity to deliver a straight-arm punch to my opponent’s face with my now-empty hand, my fist lancing directly over our two blades and catching the man square in the nose with a sickening crunch of shattering cartilage. But as I pulled the hand back before it could be cut, I was shocked to find that it didn’t come back alone, but rather with a long stream of blood wrapped around it.

Blood that just a second earlier happened to be oozing from my attacker’s nose and chin.

What the hell is this? I mentally shouted as I instinctively tried to flick the swirling blood away, only to have it continue to swish and swirl around my hand as if held in place by an unseen force. At the same time as I tried to dislodge the substance, I saw a pair of small notifications flash across my vision, signaling to me exactly what it was.

Current Blood Pool: 8/60

Health: 300/350

It’s his blood! I . . . stole his blood! I exclaimed to myself, remembering the other half of my power, which allowed me to add nearby blood to my Blood Pool.

I didn’t have time to think more on that particular revelation as my opponent quickly rallied from my attacks and exploded forward in a blur of motion, finally calling on one of his own powers. Supercharged by what I recognized as a Striker power called Frenzy, he lunged forward with incredible speed and sent a flurry of attacks in my direction. Instantly put on the defensive, it was then all I could do to stay alive in the seconds that followed, earning myself three shallow cuts that, had I been any slower in evading, would have all been lethal.

“Damn it, Kris, what’s the holdup?” I heard Jon shout as I just barely managed to deflect a final attack to the side and retaliated with a half-blocked kick to the hip that sent the man staggering back. “Shoot him already!”

“I’m trying!” the other man replied, my gaze landing on him and seeing that he was in the process of cranking his crossbow back with a mechanism built into its side, the thick muscle on his arm visibly bulging. “I just need another second!”

“Hurry it up, then!” Jon shouted back as he lunged back towards me, this time with his other two companions by his side, the pair having recovered from my latest attempt to keep them at bay.

Crap, what am I going to do? I asked myself in a sudden panic as I found myself hard on the defensive against all three of Damon’s accomplices at once with the looming specter of the fourth and their crossbow firmly on my mind. Fighting with increasing desperation as I tried to come up with a plan, it was all I could do to play for space, just barely managing to stay ahead of their attacks as I retreated across the clearing.

Maybe I can try and lose them in the trees, I thought as I risked a quick glance towards the nearby forest. It looks thick enough that I could—

“I’m ready!” a voice called out, my planning then interrupted by the sharp burst of fear that shot through me. “Now give me a clear shot!”

“Oh shit,” I cursed as I abandoned my retreat in favor of darting in close to my attackers as they tried to do exactly as asked, none of them wanting to be caught in between me and an oncoming bolt.

Unfortunately, one of the men happened to perfectly anticipate my move, and the next thing I knew, I felt an iron grip latch onto my sword hand, just above my wrist.

“Ha, got you!” Len exclaimed as he grabbed me with his hand, followed by his still-bleeding stump of an arm belatedly coming up to hook itself around my bicep a second later.

It was enough to send me into an instant panic as I tried to break free, seeing the other two men lunge back towards me with their weapons raised. But no matter how hard I tried to yank my arm free, the other man held on, his fingers digging painfully deep into my wrist.

Then use your other hand, Auric! I heard my mind shout just as I called upon my newly obtained powers to not only refill my Blood Pool from my own body, but to shape the rushing torrent of blood that burst free of my palm into something that could help me. Feeling my vision blur as the blood loss took its toll on my already all-too-strained body, I slashed my free arm forward in a half-blind swing while mentally willing the blood it held into a crude-looking scythe. Whether out of luck or perhaps skill that I didn’t know I possessed, wild motion was good enough for its bladed end to catch Jon’s oncoming sword and deflect it out of the way, its pointed tip just narrowly missing finding a home in my stomach.

Yet I soon discovered that only accounted for two of my three immediate attackers, the third and final member of the group, Merrik, making his presence known as he slashed a red-hot knife across the right side of my chest, biting through my armor as if it weren’t there at all. I let out a scream as it carved through me, whatever power the man was using superheating the blade to the point where it charred flesh on touch. Reacting as fast as my pain-addled mind would let me, I kicked out at the man as hard as I could, my metal-shod boot connecting with something soft and vulnerable just below his belt. It was enough to send him reeling backwards with a wail, taking his burning knife along with him.

But of course, that didn’t mean that I was out of trouble just yet.

“Taking the shot!”

Head turning the second I heard the voice call out, I swiveled just in time to see that the crossbow man had moved to flank us in order to give himself a clear shot.

A shot that he was seconds away from taking.

Realizing I had to do anything I could to delay the shot until I could free myself, I willed the blood in my hand to shift shapes, transforming from the crude scythe that it was now into a grasping whip that I sent wrapping around Jon’s wrist. Yanking on it the second that I felt it was secure, I pulled the man towards me while simultaneously lunging forward, intending to foul Kris’s shot before he could even take it.

But I wasn’t fast enough.

Hearing the loud click of the crossbow’s mechanism sound out just as I pulled the man off balance, I had a single instant to realize just exactly what I had done. A single, heart-wrenching instant before I felt a spray of blood mist across my face.

“Nooooooooo!” a shrill voice cried out just as Jon collapsed beside me, not making so much as a sound as he fell to the ground, the blood-covered steel tip of the bolt that had killed him protruding from his temple. It was a sight that caused everyone to pause, the gravity of what had happened taking several seconds to sink in.

Seconds in which the System used to helpfully remind me of the goals that it had set for me.

Primary Task Progress Update: 1 of 4 Schemas Collected – Beginning Initial Analysis

Damn it, go away! I thought with sudden shock as I banished the notification, my mind turning nearly completely blank as it began to replay what had just happened. First Damon . . . and now . . .

“System take you, Kris!” Len’s shaky shout interrupted my thoughts, forcing me to snap back into the present. “You shot Jon!”

“I-I d-didn’t mean to!” the other man called back, his voice breaking as he spoke. “It . . . it was his fault! He pulled Jon into the way at the last second!”

“You . . . you left me with no other choice!” I shouted as I forcefully yanked my hand free of Len’s grasp, using the shock of the other man’s death to my advantage in order to break free. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t want to—”

“Oh, just shut up!” Len said with a near-screaming rasp as we spun to face one another, the man no longer sounding as confident as he had a few moments earlier. In fact as I looked at him, I couldn’t help but notice how pale he’d gotten over the course of the fight, no doubt due to the blood loss and shock that was setting in. “Everything was going along just perfectly until you showed up! This is all your fault!”

It was with the end of his shouting that Len pulled another weapon free from his belt, this one a small hand axe, and lunged back to attack me, our fight resuming right where it had left off. Reaching up with my now-freed sword hand, I easily managed to parry the blow, knocking the weapon away and to the side before it could truly threaten me. But that did little to deter the man, who began to attack with a roaring frenzy that completely contradicted his otherwise weakening state, his attacks coming faster and faster until I was only just able to keep up. Recognizing it as a power of some sort, I again found myself hard on the defensive as I waited for his burst of energy to run its course, a fact made all the more difficult thanks to my injuries and Merrik’s arrival halfway through.

Panting heavily, I just barely managed to catch his still-orange-hot blade on my sword’s edge and flick it out of the way in time for my re-forming blood scythe in my left hand to block a chopping axe inches before it connected with my hip. Giving ground, I bought myself just enough space to send a snap kick in Merrik’s direction, hitting him hard in the thigh, before needing to simultaneously parry another thrusting knife and chopping dagger. This was all while I desperately tried to keep track of the group’s errant crossbowman who was frantically reloading his weapon in preparation for another shot.

Can’t let him get another one off, I thought as I dodged another frenzied swing from Len, the man shouting at what had to be the top of his lungs with every attack. If he does—whoa!

Having lunged forward in what I had thought had been yet another attack, I was surprised when Len abruptly fell to the ground face-first in front of me, whatever energy empowering his frenzy abruptly running out. With a surge of relief shooting through me, I realized that left me with only Merrik to worry about, a look of fear passing across the man’s already-battered face as my attention fixated on him. With no time for me to hesitate, I leapt towards him, my sword slapping away a timid stab from his knife and leaving his midsection completely exposed for a brutal knee to the stomach. Hearing him retch as he bent double over from the blow, I followed it up with a savage elbow directly to the side of the head, which sent him to join both of his other companions on the ground.

There! He shouldn’t be going anywhere for a while! I exclaimed to myself as I watched the man fall, for the first time in the fight starting to sense victory. That leaves just one more to worry about.

Feeling a surge of adrenaline shoot through me at the thought of the crossbowman, I glanced to the spot that I’d last seen him just in time for him to slide in a fresh bolt to the surprisingly quickly-armed weapon and raise it in my direction.

“I’m read—w-what?” he stammered in obvious surprise when he saw that I was the only one still standing, his eyes darting down at the tall grass around me before leaping back up to meet mine. “Oh, shit! S-stop d-don’t move! I’ll s-shoot!”

“You don’t have to,” I replied, freezing in place and raising my hands the instant I saw the crossbow’s sights land on me. Caught completely flatfooted, I knew there was absolutely no chance to get in close enough before I ended up getting shot.

But there may be a chance for me to do something else, I said to myself silently as I reached out to the blood that still surrounded my hand and began to slowly shape it along the length of my arm. “Look, I didn’t want any of this to happ—”

“Shut up!” the man shouted as he took an angry step forward, bracing the crossbow heavily on his shoulder. “Drop the sword right now. This ends right now.”

“It does,” I replied in a slow voice, despite making no motion to drop my weapon. “But it does by me leaving this clearing without any holes in me.”

“Like hell it does!” Kris hissed back at me. “You killed Damon, and Jon too. There’s no way you’re getting free after that!”

“I am if you want any hope of saving the other two,” I said without a second’s hesitation, my eye momentarily dropping down towards the grass. “They’re both still alive, but in bad shape. They need to see a healer or get first aid as soon as possible.”

“And what makes you think that I can’t do that after I’ve put a hole in you?”

“The fact that you haven’t already,” I replied, taking a slow deep breath as I readied myself for what came next. “And well, this.”

Snapping my arm in front of me as I spoke, I willed the blood that I had collected into a large disk before me, the sanguine liquid practically leaping outwards to obey. Taking only a blink to finish forming, I then braced my newly formed blood shield before me, feeling intently relieved to have something separating me and an incoming crossbow bolt.

“Wha-hey! Stop that! Put . . . whatever that is away!” Kris shouted in a near panic as he took yet another faltering step forward in an attempt to be intimidating, but still didn’t shoot.

“No, I don’t think I will,” I said as I slowly lowered my sword and moved to take a half step backward, making sure to cover as much of my body as I could with my shield. While I might have had a crash course in figuring out my new class’s powers, I didn’t have the faintest idea of what their limits were and right now, I didn’t want to find out. “What I am going to do is slowly lea—”

A loud sound of cracking wood from my right interrupted me, the noise promptly accompanied by a cursing figure stumbling out of the brush bordering the forest and falling to their knees.

A cursing figure that I happened to immediately recognize.

“Val,” I whispered, feeling my stomach completely drop out from under me as I saw Kris’s body snap in my sister’s direction, the crossbow in his hands following along with it. “W-wait, no! Stop!”

But even as the words left my mouth I knew that they were useless and that I only had one way of stopping the man before he pulled the trigger, the arm holding my blood shield already moving before I even gave it conscious thought. Cocking it backwards as I lunged to help close the distance between us, I whipped the disk of blood forward with every ounce of strength that I had left in me, aiming it directly at the man. As it flew free of my hand, I had a split second to see the bloody disk slice through the air as it sailed at him, streaks of it flying every which way as it rapidly started to come apart.

But despite its all-too-rapid disintegration, enough of it stayed intact to hit Kris directly in the side of the head, shearing through flesh and bone as if it were paper. It was enough to send the man to the ground without so much as a scream, the crossbow’s now-errant bolt finding itself a new home somewhere high in the trees above.

And then just like that, the battle was over, my gaze then landing on Val’s face as she stared back at me in complete shock, her words reaching me a second later.

“Auric . . . what . . . what have you done?”

Chapter Sixteen

Gateborn are the least dangerous of the monsters that you can find yourself faced with outside the town walls.

—Advice given to every child the first time they leave Blueridge

* * *

“He’s dead, bled out from losing his hand,” Val stated in a flat tone as I heard her rise to her feet a short distance away from me. “That makes both of them.”

“I know,” I replied numbly, my eyes fixated on the thick grass before me as I tried, and failed, not to read the System text that hung in the center of my vision.

Primary Task Progress Update: 3 of 4 Schemas Collected – Analysis In Progress

“What . . . what about the other one?” I asked, shaking my head just enough to cause the notification to vanish. “Will he . . . ?”

“He’s out cold, but he’ll be fine,” Val answered in a terse tone, her feet appearing at the edge of my vision. “I hit him with Sopor. He won’t be waking up anytime soon.”

“Good . . .” I replied, still numb as ever as I shifted my focus to stare at her boots. “That’s good. Very good.”

“Now can you tell me what exactly happened here?” she asked as she squatted down to my level, her face just barely visible at the top of my vision. “Or better yet, let me heal you? I . . . I can see you’re still bleeding.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said, even going as far as to push myself backwards a few feet away from her as I continued to speak, my voice growing faster and faster. “I . . . I need to feel this. I need to suffer. This . . . this was all my—”

“Auric, slow down! Just breathe a second,” Val interrupted, moving to place a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Just breathe and look at me.”

Freezing at her touch, I had to resist the urge to immediately try and throw it off of me, my fried nerves and tortured mind at first demanding that I remove the unwanted contact. But after a few seconds, the sensation vanished and in its place arose a wracking tremble that quickly took over my entire body as something deep within abruptly let go. The next thing I knew, Val had completely smothered me in a crushing hug, and I then completely lost track of time as I pieced myself together. It was only when Val finally pulled herself away from me, her eyes as wet as mine, and looked back at me that I finally came back to the present, her voice reaching my ears a second later.

“What happened here, Auric?” she asked in a whisper as if speaking any louder would scare me away.

“I screwed up is what happened,” I replied, feeling a lump begin to form in my throat as I considered just how I was going to explain to Val what had happened. “I screwed up so badly, I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Then just pick a spot and start there,” she said, turning her head slightly in the direction of where I knew one of the bodies lay. “Who . . . who were . . . who are these people and why were they trying to kill you? And how . . . how are you . . .”

“How am I an A-Tier Paragon?” I asked, seeing her nod slowly at the question as she turned her attention fully back onto me. “Well, I guess it started right when you saw me yesterday . . .”

And so I went on to tell her everything. Everything that had happened from the start of my illegal gate-stealing expedition all the way through my encounter with the System itself. As I reached that particular end of my explanation, I wasn’t completely sure if the power that governed our world would let me speak of it, a part of my mind wondering if the System would somehow gag me. But as I began to tell Val about what happened after Damon’s betrayal and the arrival of the seemingly omnipotent entity that governed reality, nothing happened, and I was able to tell her everything without pause.

And also watch her expression sink further and further into incredulity with every word I spoke.

“. . . and that was it, really,” I said with a final shrug, the motion having grown repetitive and familiar over the last few minutes as I spoke. “The System then threw me through the portal and back out here. Everything after that went downhill. I tried to get away, Val. I really did. But they just kept coming after me. There . . . there was nothing I could do.”

“I believe you, Auric,” my sister replied as she met my eyes. “That man with the crossbow . . . he had me dead to rights after I tripped. If you hadn’t . . . well, I don’t think I would be here.”

All I could do was nod at that, even if it didn’t begin to soothe my tormented heart.

“But with that said,” she went onto say after a second, “please don’t take what I’m about to do the wrong way.”

And then before I could even think to form a reply to her words and ask her what she meant, she slapped me across the face. So hard in fact that I saw my health flicker in the corner of my vision as it dropped down a single point.

“What the hell was that for?” I exclaimed with a yelp as I fell away backward from her, my cheek stinging angrily.

“You could have died is what that’s for!” she shouted, her expression instantly shifting to one of anger. “I’ve been worried sick about you ever since I saw you with Kerill yesterday! I just knew something was up, but I never thought it’d be something this System-damned reckless! Auric, you could have died out here and we would never have known. You’d have just vanished without a trace. Especially if what this Damon guy tried to pull off actually worked! We wouldn’t have even had a body to bury!”

“I know, I know!” I replied while raising my hands in defense, the slap having done much to banish my numbness. “It was dumb, stupid beyond reason, and I’ll never forgive myself for it.”

“That’s not what I want you to get out of this!” Val exclaimed as she fixated on me with a piercing gaze, a gaze that I noticed held more than just anger. There was fear in it as well, running wild in her eyes as she clenched her jaw and ground her teeth. “You’re not leaving me alone in this messed up, dying world, Auric.”

She said it just softly enough for me to hear, but it was enough to cause her angry mask to slip and for the tears to begin anew. At this moment, she wasn’t the responsible, protective older sibling anymore. She was just as frightened and overwhelmed as I was.

“I’m sorry, Val,” I said as I leaned forward to this time pull her into a hug, realizing that I’d never seen her like this before.

All my life she’d been the strong one, the one who had held everything together for the both of us. To see her the way she was right now caused my heart to quiver in a way that I couldn’t even begin to articulate.

Another thing that I’ve gone and screwed up with my recklessness, I thought idly as I continued to hug her as she worked to collect herself, the moment eventually passing as she sat back. Taking a second to wipe her eyes, she motioned wordlessly for us to stand, the both of us taking in the clearing around us.

“So, the rest of your . . . uh, group,” she said, breaking the silence as we glanced around the clearing. “You’re . . . you’re sure that none of them made it out?”

“Very,” I answered with a shake of my head as my eyes landed on the spot where the portal had been. At some point in the battle, likely right after I’d been thrown clear of it, it had closed, leaving a scarred patch of warped ground behind. “They were all killed in the gate . . . and the way that the System spoke about them and the primordial gate . . .”

I simply shook my head, unable to say more on that as my throat started to choke up.

“I see,” Val said, pausing for a second before continuing, a faint tone of skepticism entering her voice. “And, um, again, don’t take this the wrong way. But are you sure what you saw in the gate was really the System? I mean, you said the gate had started to act strangely . . .”

“There’s no doubt of it,” I replied with a shake of my head. “The way it spoke, the way it looked, the way that it just effortlessly controlled everything in that gate. There’s just no doubt in my mind. It was the System. Or a part close enough to it that any differences don’t matter.”

Val simply nodded at that explanation while crossing her arms before her as if to ward off a chill.

“And it’s fighting this . . . entropy thing,” she went onto say a second later. “And needs your help to do it.”

“Not that it gave me any choice in helping,” I stated more than a little petulantly before abruptly remembering the parting gifts that the System had given me. “Uh, hold on a second, that reminds me. The System gave me a few abilities right before it threw me through the gate. It all happened so fast that I forgot about them. I didn’t even have time to read about them.”

“You did?” Val asked, her expression turning curious. “What do they do?”

“Checking that out as we speak,” I replied as I mentally called up my Schema and saw it start to fill my vision. But instead of just displaying the new abilities, it flooded me with a torrent of information that I had to wade through first.

Your Schema has been updated!

Displaying updated Schema fields . . .

Subject:

Auric Cain

Tier: A

Level: 8

Class: Paragon

Progression: 214/5400

Vital Statistics:

Health: 420/420

Blood Pool: 0/80

Endurance: 420/420

Physical Attributes:

Vigor: 28

Finesse: 27

Celerity: 23

Mettle: 34

Psyche: 18

Skills:

Martial:

Unarmed Combat – Level 11 – 5% – Tier C Passive Unlocked!

Bruising Strikes: You have learned how to land particularly punishing blows on your target with your unarmed strikes, increasing the damage of every subsequent hit by 1% up to a maximum of 10%.

Swords – Level 11 – 10% – Tier C Passive Unlocked!

Precision: Your practice with this weapon has taught you where to strike for the greatest effect, increasing the damage of your critical hits by 0.5% for every level in this skill beyond 10. (Current: +0.5% Critical Hit Damage)

Class:

Bloodshaping – Level 3 – 41%

Skill Ability: As you progress on the Path of Blood, your ability to control nearby blood and the blood in your Blood Pool becomes easier, allowing you to not only wield larger amounts of the sanguine substance but to also shape it into more complex tools and objects.

Linked Attribute: Psyche

Effects:

+10 Blood to maximum Blood Pool storage per level as well as increases the speed, complexity, and durability of blood that is shaped.

+1 Bloodborne Companion every 5 levels.

+1% Health, Damage, and Resilience to Bloodborne Companion per level.

+10 seconds to Bloodborne Companion duration per level.

Powers:

Analyze:

Power Type: System Level

Duration: Instant

Reuse: Instant

Range: 15 feet

Effect: You request a portion of your target’s Schema, learning about their abilities, weaknesses, and other related information which then appear in your vision. The effect and information gained from this ability is dependent on your System Privileges. Insufficient Privileges will cause redacted data to be displayed or for the information request to be denied outright.

Current Privileges: Local Daemon: Rank 1 – Allows for display of the following categories:

Type

Intelligence

Origin

Schema Integrity

Weaknesses

Current Vulnerabilities

Purge:

Power Type: System Level

Duration: Instant

Reuse: 5 seconds

Range: 15 feet

Effect: Specifically created to work against the affliction [Entropic Corruption] this ability attempts to purge a single targeted entity of its influence and rebuild as much of its original Schema as possible. The results of this ability are highly variable depending on the level of entropic corruption encountered and the overall Schema integrity. High levels of corruption and/or low Schema integrity can result in either the ability failing to successfully purge the corruption or for the purge process to destabilize the target entity’s Schema, causing their process to instantly terminate. In addition this ability can be used to purge oneself of Entropic Corruption should one become so afflicted.

“Whoa, that’s a lot,” I grunted as the veritable wall of text slammed into me in an almost-physical blow, taking me several seconds before I was able to start making sense of the information before me. “Give me a second to sort through this. Apparently, I reached level eight after . . . well, after all this here and I have a lot of updates waiting for me.”

“Sure, but I’m starting to think that we don’t have that many seconds to spare just standing around here?” Val replied, glancing at the woods surrounding us. “We should really start thinking about getting away from here.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” I said with a slightly absentminded nod as I skimmed over my newly updated Schema, my eyes taking in the new gains that I’d made in just one short fight.

And just like that, I’m miles ahead of where I was this morning, I thought with a mental shake of my head finding it hard to believe what I was seeing. I’d been stagnant for well over a year at the pinnacle of Tier D, thinking it was the best that I was ever going to get. To find myself now already at level eight and with twice the number of attribute points to spare was a surreal experience. One that continued to last as I reached for my new skills and saw that I had progressed far enough to unlock the C-Tier benefits of both unarmed combat as well as swordsmanship.

Another way that the System used to gate and separate each of the tiers, it was theorized that the tier benefits were intended as a sort of catch-up mechanism for those who found themselves reset back to level one after advancing upwards a tier. Remaining fixed at their levels before advancement, the skills and new tier progression allowed for a person to gain a noticeable edge that otherwise belied their lower level, allowing them to regain their lost attributes in short order. At least until they capped out once again at whatever tier maximum that they now had.

Not that I’m going to ever have that problem, I said to myself as I continued to read, my lifetime around Salvo and the members within its ranks having taught me that A-Tiers had no caps put on either their skills or abilities. The only limit an A-Tier had was their resolve to keep pushing themselves against tougher and tougher gates and battles in order to progress and get stronger. With enough of it, the sky, and the infinite space beyond it, were quite literally the limit. It was with that thought circling through my head that I finally reached my newly gained Bloodshaping skill and finally started to understand just what exactly I’d done during the battle against Damon’s companions.

Not to mention how dangerous the skill is in itself, I added as I read over its use, quickly understanding that it was a core feature of the class I’d found myself with. It seemed that I could shape the blood within my Blood Pool into practically anything that I wanted, be it a shield, a weapon, or a tool. The possibilities made my head swim a bit, and I decided to put off exploring the full extent of its utility until later when we were finally safe. That left only my new System-granted powers to explore, their descriptions soon leaving a frown on my face as I tried to make sense of them.

“Okay, so it seems that the System granted me two abilities, one to Analyze a person and get information from their Schema and a second one called Purge . . .” I trailed off for a second as I re-read the ability to make sure I understood it. “Which is made to remove something called [Entropic Corruption]. But unless I’m reading this wrong . . . it also seems like it has a chance to simply kill whatever I use it on. If it’s too far corrupted and its Schema integrity is low.”

“Well, that sounds . . .” It was Val’s turn to trail off this time as she searched for what to say next, her shoulders eventually shrugging in defeat. “I don’t know what it sounds like, to be honest. Scary at the very least. The . . . uh, System really didn’t tell you anything more about this entropy thing it wants you to find and destroy?”

“Nothing,” I said bitterly, full well recalling my own frustration at how little the System had told me about my supposed target. “Apparently I ‘didn’t have sufficient privileges,’ whatever that means. It sounds like a pre-System term now that I think about it. Like from one of those ‘computer’ things Amedea told us stories about.”

“Something to ask her about, then,” Val said, her expression and stance becoming visibly tense at the mention of our adoptive grandmother. “You know you’re going to have to tell her about all of this, right, Auric? There’s no way that you can sweep something like this under the rug. Everyone will know the second that they see your nameplate. Word will spread like wildfire. Not unless you and I leave to go somewhere else and never come back.”

“I know,” I replied, feeling my heart turn to stone at the thought, one that I’d somehow managed to avoid up until this moment. “And I won’t leave. I’ll . . . I’ll take my lumps. No matter what they are. Because even if this entropy thing is a problem that needs to be dealt with, there’s also another one. A big one.”

“Other A-Tiers,” Val said with a nod, catching onto my concerns instantly. “If Damon, and I guess the people he worked for, found a way to make A-Tiers from nothing . . .”

“Then everything in this region might be in trouble,” I finished, feeling a chill shoot down my spine as I considered the prospects of A-Tiers fighting other A-Tiers. The death toll alone from such an event would be staggering to say the least.

<Good. Death is natural. Cleansing. But far better than your kind deserves in truth.>

I flinched at the unexpected voice that abruptly knifed through my mind and immediately twisted to glance around me in a panic. “The hell?”

“Auric, what’s wrong?” Val asked as she promptly began to rush over towards me, but stopped just short as I raised my hand for her to wait.

“A voice. I heard something speak,” I said as I continued to scan the surrounding forest for the voice’s source, spinning a complete circle in the process.

<The murderer hears. Curious. Why now? Why not before?>

The voice came again. Sharp. Quick. So much so that each syllable was its own word, but rushed almost faster than I could follow, such that a full sentence sounded like a flurry of clicks and pinpricks.

<Death and war. Death and war. War between yourselves until none remain. Spare us the effort of cleansing you and your kind ourselves.>

The rapid pace of the speech slowed on “you and your kind,” as if it were a curse that pained the voice to simply speak.

“Where are you? Who are you?” I asked as I spun again, scanning the clearing once more but finding nothing.

“Auric, what are you hearing?” Val asked, her voice sounding confused, worried.

“A voice,” I replied as I turned to look at her incredulously. “The voice talking to us!”

“I don’t hear any voices, Auric.”

“W-wait, you don’t hear—” I started to ask but cut myself off before I could finish, a sudden realization dawning upon me. The voice hadn’t come from the forest around us, calling to the both of us.

It had come from inside my own head.

Calling to me directly.

Chapter Seventeen

By majority Gateborn are all animals despite how exotic they may appear. At least in that they behave like the animals we know on Earth. They get hungry, they hunt, they reproduce, they even show some of the same social structures. It’s these similarities that help us hunt them, or even domesticate them, such as the case with the Ramas, Grenjin, and Contrenites that now make up the bulk of our livestock. But on occasion, a different kind of Gateborn appears. One nothing like a simple wild animal. But rather one exactly like us.

—On the Nature of Gateborn by Tanner Grimes

* * *

<Intrude, yes. Kill, yes. This is what you do. What all your kind does. Again and again and again,> the voice said, its clicking, chittering tones relentlessly echoing through my head.

“What—what are you talking about?” I shot back at the voice, seeing Val’s expression continue to fall deeper into worry as she stared at me.

“Auric . . .” she said softly as she advanced a step towards me, her hands open in a peaceful gesture. “Please let me try to help with whatever’s going—”

But before she could finish speaking, her voice was overrun by another avalanche of hissing and clicking tearing through my mind. Each and every sound hit my mind like a vicious jab until my thoughts turned into a scrambled mush. <Already you forget. Broodlings killed, broodlings forgotten.>

“I haven’t—ugh, ow!” I answered with a wince as I moved to clutch my head. “Gah. Stop . . . stop whatever you’re doing!”

<Never. Pain deserved! Punish, yes. Suffer, yes!> the voice retorted as the stridulation continued to intensify, rapidly increasing to the point where I felt my balance begin to sway.

“Auric! What’s wrong? Tell me!” Val called out just as she moved to grab me, her arms steadying me before I could fall. “How can I help?”

“I don’t . . . I don’t know,” I replied as I tried to fight through the pain, my frustration finally building enough for me to scream. “Enough!”

Shouting at the top of my lungs was enough to cause my vision to abruptly flash white, followed by the mental voice in my mind crying out in pain. Or at least that’s how I interpreted the flurry of frantic, hiss-like rustling that echoed out immediately after. Regardless, whatever it was, it seemed to be working, so I redoubled my efforts in forcing whatever had invaded my mind out.

“Get out of my head!” I hissed as I tried to will pain on the entity inhabiting my thoughts, envisioning myself pushing something gross and sickly out of my mind. I had no idea if the attempt at a mental assault was even working for the first few seconds, at least not until I felt something swell inside me, its presence bulging in an all-too-physical sense. It began with a weight that pressed on the back of my eyes and quickly grew until I couldn’t breathe from my nose and an agonizing pressure began to build in my ears.

<I will molt from you,> the voice growled as we warred with one another. <I will shed you like the husk you are.>

I groaned as my head began to feel as if it was going to explode at any second, my hands coming up to grip it tightly, as if I could hold it together through sheer force, as if I could stop the monster within.

<Like a larva emerging from its host, I will—>

There was a sharp, near-deafening pop from my ears, and the voice was abruptly cut short mid-speech, the suddenness of it vanishing making me fear that my head had finally split somewhere. But after a few seconds of desperate panting, I discovered it was still in one piece. And even better, the pressure behind my eyes was rapidly beginning to lessen, eventually going as far as to drain away entirely.

I couldn’t stop the sigh that escaped me in the seconds after, and wouldn’t have if I could anyway. Moments ago I was all but certain that my head was about to explode and now I was appreciating the comfort of having privacy within the confines of my own mind once again.

“System have mercy,” I muttered as I wiped my eyes clear of the tears that had formed there, only then realizing that I was lying half on my side, apparently having fallen to the ground at some point during my trial.

“Auric, are you okay? Please tell me what’s wrong so I can help,” I heard Val insist from above me, her blurry face gaining clarity as I rapidly blinked her into focus.

“Ugh, I don’t . . . I don’t know,” I said with a worried frown as I looked up at her. “There was a voice in my mind. A . . . mental monster? A Gateborn, maybe?”

I paused to shake my head in confusion.

“I don’t know what it was, but there was something in my head. Talking to me. Yelling at me. But I think it’s gone now,” I added when I saw Val’s eyes deepen with fear and worry. “I think I hurt it? Maybe even drove it out?”

“I’ve . . . never heard of anything like that, Auric,” Val replied softly, shaking her head as she spoke. “There are some powers that . . . well, let you do things to a mind. But . . .”

“Nothing like this,” I finished, once again cursing my luck. As if the day hadn’t already been enough of a disaster already.

<Not . . . luck,> the chittering voice suddenly hissed yet again, this time sounding much weaker than before. <It is you . . . to blame. Only you.>

“Damn it, it’s back,” I said, feeling my heart fall as I punched the ground angrily. “Can you tell if there’s something wrong with me?”

“Nothing at first, or even second glance,” Val said with a shake of her head. “You’re not wounded, you don’t have any afflictions. And I don’t see anything strange on your Schema either. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing wrong. Or if there is, it’s so far beyond me I can’t even see it.”

“Great,” I replied as I focused inwards on the sensation in my head, trying to make sense of what was now there. “I can feel it there, though. In my mind. It’s like . . . like when there’s a thing you want to remember, but can’t. That feeling of something there, but just out of reach.”

<I will split you like an egg sac,> my unwelcome mental companion said. <I will live again, yes. Avenge my brood, yes.>

“So you’re stuck in me?” I asked, deciding that I couldn’t ignore the voice any longer. “You’re stuck in my head for good?”

“It might not be, Auric,” Val said gently as she clasped my shoulder. “Maybe Amedea can help.”

“Maybe,” I agreed, once again feeling a sense of trepidation at her mention. Coming back as an A-Tier was going to be hard enough to overcome. Coming back as an A-Tier with a mental . . . something polluting my mind was another story entirely.

<The Great Web has given me a chance for vengeance and I will see it done!>

“You won’t see anything done,” I answered a little hotly as I prepared for another round with the mental infestation. “Now get out of my head!”

<I will rend you limb from limb, yes.>

“Get . . . out!”

<I will dissolve you from the inside out, yes. I will—>

“Stop!” I shouted once again, the words landing with what I thought was another burst of pain to the creature because the voice hissed sharply, then fell quiet for a moment, earning another stretch of blissful silence until Val broke it.

“Auric, you need to think about what happened in the gate,” she said urgently. “There must have been some sign of how this happened.”

“You mean aside from it going completely sideways after Damon broke it?”

“That’s part of it, I’m sure. But can you remember anything specific? Anything you did?”

“Well, I mean I killed a whole Gateborn horde, gremoras. Then I advanced all the way to A-Tier . . .” I said, my words trailing off and my eyes growing wide as realization suddenly hit me. “And I got my new class. Paragon. It has an ability that mentioned something about a companion. That could be it.”

“A Companion? So wait, y-you think this voice is a part of your class?” Val said incredulously. “How . . . how does that even work?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, feeling my stomach churn at the thought of needing to share my mind with this other creature for the rest of my life. Already my head was hurting enough that it was hard to think straight.

<I would sooner dissolve from shell rot than consort with your swarm, beast,> the voice answered in a weak, but angry tone.

“And I’m not all that happy about it right now either, believe me,” I replied with a scowl.

“So I see . . .” Val said as she furrowed her brow in thought. “That’s not entirely unheard of I guess. I’ve read about some higher-tier classes that have been able to summon things and beings to help them out. But those things were more, uh, passive. This thing you have, does it seem . . . sentient?”

She hesitated before speaking the last word, as if already fearing the answer.

But I didn’t have a chance to reply to her, the only response to her words being another assault of stridulating clicks and pops, which instantly sent pain reverberating through my head.

“Ugh, enough of that!” I growled and focused my anger inward, hearing the voice once again gasp in another rustling flurry of hisses. “Apparently I can hurt you the same way you hurt me. But if we’re going to figure this . . . situation out, we need to think straight. Not be at one another’s throats. Understand?”

Several low clicks echoed through my mind in reply.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” I said before going on to take several deep breaths as I focused my thoughts.

“So it is sentient,” Val said, her eyes lighting up with interest. “That’s . . . amazing.”

“A little less so when the amazing happens to be living in your head,” I said more than a little dryly before focusing on the presence in my mind. “Let’s start with an easy question. You keep calling me murderer. Why is that?”

<Why is that you ask?> the voice replied incredulously. <Was it not you who invaded our world-splinter? Was it not you and your ilk who brought the last molt on my spawn, invader? Why is it, indeed.>

<If that itself was not enough. Was it not you who brought the oblivion-that-comes?>

“The oblivion-that—oh.” I cut myself off as I instantly realized what the voice meant. “Are you saying that you were the hive-core inside that gate?”

Silence greeted my question.

“What does it sound like?” Val asked while pulling at my sleeve, her worry rapidly giving way to curiosity. “Describe it.”

“Angry, mostly. But . . . I don’t know. Insectile, I guess,” I replied, frowning at the mental presence’s absence and idly wondering if I’d said the wrong thing. “It spoke in all clicks, hisses, and pops. Like it, maybe she, since it referred to ‘my spawn,’ isn’t using vocal chords to speak but something else.”

“Interesting. And were there insectile monsters in the gate?”

“There were,” I said with a nod. “But only gremoras. The other creature was some sort of blood monster called a ‘bloodghast.’ Definitely not a bug.”

“Hmm,” Val mused with a nod before abruptly stepping closer to me and then practically shouting directly into my face. “Hey, um, creature. Did you come from that gate? Are you a Gateborn?”

“What are you–okay, stop,” I said, raising my hands and taking a step away from Val. “I have enough things yelling at me right now. I don’t need another.”

“Well, then see if it’ll answer the question,” my sister countered.

“I’m trying, but it’s gone quiet for once,” I said as I closed my eyes and focused on the presence within. Of course, that was right when it chose to reply once again.

<I need to end you, beast. Punish, yes. Destroy, yes. Pay for what you’ve done.>

“So you’ve already said,” I replied, starting to feel a little impatient with the creature. “Now can you answer the question? The sooner we can figure out what happened, the sooner we can figure out how to part ways.”

<Fine. You wish to know of me? I was broodmother. I was protector,> the voice said in a tone that was angry and sad. <But I was taken. Stolen from my world and trapped in the world-splinter. Yet that did not change who I was. I was still broodmother. I was still protector. I filled the world-splinter with my swarm, birthed them of my essence. And I felt each of their ends.>

“Then your . . . uh, swarm. Were they the gremoras?”

<Lean, dry. Pointy and angry. Gremoras are but prey, and useless ones at that,> the voice answered back. <How dare you think I would birth prey?>

“I’ll take that as a no, then,” I said, not sure if I should apologize for my question. “But I’ve only ever been in one gate, er, ‘world-splinter’ as you call it, and the only swarm in there were the gremoras.”

“So you do have a hive-core in your head, then?” Val asked, her eyes wide with excitement. “That’s . . . that’s . . .”

“Why do you sound excited about this?” I asked, frowning slightly at my sister’s enthusiasm as she trailed off.

“Er, sorry, sorry,” she said with a wince. “It’s just never happened before. At least I’ve never heard of it happening before.”

<I do not know this word. ‘Hive-core?’ But if it frightens you, beast, then I like it.>

“You know what? I think it’s about time we started using names here,” I said, starting to get particularly annoyed at my mental creature’s attitude, even if I completely understood why. “I’m Auric. Auric Amadeus Cain, and this is my sister Val.”

I hesitated for a second as I considered my next words and if they were at all sane. “Do . . . you have a name?”

An indescribable series of popping clicks and hisses bounced through my mind in answer.

“Uh . . . I think that might be hard to pronounce,” I said slowly, shaking my head. “How about a nickname?”

<You do not deserve my name, murderer.>

“That’s . . . fair,” I said, stopping myself from uselessly nodding. “But, um, I’m—we’re—going to have to call you something. At least until we figure out how to get you out of my head.”

<Then call me vengeance,> the voice stated angrily. <Call me stinger-that-strikes-from-oblivion. Call me enemy. Call me–>

“I’ll call you West,” I said, picking a name almost at random as I glanced up into the sky, seeing that the sun had begun its descent downward towards the distant horizon. A particularly noticeable sign that reminded me that we should really be on our way back home.

<What you call me changes nothing,> the voice, West, said to me. <For you will always be murderer. Broodkiller. You will always be Foe.>

“Again, fair, all things considered,” I replied. “But we never knew that hive-cores, or . . . whatever you are were sentient, or even alive. No one in our world ever has. The fact that you can talk to us at all . . . well, it’s honestly amazing.”

<Then my death is a fascination to you? Of course it would be. I expect nothing less from a Broodkiller.>

“That’s not what I meant.”

<It is what you thought.>

“Look, West. I know this doesn’t mean much, and I know you probably won’t believe me, but . . . I am sorry for killing you,” I said while taking in a deep breath. “I, we, didn’t know that any of the Gateborn–er, your . . . brood was sentient. No one did. And if we don’t . . .”

I paused for a second as I considered my next words carefully. “Uh, if we don’t, remove gates when they open, the creatures inside will overrun us and destroy everything. Or if not that, then the gates will overwrite everything. Phase with our world and turn it into something otherworldly. We kill and close them so that we can survive.”

<More lies,> West said to me. <You do not even give the honor of consuming those you slay. You break our world. You tear us from our nests. You imprison us in the world-splinters and kill us for sport.>

“What?” I replied, a little stunned by West’s words and everything that they entailed. “No, you’ve got it all wrong. We didn’t do any of that. We don’t know why the gates, the world-splinters started opening up. But they started to appear right after the System did.”

There was no response for a long moment, until a short, quiet burst of clicks sounded.

<What is . . . the System?>

“You mean you don’t know? You didn’t see it talk to me?” I asked, feeling increasingly off balance with how our conversation was going.

<I saw nothing but my end at your hand, murderer,> West replied, her tone icy. <Then I awoke again while you were slaughtering others of your kind.>

“Ugh, damn it,” I said, looking at the ground for a second before glancing over towards my sister. “Val, can you explain the System? West . . . apparently doesn’t know anything about it.”

“Really?” she asked, only pausing for a second before launching into an explanation. “Well, the System is . . . everything, I guess. It’s what keeps our world in order, even if it tries to kill us each and every single day. . .”

Waiting patiently as Val continued along with her explanation, I made sure to glance over towards the last remaining member of Damon’s group, who still lay completely unconscious a few feet away from us. Between the beating I’d given him and the power that Val had used to ensure he’d stay asleep, I had no concerns about him waking up, but I again chafed at the distance that we still had to travel before we made it back home. Especially since the later in the day it got, the more likely it was that we would end up encountering free-roaming Gateborn.

“. . . and that’s really the basics of it,” I heard Val say as I turned back in time to hear her explanation come to an end. “The rest is . . . more complicated and would take a while longer to explain.”

<And is not necessary,> West replied, her voice sounding curious. <What you speak of is the Great Web. The endless ties that bind all life. It was similar upon our world, though without these . . . gates you speak of. And nor did these symbols or ‘levels’ that you described appear to us at any time.>

“She says we’re describing something called ‘the Great Web?’” I relayed to Val, who nodded back at me excitedly. “It might be her . . . version of the System, maybe? But she says they didn’t have gates, System text, or levels on her world.”

“Maybe!” Val agreed, clearly struggling to contain herself at the news. “Auric, do you realize what this all is? What this means? This is insane. And, er, terrible, I guess. But think about it! This might be the first time a human and a Gateborn have ever communicated! I mean, aside from exchanging blows or eating one another. This is interspecies communication! It’s huge! It could change everything. I mean, if even the System is different on West’s world . . . that would be crazy!”

“Like enough hasn’t changed already today,” I replied, unable to fully share in my sister’s excitement after everything that had happened.

After everyone who had died today.

“I know it’s been a tough day, Auric,” Val said to me gently. “But there is a silver lining to this. More than one if you really look at it. If West is from another world, then . . . then I guess she really isn’t a Gateborn then, is she? None of them are.”

“Maybe there is,” I said with a shrug, finding it hard to work up my enthusiasm to match hers. “Maybe there isn’t. Who’s to say that Amedea won’t have other ideas about this whole mess?”

“You think she’d try to . . . remove West? You said it yourself. She’s a part of the class you were assigned!”

“I think . . . she is going to be very, very, angry with me,” I answered with a sigh as I turned to walk towards the unconscious man nearby. “Even more so if we get back home late and force them to come looking for us. Again, that is.”

“It won’t be that bad, Auric,” Val assured me as she moved to follow me. “I mean, yeah, it’s gonna be bad. And we’re both going to be in an incredible heap of trouble. But once you tell them about the gate, about West, and the other A-Tiers, they’ll have other things to focus on, and they’ll soon forget about what we did.”

“I hope so, Val,” I said, despite not quite believing that things would work out that easily. Breathing another sigh, I glanced around the clearing one last time before waving for Val to follow me. “Come on, let’s go home. There’s nothing left for us here.”

Chapter Eighteen

“If one ever wants to realize just how alone we are and how far we’ve fallen as a people—and I mean truly, truly realize it—then a jaunt an hour or two outside the town walls towards Old Town would be enough to do it. In there, you will find ruins beyond imagining, ruins that once stretched high enough to seemingly claw at the stars themselves. The ruins of what was once called the United States of America.”

—Drunk words overheard at the Pole Bar by an unknown speaker

* * *

The ascension gate that Damon and his group had led us to was to the northwest of Blueridge, way out near the slopes of Mount Le Conte. It was a journey that wasn’t excessively far in terms of sheer distance, but with several patches of dense-growth forests, elevation shifts, and a rather large river separating the most direct path, several detours were required. As a result, that forced us to pay attention to our surroundings as we traveled, lest we miss a critical juncture and find ourselves wandering even further off the beaten path and into the unclaimed wilds. It was a necessary focus that I found myself welcoming as we made our way back home, the need to pay attention banishing my otherwise wandering thoughts as I walked with our unconscious prisoner draped over my shoulder with Val following me at my side.

After making our decision to leave, we’d taken the time to loot the fallen before departing the clearing, the cold and harsh realities of living on the frontier having long since taught us that there was no sense in leaving anything potentially useful to go to waste. That, and our desire to discover something, anything, about who they and Damon had worked for.

It was a decision that paid off handsomely to say the least as we’d soon discovered, finding not only a pair of motes on their bodies, but also an empowered crossbow and a familiar-looking length of bone that I’d last seen in Damon’s hand. Roughly the size of an apple and spongey to the touch, we easily identified the orbs as Motes of Resilience, which were capable of not only restoring the durability of whatever they empowered but also hardening or sharpening it beyond what was normally possible. That was the case in particular with the crossbow that we’d recovered as well, the weapon having been empowered by a mote that somehow cut its reloading time into a fraction of what it should have been. At least according to Val, who I considered to be an expert in such things. As for the length of bone, we discovered that it was a Totem of Force, an object that had been ingeniously modified by Damon and made into what Val and I had come to call a makeshift gun.

He'd have been better off just using it for its normal purpose. Not trying to make it into something it wasn’t, I thought idly as I turned my attention towards the three floating descriptions which I’d left hanging in my vision as we’d walked, giving them all yet another look over.

Mote of Resilience

Tier: C

Item Class: Empowerment

Quantity: 2

Uses Remaining: 6

Empowerment Effect:

Weapons:

Restore Durability

+200% Durability Maximum

-50% Durability Decay

+10% Damage to Edged and Piercing Weapons

Armor:

Restore Durability

+200% Durability Maximum

-50% Durability Decay

+15% Damage Reduction Against Piercing and Slashing Attacks

All Other Items:

Restore Durability

+200% Durability Maximum

-50% Durability Decay

Heavy Crossbow

Tier: C

Item Class: Empowered

Projectile Damage: 250-450 Piercing

Condition: 167/200

Empowerment: Speed: With its mechanism moving faster than it should for the effort expended, this weapon is capable of being reloaded much quicker than appearances would suggest.

Totem of Force

Tier: C

Item Class: Empowered

Control Cost: 80

Range: 20 feet

Recharge Time: 1 minute

Ability: Shoots forth a small sphere of energy from its tip in a straight line that detonates against the first object it touches, violently shoving everything around it away.

With only a few twisted fragments of metal left attached to it, Damon had attached what Val and I had guessed was a tube filled with sharpened metal at the totem’s end, the same end where the sphere of force erupted on activation. The resulting explosion of energy then sent out a spray of the stored bullets towards everything unlucky enough to exist in its path, which, in the case of the gate, had been Trey, the man having taken the brunt of the deadly storm of metal instead of me. It was a sacrifice that I was nowhere near coming to terms with just yet, and as a result had refused to even touch the totem, allowing Val to claim both it and the crossbow for herself.

There was also more that we recovered beyond the empowered motes and totem, though of a more mundane variety. Ranging from the weapons and armor that once belonged to Damon’s group to travel packs full of food and sundries, there had been a plethora of stuff for us to sort through before we left, in hopes of finding something incriminating, but to no avail. There were no notes or letters describing their plans in intricate detail, or even a vague inkling of where they’d come from or how Damon had acquired a strange, reality-bending, entropic artifact to warp the gate with. Instead there were simply a few empowered items and the regular supplies and gear that anyone traveling in the wilderness needed to survive.

Which I suppose makes it worthwhile enough on its own, I said to myself as we continued to walk, only to immediately feel somewhat guilty at the greedy thought of using the motes for myself, my thoughts already going to their other potential uses. Such as the town’s mill, which was already starting to show its age. Using the mote on a few of the more precious pieces that comprised it would essentially give it a new life, extending its lifespan for years, if not potentially decades longer. Though by the same token, a somewhat sharper knife or tougher armor could also spell the difference for my life, which as an A-Tier now affected everyone in Blueridge just as much, if not more than the mill did. Three charges. Using just three charges once I get back and find some new and better equipment seems more than fair, I think. It’ll help make sure that I survive long enough to close other gates and recover future motes to contribute to the town with.

“Ugh, Auric, I think I need to take a break for a minute,” Val said from beside me, slowing down a step as she spoke. “My feet are starting to hurt with how fast you’re walking.”

“Eh?” I grunted, it taking me a second to process her words as I pulled myself out of my thoughts and came to a stop. “Uh, sure. Was I really walking that fast?”

“It wasn’t quite a jog, but you were starting to get there,” Val replied as she made her way over towards a nearby rock and sat herself down on it with a sigh of relief. “Isn’t he heavy to carry all this way?”

“Um, a little,” I said, not really having given my burden much thought since we’d left the clearing more than an hour earlier. “He isn’t exactly light. But I feel . . . fine? Maybe a little sweaty. But that’s it.”

“The life of an A-Tier,” my sister said with a shake of her head before looking at me intently. “Do you feel that much different?”

“I don’t know, maybe a little bit,” I said, not really having given my body’s changes much thought up until this point. “I feel stronger for sure, and my body is not as . . . stiff, I guess. Like I can move easier and faster than before.”

“That and you don’t seem to get tired at all,” Val added with a half grin. “What’s your Mettle at now?”

“Uh, it’s thirty-four,” I answered after a quick glance at my Schema. “It used to be nineteen.”

“Wow, that’s a big jump,” she replied with a shake of her head. “And far over my twenty-four. No wonder you could just keep going.”

<Perhaps for a bit longer. But not long enough. Your bodies are weak and ill-conceived.> West’s voice suddenly stabbed through my thoughts, and I couldn’t help but give a surprised yelp in reply. It was going to take some getting used to not having even the privacy of my own mind anymore.

“Our bodies are perfectly fine,” I said, using my free hand to point at my head as a signal for Val as to who I was talking to.

<So you say, but where are the rest of your legs?>

“What do you mean ‘the rest’ of them?” I asked. “Two is normal for our kind.”

Val simply shook her head in response. “You talking to yourself like that is going to take some getting used to.”

“Tell me about it,” I agreed, only to have West continue speaking.

<And you cannot even bite an enemy with so small a mouth.>

“I’ve never needed to bite—”

<—and your outer shell is far too soft—>

“—which is why we wear armor—”

<—even worse, it is leaking fluids! Are you ill, creature? Am I trapped in a diseased host?>

“That’s sweat! Look, West, this is all perfectly normal for a human. We’re just different. Really . . . really different.”

<It is an insult to the Way-of-Things that creatures so ill-formed as you slaughtered my brood.>

I reached up to scratch my head at her last words, unable to come up with a reply to match that. If she thought humans “ill-formed,” then I shuddered to imagine what her true form looked like, not for the first time wondering what sort of being had been trapped inside my mind.

<Once, my legs were many and strong. And my sting . . .> West trailed off mid-speech, sounding as lost in memory as a disembodied sentience could sound from within the confines of my mind. <My sting was such that it was called ‘The Silence-that-Follows,’ for only oblivion waited in its wake.>

“Then you must have been . . . quite a thing to see,” I said, doing my best to sound complimentary.

<As if you would have seen me coming with so few eyes,> West answered with what I interpreted as a mental scoff. <Nor with such lifeless hairs. Are yours broken? I sense nothing from them. Nothing at all.>

“I’m sorry, what exactly do you think my hair is supposed to sense?” I asked, our conversation rapidly growing more and more surreal.

<The Great Web was unkind when it gave form and life to your swarm,> West simply stated in response.

“Noted,” I said with a roll of my eyes as I glanced back towards Val with a raised eyebrow. “How are you making out? Ready to get a move on again?”

“Yeah, I’m ready,” she replied as she moved to stand. “I can feel my feet again, and that little display was entertaining enough to tide me over until we get back. That and because I want to get back home before it gets dark. I don’t want to be caught outside then.”

<Why?> West asked, her tone curious.

“Because there are free-roaming Gateborn that appear after dark,” I explained. “Which is why we’d both really rather be inside the walls before they start waking up.”

<Hrm,> she said, a series of pops echoing through my mind that I interpreted as a dismissive grunt. <Only prey fears the dark.>

I didn’t have an answer for that, so I didn’t give her one as we collectively resumed our journey back towards Blueridge. Though this time I made sure to keep an eye on my pace as we walked, not wanting to push Val to the point where she could barely keep up again. So far she had been understanding, exceptionally so, in fact, about the sudden difference in our ability, which by my count now put me eight attribute points ahead of her. Sure, it was a small difference at the moment, but all my life Val had been ahead of me in every measurable way that was possible; for that to change practically in a day was something that was going to take time to get used to.

At least until she catches up herself, I thought, wondering if Val would want to push herself all the way to A-Tier now that I had reached it. Or if she would be content to stay where she was. Through the years the focus had always been on me to catch up to her; we’d never spoken about what she wanted to do with her life. Something to figure out when we finally have a chance to sit and think. Assuming Amedea doesn’t skin us both alive after we get back home.

With that particularly unpleasant thought to end on, we all then walked in silence for the next half hour or so, the quiet finally broken by Val herself when she abruptly asked me a question.

“So, what can this new class of yours do?”

“Eh? What do you mean?” I asked, not quite sure what she meant.

“Sorry, I meant your abilities,” she clarified before continuing to speak. “You have that bloodshaping thing I saw. And those System abilities, whatever they do. But you’re level eight now. Which means you should have at least one more power.”

“Oh,” I replied, it taking me a moment to catch on. “I haven’t had a good chance to read over it just yet. But yeah, it’s an ability called Bloodborne Companion. It allows me to summon a . . . minion, I guess, from the blood in my Blood Pool. But I can’t just yet. My current Blood Pool isn’t large enough to be able to power the ability. I need to raise a linked skill I have in order to make it larger, which also in turn makes the creature stronger. Eventually it’ll let me summon more of them at one time, too.”

“Oh, that’s handy,” Val said, her head bobbing up and down in appreciation. “That way you don’t need to fight alone, and you can use them to your advant—hey, hang on a second. You said West controlled all the gremoras inside the gate, didn’t she? Maybe the System gave her to you so she could control the companions you make?”

“Uh, maybe—” I started to say, feeling West’s presence bloom in my mind with sudden interest. But before I could say anything else, I saw a spark appear behind Val’s eyes as a revelation struck her.

“Oh, oh!” she said eagerly. “Maybe you could even give West a body then! Something like what she had before! Then she won’t be trapped in your head all the time!”

<Yes! Do it!> West’s voice hissed through my mind with immediate excitement, loud enough for it to cause me a burst of pain. <Free me from this shell! Grant me the freedom I so desire!>

“Ugh, damn it, Val, why’d you have to say that?” I said with a wince and was forced to place one of my hands on my head. “You’ve gone and riled her up now. Ah! West, calm down! You’re hurting me.”

<Then free me!> she demanded hungrily. <Free me, and this misery will come to an end. We will part ways and break this unwelcome contract binding us.>

“It’s . . . not that easy,” I said through gritted teeth. “First of all, even if I wanted to, I can’t even use that power yet. I still need to get stronger. Secondly, even if I did, you wouldn’t get far. The power only lasts a short while. A minute and a half at best. Once it ended you would be stuck with me again, no matter how far you managed to get. The power is called Bloodborne Companion after all.”

<Then I take issue with that,> West replied icily, her earlier excitement fading. <I am not your companion.>

“I’ll be sure to mention it to the System when it checks in with me next time,” I said dryly. “And anyway, thirdly, I’m not sure I want to let you loose just yet. From what you’ve described to me so far . . . you sound terrifying.”

<You are right to fear my true form, Broodkiller,> the mental creature replied. <But if these free-roaming creatures you fear are so dangerous, you will soon have no choice.>

“We can handle ourselves,” I said, trying to sound confident. “We’ve made it this far.”

<I think you are all bluster,> West replied. <But perhaps we will see soon enough. Perhaps I will be proven wrong.>

“What . . . what do you mean?” I asked, there being something about her tone that set my body on edge.

<I mean that you should silence your bleating Broodkiller, and use your senses,> she said to me. <For something approaches.>

“Something approaches—” I started to repeat in confusion, only to cut myself off as I heard a rustle from the forest ahead.

Followed by a large shape starting to push its way free of the trees.

Chapter Nineteen

Johnny Boy’s outside the gate, in the woods to laugh and play.

His momma said don’t stay too late, “You must come home by end of day.”

But Johnny laughs and Johnny plays, and ’til the cusp of night he stays.

And then come monsters, then comes fate.

And Johnny Boy? Well, he got ate.

—Blueridge nursery rhyme

* * *

The monster was an amalgamation of stone and fire. A horror made of molten lava mixed with metal that somehow looked eerily like flesh. Everyone grew up knowing that Gateborn could come in all shapes, sizes, and appearances, but that didn’t lessen the shock when one was faced with something as bizarre as the sight I saw emerging from the forest before me.

It was a scorpion. If a scorpion was the size of a car from the Before Times.

It was an avalanche. If an avalanche could have six hewn-stone legs, red-veined claws like vice grips, and a red-hot, harpoon-like stinger set upon a lashing tail.

Worse too, it was very much alive, its bright red eyes burning like fiery coals set into its face as it barreled through the strand of trees ahead of us and on to the trail. Letting out an involuntary gasp as I saw the creature, I couldn’t help but take a faltering step backwards away from it, seeing my vision begin to fill with System text.

Analyzing Entity Schema . . . Complete!

Typhonic Drone – Gateborn – Tier: A – Level: 10

Type: Insect

Intelligence: Independent Collective

Health: Mildly Injured

Status: None

Origin: Gate: P43111L – Guyot Fault Region

Schema Integrity: 100%

Weaknesses:

Cold

Concussive

Shattering

Vulnerable Locations:

Prior Injury: Left Side, Middle Leg: +10% Damage Dealt, chance to temporarily disable mobility

Prior Injury: Lower Tail Segment: +20% Damage Dealt, chance to temporarily disable tail use

Lesser Armoring: Pincer Elbow Joints: +20% Damage Dealt, chance to temporarily disable pincer use

“Ugh, what the hell,” I grunted, instantly overwhelmed by the barrage of information that filled not only my vision but my mind as well, making me instantly aware of everything it had to offer. Somehow, and completely unbidden by conscious thought, my System-granted ability Analyze had automatically triggered itself, giving me the most comprehensive Schema display of a creature that I’d ever experienced before.

Not that it made me feel any better about what had just appeared before me.

“Shit, it’s a free-roamer from the fault!” I hissed, reaching with my free hand to grab Val before moving all three of us, the unconscious guard included, off the trail we’d been following. “A-Tier, level ten. We don’t have a chance if it sees us.”

<Now there is a hunter,> West’s voice cooed as the air around the Gateborn visibly rippled with each and every one of its movements, a signal to the heat it was putting out. <There is a creature to bring suitable retribution upon your swarm.>

Her voice echoed softly in my mind, but it might as well have been a shout for the attention that the drone gave it, the creature freezing, then turning to face us with the long growl of stone grinding on stone.

“Damn it, it saw us!” I said as I led us towards the forest’s edge and behind a set of trees to block us from view.

“I saw it too!” Val answered back, her expression wide-eyed with terror as we continued to move deeper into the forest. “We need to run. Escape it. There’s no way we can fight it . . . right?”

“It’s level ten, Val,” I replied, catching the implied question in her voice as something loud sounded out behind us. “And I’m only level eight. At best, I can hurt it. Maybe. But running is absolutely our best bet.”

“And you think you can do that while carrying our friend here?”

“For a little while,” I said, starting to feel more than a little bit of strain as we zigzagged a path through the brush, another crash and the sound of splintering wood from behind us echoing out. “But what are we going to do? We—we can’t leave him.”

“No,” Val agreed with a sharp nod, the fear still plastered across her face. “But I can wake him up. That way you won’t need to carry him.”

“You want to do what? But we need him!” I protested as I turned to glance over my shoulder, quickly spotting the drone closing in on us as it chased us through the forest. “He has to know something about the group that organized this! About the entropy.”

“And how do you think any of that is going to be useful if we’re dead, Auric!” Val retorted hotly. “Right now we need to find a way to survive this thing! If we don’t do something, then it’ll get all three of us!”

“Damn it,” I cursed as I wracked my mind for an alternative but came up completely blank. “Fine! Do whatever you have to do!”

“Already did,” Val answered back as she motioned urgently for me to keep running. “He should be coming to any second now, I think. Just keep moving!”

“Like we have any other option right now,” I muttered half under my breath, starting to feel the man begin to squirm on my shoulder. It began slowly at first, his limp body growing stiffer as he awoke.

“What . . . where . . . where am I?” I heard him say from behind me, his voice slurred and drunk sounding. But what disorientation he was suffering only lasted for a second, because he was soon thrashing in my grip while screaming. “Oh, shit! What the hell is that? Put me down! Put me down!”

“I will if you stop trying to kick me!” I shouted back at the man, feeling his body rapidly tense and then slacken at my words as he did as I told him. Not wasting a second once he was still, I then set him down on his feet, breathing an instant grunt of relief the second his weight was off me. “Now run!”

“Y-yeah, s-sounds like a—oh damn, it’s you!” the man shouted, his voice turning angry.

“Of course it’s me, who the hell else were you expecting?” I barked back at the man as I forcefully grabbed his arm and yanked him along with us. “Now shut up and run!”

