The cave was shallow and dry, perfect for temporary camps. Climbing teams used it regularly, at least those bold enough to hunt for soulprints, reagents, and crafting materials in the Volwood did. The apex predator of the region, a manticore, was attributed with over a hundred kills already, and those were just the ones the climbers knew about. There was no telling how many teams had been completely wiped out by the monster.

  When Lorka had announced that they were going to kill the fucker who’d mugged them on Floor 0, Armid and Shu had been eager to participate. When he’d unveiled his master plan, one that relied on Shu and his Dampen Presence soulprint, eagerness had turned to anxiety.

  But Shu had done it. He’d told himself the whole time that he was an idiot to go along with such an insane plan, especially when the onus of the risk was almost completely on him, but he’d done it. His team had tracked down the manticore’s lair—not a hard task, given how easy that information had been to obtain—and successfully baited it out in the direction of their victim’s group.

  It felt like overkill to sic a manticore on all of them, especially that mage of theirs. She was pretty hot, hot enough that Shu wouldn’t mind dropping a couple of danirs on her nightstand on his way out, at least. Lorka was not to be denied, however, and if the rest of the asshole’s group had to die to ensure he met the same fate, then so be it.

  “Do you think they’re dead yet?” Shu asked as he paced back and forth.

  “I think you’re going to wear a rut in the floor if you don’t calm down,” Lorka told him while Armid laughed.

  “What if they beat the manticore?”

  “That group? Not a fucking chance,” Armid said. “Sure, that fuckstick can fight. Can’t deny that. But the other three are worthless. I recognized the big guy. He’s that shitty healer who refused to heal for us a few months ago, remember?”

  Lorka paused to think. “On the Lorsha Banks run?”

  “Yeah. We ended up taking that guy with the bow instead.”

  “Oh yeah. I remember. That guy had a lot of good stuff on him.”

  The trio shared a grin and a laugh at that. Their temporary climbing partner had ended up in the river after they’d refused to give him a Shimmer Scale soulprint they’d pulled off one of the fish. There was no point in wasting good gear, so they’d sold off everything they didn’t personally have a use for.

  Shu patted the dagger on his belt fondly. It was a really nice piece, one he’d had his eye on since the second they’d recruited that archer. What did a guy with a bow need with a dagger, anyway?

  “Okay,” Shu said, dragging the topic back to their newest victims. “What if they manage to run away, like they did with those warblers?”

  Getting those fucking things stirred up enough to spread out and start searching up and down the river for Shu had been even more nerve-wracking than taunting the manticore into chasing him. Warblers didn’t have to catch Shu, they just needed to get close enough to put him under their spell. Fortunately for him, he was a quick runner, and he hadn’t minded sacrificing a few throwing knives to get their attention from as far away as possible.

  “They won’t,” Lorka insisted. “And if they do, we’ll find something else. Maybe they’ll be so beat up that I’ll just go finish them off myself.”

  “Not without me,” Armid insisted. “I want that asshole dead just as much as you do.”

  “Too bad we can’t take their soulprints,” Lorka mused. “Even if they’re shit, four climbers ought to have a few between them. Might be enough to make up for the money he stole.”

  “He had a new sword,” Shu offered. “Looked expensive.”

  “That’ll be a good start,” Armid said. He lifted his own sword out of its sheath and held it up to show off the blade. It was scratched and notched all the way down its length, mostly due to Armid’s poor aim and a particularly thick-skulled worg they’d fought. The fact that the big idiot was too lazy to do any maintenance on it didn’t help, either.

  “But why bother to learn when soon we’ll be so rich I can buy a self-repairing sword?” Armid had cited more than once as justification. Shu could hear the big man’s words clearly every single time he looked at the battered blade.

  Something icy blue flickered through Shu’s peripheral vision. Confused, he turned to look, only to see the guy who’d kicked their asses back on Floor 0 standing at the mouth of the cave. “Oh shit,” Shu whispered to himself before raising the alarm. “Lorka! Trouble!”

  He expected the two bruisers on his team to rush past him and keep the enemy tied up while Shu circled around and looked for an opening, but that didn’t happen. It was the sound of wet, haggard breathing that clued him in to the fact that something had gone wrong.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Then it was the sight of Armid grasping at his throat, a blade of blue-white ice lodged in it and copious amounts of blood pouring down the front of his jerkin, that confirmed Shu’s worst fears. Their attempts at getting the other team killed had failed, again, and they’d been caught. They were going to die.

  No. I refuse to die because Lorka’s fucked up plan blew up in our faces. I’ll make a run for it while this asshole is distracted.

  Lorka got his shield up just in time to deflect another of those ice blades, which somehow just appeared out of nowhere and hurtled through the air without any indication that they were being created. His face twisted in rage, the warrior scooped up his axe and leaped forward to attack.

