Jeff recovered from the blast first.

  His sword and shield were nearby, and he rolled painfully onto his hands and knees, then crawled to his weapons. The S-Ranked Citysplitter had stopped in place, a hundred yards away—no distance at all for a monster that powerful—and dust choked his throat and vision. Rubble, some chunks smaller than Jeff’s armored fist, others bigger than the Desert Wind building, littered the ground. Hot, humid air poured in from the east, and nothing stopped it.

  The 303 Wall was breached.

  Shadowy figures moved in the dust and rubble, and he steeled himself.

  Yasmin was in there somewhere. Or maybe she was behind him. He didn’t know, and that was worse than anything. Worse than the 303 Wall coming down. Worse than the monsters moving into his city. Worse than any of that.

  His people. His responsibility. And he didn’t know if he’d failed them. Sophia. Ellen. Raul. Yasmin. He couldn’t add them to his list, next to Carlos, Angie, Lamar, and Nevaeh. He couldn’t.

  Split-Second Shield.

  The skill erupted in front of him, a transparent blue wall of hexagons. His Mana started to drain, and he stepped forward—into the gap in the wall.

  Opposite the S-Ranked monster, whose pyramid tip was flattened and twisted, and the other ones pouring around it.

  Jeff knew, in his head, that he couldn’t win this. The weakest monsters he was up against were B-Rank. He had no support. He had no damage-dealers. The Light of Dawn, the Phoenix Reborn, and the others had all failed to stop the monsters. He was C-Rank, for fuck’s sake!

  But in his heart, he knew he had to try. Kade wouldn’t give up—not while he had a promise to keep. Not while he could still fight. So, Jeff stood against the horde of brass-and-silk monsters as a blast of steam ripped through the gap and slammed into his Split-Second Shield.

  He would hold as long as he had to.

  Or at least as long as he could.

  I watched from high above the burning city.

  This time, I understood what I was seeing more quickly.

  The V-shaped gash in the 303 Wall finished collapsing in front of me—right where Jeff, Ellen, and the others had been fighting. I hardened myself, watching as impassively as I could as a handful of delvers picked themselves up out of the rubble. Monsters surged toward the gap in the wall. Overhead, a handful of the brand-new Traynor-Overholz Cannons fired down into them, but they didn’t even slow the rising tide as it worked its way through blocks of concrete and rebar the size of city buses and the remnants of hundreds of core-powered Scripts and Bindings.

  I stood by, watching, as Jeff’s Split-Second Shield erupted across the gap. He was hurt, but behind him, Sophia and Yasmin rallied—and a handful of other delvers I didn’t recognize.

  Not Ellen, though.

  For one twisted, horrible moment, I knew my decision to reject the Paragon’s gift had killed her. I knew it was my fault. And worse, I knew that everything happening outside the portal was one hundred percent real. I wanted to lash out, and if the Paragon had offered in that moment, I would have given in.

  Then I cleared my head. I’d decided to trust Jeff years ago, outside the principal’s office. And Ellen had my absolute trust. She had ever since that moment in Roswell, when I’d put my progression in her hands, and she’d done the same with me.

  They would survive this.

  “Will they? Their fates—even the shadow woman’s—are unsealed. There is no certainty for them. No absolute.”

  The monsters swarmed over Jeff. His Split-Second Shield held longer than I expected it to, but then five A-Rank monsters cut through it and sliced him open from throat to stomach. He died without even screaming—and Sophia and Yasmin fell tight afterward.

  It hurt. The pain of watching them die wasn’t just in my head. It felt it in my gut, and in my suddenly furious core.

  “You can make the decision to save their lives.”

  The scene replayed, moment for moment, up until the second Jeff stood against the horde of automaton monsters. He lowered his shield and braced it with two hands. His sword was jammed between two pieces of rubble, ready to be drawn and used.

  But instead of the flickering, translucent barrier of Split-Second Shield, a wall of Mana ten yards thick surged from Jeff. It filled the gap in the 303 Wall, then doubled over onto itself, burning a brilliant blue so bright it was nearly white. I couldn’t see through it—and the monsters couldn’t punch through it, either.

  He breathed, gigantic, heaving breaths that shook his armor, as Yasmin and Sophia watched in awe. The shield should have collapsed. Jeff didn’t have the Mana to sustain something like that. But it didn’t. And I had no idea why.

  “Seal their fates, Paragon of the Stormsteel Path. Accept my gifts. Give your friends the power to survive—and to strike back.”

  And then, there it was.

  The shadows ripped away from the world as Ellen started to build her blackshadow tornado. And, in that moment, before I could give in, I forced my eyes open.

