The aloof Harmonic Healer, who normally appeared so tall, confident, and in charge, had never looked so pitiful. Crouched low on her hands and knees, Martha’s normally pristine robes were slashed and ripped apart in several places, exposing a lot of her skin. Her arms, in particular, were covered in what appeared to be knife wounds, which bled profusely, though I noticed that her injuries had strange glowing auras around them. Maybe some kind of self-healing spell trying to stop the flow of blood?

  Regardless, it didn’t seem to be doing her much good because she was just barely able to crawl toward us with her open, gaping wounds all over her body. She held out her hand toward us—toward Ruth specifically—and said in a weak voice, “Ruth … flee … return to the village and—”

  A large, bearlike paw appeared out of the bushes and slammed down on the back of her head. The paw crushed Martha’s head before vanishing back into the bushes behind her.

  Ruth gasped, clutching her chest in horror. “Martha! No!”

  A mocking male voice came from the trees around us. “Cry all you like, little girl. Soon you will be joining your mentor and your fellow researchers in the next life, where the tears never end and the flames of Sheol burn eternally.”

  There was more rustling in the bushes around us before several armed bandits emerged. They were all members of the Wolfbrand Bandits, at least double the number of bandits than the ones working under Jezebel, and they looked deadlier, too.

  Nimbus immediately began doing his heavy snort breathing as Ruth drew closer to me, staring at the bandits in pure terror as they emerged from the trees around us. I drew Inkwyrm from my holster around my belt, but didn’t cast any spells yet, though its tip glowed red as if reading my thoughts. None of the bandits appeared to be Codexers, as far as I could tell—otherwise I was sure they would have tried to attack us with spells already—but I was ready to draw on my prewritten spells from my glyph reservoir just the same.

  “Martha,” said Ruth, still staring at the corpse of the researcher before us. She seemed to have forgotten about the bandits already because she wasn’t even looking at them anymore. “Martha, no … this can’t be happening …”

  “Oh, but it most certainly is, little girl,” said that mocking male voice again. “Sometimes, nightmares are real. And trust me when I say they are about to get so much worse.”

  A huge beast suddenly emerged from the trees behind Martha’s corpse. Each step of its massive paw shook the ground slightly, breaking twigs and branches underneath it without effort.

  The creature turned out to be a bear with pitch-black fur, glowing softly with sickeningly red glyphs flashing across its skin below its fur. It reminded me of how Nimbus sometimes looked whenever he cast a spell, but whereas Nimbus’s Codex Beast glyphs glowed a soft teal or sometimes gold, the glyphs on this bear glowed a sickly red shade that didn’t look even remotely natural.

  Yet that did not take away from how dangerous the beast looked. If anything, it just made it look even more dangerous, especially with its big, dark eyes and dagger-like canines. It was two or three times bigger than me and Ruth combined, easily dwarfing Nimbus, who suddenly looked rather tiny compared to that thing. Even from a distance, it stank of wet fur and dirt, along with a strong undercurrent of fresh blood.

  The bandits took a couple of steps back when the Codex Beast emerged, but they didn’t go too far. While they were obviously apprehensive about the Codex Beast—even though it was probably on their side—they weren’t going to let us have an easy escape route. Not that I expected we could outrun them or the bear.

  I didn’t understand why the bandits were so afraid of the Codex Beast Bear, even though it was clearly on their side, but maybe they just didn’t like how it looked. I was freaked out by it, too—though mostly because I could tell it was much more dangerous than any of the bandits surrounding us.

  Beside me, Ruth and Nimbus trembled together equally. Ruth said, in an empty voice, “What is that thing? Nimbus, is that thing a Codex Beast?”

  Nimbus gulped and looked up at Ruth, partly out of annoyance, partly out of fear. “What, just because I’m a Codex Beast, that means I know all of the other Codex Beasts in the area? But yes, that thing is obviously a Codex Beast.”

  “Which means there must be a Codexer among the bandits,” I said, raising my stylus, my eyes darting around at the bandits surrounding us. “But which one—?”

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  There was a crack in the air, and a sizzling blast of dark electricity launched out of the trees toward us. I instinctively cast Minor’s Shield, forming a protective barrier between us and the spell flying toward us, but then it fizzled out, and this notification appeared in my view:

  Warning! Enemy Hex Field prevents spell glyphs from stabilizing.

  I ducked at the last minute, narrowly avoiding the electric blast. It hurtled over my ducked head, singeing the tips of my hair. It smashed into a bush behind me, instantly setting it ablaze with black and orange fire that rose into the air much higher than it should have. The heat was intense, too, making Ruth and me break out into big sweats already.