Cursing and stumbling at first, the man didn’t need any extra encouragement to do exactly that, rushing to follow both Val and I closely as we tore through the woods. With my burden gone, I was able to run substantially easier, enough so that I turned to glance over my shoulder at the drone chasing us.

<Intriguing. I can feel its mind,> West murmured as I saw the Gateborn raise its tail up high, each stone-hewn segment clicking into place one at a time, until its glowing red stinger was pointed in our direction. <Its consciousness is very much alive, though simple. I wonder. Can I . . .>

The typhonic drone suddenly screeched in pain, and its body rocked sideways as if struck by an invisible blow.

<Ah. Apologies, fellow hunter,> West’s surprised and strangely apologetic voice called out a second later. <I did not mean to cause you pain.>

“It can hear you?” I asked West, quickly putting cause and effect together as I watched it straighten and line its tail up once more. “Oh, crap, if it can, tell it to stop pointing that—”

An explosion of fire burst from the end of the tail, and the red-hot stinger on its end shot forward towards us. Eyes widening at the flying projectile, I shouted a wordless warning, and I promptly moved to shove both Val and our newly freed prisoner out of the way before flinging myself to the ground. No sooner did I hit it, than a wave of heat passed right over me as the fiery stone missile screamed past, followed close behind by the sound of shattering wood.

“Aaah! What the hell is that thing?” the man, who I only then recalled was called Merrick, shouted in a panic as he scrambled back onto his feet.

<It is Death. It is Vengeance,> I heard West reply from within the confines of my mind as I leapt back up to my feet.

Just in time to catch sight of the tree now falling towards me.

Letting out another panicked warning, it was all I could do then to scamper to the side as a net of branches plunged down toward me, my arms instinctively coming up to protect my face. Catching just a brief sight of her as she too began to move, I spotted Val and Merrik just in time to see them leap the other way, away from me, only to then lose sight of them amid the crashing foliage. Bracing myself for the impact, I felt countless pine needles and branches scrape across the exposed parts of my face, cheeks, and arms as I sprinted away while protecting myself as best I could.

<You are so fierce when killing broodlings, but show your true self in the face of a real opponent,> West told me as I ran, her amusement obvious through our link.

“You know if this thing kills me, you die too,” I snapped back, my patience particularly thin at the moment.

<You mean when this thing kills you,> she replied, emphasizing the first word. <I can feel the creature’s mind. It is primal and focused on your ruination.>

Any reply I had to that was lost to the sound of grinding rock that caught my attention, my head turning in the direction of the drone and seeing it readying itself for a leap. With its legs coiling under its body, I thought for a second that it was going to leap towards me, but at the last second before it leapt, it adjusted, its path taking it behind me, towards where the tree had fallen and where I’d last seen my sister and Merrik.

Damn, it’s going after them! I exclaimed as I watched the creature sail through the air in a way that no being made of stone and lava should have been capable of doing. But despite that sight, it didn’t stop my hand from going down to my sword and pulling it free as I raced towards them.

With a crash, I saw the drone land directly on top of the fallen tree that had nearly crushed us, reducing it to little more than flying splinters mixed with dirt soaring in every direction. A second later, I saw a bright golden light fill the clearing, appearing at the same moment that the Gateborn slashed out with one of its claws and promptly bounced off something I couldn’t see.

Not that I needed to see what it hit to know what had happened.

Shit, she used Sanctuary! I said to myself as I turned to sprint at the creature, easily recognizing what was my sister’s most potent power. Considered to be a last-ditch effort to stave off a brutal and violent end, Sanctuary created a powerful and temporary barrier that was nigh-impervious to harm, protecting those inside long enough for help to hopefully arrive. It was so strong, in fact, that the last time I’d seen Val use it in a practice session with Salvo, it had taken both Constance and Curshaw working in tandem five entire seconds to break it, which was half of its normal duration. Hoping that the drone wouldn’t prove to be more adept at shattering the barrier than the two substantially higher-leveled A-Tiers, I sprinted towards the Gateborn with every ounce of speed I had, desperately trying to come up with a plan of what to do next.

There’s no way I can kill this thing, but maybe I can do something to hurt it, I thought as I stared at the creature, my eyes landing on its tail, which was rapidly regrowing a new stinger to replace the one that it shot towards us. Forming from the magma within the drone’s body, the soon-to-be weapon was hot red in color as it elongated and swelled, the air crackling with heat around it. It was that glance at the tail that reminded me of what I’d seen during my Schema pull a few seconds earlier, an idea then coming to mind. Wait, I remember it said there was an injury somewhere on its tail. If I can somehow find it . . .

Feeling the semblance of a plan click together in my mind, I continued my sprint towards the creature while mentally counting the seconds that had passed since I’d seen Val’s power appear, knowing that time was running out. Fortunately, the drone seemed confused about the bright light that had appeared in front of it and it had hesitated striking it outright, instead choosing to probe it with one of its pincers. That hesitation was more than enough for me to close in on the distracted creature and leap onto it, my feet finding easy purchase on its rough-hewn legs to make it up its back. Moving as fast as I could, and so that I didn’t have time to second-guess my decision to jump on top of a wagon-sized Gateborn, I twisted towards the drone’s tail in search of the weak spot that I’d come looking for.

A part of me, notably a distant part, had worried that it would be hard to find in the heat of battle, but now that I was physically on top of the creature and searching for it, I quickly saw the worry was for naught. Stretching little more than half a foot across the base of the typhonic drone’s tail was a three-inch-wide fissure in the stone it was made of with a deep vein of molten red visible within its depths. Realizing that it was what I was looking for, I lunged forward without a second thought and stabbed my sword deep into it, feeling a brief, almost spongelike resistance before it pierced straight through.

The drone’s reaction was loud and immediate.

Letting out a terrifying roar of pain, it viciously bucked upwards, the unexpected movement completely throwing me free of my perch atop the creature and back onto the forest floor. Landing heavily, I felt the wind rush out of my body, followed by an indecipherable shout from Val. But I didn’t need to understand the shout to understand the warning that it was meant to be, my eyes fixating on the drone as it turned to face me.

<Curious,> I heard West whisper in my mind as I moved to scramble up to my feet while simultaneously trying to suck in a breath deep enough. <This creature has no blood.>

“Of course it doesn’t,” I croaked by way of reply, just barely managing to leap backwards and away from the creature’s pincer as it slashed towards me angrily. “Bugs normally don’t have any in our world. And this one is made from rock and lava.”

<You misunderstand,> West said to me, a chorus of chitters and pops ringing out in my mind. <This creature has no blood . . . for you. It’s even ruined your metal claw.>

“It’s done what—” I started to say before my words abruptly died in my throat as I glanced downward at the sword in my hand, having managed to somehow hang onto it after being thrown off of the drone.

Not that it would have made any difference if I’d left it behind.

Having lost nearly half its length from the last time I remembered seeing it, the now-misshapen length of metal was charred and blackened, its once-polished blade now covered in rapidly cooling rock. Of course if the destruction of my weapon wasn’t enough in that moment; I finally realized what West had meant.

It has no blood, I said to myself, the revelation prompting a litany of mental curses as I continued my desperate evasion of the drone, its tail having sagged limply after my attack. Which means I can’t steal any of it to fill my Blood Pool.

<You are ill-suited for this battle,> West said to me as I dodged and moved to stay out of the creature’s reach, at one point even throwing my now-useless weapon at its eyes in hopes to distract it. <It will be your last.>

“Or maybe it won’t be if you actually help me,” I said angrily, trying to catch sight of either Val or Merrik during my flight but to no avail. “You said you could feel this thing’s mind, right? Tell it we don’t want to fight it. That we just want to go our own way.”

<And why should I help one of the species who destroyed my brood?> West asked, her voice lowering until it was a growl. <Why should I help you destroy another broodmother’s child?>

“I don’t want to destroy it, West, I want it to leave me alone!” I answered back, just barely managing to avoid another grasping snap from the drone’s pincers. “But if you need a reason, it’s because of our connection. Because if you can actually sense the minds of these other Gateborn, then we might finally have a different option than fighting each other to the death every time we cross paths. Before today, we didn’t. Can’t you see what that means?”

That silenced her for a moment, hopefully in a way that had her reconsidering our situation. Something that I desperately needed if we were going to have any chance of escaping our situation. Until then, however, I was on my own, quite literally in fact, since I had no idea as to where Val and the prisoner had gone. Fortunately, despite having lost my weapon, I wasn’t completely defenseless, still having my new powers to fall back upon. Which is exactly what I did as I siphoned a portion of my own health away in order to fill my Blood Pool.

Ugh, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this, I thought with a wince as I saw a thick stream of blood pour out from my hands and coalesce into a large sphere before me. It was enough to prompt the drone to lunge towards me with its vice-grip-like claws spread wide, no doubt anticipating an attack.

Reacting as fast as I could, I split the blood into two separate globs before shaping them into flat, square shields, each of the halves as long and wide as I was tall. Then, controlling each half with a hand, I pushed them forward to meet the drone’s claws as they thrust towards me, blood spraying in every direction from the impact. Grimacing from the blow, I felt my boots dig furrows in the ground beneath me as I was driven back a foot from the impact. But it was enough to stop the Gateborn’s assault for the time being, the creature pulling back cautiously once again as it regarded my shields with curiosity.

Probably can’t take another one like that again, I said to myself, feeling somewhat lightheaded from the blood I’d drained as I took several more steps backwards to create some space between the two of us. It was during that retreat that a deafening boom filled the air, followed by Val’s voice calling out a second later.

“Auric!” Her tone was more than a little angry. “We’ve got a problem!”

“Yeah, a pretty big one from what I can tell!” I replied, unwilling to risk taking my eyes off of the drone to look in the voice’s direction.

“That’s not what I meant!” she called back. “I mean about our friend here!”

“What?” I asked, the urgency in her voice finally prompting me to turn my head and see that my sister was currently pointing both the crossbow that we’d recovered as well as the Totem of Force at Merrik, the man in question slowly scrambling to rise up off the ground a dozen feet away. “What the hell happened?”

“He tried to shank me is what happened!” Val retorted, her voice hot enough to melt steel. “Right after I saved his worthless life! Twice!”

“What!” I shouted back, feeling my already-thundering heart leap at the news, especially with the Gateborn picking that moment to resume its attack.

“Y-you two killed my entire group!” came the shaky-voiced reply from Merrik not even a second later. “And now you’re trying to feed me to this thing!”

“No, you idiot, we’re trying to save your life!” Val shouted back. “Though I’m really starting to wonder why!”

“We really don’t have time for something like this!” I exclaimed as I narrowly avoided being knocked off my feet by one of the drone’s pincers as it snapped out at me. Dodging to the side around it, I shifted to put Val and our erstwhile prisoner behind me, hoping that I could somehow link up with them before either of them got hurt.

Evading another sweeping pincer, I braced myself to rush back towards the pair, hoping to break the standoff between them. But as soon as I began to pivot, the drone’s limp tail unexpectedly launched itself towards me, its newly reformed stinger gleaming at its tip. Shouting in surprise, I just barely managed to twist back towards the Gateborn in time to deflect the strike to the side with one of my blood shields. The result was more than the barrier, or the hand holding it, could take, the former losing shape in a bright splash of red, and the second bending back awkwardly with the sickening crack of bone.

“Ah, shit!” I gasped as a line of pain shot up my arm and caused me to stagger backwards. But that wasn’t all that the fiery drone had in store for me, its eyes picking that moment to flare with a bright crimson light, followed by a wave of heat washing over me. It was hot enough to make me cover my face as if I was standing in front of a roaring furnace, my skin already beginning to burn.

And then, of course, it got worse.

It intensified to the point of pain; I had to bring my remaining shield in front of me to ward off the heat, the blood that it was comprised of rapidly beginning to sizzle and boil. It was then through the disintegrating shield that I saw the drone’s mouth stretch open, wider than I thought would be possible, followed by a black plume of acrid smoke escaping out from it.

With only enough time for my eyes to widen in surprise, the next thing I knew, a torrent of fire blasted against my shield, hitting me with enough force to lift me off of my feet once again and send me flying through the air for the second time in the fight. With just enough time for me to mentally curse, the next thing I knew, I slammed into something hard and landed on the ground in a heap, a searing, burning pain radiating from the front of my body and a dull throb echoing through my back.

“Aah, Auric! Are you okay!” I heard Val shout from somewhere on my right, at the same moment a string of angry curses rang out beneath me, followed by something trying to roughly shove me aside.

“I’ve . . . I’ve definitely had better days,” I answered with a wince as I discovered that the blast had sent me crashing into Merrik and flattened him beneath me.

I guess that’s one way to end a standoff, I thought through an all-too-scrambled mind as we fought to free ourselves from one another, Merrik eventually managing to extricate himself from under me and roll to my left.

Breathing a silent sigh of relief, I didn’t waste a second in trying to push myself back upwards, feeling my body scream at me as I tried to do so. Thanks to my blood shield, it seemed that I managed to avoid the worst of the fiery blast that the drone had thrown at me, which was to say that I hadn’t been killed outright. As I rose, I saw that almost every inch of my front was charred black and badly burnt, to the point where swaths of my armor were starting to peel off.

Or at least the parts that hadn’t been burnt into my flesh were.

“Here, let me help,” Val said as I slowly got to my feet, cradling what I was sure was a broken wrist to my chest. A second later, I felt her hand touch my right shoulder, which was accompanied by a wave of healing that flowed through me. It wasn’t enough to completely fix all the injuries I’d accumulated through the fight so far, but it dulled the pain enough so that I was able to focus.

“We need a plan,” Val told me a second later, her hand going back to grip the crossbow and point it past me at the prisoner. “For both him and that thing! We can’t keep doing this!”

“You’re damned right we can’t!” came Merrik’s terrified reply a second later. “Which is why I’m getting the hell out of here! Shoot me if you have to, but I’m not sticking around any longer!”

It was with those words that I saw the man turn and bolt away from us through the forest. The movement immediately caused both Val and I to shout out, my lunge to grab the man with my injured hand falling just short.

“No, wait!” we both shouted practically at the same time as he sprinted away from us.

But our warning came far too late for the reckless man, as the typhonic drone instantly fixated on him during its advance towards us, its body freezing in place. As it did, I saw its tail snap upwards to track Merrik’s flight for a pair of seconds before another thundering boom filled the air. Caught flatfooted and too far away to physically intervene, there was nothing that either Val or I could do other than watch as the drone launched its stinger at the man. Crossing the distance in the blink of an eye, Merrik never even saw what hit him, the missile catching him directly in the side and instantly tearing him in two with an explosion of gore.

Which was then followed by a string of System text appearing in my vision.

Primary Task Progress Update: 4 of 4 Schemas Collected – Analysis In Progress

Primary Task Completed

Primary Task Reward: +4,000 Experience Points

“The idiot!” I shouted, feeling my heart twist as I saw the message appear before me, followed by an overwhelming sense of failure. I hadn’t wanted to kill any of Damon’s followers after the System had ordered me to, but now here I was, with each and every single one of them dead. “He could have just waited!”

“We had no chance, Auric,” Val replied, her voice sounding both angry and sad as we both turned back towards the drone, which had wasted no time in resuming its advance towards us. “We did our best . . . but we had no chance.”

But I barely heard my sister as I turned my attention inwards for a split second, choosing to shout at the one being that I knew could affect the fight we found ourselves in.

<West!> I sent with the loudest mental growl I could muster. <Whether we want it or not, we’re stuck together. Bonded by the System, or the Great Web in your case. That’s never happened before. We can think of that as a curse, or we can see it as a gift. A gift we could use to help both of our species.>

<You forget,> West answered. <My species is dead. Destroyed by you and yours.>

<You don’t know that they all were,> I countered as I called up another surge of blood to fill my Blood Pool, effectively undoing the healing that Val had just given me and causing my head to spin. But I had no other choice with the drone rushing towards us again, our rapidly backpedaling feet not nearly enough to keep it at bay. <You said you were taken from your world, imprisoned in the world-splinter? Well, we didn’t do that. Humans can’t do that. Either the System or the entropy we’re looking for must have. If we work together, maybe we can find out what happened to them. We can find any others trapped in world-splinters and—>

I ran out of time to plead my case as the drone finally came into range, its claws scything at both Val and me in a wide cleave. Already moving, we both managed to avoid the first strike, if barely, but not the second, needing to catch the sweeping backhand that came afterwards square on the center of a freshly shaped blood shield. Much like the others that I had blocked before it, the blow sent me reeling backwards as my hastily created barrier exploded in a cloud of red, leaving both Val and I completely exposed for the last and final attack.

An attack that never came as the typhonic drone abruptly froze in place before letting out a bloodcurdling screech.

<Run, Auric,> West’s voice whispered softly in my mind. <I’ve punctured its mind, but it will not be insensate for long. This is your opportunity to escape!>

I blinked, for a second not believing the words that I heard filtering through my mind. At least not until West’s voice called out a second time.

<Did you not hear me?> she asked, her volume growing with every word. <I said run!>

Breaking the shock that had fallen over me, I wordlessly reached out to grab Val’s arm and then did exactly as I was told, pulling her along with me at first until she managed to fully turn and join me.

And so we ran. We ran through the woods, and through the neighboring valley it fed into, all while the drone continued to scream behind us. It was all that we could hear for a time, at least aside from our panting breaths and hurried footsteps.

And in my case, West’s voice.

<You truly believe we can work together. I feel it in your heart,> she said to me as I ran. <But truthfully, I do not like you, human. And I do not forgive what you’ve done. But as long as you remain committed to this course, as long as you believe we can stop more of my kind being stolen from their world . . . I will help you.>

Chapter Twenty

Not much remains of the governments of the World Before, the once-proud nations of humanity having either withered away after the System’s arrival, or if not, fallen prey to the countless wars, battles, and skirmishes that soon followed thereafter. In the case of the nation that our state, Kentucky, once belonged to, it survived better than practically all of them. If at least for the fact that the nation still exists, far out from what was once its westernmost states, a small fraction of its former glory . . .

—Excerpt from a lecture on history given to all Blueridge youths

* * *

The dark of night settled over the woods behind us as we reached the final stretch towards Blueridge, night’s presence stalking us like a hungry predator. Little by little, it encroached my awareness, beginning at its edges and inching inwards with every minute that passed.

<Where are your redundant legs?> West asked me as I pushed my way through the deepening gloom, ever cautious of my surroundings. <How would you survive if you lost even one?>

<I probably wouldn’t,> I answered tiredly, having spent the journey learning how to best talk to my mental companion within the confines of my mind. <We humans only ever have two legs. It’s rare that we would lose one . . . but if we do, we’re likely dead soon after.>

<Hrm.> West grunted thoughtfully in response. <On my world, your kind would be the most cherished prey. Fragile, but filling. Energetic, and yet . . . harmless.>

I had no idea how to even begin to reply to that statement, so I simply shook my head in response and focused my attention back on our journey. Even at the best of times, trekking through the wilderness surrounding Blueridge was a taxing endeavor. The forests, rough terrain, and occasionally sharp elevation changes from valley to valley were more than enough to tire anyone out. But to do so after the day I’d had, or rather the day we’d all had, was a completely different story. We were injured, exhausted, and more than a little traumatized after everything we’d been forced to endure, and all we wanted at this point, more than anything in the world, was to simply be back at home and in our beds.

Just a little further to go, I told myself as I stepped over a large rock and hopped down its other side, barely feeling the impact from my landing. I could see the beginnings of the town walls starting to rise from beyond the tree line ahead. We’re almost there.

It was that final thought that I found to be rather alien to me as we closed with the town. “We” had always meant Val and I, and occasionally expanded to include Salvo, or if not, then at least our adoptive grandmother. But now, and at least for the foreseeable future, I was starting to realize that “we” also now included West. Something had changed between us after she’d decided to help us in the fight against the drone and the wall of antagonism that had marked the beginning of our relationship had been broken. What was beyond it, I still didn’t know, but right now, West was the only reason that we were still alive and drawing breath.

<The final molt should never be a wasteful thing. I could not consume your flesh, and the drone had no need of it. Your end would have been meaningless. Wasteful,> she said to me, her voice filling my thoughts with its usual jumpy rhythm of clicks and taps which I somehow innately understood.

<Thank you,> I replied simply. <For saving both our lives.>

It felt weird, at least in its current context, but I had a suspicion there was more to West’s explanation of why she’d saved us. Both of us were coping with the results of extraordinary events, so I couldn’t blame her if she was wrestling with her own set of confusing feelings.

System knew I was.

<Instincts are not “feelings,” Broodkiller,> West said to me, sensing my thoughts as plain as day. <They are gifts from the Great Web. They are tastes of its wisdom. And they tell me you have more yet to do.>

<You mean that we have more to do.>

There was a long silence for the next few seconds where the only thing I heard was Val’s and my huffing breaths as we pushed into the trampled grass clearing before the gates.

<Yes,> West agreed after a while. <We have more to do.>

<Together.>

* * *

“And when the drone was distracted, we were able to escape,” I said, giving everyone a final shrug as I wound down my explanation.

“By escape, he means that we ran for our lives,” Val corrected. “And kept running until we were in the next valley over.”

“And a good thing that you did, too!” Constance exclaimed as she rushed forward and threw an arm around both Val and me, crushing us both in a giant bear hug. One strong enough that it caused the room around me to spin as we were lifted off our feet. “I don’t know what we would have done if . . . if, well, you know. But I’m so glad you’re both okay and came back home safe!”

I found myself gasping for air as Constance tightened her grip, showing a surge of emotion that was exceptionally great, even for her. During that time though, I couldn’t help but notice West let out a yelp as she recoiled and vanished deeper into my mind. Like a spider retreating into the furthest, darkest corner of its web.

“Kids tangled with a typhonic drone? Sheesh. I’m surprised we’re not finding their ash scattered in the woods, to be honest,” Curshaw said in a rumbling grunt to Mercutio in what was probably supposed to be his version of a whisper. But as usual, subterfuge was far from the man’s specialty.

“You guys likely would have been if it wasn’t for West,” I said, just barely managing the words through Constance’s crushing embrace. “She . . . did something to the drone’s mind. Stunned it. Froze it. Whatever it was, it was what let us escape.”

That was finally enough for Constance to set the both of us down, the woman then bending slightly to stare right into my eyes.

“That’s right, you mentioned West before,” she said as if she could see the Gateborn that now lived inside my mind. “I don’t know what you are, or how you got here. But thank you for saving them.” She paused for a second to touch a hand to her heart. “Really, thank you.”

<The drone is nothing compared to this one,> West stated, her voice quivering in a way I’d never heard before.

<What do you mean?> I asked, caught a little off guard.

<She is . . . might. She is terror,> West answered as she crept even deeper in my mind until I could barely sense her. <Oblivion follows in her wake.>

“Uh, West says you’re welcome,” I finally replied, feeling even more out of sorts after what West had just said. Constance was powerful, but “terror” was never a word anyone had used to describe her.

“Does she now? Well, let’s just go ahead and induct this thing into Salvo then, eh?” Sumalin asked, stepping forward as she spoke. “Or have we all lost our minds? There’s a Gateborn in Auric’s head. Why aren’t we focusing on getting it out?”

<Now this one speaks sense,> West whispered to me, her voice still small. <Caution and wariness is warranted.>

“Eh? Why are you here, Sumalin? This is a conversation for the grownups,” Curshaw said with a glare. “The weakest doesn’t get an opinion for something like this.”

Anger crossing her face, Sumalin met Curshaw’s glare with one of her own. It might as well have been staring down an avalanche for all the good that it did, but she didn’t falter or back down.

“Want to say that again, big man?” she replied, spitting her last words angrily. “Because from where I stand, I’m not one of the weak ones here. You are.”

“Try me, little shadow,” Curshaw said threateningly. “I’ll—”

“That’s enough, Curshaw!” Constance interrupted forcefully, her expression turning hard as she glared at the man. “This is the last thing we need right now. And even if it wasn’t, Sumalin is right. She’s at the pinnacle of B-Tier, far past any of us.”

“For now,” the large man stated, emphasizing his words heavily. “But soon she’ll have to start her climb all over again. And what’s the point? The kid’s got a head start on her now.” Curshaw paused to throw a gesture my way as he continued speaking. “And a good one, at that. It’d save us a lot of babysitting to focus our attention on him.”

“No,” Amedea stated, having been sitting quietly at the sole table in the room, her fingers intertwined together and pressed to her chin in thought as she’d listened to my story. “We will do nothing of the sort. In fact,” she continued as her chair screeched against the floor. “Nothing will be happening until we learn more of what happened today. We will not act rashly.”

She then slowly placed her hands on the table and rose to her feet, her eyes glancing around the room.

“You are all the foremost team of A-Tiers from here to Once-New Orleans. Perhaps possibly even the entire continent. I would wish that you all act like it.” Amedea spoke her words without anger, but a wave of admonishment rolled through the room, nonetheless. While she was easily the strongest within Salvo in terms of raw levels and ability, her position wasn’t derived through that, but rather the loyalty that she’d worked so hard to cultivate.

It was enough for Curshaw to grunt something that might have been akin to a “sorry” and for Sumalin to scrunch up her face and nod in response.

“She is right,” Constance stated as she broke the silence that followed afterwards. “We’re better than this, and we need to act like it. If what Auric and Val told us about their day today is true . . . we have bigger problems than an unusual class that is accompanied by a mental companion.”

“All too true, I fear,” Mercutio said, finally speaking up as he pushed himself forward and away from the wall he’d been leaning against. “This, what did you call it, Auric? Entropy? Whatever it is sounds like a nasty business. The kind of show no one wants to be a part of. Especially if the System itself cannot contain it.”

<And who is this one?> West queried with sudden curiosity. <He feels . . . familiar. Though I know not why.>

<Mercutio’s just like that,> I answered with a mental shrug. <It’s all part of his persona. He puts on a face about being friendly, trustworthy, and just a tad familiar to everyone he meets. It makes it that much more wondrous when he starts using his powers.>

<Deceptive,> she replied, followed by a mental chitter I couldn’t interpret as it crossed my mind. <I will watch him intently.>

“And right now I think we’ve got enough to worry about with the whole Guyot Fault situation,” Curshaw said while crossing his arms before him. “Especially if we already have free roamers looking to take bites out of travelers.”

“Which is why we must prioritize the threats facing us, beginning first with those that are within our control,” Amedea said, the woman having begun pacing around the room. “Auric, you said Kerill Baldwin was your contact in organizing your spectacularly ill-advised endeavor?”

“He connected me with the party, and by extension Damon,” I said, swallowing hard. I hadn’t exactly wanted to sell Kerill out, but this situation had exploded beyond just a somewhat illegal gate-stealing run. Not only had people died, but the System was now involved, along with a new threat that we knew next to nothing about. We needed to figure out where Damon had come from, how entropy played into it, and who he was working for. Or if anyone else was even involved in the first place.

“Good. Then in that case . . .” Amedea started to say, her gaze shifting upwards as she spoke. “Mercutio, Curshaw. Please find Sergeant Baldwin and invite him to the tower. I would very much like to chat with him.”

“’Course, boss,” Curshaw said with a nod, then turned toward the door to leave.

“With all due haste, madam,” Mercutio said before clapping once and promptly disappearing in a theatrical puff of smoke.

“Next on our list. Constance, you must speak to the Commander of the Watch. Inform him what’s happened. Gently. This is a delicate matter.”

“I completely understand,” the woman replied with a nod.

“And assure him that he must keep the news quiet for now. We don’t want to cause a panic. Not until we have a better understanding of what’s happening here, at least.”

“And how can I help?” Sumalin asked when it was clear that there was no other forthcoming task.

“You can focus your efforts on reaching A-Tier,” Amedea replied, her words instantly eliciting a flinch from the woman. Bluntness like that was expected from someone like Curshaw, but to hear it from the leader of the group was something else entirely. “You might be near the peak of what you can achieve now, but we need your potential completely unbound. If there will be more A-Tiers out in the world . . . ones not allied with us, we need there to be no restrictions on the might we can wield in response. I’ve lived, and fought, through both of the Fallen Wars; I have no wish to add a third.”

“I . . . I understand,” Sumalin answered in a pensive voice, before sinking into a shadow and disappearing without another word, leaving just Amedea, Val, and myself in the room.

And West, too, of course, but she’d been quiet for the past several moments.

“And that leaves just you, Auric,” Amedea said, her whole body turning to focus on me. “You were not ready for A-Tier. Hardly even C-Tier after our last discussion. This should never have happened to you.”

Clearly her bluntness didn’t stop with just Sumalin today.

“But it has happened,” she said with a sigh and a shake of her head. “There is no way of going back now. Especially not with the . . . warnings you’ve brought us. So, we must move forward. We must understand what’s happened and then adapt and overcome. As we always have. The survival of humanity demands it.”

“I’m ready,” I said, in what I hoped was a confident tone. “I . . . I can handle this. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

“Right now, the only thing you need to handle is rest. You’ve nearly died, what, three times by your story’s count today?” She paused to shake her head incredulously. “Foolish, headstrong boy. When my time finally comes, your parents are going to rend my Schema to shreds in the Ever After. Assuming I ever reach it. And you know? I deserve it. I have been far too lenient with you.”

I wasn’t sure I could completely agree with that sentiment, but I knew that this wasn’t the time to argue.

“Salvo will handle things for now. You need to get some sleep. System knows you’re still in shock. And you too, Val. Both of you get upstairs, get cleaned up, and rest.” She snapped a finger toward the stairs. “Go. We’ll discuss more in a couple of hours once you both look less like walking corpses.”

Chapter Twenty-One

. . . as for us, we are considered to be in a region called the Unclaimed East. Not so much because we Humans are sparse throughout this area, but because despite there being a nest of a dozen or so townships and even cities throughout the land, none are prominent enough, or strong enough, to bind the others to their will under a single unified rule. It’s a situation similarly matched in the remains of New York up in the Lost North, specifically in the ruins of New York City. There in the bones of the once-great metropolis Humanity lives as fractured tribes, stealing, fighting, and even at times warring against one another as they strive to live another day. In fact, the only place other than our once-parent nation that has managed to unify and form a central government is the city of Once-New Orleans.

—Continuation of the lecture on history given to all Blueridge youths

* * *

“All right, how about we try a different approach this time?” Amedea said with a gentle, if weary, voice. “Call her to me, Auric. I want to try and see if I can sense her.”

“She’s gone completely quiet ever since we started the tests,” I replied, shaking my head as I searched for West inside my mind, but failed to reach her. “Could be she’s sleeping? I’ve no idea if she even needs to do that, to be honest.”

“It’s possible, but see if you can’t get her attention anyway,” Amedea said, reaching out to pluck at a point in the air, like she was trying to grab ahold of a mote of dust, but frowning as if she just missed each time. Gentle light sprang to life on her fingertips as she did so, leaving me with nothing to do but look at her floating nameplate directly before me.

A nameplate which showed shockingly little, compared to the last time I’d seen it.

Name: [REDACTED] – Tier: [REDACTED] – Level [REDACTED]

Class: [REDACTED]

Health: [REDACTED]

Status: [REDACTED]

Relation: [REDACTED]

It’s all gone to me now, I thought idly as I watched it hover in my vision, having noticed the abrupt change in display ever since having woken up from my nap, one that had affected everyone in Salvo. It had confused me to no end until I’d made mention of it, prompting Amedea to reveal that she was the one responsible for it through the use of one of her class powers. For reasons that she was frustratingly vague about elaborating on, she’d said that it was a precaution to protect us. Both from West’s influence, should it not be benign, and from whatever organization Damon was potentially working for. Even I’d been protected, she claimed, promising me that even she couldn’t see any of my Schema information anymore without removing what she’d done.

I wonder if I’m not the first one to ever get a System ability like Analyze, I thought as I followed a stray thread of logic. I’d only had a chance to test it out once, and accidentally at that, during our fight with the drone. But it had shown me a plethora of useful information, the least of which being the creature’s weaknesses and vulnerable locations. I could definitely understand wanting to keep that sort of information hidden from anyone who potentially had ill intent.

And not only that, but keep my reaching A-Tier under wraps for as long as possible, I added, Amedea’s decision of not letting the rest of the town know about my rapid ascension through the tiers being one that I agreed with. As much as I wanted the attention, craved it in a way, to be honest, I wanted to get a better handle on things first before I had to deal with all the trouble the reveal would cause.

Which is what we were supposedly doing right now.

“Any luck?” I asked, my focus turning back to the present as I watched Amedea continue to pluck at the air.

“May . . . be,” my adoptive grandmother replied as she worked with one of her many particularly strange powers. Of course, “strange” included practically every power that an Auspicer had at their disposal. Mysterious and restrained, their powers weren’t intended for combat the same way that someone like mine’s or Curshaw’s were. Instead, they were designed to support and influence everything around her with a subtlety beyond measure. “Oh, oh, there! I have something!”

Snatching at the air before me, her hand closed in on something just in front of my nose, a seemingly empty point of space. But one that her fingers found a tangible purchase on. Blinking once in confusion, I almost said something, only to catch myself as the air started to become something more. It was translucent, but no longer formless, appearing as if there’d been a thin film across the air in between us and she’d caught a corner.

As she began to move her hand, I started to feel the room buzz around me, my arm hairs practically leaping to stand on end when a sudden shot charged through me. Not an electric shot, but as close as I’d ever felt. With a thin smile, Amedea pulled at the film gently and it peeled away to reveal a window in reality. Or, at least that was the only way I could explain it. It was about a foot long and tall, and rested in the air directly between us by the time she finished pulling it back. The world I could see through it was our own, but oh-so-very different. As if I’d put on a new pair of glasses and could suddenly see everything I’d always missed before.

The world beyond it was alive.

Bright blue clouds swirled through a purple sky, each of them tumbling wildly like leaves in the wind. A warm wind that wafted over the both of us, bringing a sweet scent of summer flowers mixed in with the smell of honey, likely from the colossal meadow of orange-red plants that I soon noticed grew everywhere. Blinking, I saw that each and every single one of them rhythmically waved and danced in the sunlight, completely in sync with one another.

But that wasn’t all I saw through the window as it gradually began to change, as if there were another layer upon the layer that I was seeing. It was hard to make out at first, the difference appearing at the edges of the portal, flashing in for a second before popping out. To my eye, it looked like lightning, almost at least, but stiller, somehow. As if lightning could be caught waiting in the split second before striking. Whatever it was, I couldn’t make sense of it, the sight completely captivating me until I heard Amedea’s voice call out to me, her eyes bright as bonfires as she looked at me through the window.

“Call West forth,” she said. Her voice was muffled, faint. As if coming through a closed door instead of a pace in front of me.

It was all I could do to nod.

“West,” I said, this time out loud, my voice sounding just as distant as my grandmother’s.

<West,> I said again after a few seconds, but this time internally.

There was no response, and I said as much to Amedea, her eyes flicking side to side, as if my face was a book and she was reading it. Or, perhaps she saw deeper than that and was reading my Schema itself.

“She’s in there, but . . . hiding,” she said to me. “Call her forth, Auric.”

And so I did.

<West!> I called with urgency this time, feeling a growing pressure on my chest I hadn’t noticed before. One that was starting to squeeze the air from me. <West, come out. I need you.>

I focused inward, searching for her in my thoughts in the space I felt her occupy. But as I looked, I found that it was empty, her presence seemingly gone.

. . . or maybe it isn’t, I realized after several seconds of mental digging, feeling that there was in fact something there. Probing at the strange sensation, I found what I could only describe as a single strand of her consciousness. Suddenly curious, I latched on to it and found myself abruptly yanked deeper into my mind, memories from the distant past flashing in front of my eyes as I did.

Such as the day that Val and I moved into Salvo Tower.

I saw Constance with red-rimmed eyes looking down at me. Then Curshaw looking angrier than usual, even if I didn’t know why. And there was Amedea too, standing beside them both while holding a crying Val who clutched at a small book as tears poured down her face.

Then I saw my first few wobbling steps, the world tilting and tipping with each one as I moved down an unknown hall.

And then a crib around me, with two blurry faces smiling down from above. Two faces I couldn’t quite make out. Two faces that—

<Go no further.>

The memory scattered like dust blown from the cover of an old book. Before I could make sense of its loss, I suddenly was face to face with a dozen smoldering points of light, each of them a deep iridescent green. They were attached to something, that I couldn’t see, but rather felt. Something large. Big as the bull elks that we commonly saw in the wild around the town. What felt like bristles brushed against my skin, then there was a whoosh of air as the thing slunk away.

<West?> I asked, my voice echoing out within my mind like ripples on the surface of a pond. <West? Are you here?>

“Call her to me, Auric . . .” Amedea’s voice drifted in as if from afar, echoing through the darkness before me as it bounced off unseen surfaces, gradually turning all jumbled and twisted. “Call . . . to me . . .”

Ahead, the glowing green eyes blinked once, twice, then stayed shut. In their place, there was only darkness. Wind rushed against my back, and I turned to find something reaching for me. Coming from the same place as Amedea’s voice. Again, I couldn’t see what it was, but I could feel its approach. Could feel it like a hand pushing through a bag of grain. Reaching deeper and deeper, fingers splayed and ready to grab ahold of that which was sought.

The invisible force drew nearer, then all at once a chittering hiss pierced the darkness behind me. Heat seared in my back, but as quick as I felt it, it was gone. Replaced with a chilling numbness. The world around me, the world of thoughts and feelings, trembled, shook, then toppled. And I fell with it.

A square of molten steel suddenly appeared in my vision, its light searing the darkness away.

Then the next thing I knew I was back in Amedea’s lab.

“Auric?” Amedea asked, the woman still in front of me, just on the other side of the hole she’d torn in reality.

Though this time she was in the process of stitching it up, slowly tracing her index fingers along the edges of it, moving in opposite directions, slow and steady. Light fizzled and hissed behind them until the edge of the hole was glowing. She placed a palm in the center of it next, gave a sharp exhale, and pushed through it. The glowing outline flared, faded, and was gone. In its place was nothing but empty space.

<Forgive me for that,> I heard West say from within my mind. <It had to be done.>

“Forgive you for what?” I mumbled tiredly as I struggled to pull myself together, the aftereffects of whatever I’d endured still affecting my mind.

“Hm, what?” Amedea asked, cocking an eyebrow in my direction. “What was that, Auric?”

“Oh, uh. I was . . .” I replied, my words trailing off as I collected my thoughts. It might have been a trip to the inside of my own mind, but it sure didn’t feel like it. Not from the way my limbs felt dead and heavy, and the way that my mind sloshed back and forth as if my head were a bucket full of water. “Nothing, never mind. That was just . . . a little rough.”

“So I saw, and I’m sorry,” Amedea said as she rested a hand on my knee and rubbed it apologetically. “But I needed to test something. To see what I would be able to find in your mind. You’ve got me worried. And you’ve gotten yourself into one hell of a mess this time around. Your parents . . . would want this fixed. Would want you fixed.”

“But am I broken?” I asked, fearing the question and the answer it could possibly entail.

“I’m afraid I don’t know still,” Amedea said as she rose to her feet, her hand going to my shoulder to help steady herself, before patting my cheek in a motherly gesture. “But what I do know is that it’s a big and dangerous world out there. And you’ve been introduced to it sooner than I expected—or wanted, for that matter. A lot of what you told us earlier, about the System, about entropy, isn’t exactly new news to us, but news that I’d have rather you’d lived your life without knowing.”

“That . . . that explains a lot, actually,” I replied, having been so tired and overwhelmed that I hadn’t even noticed the group’s rather restrained reaction to everything I’d told them until I looked back in hindsight. “Why didn’t you say that earlier?”

“Because I needed time to think,” Amedea said with a shrug. “About what was done, and what needs to be done. But I am certain that we’ll get through this. You just have to trust me. Can you do that for me, Auric?”

“Of course. I always have.”

“Good,” she said, giving me a small smile and nod before turning away to reach for a glass of water she’d set out. “Now, I don’t suppose that the . . . System has said anything else to you, has it? About analyzing those . . . Schemas that it recovered.”

“No, nothing yet,” I replied with a shake of my head, full well noticing the vaguely hostile tone she had taken when she’d mentioned the System. “It says it’s still analyzing them. And I haven’t the faintest idea when it’ll be done.”

“I see,” Amedea said, pausing for a second to take a drink. “Well, when it does finish, come and find me. Doesn’t matter if it is day or night. Wake me even, if you need to. The sooner we can understand what lies it wants to give us, the sooner we can start preparing ourselves against them.”

“Wait, hold on,” I said, confused at the abrupt turn the conversation had taken. “You think the System would lie to us?”

“That is all that it has ever done, Auric,” my grandmother replied, her eyes turning hard and angry as they dropped down to stare at the floor. They lingered there for so long that I was about to ask exactly what she meant. But before I could, she blinked and glanced back up at me, her expression rapidly softening. “I’m sorry, Auric, that was brought on by a lifetime of hard memories and even harder choices. All I can say is that when it comes to the System, there are three truths. The one it wants you to believe. The one it believes. And then the actual truth itself.”

“That sounds frustrating to figure out,” I said while trying to remember my meeting with the System. As far as I could tell, I didn’t think that it had lied outright to me. Sure, it hadn’t told me much of anything that was useful, but the last time I checked, simply withholding information wasn’t considered a lie. “How do you know which is which?”

Amedea simply shrugged in response. “If I ever find out, I will let you know. Until then . . . do keep me apprised if it speaks to you again?”

“Absolutely,” I replied, seeing the woman nod graciously then turn to busy herself in getting a snack out of a nearby cupboard.

<This one . . . is your broodmother, then?> West’s presence was suddenly back in my mind, her having crept out of wherever she’d been hiding without me so much as noticing. This time though, her voice was different. Slower and noticeably tired, even.

<Where were you?> I asked, more than a little put off she chose this moment to reappear. <And, no. Amedea’s not, uh, we’re not related. But she did raise Val and I after we lost our parents.>

<I do not like her,> came the reply.

<You don’t know her,> I countered with a mental sigh. <How can you not like her already?>

<Because she pulls, pulls, and pulls. Like a weave-runner.>

<And what is that, exactly?>

<Hrm. A cast-fisher, then. All web and tendrils.> West tried to explain, clearly trying to find the right words to articulate herself. <She . . . reaches, yes. She . . . pries, yes. Reaches and pries in places one should not.>

<And that’s why she is the best suited to help us,> I replied, somewhat understanding her trepidation. I could only imagine how my last experience, my memory, looked from her perspective.

<I do not . . .> West started to say, only for her voice to trail off into nothingness.

<Hey, West?> I called, feeling her presence fading rapidly as if it were a dying candle. <Are you okay?>

<I . . . I must rest. Yes . . . rest . . .> Her voice was soft, each click and pop so gentle I had to wonder if I’d imagined them as she faded away. I thought about calling on her again to make sure she was okay, but before I could, I heard a crash echo out from the stairs below, followed by Curshaw’s voice calling up a second later.

“We have a problem.”

Then there was a pop, a puff of smoke, and then a heavy-breathing Mercutio was in the room with us. His curly, black hair was slicked-back and from the smell that entered the room with him, it was on account of sweat. His mustache hung a bit limper than usual, too, the oil that usually kept it firm having run from it.

“Yes, we certainly do,” the man agreed, only to pause as he noticed me sitting at the table. “Ah, sorry. Forgive the lack of decorum, we came back as soon as we could.”

“It’s fine,” Amedea replied, her glass still in one hand, but the other now filled with a half-eaten pastry. “We just finished. Do I need something stronger to drink before you boys tell me what happened?”

“You might,” came Curshaw’s reply as he picked that moment to reach the top of the stairs, the man visibly covered in dirt and sweat.

“Fantastic,” she stated, pausing for a moment to look towards the ceiling before shifting to look at Mercutio. “Would you be so kind to get three . . . no, four glasses of fire? This concerns Auric as well.”

“But of course,” the enigma replied, needing to only shuffle half a step over before a nearby cabinet opened of its own accord and a collection of glasses, including a bottle, sailed out. Two seconds later a tumbler filled with an amber liquid was setting itself down directly before me.

“Now what happened?” Amedea asked once everyone had a glass in hand, Curshaw draining his instantly.

“We found Kerill,” he said as he motioned to Mercutio for a refill, the bottle sailing across the room to oblige.

“I’m sure he wasn’t happy I sold him out,” I said with both an internal and external wince as I tasted the whiskey before me, feeling it sear my tongue.

“Might have been,” Curshaw said with a shrug as he threw back his drink. “Gonna be hard to piece him back together and ask, though. Someone else got to him first.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Praise the System! Praise the clarity it brings! For among the many gifts given unto us, foremost is knowledge of ourselves. No longer do we wonder. No longer do we question. All that is to know can be found in the rules of the System’s reality.

—From The Systemic Genesis 13:37

* * *

“I should be out there,” I said, watching through the window’s morning light as Salvo exited the tower and headed into the town’s central building. “I could help.”

“You really think so, Auric?” Val asked from her armchair on the opposite side of the room, a closed book resting in her lap. “Do you even know where Kerill lived?”

“Of course not,” I replied with a shake of my head. “But the others do. And it’s not like Blueridge is all that large if we had to look around.”

“Says someone who has actually never had to ‘look around’ for someone or something in a place like Blueridge,” Val replied with a snort. “Don’t take this the wrong way, little brother, but did you bother to learn anything about him before letting him set you up on your gate-stealing trip?”

“Of course I did, I’m not an idiot, Val,” I replied more than a little defensively, even if I’d done nothing of the sort.

She raised an eyebrow at that and waved a hand as if to say “go on, then.”

“Uh, well,” I started, my mind scrambling for anything I knew about the man as my bluff was called. “He wasn’t liked much by people in the town. Loner through and through. Drank a lot. Longstanding reputation of corruption. He, uh, also . . . probably should have invested in better locks . . .”

Val rolled her eyes at me dramatically. “System above, Auric, it’s really a wonder you’ve lived this long.”

“Honestly, it kind of is,” I said with a somewhat defeated shrug. “Especially after yesterday.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me about that,” she said as she glanced down at the book in her lap, staring at it for a few seconds as if deciding whether to pick it up and read it or not. Eventually, she let out a sigh and picked the book up and placed it on a nearby table before moving to stand up. “Yeah, doesn’t look like reading is going to happen today. I’m . . . still too anxious and worked up over yesterday.”

“You and me both,” I said with a sigh, feeling the need to be doing something, anything, really, to keep my mind and body busy. “But we’re cooped up in here all day until everyone gets back. Reading is about all we have to do. Unless you want to clean.”

“I can assure you that I absolutely don’t,” Val replied as she placed her hands on her knees and rose to her feet. “And as it so happens, I have a better idea of what we can burn some of our time with. Practice.”

“Practice?” I repeated, unsure as to what my sister meant.

“Practice your new powers and see what exactly your class is about,” she elaborated while indicating the nearby stairs. “Like you said, right now everyone’s gone chasing loose ends with Kerill, which means we have the tower, and the training area downstairs, to ourselves. Plus . . . after yesterday you should also see about getting another set of armor adjusted for you. That drone really ruined your other set.”

“You have no idea,” I replied, recalling how I’d been forced to practically cut myself free out of my old set of armor last night before being able to sleep. Not all of it was destined for the scrap pile, but a good chunk of it was. If I was going to be doing any traveling in the near future, let alone gate sealing or tracking down the entropy that the System had tasked me to find, I needed to find something else to wear.

Which, fortunately, I have a bit of a head start on, I thought as I remembered one of my many half-finished projects that I had stowed away in the tower’s workshop and said as much to Val.

“Let’s get a little bit of exercise in first. It’d be nice to see what my powers can do when I’m not scrambling for my life,” I said, finding the prospect of practicing with my new powers to be much more exciting than I’d expected on the second thought. There hadn’t exactly been time to use my powers for anything other than staying alive yesterday, and after waking up this morning, I’d promptly fallen right back into my D-Tier rut, almost forgetting that they’d existed.

Plan made, the two of us went downstairs to the atrium, the tower’s lowest level and largest floor. It was normally more a reception room for those coming into the tower and where more informal meetings were held, but by virtue of its size, it also doubled as an indoor training and sparring room for everyone in Salvo when doing so outside was not an option.

“So, little brother,” Val began once we reached the atrium and found it conveniently set for training, the little furniture that it had already stored in one of the side rooms designed for that purpose. “Give me another rundown on the powers that the System’s seen fit to bless you with.”

“Uh, well, the jury’s still out if they’re a blessing,” I replied more than a little dryly as I called up my Schema in the corner of my vision for reference. “But the first ability of my class is something called Blood to Power. It replaces my Control with something called a Blood Pool, which I then use to power my abilities.”

“All right, I’m following so far,” Val said with a nod as she slowly raised her arms over her head in a large stretch to loosen up. “How do you fill this . . . Blood Pool of yours, then?”

“Either from my own health, or from the blood I steal from others nearby,” I answered, going on to fill her in on the exchange rates between the two. “And this power doesn’t work against things that don’t have blood. Or are too alien to us, I guess.”

“Like the drone from yesterday,” Val said, nodding to show her understanding. “That thing was made from stone and lava. Nothing even close to blood there.”

“Not even a little bit,” I agreed with a nod. “Anyway, once I’ve filled my Blood Pool, I can use it to power my other abilities, which are Shape Blood and Bloodborne Companion. Both are linked to a new skill that I learned, called Bloodshaping.”

“Right, I remember that much from yesterday still,” my sister said. “And that first power . . . that’s the one you used to make those shields, and that uh, blood weapon, scythe thing. I don’t even know what to call it.”

“If it helps, neither do I,” I replied with a half shrug. “But yeah, that was Shape Blood. I’m still working on figuring out how exactly it works, but so far I’ve been able to make basic things. A rough-ish shield. A sort of, uh, sharp length of blood. A blood scythe maybe? How does that sound?”

“Super cliché, and like something that Mercutio would come up with,” Val answered with a snort. “But I can’t think of anything better offhand, either. What about your other ability? Can you use that one yet? I remember you saying your skill wasn’t high enough.”

“And still isn’t, unfortunately,” I said with a shake of my head as I skimmed down my Schema until I found the Bloodshaping entry. “I just barely managed to get it to level four after our fight with the drone, which means I’m a level away from having a large enough Blood Pool to use it.”

“And that also makes a lot of sense when you think about it. That ability must have been your level five ability, right? Which means you’d need to be at the same level skill-wise to use it.”

“Right, I’d . . . forgotten about that,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed at missing the connection. I’d been stuck as a D-Tier for so long that I’d stopped thinking about the traditional progression path that everyone went through, regardless of tier. Summoning a bit of mental energy, I moved to remedy that mistake and began to dredge up a collection of dusty memories of what I had once learned years earlier.

At the beginning levels, those being from level one to ten, people traditionally learned anywhere from one to three abilities, the number of which depended on their tier. For D-Tiers like I used to be, a single power at level five was all that was granted by the System, their unclassed status earning them little else. But after reaching C-Tier and being assigned a class, that number increased to a maximum of three, depending, of course, on the class the System had chosen to grant. One power was granted immediately at level one, with the other two coming at levels five and ten respectively. That pattern then continued through the next set of ten levels, earning them another two more powers to unlock until they reached the pinnacle of C-Tier at level twenty.

B-Tier built again on that pattern, those reaching it enjoying an additional class power at level one, but otherwise following the same power progression, at least until they reached their previous pinnacle of level twenty. At that point, the power progression became faster, with abilities coming every three levels, along with a fourth and final one after reaching the pinnacle level of B-Tier, level thirty.

And then, of course, there was A-Tier, the rank where all of the previous patterns from the tiers before started to simultaneously go awry and yet also reaffirm themselves. Matching the B-Tier progression in terms of power gain at first, the first major milestone for an A-Tier was reaching level twenty. According to what Amedea had told us, it was the first marker that truly marked an A-Tier as an A-Tier, the System allowing them to choose between several major powers. Ones that, in the future, would completely define their growth. From there, the progression followed again as the B-Tier did, earning the person several more powers based off their previous choice, continuing until they reached level thirty and were given the opportunity to pick another major power. One even more powerful than their earlier choice.

What came after that point in an A-Tier’s life was a mystery, or at least it was until Amedea pushed herself to whatever the next level was, assuming that she was capable of doing so. For all of her accomplishments in climbing the tiers, age had still taken a vicious toll on her and would likely be what forced her to retire one day.

Assuming a Gateborn didn’t cause that first.

But that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t take over where she left off, I thought as I finished my memory-dredging efforts, unable to help but feel excited at the prospects of what level ten would bring me. After all the progress that I’d made over the last day, the two levels that separated it and myself seemed just a stone’s throw away.

Which also means I better actually start practicing my skills at some point this morning, or I’m going to be one of the weakest A-Tiers that ever existed, I thought as I fully pulled myself out of my ruminations and couldn’t help but see Val staring back at me with her eyebrow raised in question.

“You were gone a long time there,” she said, no doubt noticing the focus returning to my eyes. “Find what you were looking for? Or were you just talking to West?”

“Just lost myself in thought for a second,” I answered. “And as far as I can tell, West is still sleeping. Or maybe hiding. I’m not sure. In any case though, I’m thinking practicing with Shape Blood is a good place to start. The higher I can get my Bloodshaping, the better I’ll be able to use my powers.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Val said before giving me a questioning look. “So, uh, how do we start? You don’t need to, um, cut yourself do you? To get the blood for your Blood Pool, I mean.”

“Thank the System, but no, I don’t,” I said as I called up the necessary power in question and a stream of blood began to flow into my palm from a small, almost-painless opening in my hand. “I just call it forth and it does this. It doesn’t feel exactly comfortable, and I feel a bit exhausted and lightheaded when I call the blood, but it doesn’t really hurt. Kind of like a light scratch.”

“Small mercies,” my sister replied as she stepped in close to look at my hand while the blood streamed out, Val showing no signs of squeamishness. A trait that I completely understood given her ability to heal and, as a result, that she often treated serious injuries on a daily basis. “So how’s it work now that you have it in hand?”

“Sort of easily, I guess. I need to picture what I want the blood to do . . . and it does it,” I said as I splayed my fingers out wide and the blood formed itself into a somewhat irregularly shaped square shield, similar to the ones I’d made yesterday. “Well, sort of. It still feels . . . I don’t know, wobbly in my hand. Like if I lost my concentration, it would just fall apart.”

“Interesting,” Val said, watching intently as I moved the shield before me, its form rippling and distorting with the motion. “Think you can improve on that with more focus? Like if you wanted it to be completely smooth and hard.”

“A good question,” I said as I glanced down at the square of blood and mentally tried to do what Val had suggested, picturing the shield smooth and properly formed in my mind. After several seconds of trying, I was forced to give up, the blood continuing to ripple and wobble in my grip.

“Nothing,” I said as I moved on to waving the shield through the air before me, noticing it catch the air and distort further, but otherwise stay intact. “Maybe it’s supposed to be this way? At least until I can improve my skill in controlling it. Oh, and also maybe get a better Psyche score. My Schema says that its linked to that attribute, and it’s not particularly high at all right now.”

“More practice will definitely help with that,” Val said as she rubbed her chin thoughtfully at me. “In more ways than one, too. If you put in a good amount of work in raising the skill, you should get a good boost in Psyche. You can catch up fast if you work at it.”

“The trick to that being ‘work,’” I replied in a dry tone as I tried to shape the blood into a sword, but ended up with something that looked more like a club than anything else. “A lot of work.”

“Then we’d best get started,” Val said with a surge of enthusiasm as she motioned for me to wait for a second. “Here, let me get a few random training weapons and other things that you can practice your shaping with. No sense in letting all that blood go to waste now that you pulled it out.”

Not having any objection to her plan, the two of us then spent the better part of the next hour working away on practicing my shaping. An hour during which I managed to work up not only a colossal headache, but also managed to learn more about my Bloodshaping ability.

And how terrible I was at using it.

“Oh, come on, Auric, focus!” Val said to me at one point, her words arriving just a second before the club she was holding slammed into my poorly formed shield and partially caught me on the forearm, leaving an instant bruise. “That’s a terrible shield! If this was a sword I’d have taken half your arm off.”

“If that was a sword, I’d have let you take my arm off in hopes of it ending my misery,” I replied with a wince as I went to reach for my damaged arm.

Having begun slowly, we first started our practice session with me learning how to shape my blood into the variety of basic weapons that Val had brought out. Taking only a few minutes each, it wasn’t long until I was able to form crude impressions of a sword, a club, and a spear. We’d tried to include an axe in the mix as well, but for whatever reason, I found the bladed end particularly hard to shape, no doubt due to my lack of skill, and we eventually gave up in favor of moving on to highly controlled sparring.

Taking extreme care, given yesterday’s experience and how easily I’d accidentally severed Len’s hand, Val and I slowly worked up a sweat by having me block a series of attacks from her in an attempt to familiarize myself with my new weaponry. It was a process that taught me the limitations of the blood at my disposal.

First off, the crimson liquid didn’t behave the same way a normal weapon did, its ever-flowing nature causing its balance to constantly writhe and shift with not only every move I made, but with my thoughts as well. If I happened to lose my concentration or let my mind wander too far, the blood quickly lost its shape and flowed back into a sphere centered on either one of my hands. Then secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I discovered that practically any substantial use of the blood at my command, such as blocking a strike or attacking something, caused a portion of it to either dissipate or lose containment on contact, reducing the total blood I had at my command. While not completely excessive in terms of my overall Blood Pool, it was still as clear a sign as any that I couldn’t rely on my blood alone as a primary weapon and that I still needed to rely on more tangible weaponry for the foreseeable future.

Once we’d discovered those limitations, and I pulled myself a new pair of shortswords from the tower armory, we then shifted our focus into me integrating the blood that I had on hand into my fighting style, using my ability to shape it as needed to intercept Val’s attacks.

And then West woke up and decided to get involved.

<Your movements are as sloppy as your form is revolting,> she told me in a blunt tone as she awoke, her sudden voice causing my focus to lapse, and for Val’s practice sword to connect with my chest.

“Oof, ow!” I exclaimed with a wheeze, holding up a hand to stop Val’s apology before she could get it out. “Not your fault. West woke up and distracted me.”

<As if such a thing could be the fault of your failure,> West stated with the equivalent of what I took to be a scoff. <I’ve seen freshly hatched drones move with more alacrity than you.>

“Oh, come on, I can’t be that bad,” I replied with a grumble as I wiped a line of sweat from my eyebrow. “I survived everything that happened yesterday.”

<Only because you somehow encountered creatures more inept than yourself,> West countered. <A grand providence from the Great Web, I am certain.>

“Okay, fine, then, I’m inept but lucky. There are worse things to be,” I said, seeing Val’s eyebrows continue to rise in question, but she did not say anything just yet. “But if you actually wanted to help, you could do exactly that. Instead of just putting me down.”

<I thought you would never ask,> West replied in an eager tone. <Give me the blood.>

“W-wha?” I stammered back in response. “What do you mean, ‘give you the blood’?”

<Exactly as my words state. Release its control to me,> my mental companion told me with a tone I thought to be eagerness. <You clearly know not how to wield it to its maximum potential, especially not while controlling these feeble limbs of yours at the same time. I will ease your burden. I will be your sting.>

“Uh, sure, why not?” I said as I turned to focus back on Val and quickly explained our conversation.

“I think that sounds pretty exciting,” she replied eagerly when I asked if she was comfortable in proceeding. “It’ll be as if I’m fighting you both at the same time.”

Unsure if I shared the same excitement as my sister, the three of us this time then resumed our practice session, with West in complete control of my Blood Pool, which to my surprise took her no time at all to get the hang of wielding. Easily shaping the blood into claw-like appendages, she was able to fight with them independent of me almost from the get-go; in fact, the only major learning curve that we had was me timing my own movements to give her the best positioning for her to attack. It wasn’t something that we were going to figure out immediately, but even in our short training session we’d made stellar progress towards that goal, giving West and me a solid foundation to continue building upon for the future.

“Ugh, okay, I think it’s time for a break,” I went on to say as the little blood I still had in my Blood Pool picked that moment to lose cohesion, falling to the ground with a wet splat before it started to dissolve completely, leaving not so much as a trace behind. An unexpected trait that we were exceptionally thankful for, lest we be forced to clean up increasingly larger amounts of blood the longer we practiced. “I’m starting to get dizzier and dizzier the longer we go at this. I need a bit of time to stop my head from spinning.”

<I would agree as well,> West echoed tiredly. <It is liberating to finally have something to wield beyond your flesh. But it is taxing to use a long while yet.>

“Works for me,” Val said, breathing heavily from our exertions. “And you’ve both made awesome progress so far! How far has your Bloodshaping skill progressed since we first started?”

“Um, sixty-three percent,” I replied as I checked my Schema. “Just a little bit for me to go until I reach level five. I guess that’s not bad at all for a little over an hour’s worth of work.”

“Not bad?” Val repeated, her eyebrows rising upwards. “Not bad? Auric, I might maybe get a five percent gain in a skill with an hour’s worth of training behind it at my level. You enjoy your gains while you still can. They’ll slow down before you know it, and fast. Unless of course you plan to fight for your life while you train; that sort of training is always faster.”

“And infinitely more deadly,” I replied, knowing exactly what she meant.

Traditional training, like we were doing, was rewarded slowly by the System, its low relative risk granting a small, but consistent progress. More risky training, such as clearing and sealing a gate or fighting others under lethal conditions, granted a substantially faster progression, allowing people to advance by leaps and bounds if they survived it.

I have to wonder if that’s part of what leads A- and B-Tiers to lead such violent lives, I thought idly, remembering all too well the violent stories Amedea had told us over the years of high tiers rampaging and killing everything in their way, regardless of whether they were humans or Gateborn. It was supposedly that bloodthirsty thinking that had led to the Second War of the Fallen almost three decades earlier, which had consumed nearly half the continent from what Amedea had told us. Of course, they might have just been addicted to power in any form and wanted to expand their reach to anyone and everyone they possibly could.

Letting out a brief sigh at that train of thought, I promptly banished it and focused back on the present, sheathing the one knife that I’d been holding in my free hand.

“I think I’m gonna head over to the workshop for a little while,” I said to her. “I have a new cuirass that I’ve been working on over the last few weeks. It’s almost done, too. Just needs to be sized and finished off. Plus, I want to put those motes we found to use.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Val replied as she shouldered the practice sword she was holding. “I’m going to go through the rest of my forms and exercises and see if that settles my nerves. If it doesn’t . . . I might try a few circuits up and down the tower. Can’t be anxious if you’re dead tired, right?”