  “That was…rough.”

  I pushed myself to my feet. Tank and the rest of the GC’s ghost-shrouded delving team were covered in ichor and gore—so much of it that their white robes and masks were a dull yellow-brown. Support and Fighter both sported injuries. Fighter’s mask was cracked, and his eye had been popped, and Support’s arm was gone at the elbow.

  But Tank didn’t seem concerned with their team—only with me. “Are you ready to continue, Delver? The Vision Gate is just ahead.”

  I breathed, the last moments of the vision I’d just watched clear in my mind. There’d been no sound. Only my friends’ deaths. “What’s past the Vision Gate?” I asked.

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  “No one can say.” Tank paused. When they continued, their voice was more serious. “To get there, we need to get you past the Gate Watcher. There are two possible ways to do that. First, we can defeat it. This is preferable. But if that doesn’t seem possible, your job is to leave us behind.”

  “No.”

  I said it before I even thought it, and Tank stiffened, then rose to their full height. “Delver. Do your job, and we will do ours. Do you understand?”

  “I’m not abandoning you.”

  “You won’t be. You will be completing our mission. Once you’re in the Vision Gate, we have no need to stay in the portal. Equally, once you’re there, the portal will begin a decaying cycle. We can take advantage of that and, perhaps, succeed at our fight where we failed before.”

  I nodded. “So, from the time I go in, I’ll have an hour?”

  “Yes.” Tank pointed down the tunnel. “Let’s go.”

  We went.

  Million-Legged T’hu’uk: C-Rank Monster

  The Gate Watcher was, to no one’s surprise, another centipede. I shivered. So far, I’d managed to keep my disgust at bay, but something about this one in particular was almost overwhelmingly repulsive. It wasn’t that much bigger than the regular ones. It didn’t spit acid—that had gotten Support’s arm—or look fast and slippery like the Assassin Runners, which had ripped Fighter’s face-plate apart.

  But it had too many legs.

  They wriggled along its underbelly, just like they were supposed to. But even more skittered in the air over its back, and two more sets scrabbled at the packed dirt walls and roots that hung down from the cavern ceiling as the oversized insect clambered from floor to wall, then stopped above us, reeking yellow-orange bile dripping from its eight jaws.

  It was viscerally, gut-twistingly awful, and I couldn’t figure out why.

  But, on the far side of the cavern, up a root-choked dirt ramp, was a single, upside-down V of cavern stone—the same kind of cavern stone that the Fallen Delvers portal had been made of in the moments before it shifted forms. And filling most of that inverted V was a shimmering, red, yellow, and green portal. That had to be it—the Vision Gate.

  Then T’hu’uk lowered its body onto the ground, stringing itself down a good twenty feet from the clump of roots its tail circled to the floor below, and the fight started in earnest.

  The GC’s team dove into battle. Tank and Fighter were on the boss in seconds, weapons flashing and shield raised to take the first eight-part assault from the centipede’s jaws. The fighter’s axe slammed into a leg, cutting it free from the boss’s side.

  Archer started rapid-firing, emptying their quiver at a shocking rate. Even though T’hu’uk was almost certainly a boss they’d never seen before, they acted like they knew how to kill it. Who were these guys? They were good.

  And as for me, I circled, looking for an opportunity.

  Stamina: 121/470 (+10), Mana 215/600 (+10)

  I didn’t feel E-Rank. I still felt like an A-Ranker. But T’hu’un gave the impression of being something well beyond me, and the other centipedes had been tough to kill. The portal was working against me, trapping me at a lower rank in its own way, and I needed to play around that.

  So, instead of pressing the attack like I would have against a real C-Rank boss, I waited, and I cast. Avatar of Lightning—forming a storm clone—was first. No Polarity Shift or Rolling Thunder for copies and power-ups. Just a single clone that rushed into battle, lightning sword crackling. Then, a single Brendan’s Stormfire Lance. It sizzled and crackled against the boss’s armor uselessly.

  I didn’t care, though.

  My goal was simple: remove legs.

  I’d figured out why I hated this boss so much—and it had to do with that first Arboreal portal world, when I’d gone up against a swarm of spiders. I hated them, and this thing’s legs reminded me too much of that.

  Cutting Storm would solve that.

  Two Wind Charges circled Nimbus Edge’s blade as I circled, looking for the opening I wanted. Not the one I needed. My goal wasn’t to kill the monster in front of me in one fell swoop. But the one I wanted. I’d hold my attacks until I could take out the most legs possible.

  Wait. Wait.

  There!