  That was Shu’s cue to leave. He activated his stealthy soulprint and faded out of everyone else’s perception. It wasn’t foolproof, but with the enemy climber focused on dealing with Lorka, it would be enough for Shu to slip out unnoticed. Once he was out in the trees, there’d be so much cover that no one would ever find him.

  At least, that was the plan. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way at all. The climber met Lorka’s axe with his own blade, easily slapping the attack aside. In a less deadly situation, Shu might have laughed at the expression of shock on Lorka’s face. No one ever out-muscled the big man, not since he’d obtained Musclebound and started feeding every scrap of anima he got into it.

  This climber wasn’t stronger than Lorka, exactly. Shu wasn’t much of a swordsman himself and couldn’t be sure what exactly was happening, but it was some fancy technique or trick. Lorka generally bulled through any of that kind of shit and laughed in his opponents’ faces when they realized his raw power was overwhelming.

  Not this time, though. Who the fuck is this guy?

  It didn’t matter. The writing was on the wall, and Shu wasn’t going to stick around to watch the fight reach its inevitable conclusion. This guy had somehow killed or escaped from a fucking manticore; Lorka didn’t stand a chance by himself, and Shu doubted he’d be able to change that outcome.

  He was almost to the mouth of the cave when hot pain flared across his leg. Something wet soaked his skin, and he was suddenly too weak to support his own weight. Shu tumbled to the ground and twisted around to look, half-expecting to see a knife sticking out of him. Instead, there was nothing but a wide, bloody gash, like someone had slashed a sword across his calf.

  Even as he watched, another ice blade appeared behind the stranger’s back and launched itself at Shu. Crying out in surprise, Shu abandoned focusing on his soulprint and desperately contorted himself to get out of the way. The ice blade slammed against the ground and shattered, peppering him with tiny shards that left dozens of cuts all over Shu’s face.

  The next time Shu looked up, Lorka was down on one knee, blood matting his hair and covering half his face. The side of his skull was split open wide enough to see brain matter, definitely a fatal wound that just hadn’t quite caught up to Lorka yet.

  Oh. That’s it then. I’m going to die. We’re all going to die.

  The climber rammed his sword into Lorka’s chest, the reinforced muscles not even slowing him down. Lorka grunted once and gave his opponent a look of pained disbelief, then he toppled over and lay still in an ever-increasing pool of his own blood.

  “That’s two,” the climber said calmly as he turned to face Shu. “Your turn.”

  God. I don’t want to die. Save me. Please, do something. Send me a miracle.

  Shu couldn’t take his eyes off the length of bloody steel steadily approaching him. It was the last thing he saw before everything went dark.

  * * *

  Sorin wiped his blade on Twitchy’s cloak and sheathed it, then gave the camp an appraising look. The equipment was cheap, practically garbage. The camping gear was ratty and falling apart. The food was… acceptable, barely.

  That shield’s alright, I guess. Too heavy, but I’ve used worse, and I don’t have one.

  He didn’t particularly care to use a shield at all, not when it tied up a hand he might need to direct his magic, but at the rank his soulprints were at, it didn’t really matter. Besides, it’d be worth some money later.

  Speaking of money, let’s see if you idiots have another payday for me. God, I can’t believe it was these three morons causing us so many problems today. Maybe it’s better if I don’t tell the others that they were targeting me. Hold up, what’s this?

  Twitchy’s boots gave the slightest impression of anima, barely a whiff. “Enchanted?” Sorin muttered to himself as he pulled them off and set them aside to look at later. Whatever they’d been enchanted with, it wouldn’t be very strong, but they might sell for a nice purse after all.

  Other than another twenty danirs, there was nothing else of value. Sorin packed up what he could, shook his head, and was about to leave the corpses to feed whatever monster happened to come by next when he noticed something odd at the very back of the cave.

  Carved on the wall were four lines that formed a rectangle. In the middle was a weird symbol, some sort of circle with seven parallel lines scratched across it. If that had been it, Sorin would have dismissed it, but it reminded him of the door in the mosaic in his soulspace. Almost certain he was imagining things, he risked a quick peek at the mosaic to compare.

  There was no doubt. The proportions and the distinctive bold slashes of the art style were the exact same. But what does the circle mean? That’s not in the mosaic.

  It couldn’t have had anything to do with the trio of idiots he’d just murdered. They were barely rank 1s, and this was connected to Floor 100. It was a clue, of that he was certain. He just didn’t know what it was supposed to mean, or who had put it there. There was no anima in it, nothing to suggest it was anything but some random lines etched onto a stone wall out in the wilderness.

  Could it be a pattern, like a soulprint?

  Almost hesitantly, he channeled some of his anima into the carving. It took hardly any to fill it, and within moments, the entire thing was glowing softly. Sorin leaned in closer to study it, then jerked back in sudden panic. Black ink dripped out of the carving like blood, running down the wall and pooling on the ground.

  It barely took three seconds for the ink to clump together and the voidling to rise out of it. Another second passed while it studied Sorin. Then it attacked.