Having grown up on a farm, I knew what horses were like—big, usually dirty creatures that took a lot of effort to break, especially the young ones. My back still ached sometimes when I thought about the time I tried to break a young stallion when I was sixteen and got thrown off for my trouble.

  Dad had been so angry.

  But the horse that emerged from the trees around us looked nothing like the work horses we and our neighbors used on our farms.

  It looked like a horse of war.

  That was the best way to describe it. With pitch-black fur, glowing red eyes, and chainmail armor, the horse looked like it was ready to go to war against an entire army.

  And given how powerful the horse obviously was, I wasn’t entirely convinced that an army, even a big one, would actually win against this thing.

  Even before my portable pinged and identified this creature as a Codex Beast, I wouldn’t have mistaken it for anything else. Between its glowing red eyes, crimson glyphs blinking just beneath its fur, and its massive size and obvious strength, it would have been strange if it wasn’t a Codex Beast:

  Codex Beast identified! Darkspike the Shade Steed.

  Species: War Horse

  Synced Partner: [REDACTED]

  Chapter: 5

  Page: 1

  Affiliation: [REDACTED]

  Attempt to find public information on Darkspike the Shade Steed has been denied by high-tier protocols enforced by the Obsidian Order.

  Codex Note: Only fight this thing if you want to die a very horrible, very painful, very early death.

  I blinked at the notification. It reminded me of the notification I’d received back in my trial when I first encountered Nimbus, only this one was much longer and had a lot more detail. Not that any of the information was actually useful other than the information about its Chapter and Page.

  Which certainly explained the Codex Note at the end advising me not to pick a fight with that thing. In my defense, fighting that thing hadn’t even occurred to me.

  Between my legs, Nimbus quivered and did his stress breathing thing again. “By the Codex … not that thing …”

  I looked down at Nimbus. “You know that horse?”

  Nimbus shivered. “Not exactly, but—”

  Darkspike snorted and took one step into the clearing. Just a single step made the ground tremble under our feet ever-so-slightly. What looked like a wave of purple mana spread out from where it stepped, quickly reaching Nimbus and me before we could do anything.

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  A coldness sank into my bones just then, making me shiver as a black scroll unfurled before my eyes:

  Mana Negation Field in effect! Your ability to cast spells has been restricted for the next 5 minute(s).

  Five minutes?

  We’d be dead in five seconds if Darkspike attacked us.

  Not that having the ability to use my spells would make much of a difference. A Chapter Five Codex Beast was stronger than Nimbus and me combined. I was frankly surprised it hadn’t tried to kill us yet.

  Nimbus was shivering underneath me, too, which told me that he had likely been affected by the same Mana Negation Field. That meant we were both powerless against Darkspike. We couldn’t even run. Tried as I might, I couldn’t see Darkspike’s stats, I suspected it would have no trouble catching either of us if we tried to escape.

  A deep voice, gravelly and guttural, came from the trees around us. “By order of the Obsidian Order, I command you to stay.”

  The authority in the man’s voice was so overwhelming that I couldn’t ignore it even if I wanted to. I went stockstill, unable to move my limbs, while Nimbus let loose a pathetic little squeak that made it clear he couldn’t escape, either.

  A notification appeared in my view:

  You have been caught in a submission loop! Chapter One Codexers cannot fight submission loops created by Chapter Five Codexers.

  My breath caught in my lungs. I’d never heard of a submission loop, but if a Chapter Five Codexer—and not a Codex Beast, I noticed—had trapped me in one, then the situation was even worse than I feared.

  The clanking of metal rang throughout the clearing, punctuated by the sound of branches scraping against steel. The scraping sounded like someone screaming through a fatal fever.

  And then he appeared.

  How he appeared so suddenly and without warning, I didn’t know. The giant man in black armor emerged from within the trees, his armor threaded with obsidian. He carried a massive, double-edged glaive in both hands, glowing the same crimson color as the eyes of Darkspike. He somehow looked even bigger than Darkspike, at least at the moment.

  But his face was what actually caught my attention.

  Because he didn’t have a face.

  Well, he probably did, but I couldn’t see it because he wore a steel helmet shaped like the top of a Stationary Node. His helmet didn’t even have any eyeholes. It bore a single, jagged red glyph in the center, the same shade as blood.

  Yet somehow, I felt the armored man staring at me through his helmet. It felt like he was staring into my soul.

  The man stomped toward me and Nimbus, each step ponderously slow yet lightning fast at the same time. Just staring at him seemed to mess with my perception of time, though maybe it was the submission loop that he had caught me in.

  Desperately, I tried to scan him with my portable, only to get this error notification:

  ERROR: User lacks permissions from the Obsidian Order to read this Codexer’s data.

  The Obsidian Order? Weren’t those the same guys who had asked the SNA to send out that Codex Alert about Salome? Was this guy associated with them?

  I would have asked the armored man all those questions and more, but I found it difficult to speak. I could only stare up at the huge man as he stomped toward me, every step of his massive boots making the ground tremble under our feet. I felt Nimbus trembling between my boots, too, which didn’t help matters. Sweat broke across my entire body as I struggled to fight the submission loop, but it was lifting a boulder off my shoulders.

  The huge Codexer stopped before me and Nimbus, gazing down at us both from behind his glyph-covered helmet. Behind him, Darkspike huffed and pawed at the ground but did not come any closer. Evidently, the Codex Beast—which had to be synced with this man, there was no way it couldn’t be—did not feel the need to get any closer.

  The mysterious Codexer tilted his head to the side. “I see … yes, I smell Salome on him, too, Darkspike.”

  I blinked. I hadn’t heard Darkspike speak, but I knew that Codex Beasts could speak telepathically to their partners as well as speak out loud. Perhaps Darkspike was talking to his partner that way, though I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like speaking out loud would have granted me or Nimbus any special advantages.

  The mysterious Codexer nodded after a time. “Yes, I agree. People lie. Memories do not.”

  The mysterious Codexer raised his glaive and brought it down on my head.

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