  “Quick reflexes there for a Chapter One Codexer,” came the sneering male voice from before, which didn’t sound like it belonged to any of the bandits around us. “But as your portable no doubt warned you, you are playing by my rules now, Inscriptionist.”

  A man emerged from the bushes behind the bear. He was clad in the same brown and tan leathers that the rest of the bandits wore, but he also wore a wolf-like hood over his head that cast a shadow over his scarred features. His bulging, muscular arms were unobstructed by his sleeveless vest, with his right hand carried a bloody burlap sack filled with round objects I couldn’t identify from here.

  His left hand, however, was missing entirely. In its place was a metallic hook that ended in a very sharp, bloody point. It glowed with the same sickly red color as the glyphs on the Codex Bear, which meant that this man had to be a Codexer synced with the Codex Bear. Yet that didn’t explain why the Codex Bear looked as if it was being controlled against its will.

  The man stopped beside the Codex Bear, gazing at us with an amused look. His face was strangely familiar, especially his nose, even though this was the first time I had ever seen him. He smelled just as bad as the bear that he stood beside.

  And though this may have been the first time I had seen him, I had the sinking feeling that I knew exactly who he was—especially when I saw his fellow bandits dipping their heads toward him in respect, though of course, they didn’t move from their current positions.

  Ruth finally seemed to find her voice again, because she glared at the man and snapped, “Who are you? Are you the man who killed Martha? What did you do to the rest of the research party?”

  The man smirked at Ruth. “Ask them yourself, little girl. Their heads are right here.”

  The man threw the bloody bag toward us. It landed with a thump on the ground between us and the man, making a rather disgusting squelching noise at the same time.

  Neither Ruth nor I made any move toward the bag. There was no need. We understood the implications of the man’s statement perfectly well.

  Though that didn’t stop my heart from racing or Ruth from freezing on the spot. She just stared at the bloody bag of decapitated heads like her worst fears had just come to life right before her eyes.

  Only Nimbus reacted. He wriggled his nose in the air and made a disgusted noise. “You smell just as terrible as Jezebel, whoever you are—maybe even worse.”

  The man turned his attention to Nimbus and grinned in a way that I didn’t like at all. “So you are the rabbit that lured my sister to her death, eh? If only I didn’t need you for my plans, we’d be having rabbit stew tonight. Right, boys?”

  The bandits all laughed and jeered at Nimbus—and the rest of us, for that matter. Nimbus immediately snuggled closer to Ruth’s chest, and I noticed Ruth hug him a little bit tighter. She still seemed to be in shock at seeing what happened to her fellow researchers, however.

  The man, whose identity I was becoming increasingly certain of, then gestured with his hooked hand at Ruth. “And look, boys! That silly little girl is so upset about the loss of her fellow researchers. No amount of shekels in the world could buy us entertainment this good!”

  Mocking, cruel laughter broke out among the bandits as soon as their leader said those words. The bandit leader himself was not laughing, but he was grinning with amusement like this was all some kind of hilarious joke.

  Though Ruth didn’t react to their laughter, she appeared to be wilting under their sneering words regardless. She sank to her knees, still clutching Nimbus in her arms, but she didn’t say anything. She seemed to have lost the ability to speak.

  To say that my hands were shaking was an understatement.

  But they were not shaking out of fear.

  They shook out of anger.

  It was one thing for these bandits to murder all of Ruth’s fellow researchers, but to then follow that up with laughter and mockery like this was all some kind of joke or prank for their amusement?

  I couldn’t stand it.

  I raised Inkwyrm again and tried to cast Splinter Glyph, even though it would cost me four Words, but as soon as the spell glyphs materialized in the air before me, they glitched and vanished. This time, I got the following notification:

  Error! Enemy Hex Field destabilized spell Splinter Glyph. Spent Words have been converted into mana for Wolfbrand.

  I gasped as I felt something drain out of me. It was a burning sensation, like blood leaking from a wound, but more spiritual than physical. I’d never felt anything like it, and it made me clutch my stomach, shaking in my boots as I felt the Words I just used go to waste.

  But the leader of the bandits suddenly grinned at me. “Thank you for the free mana, boy. It’s not much, but every little bit counts, as the saying goes.”

  I gritted my teeth. “How did you steal my mana—?”

  “You mean your Words?” The man tapped the side of his head with one finger. “I saw the same notification that you did, boy. I know how your Discipline works. And I know that there aren’t enough Words in the world to save you from Wolfbrand—the Bandit Codexer, the Wyrd Wolf of North Forest.”

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