“Construct portal?” Ellen asked as we poked around the brass-and-silk machines outside the 303 Wall’s west gate.

  There were almost certainly more of them. The group was too small to break through, and where there were a few monsters, there were always more. I kept my sword at the ready. Stormsong felt light in my hand, and my Mana surged inside of me. So did the battle trance I hadn’t quite shaken off; I wanted to fight something else.

  “You’re not sure?” Yasmin asked.

  “No, I’m not sure at all. I’ve never seen this monster typing or heard of any portals like it. This is guesswork.” Ellen shrugged and looked around. “It doesn’t matter. They die like any other portal monster. Let’s keep hunting.”

  That was exactly what I wanted to hear from my partner. I stalked north, toward the border with the Wickenberg Portal Break and the triangle of green farmland. If there were monsters out there, they’d hit the Guardians there and stop dead. “We’ll secure south, then double back north.”

  “Got it,” Jeff said.

  We searched the entire Wall. Here, outside of Surprise, it was a jumbled mass of steel plates and I-beams, rebar-latticed concrete, and dirt-and-stone fill. It loomed overhead, thousands of tons of barrier between the monsters outside and the people inside. But Surprise wasn’t an important, inhabited district. People lived there, but not like everywhere else in the city. And the wall’s weathered, disrepaired surface showed it.

  I shivered slightly.

  Then I kept moving. Something felt…odd…in the air, and I needed to find it. We needed to find it. The corpses of the brass-and-silk automatons disappeared into the distance as we jogged north.

  Ellen, Jessie, and I had seen the farmland from above, at night. Halogen lights, trucks and harvesters, and green fields packed as tight as the farmers could fit them in—it was, in its own way, the most fantastic thing about Phoenix’s rebirth. But seeing the Guardian’s wall around it from the outside, and from ground level, was another thing entirely. It wasn’t the 303 Wall, but it was almost as intimidating.

  And a small hole, maybe eight feet tall at its tallest, had been bored into it as if by a drill.

  The Guardians took the Wickenberg Portal Break’s security seriously—they often had a ‘shoot first, ask never’ attitude toward trespassers, even the human kind. It made sense, since their portal and the fields outside of it fed Phoenix. Dad had told me never, ever to enter the green triangle without permission.

  But there were portal monsters inside the green triangle. They were there without permission, and we were the closest to stopping them.

  I looked over my shoulder. “I’m going in after them. You don’t have to come with me. The Guardians won’t be happy to see us. In fact, Sophia, you should stay outside, head back, and make—“

  “No. If you’re going, I’m going,” she said.

  I nodded. Then I pulled out my phone and took a page from Carter Richards’s book.

  Kade: My team was working on clearing a monster group outside of the west gate. Signs of monster entry into the Wickenberg area. We’re going in after them. Guardians, be aware we are here.

  The message sent on the ‘all delvers’ chat, I muted my phone, and we pushed into the tunnel.

  The view from above didn’t do the green triangle justice.

  We emerged from the smooth, warm tunnel into…humidity. It felt like the moment after you turned off a shower, but all around us. I’d only ever felt like this in the shower, the sauna, and a handful of portal worlds—Phoenix was too dry to ever get this sticky.

  And the greenery was overwhelming; it was like stepping out of the desert and into an Arboreal world. Stalks of wheat or corn or some kind of grain loomed a good ten feet over our heads, and the ground at our feet was choked with vines growing…something. School hadn’t taught me what the plants were. It didn’t matter. What did matter was the ripping, tearing sound in front of us and the shredded plants pointing that way.

  “Let’s go,” Ellen said.

  I nodded, and we pushed into the rows of oversized plants, following the path of destruction.

  We’d gone twenty yards—twenty yards through chewed-up plant stalks and churned dirt—when I saw the first monster.

  Drillborer: A-Rank Monster

  Just like the Silkstormer, the thing was accompanied by a swarm of clockwork brass monsters. Their eyes all glowed a pulsing yellow as they moved through the field, and their weapons gleamed.

  “Same strategy?” Yasmin asked.

  “No. I don’t think I can handle the Drillborer without help,” I muttered back.

