It was so dark that Erich wasn’t sure whether his eyes were open or not.

  He felt like he was floating in darkness. The only sounds were the occasional clink and scrape of a boot as one of his companions missed a step, the only sensation was the feeling of the string pulling gently at his wrist, connecting him to Kaden.

  Somewhere ahead of them, a loyalist led their group. Hopefully the woman had the ability to see in the dark, but the other humans weren’t exactly forthcoming about the nature of their abilities and artifacts.

  His toes hit stone, and Erich stumbled forward a couple of steps. He grunted, and the world swirled in darkness around him. For a second, there was nothing but vertigo and the endless black, but then he caught himself.

  Erich paused for a second, straining his ears. He didn’t hear anything other than the ragged breathing of Kaden in front of him, but that was hardly comforting. There was no way to know what a predator would sound like as it approached in the dark, but without any light, it was the only thing he could think of.

  The string tugged at his wrist, and Erich had no choice but to move onward. His mind whirled, clogged with paranoia as he imagined great beasts stalking him in the dark. He couldn’t see or hear anything, but that only made it worse. It was impossible not to imagine one of creatures, an arms-length away, just waiting to attack him.

  Up ahead, a tongue clicked twice, and Erich stopped, heaving a quick sigh of relief. That was the signal from the First Sword that they were at their target. He couldn’t see anything, but orders were orders. Erich drew his sword, slicing the blade across the string that connected him with Kaden and closing his eyes.

  Nothing happened. One second bled into another, and Erich found himself doubting himself. Maybe he’d imagined the sound? Maybe he was standing alone in the dark while the rest of the group continued on without him, destined to be lost forever without light or food on the empty plains of the worldbridge?

  His palms began to sweat. Erich wanted to say something. To shout for help, to move, to sprint in the general direction they had been moving. Anything.

  He bit his lower lip, running his mind through the sword form of the Swaying Willow Blade over and over again. The darkness pressed in on him, threatening to swallow his consciousness as he repeated the moves over and over again.

  Feint toward the shoulder, slash at the waist. Parry to the left, rotate grip on handle and upward cut. Feint low and high followed by a chest high slash. He replayed the forms faster and faster, trying to to fill his mind's eye with nothing but the martial art as doubt and claustrophobia screamed angry static from his subconscious.

  Seconds ticked on. Erich wasn’t sure if minutes had passed or if it was only a brief pause. A voice deep in his mind screamed that he should take a step forward, to reach out and touch Kaden in order to make sure that he hadn’t been abandoned to the night.

  Anything. The image of an upward slash faded, becoming hazy as Erich felt himself growing distracted. A touchstone. Something in the real world to ground him and let him know where he was and how long he had been there. An interruption to the empty, silent void that he-

  A flash of light, bright enough to stab deep into Erich’s eyes through his lids, interrupted his anxiety.

  He surged forward, a sigh of relief on his lips despite the urgency of his situation. A spire stood in front of him, the entire stone tower visible in the waning light of the overcharged glowstone that had just exploded in mid-air. Three more glowstones, each filled with an ordinary amount of mana, were thrown toward the rock formation.

  Erich blinked away the bright after image from the shattered glowstone. A cave in the side of the spire was their target, fifteen feet high and just about as wide. He couldn’t see anything in the interior, but he already knew what would be in there.

  A staircase and a martial artist.

  The stairs would travel up to Elysium and down to the Brimstone Wastes. The walls of the staircase would be lined with inert glowstone, and the first duty of the vanguard from Hollendil would be to charge in and activate the crystalline interior of the spire.

  Loyalists would follow a second afterward to engage the cinderborn martial artist. Theoretically Erich and his companions would be assisting them, but no one in the warband pretended that their efforts would be anything more than a distraction.

  Even if they sacrificed themselves, second tier martial artists wouldn’t be able to do much more than buy the loyalists a couple of seconds.

  The ground blurred past, uneven crags and bumps of stone blending together as Erich sprinted for the opening. The light from the glowstone that the loyalists had used as a flare faded entirely, leaving nothing about the dim illumination coming from the handful of magical stones that were clattering to a halt around the cave’s entrance.