“I’m not sure about that,” I said with a mock shudder in response to Val’s desire to willingly sprint up and then down several flights of stairs. “But it’s worth a shot?”

“I appreciate the enthusiasm there, little brother,” Val said with a snort, and then promptly began to shoo me away. “Go. Sort out your armor, and then come find me when you’re done. If I’m not face down in a pile of my own sweat by then, we’ll get back to work on putting you and West through your paces again.”

“Why does that sound like a threat?”

“Because it is, little brother,” my sister said with a grin. “Because it is.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Power isn’t the only thing that one gains as they advance through the tiers, but is rather simply the most obvious difference that is seen by those looking onwards with covetous eyes. In truth, what is actually gained as one advances from D-Tier to C-tier, then from there to B-Tier and possibly even A-Tier, is the freeing of potential. The potential to change and shape the world in a way that our forebearers, the ones from the World Before, could only dream. What is tragic, however, is that potential is almost always squandered, turned inward to serve one’s selfishness and greed, rather than used for the benefit of Humanity.

—A speech on responsibilities and obligations to the Blueridge Council of Elders by Amedea Jackson

I entered the workshop brimming with more energy than I usually did when I found myself in the place. As a person, I’d never really thought myself the most creative sort, so working with my hands to make things, regardless of what it was, was more of a survival necessity than a passion. With how tight things tended to get during the winters, or droughts, or other hard times, everyone in Blueridge needed to know how to make things stretch a little bit further or how to fix broken things so that they didn’t go to waste.

And I, of course, was no exception.

From as soon as I was old enough to be considered responsible, Amedea had insisted that I started to learn the basics of being able to make and mend my own clothes. For despite their position in the town, even Salvo couldn’t afford to throw out a pair of pants or a shirt just because they had a hole or tear in them. From there, that tutelage eventually expanded out to include Blueridge’s specialty trade, leatherworking, which, thanks to the town’s ready access to the wild and the penchant for any of the invading Gateborn to be more animal-like creatures, made it relatively easy to get supplies.

So it was over the years that followed that I was able to pick up and learn enough of the two trades so that I was able to be mostly self-sufficient, capable of making and mending basic things to keep myself outfitted. Part of that was also managing my own armor, something that everyone in Salvo had point-blank insisted on, their logic being that there was no one better invested than oneself to ensure that their equipment was properly taken care of.

Especially when the equipment in question often spelled the difference between life and death.

It was that pressure, and also undeniable logic, that had prompted me to embark on crafting the cuirass that I now saw before me, the last few exceptionally busy days having left it sitting half-forgotten on the mannequin I’d last hung it on.

Doesn’t look like there’s much left to do, I said to myself as I inspected the mostly made armor, trying to familiarize myself on where I’d left off while also using the opportunity to brush off the layer of sawdust that had fallen across it. With its multipurpose nature, the workshop was a busy place, and it was clear from the mess left behind that several people had been here since the last time I had been.

Ugh, probably Curshaw or Mercutio, I thought with a half grimace as I shifted away from my inspection to clean up the tools and other scraps that had been left in the open. Neither of them tend to clean up after themselves in here when they’re finished. Only Constance does, and Sumalin rarely, if ever, uses the place.

Busying myself for the next few minutes, I quickly restored the room to a functional state, a period during which I felt West begin to stir again and make her presence known in my mind.

<Have a good rest?> I asked after hearing a disembodied chorus of warbling chitters echo through my mind, a sound that I interpreted as a yawn.

<It was . . . sufficient.> West’s answer came a moment later, her voice sounding particularly disoriented. <Where . . . where are we? This room smells . . . peculiar. Like flesh. But not.>

<We’re in the tower workshop,> I replied, slowly glancing around the room so she could see it through my vision. <And I think what you’re smelling is the leather in the room. It’s animal skin that has been tanned and cured.>

<For what purpose?> the Gateborn queried, curiosity evident in her tone. <Its stench does not make it seem appealing to devour.>

<That’s just the salt and other stuff we use for the curing process. The leather is not intended for eating, but rather armor,> I answered as I made my way across the room towards my cuirass. <See? This is just like the armor I wore yesterday, just a little different.>

<A moment,> West said to me in confusion. <You mean to say that you did not grow the shell you wore before?>

<Grow it?> I repeated, it taking me a moment to understand exactly what she meant. <Oh, you mean . . . no. I didn’t grow it. We humans can’t do that. This leather is from a creature that was hunted and skinned. We then used that skin to make armor like this. And other things, too.>

<You . . . you use skin of the fallen to create your own shell?> West’s voice was incredulous as she spoke. <But you vanquished them. Why would you dress yourself in their weakness? They were unable to stand up to your might. Consume them and grow stronger, yes. But to wear their shell instead of devouring it . . . that only invites their failure onto oneself.>

I blinked several times as I processed what West had just said, my head slowly shaking from side to side as I eventually formed a reply.

<That’s . . . that’s not how we humans think exactly,> I said as I tried to find the words to articulate myself and my species’ culture, once again reminded of how alien West’s was. <Nor how we work. Our bodies don’t grow armor naturally. We need to make it ourselves with our hands.>

<Out of the fallen,> West stated.

<Not always,> I replied, shuffling over towards a pile of scrap metal that had once been a part of Curshaw’s armor. <We also use metal to make our armor out of. See?>

A thought occurred to me then, and I asked another question before West could reply. <You did have metal on your world . . .right?>

<If what you hold in your hand is this “metal,” then yes,> West said. <It smells the same as what I remember upon my world, even if its form was different.>

<Different how?> I asked as I put the piece of scrap back.

<That it was not found as this,> she told me, a series of uncertain chitters and pops sounding out in my mind. <It was found in the deep. In the Loam-That-Lies-Beneath. A treasured, most tasteful find, one that allowed our shells, teeth, and claws to grow ever more powerful.>

<Hold a second,> I said, feeling something click in my mind as she finished speaking. <You ate . . . the metal?>

<Of course, how else were we to use it for our growth?>

<Ah,> I said, everything about West’s perspective suddenly making sense to me. <In that case, we humans are very different, West. Sure, we eat food. But we definitely can’t eat metal. Not the way it sounds like you and your kind can. We need to dig up the metal and shape it into what we need with our hands. The same with the skin and bones of the creatures we hunt to make our own armor. We can make it stronger, harder than it was before. Enough to protect us.>

<I see,> West said, another round of chitters accompanying her words. <Our kinds are truly different, then.>

<Maybe on the outside,> I replied as I moved to lift the armor off the mannequin and over onto the table so I could better work with it. <But I think we just might be similar enough on the inside where it counts the most.>

Receiving what I interpreted as a mental grunt from West at those words, I then busied myself with my mostly made armor, internally thankful for my prior laziness in finishing it off. With how much my body had changed since reaching A-Tier, the sizing for the jacket-like cuirass was now completely off, with me needing to pick apart several sections of stitching after I’d remeasured myself. Fortunately, there was more than enough material to work with afterwards, and I was able to readjust it with a minimal amount of effort.

Once I was happy with the sizing, I turned my attention to the large inner pockets that I’d sewn into the underside of the armor, slipping in an iron plate I’d bought into the space and packing it on either side with padding. Designed to protect from piercing or slashing attacks, I hoped that they would add in a much-needed layer of protection over and above my old cuirass, which had simply been made of toughened leather.

Of course, I also hoped that I wouldn’t ever be in a position where something would be trying to stab or cut me again, but I had decided that it was better to be prepared and protected, rather than bleeding out or drowning from a punctured lung.

But that of course might be too much to hope for now that I’m an A-Tier, I thought idly to myself as I finished sewing a final pocket shut, tying off and knotting the thread before cutting away the excess. Once that was done, I retrieved the Mote of Resilience that we’d looted from Damon and the others, pressing the spongy orb against the leather and expending a single charge of the power that it bore. Once it was done, I found a new set of knives from the tower’s weapon collection, this time better crafted ones than my previous set and repeated the same process with the mote.

“There,” I said as set the orb back down into the box I’d taken it from and took a final look at my new weapons and armor, seeing their System text appear in my vision, along with a second message I wasn’t expecting.

Resilient Tempered Steel Long Knife

Tier: C

Item Class: Empowered

Weapon Damage: 27-38 Slashing

Condition: 600/600

Empowered: Resilient: +10% Damage to Edged and Piercing Weapons

Resilient Hardened Leather Cuirass

Tier: C

Item Class: Empowered

Armor: 99

Condition: 300/300

Empowered: Resilient: +15% Damage Reduction against Piercing and Slashing attacks

Your skill in Leathercraft has improved to Level 11 – Tier C Passive Unlocked!

Heightened Craft: Items and equipment created through the use of this trade have their attributes increased by 10%.

Oh, nice! I exclaimed as I saw the System text appear across my vision, my eyes flicking between it and the newly completed armor description, which I couldn’t help but notice was now ranked as C-Tier quality. I’d completely forgotten that I was capped out on all of my skills after advancing tiers. I’m due to get the C-Tier bonuses for almost everything as soon as I have the time to level them.

But before I could do anything to celebrate my advancement, I felt West stir inside my mind once again, a mixed sense of both curiosity and confusion emanating out from her.

<And again more of these symbols from your “System” appear across your vision,> she said without warning. <Ever since I have awoken within your mind, I have seen them appear and vanish seemingly without reason. What are they? Is this your people’s Great Web attempting to speak with you?>

<Uh, in a way, I guess,> I replied, caught a little off guard by her words before remembering what she’d said yesterday. <You said that when you were back on your world, you didn’t have any gates, or see any numbers, er, symbols like this in your vision, right?>

<None at all,> she answered. <Our Great Web spoke to us either during our slumber, or in cryptic whispers heard on the wind. Occasionally, the strongest of my kind would hear it speak during their molts, and I myself heard it once, though its words were brief.>

<Really? What did it say? And how did it happen?> I asked, the mental words escaping me before I could stop them, causing me to backpedal. <Er, I mean if that’s not too personal to share.>

<The Great Web’s words always bear wisdom worth sharing,> West replied, not taking any offense at my eagerness. <I had just vanquished a vicious foe after a mighty and exhausting hunt, falling upon their remains and beginning to devour them, both as my due and to honor their prowess. It was after this, after I finished consuming them and began to process their essence into my own that I felt compelled to molt, and after finding a suitable place, I did.

<It was during that time that the Great Web reached out to me with the whisper “And so you shall be a Paragon of your kind.” They were words that—a moment, what is wrong?>

<It-it said Paragon?> I asked, West’s mention of the word having sent an ice-cold shiver down my spine and making me forget the thousand other questions I had regarding her story. <You’re sure of that?>

<As anything I’ve ever been in my life,> she replied confidently. <I would have sooner willingly severed my stinger than have forgotten the Great Web’s words. Why do you ask?>

<Because when I finished the gate, after I . . . uh, killed you, the System granted me the Paragon class,> I said. <I wonder if there is a connection. There has to be, right?>

<Perhaps,> West said, her own curiosity blooming in response. <The goals and whispers of the Great Web are often beyond our understanding. It is all we can do to stride forward a single step at a time and hope that it will be made clear to us.>

<I’m sorry, West, but right now I’m not sure if I have the same faith that you—> I started to reply only to cut myself off as something flashed across my vision, accompanied immediately by West’s voice.

<And another string of symbols appear,> she said. <What does it tell you now? You’ve done nothing but stand in place.>

<Just give me a second to read it and I’ll tell you,> I answered back as I focused on the text, it taking a second for my eye to process it.

Primary Task Updated – Schema Processing Complete – Memory Fragment Recovered

Play Recovered Memory Now?

I blinked, completely dumbfounded at the text after I’d finished reading it, my mind going blank for several seconds as I struggled to process what it’d said. It wasn’t until a growl from West snapped me out of my shock that I started to move and think again.

<Well? What does it say?> she demanded eagerly.

<It-it says that the System has a recovered memory,> I answered, my attention still fixed on the text as I spoke. <One from the group that I . . . that I killed yesterday. The System just finished processing it.>

<A memory?> West repeated, the words accompanied by a curious chitter. <I wonder then what it holds.>

<There’s only one way to find out,> I said, an unexpected surge of anxiety shooting through me at the thought of what the memory could contain. <It’s asking me if I want to see it.>

<Wait, it offers you its wisdom and you burn your time speaking with me instead?> West asked incredulously. <Do not leave your Great Web waiting, lest you somehow offend it! Have it impart whatever it wishes to impart!>

<All right, all right, just calm down a second,> I answered back, West’s overwhelming insistence and volume causing my earlier headache to return full force. It was clear to me that whatever world she came from, she’d enjoyed a completely different relationship with her version of the System than we had with ours. One that, if I was right, seemed to border on near-religious reverence.

But then again, we had those kind of people in our world too, so perhaps there wasn’t much of a difference after all.

Shrugging that thought to the side for later as I took in a deep breath, I then mentally confirmed the prompt before me, only then remembering the promise I’d made to Amedea to tell her the instant the System spoke again to me.

A little late for that now! I exclaimed to myself with an abrupt feeling of vertigo as my vision began to shift and darken. Flailing to maintain my balance, I caught myself on the edge of a nearby table and used it to lower myself to the floor until I was seated. A good thing, too, because the next thing I knew as my vision snapped back into focus was that I had not only completely lost the feeling of my body, but that I was now somewhere else.

What . . . where . . . where am I? I thought as my vision cleared to reveal a moving forest floor ahead of me, along with a vague sense of exhaustion, thanks to a heavy load on my back. My first instinct at that point was to try and look upwards in order to get my bearings, but I discovered that I wasn’t able to move my head, or anything else for that matter.

It’s because I’m in a memory, I told myself, working to cut off the internal panic at the unexpected loss of control before it could fully take hold of me. I’m just here for the ride . . . to watch whatever happened. To see whatever the System wants me to see.

Fortunately, I didn’t need to wait long at that either, my vision soon panning upwards to reveal a heavily loaded wagon with a quartet of horses attached, twice as many as were needed to pull it. But that particular piece of information was only peripherally absorbed by my mind, my attention fixating on the man I saw lazily sitting on its edge.

Damon, I thought, feeling a surge of anger bloom in my heart as I recognized the man. Nor was I the only one, with West’s presence stirring in my mind the second he appeared.

<I recall this invader,> she said to me as we continued to stride forward towards the man, angling ever so slightly towards the rear of the wagon. <He was one among your group who attacked me within the world-splinter.>

<Yes, he was,> I replied. Damon did not give either of us so much as a second glance as we approached, but was instead completely focused on cleaning and trimming his fingernails with a small knife.

“This should be the last load,” I heard a familiar voice echo out from the host whose perspective I was watching from, one that I pegged as belonging to Len. “Just have Jon and Merrick doing a last sweep for anything else worth taking.”

“Good,” Damon replied, looking completely bored with the news as he continued onwards with his self-grooming, my perspective eventually losing sight of him as I rounded the wagon to its open back. “And the others? What about them?”

“Herded up like good boys and girls,” I heard Len answer as the weight on my back shifted and a thick burlap sack came into view a second before it was unceremoniously tossed up and into the back of the wagon, landing on top of two already-stacked crates. “Didn’t give us any problems. The sliver was enough to get them moving.”

“They’d be stupid to try anything,” the other man agreed. “But then again, I’ve seen some spectacular stupidity in my day. So it pays to be careful.”

“Sure does,” Len said with a snort as he came around the wagon again and glanced back up at Damon. “So what’s next after this? This job’s as good as done, and it’s rare we don’t already have marchin’ orders for the next.”

There was a pause as Damon finally looked up from his hands and down towards us, a thin smile creeping across his face. “Ha, well, I guess I can finally tell you now, can’t I? My turn is what’s next. Just got the word at our last stop, was told to keep it close to my chest a while.”

“Are you serious? That’s about time!” my host exclaimed, banging the side of the wagon once in excitement. “And here I thought they were stringing us along with sunshine and honey. Well, at least they finally dropped us the sliver, but you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Damon replied with a laugh as he shifted from his position atop of the wagon and dropped to the ground. “Our next step after dropping off our haul will be to head over to Blueridge in two days. We have a contact prepping two groups. One for me . . . and one for another. Don’t know who. Been told that once they’re done, you and Jon are next in line.”

“Shit, that fast?” Len asked, excitement clear in his voice. “Thought it would be a while. Didn’t want to get my hopes up.”

“That fast,” Damon said with a nod. “Things are apparently picking up. Don’t ask me why. Still on the outside looking in.”

“For now,” my host stated, his head then promptly turning towards the sounds of approaching feet, which resolved themselves to be both Jon and Merrik, the remainder of Damon’s entourage that I’d fought against.

“Scoured everything. Nothing worthwhile left to take,” Jon said by way of greeting. “We’re good to go.”

“Then we’ll get ready to do exactly that,” Damon said, his gaze glancing over towards my host while a hand flicked in the direction of the horses. “Mind steadying them, Len? They always get antsy when I call on our friends.”

“Can’t blame ’em,” Len said with a short chuckle as our perspective shifted to follow him, the man climbing up onto the wagon and settling into its driver’s seat. “I do too.”

“You’d best keep your ears shut, then,” Damon said with a dark laugh that instantly sent a chill down my disembodied spine. “Because this is likely going to be loud.”

He turned as he was speaking, my vision panning away from the horses just in time to see Damon pull a dark red crystal from under his shirt, the object having been hanging loosely from a string around his neck. With the shard beginning to glow as he gripped it with a hand, I saw him close his eyes in concentration, silence then falling over the group as everyone patiently waited for whatever came next.

“Steady there, girls,” I heard Len say as the horses all simultaneously let out a nervous whine, their demeanor changing almost instantly to one of fear. At first I was confused at what could have provoked such a reaction and was about to voice such to West.

But then I heard it. Heard the noise that was rapidly approaching.

Beginning slowly at first and then growing rapidly until all I could hear was chittering mixed in with the sound of rushing feet, a horde of sprab drones abruptly broke through the forest all around us. Appearing exactly as what I remembered seeing during my own encounter with them, each and every one of them swayed drunkenly as they ran, several of them tripping or falling the instant that they came into view, only to pick themselves up and continue scrambling forward. But not to attack my host and the others in the clearing. Instead, they all charged straight past the group, ignoring us as if we weren’t even there and continuing straight along the path that Jon and Merrik had appeared from.

Which was right around the point where West decided to screech louder than I had ever heard her, the noise causing my mind to explode into agony.

<Ah! West! What are you doing? That really hurts! Stop!> I shouted, wishing that I had hands to clamp my ears with, even if it wouldn’t have helped.

<That is my kind!> West shouted back to me, her screech boiling itself into a rush of clicks and pops, that threatened to make my head explode. As it was, my vision was already starting to blur as everything started to turn dark and swirl once more. <What have they done to them? They look sick. Frail. Weak. I must find them! Where is this place, Broodkiller? This swarm needs me! We must—>

I felt something hard slam abruptly into my face, the sheer impact behind it silencing West’s voice and replacing it with another.

“Auric! Stop screaming!” I heard Val’s voice shout at me from what had to be point-blank range, my vision abruptly returning to see her kneeling directly over me. “Tell me what’s wrong and I can try to help! Tell me—”

“Ravenstead,” I said to her, realization slamming into my mind as the last vestiges of the memory released their grip on me, leaving me lying flat on my back and in the workshop once more. “We have to go to Ravenstead. It’s been attacked.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Over the mountain and through the crag,

To Ravenstead we go.

Leave safety and sense and life behind,

To Ravenstead we go.

Through the old vale and up crooked creek—

For fortune and folly and fools we seek—

To Ravenstead, to Ravenstead,

To Ravenstead we go!

—A Mother’s Warning to the Adventurous Youth of Blueridge Retreat

* * *

“It looks awfully quiet down there,” Val said under her breath as we crept forward, both of us lying flat on our stomachs. “That’s a bit strange for the middle of the day, no? Figure everyone should be out and about working.”

“They should be,” I said as I considered the homestead down in the valley ahead, something that I truly hadn’t expected to see so intact. At the moment, we were prone on the mountainside leading into the valley, hidden on a little ledge about halfway down. It was the best position that we could find that was both close enough to see something, but also far enough to hopefully not be seen by someone else. “Honestly, though, I’m more surprised to see that everything looks to be still standing. I don’t know what I expected . . . but I almost figured the place would be half destroyed, or hollowed out from fire. Really anything other than dead quiet.”

<And why would you think to expect such?> West asked me, her soft chitters and pops whispering through my mind. <Even sick and uncared for, each and every one of my brood are skilled hunters. They would leave no sign of their passage if they didn’t wish to.>

<So skilled that they even closed the door behind them?> I countered as my eye shifted towards the distant homestead’s palisade gate which even from our vantage point I could tell was closed. <Something here isn’t right.>

<It certainly is not,> West agreed. <And the fact that you can sense that means there may be hope yet for your future as a hunter.>

<Very funny,> I replied dryly before turning my full attention back towards Ravenstead in an attempt to figure out what was setting my teeth on edge.

It had been a long morning since the System had shown West and me the memory it had recovered from Len, the hours separating now and then having blurred together in my mind. After Val picked me up off the floor and I assured her there was nothing wrong with me, we had both done our best to calm West, who, for understandable reasons, had continued to scream and shout about the horde of sprabs we’d seen in the memory.

Apparently the very same horde of sprabs that Val and I had encountered during our last foray into Raven Branch Valley, who by some sheer coincidence, or perhaps design, happened to belong to the same species as West.

But the only way that I had any success in calming her was by telling her everything that we’d seen in our last encounter with them. That and also promising action, action to go and find exactly what had happened to them and how they ended up in the control of someone like Damon. That unfortunately left us—or me, rather—in a particular pickle, since I had promised Amedea that I would tell her when the System finally replied back to me after processing the Schemas I’d inadvertently collected. It was a promise that I’d completely intended to keep this time as well, full-well knowing how thin the ice was beneath my feet with how many times I’d either acted out or went haring off on my own.

But this time, I couldn’t find her or anyone else from Salvo to save my life, the group all having left the tower, and by extension, Blueridge without saying so much as a word as to their destination to either us or the tower guards, Carter and McKinney. We’d even gone as far as to inquire with the town watch as to what direction they’d all left in earlier that morning, only to receive a blank stare in response along with the question “What do you mean they left?”

By that point in time, West was starting to lose patience again with us, the constant dead ends making her demand that we stop wasting time and leave to go investigate Ravenstead and the sprabs before it was too late. Given that her screaming directly affected me and my ability to think, stand, eat, and generally function as a human being, I soon found myself agreeing with her, scrawling out a brief note to tack onto Amedea’s door before grabbing my equipment and heading out. Val, of course, followed West and me, making sure to tell the both of us how reckless we were being for the first half of our journey before seamlessly switching tracks and trying to wring out every single detail we’d seen or experienced while viewing Len’s memory.

Which had included mention of a second group preparing for another gate-stealing run.

Not that there is anything that we can do about that right now, I thought as I continued to stare, my mind replaying its events for what had to be the thousandth time this morning. With how little information we’d had to go on, and how pressed we were to get moving, all that we’d been able to do was ask the town watch to keep an extra eye on any large groups heading into or out of town. Something that we were assured that they did anyway. Unfortunately, there was simply not enough other information to offer, or to even follow up on, because for all we knew, the other group of gate stealers could have left the same time I did on my own excursion days earlier, making it a waste of time to ask.

The only thing that we had truly learned for certain from the memory was that Damon and his group had been to and done something to Ravenstead and its inhabitants, a connection that I had only been able to make because of our accidental encounter with the horde. So far the Gateborn had limited themselves to that region and not traveled much further, which made it not only easy to guess the location, but had also served a second purpose in isolating the already out-of-the-way settlement even further. The distance, combined with the added danger the roaming Gateborn represented, made it simply too dangerous to travel there in recent weeks.

At least for people who weren’t as reckless as Val and I; the two of us clearly hadn’t learned our lesson after nearly being eaten the last time we’d gone out this way.

To put the icing on the cake, it was a string of logic that the System happened to agree with, the mysterious, god-like entity having updated the primary task that it had assigned to me, one that I had left hanging in my vision to constantly refer to.

Assigned Tasks:

Primary Task: Journey to Local Region known as “Ravenstead” to investigate information recovered from processed Schema memory.

Secondary Task: Using Obtained Information from Primary Task, determine the location of the local Splinter of Entropy as well as any child Slivers or Shards.

Tertiary Task: Purge any and all instances of Entropy located or encountered from Secondary Task by using the assigned subroutine.

“I’ve got nothing,” I finally said after a few more minutes of watching, unable to find anything that stood out. “Think we need to risk getting closer.”

“You realize that the last time we got closer to something, something terrible happened, right?” Val asked, her head shifting to give me a wary look.

“You’re not wrong,” I replied with a tired smile that I turned into a feeble shrug as I continued speaking. “But we also found the answer we were looking for that time, too.”

“By almost getting eaten,” Val stated. “That’s a bad thing, if you’re not sure, by the way.”

“You don’t say.” I grunted as I moved to push myself up and back onto my feet. “Come on, let’s go. The sooner we can figure out what happened here, the sooner we can be on our way back.”

Moving carefully, the two of us then began the process of descending back down into the valley before us, taking pains to make sure that neither of us slipped and started a hundred-plus-foot slide into uncaring trees and rocks. It made for slow going at first, until we got the hang of moving down the rough escarpment that we’d approached the valley from. There had been easier routes for us to take, sure, but none were as direct as this one and would have added hours for us to make the roundabout journey. Fortunately, we eventually made it to the bottom of the slope without issue and from there made our way towards Ravenstead while keeping a sharp eye on our surroundings.

“Looks even more like a tomb now that we’re close to it,” I said once we were practically on top of the settlement, having stopped at the edge of the tree line where we could still remain hidden. “Don’t see anyone on the walls or in the watchtower. Can’t hear anything from inside, either.”

“And the air is clean, even from this close,” Val added from beside me, hands cradling her new crossbow that she had strapped across her shoulder, having grown particularly attached to the weapon practically overnight. Something that I couldn’t blame her for in the slightest. A well-made crossbow was almost priceless in today’s day and age, let alone an empowered one.

“Which means there are no fires at all, not even a small one to boil water on or help keep warm,” I whispered back, feeling a chill creep up my spine as I considered what to do next, my eyes fixating on the palisade, which was made from rows of cut trees, all tied and nailed together such that they almost made a gap-free wall. From here, I could see that the larger gaps between trees had been filled with what looked like hardened clay, leaving no easy handholds for anyone looking to scale the wall or force their way through it. But that didn’t mean there weren’t any gaps in the settlement-spanning barricade, my eyes picking out several smaller pinpricks of light that hadn’t been patched. Pinpricks that were just about the right size for a prying eye to press up and look through.

“Gonna take an even closer look and try to peer through the wall,” I told Val, who nodded in agreement at my plan, the two of us then stalking forward towards the settlement until we were quite literally within knocking distance.

“Looks like the inside is the same as the outside,” I whispered as I pressed my face against a gap and took in the view beyond. Which from my current vantage point revealed several small gardens with thin fences around them, the base of the watchtower guarding the presently closed palisade gate, and the first of the five or so buildings contained within the wall.

“Can’t see anyone at all. Everything looks to be abandoned, but without any time to prepare,” I continued, pausing to glance at Val as she found her own eyehole to peer through. “I see doors still open, windows not shut. It’s like everyone went out for a quick walk . . . and just didn’t come back.”

“I see it too,” Val said as she squinted through a crack. “Look at the leaves in the doorway of the house straight ahead. There’s a huge pile blown right in, and no one’s been around to sweep them out. I’d guess no one’s been here in at least a day. Maybe even two or three.”

<Possibly longer, even,> West said to me. <For I cannot smell any sustenance or even fresh droppings on the wind. Something I’d expect even your dull senses to pick up on.>

“Which lines up with the memory,” I replied, ignoring the last part of West’s jibe as the chill that I’d felt earlier returned, except even more intense. “I guess that they huddled them all together somewhere like the memory hinted at. Then they sent the horde West and I saw . . .”

My voice trailed off as I abruptly found myself unable to continue speaking.

“Yeah, it must have,” Val finished with a grim nod, her face pale. “Or at least it’s really, really looking that way.”

“Worth an even closer look, you think?” I asked, already dreading what we might find within if we did.

“We came this far,” Val replied in a soft tone, as if speaking any louder would attract unwanted attention. “We might as well be sure. If we can even get inside. Think you could climb this?”

“Uh, I think so,” I said as I glanced up at the wall then back at her, motioning for her to follow me. “But how about we check the gate out. It might just look closed. No sense in doing things the hard way first.”

Of course, as we soon discovered, that wasn’t an option either, the heavily reinforced gate not budging in the slightest when we leaned against it.

“Well, so much for that,” I grumbled as I moved to peer in between the two gate doors and saw hints of a thick bar set behind it. “Barred from the other side. I guess climbing is on the table after all.”

“I guess it is,” Val replied, pausing for a second to rub her chin in thought. “But that’s another thing that stands out. How did the gate get locked after Damon’s thugs got in? Either it was open and they locked the door behind them when they left, maybe by jumping off the wall . . . or the settlers thought they were friendly and invited them inside, closing it after. And then there’s the sprab, too. How’d they breach the wall? Doesn’t look like there was any fight at all.”

<They would not be safe from any of my kind behind a barrier such as this,> West said to me, having remained mostly silent up until this point. <It would be effortless for any drone to scale, even for one sick and infirm as we saw.>

“Yeah, West says that even a sick sprab would be able to climb this wall without even a second thought,” I said while glancing upwards at the gate and nearby wall, trying to gauge where was better to climb. “But if they locked the door behind them . . . there’s a chance they wanted to keep something in rather than out.”

“Well, thanks, Auric, that’s a super cheery thought that makes me even more nervous about what we’re about to find inside waiting for us,” Val said more than a little anxiously before pausing to regain her composure. “So how do you want to do this? I have a rope in my pack, but I’m not sure what we’ll catch it on up top. It looks like they made the wall right.”

“That they did,” I agreed as I finished my inspection of the two surfaces and made my choice. “And that’s why I’m going to try climbing the gate. Not only is it shorter, but it looks like there are more handholds to work with.”

“Handholds?” Val queried dubiously. “You think you can make it up emptyhanded?”

“No, not emptyhanded,” I said as I siphoned off just enough health to fill my Blood Pool and held up a floating sphere of blood in my palm. “But rather, blood-handed.”

“Ugh, that was terrible and you should be ashamed,” my sister replied, rolling her eyes so intently I was worried she’d lost them. At least until they came back to glare at me as she reached out to heal the health that I had sacrificed. “And maybe not the best timing either, all things considered.”

“I’ll maybe agree on the second point, but not the first,” I replied, thanking her with a nod as I split the blood between both of my hands and went on to shape each of them into a rough imitation of climbing claws. “There, see what I mean now? This should make it easy.”

Receiving a dubious grunt from Val in response I then set about the task of proving myself right, making my way over towards the palisade gate and beginning my ascent. Or at least I tried to, my first two attempts not quite working out as I’d hoped, prompting West to suggest a litany of adjustments to the way I’d shaped my new climbing claws. It made my third climbing attempt successful though, and the next thing I knew I was swinging a leg over the top of the gate and beginning my descent down the other side.

“Huh, so it worked. Color me impressed,” was all that Val said a minute later after I reached the ground and unbarred the gate, pushing it open on somewhat loud, groaning hinges that had the both of us wincing.

“Well, I would have preferred that to be a little bit quieter, but I guess there’s no way we could have known,” I said as I shifted all of my blood to one hand and pulled one of my knives free. I was hoping that I wouldn’t need it, but the silence and stillness of the place was starting to take its toll on me. “So where do you want to start?”

“On the edges, and then work our way in,” Val answered softly, motioning for me to take the lead as she readied her crossbow, which I promptly did, making our way over towards the nearest of the five houses within the palisade.

None of them were large as houses went, especially when compared to the luxury we enjoyed back in Blueridge, the Before Times construction of Blueridge making the buildings of Ravenstead look positively humble, if not rudimentary, even. They were all made of hand-sanded lumber, their roofs comprised of tree bark tile, and the tilting chimneys poking from the top built from stacked river stones. A feature that I considered almost reckless to include in such natural and flammable homes. But then again not everyone had the same luxury I had to live in the machine-shaped stone of a pre-System school that had withstood the tests of time.

Ever cautious, the two of us entered an open homestead slowly, the leaves that had blown in crunching beneath our feet. I glanced around carefully as I strode in, looking for the telltale signs of a struggle, but instead couldn’t find so much as a hair out of place. The room was clean, save for the leaves of course, and the little furniture there was all properly upright and straightened. Even the large double bed in the far corner of the single-room house was made, complete with a stacked arrangement of pillows on top.

“Just like everything else,” Val said with a whisper. “Abandoned without any sign of struggle. Look, there are dishes still on the table over there, and half-folded laundry on the chair.”

“Maybe they didn’t have time to resist?” I suggested as the two of us made our way back outside. “Or maybe they were just caught outside when Damon and the others arrived. Or in a town hall gathering, or religious service, if they had either of them here.”

“Maybe,” my sister said, the two of us angling our path towards another house. One that, after a brief search again, was completely unremarkable, save for one thing that I finally noticed.

“There’s no food anywhere,” I said, the realization occurring to me after I decided to open a cabinet in one of the kitchens and found it to be surprisingly bare. The discovery led me to search a handful of others with an identical result. “In the memory, Damon and his group were loading a bunch of stuff into their wagons from the place. I wonder if what they took was food. West said already that she couldn’t smell any, that could be why.”

“As good an explanation as any,” Val said as we made our way out of the second house. “But why would they need so much? There were just the five of them. The amount of food that would have been here . . . well, it would be a lot. Enough to last them months if it didn’t spoil. And that doesn’t include any of their livestock. We haven’t seen any of them around either. Unless of course the sprab ate them all.”

“No idea, Val. Just another mystery for the pile,” I said as I turned my attention on the next house in line, only to find that it wasn’t exactly a house, but rather a barn. Figuring that it was as good as any place for us to continue our search, I motioned for my sister to follow me, the two of us circling towards its front entrance and finding its doors open.

Or rather, hanging open, both of the twin doors that would have normally covered the entranceway canted at awkward angles, some of the hinges holding them in place having broken.

Eyes widening at the sight, I exchanged glances with Val as we finally found the first noticeable sign of damage in the place, our hearts beginning to race.

“Auric,” Val abruptly whispered as her eyes slid off of me and through the partially open doorway, the now-trembling crossbow in her hands rising upwards a second later to point. “Look.”

Hearing an ominous creak sound out as her words reached my ears, I turned my head just enough to look through the doorway, my eyes instantly landing on a collection of shadows within, shadows which my eyes resolved into humanoid figures.

Humanoid figures that all happened to be staring back at us with gleaming orange eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Five

It is widely thought that the System is infallible. That it can do no wrong. That it is fundamentally incapable of doing wrong. Such a belief even forms the core tenants of the Believers faith who proclaim that its arrival was meant to remove all doubt from our lives. To finally equalize the inequality that pervaded all of Humanity’s lives in the World Before. But as I watch the world decay and fall apart around me, see the very rules that once governed Reality simply cease to work, I’m forced to come to a different conclusion, one I only dare to write here. The System is just as fallible as any Human, and realization of that terrifies me to my core.

—From the journals of Amedea Jackson

* * *

“Run!” I shouted as the horde of shadows within the barn abruptly rushed toward us in unison, their wordless roar shattering the silence that had filled the air.

<What in the Great Web are those beings?> I heard West shout through my mind as I backpedaled as fast as my legs could take me, managing to just barely get out of the way as the doors to the barn exploded off their hinges, the mass of bodies attempting to force their way out all at once, tearing them free. <Their scream . . . stop their screaming! It is too loud!>

I didn’t have time to ask what West meant as then the first of the shadows crossed the building’s threshold and entered into the light, allowing me to finally see them clearly, the dirty, bloodstained clothes they each wore leaving no doubt as to their identity.

“The settlers,” I gasped as I continued to scramble backwards, the discovery slamming into me with the force of a runaway wagon. “Those are all the settlers of Ravenstead.”

Visibly changed from the people they once were, the settlers of Ravenstead were now a sight to behold, and it wasn’t just because of their bright, glowing eyes. Each and every single one of them that I saw before me had turned not only deathly pale in color, but had also gained a sprawling spiderweb of bright orange veining visible across their exposed skin.

The same kind of sprawling veining that we’d last seen on the afflicted sprab horde a few days earlier.

But where the veining had been dull and muted for the sprabs, it was the opposite for the settlers, flaring to life as they rushed towards us with such an intensity that I even saw its glow shine through some of their clothes.

“Auric!” I heard Val shout as we turned to run, the bulk of the onrushing settlers clogging themselves up in the doorway as they all tried to rush forward at once, or at least they did until a point-blank blast from her totem of force knocked them all backwards. “The settlers, they’re . . . they’re all . . .”

“Afflicted. The same as the horde we saw,” I replied as I glanced around for an escape route, my eyes landing on a snaking path that led through several smaller gardens, each of which were bordered by a waist-high wire fence. “Come on, this way! We need to get the hell out of here!”

<And go where, Broodkiller?> West asked in my mind, her voice vicious and agitated. <You heard its cry. It has fixated on you. It will chase you to the ends of your world-splinter. This is the time to stand and fight!>

<Are you crazy? We’ll get overwhelmed out here if we stop to fight!> I answered back as we turned to angle our flight away from the barn. <And even if we did, I’m not sure if . . .if I—>

<You will if you wish for you and your sister to live!> West hissed back at me, clearly sensing where my thoughts had strayed to. <But if it soothes your heart, you do these husks nothing but a favor. I . . . I can sense nothing left of them. They are all . . . hollow within. Only a single screaming voice remains. The one belonging to the parasite within them.>

Once again, I didn’t have the luxury of pressing West for more as the first of our attackers began to catch up with us, an unexpected burst of speed taking us both by surprise. Moving just in time, I managed to intercept a grasping hand reaching for Val, knocking it away with a forceful, yet still restrained strike with my club made of blood before it could catch her. But as a result, the move put me point blank beside the afflicted man, who I saw bore several wicked bite and scratch marks all along his upper arms, shoulders, and head. Some of which had begun to scab over, but otherwise remained exceptionally fresh. It was during that brief glance that I felt a torrent of Schema information flood into my mind and vision telling me everything that I needed to know about the man before me.

Analyzing Entity Schema . . . Complete!

Adrian Gosseman – Human – Tier: C – Level: 6

Class: Striker

Origin: Instance 202

Schema Integrity: 40%

Health: Injured

Status: Afflicted with [Entropic Corruption] & [Entropic Wounds]

Relationship: None

Weaknesses:

Slashing

Concussive

Piercing

Vulnerable Locations:

Entropic Wound: Head: +50% Damage Dealt, chance to instantly kill entity

Entropic Wound: Shoulders: +20% Damage Dealt, chance to disable arms

WARNING: Entropic Corruption Detected! Extreme caution advised in interacting with entity. Schema Purge or process termination of afflicted entity is highly recommended.

Primary Task Progress Update: Entities afflicted with Entropic Corruption Discovered!

New Primary Task: Purge and/or Terminate Processes of all Corrupted Entities – 22 of 22 remaining.

Ugh, I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to that! I exclaimed mentally as the tidal wave of information washed over me, instantly dumping its contents into my mind with such an intensity that it caused me to stumble for half a step. Fortunately, I was able to recover quickly, while simultaneously batting away a second grasping hand, this time directed at me.

“It’s the entropy!” I shouted to Val as I shoved the afflicted man away, timing it so that it carried him directly into one of the wire fences and sent him crashing to the ground in a tangle. “They’re all afflicted with something called Entropic Corruption! I can see it on their Schema!”

A thought then occurred to me as to how they may have been corrupted, and I felt West’s presence in my mind harden. “That must be what the sprabs were afflicted with. They must have passed it on to the people here when they attacked!”

“The entropy? Here?” Val called back, her tone understandably terse. “What the hell are we supposed to do against that?”

“Purge it,” I replied as I recalled the primary task update accompanying the Schema dump that had flooded into my mind. “That’s what the System is telling me to do!”

“Then what are you waiting for? Do it! Do it now!”

“Already on it,” I replied, already one step ahead as I mentally readied myself to use the other ability that the System had granted me after reaching A-Tier, while simultaneously kicking myself that I hadn’t taken the time to at least test it sometime earlier. But beyond that initial bout of self-flagellation, I forced my recriminations away and activated the System power, my hand beginning to glow a pale white a second later.

Realizing then that I had to pick a target for the ability to work, I turned to glance over my shoulder towards the corrupted settlers chasing after us and pointed my hand in their direction. Reacting instantly, a ray of white then shot out from my hand towards them, striking one of those chasing us in the shoulder.

And promptly causing them to unravel in a flash of orange-white light, a notification appearing across my vision at the same instant.

Schema Purge Failed – Schema Destabilizing – Entity Process Terminated

<I told you, Broodkiller,> West said to me, her voice almost lost in the near- deafening wail that suddenly ripped through the air. <There is nothing left for you to save. You must destroy them!>

“That sure as hell didn’t sound or look like a purge!” Val shouted back at me as the remaining corrupted settlers began to chase us even faster, the orange veining on their bodies glowing even brighter. “What the hell did you do?”

“The ability . . . failed,” I replied, finding myself badly shaken at the speed with which everything had happened. “Their Schema just destabilized . . . and—”

<Eyes on your enemy, Broodkiller!> West abruptly shouted at me as we reached the end of the gardens and rapidly approached the back of one of the abandoned houses, her voice rising to a pitch I’d never heard before. <They change!>

<What do you mean they—> I started to reply as I glanced at our pursuers, the words in my mouth abruptly dying as I saw what West had meant.

Continuing their deafening shriek in response to my failed purge, the orange veining on the settlers had intensified and began to burn away large sections of flesh, to the point where I could see glowing, burning bone beneath. As they changed, I saw their nameplates flicker and distort in unison, each of their individual names fading away until they all bore the identifier of Entropic Zombie. Nor were their changes limited to just cosmetic ones, either, their collective speed and movement increasing even further as the distance separating us rapidly began to shrink.

“Into the house!” I shouted at Val as I tore my eyes away from the corrupted creatures, realization finally dawning on me that West was right. These weren’t the settlers of Ravenstead anymore, but rather something else entirely, and if we wanted to know exactly what, we had to find a way to survive long enough to find out.

Pulling away from Val as she chose to rush through the house’s back door, I instead aimed my approach towards the open window, leaping straight through it and inside. Just barely missing the counter on its opposite side, my feet touched down just in time for me to lose speed before my momentum carried me straight over the heavy table in the room beyond. As it was though, I still slammed into it with enough force to earn me a wince as I shifted it a couple feet.

And also to give myself an idea.

“Shut the door!” I shouted to Val as she barged in just a second behind me, her eyes going wide as she saw me reach down to grab the table by its edge. Turning, she slammed the door closed as fast as she could before stepping out of the way so that I could shove the table against it, barely getting it in place before something heavy, and angry, slammed into the other side.

“What the hell is happening to them?” she demanded as the corrupted settlers began to catch up, some of them fighting among themselves to bang at the door while others started to try and force their way through the window. It was a sight that allowed my sister her first opportunity to catch sight of them after they’d begun to change.

“I have no idea!” I exclaimed as I rushed towards the window, calling up my Purge ability as I moved. “But we can’t keep running from them! We need to fight back! There . . . there’s nothing left for me to save in these people.”

It was with those words that I sent another ray of white streaming through the window, directly into the face of a corrupted zombie, which promptly caused it to unravel in the same way the other one had.

And made the screams filling the air intensify once again.

<Yes! More! You are injuring the parasite!> West exclaimed, a hint of bloodlust entering her voice. <Do not stop! Rip it. Tear it. Rip and tear until it is done!>

<W-what are you talking about, West?> I demanded as another entropic zombie immediately tried to force their way through the window, prompting me to slash at the hand that had gripped the frame and sever two burning fingerbones in the process.

Fingerbones that disintegrated into nothingness before they could touch the ground.

<Can you not hear it?> the Gateborn asked me as the settler lost its grip and fell backwards, leaving a dark burn mark on the frame where it had touched. <I speak of the voice within these husks. The voice that guides them. It is loud. Angry. Malevolent. And bent wholly upon our destruction.>

<I don’t hear anything except—wait, are you telling me you can hear the entropy inside these things?>

<If that’s what is within these creatures, then yes,> came the reply from West. <And before you think to ask, no, I cannot touch its mind. For it has none for me to touch.>

All I could do was curse at that statement as I struck at a settler in the window again, except this time with the pittance of blood that I still had in my Blood Pool. Shaping it into a crude spear as I thrust it toward the being’s face, I saw the weapon pierce directly through its open eye socket before continuing deep within. Given its almost-skeletal state, at this point I half-expected for the attack to do absolutely nothing, save buy time for my Purge ability to reset and become available again. So it was when I heard the faint squish of unseen flesh followed by the corrupted entity dropping out of sight like a stone that I felt a surge of hope bloom within me. Despite whatever the entropy had done to warp these settlers, they could still be killed through normal means.

Now if only there weren’t so many of them! I thought, flinching as a large chunk of the nearby door abruptly exploded inwards and a near-skeletal arm of burning orange bone reached out from the other side. As it flailed wildly, chunks of the door that its arm touched began to burn and char, pieces of it flaking off before disintegrating into nothingness.

“Ah, damn it! Auric, they’re breaking in!” Val exclaimed, finally loosing the bolt she had loaded in the crossbow through the newly made gap and into the creature beyond. The attack immediately prompted a loud scream, followed by the flailing arm rapidly disintegrating into nothingness. “What are we going to do? We need a plan!”

“I’m working on it!” I shouted back as I stabbed one more time with the blood spear in my hand, its tip grating uselessly across the shoulder of the next entropic zombie in line, but serving its intended purpose in knocking it off balance. That allowed me another opportunity to send a purging beam of white through the window towards it, causing it to rip itself apart in a spray of light. As it did, another pair of notifications appeared in my vision, one of them notifying me of the Schema Destabilization I’d just witnessed and the other being something else entirely.

Your skill in Bloodshaping has improved to Level 5.

It’s about time! I exclaimed as I saw the message appear, not hesitating for an instant as I drained a torrent of my own health to fill my mostly empty Blood Pool, all while calling out to Val that I needed healing. Trusting that she would come to my aid, I turned my attention towards the only ability that I’d yet to use on account of my Blood Pool not being large enough. At least up until this moment. Now with Bloodshaping hitting level five, I finally had enough capacity in my Blood Pool to use the power.

Which is exactly what I did, the now-substantially sized sphere of blood I held in my left hand beginning to writhe and morph as it shifted in size and shape, eventually growing large enough that I had to drop it on the floor.

“Auric, what the hell is that!” Val started to say as she rushed in close to heal me, her already-glowing hand touching my back and instantly wiping away the lightheadedness I’d felt.

“My plan! Just give me a second!” I replied as I momentarily turned my attention back to the window and to the burning zombies beyond, seeing more and more of the frame begin to char and flake off as they clawed and scratched against it. Their touch wasn’t exactly like fire, for I’d felt no heat emanating from them at all despite how close I was, but its effects were similar enough that I absolutely didn’t want to risk getting touched. Which was why I’d focused my efforts on creating something that I could put between the creatures and myself.

That something happened to be a crude imitation of a wolf, made entirely from blood.

Or if not exactly a wolf, than a sort of sick-looking dog, I thought with a mental grimace as I glanced down at my newly formed minion, which looked far too thin and far too distorted to truly be called a wolf. No doubt due to my relative lack of skill in shaping blood. Whatever the case, it was the first creature that I’d been able to think of after activating my power and one that I hoped to use to maximum effect.

<Ugh, West, I think I’m going to need your help!> I mentally called out as the wolf’s presence bloomed overwhelmingly in my mind, as if I’d suddenly gained an entirely new body and set of limbs external to mine. It was enough to cause the both of us to stagger drunkenly for a second as I tried and failed to separate my movements from the wolf’s, at least until West’s presence surged up to grab hold of it, freeing me from needing to control it.

<I have the creature!> she called to me, her voice sounding noticeably surprised as the wolf’s presence faded to the background of my mind. <Now what? They are breaking inside!>

“Good,” I said as I shot yet another purging beam at the zombie that had almost managed to make it through the window, causing it to wink out of existence the same way as all of its companions had so far. But that wasn’t the only creature that we had to worry about; one of them finally managed to break through the upper half of the now mostly disintegrated door and began to claw its way across the table blocking it.

“Auric!” Val called to me as she rapidly loosed a pair of arrows through the window and into the swarm of zombies, having switched to her bow after firing her crossbow, which now hung behind her on the strap slung over her shoulder. “I think it’s about time you started sharing that plan of yours! We’re running out of time here!”

“We’re going to drag them back outside through the front door, catch them in the choke point,” I said, seeing West direct the blood wolf to attack the entropic zombie on the table, leaping onto the furniture in order to bite at its head. “But first we’re going to wait until a bunch of them are bottled up in here. Once they are, I need you to hit them with Sopor, heal me, and then get the hell out. I’m . . . I’m gonna need a lot of blood for what I’m planning to do to them on my way out.”

To my sister’s credit, she didn’t even try to argue with my plan after I told her what I wanted to do. I liked to think that was because we’d finally started to gel together as a team, the last several days possibly having finally won her over to my line of thinking when it came to surviving life-or-death situations such as the one before us. Of course, there was also the possibility that the whole window frame and section of wall beside it suddenly dissolving might have been responsible for robbing her of words, prompting her to shoot another pair of arrows into the mass of entropic zombies it had revealed.

“Using Sopor!” she shouted as one of the zombies went down from an arrow that passed through its head and unraveled in a burst of light, the others around it all rushing forward with their burning, skeletal hands outstretched. A second later, I saw a wave of nebulous energy wash over their leading ranks, cutting their speed in half.

Taking that as a signal for the next part in my hastily cobbled-together plan, I siphoned off another portion of my health to fill the entirety of my Blood Pool once more, beginning to shape it the second I had it in hand. It was during that stretch that I vaguely heard my sister call out something unintelligible as she touched my back with a much-appreciated use of her healing power followed by her rushing footsteps echoing out behind me. By that point though, I had finished my shaping and started to lunge forward, slashing in a broad arc with my newly formed, and greatly oversized, blood scythe at the now-slowed entropic zombies.

Catching four of the zombies, the scythe swept through all of them at neck height, severing each of their heads before they could even begin to react. Not even a heartbeat later, their bodies burst into orange light as the entropy empowering them unraveled in a flash, giving me a clear path at the next row of attackers behind them as I checked my swing and attacked once again, this time with a cleaving backhand. Caught in close quarters, having been following right behind their companions, there was little that the next three entropic zombies could do to evade the scythe, which slashed deep into the chests of the first two before glancing upward and completely taking the face off of the third.

<Finally the Broodkiller embraces his nature! I was wondering if I would ever see the hunter that bested me again!> I heard West shout in my mind as the last zombie in line fell apart in a spray of energy, the blood wolf that she was controlling then leaping into the closest of the two that I had injured. Catching it completely unaware, the sudden pounce sent it off balance and crashing into its partner beside it, the two of them going down to the ground in a tangle of limbs.

A tangle that I readily took advantage of without so much as a second thought.

Stabbing downwards with my knife, I thrust its blade into the open eye socket of the zombie, once again feeling the invisible squish of flesh, yet another flash of orange energy followed as it fell apart. West similarly followed suit, biting down on the fallen zombie’s head with the blood wolf’s ragged teeth and ending its struggles for good. But as with all good things, our success had to eventually come to an end, first in the pitted length of metal that I pulled free of my disintegrating zombie’s head, second in the blood wolf’s body abruptly liquifying, and third, even more of the zombies charging into the house.

<Damn it, what the hell happened?> I called to West as I scrambled to retreat, not having expected to lose her help so quickly, nor for my knife to look like I’d left it in a glass of acid.

Or for my Blood Pool to suddenly be so low despite having just filled it.

<I am uncertain,> she replied, her voice sounding surprised as I rapidly backpedaled across the single-room house and towards where I hoped the exit was. <One instant the creature was whole, the next not. It was not struck by anything, yet I could feel its form diminishing.>

<Then it has to be their touch>, I said, realization dawning on me as I shaped my scythe into the thickest shield I could manage while simultaneously siphoning another torrent of my own blood to reinforce it. <It caused the wood to burn and disintegrate in seconds, which is what must have also happened to the blood and knife the second they touched them.>

<Then that will make this prey exceptionally difficult to slay,> West replied, her voice actually sounding excited at the prospect. A sentiment that I, the person who was currently faced with actually fighting them, did not wholly agree with as I made a desperate retreat backwards, risking only a single purging beam that removed another zombie from the fight.

It was during that retreat across the room that followed afterwards that I had to endure my own series of attacks as the zombies rushed to chase me, dodging the blows that I could, while catching those I couldn’t on my shield. It was during that frenzied escape that I learned firsthand the effects of their Entropic Touch as a series of red-hued System notifications flashed across my vision.

An [Entropic Zombie] strikes your [Blood Shield] for 6 points of Blood Pool damage!

An [Entropic Zombie]’s [Entropic Touch] strikes your [Blood Shield] for 20 points of Blood Pool damage!

Damn, each hit costs me more than a quarter of my blood pool! No wonder my blood burnt out so fast! I exclaimed as I continuously fed a stream of blood into my Blood Pool until I felt dangerously weak and lightheaded. For obvious reasons, the last thing that I wanted to do was get touched by one of them, especially since I didn’t know in the slightest how they passed on their affliction. Fortunately, though, by that point, I’d made it close enough to the door to risk making a break for it, hearing Val shout the second I reached the threshold.

“Down!”

Dropping to my knees the second that I processed her order, I had just enough time to see her standing a few feet in front of me with her crossbow held up high before an all-too-familiar click sounded out. The next thing I knew I saw a black blur pass over my head before continuing out of sight, followed by an exceptionally bright flash of orange light flaring out behind me.

“Two more down but more are coming!” Val exclaimed as she shouldered her crossbow and reached out to grab my arm and haul me to my feet. “Come on, we need to move!”

Letting her pull me up with a groan, I struggled to maintain my balance as the two of us began to run, feeling my head swim wildly in the process. I’d lost track of how much blood I’d used while escaping the house, save that it had been too much. So much that at some point that I couldn’t remember, my vision had begun to blur so badly that I couldn’t even see where Val and I were running, nor realize that both she and West were shouting at me.

<To your feet, Broodkiller!> West’s voice exclaimed. <To your feet now! The hunt is not over yet!>

“Come on, Auric, stand up! They’re still coming!” Val echoed a second later, the plea accompanied by a forceful tug on my arm. “Damn it, how much blood did you use?”

“Too much,” I replied, the sudden realization washing over me that I’d fallen to the ground face-first at some point. “Can’t see straight. Can barely think.”

All I heard was a curse from Val as she no doubt used one of her powers to see just how drained I was. “Nine, Auric. You have nine health left. How the hell did you let it get so low? I’ve got one more heal left in me and then I’m empty, you hear?”

With only enough energy to mumble a reply to my sister, I felt her plant her hand on me one more time before undoing a portion of the damage that I’d inflicted on myself, my vision and mind clearing almost instantly. It was enough to send me springing back up to my feet, discovering that we had only managed to make it a short distance from the house before I’d fallen. It also helped me discover that the entropic zombies had wasted absolutely no time in continuing to chase us, slowed only by their attempt to all squeeze through the doorway at once. The result not only bought Val and I the time to ready ourselves for the final round of battle, but also enough time for me to check on the health that my sister had restored, the total flashing across my vision.

Health: 189/420

That’ll have to be enough, I thought as I raised a hand to purge the leading zombie charging towards us, buying me an extra few seconds to drain a third of the health I had left to fully top up my Blood Pool. Wincing at the lightheadedness that it brought, I didn’t hesitate to toss the bloody sphere I now held to the ground which West promptly grabbed hold of before I could shape it.

<I will shape this one,> West said as she seized control of the companion before its mental presence could overwhelm me, its appearance shifting into something vaguely spiderlike. <And when we finish here, I will show you a form far more effective than the measly beast from before.>

<I think I’d like that,> I replied, my head suddenly feeling clearer than ever as I called up yet another surge of blood, this time only filling my Blood Pool halfway, all that I felt I could spare before it became too hard to focus.

Then the first of the entropic zombies arrived, and it was time to fight once more.

Drawing my second knife as I dodged under the first zombie’s strike, I didn’t waste a second in plunging it into the creature’s wide-open chest, slicing straight through the little flesh it had remaining and into its heart. Mindful of its Entropic Touch, I made sure to yank the blade free as soon as I could, while simultaneously slashing at its exposed throat and jaw with my other weapon and being rewarded with a flash of light as the creature began to unravel. But I didn’t have time to enjoy that victory as the next of our attackers entered into range at a dead sprint, only to trip and sprawl forward as the blood creature that West was controlling tackled it at the knees. Lunging forward before it could even begin to recover, I stabbed my now-charred black knives into the back of its head, the sound of shattering bone echoing out before it, too, fell apart and faded from sight.

From there, the battle blurred into chaos as its opening moments passed and the entropic zombies began to arrive en masse, leaving Val, West, and I to fight for our lives, my sister abandoning her ranged weapons in favor of her sword. It was during that frenzied stretch that I used my Purge ability every opportunity I was able, the five-second interval it took to recharge feeling like a lifetime when pressed from every direction at once. It wasn’t enough to win the battle outright on its own, but it was the edge that made all the difference to our survival.

For when at one point I found myself caught flatfooted with no way to avoid a set of raking claws heading towards my face, it blotted my attacker out of existence at the very last instant. In another instance when two of the zombies leapt at Val at the same moment, it allowed me to wipe one of them away, giving her the opportunity to focus on just one of them, and she slashed her sword through its head an instant later. And perhaps most importantly, right at the end of the battle, right after West sacrificed our blood spider companion to give Val the opening to kill a zombie, right after my blood shield finally dissipated after blocking a strike from another, it bought us our victory.

Purge hitting it in the chest a second before its claws would have pierced into mine, the last entropic zombie tore itself apart in a brilliant spray of orange light, its parting scream ringing out in our ears one final time before fading away for good. All that was left afterwards was Val’s and my labored breathing as we struggled to stand, both of us exhausted beyond all measure.

“Is . . . is that the last of them?” Val asked weakly, her voice shaking as she spoke.

“Yeah, I think so,” I replied as I glanced around at the heart of Ravenstead where our battle had taken place, finding it completely empty save for us. But before I could comment further on that, I felt a rush of energy shoot through me, the sensation accompanied by a thick wall of System text flashing across my vision a second later.

Challenge Complete – Processing Outcome . . .

Completed

Challenge Difficulty: Extraordinary

Challenge Rewards: +10,000 Experience Points

Primary Task Completed: 0 of 22 Corrupted Entities remaining

Primary Task Reward: +5,000 Experience Points

You have advanced to Level 9!

You have advanced to Level 10!

You have advanced to Level 11!

You have gained the power: Sanguine Vigor

Auto Assigning Attribute Points Based On Prior Training Habits

“Whoa,” I whispered, sucking in a surprised breath at the levels I’d gained, having completely forgotten about the System awards that always awaited after a battle.

“Whoa is right,” Val echoed out beside me, her breathing evening out as she clearly experienced the same rush of energy that I had. “I got two whole levels out of that.”

“Three here,” I replied, already guessing what her next question was going to be.

Not of course that she would have had a chance to ask it, as a loud, unfamiliar voice cut through the air.

“Well, I’ll be damned, you kids somehow managed to survive that mess,” it said, prompting both Val's eyes and mine to widen in surprise. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything different from members of Salvo.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Damn it, it’s happened again. Every time I think I’m finally closing in on it, it moves. Except this time—this time its moved far enough that I think it’s going to take me weeks to catch up. That’s if it doesn’t continue to move. Does he somehow know I’m coming for him? If I can’t catch-up soon . . . I’m going to have to give up. I already feel it eating at me, slowly but surely, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to let it win.

—From the Journals of Ciprien Mills

* * *

“Who said that?” I shouted out of reflex as I tried to pinpoint the voice’s source, spinning in place as I turned towards two of the abandoned houses where I thought it had come from. “Come on out where we can see you!”

“That’s my plan, kid,” the voice replied, sounding a little amused as it spoke. “But only if you promise to lower those little pigstickers you’ve got there and keep a hold on those powers I saw for a little while. After seeing the show that you two just put on, I think you can all understand why a guy would be a little nervous in just jumping out and surprising either of you two.”

It was a surprisingly fair request, all things considered, and one that made me glance over towards Val with a raised eyebrow. If whoever it was had been watching us long enough to see our battle with the entropic zombies, then they had not only seen what we were capable of, but also had passed up an opportunity to harm or otherwise distract us.

Though that could just also be straight-up common sense working there. Anyone with an ounce of it would have stayed clear of those monsters after seeing them, I said to myself as I saw my sister give a slight shrug in response to my implied question, her eyes then shifting back to scan our surroundings. A move that prompted another thought on my part.

<West, can you sense him?> I asked, having learned quickly in our short time together that she was particularly adept at picking things up that I couldn’t. <Or anyone else nearby for that matter?>

<I . . . I cannot,> West replied, sounding frustrated at that admission. <I can only sense his voice coming from somewhere ahead, but nothing else.>

<So we’re blind,> I replied, unable to help the surge of hesitation that rose up in response, the feeling lasting until the voice called out a second time.

“I can see the wheels turning down there,” it said, this time coming from a place adjacent to where it had been the last time. “And I assure you I’m here alone. There’s no one else here with me.”

“So you say,” I grunted, only to realize that this standoff could potentially last forever and all that the voice had done so far was alert us to its presence, a particularly strange tactic if it wished us harm. It was that last thought that had me breathing a sigh as I slowly lowered my blackened and pitted knives, seeing Val do the same with her sword from the corner of my eye.