  The Drillborer didn’t have legs or wheels. Instead, it rolled forward on a single, massive bit, with two smaller ones behind it that seemed to act as steering. In fact, it was three drill bits, with a tiny space at their center that wasn’t spinning—no doubt to power the whole machine. I didn’t see a good way to attack it. It probably wasn’t a massive threat, despite its rank, but for sheer survivability, it’d be tough to beat a monster made of steel, diamond, and boring blades.

  “Can you do it with Jeff?” Raul asked.

  I looked at Jeff. He shrugged slowly. Then I nodded. “Keep its attention. I’ll try to take it down. Everyone else, on the little guys.”

  “The B-Rank monsters we’re qualified to fight?” Raul asked. He nodded. “Sure. You can have that nightmare for yourself. All yours.”

  The Drillborer and its escorts were still moving. I took a deep breath and cast Lightning Chain. Instead of doubling it, I stayed in the one-handed Thunderbolt stance and let the single cast pull me through the air toward the monster—and toward its undefended center box.

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  The B-Rank clockwork creatures’ eyes turned red. They locked onto me, and their brass bodies surged in, collapsing like a wall of metal around me. Plant stalks flew everywhere as they rushed me. Then Shadow Shapes erupted around the Drillborer as Ellen started her attack. Their red eyes blacked out for a moment before the constructs turned to face her and Raul.

  Then Jeff used his taunt skill on the Drillborer as I landed on its core.

  The motion almost threw me. Lightning Chain locked me in place, but even so, it was all I could do to hang on. The monster’s drills all revved, all in the same direction, and it lurched sideways, trampling plants and irrigation tubing below it. And it was fast. It slammed into Jeff before he could set himself. Steel and diamond blades ground against his C-Rank shield. We’d made a mistake; Jeff couldn’t fight this thing in a stand-up fight.

  He was going to lose. I needed to try something different.

  The Misbegotten Ogre and Hobgoblin Summoner had been the same trick. And that time, I’d told the team to take out the Ogre and let me handle the Summoner’s swarm of shadow monsters, even though I couldn’t do it. This time, the roles were reversed. We needed to relieve pressure—and I couldn’t get a Rainfall Charge to try for a Rain-Slicked Blade kill on the Drillborer.

  So, instead, I used Howling Gale. Stormsong flashed out. It ripped across the monster’s steel armor, doing nothing. But the wind blade copies that rippled out across the already-damaged swarm of B-Rank monsters added to the damage Ellen was throwing out. She dropped Shadow Shapes, then recast it again. It echoed as her skill maintained the original for a couple of critical seconds.

  None of it was enough to kill a single monster. Their red eyes kept glowing and pushing toward Ellen and Raul. Their weapons still curved and glinted in the sun. But when Raul’s spear hammered into the first one and split into two on its other side, his Echo Strike punched a similar hole across a half-dozen of the B-Rank monsters before gouging a thin, shining cut across the Drillborer’s steel bit.

  We were making headway, and Jeff was…

  I looked.

  Jeff’s shield was mangled and bent, wrapped around the Drillborer’s body like taffy being pulled. He’d shaken his arm free from it and had his short sword in a two-handed grip as he backpedaled away from the Drillborer. But he wasn’t fast enough to outrun an A-Rank monster. It’d be on him in a second.

  Cyclone stance. Polarity Shift. Lightning Strikes Twice. Repeat. Touch of Shadow. Then what? Thunder Crash might have the damage to blast through, but if it didn’t…I’d accomplish nothing. Darkness wouldn’t benefit from the chained combo. My aura churned the air around me with static. I needed to make a choice.

  Lightning Chain. The C-Rank spell wasn’t enough. But with its power doubled and doubled again, and with Touch of Shadow, maybe it would be.

  I cast it.

  Usually, the chain was the size of my wrist or smaller—little more than a rope I could pull on or be pulled by, with a small amount of damage. But with the effects of the quadruple-buffed Polarity Shift and Touch of Shadow, it was less like a golden-blue rope and more like a ship’s anchor chain, green-black and dripping with weight and power.

  It connected with the Drillborer’s central drill. I hung on tight. Counted as the chain grew tauter and tauter. Then, when it was about to snap, I let go, and the green Lightning Chain ripped out of my hands. It wrapped around the drill, its end flailing at Jeff’s dented armor. He took a dozen hits in less than a second, armor denting and popping almost as loud as the construct’s engine.

  Then the drill stopped.