  I lunged. Nimbus Edge hummed as it whipped through the air, a slight slash to it. It bit into a single leg—and that leg flew free, twitching as it severed. Then the air filled with wind and lightning as dozens of copies of the attack landed, all across T’hu’uk’s back. Ichor spewed from twenty wounds, and as many legs hit the ground around the monster.

  Then I did it again. Cut. Cutting Storm. Dodge the rain of limbs.

  T’hu’uk slipped from the ceiling. Its bulk slammed into the ground as the GC team scattered. I didn’t move. Nimbus Edge hung in the air in front of me, ready to press my attack.

  Something brushed against my leg. I ignored it until a burning pain ripped through it. Then I looked down.

  The legs I’d cut off weren’t legs. They were smaller centipedes. The million legs didn’t belong to T’hu’uk—they were their own, independent monsters.

  “Now is the time,” Tank said quietly.

  They stood next to me, shield hanging from their arm. Their boot crushed the tiny monster as I pushed Stamina into the bile-tainted wound on my leg. It had found a gap in the Stormsteel armor, and it burned. My fist balled. “We’re winning.”

  “We are,” Tank agreed. “But the Gate is wide open. Go.”

  I nodded. The boss was out of the way, and I didn’t need to win this fight. The GC’s ghost-shrouded team would be fine. Better than fine—they’d be able to leave and get Support and Fighter the help they needed. The best thing I could do for them was enter the shimmering, multi-colored Vision Gate.

  So, after a moment, I broke into a sprint. Up the ramp. Past a thrashing mass of legs and body sections as T’hu’uk thrashed and righted itself. And into the gate.

  My vision swam. Heat washed over me—but it was a dry, desiccating heat, not the oppressive humidity that had drowned Phoenix for weeks. I shielded my eyes from the sudden brightness of the noon sun and squinted as I took in my surroundings.

  A suburban street. Cacti and palm trees. A few clouds on the horizon. And, right behind me, a familiar-looking house. I didn’t need to look for very long to recognize it, or to remember the layout inside—the stairwell with the L-turn, or the landing most of the way up. Or the bathroom with the pressed-wood door and the tub at the top of the stairs.

  “What the hell is this?”

  Jessica Gerald—she rarely thought of herself by her full first name, but this was a first-name situation—wheeled herself through the empty Desert Wind building. She was hurting. Her elbows and knees felt like they were on fire. But even though Stephen was still following her through the building, she’d slapped his hand away when he’d tried to take over and push her along.

  “You’re absolutely sure this won’t get us in trouble?” Stephen asked.

  She looked over her shoulder. Her boyfriend’s hands were halfway between the wheelchair’s handles and his pockets, like he wasn’t sure what to do with them, and Jessie rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say that. We’re absolutely getting in trouble. This core’s not something I’m supposed to have. But the city’s in trouble, and someone has to do something, and they took Kade away, so it can’t be him. It’s gotta be us! It’s gotta be me!”

  “It’s just…look, I like you a lot, Jessie—“

  “Thanks. Mutual feeling, there.” Jessie kept going. There was workout equipment everywhere, and navigating the gym was tough—especially because someone kept leaving eight hundred pounds of weights on their bars, and leaving them in the middle of the floor. She didn’t know which of the six delvers that was, but she hated them more than anyone right now.

  “What I mean is, you keep getting lucky. At some point, that’s going to run out.”

  “I haven’t gotten lucky yet,” Jessie said. Then she winked, and immediately flushed red. “Sorry. Bad joke.”

  “It’s…it’s fine,” Stephen said. “I just…at some point you’re going to get hurt, and if you get hurt here, no one’s going to be there to bail you out.”

  “I know, Stephen. I know this is a bad idea, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while. The Crone might be able to help us with the Carlsbad Portal and the siege, and Phoenix is out of options. We’re doing this because we have to.”

  “You haven’t even told me who the Crone is, or what we’re doing, though!”

  Jessie reached back and touched Stephen’s hand. “Yeah, you’re right, and there’s no time. Do you trust me?”

  Hesitation. It lasted a long time—longer than Jessie had feared it would. Then he slowly nodded.

  “Then let me go do this, and wait here. Outside of the sparring room. If things go wrong, it’ll give you a little time, and if they go right, you’ll be here for me when I come back.” Jessie hugged Stephen’s waist, then wheeled herself into the guild’s training room, navigating around the cracks that had formed the last time she’d opened a portal to the Crone’s world. She’d been thinking about this for a long time, but thinking about it wasn’t the same as doing it, and it took her a moment to steel herself. Then she nodded, hit the lights, and pulled the moonlight-colored core out. It was time to pay a business partner a visit—and try to save the city while she was at it.

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