“We’ll play nice,” I called back as my curiosity won out. “For now. As you can imagine, we have a few questions.”

“More than a few, I imagine,” the voice replied with a laugh. “But I suppose that’s fair, because I do too. Now let’s see some steady hands, because I’m coming down.”

It was with those words that a patch of rooftop on one of the houses ahead of us began to blur and waver, until it resolved itself into the figure of a man wearing a brown leather jacket with matching rough-spun pants.

A man whose appearance instantly triggered a passing memory from several days earlier.

“Hold on a second, I’ve seen you before,” I said as the man swung his legs over the roof’s edge before effortlessly dropping down to the ground below, landing with barely a sound. “Back in Blueridge the other day, you cornered me to talk about Salvo.”

“Ah, I was wondering if you’d remember me,” the man replied with a faint grin. “And actually, if I remember right, you were the one who started talking about Salvo before I could get a word in edgewise. ’Course, Constance showed up right then and I had to pull a fade. Crappy luck, that.”

“You know, if any of that is supposed to make us feel better about you dropping in on us without any warning, it’s doing the opposite,” I said as my anxiety cranked up a notch, enough so that I focused my attention on the man and called up his Schema, feeling its information flow into my mind.

Ciprien Mills – Human – Tier: B – Level: 16

Class: Sentinel

Origin: Instance 202

Schema Integrity: 90%

Status: Afflicted with [Entropic Wound]

Relationship: None

Weaknesses:

[Redacted]

Vulnerable Locations:

Entropic Wound: Left Hip: +25% Damage Dealt, chance to disable mobility and spread wound.

“So unless you want to start sharing something a lot more reassuring, Ciprien Mills, we might be having a problem really fast.”

To his credit, the man didn’t seem at all fazed by my use of his name and instead nodded along with my words. “Yeah, I can appreciate how creepy this whole situation looks from your perspective, and believe me, I’d have preferred to take a different approach too. But unfortunately, I just wasn’t planning on meeting you here. Now how about before we get right into the meat of getting to know one another, you both indulge me with two quick questions. First off, did either of you take a hit during that little dance of yours with the zombies?”

“A hit?” Val asked as she joined the conversation. “N-no, I don’t think either of us did. Why does that matter?”

“I think that might be a better question for your brother to answer,” Ciprien said, his eyes shifting over towards me. “That’s if I got the family resemblance right. Can’t completely be sure, seeing as you two have somehow managed to hide your nameplates. Nice trick, that, by the way. Though it makes me wonder what you’re hiding under it. What I saw you do just now isn’t something a D-Tier should be capable of. Or a C-Tier either, for that matter.”

“It’s because he has an Entropic Wound,” I stated, pointedly ignoring the implied question that the man had dangled before me. As it was, I didn’t like how he seemed to know that I could read his Schema, or the fact that he didn’t care or was even surprised that I could in the first place. But for him to have figured out that I was at least a B-Tier or higher after seeing me fight set me on edge. “Is that what happens if you get hit by one of those . . . things?”

“It’s not guaranteed, but there’s a decent chance that it could, yeah,” the man answered with a nod. “And before you ask, no, I didn’t get my wound from the creatures you fought. Someone else was responsible for that. But we can save those kinds of details for later, since my second question is a fair bit more pressing.”

“Is it now?” I asked while glancing around, half-expecting that to be a cue for a dozen more people to jump out from the shadows. “And what could be more pressing than this chat we’re having right now?”

“Finding and purging the sliver of entropy that should be in that barn over there. Unless you two already did that before all of those settlers started chasing you?”

There was a long pause as Val and I glanced at one another in confusion before looking back at Ciprien.

“Sorry, that was a bit of a rhetorical question,” he said before waving in the direction of Ravenstead’s barn. “I know you didn’t purge it, and that’s because I can still feel it doing its business over there. Gnawing and eating at the fabric of our reality until there’s nothing but sweet, sweet oblivion left. But it was one I had to ask, if only to see those blank looks scrawl right across your two faces. You two don’t have any idea what you’re doing at all, do you?”

Once again, Val and I had no answer to the man’s words and simply stared back at him blankly with our mouths half open. Whatever either of us might have expected out of a conversation with a mysterious stranger that suddenly appeared out of nowhere, it was certainly not this.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Ciprien continued when it was clear that neither of us had an answer for him, before going on to motion for us to follow him as he slowly turned to move in the direction of the barn. “In that case, then, if you’re willing to indulge me just a little further, let’s mosey on over there and you can see firsthand what I’m talking about and also why I was skulking around this place until you two showed up.”

“Hold on, you mean you didn’t follow us here?” I asked, feeling what little control I had over the situation rapidly continue to dissipate as I tried to figure out if we were going to follow him or not.

“Nope.” Ciprien grunted in response, not breaking his stride as he spoke. “I’ve been here since a little after dawn. Or in this area, at least. I actually thought the two of you were following and looking for me when I saw you show up. I mean, at least until you two poked your heads into the barn and everything went to hell.”

“Is that why you didn’t bother to help us?” Val asked, her voice accusatory and harsh. Enough so that it actually caused the man to slow as he glanced back at her. “You’re B-Tier and mid-level at that. You could have intervened. I can’t imagine those creatures would have even been a challenge for you.”

“You can never be too sure when it comes to entropic creatures. But you’re right, they probably wouldn’t have been,” Ciprien said with a shrug. “In any case, I wasn’t about to take that risk. Not until I was sure you two were alone and didn’t have an outside agenda. You could have easily been controlling those creatures and trying to flush me out, to make me think you were both in danger and that I had to help. No, I’m sorry to say, kids. If things had gone wrong for you back there, I’d have felt a little bad as I said a prayer for you both, then I’d have forgotten about you completely as I went about my business.”

I could but shake my head at Ciprien’s words, not only because he implied that it had been possible to control the frenzied zombies, but the sheer level of double thinking he’d described. “Just who the hell are you?”

“I already told you,” Ciprien replied as he looked back one final time. “I’m a man on a mission. And if you want to see exactly what kind, you’ll follow me over to that sliver.”

And with those words hanging in the air, he then resumed his normal walking speed in the direction of the barn, leaving both Val and me to gape at one another.

“That has to be the weirdest meeting I’ve ever had with someone,” Val said to me, sounding completely baffled.

“It ranks second place for me,” I answered back, not having taken my eye off of Ciprien as he steadily walked away from us. “But believe me, it’s close.”

“So what are we going to do, Auric? The way he spoke . . . it sounds like he knows something about this entropy. A lot more. And if there’s a sliver of it in the barn . . .”

“Then we should check it out too,” I finished, seeing her nod out of the corner of my eye. “I don’t trust him. Or whatever he might have wanted from me back in Blueridge. But this . . . this seems like too much to pass up.”

“I agree,” Val said with a nod. “That last battle was close. Really, really close. If either of us had been just a little slower at the wrong moment, we wouldn’t be here now. We need to learn what we’re dealing with here. And fast.”

“We definitely need to,” I agreed before going on to turn my attention to the last member of our group. “But what about you, West, any thoughts?”

<Several. But none are in disagreement with the words and thoughts you’ve shared,> she replied, a cautious-sounding chitter ringing out through my mind. <If this being possesses information about the Void-of-Endless-Screams that we encountered, then we would be wise to obtain it at any cost.>

“Then we’ll go and see what he has to say,” I said as we moved to follow Ciprien who had roughly made it halfway to the barn which was at the far end of the open square our battle had taken us to. Setting a quick pace, we were able to close the distance between us quickly, the man glancing over his shoulder and flashing us a tight grin once he heard us draw close.

“Thought you’d both join me,” he said. “Glad to see I’m not a bad judge of character yet.”

“It’s still early,” I countered, starting to find his smug confidence rather grating. “We’re just here to see if you were right about the sliver.”

That response only seemed to set his grin wider for some reason as he turned away from us and unceremoniously entered the barn, its wide entrance now completely free of any doors blocking it, accommodating all three of us walking abreast with ease. Feeling my body tense as I stepped through the doorway, I almost expected to be attacked by something without warning, the dark shadows within the barn appearing large and ominous to my unadjusted eyes. But the only thing that I found assaulting me as I stepped deeper into the building was the pungent and nigh-unbearable stench of rot, one that grew stronger and stronger with every step we took.

“Ugh, that’s just . . .” I started to say before I abruptly trailed off, my eyes adjusting to the gloom faster than I’d expected them to and revealing the source of the all-consuming stench.

Which was to say the bodies of dozens of sprabs scattered all throughout the room in various states of decomposition, some piled on top of one another in makeshift mounds taller than I was.

<Oh,> I heard West whisper in my mind as we stared blankly into the room, all three of us having ground to a halt at the same moment. <So . . . here they all are. Rendered hollow and left to rot by the same Void-of-Endless-Screams as your people.>

<Y-yeah, it looks that way,> I replied, completely shaken at the sheer scale of death before me. I hadn’t exactly had any idea what to expect after seeing Len’s memory of the horde descending upon Ravenstead, but this certainly wasn’t anywhere close. <I’m sorry, West. I know you were hoping for something different. To find them all alive.>

<Then I will turn my hope into vengeance,> she replied, her presence in my mind then fading away once she’d finished talking, no doubt wishing to be alone for a while.

Deciding that it would be best to honor that silent wish, I summoned up a surge of resolve before continuing into the heart of the barn, taking pains not to step on any of the broken shells or discarded tools that littered the hay-covered dirt within. It was a task that I found particularly difficult the further inwards I moved, the remains of the sprab becoming too thick for me to pass through without stepping on top of them.

“It looks like they fought them,” I said as I looked back towards the others, seeing visible looks of distaste written across their faces. “There are lots of tools thrown about here, most of them with blood on them.”

“Poor souls,” Ciprien stated as he looked around. “They never had a chance against this many Gateborn. Though I guess that explains how the entropy managed to spread. All of these bugs look afflicted. Badly at that, too. It must have been looking to use them before they deteriorated too far and completely fell apart.”

“‘It’ being the entropy, you mean?” Val asked. “Or do you mean something else?”

“Either, or both,” Ciprien answered as he slowly shuffled out of sight from my vantage point, vanishing behind a mountain of sprab. “The difference is so close that it doesn’t matter. Not to us at any rate.”

“That . . . doesn’t make any sense,” Val replied.

“Welcome to dealing with entropy. If you stick with it, a lot of things aren’t going to make sense,” came the reply from the opposite side of the barn. “Which, speaking of, you see anything strange over on your end, kid? Anything either glowy, not-glowy, sort of gate-looking, or makes your eyes hurt and bleed if you look at it?”

“Please tell me that last thing isn’t actually possible,” I called back, unable to help but feel anxious as I glanced around the carnage-strewn barn.

“I wish I could, kid,” Ciprien answered with a sad-sounding chuckle. “But no. That one is definitely possible.”

“Great,” I replied, suddenly second-guessing our choice to follow the man, at least until a flicker of orange behind a pile of sprab caught my attention. “Uh, on second thought, I think I see something over here. Looks small, almost like a fire . . . but not.”

“Ah, that’s probably just a glowy one, then,” Ciprien replied, the sounds of movement I’d been hearing changing as both he and Val came into view. “It should be safe to look at, just don’t touch it or do anything stupid to it.”

“I’ll try,” I said in a dry tone as I shuffled towards where I’d spotted the orange light, needing to push the bodies of several dead sprab out of the way with my foot to get to it. As I neared it, I noticed a faint, almost imperceptible tugging sensation fall over me, as if something incredibly weak was trying to pull me forward, yet steadily, slowly growing stronger the closer I got. Frowning at the strange feeling, I carefully rounded the last pile of sprabs that the light was nestled in and peered around them, freezing the instant it came into view.

Appearing as a blot on the ground, the sliver of entropy was little bigger than an acorn-sized ember, its orange-red light flickering as if it were burning. Yet instead of burning wood as I would have expected a fire to do, the small sliver appeared to be burning the very air itself as a cloud of countless small fragments of debris pulled themselves towards it. Blinking at the alien sight as I took it in, it was several seconds later that I noticed that the sliver was actually sitting on a small pillar of dirt, having formed a bowl-like depression all around it.

No . . . it ate out a bowl around it, out of everything around it, I thought, correcting myself as I glanced at the dead sprab clustered around the sliver, seeing that the closest-facing parts of them had all begun to flake away piece by piece. But by that time in my inspection, both Ciprien and Val had managed to make their way over to me, the pair immediately focusing their attention on the sliver.

“That’s it?” Val asked, sounding a little disappointed as she took in its appearance. “Is that the sliver? It’s . . . tiny.”

“I assure you it’s more than large enough for my tastes,” Ciprien said, most—but not all—of the humor fading from his voice. “You do not want to see what a splinter, or System forbid, a fragment is capable of.”

“Is that how they’re classified?” Val asked, clearly picking up on the man’s terminology as she carefully approached the sliver and eventually bent down to her knee a few feet away from it. “Hrm, pull is much stronger here.”

“It is,” Ciprien confirmed before once again glancing between my sister and me. “And I really hope that neither of you take this the wrong way, but if you have to ask that question, then neither of you know at all what you’re dealing with here. Not even the basics. Am I right?”

“Very right,” I heard my sister reply before I could even think to say anything, my attention still too focused on the sliver.

“Ugh, I was afraid you’d say that,” Ciprien said, his face turning down into a scowl for a second. “That’s going to make things harder. A lot harder, I’m afraid.”

“And what do you exactly mean by that?” I asked, finally managing to tear my eyes off the sliver and looking back towards the man.

“It means that not only have you had your System powers for a few days, but that you likely got them sometime between when I last saw you and today,” the mysterious man replied. “Now that’s not a problem in itself, but you two belong to Salvo. If there’s anyone I expected in this region to know the ins and outs about our little friend here, it would be them. Yet here you both are . . . not only completely unaware but dangerously unaware. It makes me wonder. Especially given the reason why I’ve come all the way out here.”

“You know I think I’ve just about had enough of all this cryptic nonsense that you keep spewing,” I said, my patience finally giving way amid the countless dead sprab and their foul-smelling remains. “I think it’s time we started getting some straight answers here, starting first and foremost with just who the hell you are and what you’re doing. If we can’t get that, then I think we might be done here.”

“Hrm, I suppose I have been talking in circles a lot, haven’t I?” Ciprien grunted, a thoughtful look coming across his face. “Guess it’s been a mite too long since I’ve been around people after all.” He paused for a moment to give us both a shrug. “All right, fine. Let’s start with a proper introduction. My name, as you’ve already no doubt seen off my Schema, is Ciprien Mills. Technically First Lieutenant Ciprien Mills, but that rank doesn’t have really any sway out here in the Unclaimed East, does it now?”

“First Lieutenant?” Val repeated as she stood up and turned back towards us, cocking her head to the side in curiosity. “You mean you’re from the United States, their military I mean, from way out in California.”

“From what’s left of them and the country, yeah,” Ciprien said with a nod. “Though if we’re really going to be honest with one another here, that rank is mostly for razzle dazzle among the folk at home. To give people some assurances that despite our reality going completely to shit, that the powers that be are still working to fix it. In truth, I’m not really the military type at all, and the only reason why I have this rank is because I happened to be damned unlucky enough to catch our overlord’s attention and get conscripted into fighting its little war against entropy. Something which, despite my griping right now, I think happens to be a pretty good idea, at least when you consider that the alternative is oblivion.”

“Hold on, overlord?” I asked, my attention catching on one particular piece of Ciprien’s explanation. “You mean the System. You’ve met it too?”

“I’d call it less of a meeting and more of an interrogation,” he replied somewhat dryly as he shifted his attention over towards me. “But I suppose you of all people would know exactly what I mean. You don’t have a chance to really say anything once it notices you, do you?”

“No, you definitely don’t,” I agreed, unsure of what exactly to think of Ciprien’s words. Until now, a part of me had thought that I’d been the only one that the System had contacted so directly, that I had somehow been special. But as I gradually found the curtains peeled back on the new, higher-Tier world that I’d been unceremoniously thrown into, I was beginning to realize just how naïve that thinking had been.

Amedea and the others already knew about entropy and didn’t ever tell us, I said to myself, finding my thoughts racing as I started to put stray pieces together in my mind. From what she said to me yesterday, too . . . she sounded like she might have even had contact with the System in the past. Enough to think poorly of it. And that’s just in our tiny sliver of the world here in Blueridge. What else would others elsewhere have experienced?

“In any case,” Ciprien continued when it was clear I wasn’t going to say anything else, “as one of the all-too-few people in the military who were granted the rare System abilities needed to actually fight back against the thing destroying our universe, it’s been me and my team’s job to hunt down and destroy the entropy wherever it rears its ugly head. A job which, until recent months, had me posted on a trust-building mission way down in the jewel of the bayou. In the best and worst collection of humidity, vice, and mischief on either side of the Mississippi.”

“Once-New Orleans,” I said, unable to stop myself from interrupting, earning a frown from Ciprien. “We’ve heard of the place. Always wanted to go there, in fact.”

“And I never wanted to leave,” the man replied. “Wouldn’t have, either, if my team and I hadn’t been betrayed by someone looking for a shortcut. By someone who we thought we could trust. It cost all of them their lives.”

“So then you’ve come up all this way just looking for revenge?” Val asked. “I mean, I think I understand if you did, but . . . to have come so far . . .”

“Revenge would be nice,” Ciprien said before going on to shrug once more. “But at this point that would just be a bonus. I’m just here to recover and destroy what they took from us before they escaped. Maybe the universe will be lucky and let me shred their Schema to bits while I do that, but if not . . . well, I’ll live with it.”

“You want to destroy what they took from you?” I asked, finding that particular detail to be odd at first blush, at least until my mind managed to connect the dots and realize what he’d actually meant. “Hold on, you don’t mean . . .”

“Oh, I do, kid,” Ciprien answered as my attention shifted towards the sliver lying on the ground just a few feet away from us. “They stole a whole splinter of entropy from under my team and me. Then right as they were leaving, they gave us a brutal farewell present, one that ended up corrupting everyone. Everyone except me.”

“I . . . I see,” I replied, needing no further explanation as to what happened next. “That’s how you got your wound.”

“It is,” Ciprien said, a hand coming up to pat his hip, the same one that his Schema had told me was vulnerable. “Anyway, after I had some time to mend and get back on my feet, I realized I had to track them down. To recover and destroy the splinter as soon as possible. It took me . . . a really, really long time, but I finally managed to track them all the way up here to Blueridge. All the way to the new life that they’ve carved for themselves up here.”

“So then you’ve already found them,” Val said eagerly, having been clearly caught up in the man’s story. “What do they look like? What’s their name? If you know they’re in Blueridge then we can help you find them easily.”

“Well,” Ciprien said, very obviously choosing his next words carefully. “When I knew them, their name was Tristan Garnier. Of course, they’ve changed it numerous times since. But I think I’ve managed to track them down anyway; it’s actually why I approached you that other day.”

“It is?” I replied, feeling a wave of uncertainty wash over me as I realized where the conversation was heading. “Why?”

“Because if I’m right, you should know the man pretty well,” Ciprien said, going on to glance between Val and me. “In fact, both of you should. The new name I’ve heard him go by nowadays is Mercutio the Magnificent.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Nothing cuts deeper than the betrayal of a loved one.

—Overheard in passing from Elder Henrik while in the Blueridge Market

* * *

“Auric, you’re doing it again!” Val called to me, this time her voice sounding angry in addition to exhausted. “Slow down! Not only can I not keep up, but there’s no telling what all your damn stomping is going to attract. I don’t think you could be any louder if you were walking with a drum!”

“Well, maybe I want to attract something, sis,” I replied, feeling the anger in my own chest rise up to meet hers as I turned around to look in her direction behind me. “System knows I could use something to hit.”

“Oh, like that will really solve anything other than give you another chance to get killed,” Val shot back at me. “What you need to do is actually stop and talk to me. We’ve been walking, no, damned near running for hours since you blew out of Ravenstead.”

“And what do we have to even talk about, Val?” I asked, finally coming to a stop and turning towards her as my temper fanned itself even higher. “Something a stranger said about one of our friends? What, you think he’s right?”

“What I think is that I would like to talk to my brother about it so I can figure out what I think!” my sister practically yelled at me. “Damn it, Auric, you think I like what I heard back there? You think I believe him? A stranger who just dropped out of nowhere?”

“Sure sounded that way with all the questions you started asking him as soon as he made his accusation,” I countered, full well recalling how quickly things had soured after Ciprien named Mercutio as his betrayer.

“And the last time I checked, asking questions is how we get to an answer, Auric,” Val retorted. “Not storming off like an angry child because you heard something you didn’t like.”

“I didn’t—”

<You did, Broodkiller,> West abruptly cut in, interrupting me loudly enough within my mind that I winced. <You fled faster than a gluttonous drone eating more than their share. Yet your flight cannot hide your thoughts from me. You want to believe that this new interloper is lying, but your instincts tell you otherwise. That there may, in fact, be some truth in his words.>

“What, just because Mercutio is from Once-New Orleans?” I asked, my emotions causing me to vocalize my thoughts rather than talk to West directly. A mistake that my sister quickly leapt on.

“Oh, is West happening to agree with me now?” she asked while cupping a hand to her ear. “Listen to her, Auric. I imagine her logic and mine will line up perfectly.”

I couldn’t help but scowl back at her at those words, suddenly feeling outnumbered. “What part of literally any of this situation is logical?”

“Exactly none of it,” Val stated, crossing her arms before her defensively as she spoke. “Which is why I think Ciprien is likely telling the truth. Or if not exactly that, not lying to us outright.”

“And how, pray tell, do you even come close to a conclusion like that?”

“By stopping for one second and actually thinking through the steps involved here,” Val answered, holding up a finger. “First off, let’s say that Ciprien is in it for the greed or for the power. There are a ton of less-threatening targets to try and hit rather than pick on an A-Tier as strong as Mercutio. He’s only a B-Tier, and not particularly high leveled at that. Granted, he could get lucky and take him out, but then the rest of Salvo would be there in short order.”

Val paused for a second to raise a second finger.

“Which brings me to point two. I don’t know about you, but Ciprien didn’t strike me as the suicidal type. Rather the extreme opposite, in fact. Attacking a Salvo member directly would be a death wish. No one would rest until they put him in the ground, Amedea especially.” It was with those words that the next finger then came up. “And third, the entropy. You saw it firsthand, Auric, more times than I even have. You heard Amedea admit that it exists and she never told us about it. And you even saw Ciprien purge that sliver with his own version of the same power you have. A power that he got from the System, the same way that you got yours. There are just too many factors here at play competing with one another when it comes to that thing. Because if we are wrong, and if Mercutio did somehow smuggle a piece of entropy all this way . . . well, he wouldn’t just be responsible for killing Ciprien’s team, Auric. He would be responsible for killing everyone who went on that gate-stealing run with you, including everyone at Ravenstead, and possibly even more that we don’t know about.”

“Well, that—”

“I’m not done yet!” Val hissed, cutting me off as I started to speak, another finger appearing on her hand. “Fourth, ever since you hit A-Tier and came back to the tower with your System powers, specifically your power to read other people’s Schemas, Amedea found a way to blank all of ours. Straight out of the blue and having never even mentioned that ability in the entirety of our lives with her. An ability that perfectly counters your new one and one that you could easily use to just look at Mercutio and see if he has a different name than the one he claims to have. Doesn’t that sound at least a little bit weird to you in hindsight?”

“It sounds messy and full of the same damn double thinking that Ciprien had,” I said, my anger still hot. “We don’t actually know anything. Only wild-ass guesses, assumptions, and theories that could all amount to nothing. Unless you’ve got a fifth point over there that neatly ties everything together?”

“I actually do, in fact,” Val replied, though instead of rising to meet the tone in my voice, hers fell, becoming uncertain as she lowered her hand to cross her arms over her chest. “But I don’t think that it’ll tie anything together, Auric. In fact, I think I’ll muddy things even further.”

“Huh?” I frowned, her reaction not at all what I’d expected, and it immediately poured water on the fire within me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean the fact that I’ve never been left alone with Mercutio since he first joined us,” she said, her eyes dropping down towards the ground as she spoke.

“Alone with him?” I repeated, at first not quite understanding what she meant. “Oh, you mean . . . you and him?”

“No, no, not anywhere even close to that,” Val said quickly. “But rather that Amedea, Constance, and eventually Sumalin never let me be in a room alone with him. I mean, I didn’t even notice it at first. Probably wouldn’t have unless Sumalin straight up asked me one day if something had happened between us, but ever since . . . it’s been something digging at the back of my mind.”

“Are you serious?” I asked, not quite believing that this was the first time I’d heard anything like this from my sister. While we hadn’t exactly shared everything while growing up, we’d shared enough between one another to know at least what was going on in each other’s lives. For my sister not to have mentioned something like this until now was out of character compared to what she’d shared before. “Has . . . has he done anything to make you worry?”

“That’s exactly what Sumalin asked,” Val replied with a shake of her head. “And no. Never. Not even so much as an uncomfortable glance in my direction or anyone in town for that matter. She said she would ask Constance about it . . . but she never said anything else to me afterwards. She just started doing the same thing as them. Honestly, I kind of forgot about it after a point. Things got so hectic after the Fault gate opened up and the group was constantly away putting out fires wherever they started . . .”

All I could do was stare at Val as she trailed off, the fire in my chest guttering out and fading until I felt completely hollow. “Why didn’t you mention something like this sooner?”

“Mention what exactly, Auric? What it’s like being a woman?” my sister asked as she glanced up at me. “Blueridge is good, great even when it comes to how we’re treated. Likely no doubt because of Amedea and Constance. But if I came to you every time something along these lines happened, neither of us would ever get anything done. Instead, we women look out for one another, especially when something doesn’t sit right in our gut.”

“That doesn’t make it right that you have to,” I replied.

“It sure doesn’t,” Val agreed. “But there are a lot of things that aren’t right in this broken world of ours. Which is why I brought it up in the first place. If Mercutio actually didn’t do these things, and I’m not saying that he did, then why would they hang around me like that? Are they trying to protect me from something? Something that they know about him, but won’t say out loud? It’s something worth getting to the bottom of.”

“How?” I asked, this time not out of anger, but out of genuine curiosity. “If Mercutio is involved in anything like what Ciprien accused him of, then so are the others, if at least by association or worse as accomplices. What could we possibly even begin to do against all of them? They’re Salvo.”

“I don’t know, Auric,” my sister answered, giving me a forlorn shrug. “And maybe . . . maybe there’s an explanation for all of this. One that Amedea and the others didn’t think we needed to know, or weren’t ready to know.”

“That’s what worries me,” I replied, feeling my stomach churn at the thought of going back home and seeing everyone in a new light, wondering if they’d all been lying to Val and me for our entire lives. “Well, that and the absolutely colossal chewing out that I am going to get for sneaking out yet again. Something tells me no matter what is going on behind the scenes, Amedea won’t be happy that I’ve snuck out a third time.”

“Probably not,” Val agreed, our argument now firmly behind us as we both resumed our journey home, this time side by side instead of me haring off ahead on my own. “Are you going to tell her about Ciprien? About what he said? Or are you going to turn him in? We could do that, you know. After you stormed, er, left the barn, he told me that he would wait for us at a place in Old Town tomorrow and every three days afterwards for the next week if we wanted to meet to talk to him again.”

My sister took a deep breath and let it out as she collected her thoughts.

“I’ll back you either way on whatever you decide, Auric, but we should try and figure out a plan, not to mention get our stories straight before we get home. We both gained more than a few levels each, there’s no way we’ll be able to hide that forever, Schema mask or not.”

“I don’t know what I am going to do,” I replied, feeling a deep and weary exhaustion wash over me at my sister’s question. “But now that you mention it, I haven’t even looked at my Schema since we finished that fight with the zombies. I just completely . . . forgot after Ciprien appeared.”

“That’s pretty understandable, all things considered,” my sister replied. “And I’ll admit I really haven’t looked at mine, either. Take a minute to look them over and then regroup?”

“That sounds perfect to me,” I said as I went on to do exactly that, calling up my newly leveled Schema and seeing it fill my vision.

Your Schema has been updated!

Displaying updated Schema fields . . .

Subject:

Auric Cain

Tier: A

Level: 11

Class: Paragon

Progression: 94/7860

Vital Statistics:

Health: 530/530

Blood Pool: 0/100

Endurance: 530/530

Physical Attributes:

Vigor: 31

Finesse: 29

Celerity: 30

Mettle: 42

Psyche: 28

Skills:

Martial:

Unarmed Combat – Level 11 – 35%

Swords – Level 12 – 21%

Spears – Level 11 – 8% – Tier C Passive Unlocked!

Weeping Wound: Your skill with this weapon type has taught you how to inflict wounds that continue to bleed, dealing 0.5% of the damage originally inflicted once again over the course of 6 seconds, increasing by an additional 0.5% for every level in this skill beyond 10. (Current: 0.5% bleed damage done over 6 seconds)

Class:

Bloodshaping – Level 5 – 21%

Powers:

Sanguine Vigor:

Power Type: Metaphysical

Duration: Instant

Range: Self

Blood Cost: 1

Description: By absorbing a portion of the blood in your Blood Pool, or from a nearby Bloodborne Companion, into your body, you are able to use it to restore your stamina as well as heal yourself of any wounds or injuries you’ve suffered.

Effect: You absorb a portion of your Blood Pool or the essence of a nearby Bloodborne Companion, healing both your own health and stamina at a 1-to-1 rate based on the amount of blood absorbed.

And so this is how level eleven as an A-Tier looks, I thought as I read over my Schema, my eye lingering for several seconds on my attributes, which had grown by leaps and bounds since my D-Tier days. It was a heady feeling to see just how high they were, the once-insurmountable barrier of level ten that I’d grown so accustomed to seeing having been passed in a little more than a blink of an eye. At this rate, I’ll catch up to the rest of Salvo in no time. All I need is a gate or two on my own and I’ll be there.

Feeling my spirits buoyed by such thinking, and carefully avoiding any spiraling thoughts such as potentially needing to fight members of Salvo, I continued reading, my eye landing on my weapon skill increase I’d unlocked after reaching level ten.

My spear skill leveled up? I asked myself mentally, finding the notification to be somewhat of a surprise to see, especially since I hadn’t wielded a spear over the course of the last day. At least not a physical spear, vaguely recalling that West and I had shaped one out of blood during our battle against the entropic zombies. Wait, so blood-shaped weapons count for skill progress? I mean, I guess it does count as a weapon, but I didn’t think it would apply. Hold on a second, does that mean that the tier passives will apply too? If so, I’ll be able to take advantage of every single tier passive that each weapon has, and use them interchangeably throughout the battle. All I’d need to do is learn them . . . which is probably going to take a hell of a lot of time and practice.

I paused for a second to shake my head at that train of thought, unable to dismiss it completely, but also feeling a heavy weight sit down on my shoulders at the thought of endless weapons training.

Maybe we can just worry about that later, I said internally before going on to focus on the last and final thing in my update, the new power I’d obtained, Sanguine Vigor, a surge of excitement shooting through me the instant I read its description. Finally! Not only can I heal myself a little bit, but the extra blood in my Blood Pool won’t go to waste anymore. I can simply absorb the blood back into me instead of letting it expire or needing to use it.

“Judging by the look on your face, I’d say you got something good after those levels,” I heard Val suddenly say, her face shifting to look over towards me. “Care to share? It’ll . . . lighten the mood, for a little while at least.”

And it did.

For a little while.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Appearances are inviting as much as they are deceiving, and in a world such as ours, it is necessary to always appear strong, lest one invite challengers. But if one for some reason cannot appear strong, then the next best course is to appear mysterious, to cast doubt on what any potential rivals may witness. The threat of the unknown is a surprisingly effective deterrent, occasionally even more effective than strength itself.

—Mercutio when asked about his choice of attire

* * *

“Ugh,” I grunted as I woke up to the sound of a loud noise echoing through my window, my hand coming up to drag a pillow over my face. “You’ve got to be kidding me. What the hell could possibly be so loud this early in the morning?”

It had been a long trek to make it home last night from Ravenstead, the rest of the journey from the valley proving to be mercifully uneventful for Val, West, and me. A journey that Val and I at least had spent twisting ourselves into knots as we drew closer and closer to what we expected to be yet another hiding from our adoptive grandmother. All while of course harboring the dark suspicions that we’d found ourselves burdened with. By the time that we’d reached the Blueridge gates and convinced the night’s watch to let us in, we’d been walking like little more than whipped dogs, with the final leg to the tower being an experience akin to a prisoner’s final walk towards a noose.

Only to then find Salvo Tower completely empty on our return, save of course for McKinney and Carter, the town lookouts, who, after we rudely woke up and questioned them, apparently hadn’t realized that we had left for the day, let alone that no one from Salvo had returned.

Stunned that our excursion had gone completely unnoticed, the tension that Val and I were carrying broke, the two of us practically melting to the ground in relief that for once, we hadn’t been caught. It was a relief that lasted for almost an entire five minutes, the time that it took for us to start to wonder what could have possibly kept all of Salvo away the entire day. Instantly, we began to spin theories, beginning with the most probable ones to the least likely, including a few exceptionally farfetched ones that only served to remind us how tired we truly were.

And we hadn’t made a decision of what to do yet when it came to Ciprien’s accusation against Mercutio.

So with that weighing on our hearts, we did the only thing a person could do when faced with a moral quandary involving family: we both went to toss and turn in our beds for half the night before finally falling asleep. Of course, that was after sparing the few minutes to come up with a new explanation for our newly gained levels, and to also thoroughly burn the note that I had written for Amedea about our departure to Ravenstead.

But now that I was on the other side of the night, rudely awoken and kept awake by a steady cacophony of noise emanating from the window, I still had no answer for what I wanted to do next. I’d spent a good portion of the night trying to piece together my feelings, to figure out how I felt about the points that both Val and Ciprien had made against Mercutio, and, by extension, Salvo.

There’s no way he could be right, is there? I’ve known them all my life, I thought as I pressed down on the pillow over my face, half wondering if I could smother myself and save the trouble of making a choice. Or I’ve known most of them, at least. Amedea and Constance since the beginning, of course. Then Curshaw showed up one day while I was still young. Can’t remember when really, but he was still B-Tier back then. Would the three of them willingly take in a murderer if they knew who he was? What he’d done?

My mind shifted to think of the others that had drifted through Salvo over the near two decades of my life. To those who hadn’t made it and had fallen while trying to close a gate, to those who had simply left one day, either broken due to what they’d been forced to endure, or been asked to leave for reasons I’d never discovered. There weren’t many of them, thankfully, Amedea’s standards having always remained high and never settling for less than the best.

It was that trait, and that surety that made it hard for me to look at Mercutio as anything less than a family member, the man having seamlessly joined the team the instant that Constance and Amedea had brought him back from Once-New Orleans some eight months earlier. Granted, he was a little strange at times, his powers particularly esoteric, even for an A-Tier. But he also was the life of every party and charming to a fault, never anything other than a model team member and an inspiration to the town.

Not to mention, a sort of friend to me too, I thought glumly, wondering if that was the reason why I’d practically bolted out of the barn in Ravenstead after Ciprien had leveled his accusations.

With living in the tower all my life, I’d never had a truly traditional childhood. At least inasmuch as the other children in the town did, born to either trade families or farming ones and raised with other children their age. No, both Val and I had been kept separate the majority of the time, as we often had to accompany Amedea and the others on their longer journeys, waiting in remote camps or frontier towns while they closed whatever gates they’d been called to handle in the region. The result had made for a particularly disjointed life, and likely why my sister and I had ended up so close to one another instead of anyone else. There simply hadn’t been anyone similar to our age to make friends with, not for long at least. But when Mercutio had arrived, I’d finally felt that I had someone to relate to, and the two of us had hit it off rather well, despite the years, and tiers, between us.

Could he have really done what Ciprien said? Is he the one responsible for bringing the entropy all the way up here? And if he did, what took it so long for its presence to be known? I asked myself, the questions coming rapidly one after the other, each one seemingly bringing on another. Or is it Ciprien that’s taking us for a ride here? Planting false ideas in our minds and trying to turn us against one another?

<Are you quite done brooding just yet?> West’s vaguely annoyed voice filtered into my mind. <The circles that you are walking are beginning to cause me to reconsider my presence within your mind.>

<Well, I’m sorry, I’m just having a hard time in figuring out if the last year of my life has been a lie,> I replied with a scowl, feeling a bit of yesterday’s anger, not to mention a healthy dose of sleepless frustration shoot through me. Enough so that I immediately winced and sent a mental apology in her direction, followed by a question. <What would you do in this situation, West? You’ve been pretty quiet about all this, all things considered.>

<Because I did not want to further enflame your thoughts,> she replied. <But since you wish to hear them, I would tell you that there is a foul stench within this hive of yours. Both you and your sister are old enough to start swarms of your own, yet not only does your broodmother keep you unaware of much, she prevents you from growing strong enough to challenge the world on your own.>

<That’s because it’s dangerous out there,> I said, a little surprised to feel a heated tone attached to West’s words, as if she’d been waiting for the question ahead of time. <I don’t know how your world might have been, but ours . . . ours is chaotic, savage even, if you go far enough outside the walls. She wants to protect us, and after the last few days, I’m starting to understand why.>

<There is a fine line between protection and hindering,> West countered. <And from what I’ve seen, you of all beings need no protection. In fact, you need the opposite. You need challenge. Were you of my brood, I would be sending you out to hunt in the most wild and vicious of places to fuel your growth. To fuel your future strength. To do any less would only serve to hinder your potential.>

<So what, then? You think because she is being overly cautious with us, that she may be hiding something when it comes to Mercutio? That Ciprien is right?> I asked, taking the opportunity to throw my pillow off my face and to the side, followed a second later by my blankets. Noise or not, I was definitely awake for the day now.

<Truthfully? I do not know,> West answered. <But from what I’ve seen, this hive has too many secrets for my liking, and the points your sister made ring true in my mind. You only know enough to realize that your shell itches, but not enough to know the cause.>

<Which is exactly the problem we have!> I exclaimed as I got off the bed and made my way over towards the window, feeling another surge of frustration shoot through me that all our conversation had done so far was dance in a circle. <We don’t know anything at all. Just guesses and suspicions.>

<You misunderstand my words, Broodkiller,> West stated, the tone of her voice shifting to one of patience. <If there is something you do not know, what are the ways to remedy it? You take action. Search high among the cloudborne cliffs. Dig deep into the darkest, most forgotten reaches. Question what you are told and spin your own web of guile to draw out and entrap the lies that fly before you. You need not act until you can act decisively.>

“Well, that sounds a hell of a lot easier to say then actually do,” I replied, this time out loud as I pushed the window open and poked my head outside in search of the noise that had awoken me.

Glancing downwards from my near-perfect vantage point several stories up, I saw that a crowd of people had all drawn together at the town gate, which was swung wide open to admit two large, rolling wagons attached to two horses a-piece. Among the cluster of people, I saw a familiar flash of colorful light that I knew signaled Mercutio’s presence, and no doubt another round of one of his many magic shows. It was a sight that caused my heart to instantly tighten, not only because of the suspicions that we’d now laid on him, but because of what his presence back in Blueridge meant.

“Salvo’s back,” I whispered, feeling my already-potent anxiety ratchet even higher. “I guess . . . I guess it’s time to see what answers we can find.”

Readying myself as fast as I could manage in my still-exhausted state, I threw on a set of clothes and shoes before making my way out of the room and knocking on Val’s door.

“Nyah?” came the indecipherable, clearly exhausted reply a second later.

“They’re home,” I replied, not needing to elaborate at all who I meant. “Just making their way through the gate and I’m guessing to the tower. I’m going down to meet them now.”

I paused for a second, considering what else to say. “Haven’t made a decision on what to do still. Just going to play things close until I can figure out more.”

“Okay,” Val replied through the still-closed door, this time her voice sounding perfectly awake and alert. “I . . . I’ll be down in a few minutes too.”

Breathing out a sigh, I then started my descent down the tower, focusing the entirety of my attention on the stairs ahead of me, both to keep my mind blank and so I wouldn’t do any unplanned, face-first cartwheels down the steps due to my exhaustion. As I did so, I heard the clamor outside grow louder. People were cheering, shouting, and even crying. I even heard a few instruments begin to play a tune caught halfway between a dirge and celebration. It was enough to make me brace myself as I reached the tower’s entrance and pulled the door open, already seeing the leading edge of the crowd starting to appear.

Striding forward, I soon found myself surprised to discover that practically all of Blueridge had come to welcome Salvo back instead of heading out to the fields to continue the harvest. Or perhaps more likely, as my particularly cynical mind suggested a second later, that Salvo had timed their arrival home to coincide with the hour when people typically left the safety of the walls to begin their work for the day. Whichever case it was, though, it had the group being welcomed back as heroes as they moved through the press, shaking or clapping the hands within reach, or otherwise waving and greeting the townsfolk that they couldn’t. All while the crowd cheered them on, their voices reaching my ears en masse.

“Another gate down!”

“Score one for humanity!”

“Chase those beasts back to hell!”

Did they manage to actually close the Fault gate? I wondered as I heard the scattered voices call out, evidently celebrating yet another Salvo victory over the Gateborn. Moving for a closer look, I left the shelter of the tower entrance and walked to a spot where I could watch the group finish arriving, yet also stay relatively out of sight.

It was there that I saw Constance first, at the front of the pack as she always was. But instead of appearing as her radiant, glowing self, her presence was noticeably muted and weary, thanks largely in part to the sweeping burns and black stains that marred her normally bright armor, which I also saw bore more than a few puncture marks. Something she’d fought had clearly been powerful enough to get through her armor not only once, but multiple times. There was even a dark bruise forming across her cheek and jaw, which despite its grisly appearance, I had to admit actually served to make the thin smile she bore seem all the more impressive, that even despite the brutal injuries she’d suffered that they wouldn’t slow her down.

Next was Curshaw. The giant mountain of a man limped visibly a few steps behind Constance, with one of his arms draped over the edge of one of the wagons accompanying them, very clearly using it as support. It was a sight that momentarily puzzled me, at least until I was able to see why, that the armor surrounding one of his knees had been crushed and crumpled to the point of no longer bending as if it had been caught in some massive claw. It was that sight combined by a similar layer of black burns, ones identical to those that Constance bore, across his armor that all but confirmed my suspicions that they had tried to tackle the Guyot Fault Gate.

Those all look like injuries that typhonic drones could inflict, I thought, recalling my own battle against the creature and feeling a surge of excitement slice its way through my foul mood. If that gate had been closed, then that would change everything for the region. It would give trade a reason to come back into the area from the towns and settlements on the opposite end of the fault, not to mention give people a surge of hope for the rest of the harvest and winter to follow. The last thing anyone ever wanted was to deal with hungry and freezing Gateborn in the middle of the blizzards that commonly hit the region.

It was that surprisingly buoyant thought that had me looking at Mercutio as I saw him appear next, riding on top of one of the wagons with its reins in one hand, while he used the other to direct a series of colorful lights through the air. He too looked as rough as Constance and Curshaw did, if not in the same way. Where the former pair had visibly endured burns and fought against clearly powerful beings, Mercutio instead looked dirty, filthy even, his entire body—including his cloak—covered in a mixture of dark brown mud and what from here looked like either dried slime or thick, tangled web. It was a sight that confused me at first, if only because of its stark difference to the others and how it didn’t fit what I’d have expected them to find within the Fault gate.

I didn’t have time to dwell on that particular line of thought, as Amedea picked that moment to make her presence known, appearing almost as if from nowhere directly behind Mercutio on top of the large crates loaded within. Unlike any of the others, she looked perfectly normal as she always did, as if she herself had escaped or had been able to completely avoid any of the trials and tribulations that the others had been forced to endure. Whatever the case was, her presence instantly caused the crowd to quiet as they saw her looking over them, their good cheer rapidly falling into whispers and worry. Normally, it was Constance that gave the speeches after such triumphant returns as this one, her natural charisma and presence lending themselves well to such moments, inspiring everyone for weeks on end. But on some few rare occasions, there were times where Amedea was the one to give a speech.

Times when there wasn’t only good news to share.

Sumalin, I thought with a sudden rush of adrenaline, only then noticing that she was nowhere to be seen. Of course that wasn’t exactly abnormal, considering her abilities, but the fact that she hadn’t at least made a token appearance before vanishing completely set me on edge. Did . . . did she not make it?

Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long to get an answer, the crowd having finally died down enough for Amedea to begin speaking.

“Friends,” she said in a clear, if somewhat solemn voice. “Once again as you see, we have returned triumphantly from the wilds. This time with two fewer gates for all of us to worry about.”

A ragged cheer briefly rang up from the assembled crowd, causing her to flash everyone with a thin smile before motioning with her hands to settle everyone down.

“That’s right; no longer will the sprab horde gate of Raven Branch Valley trouble us. Nor will the new gate that opened just yesterday, spilling forth countless of the Formless at the foot of the mountain lord’s home, risk disrupting him from his perch and bringing ruin upon us,” she continued after it was quiet enough to be heard again. “But I am afraid that both of those achievements came at a high price.”

Oh. Oh, no, I thought, feeling my body tense at the news, despite having been half-expecting it already.

“When we left yesterday, it was our intention to attempt to finally assault the Guyot Fault Gate, an endeavor filled with far more risk that I’d been willing to tolerate in the past. But enough time had passed without us finding a suitable member to round out our ranks, and as we all know, the lands around the Fault have begun to warp more and more with each passing night. It was past time that we tried our best to seal it.

“Unfortunately, the System and the Gateborn had other plans for us before we could even begin our assault,” Amedea continued, putting enough emphasis on each of the two words to make them sound like they were curses. “A pair of premonitions came to me as we readied ourselves. One of a gate bearing the creatures known as the Formless tearing itself open and spilling forth a torrent of its shambling monsters into the lands directly under the Mountain Lord’s perch. And a second of Ravenstead aflame, its walls breached and its defenders under attack by a rampaging horde of sprab.”

H-hold on, w-what? I asked myself, Amedea’s final statement catching me off guard and causing my blood to run cold. But that brief thought was all I had before she continued speaking, leaving me with nothing to do but listen to her over the sound of my suddenly pounding heart.

“We were faced with an impossible choice, and one that we had to make with the heaviest of hearts,” she said, panning her gaze over the audience. “With the farthest distance to travel to reach the Formless gate before it spewed forth its kind and angered the dragon above, we sent Sumalin and Mercutio to close it. Their speed is unmatched over such long distances. The rest of us in turn rushed as fast as we could towards Ravenstead, hoping against hope that we could arrive in time.

“I am sorry to tell you all that we only succeeded in one of our twin tasks, incurring a great cost in closing the Formless gate. That being the loss of our dear friend and ally Sumalin.”

Amedea paused to let her words sink in, the few murmurs that were echoing through the crowd falling completely silent.

S-she’s dead? I thought, feeling a heavy weight settle upon my heart at the news. Sumalin is dead.

“As we have with far too many others, we will remember her sacrifice with a vigil for the days to come. A vigil that I am afraid that she will unfortunately need to share with the families of Ravenstead, for we arrived too late to do anything but still the burning fires and enact vengeance upon the Gateborn invading it.” Amedea waved a hand at the wagon and the crates that she was standing on. “What you see here is all the food, equipment, and personal effects that we were able to recover from the town, not wishing it to go to waste in the wild. All those who had kin in Ravenstead will be able to look over and claim—”

That’s . . . that’s not right. That’s not what we saw at all, I thought, at first feeling confused at what my adoptive grandmother was saying as she continued to speak. Is . . . is she trying to cover for what really happened there? Does she—

It was then that I saw the horses attached to the wagon.

W-wait, I remember those, I said, my feet having somehow unconsciously taken me forward, closer to the wagon. Those . . . those are the same horses I saw in Len’s memory with Damon. And those crates . . . are those the same crates I saw, too? If they are . . .

I felt my heart skip a beat in my chest right before it began to thunder uncontrollably, followed by a sickening realization washing over me a second later.

They were working with Damon, I whispered mentally, feeling the first embers of rage beginning to kindle within me. They knew . . . they knew everything that was happening. No, not only that. They—

<Broodkiller! Focus!> West shouted at me, her voice causing me to snap out of my spiraling anger.

And onto Constance’s surprised-looking face.

In fact, onto several surprised-looking faces, more and more of them turning my way as a growing revelation rapidly worked its way through the crowd, the whispers eventually growing loud enough to reach my ears.

“Look! There’s another A-Tier!”

“A-Tier? Where?”

“Wait, is that Auric?”

“That’s him!”

“Thank the System! One hero falls, another rises!”

And then the crowd washed over me as they all surged forward to greet Blueridge’s newest A-Tier.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Mister Monster small and sweet, Mister Monster cute and weak.

Mister Monster talk and say, “Johnny won’t you come and play?

Monster’s nice, Monster’s fun! Monster wants to hurt no one.”

But Monster laughs, ’cause Monster lied, and

Monster’s not the one who died.

—Blueridge nursery rhyme

* * *

“Well, that was a rather inopportune time for the Schema mask to have fallen off,” Amedea said in a resigned tone as the tower door finally closed behind her with a crash, instantly halving the volume of the crowd that was still outside. “Though I suppose the reaction could have also been much, much worse. At least no one openly challenged your sudden advancement through the tiers.”

“Yet,” Curshaw grunted as he stomped ahead of us, already making a straight line for the workshop, where he no doubt planned on cutting the pinched and broken armor immobilizing his knee completely off. “Give it a few hours, maybe even a day. Everyone will start wondering.”

“An inevitable fate given his meteoric rise,” my grandmother replied, her eyes flashing over towards me. “Short of confining him to the tower or exiling him out of sight for years, I imagine there would be questions. No one ascends three tiers in a span that isn’t measured in years.”

“Nor three levels in a single day, usually,” Mercutio added a second later, the man flashing me a knowing glance as he strode past Amedea and me, already in the process of stripping his dirty cloak and clothes off his body. “Have you had a busy time while we’ve been gone, Auric?”

“Huh, w-what?” I replied, still overwhelmed and on edge from both the revelation that I’d uncovered about Salvo and the near mobbing that I’d had to endure from the crowd for the past half hour until we’d been able to get free. As it was right now, my nerves were completely shot, and a boiling pit of rage roiled endlessly in my stomach to the point where I wasn’t sure if I was going to scream or vomit.

“Your levels, Auric,” Amedea said in a pointed tone, a frown coming over her face. “I hadn’t noticed it at first. But it does seem that you’ve somehow gained three more than I recall you having when we left yesterday morning. Care to explain how?”

Is . . . is that really what they want to talk about right now? I wondered as I stared back blankly at my adoptive grandmother, finding it difficult to even begin to formulate a response.

But fortunately I had West to help snap me back into focus.

<Now would be a good time to speak, Broodkiller!> she said to me, her words accompanied by a brief spike of pain, the equivalent of a pinch shooting through my mind. <Else you will draw suspicion to yourself!>

“S-sorry,” I blurted out, knowing that the pause in between the question and my answer had been too long. “I just . . . was thinking about Sumalin. Is . . . is she really gone?”

Instantly, Amedea’s face melted, as if suddenly remembering something that she had forgotten. “Oh, child, of course that’s where your mind would be right now. Forgive us. We’ve already had an entire night to grow a callus over our hearts.”

“Some of us have, at least,” Constance commented in a bitter tone from somewhere behind me, prompting me to turn and see her also in the process of stripping her armor from her body, choosing to tear the straps clean off instead of unbuckling them. Following beside her was Val, one of her hands aglow with the fluttering lights that signaled the use of her healing powers. “It . . . it shouldn’t have happened.”

“What . . . what do you mean?” I asked while turning, not having seen Constance so angry before. Normally, she was a beacon of calm and peace, even at the worst of times. For her to be like this, something had to have gone wrong, and drastically.

<Such as betrayal?> West suggested in the back of my mind.

“That fate played a cruel role in Sumalin’s fall,” Mercutio replied, his voice heavy. “Rather than any failing on either of our parts.” The man paused for a second to swallow before continuing. “We made it to the gate relatively quickly, all things considered, but by then, dozens of the Formless, slime-like creatures, had poured out of the portal and into the surrounding lands, each of them mid-to-upper B-Tier. A challenge, yes, but not one insurmountable for the two of us. Or wouldn’t have been, had they not had one nasty power in particular.”

“And what was that?” Val asked, her voice sounding perfectly level and unsuspicious, a far cry more than I knew mine would be.

“They exploded when they died,” Mercutio said, waving vaguely at the mess of his clothes. “And with rather great force, I might add. Sending all of their innards, along with their acidic flesh, in every direction. Had we all been there, it wouldn’t have been too great a problem; we could have drawn them out and slain them at our leisure. But for just the two of us . . . our only option was to force through them and try to crash the gate. To get inside before we were overwhelmed. And I think it would have worked . . . had the mountain not come down on us.”

“The mountain?” I repeated, finally finding my voice. “You mean the mountain lord?”

“Thank the System, no, elsewise I am certain I would not be here myself,” Mercutio answered with a shake of his head. “Rather, I mean quite literally the mountain itself. During our fight to the gate, we were forced to kill several of the Formless, enough so that their detonating deaths must have destabilized a shelf of rock above us, causing an avalanche. I called for us to break free the instant I saw it, but it came down on us too quickly and . . . well . . .”

The man simply shrugged in defeat. “I lost track of everything. Her. The Formless. The gate. I only just managed to transport myself away at the last instant. The next thing I knew afterwards, the whole region was buried under an untold amount of rock. Enough to have buried the gate and the Formless completely beneath it.”

Did . . . did he kill her? I wondered with a sickening feeling forming in my gut as I finished listening to Mercutio’s story, the suspicions that Ciprien had shared racing to the forefront of my mind. Everything he’d explained had been too neat and too tidy to account for. A gate to appear at the right moment? Gateborn with a near-perfect ability to bring down an avalanche? Sure, it was technically possible, but so full of perfect coincidences that I found it difficult to swallow.

Unless this is just a cover story to explain away her death, I added after a second thought, realizing that Ciprien’s insidious affliction of double thinking had infected me. If they were doing something they shouldn’t have been with entropy . . . it could have backfired on them and killed . . . or corrupted Sumalin in the process. They could have—

“So . . . you didn’t actually close the gate?” Val asked from somewhere behind me, interrupting my thoughts before they could continue to spiral. “Or find her body after?”

“Despite what we told the town, no, we did not,” Mercutio said. “At least not the traditional way. If it remains open . . . then it remains open under a truly stunning amount of rock. As for Sumalin . . . I searched for as long as I was able, but could not find a trace. Nor a way to get to the portal. It is possible that she may have made it inside before the rocks fell . . . but if she did . . . then she would be alone against an entire gate of them.”

“And with no exit to escape from.” Curshaw grunted as he continued his ambling motions towards the workshop, stopping just at the door and looking back. “Not a way I’d pick to go. That’s for—”

A loud sound of metal on stone interrupted the giant man as something suddenly slammed into the wall beside him, the unexpected noise causing all of us, including Amedea, to jump.

“Shut up,” Constance hissed angrily, the woman already striding across the room and towards the stairs as she spoke. “All of you. Just shut the hell up.”

And then in a blink, she was gone up the steps, leaving her breastplate lodged edge first in the stone doorway leading into the workshop, having just barely missed Curshaw’s head by less than a foot.

In shock with my mouth open wide, I watched her vanish before I turned my head back towards Val, our eyes locking on each other’s.

Just what the hell had happened out there today?

***

“Just a moment more,” Amedea said to me, her attention focused on a point of space between us. She pulled at it again, pinched her fingers down as if catching a mote of dust.

And missed once again.

“Damn the System, I almost had it,” she cursed, her other hand coming up to rub her eyes. “I just lost focus at the last moment and it escaped me. One last try . . .”

Her eyes lost focus once again as she fixated on a point just before me, her hand abruptly lancing out to pinch at a point of empty air again, this time finally snagging hold of something.

“Aha! Got you, slippery little devil,” she whispered as she gently pulled back, her lab beginning to buzz with energy just as it had the last time that she’d used her power on me. The only difference this time was that it felt more electric as it raced across my skin and caused my hair to stand on end, as if I could get shocked at any moment.

Though that could just be the air in the tower right now, I thought as I fought to keep my hands from shaking, Constance’s display just ten minutes earlier combined with my earlier anger and anxiety leaving me particularly high strung.

After throwing her armor and vanishing up the stairs, everyone practically sprinted to go their own separate ways too, Curshaw vanishing into the workshop, Mercutio into the laundry, and Val to chase after Constance. That left only Amedea and me to stare awkwardly at one another before she invited me up to her room and lab. With no real way to refuse her, and more than a little curious to learn exactly what had happened during their day out, the next thing I knew I was upstairs and at a small table with her telling me that we could “work and talk” at the same time.

Which was exactly what she did as she drew open another translucent window of reality between us.

“So, have there been any changes with the new guest in your mind?” she asked, not wasting so much as an instant to get started.

<Only that she has realized how much rot has infected this swarm,> West answered.

“Uh, n-no, not really,” I replied, struggling to keep my voice normal as I spoke, but not correcting West in the slightest. “She’s . . . settled in? I don’t know how to describe it any better. We’re still getting used to one another, but there haven’t been any issues.”

“Hrm,” Amedea mused as she peered into the window between us, which was slowly starting to shimmer. “What about mental changes? Have you noticed anything different in your own mind after she joined you? Foreign impulses, desires, anything?”

<I think our desires are particularly well aligned at the moment,> West whispered to me, her voice a rasping echo of chitters in my mind. <We seek answers to the web of deception that you’ve woven around us.>

“Nothing that I can specifically put a finger on,” I answered, taking pains to choose my words carefully. “She’s different, that’s for sure. But so far we’ve worked well together.”

“I see,” my grandmother said, her nose wrinkling slightly in distaste. “Then I suppose that’s unfortunate. Because I’d been truly hoping that she would temper your exuberance and not further enflame it.”

“Uh, what—”

“Your levels, Auric,” Amedea stated, cutting me off before I could say anything else, her eyes shifting ever so slightly to glare into mine. “I’ve not forgotten about them. How did you get so many so quickly? We were gone just a single night.”

“The System gave them to me,” I replied in a surprisingly even voice, leading me to mentally thank Val for insisting that we prepare an explanation ahead of time.

And to also make sure that it was mostly true.

“Uh, two of them at any rate,” I added after a second, summoning up what I hoped looked like guilt on my face. “I was so close to a third after . . . that, uh, well, we snuck out to Old Town after you all didn’t come back. Killed the few free roamers I needed to reach it, the same for Val too. She got a portion of the experience too.”

“Hold a moment, the System awarded you two levels?” Amedea queried in disbelief, the part of me admitting to leaving town apparently not as important. “You mean it finally finished . . .”

“It did,” I said, once more seamlessly falling into the story that Val and I had readied by way of explanation. “It awarded me enough experience to take me just a hundred experience shy of level eleven after it finished processing the Schemas.”

“Ugh, child! Why didn’t you say something earlier, then?” Amedea exclaimed, the window in reality between us wavering as she spoke, followed by an array of new colors shining through on her side.

“When could I have possibly said anything?” I replied, a surge of heat abruptly shooting through my voice. “When none of you came back last night? Sometime between finding out that Sumalin is dead and Ravenstead was burnt to the ground? Or maybe right after Constance nearly took a swing at Curshaw?”

Amedea’s gaze hardened as she glared back at me, the strobing lights from whatever power she was using playing across her face. “Auric, unless you haven’t been paying attention, it’s been a rather long day for us. One that makes me less than fond of this attitude I’m witnessing.”

“And I’m feeling less than fond of being kept in the dark and lied to,” I retorted, feeling West’s presence rise up in my mind at the same moment.

<Choose your next words carefully, Broodkiller,> she warned, clearly sensing my building anger. <Especially if you look to conceal your suspicions longer.>

“You all left without telling Val and I anything of your plans yesterday, which is fine, I can understand why,” I continued with a slightly over-long pause, West’s words just enough to keep me from saying something I’d regret. “Then when you came back, you lied to everyone out there, you told them the Formless gate was closed. But then as soon as you were inside the tower here, you said it wasn’t. That it was just buried. That Sumalin might just be alive and trapped inside. Yet you’re all still here, and aren’t even trying to rescue her in the off chance that might be.”

And that doesn’t even count what you aren’t telling us about Ravenstead, I added in my mind, just barely managing to keep myself from blurting the words out loud.

“You think being forthright and honest with the townsfolk about Sumalin would actually serve a useful purpose, Auric? After hearing about Ravenstead’s fall?” Amedea asked, the expression on her face unchanging as her gaze momentarily shifted off mine and onto the window between us. “That they would somehow draw strength from the knowledge that she was either crushed flat by a torrent of stone, something beyond even an A-Tier’s control, or that she was trapped within a gate and overrun by countless Gateborn?” She shook her head. “No. It would instead sap their resolve even further. Possibly break it, even. And that is the last thing that we can afford before the winter comes.

“As for attempting to rescue her,” Amedea continued after a brief pause, something in the window between us catching her attention for a moment, “that’s exactly what we would have done had I been able to sense that she still lived. But I cannot, Auric. I’ve tried to divine her fate time and time again since I learned what happened and have only seen darkness in return. As much as it pains me, I am forced to admit that she is gone. It’s why it is better for the town to see her as a hero who fought to the end, rather than as a victim of chance.”

“And is that why Constance is so angry?” I asked, treading as close to the line as I dared. “Because Sumalin was a victim of chance?”

“What Constance is, is grieving,” my grandmother shot back, her tone rapidly rising to meet mine, a flash of orange and red coloring her face from the window between us. “Because unless you’ve forgotten, we’ve lost Ravenstead last night. More than twenty souls that humanity can scarcely afford to lose.”

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten,” I stated as I abruptly stood up with enough force to knock my chair over, knowing that I had to get out of the room before I truly lost my composure.

As I rose, the motion was enough to shatter the window that Amedea had conjured before us, fragments of it spiraling in every direction before fading away into nothingness.

“In fact,” I continued, barely paying attention to the flying shards of energy, “I seem to remember telling you that something was wrong in Raven Branch Valley days ago. Hell, I actually tried to do something about it, rather than sit on my hands and wait for everyone to die.”