  Erich jumped into the cave a half step behind Kaden. The tunnel wasn’t well lit, none of the glowstones had landed inside so their group was forced to make do with the diffuse light filtering in from the stone plains.

  In the center of the passage was a man sitting with his eyes closed and his legs crossed, a red sword planted into the ground face first in front of him.

  He rushed past the seated figure, taking note of the large circle of glossy obsidian that surrounded the man as he sprinted toward the crystal walls of the stairwell that marked the back of the tunnel.

  Harold reached the wall first, slapping a hand to it and pumping in enough mana to illuminate the entire cave. For a brief second, the shadows disappeared revealing a stark room with nothing but the meditating cinderborn and a pack full of food and water.

  Then, just as Erich was reaching the back of the cave, the first of the loyalists burst in.

  The cinderborn warrior stirred, and the mana vanished from the passage.

  The air around him seemed to harden, solidifying and trapping him like a bug in amber. Erich almost blacked out as a stifling blanket of force pressed down on him, driving him to his knees.

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  Air burned in Erich’s lungs as he struggled to crawl the last dozen or so feet to the stairwell, his bones creaking in protest. He only made it half-way there before the cinderborn opened his eyes.

  Erich’s skin blistered as scorching mana erupted from the man, filling the entire cavern complex in a fraction of a second. He blinked his eyes, trying unsuccessfully to clear them as they began to water in response to change in his environment.

  Even Erich’s lungs felt like they were being scoured by the heat. He gasped for breath, but it was like he was a fish flopping on a riverbank. No matter how hard he tried to pull in oxygen, there was nothing left for him to breathe.

  The moment ended as loyalists swarmed into the cave. Erich used the moment of respite to scramble the last handful of steps into the stairwell. He turned around just in time to see the first blade fall to the floor, his body split diagonally from his shoulder to the hip.

  Fire swirled around the cinderborn as he stood up. The warrior seemed to move in slow motion as he reached toward the sword that was still planted in the ground. He swung his left arm horizontally, index and middle finger extended, and a pulse of mana arced through the air.

  The big loyalist that had threatened Kaden got his sword up just in time, but it barely mattered. The blade shattered, sending the man flying into one of the cave’s walls where he bounced off, tumbling bonelessly to the ground.

  None of that stopped the other loyalists. They swarmed through the opening like ants, leaping over the bodies of their fallen companions as they charged toward the cinderborn martial artist. The air tingled with magic as a half dozen techniques activated at once, some of the humans taking up defensive stances while the others swung and stabbed their weapons.

  A casual sweep of the cinderborn’s sword deflected everything. Two of the loyalists were thrown to the ground, but the rest managed to set their feet, attacking a second time in a storm of steel and mana.

  The cinderborn took a single step forward, his sword only visible through the flaming afterimages it left behind.

  An ax wielding loyalist was cut down with the first stroke of his sword. The woman behind him thrust a spear only for the cinderborn to deflect it effortlessly and cut both of her arms off at the elbow using only a flick of his wrist.

  It was like watching an artist paint. Each twitch of the cinderborn’s shoulders sent another spray of color spattering against the walls even as loyalist corpses fell to the ground.

  The survivors rushed over the bodies of their fallen, attempting to circle around and flank the cinderborn warrior. Their idea was sound, after all their opponent only had one sword. Unfortunately, their tactics were meaningless in the face of the enemy’s overwhelming strength.

  Erich crouched in the stairwell, eyes wide as Harold, Gwen and Kaden huddled next to them. The loyalists and the cinderborn were completely ignoring the Hollendil martial artists, but it was hard for him to feel slighted while watching their fight.

  The cinderborn warrior completely outclassed the loyalists, and the loyalists were so far above Erich that it felt like an insult to call both of them martial artists. Mana flashed and crackled as they used techniques to move as fast as an arrow, zigzagging in a futile attempt to avoid the enemy master’s blade. When they swung their weapons, it was with enough force to crack rocks.