  The massive machine groaned. Rivets popped, slamming through the rows of crops and into the rest of the team. Steam poured out of the gaps in its armor. I flew off the safe spot as the two guiding drills caught dirt and flung the entire monster to the side. The ground broke my fall. Nothing snapped, but my knee screamed in pain until Stamina poured into the wrenched joint. Smoke poured from the damaged drill, fighting the wave of steam, and the screech of metal on metal was deafening.

  Then the two supporting drills stopped, too, and Ellen dropped a triple Shadow Box on it. Even with her Unique skill working at it, it took almost fifteen seconds to make a breach in the thing’s armor large enough for Raul to get his spear in and stop the screeching.

  Jeff was…fine. We recovered his shield—or what was left of it—and he tucked it onto his back. “I’m going to have bruises everywhere, Kade. Good job, though. It would have killed me.”

  “Think that’s all of them?” Sophia asked.

  I stared at the trampled rows of crops leading away from the mauled, churned earth where we’d been fighting. Then I shook my head. “No chance. There are more of them in here.”

  My phone buzzed.

  Unknown Number: Negative. Delver Noelstra, stand your team down immediately and move to the intersection of the 303 and Guardian walls for detention and questioning, by order of Guardian Kellen.

  The Guardians were not to be messed with. If they told you to stand down in their territory, my dad had always said to listen. Immediately. It was the only way to stay safe.

  But…

  “Alright, team, we have a problem. The Guardians want us to stand down and surrender,” I said quietly. “I propose the following plan…”

  Ellen followed Sophia, who was a little too close to Kade for Ellen’s liking. It wasn’t her fault. They were pushing into dangerous territory, and Ellen could feel the healer’s anxiety spiking with every step, but hugging each other only increased the danger. Personally, she’d rather have taken Raul, but leaving Yasmin, Jeff, and Sophia behind with no combat power was asking for trouble. The waiting team needed a damage source, and the hunting team needed non-combat help.

  Kade’s hand went up. The girls froze. Two fingers, then a pause, then another single finger. Two monsters. B-Rank.

  They’d been hunting the clockwork monsters for almost ten minutes. Three fights so far—the worst against a group of five that had been too spread out for a single Shadow Shapes. Kade was mostly hanging back and letting Ellen do the work while keeping her and Sophia safe. That was fine with Ellen; it let her stretch out her powers a bit, especially with Mana from Shadowstorm Battery.

  She pushed her aura out. It slammed against the B-Rank monsters, pinning them in place for a crucial moment. That was all it’d buy against the automatons—they adapted fast—but it’d be enough.

  Shadow Box. Shadow Shapes. Orb of Darkness—twice.

  Then Kade moved in to finish off the two machines. His sword sliced into each, finding gaps her shadow magic had torn into their brass armor and severing something important inside first one, then the other. The whole fight took only about five seconds. They’d gotten good at this kind of fighting.

  “All done,” Kade muttered. The ears of corn hung overhead in the half-trampled rows they’d had their little fight in. “I think we loop around and see if there are any more groups, then see about meeting up with the others. If we hurry, they’ll still be there.”

  “I’m worried about something,” Ellen said quietly. That was only half-true. She was worried about a lot of things—including Sophia, who wouldn’t stop looking over her shoulder at something, then shaking her head. But that wasn’t her main concern. “These monsters don’t match any portal world I’ve read up on—and I’ve checked up on all the A-Rank and lower worlds in the GC records.”

  “Yeah, I noticed you weren’t sure,” Kade said. “In the short term, it doesn’t matter, does it? We need to get rid of them, then figure out more about them after the fact.”

  “Right, but…” Ellen trailed off, thinking. “I also couldn’t find any record of the S-Rank portal break in Carlsbad.”

  “That’s what I was worried about,” Kade said. “I’ll have Jessie look into it later. She’s got more access than we do. Maybe she’ll be able to find answers.”

  He stalked off into the corn rows, and Ellen followed him. One more group—at most—and they’d have all the monsters that had entered the green triangle. Then they could wait for the Guardians and work on talking their way out of whatever that guild had in mind for them. Kade headed down the path they’d smashed into the field. One more group, Ellen told herself. Then they’d be done here.

  But they didn’t find the monsters.

  The Guardians had found them first.

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