I saw the shocked look cross Amedea’s face a second before true anger started to show. “Oh, you ungrateful child! You have no—”

“Enough!” I interrupted as I started to walk to the door, stopping only to look back. “I’m done listening to you, and I’m sure as hell done staying here.”

And without waiting for a reply, I slammed the door shut behind me.

Chapter Thirty

Requesting Schema Information From Parent Node

Schema Information Received

Welcome, Entity: Auric Amadeus Cain – Tier: A, to C-Tier Gate: P4243V3

Your Challenge Awaits

— System Message Upon Entering Old Town Gate

* * *

“Auric! Slow down! Wait for me!” I heard Val shout from behind me as I rushed forward with both of my knives in hand, barely noticing the disorienting effects of transition into the gate that we’d just stepped into. Instead, my attention was wholly fixated on the five doglike creatures ahead of us, their growls already filling the air as they scrambled to meet my charge, visibly caught off guard.

Sprinting forward with a burst of speed as I closed the final distance separating me and the pack of lesser barghests, I caught the first of them straight across the snout with my knife before they could even begin to react, sending a spray of blood flying through the air. A spray of blood that I hungrily pulled towards myself as I struck out with my other weapon a second later, driving its point deep into the shoulder of yet another one of the creatures who had been frozen in place, thanks to a timely mental spike from West. I was instantly rewarded with twin howls of pain from my vicious assault, followed by a chorus of angry snarls as the pack of beasts rounded on me, their bodies coiling in preparation to leap.

But by then it was too late for any of them to do anything but die.

With a growing stream of crimson liquid coiling itself around my arm as if it were a living thing, I twisted to open the throat of a leaping barghest, its own momentum carrying itself across the blade’s edge as I shifted harmlessly out of the way. It was a move that put me in perfect position to direct a savage thrust directly into the eye of another one of the beasts, my knife lancing straight through the yellow orb and into the soft tissue beneath, the creature beginning its collapse to the ground an instant later.

Yet that opening brutality and ferocity was only the beginning of the carnage that followed afterwards as I felt West take hold of the blood that had filled my Blood Pool thus far and begin to direct it. In a blink, a razor-sharp tendril carved a line across the side of the nearest beast, spoiling its leap before it could even begin, then going on to wrap itself around the leg of another. This was all while a second length of blood shaped itself into a spear before promptly plunging itself into the side of the barghest before me, distracting it just long enough for me to ram my blade home below its ear with more anger behind it than I’d ever felt in my life.

It was that anger, the anger that had consumed me ever since I’d left Blueridge with Val chasing behind me, that fueled the rest of what proved to be an all-too-short fight. One by one, the barghests fell to the ground in a bleeding mess as West and I carved through them with ease, not taking so much as a scratch in the dozen or so seconds we needed to dispatch them. In fact, it was only when the last of them had collapsed to the ground with a pitiful whine that I even noticed that their Schemas had appeared, the belated surge of knowledge flashing across my vision for a second before I dismissed it.

Barghest – Gateborn – Tier: C – Level: 6

Type: Animal

Intelligence: Bestial

Origin: Gate: P4243V3 – Old Town Region

Schema Integrity: 100%

Health: Dead

Status: None

Weaknesses:

[None]

Vulnerable Locations:

[None]

“Ugh, damn it, Auric,” I heard Val curse from behind me, prompting me to finally turn in her direction and see that she was only now just beginning to shake off the gate’s transition effects.

Which included getting used to the rather potent stench of sulfur that filled the entirety of the alien landscape around us.

“Y-you c-could have waited,” she said in a halting tone, clearly working as hard as she could to suppress gagging while she spoke. “S-stop being s-so damn reckless!”

“I’m fine, Val,” I replied tersely, the fight barely having managed to touch the rage burning within me. “This is just a low-level C-Tier gate.”

“And what, is that supposed to make it sound less dangerous than it really is?” Val countered, finally mastering the gate’s smell enough to talk clearly, her eyes moving to scan our surroundings, which until a few seconds earlier had been the broken and shattered remains of Old Town.

Now instead of the crumbling buildings and lost memories of the long-since-fallen city from the Before Times, the two of us stood in a fetid, foul-smelling forest, with tall and slender mushroom-like plants taking the place of trees as they stretched up to a yellow sky above. It wasn’t a place that either of us had counted on visiting after we’d reached Old Town, at least not until we’d been attacked by a pack of free-roaming barghest. Eager for the chance to work out my rage on something physical, I’d leapt at the chance to fight, dispatching the roaming pack effortlessly before pressing onwards to try and find the gate, which I promptly dove into the second I found it, dragging an increasingly irate Val behind me.

“I’m not here to try suicide by Gateborn, Val,” I said as I finished my own inspection of the area, finding that the gate had dropped us off in a small, meadowlike clearing with only a single visible path leading out of it. It was exactly what I expected out of a C-Tier gate, which were relatively simple as gates went, differing from D-Tier gates by virtue of their size, the number of Gateborn that they held within, or the presence of puzzles that had to be solved to progress. “If that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Honestly, Auric, at this point I have no idea what I’m wondering,” my sister said as she moved to catch up to me, her face paling slightly when her eyes dropped down to see the remains of the barghest I’d slain. “At least not beyond wondering how we ended up exactly where we were yesterday again. You know you really can’t keep running from your problems like this, right?”

“Why not?” I shot back, motioning sharply for her to follow me as I turned to walk down the open path. “It’s worked for me so far. And besides, tell me I’m lying if you didn’t also want to get the hell out of the tower and start breaking stuff after they came back. After everything they said.”

There was a long pause as Val considered her reply, her soft voice reaching my ears as I continued to stride forward, my eyes scanning the flanking trees on either side of me.

“I’d have liked to have a chance to talk to Constance,” she said. “Whatever . . . whatever happened, it didn’t sit well with her.”

“It clearly didn’t,” I agreed before going on to shrug. “But that sure didn’t stop her from being involved with Damon. To being involved in whatever Mercutio brought along with him from Once-New Orleans. She . . . they are responsible for all of those deaths. For Ravenstead. For everything.”

“Are . . . are you really sure about that, Auric?” Val asked me, doubt heavy in her voice. “Like, really, really sure? There could be an explanation . . .”

“West and I saw the same wagon and horses in the memory, Val,” I replied, shaking my head. “The very same ones that Damon and his group had stolen. And if that wasn’t enough, they recovered food from Ravenstead. We didn’t find any food there at all when we were there. It was picked completely clean. What sort of story could explain that?

“And even if that wasn’t the case,” I continued when it was clear that Val wouldn’t respond. “There was still Sumalin. Nothing . . . nothing is sitting well with me and their explanation of what happened. If it actually happened.”

“Me either,” she said finally. “But what can we do about any of that? They’re . . . they’re our family. Or they were, at least.”

It was my turn to not have an answer for my sister, having been wrestling with that very question ever since I’d stormed out of Amedea’s laboratory and, shortly afterwards, the tower. There were too many things that had happened over the last few days that weren’t adding up, no matter which way I looked at them. Things that made me far too angry to think about rationally. Fortunately though, I didn’t have to come up with an answer right at that moment as our path finally came to an end in the form of a woven cluster of vines decorated with several glowing bulbs upon it. It was a sight that I didn’t have to look at long to figure out was a puzzle.

Nor one that I was even remotely in the mood to try and solve.

“Stay back,” I told Val as I glanced over my shoulder. “I’m not done hitting things yet.”

To her credit, she didn’t so much as call out at me as I broke into a jog to close the distance between me and the puzzle, instead choosing to let out a resigned sigh that reached my ears at the same instant I slashed out at the vines. Carving into them with both my knives and blood at once, I was rewarded with a chunk of them falling to the ground in a heap, their severed lengths flailing and flopping like beached fish. Reacting to my attack, the cluster of vines didn’t waste so much as a second in responding to my violence, several barbed tendrils lashing out towards me en masse.

But I’d expected such a reaction from the puzzle, knowing firsthand how gates, and by extension the System, liked to punish people who didn’t follow their prearranged script. Dancing backwards a step as the vines shot towards me, I waited until they were just barely within reach before lunging forward, my knives and blood reaching out to slash at them. In a blink, the attacking vines had joined the others on the ground as I raced even closer towards the woven-vine barrier, which was now writhing as if it were a pit of snakes. Closing in at a sprint, I was forced to dodge a final pair of seeking vines, West directing the last of the blood at my command to sever them completely, allowing me to focus my attacks on the still-glowing bulbs attached to their core. Cutting, stabbing, and crushing them during the onslaught that followed, the vines then rapidly lost their will to fight, some of them retreating out of sight while others suddenly went limp the instant their parent orb was destroyed.

“There, all done,” I said, barely feeling winded after the last of the vines had stopped moving, the result now mostly opening the once-blocked path ahead of us. “Now we don’t need to waste our time dealing with a stupid puzzle.”

“Yeah, but with all the noise you made we now need to deal with that thing!” Val exclaimed just as a loud growl split the air and a dark, furred shape appeared on the opposite side of the now-insensate vines.

A shape that charged directly towards us.

“Noise that if you didn’t make, we could have taken advantage of and snuck up on it!” she went on to add, a click of a mechanism sounding out a second before a bolt raced past me, the vines, and towards the beast before vanishing out of sight.

“Actually, I think fighting here is perfect,” I replied as I raced toward the wall of vines, hearing a dull roar of pain echo out in the distance, Val’s bolt no doubt having found its mark. “Hit the thing with Sopor, but save your totem. No sense in burning it out if we don’t need it.”

Reaching the vines while speaking, I wasted no time in slipping through them and to the other side, managing just a brief moment to catch sight of the oncoming creature as I readied myself to receive its charge, a portion of its Schema flashing across my vision.

Greater Barghest – Gateborn – Tier: C – Level: 10

Just a bigger version of the others, I noted as I watched the distance separating us shrink, taking the opportunity to sheath one of my knives so I had a hand free for the next step of my plan. That shouldn’t be too hard to deal with.

With only seconds left before the barghest arrived, I had just enough time to wrap a now-empty hand around a vine as it closed. The next thing I knew afterwards, I was leaping into the air as the creature’s jaws snapped shut on the spot that I’d just been standing, pulling hard on the vine for the extra bit of height that I needed to escape the scything claw that followed me upwards. Hanging in the air for a split second high above the barghest, I had a moment to take in its appearance up close, its massive, wolflike form and pronounced teeth dwarfing its smaller cousins by an order of magnitude. It was a sight that just days earlier would have filled me with nothing but dread, the vicious, horse-sized beast enough to bring on nightmares worthy of lasting for weeks. But to me now, an anger-fueled A-Tier with nearly a dozen levels under his belt, the barghest barely looked like a challenge, its movements appearing slow and sloppy to my eye.

And that was before Val’s power washed over it, slowing it even further.

Feeling a thin smile play across my face as gravity reasserted its hold on me, I let go of my grasp on the vine and allowed myself to drop, but not before tugging on it one last time to better direct my descent. A descent that had me landing hard on the barghest’s back, causing its knees to buckle from my unexpected weight. Gripping the creature tightly with my legs before it could even think to buck me off, I put the next stage of my plan in motion.

Which, of course, as any sane person would do in my situation, was to thrust my knife deep into the barghest’s withers, the spot between its front shoulder blades and where I expected its spine to be.

Aided by my strength and positioning, the blade easily sank into the flesh until its hilt touched the creature’s fur, unfortunately just barely missing my intended target and what I had hoped to be a critical blow. It served its secondary purpose, which was to cause the creature to howl loudly in agony as it tried to buck me off, rather than twisting to try and bite me. It was a tactic that Val’s power had already countered before the barghest could even begin to fully put it in motion, giving me what felt like all the time in the world to pull my other knife free and plunge it into the side of the barghest’s neck. Yanking it free a second later, I was rewarded with a thick stream of blood that came along with it, West already having grabbed hold of it as it snaked down the metal and coiled itself around my arm.

An arm that plunged itself downwards again and again in the seconds that followed, causing the stolen blood to thicken and swell until there was finally enough.

Shifting and undulating, the blood shaped itself into that of a wicked, pointed claw, which West immediately moved into a thrust, its blood spike finding its mark on the back of the barghest’s head. It pierced through bone with only token resistance and into the tender flesh beneath before exiting out the far side. I felt the creature give way beneath me, collapsing to the ground without so much as a sound to mark its death.

<A glorious hunt, Broodkiller,> West said to me, her voice sounding vaguely impressed. <Not even so much as a flailing strike against you to mar your new shell. Though perhaps it is time to hunt more worthy prey?>

“Maybe,” I replied as I moved to dismount from the fallen barghest, a little disappointed at how trivial it had been to kill. But with two tiers and a level separating us, I realized that I was now easily twice its strength in every measurable metric there was, and shouldn’t have expected anything different.

“Come on, let’s close this gate and get out of here,” I said as I reshaped the blood back onto my arm and glanced over at my sister, who I couldn’t help but notice was staring at me with a mixture of awe and fear at my brutal dispatch of the barghest. And I could understand why. So far we hadn’t managed to really talk about my meteoric rise level-wise and what that meant for relative power difference, but it was clear that I was rapidly leaving her behind.

Something to figure out later, I said to myself as we began to move once more, not anywhere even close to being in the mood to address that particular topic in the state I was in. The anger that I felt at Salvo’s betrayal was still too raw, too fresh in my mind to think about anything else.

So instead it was in complete silence that we stalked through the remainder of the gate until we came across what had to be the barghest pack’s lair, a partially covered burrow of dirt with dozens of shattered and gnawed-on bones strewn about. It was wholly unremarkable as things went otherwise, the only point of interest being a large, glowing bulb, exactly like the ones we’d seen a few moments earlier, growing on the burrow’s lip half a dozen feet above us.

“Want to do the honors?” I asked Val as we both looked up at what was undeniably the Gate Core, and what we needed to destroy to close it.

“S-sure,” she replied, only hesitating for a second before she raised her crossbow, took aim at the glowing plant, and fired.

Which was promptly followed by reality crashing down on us an instant later.

Chapter Thirty-One

Even after all the years that have passed since its arrival, we still have no inkling about how and why the System opens Gates, or even what their true purpose is. Beyond, of course, releasing hordes of Gateborn into the lands surrounding them. In fact, the only thing that we have been able to determine beyond a reasonable doubt is that they open most frequently around the ruins of the World Before. Cities and metropolises especially. Even now, almost a century after they were all abandoned. It’s why here, around Once-New Orleans, we’ve always needed to endure an exceptionally high number of gates . . .

—excerpt from A Study on the Appearance of Gates by Gregory Starn.

* * *

Gate Challenge Complete – Processing Outcome . . .

Completed

Gate Challenge Difficulty: Minor

Gate Challenge Rewards:

+4,000 Experience Points

Empowered Mote of Ferocity

Empowered Mote of Silence

“Well, that was a better haul than I was honestly expecting to get,” I said as I dismissed the system text from my vision and glanced around the familiar surroundings of Old Town, the mostly hollowed-out shell of buildings looking exactly like what I’d remembered before I’d leapt into the gate.

It had been less than a minute since the gate spat us back into our native reality, the transition between the two worlds proving to be much smoother than my first experience. This time after Val had destroyed the Gate Core, everything had more or less blurred out of focus around us, followed by a vague sense of falling, as if I’d stepped off an unexpectedly high step before finally touching ground. But in addition to the smooth exit from the gate, I’d finally had a chance to experience another unanticipated benefit, that being actual, tangible System-granted rewards that fueled the motivation of even the laziest of gatesealers.

“No kidding!” Val said, the yellow-hued mote that she currently held in her hand doing much to banish the mood that had fallen over her in the last few minutes of the gate. “I’ve . . . I’ve only been on one other gate run before this one, a D-Tier one. We barely even got enough experience to make it worthwhile. This, on the other hand . . .”

She waved the orb as if to emphasize her point. “This changes everything.”

“I’ll bet,” I replied as I glanced down at my own empowered mote, the nebulous, slightly spongey ball of energy’s description filling my vision.

Mote of Ferocity

Tier: C

Item Class: Empowerment

Uses Remaining: 6

Empowerment Effect:

Weapons:

+5% Critical Damage

Armor:

+5 to Celerity

Finally, an attribute boost! I thought as I finished reading it, my excitement only intensifying once I realized what I was holding. Considered to be one of the rarest of empowerments, motes that conveyed attribute boosts to items were capable of enhancing the physical ability of anyone who wore them, which, considering how difficult it was to progress at the higher levels, was always greatly appreciated. And a decent enough effect to put on my knives too, especially considering that I can only enhance my armor once.

“So what does yours do?” I went on to ask Val as I went about doing exactly that, empowering both of my knives and armor with the mote’s energy before glancing at the mote she held, her eyes not having moved from it in the slightest.

“Hm? What? Oh, here, take a look,” Val replied in a half-distracted tone before coming fully back into the present and shifting so I could better see the mote, the empowered item’s description soon filling my vision.

Mote of Silence

Tier: C

Item Class: Empowerment

Uses Remaining: 6

Empowerment Effect:

All Items:

Reduces the typical noise made by the empowered object by half.

“Now that’s pretty useful,” I replied with a low whistle, instantly appreciating the item’s utility, which even after living with Salvo for my entire life happened to be one of the more unique ones I’d ever seen, and that was without seeing how it actually worked in practice. “Make sure to hang onto that one tightly when we get back home. Everyone’s going to want it.”

Val’s face looked at me blankly at that statement, which had come out of my mouth with barely a second thought.

“And is home a place that we are going to go again?” she asked me. “Because we haven’t exactly figured out what we’re doing there just yet, Auric. In case you’ve forgotten.”

“I haven’t,” I replied with sudden bitterness, the reminder of exactly what we’d been running away from causing my exuberance over closing the gate and getting its rewards to sour. “I . . . I just have no idea what we can even hope to do.”

“Well, for starters, kid, you can tell me how the hell you’re an A-Tier already?” a familiar voice said from somewhere above us, promptly making both Val and I jump. “I mean, I had my suspicions you weren’t D-Tier anymore, but this . . .”

<Again he appears!> West immediately exclaimed. <Yet I cannot so much as even get a sense of his place. Do all you can to learn from this hunter, Broodkiller, for I cannot imagine what we couldn’t accomplish with his skill.>

“Ciprien?” I called out as I scanned our surroundings for the man, my heart having instantly been sent racing by both his unexpected interruption and West’s excitement. “You weren’t supposed to meet us here.”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he replied with a grunt. “And no, I sure as hell wasn’t. But as it happens, while I was busy minding my own business, a commotion caught my ear. One that after I followed, ended up with me catching a rather familiar-looking A-Tier diving into a gate. An A-Tier who until that moment, I didn’t know was an A-Tier. If you catch my meaning.

“Now, got an answer to my question? You’ll have to forgive me if I keep my distance till I get one I like. It’s been a trying night and I’m not feeling in a particularly trusting mood.”

“Well, I’m afraid I don’t think I have an answer you’ll like,” I replied as both Val and I continued to look around, despite knowing how futile the effort was; whatever power Ciprien was using to conceal himself, it was a particularly effective one. “But it happened when I met the System, when it granted me the abilities to purge entropy.”

“You’re telling me it advanced you three tiers at that point, too?” he queried, voice full of disbelief. “What the hell were you even doing when you met it?”

“Trying to survive, mostly,” I said with a shrug as I tried to figure out how best to summarize what I’d gone through. “I’d signed up for a . . . uh, let’s say less-than-sanctioned chance at an ascension gate. Turns out it was a trap to get the number of bodies one of them needed into the gate in order to sacrifice them and get boosted straight to A-Tier. I happened to fight back just enough for the System to notice and intervene.”

“Giving you the boost instead of this other so-called person,” Ciprien stated. “Seems pretty convenient if you ask me.”

“I had no choice,” I replied, understanding full well how my abbreviated story sounded. “Only one of them went into the gate with us. There were another four outside waiting. If I hadn’t taken it . . . then I wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Uh-huh,” the voice from above grunted. “And during this whole story, did you happen to forget that I already know that you two kids are part of Salvo? Why the hell would you need to look further than your nose to get yourself run through an ascension gate? Let alone an ‘unsanctioned’ one, whatever that means up in these parts.”

“Because I felt they were holding me back from advancing to C-Tier for far too long, so I went to find my own gate,” I replied, remembering not only how impatient I’d been back then but realizing likely why they’d been so adamant at keeping me from attempting an ascension gate. They’d needed them for their own purposes. “Little did I know that they were behind the group that organized the expedition in the first place.”

“Say what now?” came Ciprien’s reply, this time sounding much more alert than it had a moment earlier.

“They’re all in on it,” I repeated, feeling my stomach harden at the admission as if it had suddenly been encased in lead. It was enough to put me off balance and leave me rambling. “After what you said yesterday . . . we did some thinking and digging. And then this morning they came back from their own expedition and—”

“Did you see them burn down Ravenstead?” Val abruptly interrupted me, flashing an apologetic glance in my direction. “Sorry, Auric, you were beating around the bush too long.”

“I saw someone burn down Ravenstead,” Ciprien replied, the man fading into view perched high in the remains of a window above us. Evidently Val’s words had been more than enough for him to finally reveal himself. “Was too far away to see exactly who did it, save that they moved fast. Made me glad that I left when I did too, because the place lit up in a blink. One minute the night was dark as it’s ever been, the next it looked like another phoenix was being born. You’re confirming it was them that did that?” He paused just for the briefest second as he glanced between us. “And that you didn’t send them?”

“We didn’t send anyone,” I assured him, unable to help but comment on his choice of words. “And hold on, another phoenix? You mean you’ve actually seen one?”

“Briefly,” he answered, a vaguely haunted look coming across his face before he regained his traditional stoic expression. “But that’s a story for another time. If you didn’t send . . . whoever that was, what the hell did you two find out? And so quickly? With the way you two took off yesterday, I wasn’t expecting to see either of you again. Nor, if I’m gonna be really honest, was I planning on even meeting you two today if you showed up. Not until I saw you were an A-Tier.”

“Well, I’m glad that you changed your mind,” I said with a sigh, once again trying to wrap my head around how messy this situation had gotten. “Now you want to come down so we can talk like normal? Or do you prefer this whole shouting thing we’re doing now?”

“It’s growing on me,” Ciprien replied as he stood up from his seated position. “But you’re right, I think it’s time that we traded notes. Starting first with whatever had you two barging through this place with murder in your eyes.”

Which is exactly what we did over the course of the next few minutes, Val and I bringing Ciprien up to speed on everything that we’d endured after Salvo’s return, the man’s face falling deeper and deeper into a scowl with every word we said.

“They knew we destroyed the sliver,” he said as soon as we finished speaking. “That’s the only thing that explains how they came so fast. You two would have barely managed to get back to town before one of them arrived to burn the place down. They must have done a quick look, seen what happened and knew that they had to cover their tracks.”

<As a guilty mind would immediately seek to do,> West commented from within the depths of my mind.

“From whom?” Val asked. “There’s no one out there. Not anymore at least.”

“No idea,” Ciprien stated with a shrug. “But I can’t think of anything else that would have had them rushing out that fast. It’s possible they were due to check the place last night. But the reaction tells me it wasn’t likely.”

He paused to take a breath as he readied to say something else, his eyes flicking between Val and me.

“And also because whoever showed up had another sliver of entropy on them. I felt it on them as they approached, and they still had it on them when they left. It . . . it belonged to the same parent as the sliver we purged in the settlement, and also the one that injured me.”

“You did? How can you be so sure about that?” I asked, remembering the man’s comments from yesterday and how he knew there had been a sliver of entropy in Ravenstead long before we did. “Did the System give you something to be able to track the entropy?”

“If only, kid. That’d have made our lives so much easier,” he said with a shake of his head, his hand coming down to lightly pat his hip where his entropic wound was. “But no, I can track it thanks to this thing, which ever since I’ve got, I’ve been . . . I don’t know, attuned to the splinter of entropy that injured me. I can feel it tugging on me, trying to pull me towards it. It was what actually let me track it most of this way, and why I haven’t purged the entropy from me. Or let me track it until it vanished, likely by being taken into a gate. Then eventually I started to feel the slivers appearing in its place.”

“And how many of these slivers have you sensed?” Val asked with a frown.

“At a time?” Ciprien clarified. “As many as three. But they’ve all vanished and reappeared so many times that I have no real idea how many there could have possibly been. They all feel the same to me.

“As for how many I can sense right now,” he continued, no doubt guessing the next question that one of us was going to ask. “Is just one to the north of here. Which I am pretty sure is the same one I sensed last night, if only on the account that it hasn’t moved at all since it stopped yesterday.”

“And exactly how far away to the north is it?” I asked.

“Not far, but not close either, at least a couple hours of traveling, maybe?” Ciprien replied, a questioning look appearing on his face. “Why do you want to know?”

“What do you mean why?” I asked back. “We need to destroy it, don’t we?”

“That was before I knew that I had four A-Tiers up against me, kid,” he replied, giving me a look like I was crazy. “I’ve gone this far because I thought I could somehow get a handle on things myself. Because I wanted to get a handle on things myself. But this has gotten too damned deep now, and I’m in way over my head. I need to go back west, all the way to California, and formally report what’s happened. Hopefully, if they listen to me, they’ll send a proper clean-up team up here. One strong enough to slap Salvo down and get things under control.”

<His hive sounds particularly potent and powerful,> West said to me in a thoughtful tone. <And one perhaps safer than yours. Perhaps an alliance is in order?>

<Maybe, but it’s not that easy,> I replied, unable to help but wonder at Ciprien’s comments at sending another group of A-Tiers here.

“And how long would something like that take? From what I remember California is on the other side of the continent, thousands of miles away from here,” I said, using a hand to sharply indicate the sky and air around us. “And worse, winter’s only a month or so away. Even without any issues along the way, that’s going to make travel hard, maybe even impossible at times. You’d be looking at a season, likely two or three if things go bad, to make it there and back. Who knows what they could possibly do during that time! Especially if they’re capable of boosting more people to A-Tier.”

“And what exactly is it that you think we could do right now?” Ciprien countered, thrusting a finger out at me. “You might be an A-Tier yourself, sure, but you’re twenty levels below what you’d need to be to even stand a chance against all four of them at once.”

“What if we didn’t need to stand up against all of them at once?” I challenged. “Whatever it is they’re doing, it’s clear that they’re not all on board with it. Constance, in particular. If we can reach out to her, and get—”

“Yourself killed, or worse,” Ciprien interrupted, shaking his head at me. “Look, I know that this whole situation is tough to swallow and accept. But whatever you think you might have known about your family, you can’t count on it anymore. If they’ve fallen far enough that they’re willing to work with entropy, let alone do even half of what you’ve just told me, then you reaching out to them is all but guaranteeing your death. In fact, I think both of you should come with me when I leave, today, because I think it’s only a matter of time before they figure out what you two have been up to and act accordingly.”

“That’s not an option,” I replied with a shake of my head, Val doing the same beside me. “They’ll follow us. Especially if they think we’ve figured out what they’re doing. What they’ve done.”

“Then I’m sorry to say, kids, but this is the part where we go our own separate ways,” Ciprien said, shuffling a step backwards away from us. “I know that’s cold to put it so bluntly, but making sure that the entropy is kept in check is worth more than any of our lives put together. Our reality literally depends on it.”

“Then help us one last time before you go,” Val said before I could say something less than kind. “You can sense the sliver, right? Lead us to that and help us either capture it or destroy it. That way, no matter what, there’ll be one less of them around. Then after that, you can leave. Auric and I . . . we’ll figure something out until you can bring help.”

“You realize that’s not much of a plan?” Ciprien asked.

“It’s the best one we have right now,” I said, doing my best to control my emotions as I spoke. “And it’s the only one that keeps our home safe. So, will you help us do that?”

Chapter Thirty-Two

New Entropic Anomalies Detected Within Instances: #64, #91, #134, and #202.

Integrity of Indicated Instances Dropping Rapidly.

Primary Recommendation: Allocate Resources for Immediate Intervention by Mobile Daemons In All Affected Instances.

Primary Recommendation Denied: Insufficient Resources Available – Triage Required

Processing . . .

Secondary Recommendation: Allocate Resources for Immediate Intervention by Mobile Daemons In Highest Integrity Instances #91 & #134. Recoup Expended Resources Through Nullification Of Instance #64. Place Instance #202 On Quarantine List.

Secondary Recommendation Approved.

Allocating Resources.

Beginning Intervention In 3. . . 2. . . 1. . .

—System Central Log Excerpt

* * *

“Shit, it’s starting to move again,” Ciprien said, his voice breaking the silence that had fallen over us. “Nowhere near as fast as it was yesterday, but it’s not staying put any longer.”

“Damn it,” I cursed as I glanced over at him, seeing his eyes scanning through the growing forest of trees ahead that had long since begun to reclaim the outer ruins of Old Town ahead of us. “Where is it going now? Towards us?”

“No,” he answered with a shake of his head. “It’s going . . . away from us and to the east, I think. Further into the outskirts of this place from what I can tell.”

“Something that I can absolutely live with,” Val stated, her voice barely above a whisper as she scanned the area around us with her crossbow held at the ready. No doubt not wanting to attract one of the several groups of free-roaming Gateborn that we’d seen on our journey through the ruined city and northwards, the direction where Ciprien sensed the sliver of entropy.

“Me too,” I replied after a moment of silence. “Do you think we can catch up with the sliver? Or is it moving too fast?”

“We’ll have to pick up our pace, but we should be able to, yeah,” Ciprien answered, taking his eyes off the woods to look back at me. “But the question is do we want to? If the sliver’s on the move, then there’s a good chance one of your people snagged it again. That ups the danger and the chance of getting caught.”

“Maybe,” I replied with a shrug. “But if that’s the case, it could also give us a chance to follow them to wherever or whatever they’re intending to use it for. Considering how little we know at this point, that’s worth the risk.”

“Hrm,” the other man grunted, either unable or unwilling to debate my logic. “We’ll see. Come on, then. We’re going to have to move double time if we have any hope of closing in on them before they stop.”

“Just lead the way,” I replied eagerly, glancing over towards Val, who simply nodded in response, the three of us then breaking into a light jog over the remains of an ancient, and largely reclaimed, road that led out of Old Town and into the forest beyond.

Moving at a steady pace for the next hour that followed, we were fortunate to avoid any other prowling Gateborn, the creatures for whatever reason clearly preferring the shell of the fallen city rather than the open wild. It was a stark and wholly welcome difference that actually had me contemplating braving the inner reaches of the abandoned ruins once we’d dealt with the sliver of entropy. Both to find additional Gateborn and gates to cut my teeth on, and also to attempt to find a hiding place within its sprawling depths where Salvo wouldn’t try too hard to search.

They always said they hated going far into the ruins to deal with the gates, I recalled, my mind drifting as we cut through the forest, occasionally seeing the overgrown remains of buildings and leftovers from the World Before. The place is just too big and too full of hidden nooks and crannies to escape into. We could possibly hide out and survive in there for a little while at least. Long enough to come up with a better plan.

“We’re almost on top of it,” Ciprien eventually announced in a whisper as we began to abruptly slow down, the terrain around us having increasingly turned wild until all traces of former civilization had completely vanished. “It’s just a little further ahead, still moving, but much slower. Wherever its going, I have a feeling that it’s just about there.”

“Then we’d better be careful getting close to it,” I said more than a little uselessly, judging by the looks that I got from both him and Val a second later. But my nerves were far too tightly wound by that point to do anything but press onwards, trusting that they would follow.

<Can you hear anything, West?> I asked while doing my best to strain to catch anything around me other than our breathing and footsteps.

<Only the wind thus far,> came her reply as I crept forward. <Though . . . I believe the shadows here look different than they should. Especially with the sky being so covered above.>

<They do?> I asked, my attention instantly shifting upwards at the darkened sky, barely able to see it through the forest canopy around us. Thick and dark thunderclouds had steadily begun to move in on us as the day had worn on, their presence heralding what I was certain was going to be a miserable storm later this night. It was that glance that made me understand what West had meant as my eyes caught thin rays of light playing against the leaves and foliage high above us.

“Look up,” I whispered to the others as I watched the pale and ghostly light continue to flicker, almost as if its source was moving. “There are lights above us.”

“Lights?” Val whispered back at first in confusion, before it quickly morphed into understanding. “I see it. That must mean we’re close to . . . something. A camp maybe?”

“We’re about to find out,” Ciprien stated while motioning for us to crouch down and follow him quietly, the three of us then slowly creeping through a thick wall of branches before eventually being forced to drop down to our stomachs as we climbed a final hill. Crawling forward from there, we soon found ourselves all shoulder to shoulder as we carefully pulled back the last of the foliage separating us and the beginnings of a clearing ahead.

A clearing which we promptly discovered was the home of a roiling and twisting gate, the source of the light that we’d seen.

Nor was that the only thing I spotted within the small forest meadow, my eye landing on the silhouette of a person an instant before they entered into the portal, with a handful of other people standing around it waiting their turn.

It’s an ascension gate, I realized, the shape and size of the gate a perfect mirror to the one that I’d encountered just days earlier, the sight causing my stomach to roil as I recalled the result of my ill-fated expedition.

And also the memory that I’d recovered after it.

“Where is the sliver of entropy?” I whispered with sudden urgency as I turned my head to glance towards Ciprien, the pinched look on his face telling me everything I needed to know.

“Gone,” he answered back in a barely audible tone. “Whoever was carrying it went inside.”

“Shit!” I cursed, struggling to keep my voice low enough as two more of the other figures ahead vanished into the gate. “This is another gate-stealing group! The second group that Damon mentioned in the memory the System recovered. They’re going to try and boost another A-Tier!”

“Then that gives us an extra good reason to cut and run right now,” Ciprien hissed back, the man going as far as to start moving backwards before I grabbed hold of his arm, prompting him to flash an angry glare at me. “The hell are you doing? Let go of me!”

“So what, you could run?” I growled back at him. “Didn’t you hear what I said? They’re going to kill half a dozen people in there!”

“Oh, I heard you, kid,” he answered with a scowl. “And that’s exactly why I’m getting out of here. If they’re doing something like this, what are the chances that one of your people are going to show up to meet them afterwards? Hell, what’s to say that they’re not already here watching the gate?”

“So you’re just going to leave them to die?”

“I am going to get help,” Ciprien snarled back, the distance separating us and the ascension gate mercifully large enough that no one ahead could hear our rapidly escalating argument. Or at least couldn’t just yet. “In case you’ve forgotten, I have the bigger picture to worry about.”

“And damn everyone else who happens to be too small to fit into that, eh?” I spat back as I let go of his arm. “Fine. You want to go? Go. I’ll make sure that there are people still here to rescue when you come back. If you come back.”

“Don’t be an idiot, kid—”

“Both of you, shut up!” Val abruptly interrupted as a flash of red light filled the air. “The gate is changing!”

And it was. I saw as my head snapped back in its direction, discovering that not only had all the people clustered around it gone inside, but that the gate itself had begun to ripple at its core. A ripple that was rapidly turning red and solidifying.

“The gate is sealing itself,” I said, feeling my blood turn cold as more and more of the gate began to harden, turning into the same crimson-hued crystal that I’d seen on my own gate-stealing run. “We’re running out of time. We need to go, we need to get inside.”

“Auric, wait!” I heard my sister call as I pushed myself up and off the ground, my heart thundering in my ears louder than I had ever heard it. “We can’t just run—”

I stopped listening as I forced myself into a sprint, my attention fixated ahead on the closing gate. It was only a matter of seconds until it was fully sealed, only a matter of seconds until the unwitting people caught inside would be picked off one by one by whoever had organized the run.

I’ll find them, I thought as I crossed the final distance separating me and the portal and threw myself forward into it.

I’ll find them, and I’ll stop them.

Chapter Thirty-Three

After living with it for a century, we like to think that we know the System. That we’ve uncovered all of the secrets, tricks, and hidden nuances that it has scattered not only through the remains of our world, but in its own function as well. But let me assure you, we have only begun to scratch the surface of its depth.

—said by Constance Turner after returning from closing her first A-Tier Gate

* * *

The world around me shivered as I exited the gate at the same speed I’d entered it, just retaining enough presence of mind to throw myself into a roll at the last second. As I did, I felt a torrent of information flood into my mind a second before my vision filled with System text, leaving me staring at it as I came to a stop.

Requesting Schema Information From Parent Node

Schema Information Received

Welcome, Entity: Auric Amadeus Cain – Tier: A, to Ascension Gate: 5H4P32

Congratulations! You have reached the maximum tier! Challenge Mode Has Now Been Unlocked!

This Ascension Gate will now challenge your current skillset.

Bonus experience will be earned on every successive challenge completed

Prepare yourself and then proceed forward to the First Challenge

Phew, I made it! I thought with relief, letting out an involuntary shudder as the gate’s traditional slimy, slick sensation washed over me. For whatever reason, likely because of the fact that the gate was half crystalizing, it felt more intense this time, making me feel as if I’d fallen into a vat of goo. Yet despite that almost overpowering sensation, it wasn’t enough to keep me from focusing my attention on one particular line of the text in my vision. Hold on, challenge mode? What is that—

But before I could finish that thought, the room flashed and something hit me hard from behind, sending me stumbling forward, with me just barely managing to keep my balance on the slick stone floor. Recovering quickly, I twisted to find Val standing where I’d just been, her hand plastered across her face in pain and leaving me with no doubts as to what part of her body she’d hit me with. Yet just as I finished taking in that particular detail, the now mostly crystalline gate pulsed one more time right before Ciprien appeared headfirst, his momentum completely taking out Val’s legs from under her and causing her to land heavily on his back.

“Ugh,” I said with a wince as I saw the two of them fall on top of one another. “That looked like it hurt.”

“Believe me, it did,” Ciprien replied with a weak cough as Val slid off of him, the gate behind the two of them finally crystalizing over as it sealed shut. The second it did, another string of System text flashed across my vision, displaying an eerily familiar message.

Error: Lost Connection To Parent Node

Attempting To Restore Connection . . .

Attempt Failed

Searching For Alternate Node . . .

Local Node Detected . . . Establishing Connection

Connection Established . . . Downloading Update

Úpd͘ate ̶Çom͜pl̢ètèḑ

“Here we go again,” I whispered as both Ciprien and Val rose to their feet, largely uninjured from their rough landing after exiting the gate. “That’s pretty much the same message I saw last time when the gate sealed on me.”

“And one that already has me regretting coming in here with you,” Ciprien said more than a little breathlessly, the sprint into the gate and Val’s fall directly on top of him having clearly winded him.

“But you came,” I said, more than a little surprised to see the man after the way I’d left him. “What changed your mind?”

“I remembered what it was like to be young,” he stated as if that explained everything, already moving to push himself up and look around. “Now . . . where the hell are we? And where is the other group? The sooner we can find the entropy and purge it, the sooner we can get the hell out of here.”

It was a good question that I hadn’t had time to answer myself after entering into the gate before the others had arrived behind me, at least not beyond the courtesy check to make sure that I was alone. But now that I had the time to take in the massive, cave-like chamber around us, I saw that it was empty, save of course for us and the now-frozen, red-glazed gate we’d come through.

Oh, and also all of the distant reflections of the two that I saw in every direction I looked.

Now this . . . this is weird, I said silently as I looked at the distant walls and ceiling above, finding that they weren’t made of stone as I’d originally thought, but rather some sort of mineral that seemed to have naturally formed in cubic clusters with large, rectangular surfaces. It was each of these flat surfaces that were reflective, almost perfectly so, revealing countless images of us, the gate, and other angles of the chamber around us.

<A most unsettling sight,> West commented to me. <I’ve never seen a place like it.>

<Me either,> I answered as I tried to make sense of the room’s layout, struggling to make out what I thought was at least six tunnels that led out, but might have actually only been three, or possibly even two. Whatever the case was, the illusion of all the countless reflections made it so I couldn’t trust my initial impression of anything, nor did it allow me to rely on my peripheral vision to help spot and keep track of threats.

“This place is a mess,” I heard Val say, her words earning an immediate grunt from Ciprien.

“You can say that again. I already feel a headache coming on.”

“We just need to focus to figure out what’s real,” I said, reaching up to rub my eyes and give them a moment’s rest before I glanced around a second time. “These reflections are going to be a pain to keep track of, which by my guess means surprise attacks and misdirection from whatever puzzles and Gateborn are in here.”

“And false or hidden paths, too,” Val added as she strode a few steps toward a reflective wall and pointed at the ground. “Look here, I think this might have been another tunnel. One the group took ahead of us.”

“I was wondering what happened to them. We weren’t exactly that far behind them, not even a minute.” Ciprien grunted as he and I moved to inspect the area Val had pointed out, finding the thankfully non-reflective floor covered with a collection of dirt, twigs, and other debris that had been tracked in from the clearing outside the gate. All of which ended abruptly at a reflective section of stone that reminded me of glass frosted over. “They must have gotten themselves together and moving quickly if they’re already gone. But then our timing could be off, thanks to whatever they did to seal the gate. A few seconds outside could have been minutes, or even longer in here.”

“Hold on, is that even possible?” I asked, glancing over towards Ciprien as he stepped up to place his hand against the wall blocking the path and pushed against it, as if to make sure that it was real and not an illusion. “And are we too late to even catch up to them?”

“Like I told you before, anything is possible with the entropy,” he stated before shaking his head. “And no, I don’t think so. I can still sense the sliver . . . somewhere ahead this way.”

“Which we can’t follow, since this thing is in the way,” Val said before motioning towards one of the other tunnels nearby. “But that one there looks like it sort of leads in the same direction. Maybe we can try and catch up? Hope that it connects with them at some point?”

“Don’t think we have any other choice,” I replied as I glanced in the direction of the other tunnel which was halfway across the room from us. “Except that there might be . . . a problem. Maybe just for me at least. When I entered into the gate, I got a message telling me that I’d unlocked and activated something called ‘challenge mode’ because I was an A-Tier. I’ve never heard anything about it.”

“Me either,” my sister said, suddenly looking anxious. “And I got a similar message as well. One telling me that I’ve joined ‘a challenge in progress.’ No one in Salvo ever said anything about this. I’d have definitely remembered if they did.”

“And that makes three with me,” Ciprien said, his jaw tightening as he glared at Val and me, who had turned to look at him askance. “What? You think I’ve been rubbing shoulders with A-Tiers all my life and know everything? Well, I’ve only ever seen two, right while they were trying to kill one another. Neither of them stopped to tell me how ascension gates worked for them.”

“Then we’ll figure it out as we go,” I said, already worried at how much time we might have lost, and motioned to the others that we should get moving. “Any objections to following this tunnel and hoping we catch up to the group?”

“Ask me that question once we see what’s at the end of it.” Ciprien grunted as Val simply shook her head in response.

A moment later, the three of us—well, four, including West—were all heading down the mirrored tunnel, managing to make it a few dozen footsteps down its length before we felt the ground rumble behind us as we were sealed in. Committed and with only one way to go, we all then worked our way down the tunnel, walking steadily for a couple of minutes before it abruptly began to open wide into yet another large and completely empty room.

One that immediately looked far too simple at first glance, with the distant exit completely visible on its far side.

“Okay, now I’m nervous,” I said aloud as we all gazed into the room as if we expected a horde of Gateborn to suddenly appear. “Gates . . . let alone ascension gates are never this simple. There has to be traps, pitfalls or something else in here. Something keeping us from easily reaching the other side.”

“Without a doubt,” Ciprien agreed as he turned to glance at the walls near us as if he were searching for something. “Anyone see anything interesting nearby? On the walls, the floor, anything, really. Gates usually leave some clues as to what to expect.”

“Unless they don’t because this is supposed to be a ‘challenge,’” Val commented in a dry tone as she began to help search, checking the walls on the side opposite Ciprien. “No, I don’t see anything at all. Not at first glance.”

“Then maybe we need to trigger something?” I wondered aloud, waiting for a second for the others to turn and look at me before I took a cautious step forward out of the tunnel as I waited for something to happen. After a few seconds of nothing, I took another step, and then another and another, waiting a few seconds each time until I had taken five without anything happening. “Huh, I don’t know. It doesn’t look like anything is—oof!”

I felt myself slam into something headfirst on my sixth step, which had admittedly been less cautious than the ones before it, lulled into a false sense of security by my previous success.

<A trap lain by a truly cunning being, then,> West said to me as I winced from the impact. <One crafty enough to attack the mind as well as the body.>

I didn’t have a chance to reply to her, as the air in front of me begin to ripple and crack right where my head had connected with something, followed by a shimmering reflection of myself that gradually appeared out of nowhere.

“Ho, that looked like it hurt!” I heard Ciprien call out from behind me. “What’d you find? An invisible wall?”

“Ugh, more like an invisible mirror,” I called back as whatever power had been keeping it hidden faded away, effectively blocking the path ahead of me. Instantly on guard, my first instinct was to then try and look around it to see if I had triggered the arrival of Gateborn.

And promptly bashed my head against another invisible mirror that had been lying in wait to my right.

“Ugh, damn it!” I cursed more out of annoyance than pain, only to freeze when I saw that the reflections of me in both of the freshly visible mirrors were rubbing their heads.

Something that I was decidedly not doing at this moment.

“Um, t-that’s not—whoa!” I exclaimed as I saw the reflection on my right flinch at my voice and lock a set of angry eyes onto me, followed by both of their hands reaching down to grab hold of their knives and slashing out at me faster than I could react. The next thing I knew both of the mirrors exploded out towards me, showering me in an avalanche of reflective shards, several of them slicing me across the face, while a number of others pierced straight through my armor.

<Ah! Broodkiller!> I heard West shout in my mind as I stumbled backwards to the sound of falling glass, seeing a somewhat helpful System alert flash across my vision.

Health: 470/530

“Auric!” It was Val’s turn to call out to me, a quick glance in the direction of her voice showing me that she and Ciprien were carefully making their way towards me, their hands stretched out before them. “Are you okay?”

“Ugh, I’ve been better, but I’ll live,” I replied as I glanced in the direction of the two mirrors that I’d hit and saw that they had completely shattered, taking their reflections with them and leaving only frosted glass behind. Something that I was rather happy about, not wanting to have to fight a single version of myself, let alone two. “So I guess we’ve figured out what the room’s about. An invisible mirror maze.”

“That sounds like the least fun thing that anyone has ever said,” Ciprien said, both he and Val finally reaching me as I gently shook the glass from my body and reached up to pull free a few slivers that had embedded themselves in my arm. “Depending on what path we have to carve out to get through here, we could end up coming out the other side in pretty bad shape.”

“Then we’d better figure out whatever trick this place has before it gets that bad,” I said as I glanced at the two broken mirrors, which I saw stretched all the way up to the ceiling high above, no doubt to prevent an aerial approach.

So much for going over them, I mused with a faint scowl on my face as I shifted my attention back downwards to the spot I’d been standing in before I’d crashed into the mirrors, which if it had been a square on a chessboard, left only two possible directions to go from it, backwards the way we had come, or to the left. But how far though? Each mirror is roughly . . . I don’t know, four, maybe five feet wide. Can we divide this room into squares, maybe? Or use a hand on the mirrors we’ve found to guide us? Though that could very well set them off as we touch them.

“Well, if they’re anything like normal mirrors, they would show condensation,” Ciprien said thoughtfully. “We can try to see if fogging them up would work, either with a bit of steam or maybe our breath. Not that I expect that second method to really be sustainable.”

Moving as if to demonstrate that point, Ciprien then carefully approached the edge of the frosted mirror and blew a blast of hot air from his mouth, causing a palm-wide spot of open air to temporarily fog up, before vanishing a second later.

“Well, there’s a mirror there, but yeah, that’s definitely not gonna work long-term,” he said with a shake of his head. “Not if we actually want to catch up to the group in good time.”

“Definitely not,” I said, firmly rooted in place as I looked out across the chamber, seeing that there was easily a hundred feet between us and the exit. That was assuming that we only traveled in a straight line.

<Which we most certainly will not,> West said in my mind. <It would not be an effective trap if it did.>

“Well, if you boys are done tossing your ideas around, I think I have one I’d like to offer,” Val said as she stepped forward. “One that’s not only fast, but I think should also entirely solve the problem of exploding mirrors.”

“Eh? You do?” I asked as I turned towards my sister, instantly seeing that she was holding a familiar length of bone in her hand. “Hold on, is that—”

“Yes, it is,” she interrupted, already reaching out to grab Ciprien by the wrist and pull him backwards. “I think you’re going to want to be out of the way for this. Back as far as you can go, in fact. There, that should be good.”

“Whoa, hold on a second, what are you going to—” Ciprien started to say as Val pushed both him—and by extension me—back towards the tunnel entrance before giving us a single sharp motion to take cover.

Then without so much as a word to announce her intentions, she raised the Totem of Force in her hand, pointed it into the apparently open air before her, and activated it, the inscriptions on its surface flaring brightly. A second later, a soapy bubble of force then launched itself from the end of the totem and raced forward a dozen feet before connecting with something invisible.

Which in turn was followed by a thunderous explosion of force that rocked all of us back onto our heels, even from where we were standing.

Shaking the ground as the blast reverberated through the chamber, dozens if not hundreds of cracks began to form in the air ahead of us as shattered mirrors appeared, each and every one of them bearing Val’s appearance. Shifting to look at all of us in unison, they clenched their fists and pounded angrily on the inside of their mirrors, causing each and every one of them to explode at once, filling the air ahead of us with a cloud of deadly shrapnel. Shrapnel that in turn must have struck other mirrors somewhere ahead of us, for we then soon heard a second round of shattering glass, followed by an even weaker third round, before things finally fell silent once more.

“There,” Val said, having rushed back to our completely unscathed position at the tunnel’s entrance after activating her totem. “Fast, effective, and most importantly, safe. We can easily clear the room like this.”

“Damn right, we can,” Ciprien stated, looking at Val with a tinge of awe. “No need to dick around finding the mirrors if we can just take them out in groups.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Val said with a nod. “And even better, it doesn’t take that long for this thing to recharge either. We can just step our way through the maze bit by bit until we get to the end.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” I asked as I motioned for all of us to press onwards, the sounds of crunching glass soon filling the air as we wove our way through the destruction that Val had caused, eventually reaching the end of the broken glass. By that point, we only needed to wait a few more seconds until Val’s totem finished recharging and we repeated the same tactic again.

And again, and again, until we finally reached the maze’s exit, our journey having forced us to cross the room’s width twice over before we finally blazed a path to reach it.

<This was a wholly destructive and inelegant solution to such a trial,> West said to me as we all strode out of the maze and into the tunnel ahead, both Ciprien and Val letting out relieved cheers the second we stepped over the threshold. <Though, admittedly, it was effective.>

<I’m sure the next one won’t be so easy,> I replied mentally, my words coming at the exact same moment that several lines of System text flashed across my vision accompanied by a familiar rush of energy.

Ascension Challenge #1: Completed

Members Remaining: 3/3

Challenge Rewards: +3,000 Experience Points

You have advanced to Level 12!

Proceed onwards to reach Challenge #2 or return to the gate entrance to abandon this challenge

I shook my head as I finished reading the text and mentally dismissed it from my vision, for the first time feeling a little anxious after managing to gain a level and what it meant for the challenges ahead of us.

<No,> I said to West after a moment’s pause to collect myself. <It definitely won’t be as easy.>

Chapter Thirty-Four

Have you ever wondered where the Gateborn truly come from? No, I don’t mean the Gates. I mean their homes. Their home worlds. Their home planes? Wherever it is they were born. Wherever it is they lived before the System dumped them in our world. Can you imagine how some of these places must have looked? How they must have worked? Even at the best of times we only get to see a small snippet of their reality, right as we do our utmost to destroy it. It seems like such a shame, to be honest.

— From the writings of Tanner Grimes

* * *

Some challenges within gates were complex and tricky, testing the mind more than the body in the form of puzzles or mazes. Other kinds pushed their victims to their limits, forcing them to hone their resolve and endure impossible terrain or deadly traps as they navigated a route towards their goal. And then, of course, there was the last kind. The kind that only the most bloodthirsty of gatesealers ever wanted to encounter. The kind of challenge that resulted in hordes upon hordes of Gateborn being thrown at you.

Like the challenge we’d just stepped into now.

“Whoa, heads up!” I heard Ciprien shout from beside me as I drew my knives, my eyes already scanning over the room for additional threats and finding that it looked almost identical to the room that we’d just left. Of course this time, instead of needing to navigate a path through an invisible mirror maze, it looked like we were going to need to deal with a rapidly growing number of crystalline creatures that rolled into the room from cleverly hidden holes in its walls and ceiling.

And despite seeing their Schemas, I couldn’t make heads or tails of the creatures.

Selenoid Breaker – Gateborn – Tier: A – Level: 10

Type: Animal

Intelligence: Discrete Consciousness

Origin: Gate: 5H4P32

Schema Integrity: 100%

Health: Uninjured

Status: None

Weaknesses:

Shattering

Concussive

Vulnerable Locations:

Heart Core: Central Mass: +100% Damage Dealt, chance to temporarily stun

“What even are these things?” Val called out as the spherically shaped Gateborn all slammed into the ground on the far side of the chamber and began to roll towards us en masse. “I’ve never seen anything even remotely close to them!”

“Well, we’re about to get an up-close look!” I replied as I readied myself for a fight, watching the crystalline creatures close in, a rolling stampede that caused the whole room to tremble. A stampede that I couldn’t help but feel was too quiet given the sheer number of them rushing towards us but promptly wrote off as a trick of the cavern’s acoustics.

<I don’t suppose you can sense their minds at all, can you, West?> I asked urgently. <Maybe convince them to let us through?>

<If only, Broodkiller,> West replied, sounding a little confused and frustrated. <But there is nothing within those shells that I can sense. Only emptiness. Whatever minds they have are not ones I can find, let alone touch.>

<Oh, great! Just our luck!> I answered back as an unheard message then passed among the breakers, causing all of them to tighten up on one another a second before they all picked up speed.

“Stay together when they get here!” I called to the others. “If we split up, we’ll get overwhelmed and picked off one by one. They’re also weak to Shattering and Concussive if either of you have anything that fits that. Plus they have some sort of heart-core inside them that’s vulnerable if hit.”

“System above, how many of them are there?” Val asked in a rushed hiss on my left as they all closed, a question that neither Ciprien nor I had an answer for. Everywhere I looked, there seemed to be more of the blue-hued, crystalline creatures, weaving, bouncing, and overtaking one another, making getting a count of them nigh-impossible.

“Doesn’t matter right now,” Ciprien said, striding forward half a step, both of his hands starting to glow a bright gold as twin shields made of light began to form in them. “We can work with those weaknesses! Just hit them with your totem soon as I’m done. Hopefully that’ll put a good dent in them!”

Rapidly forming, Ciprien’s weapons, for that’s what I realized they were, gained an almost physical solidity in his grip, a series of sharply shaped runes flaring brightly across their surfaces. It was a sign that he must have been waiting for, as the man then abruptly leapt forward with a shout before slamming both of his golden shields into the ground before him.

Which instantly shattered from the titanic impact that followed afterwards.

Spreading in a wave from the point of impact, a shockwave exploded outwards in front of Ciprien and promptly crashed into the first of the breakers, all of whom were thrown backward, slamming into those behind and causing their ordered line to fall into chaos.

“Okay, now!” Ciprien shouted to Val, who didn’t waste a second in sending a blast of force into the cluster of Gateborn, which promptly scattered or stopped the remaining breakers who hadn’t been in range of his power. “Good! Now I’m going to hit them one more time, then we’re going to charge them!”

“We’re going to what?” I shouted back, completely caught off guard not only by his words but the display of power that he’d shown. Up until now Val and I had never had a chance to see Ciprien fight, the man not even carrying any visible weapons upon him for us to guess at his abilities. To finally see it, and the extent of his power, put me more on guard than even the breakers did.

“Charge them!” he shouted back as he rushed forward several more steps this time before once again leaping forward and slamming his fists into the ground, sending another rippling shockwave forward and throwing the Gateborn even further into disarray. “They need to pick up speed to hurt us. If we’re on top of them, they won’t be able to do that!”

It was a sound logic that I found myself unable to disagree with in the seconds that followed, my feet moving to chase after Ciprien as he quickly recovered his feet and sprinted forward. Knowing full well that everything hinged on us closing with the creatures as fast as possible, I held nothing back as I raced forward, crossing half the distance separating us and them in a blink. Which was right around the point where I noticed that there were fragmented cracks and splinters floating in the air above me.

What are those—I started to ask myself, not even managing to finish the thought before realization dawned upon me.

“They’re reflections!” I shouted as I sprinted forward, shifting my charge away from a floating wall of cracks. “That’s why there’s so many of them! There are mirrors here too and they’re only reflecting the Gateborn! Not us or the rest of the room!”

“Damn picky mirrors, then!” Ciprien exclaimed as he too shifted his approach towards a cluster of real Gateborn and not the reflected ones. “That means we have . . . how many to deal with?”

“Maybe eight or ten!” Val shouted from behind us, clearly having overheard our conversation, as Ciprien rushed to catch up.

“That many is still no joke,” Ciprien called back a second before he plunged into the cluster of momentarily stunned breakers. “Especially if they get moving again!”

“Then we make sure that they don’t!” I shouted back as I joined the man a second later, already trying to come up with a way I could even damage the creatures with my knives. Or even my blood, for that matter. My specialty tended to be in stabbing and cutting things rather than crushing them, and that was a hard prospect against beings made of literal stone and crystal.

Though its Schema said something about it having a vulnerable spot in its heart-core, I said to myself as I lunged forward to strike one of the spherical creatures, more to get its attention before it could start to roll away than to actually hurt it. It was why then I wasn’t the least bit surprised when my knife bounced off of it harmlessly, leaving only a faint scar across its hard surface. The only question is where the hell is its “central mass” so I can hit it!

Yet despite the problems that I was having with my creature, I soon saw that Ciprien was experiencing the opposite as he slammed one of his glowing shields into a breaker in front of him, the impact causing several cracks to explode across its surface. Not only that, the blow also seemed to hurt the Gateborn, which instantly reversed course in an attempt to get away from him. Or at least it tried to. Lunging after it as it rolled away, Ciprien struck it with a powerful hook with his other shield, the force enough to break off a chunk of its body and send it flying through the air.

“They’re damned tough, but I think I can hurt them at least!” I heard him call out as my attention shifted back towards my opponent, which I’d succeeded in managing to have fixate on me, the creature rolling in a short loop as it turned to orient on me. But instead of surging forward to try and crush me, the Gateborn, and all the others of its kind, abruptly froze in place, followed by a cool, cobalt light pulsing from within their core.

And they all began to change.

“Uh, I don’t think they liked that!” I exclaimed as two arms exploded from the sides of the breaker before me, its crystalline body flowing as if it were made of water. A second later, four other appendages erupted from the bottom of its spherical body, pushing the Gateborn upwards until it stood on four legs each. Then, finally, the heads emerged, or what I immediately took to be a head. One of them appeared upon each and every breaker. But what was more particular about its appearance than the other limbs that had grown outwards from its center sphere, was that it detached itself from the main body and instead floated above it, held in place by some unseen force.

“Nope, they definitely didn’t!” I heard him shout back as all of the breakers exploded into motion at once, all eight of them, for I was fairly sure there were only eight, rushing to attack Ciprien and me standing among them. In a blink, that had me defending against no fewer than five crystalline arms coming my way, their ends looking either hard and shaped like a club, or impossibly sharp as they took on the vague appearance of a blade.

Happening far too fast for me to react to everything, I took the first two blows hard on my armor, my arm and chest absorbing a brutal slash and strike with only bruising, and thankfully not life-ending, effect. It allowed me just the time I needed to siphon off a stream of blood from my body and shape it into a shield, deflecting two other attacks before they could hit me. Unfortunately, as I soon discovered, that left the fifth strike unaccounted for and by extension unblocked, leaving a clublike appendage to connect heavily with my lower ribs, instantly shattering them.

“Oof,” I gasped as the blow promptly knocked all of the wind from my lungs and sent me staggering to the side, off balance. It was thanks to a lifetime of training, and perhaps more likely my now exceptionally resilient body, that I didn’t end up falling in the seconds that followed afterwards, instead managing to just barely recover and backpedal out of range before I could be hit again.

“That looked bad! Are you okay?” I heard my sister call out a second before a shimmering mist of energy shot past me and fell over a group of the breakers, their movements immediately slowing. Then, not even a second later, a crossbow bolt shot past me and connected head on with one of the central bodies of a Gateborn on my left, somehow managing to pierce surprisingly deep into it.

Deep enough, in fact, that the creature abruptly keeled over as the light within went dark.

“I’m—I’m fine,” I called back with a wince, shoving down the explosion of pain shooting through me in favor of focusing on the now-fallen Gateborn which had the remains of a bolt sticking through a shattered section of its body with a thick goo oozing out of it. “More importantly, how did you do that? You killed the thing with just a single shot!”

“I have no idea! I just shot it!”

“Then do it again!” I called back as my time to inspect the dead breaker came to an end, its companions wasting no time in coming after me. Fortunately though, thanks to Val’s slow, I was able to keep just ahead of them, narrowly avoiding running into a shattered mirror that I didn’t see until the last second.

“Over here, kid!” Ciprien called out as I ran, having temporarily lost sight of him and the four breakers he was fighting against in the chaos. “Did I hear that right a second ago? Your sister killed one of them?”

“She just shot it and hit its core,” I replied, having bought enough time in escaping from my slowly moving group that I was able to slide in beside Ciprien and block a strike on his flank that would have taken him unaware. “No idea why it went through. All I’ve been able to do is scratch their shell.”

“Tell me about it.” The man grunted as the two of us shifted positions to accommodate and better line up against the group chasing after me. “The one I hit earlier got straight back up, and I’ve pounded on the others until they’re practically dust. But nothing seems to put them down for good.”

And I could see what Ciprien meant by that, too; each and every one of the breakers that he’d been fighting bore dozens of cracks and impact marks on their bodies, some even going as far as to visibly be missing chunks of their shell. But despite that damage, it didn’t slow them down in the slightest as they continued to attack us, forcing us both to play for space.