  Even from a distance, the wind from their attacks was battering Erich hard enough to force him to his knees. Harold and Gwen were faring a little better, but both of them had pained looks on their faces as they struggled against the pressure.

  Despite that, there was nothing fair about the fight. The strongest of the humans managed to last for five or six quick exchanges before being tossed aside, grievously wounded. None of them managed to injure or even tire the cinderborn warrior out. In barely thirty seconds, it was all over and the opposing martial artist was breathing normally.

  He turned slowly, fixing his glowing amber gaze on the six of them. Harold took a step forward, he raised his sword, arms visibly trembling as he squared off with the cinderborn. A second later Kaden and Gwen joined him. Erich stood up to join them only for Harold to shake his head.

  “You’re only first tier,” Harold said, his voice tight. Erich could see the man’s knuckles whiten as he clutched the hilt of his sword. “You wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  Erich frowned but he didn’t say anything. At this point, their tiers meant nothing. The loyalists were far stronger than their group. Any two of them could have handled all of the Hollendil martial artists at once, and they looked like clumsy children, fumbling around in front of an apex predator.

  The battle was already over. If the cinderborn wanted the six of them dead, they were dead. As simple as that. Arguing with Harold wouldn’t save anyone’s life. It would only cheapen the moment.

  “Ambushing a warrior in meditation,” the cinderborn’s voice was a dry croak. “That’s a bit cowardly even for the Cothleer Empire.”

  Erich froze. There wasn’t any anger on the man’s face. Really, there wasn’t any emotion at all. The cinderborn was looking at the six of them like they were objects, slightly musing but below his actual notice.

  “Still,” he pursed his lips. “I don’t suppose this was your idea. You have the smell of slave warriors on you. Killing you would tarnish my blade and my honor. Tell me where your elf master is and I will let you leave. I doubt you will survive the wastes, but I won’t dirty my sword with your blood.”

  Harold wavered, glancing back over his shoulder at the rest of the group. One of the Iron Axs, Brett nodded, followed by Gwen. Erich copied the gesture and sheathed his sword.

  “He is outside,” Harold wavered slightly as he replied. “The martial artists were supposed to keep you tied up while he finished gathering mana for a spell that he was sure would finish you. Our job was to be a distraction and activate the glowstones so that everyone else could see you.”

  A torrent of mana swallowed the cinderborn’s response, flooding the cave as a storm of ice, jagged shards that ranged between a foot and three feet long, filled the air.

  Erich blinked dumbly. Time seemed to slow and it was as if his feet were rooted to the ground. Glittering spears of ice rushed toward him, a rainbow of light in their wake as they diffracted the illumination from the glowstone and painted the blood and stone of the cavern in a million different colors.

  What a pretty place to die.

  He didn’t know where the thought came from, but once it popped into Erich’s head, he couldn’t think of anything else as the deadly blizzard inched toward him.

  Something hit him in the chest. Harold’s hand.

  Erich folded over, the impact of the blow knocking him down the staircase. He could see Harold’s mouth moving. His friend was saying something, but he couldn’t quite make out what it was.

  His brain struggled to process the moment. The magic attack, the sensation of weightlessness, Harold’s scream, all of it seemed utterly unreal. Like he was feverish and dreaming back in his cabin.

  A spear of ice erased Harold’s head.

  Blood splashed into the air, instantly freezing into ice crystals as the harsh cold that accompanied the magical attack ripped the breath from Erich’s throat. His last sight of his friends was a smear of shredded meat as the spell plastered them against the back wall of the cave.

  Then his spine hit a step, sending a spike of pain through his system. Unwillingly, Erich let out a scream that was strangled in his throat by the frigid air. The force of the spell raged around him, squeezing Erich’s skull like a vice until his vision began to narrow.

  He tumbled backward down the stairs, a scream and a blast of heat from above marking the cinderborn’s counter attack.

  The second wall of pressure sent a wave of screaming agony through Erich’s body as it roasted the nerves that had been flash frozen by the first. His head snapped backward from the force of the blast, slamming the back of his head into one of the crystalline steps and forcing him into blissfully concussed darkness.