<There is something to them we do not see,> West said to me as I dodged under a heavy, clublike arm and raised my knife just in time to deflect a bladed one. <No creature is without weakness. You must only find it. Before it kills you, preferably.>

<Well, that’s the thing!> I replied as I landed another ineffective slash against the breaker I was currently focused on, succeeding in only scratching another line on its crystalline body. <I know what its weakness is, it’s that damned core right in there! The only problem is that I can’t get to it without stabbing it, and if I try to do that, this happens!>

Already moving in my preparation to show West exactly what I meant, I thrust out with my knife towards the breaker, picking a spot almost at random on its fragmented and splintered body, the result of Ciprien’s earlier work.

And of course pierced straight through it.

“Wait, what—” I yelped in surprise, not having expected in the slightest for my weapon to break through, nor for the breaker to react as violently as it did a second later, slamming its arm directly into my face. Feeling blood instantly gush into my mouth, I instinctively reeled back, just barely managing to pull myself and my arm backwards in time to narrowly avoid getting it sliced off by a bladed arm that swept through the space a second later.

“The hell did you do, kid? It looks like you figured something out!” Ciprien called out to me as I regained both my balance and my senses, vaguely seeing him use some sort of power that caused him to glow with energy. Whatever it was it greatly sped up his movements and caused the Gateborn to temporarily pause in their assault.

“I just . . . stabbed it,” I said as my vision started to clear and the pain coursing through my head lessened enough to think.

And also enough for me to notice the notification that was hovering in my vision.

New Vulnerability Discovered:

Fractured Shell: Central Mass +60% chance to shatter armor by piercing weapons

“Ugh,” I grunted as realization suddenly hit me, the solution clearly obvious in hindsight. “We need to shatter their shells first and then pierce through to their core! That’s how we can kill them!”

“Perfect!” Ciprien shouted as he caught a pair of attacking arms on a shield, but at the cost of allowing a third to slip through and hit him in the hip, fortunately the opposite one from where his entropic wound was. “Now get back in here and start doing that! I’ll prime all the others for you!”

“Right,” I replied, already on the move as I siphoned another stream of blood from myself to refill my Blood Pool, feeling my head begin to spin dangerously. I was beginning to hate fighting creatures that didn’t have their own blood for me to steal and use.

But on the bright side, I actually know how to fight these things now, I thought as I relinquished my Blood Pool to West, who eagerly grabbed hold of it and shaped it into a spear. Trusting that she would handle her end of the fight, I focused on mine, which was to get the both of us to where we needed to be. Shifting rapidly in the seconds that followed afterwards, it wasn’t long before the momentum of the battle turned in our favor.

Weaving in between the breakers that Ciprien had already damaged, I landed strike after strike on their central bodies, targeting my attacks to land directly on the most fragmented or cracked spots I could find. It was a tactic that in almost every occasion was rewarded by my knives breaking through into the thick, syrupy goo inside the breakers’ core, with the few times it didn’t being spoiled by a last-second shift in positioning, or the discovery that I’d accidentally attacked a reflection. That didn’t mean that the battle was completely one-sided, however, with both Ciprien and I taking a number of injuries from the breakers as they tried to swarm us. Had it not been for Val’s intervention in the form of another timely aimed crossbow bolt, a blast from her totem, and a pair of desperately needed healing touches, the battle could have easily gone the other way for us.

But instead it didn’t, the last and final one of the breakers eventually falling to a spear of blood that punched through its shattered shell before continuing straight on to skewer its glowing core within, causing the crystalline creature to immediately go still.

“And that’s the last one,” I said, breathing heavily and covered in sweat as I withdrew the spear and reabsorbed it into my body, desperately needing its healing effects. A quick glance told me that neither Val nor Ciprien were in any different shape, the two of them sharing an equally similar state of exhaustion. Though in the case of the latter, his state included a fair bit more blood across his armor, having found himself on the wrong end of a breaker’s sharpened arm more than once.

“Until the next room,” Ciprien said, his voice sounding surprisingly fresher than he actually looked. “I don’t know about you kids, but if—whoa!”

Beginning without warning mid-speech, we all found ourselves struggling to remain standing as the whole chamber around us bucked unexpectedly, followed by the loud and repeated snap of cracking stone echoing out all around us. Spinning to the source of the nearest noise, I saw a large fissure appear in the ceiling across the room, followed by another and another leading downwards towards the floor we were standing on. Spreading faster than we could ever hope to react to, the floor beneath our feet fragmented and began to crumble, causing each of us to lose our balance and fall.

“What the hell is happening?” Val shouted as loose stone began to fall from above, the whole atmosphere of the chamber, or entire gate rather, instantly becoming oppressive, as if an invisible force was trying to push everything down. “Is-is this part of the challenge?”

“I-I don’t think so!” I called back as I desperately tried to pull myself closer to my sister and Ciprien, the shaking room trying to carry me away from them. But as I tried to grab at the floor, I found it turning to dust in my hand, the once-hard rock crumbling in my grip as if it were sand. Eyes widening at the sight, I then saw a barrage of System text scroll across my vision, followed by a heavy, leaden sensation falling over my heart.

Ascension Challenge #2: Completed

Members Remaining: 3/3

Challenge Rewards: +6,000 Experience Points

E̶rr̢oŗ:́ Gat̛e T͠y͢pe ̷In̶corre͘ct

Adjus̢ti̶ng̡ G̛a͢te̸ Ty͠p̨e͠ T̀o͞:̡ ͠W͟òrl̶dse̷e͢d͝er̴ ͞G͟a͜t́e

A̵dj͢u̷stme̢n͝t͞ Co̕mplete

“We’re too late,” I whispered.

And then the ground abruptly gave way beneath me, sending me plunging into an infinite night of darkness.

Chapter Thirty-Five

There is much in this new world that I have seen that I cannot even begin to explain, to say nothing of my own existence, which I had thought ended. The Great Web here is . . . strange, different, wholly so than the one of home where it was once a guiding, reassuring presence in our brood’s lives. Here, it appears antagonistic, or if not exactly that, then coldly indifferent. So much so that it is no wonder that all of these Broodkillers seek to destroy everything before them. Because if they do not, it is likely to destroy them instead.

—Disjointed thoughts by West as overheard by Auric Cain

* * *

I let out a shout as I fell into the pitch-black oblivion that opened up beneath me, the chamber floor simply dropping out without warning as if whatever had been holding it up suddenly vanished. Joining me in my screaming were also both Val and Ciprien, the three of us flailing like mad as we desperately tried to grab hold of something, anything, as we fell.

“Shit!” I shouted as I dropped, the long and drawn-out curse practically leaping out from me as my panicking mind tried to figure out what to do next, leaving me flailing my arms and legs in an attempt to somehow catch myself on something and stop my fall.

Or at least that’s what I tried to do; the only thing my desperate thrashing did for me was to send me into an uncontrollable spin as I tried, and failed, to grab onto a floating rock, which promptly turned to dust the moment I touched it.

Oh, damn it! I mentally screamed as I tumbled wildly through the air, my heart leaping into my throat as I realized that I was reliving one of my worst nightmares. One where I simply fell endlessly through the air, completely helpless to do anything to help myself until I was able to force myself to wake up. Where is the System when you need it? Please don’t tell me I’m going to be fall—

My thoughts abruptly cut off as my thrashing somehow managed to stabilize my fall, just in time for a rocky island to appear far below me and begin to grow larger and larger with every second that passed. It was during that time that a brand-new fear then gripped my heart as I fell into an even deeper panic, my limbs continuing to flail uselessly around me.

“Oh, no, no, no!” I shouted as I plummeted through the air, West’s own screams sympathetically echoing through my mind as the island rapidly grew to fill my entire vision until there was little doubt left in my mind what would happen next. Letting out one final shout of terror before I landed, I threw my arms in front of me in a feeble attempt to protect myself before the ground rose up to meet me.

An action which I discovered as I hit the island with all the force of a feather landing on a pillow, that I needn’t even have bothered with, leaving me staring at the rocky ground while shaking on all fours.

<W-w-what?> West stammered in my mind as I tried to process what had just happened, my head turning in the direction of a pair of screams just in time to see both Val and Ciprien land softly a few feet away from me, their descent simply stopping the second they touched the ground. <How. How is this even possible? We should have been . . .>

<I have no idea,> I replied as she trailed off, clearly shaken just as much as I was from the fall and the gate’s sudden unraveling. <But I don’t think the normal rules of reality quite apply anymore.>

<So it seems,> West stated as I began to push myself upwards and heard Val’s voice call out.

“By the System, I never want to do that again!” she exclaimed in a shaky voice, a quick glance showing me that she had curled herself into a ball, visibly shaking from our descent.

“You and me both,” Ciprien said in a near-identical tone, despite recovering quickly enough to sit up and glance around at the void that surrounded us, clearly not quite believing what he was seeing. “Um, well, I have to admit this is new for me. Anyone have an idea of what happened?”

“We were too late is what happened,” I said as I continued to rise on shaking legs, only to stop when I saw the ground abruptly end less than a foot away from me. Flinching at the sight, I pushed myself backwards from the edge and worked to calm myself before continuing. “Whoever is in the other group must have started to use the entropy and changed the gate type. That’s the same thing that happened to me during my run.”

I paused for a second as I reread the System notification that was still fortunately hanging in my vision.

“Though in my case, they didn’t change it to a worldseeder gate. I have no idea what this gate type is.”

“And hell if I know either.” Ciprien grunted as he slowly began to rise to his feet, prompting me to do the same, albeit slowly as I was worried that our movement would somehow destabilize the roughly twenty-foot stone island we’d landed on. Fortunately, it did no such thing as I rose, the island staying firmly level despite not appearing visibly anchored to anything.

“It looks like it . . . shattered everything in the gate almost,” I said as I looked out into the starry night surrounding us and immediately picked out dozens if not hundreds of other fragments and islands suspended in the inky darkness. Ranging in all shapes and sizes, I saw that some were only a few feet from our island, while others looked to be an incredible distance away, the lack of features and landmarks between us making it impossible to get a sense of just how far they were.

But as my eyes darted from patch of land to patch of land, I saw that there was a great deal of variance between the islands in the void, both in size and their environment. A good majority of them appeared to be similar to the one that we were standing on, consisting of just plain rock and little else. But there were also others I saw that appeared wildly different, some of their landscapes covered in waist-high, rust-colored grass, while others appeared lush and covered in verdant forest. Yet even beyond those differences, I noted that there was no common plane to any of the islands; many of them canted at strange angles in relation to one another.

<Ugh, this place hurts my mind to gaze upon,> West said to me as I continued to look out into the surreal voidscape, my attention landing on a particular island that only bore half of a mountain that had been split vertically, its other half nowhere to be seen. <Even in the most feverish of molts, I would never think of such a place existing.>

<You’re telling me,> I replied to my mental companion, starting to feel overwhelmed by the scale of everything before me and what we could possibly do next. Fortunately, that question was answered by a flash of orange light in the distance, one that rapidly grew bright enough that I found myself needing to shield my eyes a second later.

“Ugh, what is that?” I asked with a wince, hearing similar sentiments from both Val and Ciprien beside me. Yet before any of us could comment further, we felt the island under us lurch as it began to move, suddenly drawn forward by an unseen force.

“Whoa! What’s happening?” Val called out as she belatedly rose to her feet, having understandably remained sitting down as she collected herself.

“I don’t know, but we’re going to have to move!” Ciprien exclaimed in an urgent tone, his hand reaching up to point towards an also now-moving fragment high above us, one that happened to be getting increasingly closer and closer. “Quick! Onto that island over there!”

Scrambling, the three of us then went about doing exactly that, Val moving the fastest by virtue of her positioning and leaping over towards the ochre-hued grassy island that Ciprien had pointed out, the man following on her heels just a second behind. That left me to bring up the rear, the rapidly closing presence of the other island from above spurring me to leap into the void, my momentum carrying me effortlessly towards the others.

Perhaps too effortlessly.

Traveling the distance in less than a second, I experienced a brief moment of weightless panic where for a split instant I thought that I was going to be in danger of overshooting Val and Ciprien completely. But as I passed over the island, my momentum slowed as gravity’s firm hand reasserted its hold on me and pulled me downwards into a safe, if stumbling landing.

“Yeah, that first step is a doozy, isn’t it?” Ciprien commented as he helped steady me, lest I bowl him over completely. “Thought I was going to fly straight over it for a second too. Looks like gravity only works around these islands. Or at least that’s my guess.”

“That’s what it felt like,” I replied, just managing to get the words out before a loud crash of stone on stone reached my ears and caused me to spin in its direction, seeing the island we’d just escaped from had collided with the other one, the impact shattering it into half a dozen pieces.

“Phew, that was close,” Val said as the fragments mercifully flew down beneath us and out of sight. “But now what? All of the islands—fragments, whatever—are moving. I even think I see a couple that just . . . appeared out of nowhere, too.”

“That’s probably what a worldseeder gate does,” I said as I tried to reorient myself after our transition to another island, it only taking a second for me to spot the orange light I’d seen a second earlier, which had dimmed notably since I’d last seen it. “As for now what, I think we have to head that way. Right, Ciprien?”

“Yeah, I think we do,” he replied, not needing the help of my pointing hand to turn in the direction of the distant light. “That’s definitely entropy I feel there. And worse, it’s getting stronger, too. I have no idea what this other group’s plan could be . . . but something tells me it isn’t making another A-Tier. I’ve never seen anything even close to this.”

“Then we better make sure that we get there and stop it,” I said, not needing to glance around at the void to see that something was different this time. “I think there are enough of these islands or fragments between us we can use to get there.”

“I sure hope there are, kid. Because if there aren’t, we’re about as screwed as people could be.”

Taking only a moment to catch our breath and prepare ourselves, we were soon off across the shattered void, leaping from island to island across the infinite expanse. At first it was a journey that was relatively straightforward, the three of us following a chain of slowly moving islands that were already heading towards our destination as if drawn in by some unseen force. But as we grew closer, we eventually started to encounter obstacles along our path.

The first of these involved the less-than-hospitable gate fragments that occasionally appeared in our path. These were usually pieces of land that consisted of either large pools of water, mud, ice, or in one rare case, shattered glass, making it exceptionally important to watch one’s footing, both when landing and taking off. Yet as annoying as those particular obstacles proved to be, they paled somewhat in comparison to the islands that weren’t aligned or traveling along the same plane as ours, appearing slanted in relation to our current fragment, or in a few cases, completely perpendicular. Navigating between these places essentially required careful aim combined with a leap of faith through the void as you tried to reach the dream fragment in question and trust that its gravity would pull you towards it. Of course, when it came to the rare radically offset islands, that meant you often landed heavily and awkwardly as you entered its gravity and it promptly yanked you towards its relative “down.”

“Oof,” I grunted as that unfortunate event happened, feeling my right shoulder and back take the brunt of the impact, which ended up being more psychologically jarring than actually painful. Shaking my head as I brushed off my rough landing, I waited for a second for my sense of reality to finish shifting to accommodate for my new perspective, only then pushing myself up to my feet.

Almost there, I thought as I rose and gathered my bearings, my eye easily finding the orange-hued fragment that we’d been working towards now that we’d managed finally to close in on it. Only a short distance away from us now, what was once a glowing blot of light had changed until it was a hazy cloud surrounding an orbiting collection of gate fragments. But as I stared at the hazy fragment, my eyes were suddenly attracted to signs of movement that appeared from the orange cloud surrounding it, forcing me to squint.

<I think I see something flying over the island there,> I said to West as I tried to make sense of what I saw, just barely able to make out fluttering shapes that blended in almost perfectly with the distant cloud. <Can you see it too? Or are my eyes playing tricks on me?>

<Hmm,> West replied thoughtfully as she took her own look through my eyes, her own life’s experience allowing her to see what my inexperienced ones missed. Still, it took her a few seconds before she replied. <Yes. I see something, though I cannot say what. Only that they appear to be getting larger. Perhaps coming towards us? I feel no minds yet.>

<Yeah, that’s what I thought too,> I said, the gradual, unsettled feeling that had been growing in my stomach suddenly intensifying.

As I finished voicing the thought to West, I heard the sound of Val and Ciprien arriving behind me a few seconds apart, the shift in planes earning a grunt from both of them as they landed.

“Is there a problem, Auric?” Val called out in a worried tone. “You stopped.”

“There might be,” I replied, not taking my eyes off of the distant movement I’d seen as I pointed in its direction. “West and I thought we saw something coming.”

There was a brief pause as both Val and Ciprien peered ahead, barely three seconds passing before the latter bit out a curse. “Shit. I see it, all right. It looks like . . . a swarm of . . . something. I can’t make it out yet.”

“Which, no matter what it is, is the last thing we need while we’re jumping from island to island,” I replied as I took the time to glance around the patch of bare savannah that was the gate fragment that we’d all landed on, seeing that it was thankfully wide and flat with no major obstacles of note. “I think we need to make a stand until we can figure out what we’re dealing with, and this island looks like the best place to do it. Anywhere else, we’re going to get into one another’s way or be forced to split up.”

“I agree,” Val said. “It’s hard enough jumping from fragment to fragment, let alone needing to fight as we do it.”

“Then we’d better get ready,” Ciprien said, pointing as he spoke. “Because whatever’s coming this way is here!”

And it was, I discovered, as I turned to look back at the glowing platform and saw that there was in fact something flying towards us, having crossed the distance separating faster than I’d expected.

It let out a loud screech as it arrived. I looked up in time to catch a somewhat familiar silhouette as it closed in on us with another four trailing behind it. Quickly taking them in, I saw that they each vaguely resembled the selenoid breakers that we’d just fought, if only in shape. Where they had once been cut from hard, cobalt-hued crystal, they now appeared as living fire, their bodies constantly writhing and reshaping themselves as if unable to decide on what form they wanted to assume. It was this chaotic shifting that had somehow changed their arms into two large wings that kept them aloft as they sailed through the void towards us.

<I can hear their minds now!> West exclaimed as I finished my snap inspection of the group of creatures. <They are just like the creatures we fought in your people’s hive! Filled with nothing but the Void-of-Endless-Screams.>

I soon discovered a flood of knowledge as their Schemas appeared in my mind and vision. Not that the information proved to be particularly valuable, given how little it ended up telling me.

Entropic Breaker – Gateborn – Tier: A – Level: 10

Type: [Undefined]

Intelligence: [Undefined]

Origin: [Undefined]

Schema Integrity: 10%

On the other hand, though, it did give me an exact idea of how best to deal with them.

“Purge them!” I shouted, sending a bar of white energy towards one of the entropic breakers as they swept down towards us, catching it square-on and causing it to unravel in the blink of an eye. By that point, the creatures were all but on top of us, forcing me to dodge and roll to the side, lest I get hit.

“Got one too!” I heard Ciprien call out from behind me, his voice then turning urgent. “But there are four more on the way behind them!”

“I’ll slow them, soon as they come into range!” Val called out, the sound of her crossbow bolt ringing out mid-speech. “Just kill these ones first!”

Replying to my sister with a wordless grunt, I went about doing exactly that, slashing at one of the entropic creatures with my knives as they dove by me and missed, not knowing in the slightest what to expect. In their original state, the breakers had been tough opponents, requiring both Ciprien and me working in tandem to break through their outer shell, a prospect that I dreaded to repeat. Fortunately though, fate smiled on me and my strike, allowing my knife to pass through the creature as if it were water. The result earned me what I took to be a cry of pain from the entropic beast as a spray of orange energy erupted from its body, the majority of which splashed across my attacking arm.

And immediately sent a torrent of burning agony, accompanied by nausea, shooting through me.

Baring my teeth at the unexpected injury, I reacted at the speed of thought and promptly purged the creature at point-blank range.

Ah! That hurts! I thought as I risked a glance at the wound on my arm, seeing a large golden stain where the energy had hit me, having burnt away a portion of my armor and continued on to the skin and flesh beneath. A second later, I then saw a pair of System messages flash across my vision.

You have been struck by [Entropic Touch]

Warning: Schema Integrity 98%

“Ugh, watch out when you hit them!” I called out the second I finished reading the message and turned my attention back towards the battle, feeling a hint of nausea and wrongness linger in my stomach. “They spray entropy everywhere, and believe me, it hurts!”

“That’s good to know, but also not our biggest problem right now!” Val shouted back to me as I carefully sliced at, and missed, another one of the entropic breakers as it flew past me. “These things are starting to eat the island! And fast!”

“Hold on, they’re doing what?!” I shouted back to my sister in confusion as I risked a quick glance in her direction, her warning making a sudden and terrible sense a second later. Swarming like a group of hungry beavers, I saw that the other group of breakers Ciprien had warned us of had chosen to attack our platform rather than us, their burning bodies devouring large sections of earth and stone as they threw themselves at it.

“Shit, never mind, I see it now!” I exclaimed, my eyes unable to help but flick towards a large fracture that was starting to form across the island’s surface.

“Good!” Val exclaimed as a faint rumble chose that moment to shudder through the ground beneath us. “Because if we stay here much longer, we’re not going to have anything left to stand on! We need to go!”

“We sure won’t! The island is already starting to come apart over here!” Ciprien exclaimed from somewhere behind me as the growing rumble intensified into a full-out quake, causing my balance to suddenly shift. “Which means we need to start moving fast, kids! And by that, I mean the running kind of fast, right now!”

“You don’t have to tell me twice!” I replied, struggling to maintain my balance as the island began to break apart. “Follow me!”

Trusting that they would be right on my heels, I didn’t wait to see the others start to move before breaking into the best run that I could manage, rushing across the rapidly deteriorating island while also paying mind to the still-circling entropic breakers. While our efforts had managed to purge or kill four of the original five that attacked us at the start of the battle, that still left five total when the new wave was counted.

So much for not fighting a running battle, I thought grimly as I reached an intact edge of the island and promptly leapt towards another one nearby. Crossing the void easily, I landed on a barren fragment of an island and continued to run without breaking my stride, except for a momentary pause to purge an entropic breaker that darted right in front of me, promptly causing it to unravel.

Picking up speed as I worked myself into a sprint, it was only a matter of seconds before I was leaping towards a new island, followed by two others in sequence. The rapid pace let us stretch out our attackers somewhat, allowing Ciprien and I to both pick them off at range two by two every time our purge ability recharged. Despite that momentary respite, I knew that we wouldn’t be able to run forever and that I had to come up with a plan of what to do next.

We need to find the source of the entropy and also the other group, I said to myself as I ran, slowing just enough to risk a glance in the direction of the hazy island that had been our goal and noticing that it had grown closer in our fight. If we can find it . . . and maybe destroy it, then hopefully the System will detect that something’s wrong and show up again. If it doesn’t . . .

I shook my head to banish that fatalistic train of thought, not wanting to give it even the faintest form. Instead, I put on a burst of speed and redoubled my efforts in blazing a path across the islands towards what I hoped was the source of the entropy.

Rushing across the island-strewn void, I soon felt all conscious thought flee from me as my world devolved into a seemingly endless series of sprints and leaps. It was twice on that journey that we were interrupted by the sudden appearance of even more entropic breakers which either Ciprien or I promptly purged, or in Val’s case, sent a torrent of arrows towards. It wasn’t until the sound of shouting caught my ear that I fell back into the present, realizing that our desperate flight had finally taken us to our destination.

And also that the scream I’d heard hadn’t come from behind me where Val and Ciprien were following, but rather from ahead of me.

<Look ahead, Broodkiller!> West shouted in my mind as I landed from my latest leap, her words prompting me to glance at an island just ahead and below us. <Others! And more of the screaming creatures!>

<I see them,> I replied, instantly spotting four humanoid shapes on the fragment below, two of whom were attempting to fight the entropic breakers. But despite the obvious threat that the creatures posed, the other two in the group stood apart from the others and were very clearly in the process of squaring off with one another.

And I know what that means, I thought, feeling my body tense.

<Are you ready?> I asked West as I readied myself to jump once more, the distance this time being noticeably greater than the usual leaps I took while traversing the islands.

<Always,> she replied eagerly.

<Good,> I said, pausing to suck in a deep breath before leaping out into the void. <Then here we go.>

Chapter Thirty-Six

I broke a gate once. Or at least that’s what I think I did. It happened so fast that I’m still not really sure exactly what happened. I was digging out a vein of metal—as one does, of course, after neutering a gate, and before closing it—when I reached the end of it, and well, fell through the world. One moment I was standing on solid stone, then the next I was clinging to a sliver of rock while hanging over an infinite and empty abyss. I truly thought it was going to be my end in that moment, at least until a brightly glowing orb of light appeared in the distance and began to speak to me. I wish I could recall what it said, but the next thing I knew afterward, I awoke face-first on the ground in our reality as the gate entrance sealed shut behind me. Ever since then, I’ve always left the mining to someone else.

—On his adventures and experiences while gate sealing by Tanner Grimes

* * *

I fell through the void rapidly as my leap carried me towards the gate fragment below, my journey having honed my island-hopping skills to so fine an edge that at no point did I worry that I would miss landing on it. In fact, as I drew closer towards it, I soon discovered that I couldn’t have picked a more perfect landing spot to arrive on, my descent taking me directly between a pair of completely unaware entropic breakers.

Not one to pass up an opportunity when presented to me, I promptly purged one of them the second I entered range, causing it to unravel in a flash, while slashing through its partner as I fell past it with my knife. A second later, my feet touched down on the fragment with barely even a sound, leaving me to roll directly in between the two men that had been fighting the creatures, their surprised voices calling out.

“Whoa! What the—”

“Who is that?!”

But I didn’t stop to greet them as I rose from my roll, my attention firmly fixed on rushing towards the other two that were currently fighting one another. One of them, a blonde-haired woman from what little I could tell with their back turned towards me, held a heavy-looking metal shield and axe, while the man opposite her fought back with a long-bladed spear.

A man that I realized looked eerily similar to Kerill.

Hold on, he’s supposed to be dead! I mentally exclaimed the second that I saw the man, his unexpected resemblance causing me to falter for half a step, allowing his Schema to flood into my mind.

Marcus Baldwin – Human – Tier: D – Level: 10

Class: Striker

Origin: Instance 202

Schema Integrity: 89%

Health: Injured

Status: Afflicted with [Entropic Corruption]

Relationship: None

It’s his brother, I realized with a start as I continued my charge forward, my movement causing Marcus’s eyes to slide on over towards me, disbelief—followed by hatred—flashing in them. He must have had a brother I didn’t know about.

Instantly enraged as a missing puzzle piece in my mind finally clicked together, I instinctively knew who’d been responsible for bringing the entropy into the gate. It was that knowledge that then fueled me as I bulled past the axe-wielding woman, my arm coming up just enough to push her off balance and send her stumbling out of my way. I vaguely heard her let out a cry of surprise as I charged by, but by that point I was already deflecting a panicked spear thrust from Marcus and sending it to the side as I rushed in close, striking him in the face with an elbow. In the next instant, as he was reeling backwards from the attack, I hooked his ankle with my foot and sent him crashing down heavily onto the hard stone.

“Don’t move,” I hissed as I fell over the man and planted my knee into his chest, holding my knife just inches away from his face.

“Ugh, d-damn you!” he spat back at me, flecks of blood spraying from his mouth, courtesy of my strike. “This is all your fault!”

<Bold words from a creature you hold your sting to,> West hissed angrily. <A fact you should remind him of.>

But before I could even begin to reply to either her or the man, I heard a woman’s angry voice call out from behind me, along with several muted shouts from the other two men that I couldn’t make out.

“Hey! Who are you?!” she demanded in a heated tone, promptly making me turn my head just enough so I could see her out of the corner of my eye. “And where the hell did you just come from?”

“My name is Auric Cain,” I replied, needing to lean more of my weight on Marcus’s chest as he tried—and failed—to break free. “And we came here to rescue you all. Tell me, did you see him do something that caused all of this?”

The question seemed to take the woman by surprise for a split second before she nodded. “Y-yeah, he did. He had some sort of crystal on him that he broke when we entered the final chamber. Everything . . . everything went to hell after that.”

“It wasn’t supposed to!” Marcus protested angrily. “It’s because . . . it’s because he is here that everything broke! That’s why everything we faced was—”

“Oh, shut up,” I growled back at the man. “I know exactly what you tried to do with the entropy. Better than you probably do, in fact.”

I was saved from needing to say more about that topic by the arrival of both Val and Ciprien who had landed behind me at some point during my exchange, the pair arriving along with the other two gate stealers in a chorus of shouting.

“Alice! We have others!” one of the men exclaimed amid the sounds of several sets of footsteps rushing behind us. “They killed the breakers!”

“Auric!” Val shouted right at the same moment. “What are—hold on, is that Kerill?”

“It’s his brother,” I said, once more partially turning my head so I could see her. “Did you know he had a brother?”

“Uh, n-no,” she replied, suddenly sounding unsure. “I mean, maybe I remember something about having family somewhere out east but—”

“Hate to interrupt, kids, but does any of that matter right now?” Ciprien asked in an urgent tone, pointing with one of his glowing shields in one direction while letting out a purging beam of light in the other. “Because if it doesn’t, we’re about to have bigger things to worry about! And I don’t mean more of those flyers coming our way!”

“Damn it,” I cursed, the man’s words causing everyone’s heads, including Marcus’s, to turn in the direction he’d indicated where we all not only saw another five of the flying creatures heading towards us but also the source of the glowing orange light that had drawn us all this way.

Set upon a large, disclike island, which I had little doubt had once been the gate’s final chamber, I saw a rather large shape striding across its surface, moving as it reached upwards to grab something and did something that I couldn’t quite make out. At least not until it threw a burning hand back into the air and released another entropic breaker that promptly flew towards us.

“It’s making more of them,” I stated, mentally pegging the being as the ascension gate’s final guardian, or at least what it had been before they’d been infected by the entropy that Marcus had brought along with him. The thought was confirmed a second later by Schema knowledge flowing into my mind.

Entropic Shaper – Gateborn – Tier: A – Level: 12

Type: [Un̶d͘e̢f͘i̴ne̢d]

Intelligence: [̸U͟ņdef̷i͟ned́]

Origin: Gate: 5H4P32

Schema Integrity: 39%

Weaknesses:

Shattering

Concussive

Vulnerable Locations:

Heart Core: Central Mass: +100% Damage Dealt, chance to temporarily stun

“Sure is, and damned fast, too,” I heard Ciprien say as I tried to make sense of the information dump, finding it to be nigh-identical to what I’d seen on the selenoid breakers. “And if we don’t go do something about it, we’re going to get overwhelmed.”

“H-hold on, y-you’re going to go and fight those things?” I heard one of the men ask from behind me. “That’s suicide! They aren’t normal Gateborn anymore. There’s something wrong with those things, especially if they hit you! They . . . they poison you somehow.”

“Believe me, we know. But there’s no other way we’re getting out of here unless we kill them,” I replied as I dismissed the Schema from my mind and shifted my attention over towards the woman, who a string of System text promptly identified as Alice Stillwater, a level-ten D-Tier, the same as Marcus. “You three okay to stay put and watch him while we go do that? We need him alive to ask questions later.”

“Y-yeah,” Alice replied in a shaky voice, her eyes going wide as she stared back at me, no doubt seeing my tier for the first time. “W-we can do that. I have some rope in my pack. We’ll tie him up.”

“Perfect,” I replied as the woman then called for the two men, two other max-level D-Tiers named Brad and David, to grab hold of Marcus in my place, the three of us just managing to finish the exchange right as the next wave of entropic creatures appeared.

Purging them the instant that they arrived, Ciprien and I quickly cut their numbers to something more manageable before they fell upon us, causing Alice to shout out.

“How are you two doing that?” she demanded as she took a swing with her axe at one of the creatures, only to miss as it flew out of range. “How are you killing them so easily?”

“That’s a long story,” I replied as I slashed at another one of the creatures as they flew past me, my knife managing to slice one of its burning wings off and send it tumbling through the abyss and out of sight. “And one better suited for when we’re out of here! Val, Ciprien, are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be!” my sister replied as she rushed over towards me, having taken a second to heal the others, who judging from the blood on their clothes and armor, had taken several injuries during their journey through the gate.

Ciprien, on the other hand, responded with a wordless grunt as he purged yet another entropic breaker from existence and promptly leapt to a fragment ahead of us.

“Guess that means it’s time to go!” I exclaimed as I motioned for Alice and the others to stay put. “Hunker down here and keep safe. We’ll try and keep the breakers’ attention on us if we can.”

Then without waiting for a reply, I unceremoniously purged the remaining breaker and leapt to follow Ciprien across the string of gate fragments leading towards the shaper, with Val in turn doing the same as me a second later. Smaller than the ones we had traveled over so far, we were each forced to blaze our own individual paths across the islands, some of them only large enough to place a single foot on as we leapt from fragment to fragment. Moving with urgency, we managed to make our way towards the central island, Ciprien purging the remaining entropic attacker ahead of us the second that they entered his range.

“Uh, it sure looks a hell of a lot bigger up close!” I said the second that we landed on the central platform, seeing the massive Gateborn now looming high over us as they stood near the center of the island, appearing almost identical to the selenoid breakers that we had fought earlier.

Save, of course, being several orders of magnitude larger and mostly comprised of burning entropic flames that appeared to be slowly devouring what remained of their crystalline bodies.

“It sure does!” Ciprien called back as the creature reached up to snag an orbiting shard of crystal in its hand before it could sail past them, immediately moving to bring it close to their body. As it did, the shaper grasped it with its other hand and began to mold it, crushing it in its grip and causing it to vanish from sight. “But size doesn’t mean everything.”

“If you say so,” I replied in a disbelieving tone, watching the shaper then throw their hand up into the air and this time release a trio of entropic breakers, all of whom wasted no time to home in on us. Reacting quickly at the creatures’ appearance, I didn’t hesitate in rushing forward to purge one of them as it flew towards us, the creature not even attempting to dodge the pale blast of energy before it struck head-on.

And did absolutely nothing to it.

<Hrm, what is this?> I heard West exclaim as the beam of light completely glanced off the breaker with no effect, the creature lunging forward with a loud scream. <Your power did not—>

Yet before she could finish speaking, a second bar of light connected with one of the other corrupted Gateborn, causing all three of them to unravel in a spray of orange energy.

“There are mirrors here! Shattered ones in the air!” Ciprien shouted out as his display caused the shaper to fixate on him as if noticing our group for the first time, an angry, avalanche-like growl filling the air a second later.

None of us had time to ponder that revelation as the shaper reached upwards with one of its hands again, grabbing hold of, and promptly throwing an orbiting fragment in our direction.

“Look out!” Val shouted as we all promptly scattered, each of us trying to make sure we focused on the real stone that the creature had thrown and not the one that was suddenly reflected from countless broken mirror fragments around us. Fortunately, we all managed to do so, if only barely, the boulder-sized gate fragment slamming into the ground just where I’d been standing a second earlier, its impact causing the entire island to wobble and shake.

“A plan would be really good right about now!” I called out, scrambling to regain my balance after the tremor had knocked me down to one knee. “We can’t see the damn mirrors if they’re all flying in the air around us!”

“I can deal with them!” Val said from somewhere behind me. “Next time something’s reflected, I’ll blast the mirrors with my totem. The shockwave should clear a bunch of them!”

“Great, that’s one thing! Now how do we kill this thing?”

“What do you mean how do we kill it? Same way we did the other things, except we need to purge the flames off of it first!” Ciprien called back as he ran, the man needing to dodge yet another thrown fragment, this one an exceptionally large crystal that tore out a chunk of the island before speeding off into the void beyond it. “Preferably before it kills me!”

Letting out a curse as I realized that was easier said than done, I forced myself up onto my feet and began to sprint towards the shaper while simultaneously drawing out a stream of blood to fill my Blood Pool. With only a range of fifteen feet, I had to get fairly close to the creature before the ability could hit it, which, given its size, was not only a daunting proposition, but also a dangerous one. Needless to say, I did it anyway, managing to close on the entropic creature as it threw yet another oversized rock at Ciprien, the man needing to deflect this one away and upwards with both of his shields and nearly being knocked off the island for it. The second I was close enough, I led with a purging beam that caught the shaper directly in its center of mass and instantly wiped away a portion of burning flames that had covered the spot, revealing hard, translucent crystal beneath.

A reveal that was also promptly accompanied by a scream of agony, both from the shaper and from West inside my mind.

<Ah!> she exclaimed with a loud chitter. <Now you’ve gone and enraged it, Broodkiller! Be wary!>

The shaper wailing as if I had prodded it with a blazing hot iron, I processed West’s warning just as the shaper slammed one of its arms into the ground in a titanic strike, the impact from the mighty blow instantly throwing me off my feet. Falling heavily, I felt the ground tremble and crack as several large fissures snaked their way around me, the stone under my body rapidly losing its firmness. Realizing in a blink what was happening, I managed to get one leg under me just in time for a sprawling half leap a second before the ground beneath me completely gave way into the void below.

<This is not what I meant by being wary, Broodkiller! Move! Quickly!> West shouted at me as I hit the newly formed edge of the hole that the shaper had made, just barely managing to get most of my body on solid ground before I could fall into the abyss. Yet that was far from the end of my troubles as the shaper struck the ground a second time, this time with its other arm, and sent another spray of fissures towards me, forcing me to scramble once again. But instead of heading in a direction that would ensure my safety, my panic to not fall into the void found me rolling even closer to the shaper, something that I belatedly realized the second I saw a colossal foot covered in entropic flames appear in my vision.

Oh crap, wrong way! I mentally exclaimed as I saw the foot, and the leg it was attached to, immediately rise up into the air in preparation to stomp on me. But before it could come down to crush me, another white beam of light splashed against it and caused the shaper to recoil as the entropy enveloping its foot was wiped away. Nor was that the only thing that happened as the corrupted Gateborn let out another scream and recoiled a step, Ciprien suddenly appearing high above me in a leap, the two glowing shields on his arms crackling with power.

Clearing both me and the distance separating him and the shaper with a loud shout, the man then slammed both of his weapons into the shaper’s main body, right where my first purging beam had struck. Detonating instantly from the impact, a wave of power exploded outwards from both of Ciprien’s shields and into the shaper, rocking it backwards several steps.

“T-thanks!” I called out as I rushed to climb back up onto my feet, relief pouring through every inch of my body.

“No problem, kid,” Ciprien said, already running to round the shaper as it regained its balance, both of its hands reaching up to grab an orbiting fragment apiece. “But we’re not through the woods yet! Look at the body—it’s shattered the same way as the others! We need to crack it open and get to the entropy inside.”

“I see it!” I replied a second later as a quick glance towards the Gateborn revealed a large network of spidery cracks throughout the shaper’s main body, exactly as we’d seen on the breakers just a short while earlier. What was unlike the creatures in question was that the fractured lines on the shaper’s body were rapidly thinning out and shrinking with every second that passed.

Yet before I could comment on that particular discovery, the two crystalline fragments that the shaper had grabbed began to glow with a bright orange light as the shaper filled them with entropic flames. A second later, the creature then brought them together in a thunderous clap, causing them to shatter and explode outward in a storm of crystalline shrapnel.

A storm that was only magnified by the hundreds if not thousands of reflections that appeared all around me.

<Get down, Broodkiller!> I heard West shout at me as she seized on the blood I’d portioned off from myself and began to shape it in an arc before me, using every ounce I had available to me to thicken and reinforce it. It was her quick thinking that let me survive the wave of entropic shrapnel that came next, countless fragments slamming into the shield seemingly all at once.

But that didn’t mean I survived it unscathed.

Piercing through the shield, which held up to the barrage better than I had any right to expect, several of the burning shards found their way into my body, slicing through the thinner portions of my armor as if it weren’t there. Instantly, I felt another wave of revulsion and nausea pass through me just as it had with my last contact with the entropy, save that this time, it was accompanied by a wailing shriek in the back of my mind and two warnings flashing across my vision.

Warning: Schema Integrity – 80%

Warning: You have suffered an [Entropic Wound]

<Argh! The Void-of-Endless-Screams is within!> West exclaimed, her voice accompanied by the vague sensation of movement in my mind. <Get it out! Cast it out! Quickly before it takes root!>

<Ugh, West, calm down a second!> I shouted back as I felt my blood shield abruptly dissolve, the blast of flying shrapnel having shredded it beyond saving. <I can’t—>

A second explosion directly above me cut my thoughts before I could finish them, the noise almost instantly accompanied by a wave of force that pressed down on me. Lasting for only a second, it wasn’t enough to do anything but rock me on my heels as I heard Val call out a second later.

“I got the mirrors!” she shouted more than a little breathlessly, concern entering her voice a second later as the wave of shimmering energy that was her Sanctuary power passed over me, followed by her appearing at my side. “Auric! Are you okay?”

“I will be in a second, hopefully,” I replied as both West and the entropy that had infected me continued to war with one another in my mind, prompting me to plant a hand against my chest and purge myself in an attempt to banish the latter.

An instant later, I felt my world go white as thousands, maybe even millions, of fingerlike pinpricks dug into me, each of them peeling a portion of my very being away as they inspected it, cleaned it, and returned it back to where they’d found it. Then, seemingly as soon as it had begun, the veil of white faded just in time for Val to catch me before I fell to the ground, but not before another pair of messages appeared in my vision.

Schema Integrity – 100%

You have successfully Purged [Entropic Wound] from your Schema

“Auric, what did you just do?” she demanded as she sent a surge of healing power through me, causing the wounds that the crystalline shrapnel had inflicted to vanish.

“Purged myself. Took too many hits from the entropy,” I explained, breathing a sigh of relief as the nausea, West’s screaming, and the wailing voice in my head faded away, though at the cost of a profound wrongness that permeated my entire body. As if my body was simultaneously too small and yet too large for me to be in. But as unsettling as that discomfort was, I didn’t have time to worry about it as I saw the shaper begin to move once again, its attention focused on Ciprien, who had somehow enlarged his shields, no doubt to block the spray of shards.

“Come on, I think I know how to hurt it, but we have to be fast,” I said as I siphoned more blood from my body to replace what I’d spent on the shield, feeling West grab hold of it without comment.

<West, are you okay?> I asked mentally as Val and I rushed towards the entropic Gateborn. <You sounded pretty panicked there for a second.>

<Because I was,> she answered, a shiver of fear echoing out from her mind to mine. <That Void that touched us . . . is unlike anything else I’ve ever witnessed. We must destroy it. Utterly and without mercy.>

<Good thing that’s the plan I have in mind,> I said as I worked my way up into a run while calling out to my sister. “Hit it with your slow, Val, once I purge it. Then wait to hit it with your crossbow. We need to crack its shell the same as the breakers!”

“Got it!”

Trusting that she would hold up her end of the plan, I closed as fast as I could with the shaper and immediately purged it the second it entered range, targeting the very same spot that I had last time. Lancing out from the tip of one of my knives, the light connected solidly with its body and, for the second time, wiped away the entropic flames that had regrown over that location, revealing a slightly cracked midsection, having almost completely healed itself since its attack. Much like the first two times when it had been struck, the creature instantly recoiled at the beam’s touch, its attention shifting away from Ciprien and back towards me.

“Hit it again!” I shouted as I pulled away from the entropic goliath, with it looking to keep its focus on me while Ciprien got into position. “Hit it again like you did last time! We’ll be ready!”

<I’ll need a blood spear as soon as he hits it,> I told West as Val dropped her power on the shaper, its effects slowing the already-ponderous creature even further.

<It will be ready,> she assured me as I stutter-stepped just ahead of the Gateborn, looking to keep just far enough ahead of it that it would remain fixated on me, but not so close that it could hit me, or try to destroy the ground under my feet.

Fortunately, it was a dance that I didn’t need to keep going long as Ciprien sprinted into range, repeating his earlier strike with perfect form, slamming his shields into the same spot as before, prompting the shaper to shatter and crack even worse than before.

“Now, Val!” I shouted as the shaper recoiled from the strike, once again staggering on its four legs from the impact. A second later, a crossbow bolt lanced out and connected with the twin craters that Ciprien’s strike had left on its body, piercing deeply into it.

But not all the way through it, I thought with a grimace as I watched the shaper recover, my feet already moving to sprint towards it. Closing in a blink, I felt West shape my requested blood spear just in time for me to lunge and punch forward, driving the crimson spear straight into the same spot Val had struck. A spot which this time completely gave way under the weapon’s assault, cracking through the crystal protecting its core.

Which in turn promptly vented a torrent of entropic flames directly outwards from its open core towards me.

“Whoa!” I shouted as I just barely managed to dodge out of the way in time to avoid being hit directly by the flames. I was still clipped by them, however, and felt my back and arm explode in agony as I rolled out of the way.

“Was that part of your plan too? Because if it was, I don’t like it!” I heard Val shout at me as I regained my feet, cradling my burnt arm to my chest and reading a notification that I’d lost five percent of my Schema integrity. Worse, too, the blood that I had used to break the shaper’s shell had been completely burnt away by the flames, halving what little had been in my Blood Pool a second earlier.

“Um, n-no, not really!” I replied as I continued to back away as the now-frantic Gateborn tried to cover its chest with its hands as if trying to keep the flames inside, only to have them burnt straight through, earning a pained and angry wail. Nor were its hands the only thing that the flames burnt through, the jet of entropic fire reaching far enough from its body to burn a thigh-wide hole in the ground before it.

Or rather, as I soon discovered a second later, straight through it and into the void beyond.

“Check that!” I exclaimed as the shaper began to flail the second that it burnt its hands off, sending the jet of entropy slicing across the ground and through the air, forcing me to dodge a second time. “Definitely not what I was planning to have happen!”

Rolling across the ground as I lunged out of the way, I regained my feet and sent a purging beam of white at the jet of entropy pouring from the shaper’s chest, a similar beam arriving from Ciprien a second later. Working together, the two abilities instantly cut the roaring torrent of entropy pouring free of the creature in half, the flames then going on to sputter for several seconds as if they were going to wink out. But just when I thought that they were going to vanish completely, the shaper’s core blazed with a burst of power, causing the flames not only to intensify, but for its main body to crack and shatter, venting even more of the orange energy.

“Purging doesn’t seem to be working, Ciprien!” I shouted as the shaper began to thrash wildly with its feet, slamming them down with enough force that spidery cracks began to snake through the ground outward from it. “It’s only making the thing angrier!”

“Got that wrong in one, kid!” he called back as he leapt away from the shaper, narrowly evading a bar of entropy that was venting from the creature as it scoured the spot he’d been standing in. “It getting angrier is a sign purging is working! Just hit it a few more times! The entropy should lose containment soon! We just need to make sure it’s weak enough that we survive it!”

“It should lose what?” Val asked as the island shuddered threateningly beneath our feet. “What do you mean it will—ah, look out!”

Cracking and splintering apart mid-speech, a large section of the shaper’s body abruptly shattered, the creature letting out another pained scream as what remained of its arm and shoulder exploded outwards, showering both Val and me in burning crystal. Protecting us both with a shield of blood as best as I was able to given the speed of the blast, I didn’t hesitate in retaliating in kind, ignoring the few stray injuries just long enough to send yet another purging beam back at the rapidly deteriorating Gateborn. Tracking the pale line, I saw it vanish into the freshly made opening on the shaper’s body, the entropy within dimming noticeably in response.

But as before, that brief fading only lasted for a couple seconds before the flames rekindled themselves with a fury, causing the shaper’s already-cracked and broken body to fracture even further.

“Good! It’s almost there!” I heard Ciprien shout as he charged in close to the Gateborn one more time with his shields at the ready, the creature having lost any semblance of coordination and will in its movements. All it did now was thrash and flail its body wildly as the entropy consumed it from within, leaving the man a mostly clear path towards it.

Striking it just as he finished yelling, Ciprien delivered a third and final strike on the shaper’s body with his shields, the impact sending it reeling backwards. But where before the Gateborn had been able to weather Ciprien’s strikes, its crystalline shell only fragmenting from his blows, this time it could not, his strike completely shattering the protective armor and exposing its core. Catching a spray of the ocherous flames on one of his shields, Ciprien sent his own beam of white into the blazing furnace within, causing them all to immediately darken.

“Now, Auric!” he shouted as he turned to run towards us. “Purge it one more time and then take cover!”

But by the time his words reached me, I’d already finished taking aim, my outstretched knife sending a final bar of light into the open heart of the shaper, its arrival causing the already-muted fire to all but wink out completely.

If at least for a couple seconds.

The next thing I knew as I threw myself on top of Val, only vaguely accounting for Ciprien’s arrival beside me and West’s desperate shaping of another blood shield, was a nigh-deafening blast accompanied by a bright flash of red-orange light. A second later, I felt a wave of energy slam into us with the force of a sledgehammer, the impact not only enough to send all three of us rolling across the ground, but to also cause the island beneath us to tremble and shake. It was enough to make me briefly worry that the platform was about to come apart beneath us, but after a few seconds of rumbling and cracking stone, the shaking mercifully stopped, leaving all three of us to breathe a sigh of relief.

“Is . . . is it dead?” Val asked, her voice the first to break the silence that had followed the explosive blast. “Please tell me its dead.”

“Well, I can’t feel any entropy anymore,” Ciprien said a second later as we began to untangle ourselves from one another, all three of us grunting and wincing from the variety of injuries and bruises we’d suffered. “So I’m really hoping that means its dead.”

“We’ll know in just about a second,” I said weakly as I pulled what little blood that had survived the blast back towards me and reshaped it over my arm, revealing a completely barren island ahead, the entropic shaper nowhere in sight. A good thing too, since I’d practically drained myself dry in the split second that we’d had before the shaper exploded, leaving me with barely any health left. But the visual confirmation wasn’t the only one that I received in the seconds that followed, a barrage of familiar System text soon appearing across my vision.

Error: Connection to Local Node Lost

Attempting To Restore Connection . . .

Connection Failed

Searching For Alternate Node . . .

Parent Node Detected . . . Establishing Connection

Connection Established . . .

Warning: Deviant Parameters Detected

“There, now we know it’s dead,” I said the second I saw the messages appear, readying myself for the System’s inevitable arrival as it had during my own ascension gate run.

Only to find myself abruptly freezing as another dump of text appeared in my vision.

Warning: Insufficient System Resources For Master Daemon Intervention

Searching For Alternate Daemons . . .

Local Daemons Detected

Identifying Local Daemons:

Entity: Auric Amadeus Cain, Level 15, Tier: A

Entity: Ciprien Mills, Level 16, Tier: B

Assigning Local Authority To Highest-Tier Daemon . . . Complete

“Hold on, what—” I started to to say, only find any further words dying in my throat as even more System text appeared in my vision.

Warning: High Levels of Residual Entropy Detected

Warning: Sub-Instance Destabilization In T-Minus 120 Seconds

Warning: Instance #202 Is Now In Quarantine

Primary Recommendation: Emergency Evacuation of All Non-Local Entities to Origin Gateway

Secondary Recommendation: Nullify Sub-Instance

Available Commands:

Award Trial and Challenge Progress Using Local Data

Nullify All Trial and Challenge Progress

Restore All Non-Local Entity Schemas

Nullify All Non-Local Entity Schemas

Emergency Evacuation of All Non-Origin Entities to Origin Gateway

Emergency Evacuation of Local Daemons to Nearest Available Instance

Seal Origin Gateway

Nullify Sub-Instance

“W-what is all of this?” I asked as the seemingly endless wall of System text continued to flow in my vision, leaving me reeling while I desperately tried to make sense of it all. “Are either of you two seeing this?”

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Val said while doing something that I wasn’t able to make out through my overly cluttered vision. “The last thing I saw was that the System was searching for a local . . . daemon. Whatever that is.”

“That would be Auric and me,” Ciprien replied, his tone urgent as he spoke. “I can explain more later, but it’s how the System sees us after it’s granted powers to us.” I felt his hand grab onto my arm as he turned me to face him. “Auric, you need to tell us what you see. Did it give you options? Of what you can do?”

“Y-yeah,” I replied, trying to focus on the man past the wall of text. “There’s . . . a lot, and warnings, too.”

Ciprien cursed at that particular mention. “Tell me everything you see, then, and quickly. If my experience serves me right, we don’t have much time before things go sideways again.”

Which is exactly what I did over the next several seconds, repeating to both him and Val all that had appeared in my vision, including specifically the countdown warning I saw.

“It says ninety seconds until sub-instance destabilization now,” I said as I finished speaking, seeing Ciprien’s eyes widen in shock.

“Shit, no time to waste,” he replied even more urgently than before. “Okay, this is what I am going to need you to do, Auric. First off, restore all non-local entity Schemas, then award trial and challenge progress. Once that’s done, I need you to run the emergency evacuation command to the origin gateway and get us the hell out of here.”

“And what about nullifying the sub-instance?” I asked, not forgetting about that particular recommendation that had been provided to me. “Or the quarantine warning?”

“Honestly?” Ciprien said. “I have no idea. I’ve never even heard of either of those two things before, but nullification sounds like something to do on the way out. Right before you hit the gate. If my guess is right . . . it’ll destroy everything in this gate.”

“Which we don’t want to have happen while we’re still in here,” I said with a nod as I turned my focus back onto the commands floating in my vision. “Okay. No time to waste. Here goes . . . everything, I guess.”

Activating them in the order that Ciprien had recommended, I went down the list of commands in my vision, triggering them one by one in sequence. As I did, I saw a string of System notifications appear in my vision, followed closely behind by a rush of energy shooting through my body.

All Non-Local Entity Schemas Restored

Awarding Trial and Challenge Progress

Ascension Challenge #3: Completed

Challenge Rewards: +9,000 Experience Points

Ascension Challenge #4: Completed

Challenge Rewards: +12,000 Experience Points

You have advanced to Level 13!

You have advanced to Level 14!

You have advanced to Level 15!

You have gained the power: Bloodlust

Auto Assigning Attribute Points Based On Prior Training Habits

Commencing Emergency Evacuation of All Non-Origin Entities to Origin Gateway

Hitting the evacuation button last, I had just enough time to finish skimming over all of the messages before an invisible force grabbed hold of my body and began to lift me up from the ground, prompting me to realize just exactly what an emergency evacuation meant.

“Oh crap, not this again!” I said as a sickening sensation fell over my stomach.

Then the next thing I knew I was hurtling through the void towards the distant gate.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Assigned Tasks Completed

Beginning Report:

Entropic Anomalies Detected Within Instances: #91 & #134 Eliminated.

Instance Integrity Returning to Prior Benchmark.

Instance #64 Successfully Nullified.

Repairing Integrity of Recovered Resources & Adding to Resource Pool.

End Report.

Releasing Unused Resources.

Mobile Daemons Returning to Assigned Tasks.

—Excerpt From Lead Mobile Daemon’s Log

* * *

For the second time in my life, I flew out of the ascension gate at speed, the world around a complete blur thanks to both my velocity and the transition between realities. So it was only with a last-second yelp that I managed to get my hands up in time to keep my face from slamming into the forest floor as I landed. As it was though, the impact still dazed me for several seconds until I could pull myself together. Rolling onto my back I waited for the world to stop spinning long enough so that I could focus on the plethora of System text hanging both at the edge of my vision and mind. Tired of having it continually bombard me, and not wanting to deal with it once everyone recovered from our dramatic exit, I let the information wash over me in one overwhelming torrent.

Subject:

Auric Cain

Tier: A

Level: 15

Class: Paragon

Progression: 94/10420

Vital Statistics:

Health: 700/700

Blood Pool: 0/200

Endurance: 700/700

Physical Attributes:

Vigor: 38

Finesse: 35

Celerity: 34

Mettle: 55

Psyche: 38

Skills:

Martial:

Unarmed Combat – Level 12 – 15%

Swords – Level 13 – 11%

Spears – Level 13 – 18%

Class:

Bloodshaping – Level 10 – 41% – Tier C Passive Unlocked!

Potent Blood: As your skill in controlling and shaping blood improves, you are able to tap into the power the blood holds more efficiently, filling your Blood Pool all the faster. For every level in this skill beyond level 10, you generate an additional +0.05 blood points per point of blood absorbed.

Current Bloodshaping Bonuses:

+100 Maximum Blood Pool

+2 Bloodborne Companions

+10% Health, Damage, and Resilience to Bloodborne Companion per level.

+100 seconds to Bloodborne Companion duration per level.

+1.05 Blood Points per 1 health drained.

+0.55 Blood Points per 1 enemy damage inflicted.

Powers:

Bloodlust:

Power Type: Metaphysical

Duration: Until Canceled

Range: Self

Blood Cost: 5% of Maximum Blood Pool per second

Description: You tap into the latent power of the blood at your command and send it coursing through your veins, using it to greatly enhance your strength and speed.

Effect: For as long as this ability is active, you gain a +15% Attribute bonus to Vigor, Finesse, and Celerity.

Ugh, that . . . that was a lot, I thought with a mental wince as the System unceremoniously dumped not only three levels worth of updates into my mind, but also a new passive ability and power. At a glance, both would be incredibly useful tricks to add to my growing repertoire, to say nothing of my rapid power progress. Maybe running more challenges in an ascension gate would be worthwhile in the long run. Sure, they’re dangerous, but to gain three levels so quickly . . .

I shook my head at that train of thought, unable to fully comprehend it. Here I was barely through my eighteenth year and already a level-fifteen A-Tier. It was a surreal and practically unheard-of development for someone so young.

Not that I can get ahead of myself on that front, I said to myself a second later, knowing full well how far my skills still lagged behind a properly trained A-Tier. I still had dozens of skills that needed catching up to my own level, let alone further beyond as many A-Tiers already were. Breathing a sigh to ground myself from there, I shifted my attention towards more pressing matters, which happened to be in the form of yet another collection of System text still blinking in my vision.

Nullification of Sub-Instance Complete

Your Assigned Tasks Have Been Updated

Assigned Tasks:

Primary Task: Using Obtained Information from Primary Task, determine the location of the local Splinter of Entropy as well as any child Slivers or Shards.

Secondary Task: Purge any and all instances of Entropy located or encountered from Secondary Task by using the assigned subroutine.

Tertiary Task: Improve Instance Integrity to 75% or higher to be removed from Quarantine List. Current Instance Integrity: 71%

Oh damn it, what the hell is going on now? I thought with a wince at the sheer amount of text, the surge of relief that had briefly shot through me at seeing that the instance nullification had succeeded being overwritten by my updated tasks.

What does it mean to be on the Quarantine List? I asked myself as I slowly moved to push myself up, full well recalling what I’d seen inside the gate. Did . . . did something go wrong while we were in there? Did I do something wrong?

Whatever the answer was, I certainly didn’t find it among the several curses and pained grunts that echoed out from all around me, courtesy of Val, Ciprien, and all the other gate stealers we’d managed to rescue.

Nor did I find it amid a crunch of breaking twigs and the much-louder curse that soon reached my ears from a voice I didn’t expect to hear.

“Oh, fucking hell,” it said in a hard, gravelly tone. “They’re here, and they killed the gate.”

“So I see,” another replied. “This is rather unfortunate. To say nothing of the other problem accompanying them.”

Feeling my blood run cold at the sound of the two voices, I turned my head to see none other than Curshaw and Mercutio a couple dozen feet away from us, the former’s expression downcast and angry, while the latter’s was hidden in the depths of his cowl. But they weren’t the only ones present as I discovered a second later as my eyes shifted towards the exceptionally large silhouettes that stood behind them.

Are . . . are those typhonic drones from the Fault Gate? I wondered, vaguely recognizing the scorpion-like shapes as my eyes adjusted to the lighting. As they did, I realized that they didn’t quite look exactly as I remembered, their once-lava-veined bodies now replaced with a familiar orange glow that pulsed from within.

Which only meant one thing.

“They’re entropic,” I whispered, my suspicions soon confirmed as I saw a tag appear, pointing at each of the creatures, identifying them as entropic drones.

<So the betrayers finally reveal themselves,> West declared, her presence growing somehow larger in my mind. <Finally. No more shadows and lies.>

But before I could gather myself to reply, I heard Ciprien curse from beside me as he slowly began to rise. “Shit, this is bad.”

“Yes, you could certainly say that again, First Lieutenant,” Mercutio called out, clearly having heard the man. “Because I for one certainly never expected to see you again. Especially not here and in such company.”

“Only because you thought you killed me, I imagine.”

“Well, yes,” Mercutio replied, the exchange causing everyone’s heads to start to turn in his and Curshaw’s direction. “But if I recall correctly, you were trying to kill me then too. Fair is fair, after all.”

But before any of us could reply to that, other voices from amid the gate stealers started to call out, one in particular standing out.

“Oh, thank the System! It’s Salvo! We’re saved . . .” Brad said as he shot up to his feet, his voice at first sounding relieved until he, too, spotted the drones standing beside the pair. “W-wait, w-what are those?”

“They are our . . . guests,” Mercutio answered with a sigh, slowly gliding forward as everyone’s attention fixated onto him, the brief aura of relief that had filled the air after our escape instantly replaced by one of tension. “Guests that I am afraid none of you were meant to see.”

“Wait, are you—” I heard Marcus call out before cutting himself off, prompting me to look in the direction of the man, who, since I’d last seen him, had been tied up rather thoroughly, and I could see the look of pure terror written across his face. “I-I swear it wasn’t my fault! S-something went wrong inside there and the entropy—urk!”

“No, Marcus, I’m afraid that nothing went wrong at all,” the cowled man said as he raised a cloaked arm and sharply gestured with it, prompting Marcus’s face to turn a bright red. “Or at least not anything that you had your hand in.”

“You meant to kill them,” I said, speaking up for the first time as I stared back at Mercutio and Curshaw, the revelation that they were, in fact, here hitting me particularly hard in that moment.

“We meant to both tie up a loose end and replace some . . . assets that were lost,” Mercutio stated simply as he lowered his arm, prompting Marcus to let out a gasp in relief. “And if I may be so petty to say, also enact a much-deserved smidgen of vengeance in the process. You and your sister were never meant to be caught up in this mess of ours. But thanks to him, and his brother, you were.”

“His . . . brother?” Val asked, her voice sounding particularly flat as she spoke. “Wait, so you were the ones that killed Kerill.”

“Aye, we did,” Curshaw said, not even bothering to pretend otherwise. “Bugger had it coming for a thousand different reasons. But the second he put you two in danger, he was a problem that had to be solved.”

It was an answer that I didn’t even know how to begin to reply to at first, their candor the complete opposite of what I’d expected to hear. Had they instead replied with denials, recriminations, or perhaps literally anything else, I was sure I could have come up with something cutting to counter with. But since they had not, I found myself completely off balance, eventually managing to force a question out in response.

“Why? All of this. Just . . . why?”

“Because we’re losing, Auric,” Curshaw answered in his typical coarse tone. “And by we, I mean humanity. I know things haven’t exactly been going that well for us as a species over the last hundred years. But lately, they’ve started to get worse, much worse.”

“And so this is your solution?” I asked, while gesturing vaguely all around us, not quite believing what I was hearing. “You’re . . . killing people and using entropy to . . . do what exactly? Grow stronger? Create more A-Tiers out—”

“Fifty million,” Curshaw interrupted without waiting for me to finish. “That’s roughly how many humans there were on Earth three years ago. Any idea how many there are now? A little less than ten million. And falling fast.”

“How . . . how could you possibly even know that?” It was Val’s turn to ask, her voice now trembling as she spoke out. “How could you know how many people there are in the world?”

“Your grandmother, how else?” Mercutio answered, the eyes in his cowl then shifting to look towards her. “Ever since she was able to, she has kept track of humanity’s population. Something that a good many people paid very, very close attention to every year when she released her accounts. But you don’t have to take just our word for that, either. You can ask our mutual friend here as well. Do you remember the day we first found out about the loss, Ciprien? Or perhaps I should still call you sir? I’m afraid I’m not sure what the protocol is anymore.”

“I’d rather you not call me anything, murderer,” Ciprien growled in response. “But what I remember from all those years ago is a man who pushed too far into things he didn’t understand and lost himself for it. Tell me, is Tristan still in there? Or has he been consumed by what you stole?”

“Ah, and again with the same old saw as before,” Mercutio said in a disappointed tone while shaking his head. “I am still me, Ciprien. Always have been. I just got tired sitting and watching humanity die while doing nothing to stop it.”

“Says the man who helped destroy Ravenstead,” I said, my earlier shock finally starting to give way to the roiling anger that had been burning in my stomach since yesterday. “We know exactly what happened there. How everyone there ended up corrupted and consumed by entropy. How was that supposed to help anything? Better yet, how can you live with yourselves after what you did there? Let alone what you tried to do here.”

“Living with ourselves comes second to simply living,” Mercutio answered. “More than anything, you need to know that none of us actually wanted to do any of this, Auric. Myself more than all. But we all realized that a few lives had to be sacrificed while we mastered our control over entropy and its power. It’s simply the cost of saving humanity and a toll that we all recognize stains our souls. But if it saves our species, and undoes the damage that has been done? Well, then it’s a cost we’ve all agreed to pay. Future generations can sort through the morality. It’ll be a luxury they’ll have because of our sacrifice.”

“And I will tell you again, Tristan, you can’t master entropy. No one can,” Ciprien stated in what sounded like a worn and familiar argument. “It has a mind of its own. An insidious, conniving, and unpredictable mind. Any control you think you might have over it, is only because it’s allowing you to think you have that control. It will take it away in a second when it wants to.”

“I can understand why you would think that, old friend,” Mercutio replied in a sad tone. “I did too, once. But after what we’ve seen . . . what we’ve learned. That’s no longer a concern of mine. And truthfully not yours either.”

“And why is that?” I asked, my body starting to tense at his particular choice of words.

“Because we’re leaving,” Curshaw answered. “All of Salvo.”

“Wait, you’re leaving?” Val asked, the shock of the admission outweighing the anger she so clearly felt. “W-why?”

“Because you and your brother have tipped our hand, in a matter of speaking, making it best that we move on as soon as possible,” Mercutio answered as a glowing crimson shard floated free of his sleeve before shooting towards an empty patch of air a short distance away from him and Curshaw. Stopping with an audible snap of power, the crystal, or sliver of entropy that I realized it was, began to warp the air, causing it to twist and distort. “And also because it’s preferable to the alternative.”

“W-which is what exactly?” I asked, sensing the implied threat as I shifted to look at the crystal, which began to pulse faster and faster.

“Wasting the investment that we made in you and your sister,” I heard Curshaw answer as the sliver then exploded outwards in a flare of energy, forcing me to shield my eyes from the sudden brightness. Catching all of us by surprise, there was a loud shout from everyone as we staggered back en masse, unsure if we were under attack. But as the light faded away a few seconds later, we found ourselves faced with something entirely different and unexpected. Something that none of us had expected to see.

A gate, I thought numbly to myself as I stared at the crackling red-orange oval now before us, the vague hints of a barren landscape visible within it, covered by a veil of red. He . . . summoned a gate out of nowhere using entropy.

“We raised you both to be the best of us,” Curshaw continued as the portal finished taking shape, its presence casting the entire clearing in a bloody light. “And to replace us in the world we left behind. Granted . . . that came along a little faster than we were—”

“Bullshit,” I hissed with venom in my voice as I tore my eyes off of the freshly made gate and back onto Curshaw. “This is all bullshit. All you’re doing is running away from all the damage you’ve caused. From all the people you’ve killed. You’re all running from your guilt.”

“If only we could do such a thing, Auric,” Mercutio replied in a sad tone before motioning towards the portal he’d created. “But in any case, I think we’ve spent enough time talking here. You’ve all set our work back once again, and I’m afraid that we cannot allow that to continue any longer. I’m going to have to insist that you all come with us now, where you will all be kept under guard, safely, I might add, until further notice.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ciprien countered as a wave of worried chatter rose up from the gate stealers, all of whom had been understandably quiet during our exchange. “You can’t expect us to believe that. Not after everything you’ve done.”

“You are right, old friend, I cannot,” Mercutio admitted as he raised a cloaked arm once again, the motion accompanied by the sound of snapping fingers. “But what I can do is compel you all to obey anyway. For your own safety, of course.”

Moving as if to demonstrate the point in sync with his snap, the four entropic drones began to advance towards us, prompting a scream from someone among the gate stealers. Nor was that the only thing that happened, as Mercutio then conjured a golden whip of light that promptly wrapped itself around Ciprien before he could even think to react, the other end grasped firmly in Mercutio’s cloaked hand. When he tugged on it sharply a second later, the next thing any of us knew, Ciprien was sailing through the air and directly into the gate, his panicked shout cutting itself off before it could even fully begin.

“Ciprien!” Val shouted the second he was yanked off his feet, her hand belatedly reaching up in an attempt to catch him but missing.

As for me on the other hand, I didn’t hesitate to charge forward the instant that I saw the creatures begin to move, with my knives in hand, intending to buy whatever time I could for everyone to escape. Or at least that had been my intention until Curshaw’s colossal form appeared before me, his heavily armored hand outstretched before him.

“That’s enough, Auric,” he said, immediately shifting to block my path when I tried to dodge around him. “We don’t need any more of your heroics here. You’ve done enough already.”

“The hell I have,” I countered as I backpedaled several steps in lieu of clashing with the man, a lifetime of knowing exactly what he was capable of giving me pause. Instead, I chose to completely break away from him as one of the entropic drones rushed past us, hoping to put it between us.

Or at least that had been my intention, because the next thing I knew, something exploded behind me, followed by a wave of force slamming into me from the side. It was enough to not only take me completely off my feet, but to send me bouncing across the ground with a shout.

Letting out a grunt of pain, I felt myself hit the forest floor shoulder first before spinning completely head over heels and landing heavily on my back, both my side and shoulder exploding with pain a second later. Then before I could even begin to recover, I felt something clamp down on me across my chest and lift me into the air as if I weighed nothing.

“There, have you had your fill of action now, Auric?” I heard Mercutio’s voice ask as my head started to clear, leaving me to realize that I’d been grabbed by the very same drone I’d seen and now was being held tightly in its pincer with my arms pinned at my sides. “I can only imagine how this may look from your perspective, but I truly do assure you this is for the best.”

“Damn it, let me go!” I hissed back as my vision continued to clear, leaving me to glance towards the others just in time to see the remaining drones finish capturing them, their movements far too slow to escape the higher-leveled—and higher-Tiered—creatures. In the case of Val, I saw that Curshaw had rushed forward to grab hold of both her and Alice, tucking each of their flailing forms under his arms before turning towards the gate.

“We will, Auric. I swear on what’s left of my soul that we will,” Mercutio assured, once again snapping his fingers and prompting all the drones to start following Curshaw towards the entropic portal. “That’s provided that you don’t do anything foolish. You’ve made great strides of late, incredible ones, in fact, when it comes to your power. Ones that could very well force us to take you seriously if you push too hard. Please don’t make us do that.”

“You . . . should have thought of that . . . earlier,” I replied, struggling with every ounce of available strength I had to try and free myself as the first of the drones entered into the portal ahead of Curshaw and disappeared with a blink. “I’m not going to let you all just . . . run away after what you’ve done.”

“I understand your anger, Auric,” Mercutio said as another drone entered the portal and mine started to move towards it. “We’d hoped to make this . . . transition easier for you and your sister. But in our efforts to protect you both, we simply underestimated your ability and your drive. You were never supposed to know.”

“If . . . if that’s an apology, it’s a really shitty one,” I spat back as I continued to twist and writhe in an attempt to get an arm free, but to no avail. The best I’d been able to do was simply loosen it against my side and allow myself to bend my elbow.

Which might just be enough, I thought as I struggled, a vague and desperate idea coming to mind, one that I was sure would only cause me trouble. But when have I ever stayed away from trouble?

<Not since the Great Web has allowed our paths to cross,> West said to me, a growl of approval echoing through my mind as she sensed what I wanted to do next. <Nor should I believe you would start to do so now.>

“It is . . . what it is,” Mercutio said simply as the last drone ahead of me entered into the portal and also vanished from sight, leaving only Curshaw standing short distance away from it, holding both Val and Alice. That left my drone the last in line as it continued to lumber towards it, the distance separating us rapidly shrinking.

Until I was finally close enough.

<Now!> I exclaimed to myself as I awkwardly pointed my half-trapped arm towards the gate and sent a purging beam of white towards it. A purging beam that Mercutio had clearly anticipated for me to try and use at some point, his half-raised arm snapping up in preparation to intercept it.

Exactly as I had expected it would.

Lunging out from under the drone just ahead of my beam was West in the form of a sleek, spiderlike creature, her path and subsequent leap taking her directly towards Mercutio’s outstretched arm as it rose, causing him to flinch as he instinctively pulled it back to evade her.

And leaving my beam to connect solidly with the portal, which promptly began to destabilize, its smooth, oval shape rapidly beginning to twist and deform.

“Oh, damn it, Auric, why?” he shouted as he spun towards the gate, his hands at the ready to try and stabilize it.

But he was too late to do anything but watch as it rapidly came apart before us in spectacular fashion, the entropy that he had used to create it unable to stand up to the effects of my ability. Unfortunately, despite my success in disrupting the gate, I didn’t account for Curshaw’s blindingly fast reaction time, the giant man lunging through the gate with Alice and Val in tow and vanishing before it winked out of existence.

Shit, Val! I cursed mentally as I saw them vanish, a sudden pit of dread forming in my stomach. I hadn’t been close enough to purge the gate while the gate stealers had been taken through, but I had really hoped that I’d have been able to save my sister. At least Ciprien is on the other side; they can watch one another’s backs.

It was a thought that brought a little bit of comfort to me in the seconds that followed afterwards, especially when Mercutio finally turned back towards me, anger finally visible in the glowing eyes that hung in the otherwise empty cowl.

“This is beginning to get rather exhausting now, Auric,” he said in a hard tone. “I’ve been as understanding as I could possibly ever hope to be given all the damage and disruption that you have caused thus far. But that ends now.”

“I . . . couldn’t agree more,” I replied as I felt West finish shaping another blood spear from under the claw that was holding me and promptly jam it into something I couldn’t see.

The result afterwards was instant, the drone releasing me from its grasp and letting me fall to the ground before immediately rolling away before it could catch me again.

“I have no idea what the hell any of you are planning,” I said once I was clear of the drone, both of my knives in hand. “But I know that you all killed people, a lot of people, and I can’t let that stand. You all need to pay for what you’ve done.”

“And you think you’re the one to collect on that payment, do you, Auric?” Mercutio replied as he spread his arms out wide, clearly preparing for something. “Oh, how little do you understand, and how I oh so wish I could still have your ignorance. But fine then, have it your way. If you want to take this so seriously, then I will begin to take you seriously. I hope your sister and grandmother will understand afterwards.”

But before Mercutio could do anything to follow through on his threat, an impossibly dark shadow abruptly fell over the clearing, followed by a voice that I had never expected to hear again.

“Good,” it said in a cold tone. “Then maybe you can start taking me more seriously too.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

I’m sorry, Val. I’m sorry, Auric. There was no other way. I hope you’ll understand one day. Even if you’ll never forgive me.

—Note left on the bed of Constance Turner

* * *

“Sumalin?”

My confused voice filled the suddenly dark clearing as I reflexively glanced around in an attempt to find her. Yet before I could even have a hope of doing so, the still-frozen entropic drone a few feet away from me abruptly cried out in pain before collapsing, a muted flare of entropy spraying out from its head.

“Whoa!” I shouted, unable to help but flinch as the creature fell, slain by a single blow that I hadn’t even seen, let alone the person who had caused it.

But despite my own personal surprise at the sudden change in ambience and the attack that had followed, Mercutio stood completely unfazed, the only sound reaching my ears a long and drawn-out sigh.

“Oh, fantastic,” he muttered afterwards in a defeated tone. “Another complication.”

Then he vanished as an angry shadow fell over him, the voice, Sumalin’s voice, hissing out a second later.

“Did you really think such a dirty trick would kill me, Mercutio?” she asked while striking, the shadow that was her and Mercutio’s form reappearing a few dozen feet away across the clearing. “Did you forget where I came from? What I lived through? I never expected to see the same kind of betrayal from a group like Salvo!”

“And we are truly sorry that you had to, but our hand was forced, Sumalin. We just couldn’t wait any longer,” Mercutio answered before going on to try and say something else, but whatever it was, Sumalin had apparently no interest in hearing it. Instead, her shadow rushed forward with a barrage of slashes that moved so quickly I could barely distinguish one from the next.

Set hard on the defensive against the onslaught, I saw Mercutio work furiously to stay ahead of them, conjuring an array of shimmering shields before him to ward off or deflect the attacks. Yet despite those efforts, it was clear that he was badly outmatched, and for good reason too. From what I was able to catch amid the frenzied exchange, Sumalin had finally reached level thirty, the peak of B-Tier, whereas Mercutio was still the same level seventeen as he had been days earlier. Granted, the tier difference shrank the gap between them somewhat, but not enough for Mercutio to have any reasonable hope in beating her in an even fight.

And it was clear that he knew it, too, as he desperately tried to stay ahead of her attacks but failed, a few of her slashes landing close enough to shred his robes. Immediately, I saw Mercutio throw himself backwards away from the strikes that hit him and clap his hidden hands together. As he did, two walls of shimmering force manifested on either side of Sumalin before they rushed forward to crush her, but no sooner did they appear than she vanished, leaving them to collapse only on empty air.

Then as quickly as she had disappeared, she reappeared behind him, ramming two long, shadowy blades into his back with enough force that their tips burst through the front of his chest.

“Huh,” he grunted in surprise, if not in pain from the brutal attack, a hand coming up to touch one of the blades protruding from him as if to check that it was real. “Not nearly as long as I’d hoped. Oh, well . . .”

Then before either of us could say anything else, his body disintegrated into dust, leaving both Sumalin and me standing in the gloom-filled forest glancing in every direction for the next attack.

An attack that we soon discovered was nowhere to be found as Sumalin’s shadow rapidly flashed all throughout the clearing in search of Mercutio, but to no avail.

“Damn it,” she cursed angrily as she reappeared a few feet away from me. “It was a fake. He was never actually here. I-I should have known . . .”

<Ah, she falls! Quick, aid her!> West called out as Sumalin’s balance suddenly shifted mid-speech, followed by her falling to one knee as she trailed off, the dark, shadowy veil that had fallen over the clearing abruptly beginning to fade away a second later.

“Sumalin! A-are you okay?” I called out as I rushed towards her, the change in lighting allow me to finally see just how much the worse for wear she really was. Which was to say incredibly so. Normally armored in a pristine suit of exotic, Gateborn-sourced, leather armor and layered with protective chainmail, Sumalin looked as if she’d been thrown into an acid-filled bucket of razors, every inch of her appearing either scarred, cut, or burnt.

“N-no,” she replied in a halting voice as she sank even deeper in on herself, her arms wrapping themselves around her midsection. “I’m pretty far from okay, I’d say. That . . . that took more out of me than I’d hoped it would.”

“Here, let me see,” I said as she trailed off in clear agony, leaving me to drop down beside her, and I quickly began to inspect her for injuries. I may not have had the same powers as my sister when it came to actually being able to heal someone, but I still knew enough about first aid to be able to help with basic care.

<There is nothing “basic” about what she has endured,> West said to me as I peered closer at the dozens of wounds that I discovered across her body, finding that the damage that I’d seen all throughout her armor also extended to her flesh. Everywhere I looked there seemed to be a combination of acidic burn marks, imbedded stone fragments, and ragged cuts. So many, in fact, that it left me wondering how the woman was still alive, let alone how she’d managed to fight off Mercutio. <She looks to have solely assaulted a Sky Reavers hive and lived to tell the tale about it.>

“I know they look bad,” she replied, no doubt hearing my sharp intake of breath as I checked her over. “But they aren’t the problem. I’d be able to heal them myself if it weren’t for this stupid thing. It’s burning me up. Eating me from the inside out.”

Moving her hands as she spoke, Sumalin shifted to reveal a large gash in her armor, under which my eye instantly spotted a glowing orange wound. Pulsing rhythmically as if it were alive, I saw that the injury stretched across her entire midsection, the flesh around its edges already beginning to blacken and turn necrotic. In fact, the longer that I stared at it, the more certain I became that the wound was actively growing, gradually becoming larger and larger until it would inevitably consume Sumalin whole. It was a sight dire enough for me to will a portion of Sumalin’s Schema into view, seeing it simultaneously flash across my vision and dump itself into my mind.

Sumalin Malee – Human – Tier: B – Level: 30

Class: Shadow

Origin: Instance 202

Schema Integrity: 59%

Health: Severely Injured

Status: Afflicted with [Entropic Wound]

“It’s an entropic wound,” I explained the second that my suspicions were confirmed. “And a really bad one at that. Did . . . did Mercutio do this to you?”

“Y-yeah,” she replied in a shaking voice, whatever strength she may have had during her fight now rapidly fading away from her. “Right before he threw me into a gate and left me for dead. It wasn’t this big when he first hit me, but it’s been getting worse with every hour. Then when he opened that gate . . . I thought I was going to die. It set off the wound as if it were on fire. I’m sorry I couldn’t . . . couldn’t . . .”

Sumalin’s words trailed off for a second as if she suddenly remembered something important, prompting her to turn her head so that she could look at me. “Look . . . Auric, about Salvo—”

“I already know,” I interrupted, perhaps a little bit more forcefully than I could have. But I was understandably high strung after everything had happened, let alone the discovery that Sumalin was still in fact very much alive. “Which leaves me with a very awkward question to ask right now. Were you working for them? Did you know at all what they were doing?”

“Hell, no,” she answered vehemently with a shake of her head, the simple motion nearly sending her falling to the ground—or would have if I hadn’t reached out to steady her at the last second. “I’ve always been on the outside looking in with them. At first I thought it was because of their history together and the fact that I was new. But I was wrong . . . very wrong.”

“We all were,” I said, feeling relieved to hear that admission, even if a cynical part of my mind told me she could be lying. But regardless, even if she was, I didn’t have the luxury of tying myself up in mental knots right now. Not if I wanted to save Val, Ciprien, and the others, let alone get to the bottom of whatever Salvo was up to. What I needed more than anything was help, and there was hardly anyone better suited to offer that than a peak-level B-Tier with a grudge to share.

If she survived long enough to help in the first place.

“Anyway, in that case,” I continued as I exhaled a deep breath to help steady my own torrent of emotions. “I might be able to do something about what Mercutio did to you and purge that wound. But there’s a chance it might not work.”

“And by ‘not work,’ you mean it might kill me,” Sumalin clarified in a soft voice, no doubt sensing some of the trepidation in my voice.

“Yeah,” I replied softly. “I haven’t had a chance to really learn much about these new abilities that the System granted me, but so far if things are too far gone when I try to purge them . . . they just . . . fade away.”

“Which is about what I feel I’m doing already,” Sumalin stated with a wince as she sat herself up so I could better see the wound. “Do what you need to do. If I pull through, we can start worrying about what to do next. If I don’t . . . well. It’ll save you the trouble of needing to bury me.”

Grimacing at that particular choice of words, I moved to follow through on my promise, moving my hand over the entropic wound where I instantly felt its heat radiating outwards even through my glove. Once it was in place, I took a second to mentally brace myself before sending a purging beam directly into the wound covering Sumalin’s stomach, earning a loud scream from her the second it connected. She flailed away from me as the System ability began to work its magic; I did my best to hold the woman upright, managing to keep her from hitting the ground, at least at first. Partway through the purging process, her body abruptly turned transparent, leaving my hand to phase straight through her as she toppled over to fall onto the ground, landing on her side not only soundlessly, but without kicking up so much as a stray speck of dirt.

“Oh no, Sumalin!” I exclaimed in a panic as I lunged towards her, only to have my hand pass straight through her again, her body turning so faint over the next few seconds that I was almost certain that she wouldn’t make it. Yet right before I was about to truly give up hope, she instantly snapped back into focus, a pained whine echoing out from her a moment later.

“D-damn,” she said with a whimper as she wrapped her arms across her chest, her entire body shivering as if she were freezing. “I-I n-never want t-to do that again. It . . . was . . . something else. I can’t even describe it.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” I replied with a sharp exhale of relief, recalling my own experience in purging myself, if not at such a dire point. “But you survived.”

“Don’t remind me.” Sumalin grunted as she finally managed to get her shaking under control and started to rise to her feet, waving away one of my helping hands in the process. “I’m fine. Or I will be in a second. I just need to focus and . . . ah, here they come.”

Stepping back from her just in time, I saw the shadows around us abruptly darken as she activated a power. A second later, the shadows then all began to flow towards her en masse, a substantial portion of them breaking away from their parent objects. Reaching her, the animated shreds of darkness were wrapping themselves around her various injuries the next thing I knew, before somehow soaking into her body, leaving the spot that they had touched blurry and insubstantial to the casual glance.

“There,” she said with an obvious note of relief in her voice as the shadows did their work. “That should take care of the worst of the injuries. And give us the time we need to trade notes. What the hell has happened in the last day since we all left? How did you and your sister find out that Salvo was . . . whatever they are?”

“Honestly? We just stumbled onto it,” I replied while shaking my head. “Too many things just didn’t add up after a while. Especially after they came back this morning and told us that you died, killed in a gate, and that Ravenstead had been attacked by Gateborn and burnt down.”

“Hold on, we lost Ravenstead?” Sumalin asked, her eyes going wide at the mention. “H-how?”

“They infected everyone with entropy but blamed it on the sprab horde,” I replied before launching into an explanation of everything that had happened to Val and me since the last time I’d seen Sumalin. It was a story that had her face not only going completely pale but also causing a wave of understanding to eventually flash across it.

“So that’s why they were trying so hard to keep me on the edges,” she said in a soft tone once I’d finished speaking. “All this time they were testing me. To see if I would be open to their plans. I must have said or done something that they didn’t like.”

“How were they testing you?” I asked, unsure of what to make of the expression I saw on the woman’s face. Ever since she’d joined us a couple months earlier, she’d been distant and standoffish, especially to me. To hear that she had also not only been on the outside when it came to the others, but had her own problems to deal with was something entirely out of what I’d have expected to hear.

“By asking me questions, or hypotheticals,” Sumalin replied, still visibly off balance as she spoke. “I only see it now that I look back in hindsight, but there were several times where Mercutio or Amedea asked me things while we were out in the wild or sealing a gate. Things like what I would be willing to do to protect Blueridge. To protect the group. Or even humanity itself. I didn’t even think when I answered them. I just thought they were something to pass the time and get to know one another better.”

She paused for a second to glance at the spot where the gate had been in the clearing.

“But I’m realizing now that they always asked the same questions over and over, just phrased differently and each time more . . . extreme. Then one day, recently in fact, those questions stopped and I started to be . . . excluded from certain expeditions. Or given more solo work that would put me out of touch for days at a time. Again, it wasn’t something that I really thought differently of. Not until . . . well . . .”

“Not until I came back from my gate-stealing run,” I finished, not needing to guess at what she meant. “I must have screwed up whatever plans they had.”

“Everything changed then,” she said with a nod. “Everyone became tense. Secretive. Angry, even. After our first chat when you came back, Amedea tried to send me out for a deep sweep into Old Town in search of gates and so I could hit peak B-Tier. But I saw it as another attempt to get me out of the way. We had a . . . disagreement. I wonder if it was then that they decided I needed to be removed.”

“They could have just told you to leave,” I replied with a shake of my head, struggling to imagine that Salvo, my family, would resort to such lethal means as a first resort.

“They could have,” Sumalin said with a shake of her head. “But I think they knew I wouldn’t have left. Not right away, at least. Blueridge is a safe and calm place compared to the rest of the world out there.” Her face narrowed in a scowl. “Or was a safe place, at least. It certainly isn’t anymore.”

“No,” I agreed, feeling my heart fall even further at the admission. “And it won’t be while they’re still around. We need to find them and put a stop to what they’re doing. Not to mention rescue Val and the others. I know Mercutio and Curshaw promised that they wouldn’t hurt them . . . but I’m not so sure I can believe either of them anymore.”

“Smart. You shouldn’t,” Sumalin replied in a blunt tone. “That said though, are you going to be able to raise your hand up against them? I saw you ready to take on Mercutio, as ill-advised as that would have been, but are you going to be able to do the same against Constance or Curshaw? Or even your grandmother? They are your family.”

“Were my family,” I corrected as a spike of anger shot through me. “I have no idea what happened to them, but the moment they started killing innocent people, they stopped being that. There’s . . . there’s nothing they could be doing to justify that.”

“No. There definitely isn’t,” Sumalin agreed as she met my eyes, no doubt trying to see how serious I was. Whatever she saw though was enough to cause her to nod at me a second later before motioning towards the remains of the entropic drone still lying in the clearing. “In any case, I believe you. Or believe that you’ll at least try. Which means that we better get moving if we’re going to have any hope in catching them. Judging from the drones we saw and what little I could make out through the portal Mercutio summoned, my bet is that they’ve all gone to the Guyot Fault Gate.”

“I think so too,” I replied as I glanced over towards the hollowed-out shell of the creature, seeing only bits of rocky flesh remaining. The rest had been completely consumed by the entropy that had corrupted it. “They’ve been using the gates for something in conjunction with the entropy. Either to grow more of it or to somehow . . . change how the System works inside of them. Given what I’ve seen so far, either of those two things sound bad to me.”

“Then we’d better hope we’re right,” Sumalin said, breathing out a quick sigh as she glanced upwards at the small sliver of sky that was visible through the forest canopy above. “Because if we aren’t . . . who knows how many more people are going to die.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The most dangerous quality of a Gate isn’t the Gateborn that they spill forth. Nor is it the challenge, the maze of puzzles and creatures housed within. No, the most dangerous quality of a Gate is the ever-present threat of it phasing with our reality. The risk that if it is left open long enough that it will eventually overwrite everything around it with whatever environment the System created inside. Now in most cases, even this might not be truly devastating, the risk of a few alien plants and creatures doing little to affect the surrounding lands that once joined the place. But in the other cases, the cases of Gates that are made of fire or water, or those that bear clouds of poisons, lakes of acid, or other countless deadly qualities, a phasing can be absolutely catastrophic.

—On the Necessity of Sealing Gates, by Tanner Grimes

* * *

“It might just be me, but I have a feeling that we’re almost there,” I announced as I reached the crest of the ridge that we’d been climbing and was finally able to see over the landscape beyond.

A landscape which happened to be an almost completely barren, volcanic expanse as far as my eye could see, broken up only by a few hints of ancient, ash-covered buildings and structures from before humanity’s fall.

“Eh, what? We shouldn’t be,” Sumalin replied a second later as she slowly caught up to me, having been trailing a few steps behind while we made our ascent. But as she reached the top beside me and peered over the edge, she let out an immediate string of curses before continuing. “This is bad. We’re at least . . . a half hour, maybe a bit more still away from the gate. It’s already starting to phase, and quickly at that, too. It wasn’t like this yesterday.”

“Maybe whatever they’re doing to it is causing it to phase,” I said as I continued to gaze ahead in an attempt to pick out something, anything of note in the distance. Considered to be the end stage of a gate’s lifecycle if it wasn’t sealed in time, phasing was an event when the world it contained imprinted itself upon our reality, effectively making its environment and the Gateborn it held a permanent fixture forevermore. It was the reason why closing the gates was so imperative for humanity’s survival, lest we find ourselves overwhelmed by endlessly reproducing Gateborn. Or if not that, find ourselves living under the shadow of truly powerful ones, such as the Mountain Lord who had phased out from his gate a generation earlier and now resided in the Appalachian peaks nearby.

“Could be. Either result is the same: we need to hurry and put a stop to it,” Sumalin said as she motioned onwards into the blasted landscape. “Got any last-minute things to take care of? Because once we go in there, we’re not stopping.”

“I’m ready,” I assured her, the two of us having already stopped to answer nature’s call and eat during our four-hour trek to reach the gate.

“Good,” she stated before glancing around to find us a path downwards. “Then eyes open the whole way through. There’s no telling what we’ll run into in there.”

Discovering a path downward into the volcanic expanse in short order, it wasn’t long from there until Sumalin and I found ourselves completely surrounded by charred black ash and the rasping crack of igneous stone beneath our feet. From there we set a steady, if still urgent pace, towards where Sumalin last knew the Guyot Fault Gate to be.

<Nothing lives here anymore,> West said to me as we walked, my eyes focused on the few dilapidated remains of the gigantic structures from the World Before that had so far managed to resist the distant gate’s efforts to overwrite the terrain. <It is a barren land devoid of anything save for fire and ash.>

<As far as we can see so far,> I replied, wondering just how long it would take for the phasing to finish and what sort of Gateborn the phasing would unleash. It was a thought that couldn’t help but ratchet my already-potent anxiety upwards until I forced myself to try and think of something else, focusing instead on the buildings in the distance. From what I remembered being taught during my youth, the region had once been something called an “industrial area,” filled with massive buildings called factories that produced all kinds of goods before they were sent out elsewhere. But once the System arrived and the Gateborn took over the world, the places had been abandoned and left to rot, much like everything else in the world.

All that’s left here are memories of dust and ash, I told myself as we continued to walk, Sumalin making sure to cut a wide swath around any building that still stood, especially the ones that appeared to be actively smoldering, either due to the landscape phasing or something else that we didn’t want to discover. It was a precaution that forced us to change paths on three separate occasions during our trek towards the gate, the last of them involving a small river of lava that had begun to bubble free of a mostly collapsed building.

<Ears open, Broodkiller,> West suddenly said to me as we were crossing over the aforementioned obstacle on a makeshift bridge made of debris. <I hear noise ahead. Movement of stone on stone. A lot of it. We may finally have found the prey we seek.>

<It’s about time,> I replied back with a mental flinch as I, too, picked up on the sound a second later, the anxiety of travel over the ashen landscape while wondering when something would jump out at us having worn on my nerves until they were raw. Nor was I the only one to notice, I discovered a second later as I glanced towards Sumalin and saw that she was already squinting up at the hills ahead.

“I hear it too,” she whispered, not needing for me to say anything. “Doesn’t sound like it’s coming for us though.”

“No,” I agreed as I strained to better hear the crunching and banging noise in the distance, finding it difficult to tell just how close or far away it was and said as much to Sumalin.

“Can’t be too far,” she said as the shadows started to deepen around her feet before reaching up to wrap themselves around her body. “The gate can’t be too much further away from us. Whatever we hear is likely coming from there.”

“Then that’s where we need to be,” I said, feeling my heart begin to beat with excitement as I motioned for her to take point, knowing that I’d never be able to compete with her stealth.

Advancing carefully at her signal as she crept forward, it wasn’t long before the noise echoing out in the distance became clear to hear, building slowly at first until it was nigh-impossible to ignore. Moving rapidly in its direction, we threaded the two hills before us, using an ancient, ash-buried road to navigate a path between them. Along the way, we started to hear louder noises, groaning roars and ominous scratching, that caused us to slow our approach even more. It wasn’t until we started to round a final bend in the road that separated us from the noise that Sumalin abruptly signaled for me to stop before she, too, froze in place.

Feeling my heart begin to beat even faster as the shadows covering her almost completely obscured her from sight, I couldn’t help but wonder what she’d spotted, the ten seconds passing in agonizing anticipation before she finally signaled for me to advance slowly and with caution. Creeping forward, I moved as fast as I dared to close with her, my eyes fixed firmly ahead as the road continued to open up, revealing a lake of bubbling lava in the not-so-far-away distance.

One that also happened to be surrounded by a small horde of black-and-red figures locked in vicious combat with brightly orange glowing ones on its beach, with a warping, shifting gate directly in the middle of them.

<A hive war between the burning ones and the ones claimed by the Void-of-Endless-Screams,> West stated as I numbly tried to take in the scene, any expectation that I might have had in my mind of what could have been waiting for me completely shattering.

Perfectly manicured and taken care of despite the destruction that surrounded it, the lava side beachfront could only be described as an alien garden given form. Filled with countless treelike growths made of crystal, living stone plants that rippled in the air, and blooming flowers seemingly made of fire itself, it was a place unlike anything I’d ever seen before. But despite the initial beauty and wonder of the place, it only managed to capture my attention for a brief instant before a colliding wave of black-and-red creatures against a tide of burning orange fire stole it away.

Drawn to the very clearly outnumbered black-and-red figures first, my eyes landed on the familiar shapes of several typhonic drones, appearing exactly as I’d remembered them from my encounter several days earlier. Rushing en masse in a single line, the creatures all charged forward at an opposing mirror of their ranks in the form of entropic drones that were half again their total number. Meeting one another with a deafening crash of stone hitting stone, the two sides then began to war with one another with a ferocity that made me cringe and wince despite the distance that separated us.

“Looks like our guess was right,” I said, whispering as loudly as I dared, fearing that my words would instantly attract attention, despite us being well away from the battle and partially obscured by the angle of the street. “I don’t see any of the others, but those creatures there, they’re all infected with entropy. That means that they’re here, likely inside the gate if what they’ve done before holds true.”

“It sure looks that way,” Sumalin whispered in a pitch that matched my own, her head turning ever so slightly to peer at me out of the corner of her eye. “But that’s the problem. If they’re in the gate, we need to be too. Hell of a lot of Gateborn in our way to make that happen. They’re fighting practically right on top of it, and I don’t fancy burning the energy trying to break through them, even as low leveled as they are. I have a feeling we’ll need it later.”

“Then we don’t,” I replied as my eyes shifted to scan the path ahead of us before the rock garden began, seeing that it was densely packed with not only large chunks of volcanic rock, but also the fallen remains of more than a dozen drones. Given the size of the creatures, there was simply no chance that they could move quickly through the area.

But us on the other hand, we didn’t share that particular handicap.

“All we need to do is get into the gate, right?” I asked as a plan started to come together in my mind, my hand coming up to point towards the entropic drone side. “We can just skirt the edges of the battle along over that way towards their rear and then cut towards the gate from behind.”

“You want to get closer to the glowing creatures?” Sumalin hissed back in an incredulous tone. “Other side looks a hell of a lot cleaner.”

“Not by the time we get there,” I replied with a shake of my head as I looked onwards at the not-yet-corrupted drones. They were putting up a good fight, all things considered, but were rapidly becoming overwhelmed. It was only a matter of time until they either had to retreat, or broke entirely. “And also because I can try and purge the entropy from them once we’re close enough. Best case, it’ll cause them to turn back to normal, worse case . . .”

“It’ll kill them outright,” the woman said with a curt nod, showing no emotion on her face at my particular choice of tactics given what she’d just endured. “All right, I get it. But that’s still going to leave them likely spotting us and chasing us into the gate, unless . . .”

“Unless what?” I asked as the woman trailed off, intently studying the battle ahead.

“Unless I drop some shadows on top of them as we go in, throw them all into confusion,” she said with a sharp nod. “I can black us out a path so we can hit the gate at a run. With luck, they won’t even see us. Less chance of that too if you purge one or two of them on the way in. The extra confusion will only help.”

“Then that’s what I’ll do,” I replied as I saw the battle ahead of us abruptly shift with several of the entropic drones surging forward to swarm their non-entropic cousins. “Here’s our chance! One of the normal drones went down!”

“I see it!” Sumalin answered with a sharp motion of her hand towards our right. “Let’s go, stay on my heels, and stay out of the shadows I drop. You won’t be able to see through them like I can.”

Responding with an affirmative grunt, we began to move with Sumalin taking point, the shadows surrounding the woman beginning to writhe and move of their own accord as if they were excited at what was about to come next. Setting a quick pace at first, we made it towards the rocky beach in short order before we slowed and broke off the road we’d been following, quickly taking cover behind the hollowed-out remains of a once-entropic drone. It was then, when we were finally on the beach, and I was able to look down its length, that I was able to catch the full scale of the war raging between the two sides.

A scale that made my blood go cold.

How . . . how many are there? I found myself wondering a second later as my eyes landed on what had to be several dozen if not possibly well over a hundred broken bodies and shells that stretched further down the beach’s length away from us. Some of whom appeared to be several times larger and differently shaped than the simple drones that we’d seen before us.

<Many,> West answered me a second later, her voice tinged with awe. <Too many. We should be so lucky we didn’t need to face them all.>

A hard tap on the shoulder interrupted any reply that I might have been able to give to her as my head snapped to see Sumalin’s vaguely annoyed face glaring back at me before she turned to move yet again. Taking the silent rebuke and demand to focus without complaint, I rushed to follow her, making sure that I remained as hidden as possible as we worked our way through the sea of slain Gateborn and mounds of volcanic rock. Timing our movements so as to not be seen, the two of us then worked our way around the battle until we were almost directly behind it, the entropic drones having managed to press their advance substantially since we’d arrived. So much so in fact that they’d almost overtaken the gate and had left us with a relatively straight shot towards it.

If we could get to it without one of them seeing us.

“Here we go,” Sumalin whispered as if on cue once we’d both reached the last point of cover available to us. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” I answered back with a curt nod, not risking saying anything else, lest I accidentally vomit from the nerves that had been building in my stomach.

“Good,” she stated, pausing to take a deep breath. “Then here we go. Straight into the gate. Don’t stop for anything.”

Waiting just long enough for me to nod my head one more time, the woman then exploded out from behind our cover and towards the gate with me following a second behind. Pumping my legs as fast as I could, I began to sprint towards the roiling and twisting portal ahead. As I did, I had a brief second to catch sight of the entropic drone line we’d snuck behind, my count of their number reaching ten before an inky cloud of darkness appeared between us. But for all of its obscuring ability, it only stretched out a dozen or so feet in width before the drones reappeared once again, if for a short while, before another orb of darkness rose up between us.

Repeating itself again and again as we ran, Sumalin held up her end of the plan perfectly as we charged towards the gate and I worked to hold up mine the second we got close enough to do so. Waiting until I was sure I couldn’t miss, I shot a purging beam into the tightly packed ranks of entropic drones, having just enough time to see it connect with one of them before it was blanked by another wall of shadow. A second later, I heard an agonizing cry rise up to split the air as the entropy-filled drones reacted in unison to the purging assault. But that was all that they had time to do as our plan came together perfectly, Sumalin’s last and final orb of shadow falling upon their ranks in time to blot all of them from sight and allow us to both simultaneously dive into the looming portal ahead.

Directly into the chaos that awaited beyond it.

Chapter Forty

Warning: Quarantine Breach Attempt Detected In Instance #202 – Immediate Response Required

Primary Recommendat—

Warning: Quarantine Breach Attempt Detected In Instance #58 – Immediate Response Required

Warning: Quarantine Breach Attempt Detected In Instance #342 – Immediate Response Required

Error: Insufficient Resources

Error: Insufficient Resources

— System Central Log Excerpt

* * *

With my vision blurring and warping wildly as I transited the gate, it took me a second to realize that something was wrong once I’d emerged on the other side, the sudden feeling of weightlessness that washed over me not quite making sense. Nor was the sudden falling sensation that I found myself experiencing a moment later that instantly sent my stomach flying towards the roof of my mouth.

“Ah, crap! Not again—” I started to shout as I felt myself fall, only to have my words cut off as I abruptly landed on something solid legs-first and found myself pitched forward on all fours, just barely managing to catch myself before I face planted.

“Ugh, thank the System,” I wheezed a second later when I realized that I was not in fact plummeting through another infinite abyss with no hope of landing on something solid. It was a realization that had the courtesy to last just long enough for me to push myself back upwards, by which point my vision had cleared enough so that I was able to make out the endless storm of red that stretched out in every direction around us. “Oh, come on, is it too much to just ask for a normal gate for once?”

“I think we’ve left normal behind us a long time ago,” I heard Sumalin’s voice echo out a second later as she effortlessly touched down on the ground beside me. “Right about when you decided to skip three tiers in a single day.”

“Don’t remind me,” I replied in a dry tone as I pushed myself back up to my feet and took a second to take in our surroundings, already feeling West shrink backwards from it and further into my mind. It seemed that for the third time in my stunningly short gate-sealing career so far that I had ended up in a gate gone haywire, whatever world that it had once contained completely shattered and strewn about a seemingly infinite void. Except this time, the void around me wasn’t a dark, all-consuming abyss, but rather a burning mix of red and orange that visibly appeared to seethe around me.

“This . . . this looks bad,” I continued after I finished looking around, finding that the gate we’d entered from was positioned roughly five feet above us and the reason why I’d ended up nearly falling flat on my face. The only good news that I could find was that we were alone on the particular slab of volcanic rock that we’d arrived on with no one, human or Gateborn, anywhere in sight.

“You’re telling me,” Sumalin replied a second later as an ominous flash of lightning all around us caused the ground beneath our feet to shake. “You see the System messages that hit us on entry?”

“Uh, I haven’t yet, give me a second,” I replied back a little anxiously, only then noticing the System notifications hanging in the side of my vision, having temporarily pended themselves. That brief acknowledgement of their presence was enough to cause them to expand and overtake the entirety of my vision, the sheer quantity of text causing me to take a step backwards.

Requesting Schema Information From Parent Node

Schema Information Received

Welcome, Entity: Auric Amadeus Cain – Tier: A, to Genesis Gate: 3N2493

Warning: Extreme Levels of Entropy Detected

Warning: Deviant Parameters Detected

Warning: Insufficient System Resources For Master Daemon Intervention

Searching For Alternate Daemons . . .

Local Daemons Detected

Identifying Local Daemons:

Entity: Amedea Jackson, Level 31, Tier: A

Entity: Auric Amadeus Cain, Level 15, Tier: A

Entity: Ciprien Mills, Level 18, Tier: B

Local Authority Currently Residing With: [Entity: Amedea Jackson]

Warning: Sub-Instance Destabilization Imminent

“Ugh, I . . . I don’t even know where to start,” I said as I finished reading over everything, my mind picking a point at random to comment on. “What even is a genesis gate? Why do so many of these different gate types exist?”

“Couldn’t even begin to tell you, at least not beyond the obvious,” Sumalin said before going on to gesture vaguely at our surroundings, which visibly appeared to be getting more and more chaotic by the second. “My guess is it has something to do with creation, given the wording?”

“It’s the creation of what that worries me,” I replied, flinching as a bolt of crimson lightning struck and detonated a hunk of floating rock far above us, sending fragments raining in every direction. “Every time they’ve taken entropy into a gate, they’ve always gone and changed its gate type to something different. Something I’ve never even heard of. First it was a primordial gate, then a worldseeder gate, and now this. Every time they’ve known what they were looking to do.”

“Then we’d best get moving and figure out what we can do to stop it,” Sumalin said as she motioned for me to follow her forward, the only direction available to us, while conjuring a pair of shadow-hewn blades in both of her hands. “This place looks like it’s ready to come apart, and I really don’t want to be here when that happens.”

Drawing my own weapons with an affirmative grunt, the two of us then began to walk down the long, snaking strip we’d landed on, discovering that it was nigh-identical to the beach that we’d entered the gate from, complete with the same crystalline trees, plants, and rocks. In fact, the only thing really missing from the scene that we’d just left was the presence of the Gateborn, something that we both counted our blessings for.

“See anything interesting yet?” I asked as the two of us strode forward, my attention wandering out to look into the swirling storm that stretched out on either side of us, our roughly thirty-foot-wide patch of land just abruptly ending as if cut by a knife. Beyond it, I saw countless red and orange-hued lightning bolts lance out seemingly at random, striking either floating rubble in the distance or, on some rare occasions, what appeared to be an empty pocket of air, the spot flaring brightly with energy.

“Only everywhere I look,” Sumalin answered in a vaguely awed tone. “But nothing worth stopping for just yet.”

She paused for a second as a particularly loud clap of thunder rolled over us, causing us both to wince and grimace until it passed.

“Speaking of interesting though, you saw the bit about Amedea in your prompt too, right? Any idea what that’s about?”

“Not entirely,” I replied with a shake of my head as I kept a wary eye on the storm around us, half expecting a lightning bolt to come falling down upon us both. “In the last gate we were in, something happened after we defeated the entropy, and uh, ‘restored connection with our parent node.’ I somehow ended up with access to a bunch of ‘System commands’ as Ciprien called them. They were capable of doing really powerful things, from granting us experience, bringing the people who’d died inside back to life, even destroying the whole sub-instance, which is everything inside of the gate itself.”

Sumalin cursed at that last particular bit, turning just enough to look directly at me. “So basically what you’re saying is that you somehow ended up with the power of the System itself. Or a piece of it at least. Power that Amedea could very well have right now.”

“Pretty much,” I affirmed with a grim nod. “We even got the same warning about the master daemon too, which I’m starting to think was the part of the System that I met during my gate run when I reached A-Tier. Which, unless I miss my guess, sounds like its either been broken by whatever Amedea and the others have done, or if not, made it too busy to help us.”

“Leaving us to clean up the mess ourselves, figures.”

“Yeah . . .” I agreed, my voice trailing off for a second before I continued. “But that’s not all. Both other times they did something like this, the gate sealed over, because I guess it lost connection with the . . . uh, rest of the System. This time it didn’t. The gate was still open.”

“Which means what exactly?” Sumalin asked in a tone that was clearly growing more frustrated with every word I said.

“Which means there is a good chance that whatever they’re trying to do in here won’t just affect the inside of this gate,” I said. “But that’ll also affect the outside world too.”

“Great, so not only do we—” the woman started to reply in an angry tone only to be cut off mid-speech by a bolt of lightning that struck an empty section of air a few dozen feet away from us, leaving a cracking well of orange energy.

A well of energy that promptly tore open with the sound of ripping cloth and released a quartet of flying serpents into the air before us.

“Shit, look out!” I shouted the second that I saw them appear, the slender, gray-scaled creatures not wasting so much as a second before they spun to charge us with a roar.

Resembling something akin to an elongated lizard, the wingless, roughly five-foot-long creatures were armed with a set of razor-sharp claws attached to the two front limbs with another pair attached to the hind legs on its back. Then beyond that more obvious armament, they also possessed a tooth-filled maw set in the center of a bestial face unlike any I’d seen before, complete with a set of barbed horns crowning their heads. But if the unexpected appearance of the Gateborn, if they were in fact Gateborn, wasn’t enough as they rushed towards us, I found myself instantly distracted by the tags that appeared in my vision a second later.

Flying Serpent – Unclassified – Tier: Unclassified – Level: Unclassified

Warning: Entity Not Localized To Instance 202’s Preservation Model

That was as far as I was able to get before a line of shadow abruptly slashed out in front of me, splitting two of the leading serpents in half, followed closely behind by Sumalin’s voice.

“Focus, Auric!” I heard her say right before she shoved me out of the way of the other pair, which promptly sailed past me, both its gnashing teeth and claws just barely missing me. “There are more of them coming!”

And she was right; I saw a second later as I turned my attention back to my surroundings, just in time to see another crackling patch of energy in the air beside us tear open and spew forth three more of the flying creatures. Letting out a loud, rasping roar, they wasted no time in charging towards us, putting me instantly on the defensive as I desperately siphoned off a portion of my health to fill my Blood Pool.

<Going to need help with this!> I called out to West who eagerly emerged from whatever corner of my mind she’d retreated to as I dodged under a sweeping claw that I was sure would have taken off my face had I allowed it to connect. <I can’t catch them while they’re flying!>

<Then I will bear them to the ground,> she replied as she took control of my Blood Pool. <They may be wingless, but no creature of flight wishes to be grounded.>

<Works for me!> I answered back as I was forced to dodge under another claw, timing my movement just close enough that I was able to slash the flying creature as it sailed by with my knife, drawing blood in the process. The injury wasn’t enough to kill or even slow it, the creature flying out of range with a pained hiss.

“Hrm, these things are faster than they look!” Sumalin called from beside me as three of the creatures fixated on us and charged forward as a group, their mouths opening wide with their claws outstretched before them.

“You’re telling me!” I replied, unable to help but flinch as two different sets of claws before me rasped across the armor protecting my arm and shoulder, while I deflected a third with my weapon. But no sooner did I do so than the serpent in question then whipped its body forward to kick me in the chest with its hind claws.

Grunting in pain from the blow’s bruising impact, I felt the wind rush out of my lungs as I blindly flailed at the serpent, West taking advantage of my arm’s positioning to form a sharp blade out of blood and slash at the creature. Catching it on the underside of its belly, the attack carved open a section of scale and promptly sent the beast skittering away from me with a wail. Realizing that I needed to buy myself some space to adjust to their speed, I followed the attack up with another cleaving slash of blood, prompting the two flying serpents to spin away from me, both moving eerily in sync with one another. Yet just as they evaded my defensive swing, the pair found themselves caught directly in the path of a line of a second slash of blood, which West had formed without me even asking, perfectly sensing my intent.

Cutting upwards in a vicious arc, the scythe of blood sliced straight through the two creatures, sending them both flopping to the ground a second later. Emboldened by my kills, and the torrent of blood that filled my Blood Pool because of them, I didn’t waste a second in turning my attention towards the third flying creature that I’d been fighting with while simultaneously reaching for my new power. Reacting more out of instinct than conscious thought as I activated Bloodlust, I instantly felt a surge of power shoot through my body that caused the world around me to slow ever so slightly. Leaping forward with the newfound energy coursing through me, I saw my knives turn into a blur as I slashed out with them towards the flying serpent, catching it directly in the head.

That’s one down, I thought through the haze that shrouded both my thoughts and vision, my rapid dispatch of the creature having barely taken more than two seconds from the moment that I’d activated my new power.

Yet that time was more than enough time for another one of the flying reptiles on my right to regain its bearing and throw itself at me after regrouping from its earlier attack. Reacting as fast as my empowered body would allow me, I was forced to retreat a step in order to evade a slashing claw towards my unprotected side. As I moved, I took the opportunity to mentally check my Blood Pool, cautious of Bloodlust’s steady drain as I maintained its effects and the blood that I’d used so far. So far I still had a decent reserve to work with, but at the rate I was going, and with how many creatures there were still left to fight, it was only a matter of time before it ran out.

Unless of course, I kept refilling it.

Losing all sense of myself as I lunged forward at the offending creature, I sent a spear of sharpened blood into its side, followed closely behind by a brutal overhand slash from one of my knives. Effortlessly biting through the creature’s scales, the twin strikes caused whatever was empowering it to fly to abruptly give out, sending it flopping to the ground in a heap. But as the serpent fell, I suddenly realized that there was yet another one of its kind behind it, the creature making its presence known as it leapt towards me, its claws outstretched. Caught off guard by its unexpected presence, I immediately tried to dodge under it, already knowing that despite all of the speed that I had to work with, there was little chance of me remaining unscathed.

At least not without a little unexpected help.

Lancing out from my right with perfect timing, I saw a shadow suddenly slice past me at eye level, its razored edge catching the flying creature directly in the face. Slicing deep into it, the blade stopped the serpent’s momentum cold as it slashed through it, causing two bisected halves to crash to the ground in a spray of gore.

“Auric, we need to move!” Sumalin’s voice reached my ear a second later as I saw her appear by my side, her shadow-hewn blades slicing through another one of the creatures further on my right. “I don’t know what they’re doing, but more and more of these portals keep opening up! We need to push ahead and find them, or we’re going to be overwhelmed!”

“More of them?” I queried with a shout, silently grateful for the woman’s timely intervention as I finally had the chance to glance around and spot the eight or so portals that the lightning strikes had opened thus far.

All of which were steadily leaking more and more of the airborne beasts.

“Shit! Never mind, I see them!” I called back to Sumalin as I realized she was absolutely right. “Let’s go then! Just lead the way and I’ll keep up!”

“Make sure of it!” the woman exclaimed with a shout as she spun her blades in a deadly maelstrom before us and cleared away the last remaining creatures. “Come on, let’s go!”

Fueled with a newfound urgency, the two of us sprinted forward as fast as our feet could take us, slowing only to leap over the fallen bodies before us. As we ran, we continued to cut down whatever monsters came our way, be it by hand or power, giving us the space we needed to build momentum as we charged deeper into the gate. Yet the further in that we traveled, the more intense the entropic storm around us grew, opening more and even larger portals, some so large in fact that Sumalin and I both caught glimpses of a completely alien landscape and world beyond them. Or in one case, the eye of what had to be a truly colossal creature beyond imagining as one portal above us split open to reveal a glowing emerald iris that temporarily split the sky before the gateway holding it mercifully slammed shut.

“L-look ahead!” Sumalin shouted in a shaky voice as the eye, and the wave of impossible dread that had accompanied it, faded away from us. “The creatures . . . they’re all moving towards something! They’re not coming at us anymore!”

“Something I’m definitely not complaining about!” I replied with a weary grunt as I shook off the eye’s residual effects and saw that the woman was right.

At some point that I had missed, all of the creatures that burst free of the gates around us had stopped rushing to attack us in favor of flying towards something ahead. Something that was beginning to glow brightly through the all-consuming red-orange haze that obscured the path ahead of us.

It was a mystery that we didn’t have to wait long to solve as we continued to sprint forward, slowing our approach ever so slightly now that we weren’t actively being chased. Growing thinner with every step we took, the haze soon cleared to reveal a gargantuan platform of obsidian. Upon it, I could make out several large pillars of the volcanic glass that appeared to have been purposefully shaped and placed around a brightly glowing spot at its heart.

A glowing heart that each and every single one of the creatures flying through the air around us, including dozens more on the platform itself, seemed to want to get to, their unstoppable advance only held back by two figures.

“That’s Constance and Curshaw,” I said, instantly recognizing the pair in the distance as they fought against the endless tide of Gateborn, holding them back from reaching the glowing light behind them. “We found them.”

“And just in time, too,” Sumalin answered back as yet another vicious clap of thunder split the air, this one strong enough to cause the entire gate to shake and rumble around us. “Because something tells me we don’t have much of it left.”

Chapter Forty-One

As I send out this missive, I do so with the full understanding that it is not only late, but painfully so. It is a delay that I wish I could apologize for, but I am afraid there is no room for apologies in this year’s update. Only a stunned despair the likes of which you will understand in short order. Now for those receiving this report for the first time, know that I have tracked the population of humanity every year, on the same day for nearly the last two decades. A population which, as of July 4th of this year, now stands at 34,543,231. A decline of some sixteen million souls since last year’s tally, which was our first year since my account began that we had positive population growth. Needless to say I have confirmed this number multiple times since and it only has continued to decline. I do not know what could have possibly happened to cause such a drop but . . .

—Crumpled Letter Addressed From Amedea Jackson

* * *

“Constance! Curshaw!” I shouted their names as loud as I could as we charged onto the central platform and into the monster-filled chaos consuming it, blades of shadow and blood carving a path through them ahead of us.

“Is-is that you, Auric?” I heard Constance’s surprised voice call back through the press of hissing and roaring creatures as they either abruptly died under our attacks or lived just long enough to escape out of range. “And Sumalin . . . you’re . . . you’re alive? What are you both doing here?”

“That’s the question we came here to ask you!” I called back as I swept my knives through a vaguely wolflike creature that not only had the misfortune of finding itself in front of me but had also decided to attack instead of retreating. The result had the surprisingly fragile beast practically come apart before me, the force of even a simple attack complete overkill when it came to dispatching it. “What the hell have you all been doing? And better yet, where is my sister and the others!”

“They’re here and they’re safe, if just barely, thanks to your earlier stunt!” came Curshaw’s growling reply a second later as a bright flash of white, searing light flared out ahead of us, its mere touch causing a half dozen of the invading creatures to simply burn away into ash. “You should have just come along peacefully!”

“And let you do exactly what to me?” I shot back, just barely catching a glimpse of the giant man’s head over the press of creatures before us. “I saw what you all did to the settlers in Ravenstead! You infected all of them with entropy! You killed all of them!”

“That . . . that was a mistake!” Constance immediately shouted back. “And we’re working to fix it! To fix everything! But right now, you two shouldn’t be here! You need to get out while you still can!”

“Like hell we do!” Sumalin shouted out from beside me as she too slashed through another wolf creature, our vicious and violent arrival carving out a pocket of calm around us. “We came here to get answers. Starting with what you’re doing here and ending with why the hell you all tried to kill me!”

“Sumalin, I am sorry. We really wish we had the time to tell you, to explain everything that’s happening, and bring you into the fold,” Constance replied more than a little breathlessly as both she and Curshaw partially came into view, the press of countless Gateborn finally thinning enough to catch a glimpse of them. “But things started to move too fast, and there’s so much that we knew you just wouldn’t understand. Not soon enough to—”

A bright flash of power from the center of the platform behind her, followed by another earthshaking clap of thunder, interrupted the visibly battle-worn woman, causing her to wince from its intensity.

And for Amedea’s voice to then call out the second it faded, causing my eyes to snap towards a thin silhouette that I saw moving through the press just beside the blazing orange light.

“It’s stabilizing! Be ready!” she announced in a triumphant voice as the blurry shape stepped around what my eye was gradually making out to be a rapidly spinning crystal and away from its blinding light. Yet where I had expected to find the familiar, elderly form of my adoptive grandmother, I saw a tall, youthful-looking dark-skinned woman step into view, her eyes locking onto mine and widening.

“Auric,” she said in a breathless tone of surprise, which carried just far enough for me to hear.

“A-Amedea?” I called back in confusion, needing to take my eyes off of her for just a split second as the creatures that had been attacking us abruptly started to disintegrate, their bodies abruptly fading away into nothingness. It was a development that forced both Sumalin and I to stop completely, my eyes snapping back towards my grandmother. “W-what did you just do? A-and what happened to you? You . . . you look—”

“Young again?” she interrupted before I could finish, turning to look at something behind her. “A necessary change to remove the frailties of age before they became too much more of a burden for us. As for the creatures, they were no longer needed.”

“A necessary . . . change?” I started to repeat as I followed her gaze, a sudden flash of movement catching my eye. Worried that it would be yet another threat, I instinctively braced myself for the worst when my eye landed on a shimmering white cube of energy, only to find my brain temporarily short circuiting when I found myself suddenly staring into Val’s screaming face trapped inside it.

“Wait, is that . . .” I started to say as I saw her wordlessly shout at me and pound on her prison’s walls with Ciprien appearing by her side a second later and doing the same. “That’s them! What are you doing to them? What is all of this?”

“It’s us trying to save the world, Auric.” It was Constance’s turn to reply from ahead of us as she swept a bar of burning light through the few remaining creatures separating us, revealing that she, too, had shed decades since I’d last seen her this morning. Where before she had borne a kind, motherly face with hints of age beginning to touch her eyes, she now appeared barely older than I was, her features sharp and striking. Curshaw appeared the same as well, I saw as my eyes wandered over to the man, seeing that not only were the gray streaks that had lined his beard completely gone, but that his weathered and wrinkled complexion had cleared up, including the scars a lifetime of violence had accrued.

But all of that only encompassed the physical changes of the pair. The real difference that I soon noticed was upon their Schemas as they flashed across my vision and flowed into my mind, the single line belonging to each of them that hadn’t been redacted causing my blood to go cold.

Constance Turner – Tier: A – Level 26

Curshaw – Tier: A – Level 25

Seven levels, I thought with a sudden start, at first thinking that the System display and mental surge of knowledge was wrong, that I’d somehow misunderstood what their Schemas had contained. But as I heard a surprised grunt, followed by a muttered curse echo out from Sumalin beside me, I knew I wasn’t mistaken. That what was hovering in my vision and mind was true. They each gained seven levels since this morning . . . since we’d last even seen Curshaw a few hours earlier . . .

“We’re working to undo all of the damage that’s been caused since the System arrived,” I heard Constance continue as I stared dumbfounded at both her and Curshaw, my sister and the others’ prison temporarily forgotten. “Working to bring back every single soul that’s ever been lost. Even the ones we had to take. When we’re done . . . it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”

“Is that how you justified everything? Is that how you justified trying to kill me and all the others?” Sumalin growled back as we stayed in place. She may have had an overwhelming advantage over Mercutio when she’d fought him, and I had been close enough in level as to not completely embarrass myself if we’d actually come to blows. But against either Constance or Curshaw at their new levels, any advantage Sumalin might have had was gone.

Which in turn put my odds of standing up to either of them somewhere between less than zero and zero itself.

“You wouldn’t have even remembered it,” Constance said in a bone-weary voice as we soon found ourselves standing all alone, the last of the creatures fading away into nothingness just as quickly as they had appeared. “You would have just woken up as if it were a brand-new day. Everything would have been—”

But before she could finish, another flash of light accompanied by a peal of thunder split the air and interrupted her, the noise immediately followed by the ground violently shaking beneath our feet. Yet this time, the earthquake didn’t abruptly end as it had on the previous occasion, nor was the thunder the only sound that we heard. Just as soon as it and the light began to fade away, a loud tearing sound filled the air, prompting all of us to wheel or glance in the direction of Amedea and the crystal I’d seen just seconds earlier.

Shifting focus just in time, I was able to catch sight of the glowing orange shard as it tore open a hole in reality, seemingly shredding apart the very air itself as it exploded outwards. It was a sight that filled me with a sense of indescribable wrongness to witness, as if whatever was happening before me somehow violated the rules of the universe in a way I couldn’t even begin to articulate, let alone understand. I didn’t have time to ponder that feeling as a crimson shadow appeared from inside the tear and stepped out, a single burning foot touching down on the ground with a thud. As it did, a stream of smoke began to curl up from the floor where it had touched, a second foot joining it in short order as the rest of the body it was attached to stepped through the tear.

Revealing the last person I’d expected to see exit out of it.

“Mercutio?” The name left my lips as I saw the man appear, his entire appearance, dress, and demeanor completely different than what I’d remembered of him. Beginning first with the fact that I could see him, his thick gray cloak that had once obscured him had been replaced by a simple, ashen robe dotted with burn marks. Burn marks which, unless I was mistaken, I was certain had come from his very own body, which was now completely comprised of molten, orange-red entropy, having replaced the entirety of his flesh and blood. Then, as if his appearance hadn’t already been enough to take in, I saw his Schema appear before me, which only brought on more questions.

Tristan Garnier – Unclassified – Tier: Unclassified – Level: Unclassified

Warning: Entity Not Localized To Instance 202’s Preservation Model

“Whew!” he announced in a jubilant, un-Mercutio-like tone as he stepped free of the gate, his attention turning towards Amedea who stood nearby, her eyes focused on a sheet of shimmering golden light that hovered before her. “That was a close one! Almost thought it wasn’t going to work. You manage to get the access you needed in the process?”

“Y-yes, I did,” she replied, stammering slightly as she glanced up at the man in what appeared to be obvious fear. “We should be in the clear.”

“Fantastic, then we can get right the hell out of here before . . .” he answered as he started to look away from her, his words trailing off the second that he spotted both Sumalin and me. Instantly, a frown appeared across his face, and he let out an annoyed grunt of frustration. “Aw, you’re both still alive. And here. Guess that answers what happened to my other half. Oh well, nothing to be done about that now. Come along, everyone, the breach is open and we’ve got places to be and not nearly enough time to get there!”

“H-hold on,” I stammered as Constance and Curshaw both sprinted away from Sumalin and me without so much as a word, both of their sudden movements causing us to flinch yet still hold our ground. “What-what did you just do? Where did you just open that portal to?”

“To a place where we can finally effect meaningful change, which I’ll have to beg you to forgive me if I don’t tell you more about,” Amedea replied in a cryptic tone, finally glancing over towards me as the golden sheet before her rolled shut and promptly vanished. Meeting her eyes, it was then that I noticed the twin streams of tears streaking down her face as she looked back at me, one of her hands reaching up to touch her chest. “I know this all hurts to witness, Auric. Deep in here. I know that you feel betrayed and lied to. And that’s fair, because you have been. What you must believe though, is that if there was another way, any other way that we could have done this, we would have. But there simply—”

“I am dreadfully sorry to interrupt this heartfelt farewell, Amedea! But time is beginning to grow rather short!” Mercutio, or Tristan rather, called out mid-speech as another rumble shook the ground beneath us, causing me to glance in his direction just in time to see both Constance and Curshaw leap into the portal and out of sight without so much as a word. “We need to go!”

“I’m coming,” she replied quickly as she began to move, casting one last glance my way. “If you want to find out why we are doing this, to begin to understand the lie that the System has covered our eyes with, then read my journals. I’ve left them all for you and your sister. They might help you understand.

“Oh, and one last thing,” she said right as she hopped up to the portal’s edge, pausing just long enough to extend a hand out towards the white, cubelike prison containing Val and the others, causing it to immediately shimmer and fade. “Please apologize to your sister for me. She deserves better than I’ve ever been able to offer her.”

And with those words then hanging in the air, she then dove into the portal without so much as a glance back in my direction and vanished from sight.

Chapter Forty-Two

Error . . . Error . . . Error . . . Breach Detected . . . Error . . . Error. . . Error . . .

— Excerpt From Master Daemon’s Log

* * *

“Good, good, we are all still on schedule,” Tristan announced as he clapped his hands together eagerly the second that Amedea was gone. “If barely. And not without problems. All thanks to you two.”

“U-us?” Sumalin answered in an unsteady tone as a chorus of shouting roared out from Val and the others as the prison containing them all vanished. “W-what did we do?”

“You killed me, didn’t you?” the entropic man asked, scratching his head as if unsure of his words. “Or did you chase me off? I don’t think I would have given up easily . . . not unless there was something else I had to be doing. Or something else I was busy setting up. Whatever the case, it doesn’t—”

“Tris . . . Tristan is that you?” Ciprien’s voice called out, causing the man to instantly turn in his direction. “What . . . what happened to you? You’re . . . you’re . . .”

“Alive? Taller? Shorter? Completely made of entropy?” Tristan finished as he turned in the direction of the voice and waved a burning hand. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure what part of me might be different than the Tristan you’re used to. Or who you even are. And as interesting as it would be to figure that out, I’m afraid we don’t have the time! Since I’m not here to deal with it myself, I’m gonna have to get you all to take care of the uh, System’s security breach—which, yes, I know is a mouthful to say—as soon as I leave and close this breach here. We had to kinda break it, and well, corrupt it too. So it’s probably going to be pretty angry. Some of you can purge entropy, right? Gosh, I hope so, or this is gonna be a huge mess for me to clean up later.”

As if to punctuate his words, the ground beneath our feet began to rumble and shake violently, followed by the tear beginning to wobble and distort.

“And that’s my cue to go!” Tristan exclaimed as he started to rapidly backpedal towards the hole in space he’d emerged from not even a minute earlier. “Good luck, everyone! If any of you live through this and see me later, tell me I said hey.”

Then, completely ignoring the half-dozen shouts that rose up in response to his movements, the alien man gave us all another cheery wave before leaping straight back into the tear, which almost instantly sealed behind him as if it had never been there in the first place.

<What in the name of this wretched System of yours was all that!> I heard West shout from inside my mind as the brightly glowing light of the tear vanished from sight, its disappearance accompanied by the sound of several of the crystalline shards that had been used to open it hitting the ground a second later.

<I . . . I couldn’t even begin to tell you,> I replied wearily as my attention shot towards several figures running towards us, the first of them being none other than Val herself. With just enough time to brace myself before she arrived and threw her arms around me, the next thing I knew she was practically yelling at me a torrent of words flooding out of her.

“Auric, you came!” she said as the other gate stealers, including Ciprien, gathered around us. Even Marcus was there, the man’s hands still bound together and his face looking terrified beyond belief. “And Sumalin, you’re . . . you’re alive! W-we thought that you were dead! They . . . told us you were dead.”

“Nearly was, too,” the woman replied, the brief smile that had managed to work its way across her face at seeing Val abruptly ending when the ground shook again and Ciprien’s voice called out.

“Heads up, everyone!” he announced loudly. “Remember that . . . Defense System thing he mentioned? Well, I think this is it!”

Spinning towards where the tear had just been, I turned just in time to see a renewed flare of light illuminate the air, its dull intensity nothing near what it had been just moments earlier. Regardless, I still had to strain my eyes to try and make sense of exactly what I was seeing, only vaguely being able to make out the shape of several crystalline shards from within the growing light.

“All of you get back!” I heard Val call out from beside me, a quick glance telling me that she was addressing the gate stealers, all of whom wasted no time in listening. “Take cover over there and up the path! Better yet, run as far as you can to the gate! The creatures all look like they’re gone for good now! We’ll take care of whatever this thing is.”

“Might be easier said than done there, Val!” I replied as I watched the shards spin away from us as they took to the air. As they did, a shimmering, distorted field of energy began to flow out of them, growing larger and more substantial with every second that passed. Stunned and unsure of what to make of the sight, I found myself frozen for a pair of seconds as I simply stared at the rippling cloud of energy, unable to help but wonder if it was going to explode.

It . . . it isn’t going to explode, I corrected myself, feeling my eyes widen as the shards suddenly dimmed in intensity and the power oozing from them came to an end. It’s shaping itself. Shaping itself into something real.

Feeling a sinking sensation fill my stomach as I realized what was happening, I saw the energy continue to ripple and writhe as it gathered in on itself. Continuing to warp the air as it did so, the orange-white cloud gradually took on a vaguely humanoid shape, growing rapidly until it reached just over ten feet in height. From there it sprouted a pair of claw-tipped arms from its central mass, which then defined itself into a thick, powerful chest an instant later.

Growing next was a squat, blunt-tipped head, with two brightly glowing eyes opening upon it. Planting a powerful arm into the ground for stability as it drifted downwards and finished its transformation, the swirling mass of energy shaped its lower half into a set of short, yet powerfully built legs. Once they were fully formed, the roiling storm of energy quickly stilled and then visibly hardened, its entire body then taking on a hard, crystalline sheen.

Oh, this isn’t going to be good, I thought numbly as I stared at the newly formed monster with a growing feeling of dread, its intimidating presence causing not only me but everyone else as well to take an unconscious step backwards. Watching the creature with bated breath, it began to steadily rise as it adjusted to its new form, its head turning to look towards us at the exact same moment several lines of System text scrolled across my vision and flowed into my mind.

Protection Daemon #2112 – Automata – Tier: Undefined – Level: Undefined

Warning: Entity Not Localized To Instance 202’s Preservation Model

Warning: High Levels of Entropy Detected

New Local Daemon Detected

Identifying Local Daemons:

Entity: Auric Amadeus Cain, Level 12, Tier: A

Entity: Ciprien Mills, Level 16, Tier: B

Entity: Protection Daemon #2112, Level Undefined, Tier: Undefined

Assigning Local Authority To Highest Tier Daemon: Protection Daemon #2112 . . . Complete

Nope, definitely not good! I said to myself as I stared at the tag, barely having the time to finish the thought before a monotone voice sounded out from the creature.

“I-INTRUSION BY HOSTILE E-ENTITIES DETECTED,” it declared in a stuttering tone as its whole body turned to focus on us, jittering and trembling as it did so. “I-INSUFFICIENT RESOURCES TO EXECUTE Q-QUARANTINE P-PROTOCOL. INSUFFICIENT R-RESOURCES TO E-EXECUTE ELIMINATION PROTOCOL.”

“Uh, I don’t like the sound of those protocols!” Ciprien shouted out in answer to the daemon’s halting words, which continued to echo out all around. “Especially that last one!”

“You’re telling me!” I replied to the man as I watched the other gate stealers rush off our platform, leaving just the four of us, plus West of course, to stare it down. “Do you think you can . . . I don’t know. Talk some sense into it?”

“SUFFICIENT RESOURCES FOR MANUAL PROCESS TERMINATION,” the daemon said before anyone could reply as it raised one of its clawed hands in front of its face. “BEGINNING MANUAL PROCESS TERMINATION.”

“I am going to take that as a no!” I shouted as the daemon then slashed out with its upraised claw, sending a spray of orange-white shadows sailing towards us. “Look out!”

Reacting at the speed of thought as the shadows rapidly closed towards us, I took the only option I saw before me and threw myself forward, rolling directly under them as they passed by overhead. Regaining my feet as everything around us exploded into chaos, I found myself standing an arm’s length away from Sumalin, who had chosen the same escape path.

“Is it just me or is process termination the same thing as killing?” she demanded while pushing herself off the ground, twin shadow swords clutched tightly in either hand.

“Oh, it’s definitely not you!” I answered, slapping the woman on her shoulder as I saw the daemon’s claw flash for a second time, sending another wave of the shadowy projectiles directly towards us. “Heads up! More incoming!”

With no time to say another word, the two of us then leaped back a step just in time to avoid being hit by the blast of ochrous energy, four of the missiles splashing across the ground where we’d just been standing.

“Damn, that was close!” I exclaimed, the words barely leaving my mouth before orange stains on the ground began to twist and grow as if they were coming to life. “Oh, what the hell is it doing now!”

With it morphing rapidly, the two of us quickly got our answer as the four writhing shadows before us began to grow exponentially in size, transforming into a smaller imitation of the larger being, a line of System text identifying each of them as Lesser Protection Daemons.

“Damn it, it’s making more of them!” I shouted as I saw the twisting mass of energy take shape. “Kill them before they finish forming!”

Lunging forward as the words left my mouth, I sent a purging beam of light at the closest of the four transforming shapes, watching it instantly unravel and vanish before it could finish forming. As it did, I slashed at the next nearest creature with my knives, shredding the helpless daemon before it could react. Letting out a weak, distorted hiss as the blades passed through it, the partially formed creature rapidly lost its shape as it evaporated into nothingness. It was a scene that I saw replayed beside me as Sumalin did the same to her target, allowing me to fixate on the last of the creatures.

Yet before I could reach it, the lesser daemon finished its rapid transformation and ducked under the swing, the blade only managing to carve a line across the top of its head. Checking my swing, it was then my turn to be put on the defensive as the newly spawned creature launched itself recklessly towards me with its claws outstretched. Reacting as fast as my body would let me, I was then forced to backpedal half a step while simultaneously catching a set of glowing talons on my forearm, feeling them scrape across the armor covering it.

“Focusing on these things isn’t going to work, Auric!” I heard Sumalin shout from somewhere on my left as I parried a second blow from the creature, this time with the dull edge of my knife. “Whatever that thing is, it’s making more of these things! We’re going to get overwhelmed fast if we don’t stop it!”

As if to punctuate her words, another volley of the protection daemon’s shadows sprayed across the ground before us, their shapes already starting to change as they morphed into another cluster of the corrupted creatures.

“Shit, I see them!” I called back, tearing my eyes off the newest batch of lesser daemons and flashing a quick look towards Ciprien and Val, seeing that they too were fighting as hard as we were against a half dozen of the creatures.

With another four about to come and add into that, I thought as I saw even more of the daemons appear, the battle rapidly beginning to spiral out of control.

Realizing that I only had seconds to make a difference, I shifted my attention back towards my target while twisting my grip on one of my knives’ hilts and bringing it an upwards slash before me. Fueled with every ounce of strength that I could put behind it, the motion caught the daemon that I was fighting directly in the midsection before continuing straight across its body until it met its shoulder. Split nearly in two, the wounded creature then staggered a step away from me, only to completely fall apart as a point-blank purging beam ended its existence permanently.

“Help the others! I’m going to try and distract the stupid thing!” I called to Sumalin as I stepped forward into the space that the smaller daemon had just been standing in, not waiting to hear her reply as I moved. Instead, I turned my attention inward and called out to West, knowing that I needed her working with me if I was going to pull this off.

<I need your help!> I said urgently as I worked myself up into a sprint, going on to give her a quick outline of my plan.

<A plan of guile, good. We wouldn’t be able to stand up to it in raw strength. Not yet at least,> West answered the moment that I finished my explanation, the ground separating me and the towering protection daemon rapidly vanishing with every step I took.

Oh, I hope this works, I pleaded mentally as I saw the daemon lift one of its arms again in preparation to replicate itself once again. But before it could do so, I activated Bloodlust and lunged forward towards it with twin spears of blood stretched out ahead of me.

Feeling the power course through me in a rush, I saw the world around me turn a deep red and blur ever so slightly before instantly snapping back into focus. When it did, I found myself sailing through the air and towards the towering creature, two of my blood spears already thrust into its body and my knives raking across it. As they connected, I felt twin jolts shoot up my arm, the blades’ razored edges slicing two deep lines through the daemon’s crystalline skin.

Satisfied that I’d done everything I could do to catch its attention, I allowed my momentum to carry me past the monster, seeing it not only flinch from the barrage of attacks, but let loose a pained growl that echoed through the air. Heartened by the sentiment, I circled the creature as fast as my empowered legs could take me, managing to catch a brief glimpse of the shattered crystals I’d seen earlier, all of which were now floating in a tightly packed cluster. It seemed that in the short time that it was out of view, the entropic shard, for that was what I was sure it was, had managed to partially reform itself and now emanated a thick, orange-red shroud of corruption around it. Nor was that the only thing as I soon discovered, noticing that there was a finger-sized strand of energy flowing outward from the cluster and connecting directly to the daemon.

Then as quickly as the shard appeared in my vision, it vanished as I tore my eyes off of it and twisted back towards the daemon. I knew I only had a short window before it fully turned its attention towards me, and I had to make the most of it. Slashing out with my weapons and blood weapons as fast as West and I could manage, we landed an avalanche of strikes on the creature before it began to react.

“RESISTANCE IS UNADVISED,” the daemon exclaimed loudly as it recoiled in obvious pain from my attacks, its massive body twisting around to find me. “CEASE EFFORTS AND PREPARE FOR PROCESS—”

Picking her moment perfectly, it was right during its speech that West chose to arrive, the freshly conjured blood spider slamming into the creature mid-turn when its balance was most precarious and sending it staggering sideways as it tried to remain standing. Ducking under a wild backhand as the daemon flailed to catch itself, I moved to stay behind the creature, delivering a barrage of strikes with my knives along its legs and back.

If this doesn’t get its attention, I don’t know what will! I exclaimed to myself as I finally sent a purging beam of white into the creature, causing its body to ripple and spasm the instant it connected. Staggering and letting out a wail of pain from its effects, the daemon flailed wildly as it tried to dislodge West, the spider that she was controlling, climbing up, over, and then leaping off its shoulders in order to evade its grasping reach. Landing on the ground effortlessly on the opposite side of the creature, she quickly put some distance between herself and it, giving us both a chance to regroup and catch our breath. So far, my plan to distract the daemon had managed to go off without a hitch, buying the others some time to clear away the creatures that it had created. Unfortunately, though, said plan only went as far as to lead me to roughly this moment, after which everything could have been summarized by four simple words.

Try not to die.

“EXTREME LEVELS OF RESISTANCE DETECTED. COMMITTING MORE RESOURCES TO PRIMARY TASK,” the protection daemon declared in what I was certain was an almost seething tone as it shook its injuries off, its head glancing between West and I. As it did, I saw that it now bore a jagged bite mark directly across its face, courtesy of West’s efforts. Yet despite that visible wound, it was when the daemon’s eyes landed on me that they flared with a bright orange light, the entropic being immediately lunging towards me. Lashing out with a massive claw, it exploded into motion with more speed than I thought it possessed, forcing me entirely on the defensive and seemingly uncaring that it had left West completely open behind it.

Which will mean a whole lot of nothing if it manages to smash me into paste, I thought, vaguely wondering what would happen to her if I died, only to immediately force the unproductive line of thinking out of my head entirely. Instead, I focused on moving as fast as my no-longer-empowered feet would take me as I dodged the daemon’s attacks. Fueled with the very real fear of death, desperation was the only thing that allowed me to stay ahead of the being’s attacks for the first few seconds of its frenzied assault as I dodged and weaved in between its strikes.

But I was far from defenseless as I avoided the creature’s claws, taking advantage of my purge ability’s longer range to sear the daemon every opportunity that I had. As it moved to rejoin the battle itself, it didn’t take long for West to make her presence known once more, the nimble spider working to harry the daemon from the rear. Clawing and biting deep into its legs and back, she taught the creature the folly of ignoring her, forcing it to divide its attention between us. It was a game that we managed to stretch out for several seconds as we baited the creature into constantly changing its target and we dipped in and out of range, a game I thought we’d be able to stretch out a little bit longer. But as I rushed in to strike the daemon as West fled out of range one time, it suddenly snapped in my direction and lunged towards me with a burst of blinding speed, crossing the distance separating us in less time than it took to blink.

Appearing as a blur before me, it was all that I could do to abort my attack and throw myself to the side to evade a sweeping claw that slammed into the spot that I’d just been standing in. Stumbling to the side, I tried to duck past another attack only to feel a wicked burning sensation bloom across my chest as one of its pointed talons raked across it and through my armor. With only enough time to hiss and grit my teeth at the injury, I found myself forced hard onto the defensive as I tried to weather the daemon’s renewed onslaught with the barrage of blows that followed after.

Shit! So much for thinking it wouldn’t adapt! I thought with a mental curse as I dodged a vicious twin swipe from the daemon that would have certainly spelled my doom. As I moved, it gave me a clear view of the creature’s body and the various injuries that West and I’d managed to inflict on it.

Glowing with a deep crimson light, the same light that I’d seen surrounding the entropic crystal, they were all starting to seal themselves, rapidly growing smaller and smaller with every moment that passed. But that short glimpse was all that I had the time for, as a second flash of light caught my eye, causing my gaze to snap towards the daemon claw, seeing that it now held a rapidly growing orb of energy. It doubled in size in just the time it took me to process what it was; I instantly realized my peril and threw myself to the side, the world dissolving away the moment it thrust its arm forward. Vision blurring as I tumbled across the ground, I rolled back up onto my feet a short distance away from the daemon with West rushing to my side, no doubt sensing the danger of the attack. Yet no sooner did I ready myself than I suddenly saw a streaking orange orb appear ahead of me.

<Watch out, Broodkiller!> I heard West shout as she promptly leapt up into the air to intercept the sphere, her body twisting and shaping itself into a thick, shieldlike barrier in the process.

The next thing I knew afterwards was my world exploding in a blast of entropic fire as I was thrown backwards and off my feet from the sudden detonation. Temporarily blinded by the brightness, I felt hot flames sear my skin along with the all-too-familiar surge of nausea as I tumbled through the air wildly. Spinning once as I flew through the air, I felt myself then hit something hard and rebound off of it before unceremoniously landing hard on the ground, the burning light that had consumed me fading away as quickly as it had appeared.

“Ugh, ow,” I said with a low groan as I tried to focus through the pain and sickness, a bright, blood-colored line of System text attracting my attention the first moment that I could think.

You have been burned by [Entropic Flames]

Warning: Schema Integrity 94%

Ugh, that really hurt! I thought numbly as I tried to work past the pain, placing a single hand on the ground before me to push myself up. But just as I planted my hand on the ground for stability, I felt a heavy wave of force wash over me and knock me off balance, sending me tumbling across the ground for a second time. Bouncing across the grass, the world spun around me in a blur before I came to a stop, this time lying flat on my back. Stunned from the rapid impacts, it took me a moment to process what had happened, my vision only beginning to clear when I felt a second wave of force pass over me. This time, the effects were much weaker than the first, my body only sliding another foot across the ground.

Ugh, what the hell is going on?! I thought in a panic as I pushed myself up into a seated position just in time to feel a third wave pass through me, this one feeling like little more than a gentle shove that I easily ignored. But as I sat up, I immediately managed to catch sight of the daemon, who had since moved to stand directly next to the floating crystal I’d seen, its claws cupping either side of the orb. Captured between its grasp, countless motes of entropy visibly peeled away from the sphere only to flow directly into the daemon, causing a crackling storm of orange and red energy to surround the well. Staring at the scene in confusion at first, I tried to figure out just what exactly the daemon was doing as waves of force continued to emanate outwards from the shard.

“Oh, shit, hang on a second,” I whispered as I stared into the billowing waves of dust, my brain finally making the connection of what was happening, causing me to leap to my feet while shouting a warning to the rest of the group. “Heads up, everyone! It’s doing something big!”

Feeling my hair stand on end as more power filled the air, I turned my attention away from the monster and glanced back towards the rest of the battlefield, desperately searching for the others. Fortunately for me, the group had already seen the situation and had begun to react by the time my voice reached them, Val calling out from amid their ranks, which was still surrounded by a handful of the lesser daemons.

“To the pillars! We can take cover there!” she shouted as she, Ciprien, and Sumalin all began to move as one, knocking several of the smaller daemons out of their way in the process.

Knowing that we only had seconds to get behind cover before the daemon finished whatever it was doing, I promptly moved to join the group, running as fast as my legs could take me. Fortunately, I didn’t have far to go before I caught up with them, arriving just in time to blindside one of the lesser daemons chasing them. Sweeping a knife out the moment that I drew close, I chopped the blade directly into the back of the unaware creature and sheared straight through it, sending it tumbling to the ground in a spray of white-orange shadows.

“Thanks, Auric!” Val exclaimed in a winded tone the moment that I appeared, my arrival putting me roughly beside her. “Perfect timing.”

“No problem!” I replied more than a little breathlessly as we continued to sprint towards the obsidian pillar, the waves of force emanating outward from the protection daemon gradually becoming stronger the closer that we approached. But thanks to our angle of approach, we quickly found ourselves passing behind the massive gray slab, which caused its effects to abruptly vanish.

And good thing it did, because there’s no way we could move against it otherwise, I thought as the punishing waves of force came to an end, leaving us free to close with the massive rock at a sprint.

“Everyone get as close as you can to the stone!” Sumalin shouted the moment that we were out of immediate danger, the scout then spinning around to send a spear of shadow flying towards one of the several smaller daemons still chasing us. “And then help kill these things before they crowd us again!”

Well familiar with our strengths, none of us hesitated to follow the woman’s instructions as we put our backs to the roughly cut pillar before switching back into an offensive posture as the pursuing creatures arrived. This time when our two groups clashed, it was the creatures that found themselves completely outnumbered as they charged headfirst into a line of weapons prepared to meet them.

Standing with Val on my right, the two of us fought in sync as a charging daemon lunged towards us, only to find itself suddenly clawless as both of my knives flashed before it, severing both of its outstretched arms at the wrist. Stumbling awkwardly, the creature never had a chance to recover as Val’s sword then found it a moment afterward, causing it to dissolve into a spray of shadows. Moving across our line, the same scene repeated itself with minor variations, Ciprien pulping his target into the ground with his shields, or with Sumalin shredding them to pieces with lines of shadow. The end result had us, a few seconds later, standing for the first time since the battle had begun with no targets within reach.

Just in time for the world around us to explode in violet fire.

Chapter Forty-Three

A hero is defined not by what they kill, but what they save. Lives, families, homes. How you use your powers is every bit as important as having them.

—On what it means to be an A-Tier, Tanner Grimes

* * *

I just barely had enough time to throw my hands up to protect my face before a searing wall of heat and queasiness passed over me, causing my exposed skin to burn at its touch, followed by my stomach beginning to roil. Wincing from the twin sensations, I twisted away from the wave of searing entropy, my feet instinctively carrying me towards a shouting voice.

“Over here!” Val called out urgently as waves of the entropic fire continued to pour out from around the edges of the towering pillar before us. “Get in as close as you can!”

Homing in on my sister’s voice, I moved as fast as I could, pressing in from the edge. The distance was barely more than a couple feet in total, but still close enough to the pillar’s end that the entropy was able to reach us, causing a second bright red entry to appear in my combat log.

You have been burned by [Entropic Flames]

Warning: Schema Integrity 89%

Damn, just a grazing burn hurt that much? I thought as I nestled in closer towards the rest of the party, all four of us grouping tightly together behind the giant rock. As I glanced between them, I couldn’t help but notice everyone bore sickened expressions and the orange hints of entropy marring their skin, no doubt a courtesy of the lesser daemons they’d all fought. But there wasn’t anything that we could do about that right now as we all clung to one another, the next few seconds passing by with desperately needed breaths to suck in air and the faint glow of Val’s healing power.

“Well, that could have gone a lot worse,” Ciprien stated as we all clustered together, the man breathing particularly heavily. “We’re all still alive and kicking.”

“That we are,” I agreed, breathing a sigh of relief as a wave of healing passed through me, soothing the list of injuries that I’d taken in my duel with the protection daemon. “But if we have any hope in winning, we need to come up with a plan. I don’t know how long this ability is going to last, but once it stops, we need to be ready to move. It didn’t make more of those . . . things when I was fighting it, which means we need to keep it busy. If we don’t, it’s going to make more of them and overwhelm us again.”

“You don’t need to tell me twice,” Sumalin replied in a confident tone. “I’ll be on top of it soon as the fire stops.”

“Good,” I said as I offered the woman a quick nod, my attention then shifting over towards Ciprien as I continued to speak. “But past that, we also need to figure out how to kill it for good. Because while I was fighting it, it somehow drained energy from a crystal, an entropic shard, I think, and got a hell of a lot stronger in the process. Not to mention it also healed all of its injuries, too. There’s no way we’re going to get anywhere as long as it’s able to do that.”

“Sure as hell not,” the man agreed, his voice then taking on an urgent tone as he continued. “But if it’s entropy, then the only option we have is to purge it. Beating on it with our hands and weapon just isn’t going to work.”

“Then that’ll be on me and you to figure out while Sumalin and Val keep it busy. Because I’m pretty sure it’s going to have a few objections to letting us just tinker with it,” I said, turning my attention to my sister and seeing her nod in response. But before I could say anything else, Sumalin spoke up again, her voice sounding particularly annoyed.

“Heads up, kids,” she said, causing each of us to glance in her direction and see that her head was tilted upward. “Don’t look now if you don’t want to see it, but this fire is starting to . . . uh, eat the stone.”

Without saying a word, we all then followed her gaze upwards, our eyes landing on the stone’s edge which was notably smaller than it had been seconds earlier. As we watched, we saw large chunks of our cover flake off under the entropic fire’s touch, the black obsidian burning away into nothingness before the pieces could touch the ground.

“And just like that, we have a timer,” Ciprien announced as other fragments of the stone began to flake off around the edges and melt, causing the heat around us to spike as our cover shrank. “If the daemon manages to do this again . . . things are going to get bad, really bad.”

“Then we better make sure that it doesn’t get a chance to,” I replied, seeing the inferno filling the island finally begin to die down, prompting all of us to organize ourselves in preparation to rush out.

“I’ll be heading straight for it,” Sumalin said as we readied ourselves, the woman having taken up a position at the pillar’s edge. “Give me two or three seconds to get its attention first, then either hit it or the shard with everything that you have and don’t stop until its dead. Everyone okay with that?”

“‘Hit it until it’s dead’ happens to be one of my specialties,” Ciprien replied, tapping both of his weapons together as he spoke. “So I’m completely on board with that plan.”

“Just be sure to keep an ear out in case we need help with the entropy,” I said as he and I shifted to the rear of the group, intending to follow once Sumalin and Val were ahead of us. “We’ll call out if something goes wrong.”

“We’ll be all ears,” Sumalin assured dryly as the last of the fires faded away. “Okay, it’s showtime, everyone! Let’s go!”

Conjuring a veil of shadow around her as she spoke, the woman rushed out from behind the stone at a sprint, all of us trailing on her heels in turn. Positioned towards the end in the line following my sister, I let her and Sumalin pull ahead of us as they broke into a charge, their long strides quickly eating up the distance that separated them from the daemon. As they focused on their goal, I then led the way towards my target, my eyes landing on the glowing red-orange shard ahead. Yet as they shifted towards the shard, I couldn’t help but take in the state of the platform, seeing that it had been almost completely scoured smooth. Where once it had been rocky and rough, it was now a seared and steaming expanse, waves of heat still radiating upwards from the ground beneath our feet.

Better make sure not to slip! I mentally exclaimed as I pulled my attention away from the destruction and focused on the rapidly approaching shard and the daemon standing near it. Eyes fixated downward, the entity was still standing where I’d last seen it, claws wrapped around the glowing orb with an aura of fading embers floating through the air around it. It wasn’t until we were a dozen feet away from it before finally it looked up from the entropic shard, its eyes visibly brightening with surprise as it saw us charging directly towards it.

Only to then catch a shimmering ball of energy that splashed across its head, courtesy of Val ahead of me.

Flinching from the impact, the daemon’s movements grew sluggish as it let go of the shard, allowing it to be easily struck twice again, once by a point-blank fired crossbow bolt, followed immediately by a translucent ball of force, which exploded the second that it connected. The daemon was thrown backwards and away from the shard, its arms flailing as it suddenly found itself struggling to maintain its balance. A balance that it failed to maintain when Sumalin finally arrived in a thick cloud of shadow, practically tackling it at chest height as she leapt upon it and sending it crashing to the ground on its back.

“Good! That’ll buy us time!” I exclaimed as I watched Sumalin begin to savage the daemon, the scene soon vanishing as I shifted my attention towards the entropic shard.

Shrouded in a haze of orange and red energy, it only took me a second to notice that there was something different about it since the last time I’d seen it, the strands encircling it having grown thicker and more vibrant.

“Shit, this thing sure doesn’t look that great,” Ciprien said as we came to a stop around it, the man’s words echoing my thoughts perfectly as we looked at both the shard and the wispy strand of power leading away from it and towards the daemon. “It looks like it’s getting stronger, and fast.”

“That is because it is,” I said as I inspected the crystal and saw that several of the fragments I’d seen earlier had fused together. “Last time I saw this thing, it was shattered; now it looks like its reforming.”

“Then we’d best better get on purging it,” Ciprien stated as he glanced at me. “Both hit it at the same time?”

“Works for me,” I replied as I lifted a hand and pointed it at the shard. “On three!”

Counting quickly, the two of us simultaneously purged the shard, causing it to momentarily vanish in a globe of pure white light, lasting for well over a second before it vanished. The two of us were rewarded with a loud cracking sound followed by the tether joining the shard to the daemon visibly dimming in intensity.

A sight that then in turn was promptly followed by a wordless cry of rage that filled all of our ears.

“I don’t know what you two just did!” Sumalin shouted loudly over the mental scream. “But it just pissed the hell out of this thing!”

“I can see that!” I called out, having twisted to look back towards the creature the moment I’d heard the scream, just in time to see it begin to rise. “Just try to keep it busy a little bit longer!”

“That’s easier said than—oof!” Sumalin called back as she tried to force the daemon back to the ground. But before she could do so, she was forced to catch a sweeping backhand from the being on a shield of shadow that not only stopped her movement cold but lifted her off her feet and sent her tumbling across the ground.

“Oh, shit!” I cursed as I then saw the daemon turn its attention towards us, its body already moving to intercept us. Thankfully, it was only able to manage a single step forward, before Val attacked it from the side, forcing it to stop and defend itself.

“Do whatever you need to do, Auric, but do it faster!” she shouted urgently. “We can’t keep this up much longer!”

“We’re trying!” I called back, feeling a sense of relief due to their timely intervention, but also feeling a renewed sense of urgency grab hold of me. As such, I decided to focus back on Ciprien and the shard just as my purge ability reset itself once again. “Let’s hit it again!”

Exhaling sharply, I did exactly that a half second later as the two of us sent another purging beam into the shard. This time, as we struck the crystal, I immediately noticed that the light was just a touch brighter, enough to cause two resounding snaps to echo out, followed by something hitting the ground between us. Glancing downwards, I saw that a finger-length splinter had shattered and broken free of the greater shard, the roughly cut piece of crystal crumbling to dust a second later.

“Now that looks promising!” I exclaimed, glancing back up to Ciprien as I eagerly waited for my ability to recharge yet again.

“Sure does, kid!” he replied as a sudden stomp of movement caused his head to snap in the direction of the others. “But we’ve got incoming!”

And we certainly did, I discovered a second later as my head turned in time to see both Val and Sumalin rapidly forced back towards us until we were all practically standing in the same space. Fighting furiously in an attempt to protect the shard, the daemon had worked itself up into a frenzy, swinging its claws almost faster than I could follow. It left us in an impossibly tight melee during which I soon lost track of time; everything turned into a wild scramble with each of us trying to keep the daemon at bay, while simultaneously attempting to continue purging the crystal. Dodging, weaving, and draining more blood from myself than I thought I could safely withstand, I didn’t snap back into the present until a blinding white light filled my vision, courtesy of one final joint purge from Ciprien and myself.

Lasting for what felt like an age, the sudden brightness prompted a loud, distorted scream from the daemon as whatever connection joining it with the shard was severed, its warbling voice calling out a second later.

“ERROR. C-CONNECTION TO S-SOURCE LOST,” I heard it say in a distorted tone as the now-dim entropic shard hit the ground and began to disintegrate, its body jerking and twitching randomly as it spoke. “ATTEMPTING TO—ERROR: PATH NOT FOUND. WARNING: INSUFFICIENT RESOURCES REMAINING FOR SUSTAINED PERFORMANCE.”

Its spasms intensified as it continued to speak, my eyes landing on it just in time to see it begin to flail wildly and with little of the control it had shown earlier.

“This is our chance!” I shouted as I saw the daemon’s crystalline skin begin to lose its earlier shine and hardness. “Now, let’s finish this thing off before it recovers!”

Not needing to be told twice, we all then rushed forward to take advantage of the daemon’s weakness, the pause in battle barely having lasted a handful of seconds since the shard’s destruction. Siphoning off a stream of blood as I rushed forward, I was the first to re-enter combat, slashing out with a blood scythe and seeing its edge bite deep into the daemon’s side. No sooner did my attack land than the spiderlike form of West appeared, reborn in a new Bloodborne body, as she slammed square into the daemon’s back and sank her teeth into its shoulder. Using her teeth as leverage, she then began to rake her claws along the daemon’s weakening body, carving wicked lines through its skin.

Continuing with its now-incomprehensible speech, the daemon didn’t even have time to twist in response to our attacks before it was struck again, this time by a mighty double shield strike from Ciprien, the impact of which completely tore an arm off its body. Nor were the others outdone as Val sent another exploding ball of force at the daemon from her totem, which detonated against its side and threw the entirety of its body off balance. That allowed Sumalin to finally put an end to the creature as she leapt forward with a storm of writhing shadows spinning around her, all of them exploding outwards at once. Slashing at the daemon en masse, the shadows promptly took what remained of it apart and sent it crashing back to the ground where it immediately began to dissolve.

“E-error . . . error . . . error . . .” the daemon intoned as it faded away, its voice growing weaker and weaker with every repetition, until there was finally nothing left of it and silence filled the air. At least until Ciprien broke it with a loud and relieved sigh.

“Well,” he said in a breathless tone as he glanced between all of us. “That was fun. Let’s never do it again.”

Epilogue

I’d always thought that if I forced myself to climb high enough that I would be able to effect change. To navigate the rules along the path that the System had put before us and take control of the power at its end. But now here I stand, at the peak of my journey and with nearly a hundred winters behind me, and I now begin to realize that I’ve devoted my life to a lie. There is nothing waiting for me at the end of this journey, nothing at least within the System’s grasp. If I am going to have any hope at saving us, saving Humanity, then I must look outside the rigid confines that the System has built around us. I must look at entropy itself.

—The last entry in the journals of Amedea Jackson

* * *

“So then there’s nothing at all in her journals. You have no idea at all where they’ve gone,” Elder Johannsen said before me, his thick and unkempt eyebrows furrowed downwards disapprovingly as he spoke. “None at all.”

“Like I’ve told you all, yesterday, it’s still too soon to say anything,” I replied, letting some of my annoyance seep through into my voice as I slashed my sword at the training mannequin before me, trying to maintain my rhythm as I spoke. “I’ve been going through all of her journals and notes every day since they left and I’m just barely getting my head wrapped around how much is there. Let alone what’s in them. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, they kept me, my sister, and even Sumalin entirely out of everything involving Salvo, let alone what they planned before they left. I don’t even know where to start looking.”

“A convenient thing for you to say now that you’re sitting where you are,” another elder, Noressa, stated in a hard tone. “The new master of the tower.”

“An honest thing to say now that I am sitting where I am,” I practically growled back as I took my eye off my target and glared at the three Blueridge elders that were standing a short distance away from me in the latest of what had been several impromptu meetings over the last week. To say nothing of the ones that had actually been scheduled. “And as I’ve told you before, if you truly don’t want me here. I will leave Blueridge. Tonight. I already have a bag packed.”

“And so will your sister, and likely Sumalin as well,” said the last of the three elders, and perhaps the only one of them here with a lick of sense, if at least in my mind. “Which in turn will leave Blueridge as easy prey for anyone who turns a greedy eye in our direction. A fact that perhaps my fellow elders have forgotten.”

“I assure you we haven’t, Henrik,” I heard Johannsen say in a bitter tone as I turned my focus back onto the mannequin, sending a vicious chop into its head and causing it to rock backwards unsteadily. “But now that the subject has been broached, we are vulnerable unlike we’ve ever been before. People are looking for answers to what happened to Amedea and the others. Better reassurance than what we’ve already told them.”

“What more reassurance could they possibly need?” I replied, unable to help but grit my teeth as I spoke. “We all went into the Fault Gate together and we were the only ones that came out. Gatesealers die so that others may live. As its always been since the System arrived. Not to mention, it’s also the story that everyone’s agreed to go along with. It’s too late to change it now.”

“Be that as it may,” Johannsen said. “It’s one that has begun to ring hollow. People are beginning to sense that there is more to it and their minds are starting to wander. Especially with your own . . . meteoric rise in power.”

“So what are you saying?” I asked as I turned to look back at the man. “People are starting to think that I somehow killed them all inside the gate? Is that what you’re beating around the bush about?”

“It is one theory that has been bandied about, yes, but not what we are concerned about,” Johannsen stated as he looked back at me impassively. “Auric, you are young, painfully so, if I may apologetically say. As such, you’ve not had the opportunity to be privy to the greater politics and issues that have governed the region. Ones that the others kept firmly in check simply by Salvo’s presence. Not all of our neighbors are as gentle or peaceful as they may have been made to seem while they were with us.”

“And what more do you want me to do about that?” I asked, letting a note of frustration seep into my voice. “We are already looking to strengthen Blueridge as quickly as possible. Val and Sumalin are both out training another group of the guard as we speak, and if they keep advancing the way they have up until now, they’ll be ready for their B-Tier Gates in another week or two. Val included.”

“Which will only reset them to the bottom of the totem pole so to speak,” Noressa said peevishly. “Right as we head into the winter. Wouldn’t it be better to keep them peak C-Tier? At least then we would have something available to us should the worst happen and we find ourselves attacked, either by Gateborn or by others.

“Then of course there is you,” she continued before I could even say anything. “You’ve advanced far and fast, we understand. But what are your plans to continue advancing? You’ve stayed in place for over a week now. The sooner you can match, if not exceed, what Amedea was the better. She stood head and shoulders above everyone else in the region and was most likely the reason for staying rival hands.”

I simply turned to blink at her in response, momentarily stunned by her words.

Are we really having this conversation? I asked myself as my eyes then drifted over towards the obstacle course that was currently filling the entirety of the tower’s main level, complete with several different kinds of practice mannequins that had been set up strategically along its route. It was a thought that had me pausing for a second to clear my throat and collect my thoughts before I said something I’d regret.

“We will make sure there is a good balance of those who wish to advance beyond C-Tier and those who wish to stay in a place for the season. Or forever, even,” I said as I glanced between the three of them. “Those that do decide to stay in place will work on helping others level and reach the peaks of their respective tiers. Like we’ve all agreed before, there has been too much dependance on Salvo to constantly save the day and people haven’t been working on their own progression because of it. It’s time that changed.

“And, as for my own advancement,” I said, raising a finger before the woman or any of the two other elders could speak up. “I certainly hope you can see that I am working on it. And was until you all interrupted me. Again. As you’ve said, I’ve made incredible progress in hitting level eighteen after closing the Fault Gate, but I need the time to get used to that and all the levels I’ve gained in the last week. To train and practice with my skills before I set out looking for gates on my own. Or one appears that needs my instant attention.”

“Which is more than reasonable, all things considered,” Elder Henrik said diplomatically. “And also something that we elders should perhaps allow Auric to get back to? I believe we’ve bothered him enough already.”

“What, you want to leave already?” Johannsen demanded as he turned to glare at his fellow elder. “We’ve barely even gotten started. We still need to discuss and plan on how we are going to weather the winter. We were counting on the harvest from Ravenstead to—”

“An issue that I assure Auric, our only A-Tier now, doesn’t need to spend his valuable time on,” Henrik stated in a blunt tone before glancing over towards me. “Unless he wishes to hear about the minutiae and accounting of our stores?”

“Respectfully, elder, I could think of nothing less appealing,” I replied, seizing on the proffered lifeline. “Unless it becomes an emergency, of course.”

“Of course,” the man said inclining his head towards me and then looking back to his companions. “With me, elders? I believe that there is someone else in the town we can annoy. Perhaps someone in the market, yes? The lunch rush should be over and I’m certain I smelled biscuits being made on our way through.”

Letting out a chorus of grumbles at the man’s sentiments, neither of the two elders were able to offer a suitable rebuttal to the suggestion and soon found themselves being escorted out of the tower. As they left, Elder Henrik offered me a knowing wink and a reassuring clap on the shoulder when the others couldn’t see. Until the last few days, I’d never even so much as traded words with the man, but he was rapidly becoming a staunch ally in what I was discovering was a complicated nest of rivalries and politics within Blueridge itself.

Something that I never needed to even know, let alone worry about, I thought as I took a deep breath to still the frustrated anger that had built up in me. Every day over the last week, sometimes as many as two or even three times a day, one or more of the seven Blueridge elders came to see me. Either to discuss something that pertained to the town’s safety or to get an update on my research through Amedea’s writings.

<It is because they are afraid,> West said to me, very clearly sensing my thoughts. <They are afraid because their protectors have not only not truly been protectors, but have fled the hive in shame. They now lurk in the shadows of their minds, making them wonder if they will return, and if so, in what state of mind.>

<I know,> I replied back, the realization having crossed my mind more than once as I’d spoken with the elders, especially when I had first told all of them of what had actually happened in the gate. After I had finished I had expected them to practically attack us, as they exiled Val, Sumalin, and myself all out of Blueridge. After all, we’d all been linked to what Salvo had done. But to all of our surprise, at the time, they’d done the opposite. They unanimously voted that the ownership to Salvo Tower be passed along to the three of us and practically begged us to stay. If at least until they could raise up a stronger core of B-Tiers to help defend the region before we left.

It was an offer that we of course accepted, if only for the time being.

<It’s more that I don’t know what they expect of me. Every time they ask me a question it’s like they think that Amedea would have taken the time to simply spell out her and the others’ reasoning before they betrayed us all and set off on . . . whatever it is that they’re trying to do.> I continued after a few seconds of thought, turning away from the door and heading across the room to the upper floors. The latest interruption had soured my desire to exercise, which in turn meant that it was time for me to get back to my work upstairs. <All that I know is what Constance let slip before they all escaped, which is that they want to . . . reset reality, if I understand right. To bring everyone who has died since the System arrived back to life.>

<A potentially noble goal, is it not?> West stated, with a mental chitter. <If it is at all possible. This . . . System of your world has damaged much, from what I’ve been able to gather so far.>

<It has,> I said despite a tinge of doubt curdling in my stomach as I spoke. <But I’m not so sure it’s the only factor. The more I learn about this entropy . . . the stranger and more unpredictable things get. From what we’ve seen, it’s able to change the System. The rules that it runs the world by. Not to mention destroy almost everything it touches. I think whatever is truly happening, it is a lot more complicated than we know. More than they even likely know.>

<The truth often is,> West said philosophically. <There is still no change with the task that it had given you?>

<No, not yet,> I replied with a mental sigh as I called up the assigned tasks that the System had given me what was rapidly beginning to feel like a lifetime earlier. <It’s still the same as it’s ever been. Stuck, waiting to update me.>

Assigned Tasks:

Primary Task: Completed – Awaiting System Reply

Secondary Task: Completed – Awaiting System Reply

Tertiary Task: Improve Instance Integrity to 75% or higher to be removed from Quarantine List. Current Instance Integrity: Unknown

Error Connecting to Master Node – Insufficient Resources Available

<Then we have found ourselves with a much-needed respite, then,> West stated with a chitter and pop that I interpreted to be relief. <Even the mightiest of beings require a time to lay their heads and heal their wounds. Unless of course you would rather run yourself until your shell withers and cracks?>

<I would not,> I answered with a sigh as I climbed the stairs ahead of me, passing through the kitchen without so much as a glance before continuing up to the athenaeum. It was there that I came to a stop as I caught sight of the grand mess that the room had descended into with books, bags, and boxes piled or stacked upon every surface that could reasonably bear them. <But there’s still stuff to do in the meantime.>

With not nearly enough space to work in, and also full of memories that I very much wanted to avoid, I’d practically emptied out Amedea’s and the others’ rooms upstairs of everything that I’d thought was worth investigating and had brought it here. Ranging from everything including books, trophies, mementos, and even unused, gate-acquired empowerment orbs, it was a nigh-overwhelming collection to sift through and one that despite having Val, Sumalin, and I working on it with every spare moment we had, we’d yet to make a dent in.

And that doesn’t even include what we’d recovered from the Fault Gate either, I thought with a mental wince as I slowly stepped my way through the clutter, my eye landing on a particular pair of crates which I’d purposefully left in the way the last time I’d been here in hopes that it would prompt me to sort out their contents. Letting out a loud sigh as I cursed my past self’s ambition, I gave in to the inevitable and angled my path towards them, opening the first of the two wooden containers in hopes of refamiliarizing myself with their contents. Peering inside, I soon found myself staring at a collection of half a dozen red-veined stones, several pink-hued crystalline shards, and a rather full-looking burlap pouch, all of their descriptions filling my vision a second later.

Lavashard Crystal

Tier: A

Item Class: Empowered Object

Capacity: 300/300

Special Ability #1: Radiate – When activated, waves of intense heat pour out from this object until the stored energy within is completely consumed or it is deactivated.

Special Ability #2: Absorb – When activated this object begins to gradually absorb ambient heat and replenish its stores until its full capacity has been reached or it is deactivated.

Condition: 200/200

Lavashard Bud

Tier: A

Item Class: Gateborn Flora

Special: Plant in a place of substantial heat and mineral deposits to begin growth.

Fire Flower Seed

Tier: A

Item Class: Gateborn Flora

Special: Plant in rich earth supplemented with ash to begin growth.

All right, so this box I can just hand over to the commissary and have them sort it out, I thought as I finished looking through the container and discovered that it had been the one I’d filled full of the more miscellaneous objects we’d recovered from the gate. They can figure out what best to do with it and whether anyone wants to try and take a crack at actually growing one of these things. The crystals definitely sound useful enough to warrant trying . . . especially with the winter coming. Though with that said, I’ll probably have to include at least one of the empowerments from the other box if anyone’s going to use them; until we test it, there’s just no telling exactly how hot they’ll end up being. As for the flowers . . . I haven’t got the faintest idea how they’ll turn out or what they’ll do, but if they look anything like those I saw near the gate . . . they’ll be hot. Very, very, hot.

It was with that thought running through my mind that I lifted the crate and set it on the ground beside me, before turning to open the sister container that it had been stacked on top of, revealing a collection of six orbs within. Arrayed according to their two respective colors, and hence empowerments, I saw their descriptions appear in my vision, allowing me to easily pick out the one that I’d been looking for.

Greater Mote of Thermal Insulation

Tier: A

Item Class: Empowerment

Quantity: 3

Uses Remaining: 8

Empowerment Effect:

When empowered, the affected object becomes no longer capable of transmitting, conducting, emanating, or otherwise being affected by heat and will forever remain a neutral temperature relative to its current environment.

Greater Mote of Thermal Concentration

Tier: A

Item Class: Empowerment

Quantity: 3

Uses Remaining: 8

Empowerment Effect:

When empowered, the effected object begins to absorb and store ambient heat, gradually increasing its temperature until a threshold is reached.

On second thought, I’ll maybe give them one of each for now and mention that we have extra, I thought as I finished reading over the two different types of motes, thinking how best either of them could be put to use for the good of the town. Not to mention for myself as well, as I already had a few ideas of how I could apply their effects to my own equipment. Which I’d better look to carve some time out for soon as well. With the way that things have been going, there’s no telling when I’ll need to head out to close a gate.

Moving the motes into the box containing the seeds and other items, I did one last check of the area to make sure that I hadn’t forgotten anything among the mess that I’d made of the room. Eventually satisfied that I hadn’t missed anything, I lifted a box and carried it over to the stairs, once again strategically placing it in the way so that I would have no choice but to carry it down the next time I used the stairs. There had been more recovered from the gates than just the two boxes, but they had been the only ones that had physically ended up in our care—or my care, rather.

The bulk of the gate’s bounty was in the bodies of the Gateborn that had spilled forth out of it and onto the region now surrounding the rapidly cooling lava lake that had managed to partially phase into our world. Killed by either Salvo or the entropic drones that Sumalin and I had been forced to clean up afterwards, we’d discovered all of the typhonic drones carried substantial stores of molten metals inside them. Granted, it was an alien, Gateborn metal unlike anything we’d seen before, but it was one that still melted when sufficiently heated and still took form when poured into a mold or hammered into a useful shape.

Which is about the most useful thing that we could possibly have, all things considered, I thought, a lifetime of living through the strange and unpredictable effects that the System had managed to inflict upon our reality having taught me to be appreciative of the simple things. There was just no telling when something, somewhere would change and something we’d taken for granted would no longer work the same way it had before, or even at all.

It was with that thought passing through me that I begrudgingly turned back towards the room, specifically the large chair and table that I had claimed for myself as I read through Amedea’s journals, mentally preparing myself to dive in once again. Yet before I could so much as take a single step in its direction, I heard the main entrance door thunder open, followed by a loud shout from a familiar voice a few seconds later.

“Auric!” Ciprien called loudly in a breathless and urgent tone. “Auric, are you in here?”

“Yeah, I’m upstairs!” I answered back, feeling my heart begin to race. It had been days since I’d last seen Ciprien, the man having almost immediately departed the day after we’d closed the gate in search of the one puzzle piece that we all hoped hadn’t escaped our grasp.

Which means if he’s finally come back . . . I thought as I rushed down the stairs, leaping straight over the box I’d set before it and into the kitchens below, arriving at the same time that the mud, dirt, and seemingly blood-covered man ran up the stairs from the floor below.

“I found him,” he said without so much as a second’s worth of hesitation the instant we laid eyes on one another, my eyes shifting downwards to the heavy grey cloak that he held in his hand. “I found out where Mercutio went.”

Auric’s Character Sheet At The End of Book 1

Subject:

Auric Cain

Tier: A

Level: 18

Class: Paragon

Progression: 1/12340

Vital Statistics:

Health: 830/830

Blood Pool: 0/230

Endurance: 830/830

Physical Attributes:

Vigor: 43

Finesse: 40

Celerity: 34

Mettle: 65

Psyche: 48

Skills:

Martial:

Archery – Level 10 – 1%

Throwing Weaponry – Level 10 – 1%

Unarmed Combat – Level 12 – 15%

C-Tier Bonus: Bruising Strikes: You have learned how to land particularly punishing blows on your target with your unarmed strikes, increasing the damage of every subsequent hit by 1% up to a maximum of 10%.

Swords – Level 15 – 1%

C-Tier Bonus: Precision: Your practice with this weapon has taught you where to strike for the greatest effect, increasing the damage of your critical hits by 0.5% for every level in this skill beyond 10. (Current: +2.5% Critical Hit Damage)

Spears – Level 14 – 13%

C-Tier Bonus: Weeping Wound: Your skill with this weapon type has taught you how to inflict wounds that continue to bleed, dealing 0.5% of the damage originally inflicted once again over the course of 6 seconds, increasing by an additional 0.5% for every level in this skill beyond 10. (Current: 2.5% bleed damage done over 6 seconds)

Trade:

Tailoring – Level 10 – 1%

Leathercraft – Level 11 – 31%

C-Tier Bonus: Heightened Craft: Items and equipment created through the use of this trade have their attributes increased by 10%.

Class:

Bloodshaping – Level 13 – 61%

Skill Ability: As you progress on the Path of Blood, your ability to control nearby blood and the blood in your Blood Pool becomes easier, allowing you to not only wield larger amounts of the sanguine substance but to also shape it into more complex tools and objects.

Effects:

+10 Blood to maximum Blood Pool storage per level as well as increases the speed, complexity, and durability of blood that is shaped.

+1 Bloodborne Companion every 5 levels.

+1% Health, Damage, and Resilience to Bloodborne Companion per level.

+10 seconds to Bloodborne Companion duration per level.

C-Tier Ability: Potent Blood: As your skill in controlling and shaping blood improves, you are able to tap into the power the blood holds more efficiently, filling your Blood Pool all the faster. For every level in this skill beyond level 10, you generate an additional +0.05 blood points per point of blood absorbed.

Current Bloodshaping Bonuses:

+130 Maximum Blood Pool

+2 Bloodborne Companions

+13% Health, Damage, and Resilience to Bloodborne Companion.

+130 seconds to Bloodborne Companion duration.

+1.05 Blood Points per 1 health drained.

+0.55 Blood Points per 1 enemy damage inflicted.

Powers:

Blood to Power:

Power Type: Metaphysical

Duration: Instant

Range: Self or 10 feet

Linked Skill: Bloodshaping

Blood Cost: Variable

Description: As you embark on the Path of Blood, the first thing that you learn is that Blood is power. The power to fuel your ambitions as you wreak havoc among your enemies. As such you are no longer bound by the constraints of will and effort that you once were as you seek to shape the world before you but rather by the blood at your command.

Effect: You no longer rely on Control to fuel your powers, but rather raw lifeforce itself in the form of blood within your Blood Pool. When using a power, you instead pay its cost from your Blood Pool, which you can fill by using your own health at a 1 to 1 rate, or by using the blood of a nearby enemy at a 0.5 to 1 rate. The blood stored in your Blood Pool does not last long however and will rapidly dissipate after five minutes of unuse. Note: This power does not function against bloodless opponents.

Shape Blood:

Power Type: Metaphysical

Duration: Instant

Range: 10 feet

Linked Skill: Bloodshaping

Blood Cost: 50

Description: Capable of manipulate the raw lifeforce that is blood, you are able to wield it as if were an extension of your own body, shaping it into appendages, tools, or even weapons as you so desire.

Effect: You are able to shape the blood within your blood pool and telekinetically shape it to form shapes or objects. As your skill in wielding this power improves you will be able to gain finer control of the blood you shape as well strengthen its potency.

Bloodborne Companion:

Power Type: Metaphysical

Duration: 1 minute (Dependent on Bloodshaping skill)

Range: 10 feet

Linked Skill: Bloodshaping

Blood Cost: Variable – Minimum 100

Description: All blood teems with power, the power of life itself. As a Paragon on the Path of Blood, you have learned how to infuse an echo of your will into a stream of blood, granting it a temporary semblance of life.

Effect: You create a temporary companion made of blood to join you in battle. Capable of being directed either telepathically or allowed to function independently this creature will do its utmost best to aid you. The strength of this creature and the total number allowed to be controlled at a time is dependent on the amount of blood used to create it and your Bloodshaping skill.

Bloodlust:

Power Type: Metaphysical

Duration: Until Canceled

Range: Self

Blood Cost: 5% of Maximum Blood Pool per second

Description: You tap into the latent power of the blood at your command and send it coursing through your veins, using it to greatly enhance your strength and speed.

Effect: For as long as this ability is active, you gain a +15% Attribute bonus to Vigor, Finesse, and Celerity.

Analyze:

Power Type: System Level

Duration: Instant

Reuse: Instant

Range: 15 feet

Effect: You request a portion of your target’s Schema, learning about their abilities, weaknesses, and other related information which then appear in your vision. The effect and information gained from this ability is dependent on your System Privileges. Insufficient Privileges will cause redacted data to be displayed or for the information request to be denied outright.

Current Privileges: Local Daemon: Rank 1 – Allows for display of the following categories:

Type

Intelligence

Origin

Schema Integrity

Weaknesses

Current Vulnerabilities

Purge:

Power Type: System Level

Duration: Instant

Reuse: 5 seconds

Range: 15 feet

Effect: Specifically created to work against the affliction [Entropic Corruption] this ability attempts to purge a single targeted entity of its influence and rebuild as much of its original Schema as possible. The results of this ability are highly variable depending on the level of entropic corruption encountered and the overall Schema integrity. High levels of corruption and/or low Schema integrity can result in either the ability failing to successfully purge the corruption or for the purge process to destabilize the target entity’s Schema, causing their process to instantly terminate. In addition this ability can be used to purge oneself of Entropic Corruption should one become so afflicted.

Thank You All!

Hi, everyone! Thank you so much for taking the time to read Paragon of Blood! We hope that you enjoyed the book! It's only because of all of your support and excitement that we’re able to work on this series and all of our others full time, and we truly, truly appreciate it!

So, with that said, much as I have in every book so far, we’d like to ask for your help once again before you go:

First: Please, please, consider rating and reviewing Paragon of Blood on Amazon and Audible, as well as any of your other favorite book sites. Many people don’t know that there are thousands of books published every day, most of those just in the USA alone. Over the course of a year, a quarter of a million authors will vie for a small place in the massive world of print and publishing. We fight to get even the tiniest traction, fight to climb upward one inch at a time towards the bright light of bestsellers, publishing contracts, and busy book signings.

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Regardless of whether or not you choose to review, reach out, or support us elsewhere, thank you again for taking the time to read Paragon of Blood, and we’ll see you again in Paragon of Shadow!

Alex & Luke

About The Authors

Alex Knight:

Alex Knight (notabilis mendax) is a midlist author endemic to the coastal wetlands of North America. A member of the scriptum mendaces family, he is best known for having books so popular they crash global markets, and a firm grasp on reality.

His original habitat was confined to crumpled notebooks, but due to meddling persistence, has expanded to include such works as the Nova Online trilogy, Rise to Glory, The Far Wild, and more.

In 2018, notabilis mendax was included in the list of Invasive Species of Federal Concern. His current status is listed as “Class II: fast-growing; nuisance.”

Other Books By Alex Knight:

Rise to Glory

The Far Wild

Warden (Nova Online #1)

Renegade (Nova Online #2)

Harbinger (Nova Online #3)

Luke Chmilenko:

Writing far faster than his hands can withstand, Luke Chmilenko hails from the Great White North where he lives with wife and two daughters. Toiling endlessly Luke juggles his time between a rapidly growing catalogue of series while playing far more video games than he would ever openly admit.

Other Books By Luke Chmilenko:

Ascend Online

Ascend Online: Hell to Pay

Ascend Online: Legacy of the Fallen

Ascend Online: Glory to the Brave

Stormweaver: Iron Prince

The Shattered Reigns: A Mark of Kings

The Shattered Reigns: A Blood of Kings

Savage Dominion

Savage Dominion: Wyrmshard

Savage Dominion: Voidgod

Immortal’s Ascent: Death and Glory