The kobold’s skin cracked like shatterproof glass beneath my boot. It didn’t break apart, but a spiderwebbing of lines spread across its rocky skin. My kick sent it flinging away, and it squealed as it slammed into the wall then tumbled to the floor. Kobolds were harder than they looked. The impact would’ve broken a few toes if I hadn’t raised my fortitude.

I barely had time to enjoy the sight of the spiderwebbed one gasping on the floor before the kobold that I’d dodged scrambled to face me again, it skinny legs bent to lunge. I crouched to meet the attack but my webtouch spun me around with an insistent twang.

Instead of hacking at the scrambling kobold, I threw my hatchet at the little fucker that was scurrying toward Tansy and Usim.

My blade carved a furrow in the kobold’s head, then I lunged sideways and failed to keep the scrambler from leaping onto my back and trying to climb to my head. Scratchy claws scraped at my armor and I turned to smoke for the briefest moment, then spun in place and returned to myself and caught the now-falling kobold by one skinny leg and bashed its brains out against the floor.

I beheaded another one with a casual backhand of my hatchet, using my webtouch to aim, then recalled my thrown hatchet and took stock of the fight.

INTUIT: Kobold, Level 4

Three of them were still alive, but none of them was after me. I watched Wren dispatch two more, wielding her sword with elegant perfection. She hadn’t even bothered tapping her gem--either because Tansy had been right and the ability was time-limited, or because she hadn’t needed to.

Maybe both.

Tansy killed the final one, the one I’d wounded, with a sword blow that looked more like a golf swing, and then:

INTUIT: Kobold Squad, Level 3

The notification remained. Huh. That didn’t make sense.

“Um, I’m pretty sure ...” I said, frowning at the carnage. “They’re not all dead.”

Tansy poked the corpse at her feet with her sword. “This one is.”

“There!” Wren said, gesturing along the hallway. “Don’t let it get away!”

The one that I’d kicked, the one with the spiderweb-cracked skin, was hugging the corner as it scurried away. It was blending into the surroundings as it ran, camouflaged so well that I only saw it in flashes. Still, I hefted a hatchet in my right hand and measured the distance in my mind.

I knew the weight and balance of my weapon perfectly, I’d been practicing for days. I was bound to these hatchets. My vision narrowed, and I threw.

It was a perfect throw in terms of rotational timing. The blade hacked forward and downward at exactly the right distance. Sadly, it was also about ten inches to the left of the kobold, which scurried through a hole and vanished.

“Well, nine out of ten ain’t bad,” I said, recalling my hatchet in a stream of smoke.

“It’s a scout,” Wren told me, as she strode toward Tansy to check Usim. “It’ll raise the alarm and return with dozens of warriors.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I’m fine, mom,” Usim said. “That’s not my blood.”

“Kobolds get stronger when they fight together,” Tansy told me.

“Doesn’t everything?” I asked.

“No, I mean each individual kobold gets stronger if there’s more of them around.”

“What? You mean, like ... each one gets individually stronger?”

“If there’s more of them around,” she finished.

“That’s so weird.”

“We won’t have much trouble if there are fewer than twenty,” Wren said, cleaning the gore from her sword. “But that scout might recruit forty or fifty to defend their territory.”

“In that case,” I said, “let’s get out of their territory.”

On the way back toward the street with the courtyards and the skinbear den, I double-checked every lump of stone and water stain. I didn’t detect a single thing except a few beetles and big-eyed rat-lizards. Everything was clear sailing, at least until we returned to the fork in the tunnel. Our rather simple plan had been to U-turn and take the left-hand hallway this time. We knew we’d come from one of those two branches, after all.

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But the moment we trotted around the corner, we heard a shout: “Hostile contact! Ahead, ahead!”

“Crossbows!” one of the infenti twins called from the depths of the left-hand hallway. “Fire!”

A dozen click-twangs sounded, then a dozen bolts sped toward us from the shadows.

“Usim!” Wren bellowed, and threw herself toward her son, ballooning larger with shocking speed.

My mind sharpened, my world narrowed. I focused on my webtouch senses instead of my sight, and for a fraction of a second I felt a dozen crossbow bolts speeding at us. I located them. I touched them with my awareness ... but I still only managed to plucked five of them into my domain

Another one caught me in the side and two struck Tansy in the stomach as she spun to face the onslaught and keep the boy safe behind her bulk.

She made a pained noise and backed unsteadily away, telling Usim to drop lower on her back. He hunched down, piggybacking on her with his head behind hers for protection, and the rest of the bolts slammed into Wren but at her full size they didn’t penetrate far.

“Back, back!” she snarled to us, spreading her arms to make herself a bigger target for the crossbowers.

She was a ruthless invader and all, but she didn’t hesitate to protect her son. So as Tansy retreated with hisses of pain--and with Usim on her back--I darted closer to Wren and slapped my palm between her shoulder blades.

“Follow my hand backward,” I said.

She grunted acknowledgement but before we took a step a wave of crackling air shimmered from the dark tunnel in front of us. For a blank moment, my brain didn’t understand what I was seeing. Only for a moment, though. Then I realized, and Kathina’s lightning-shield swept toward us.

At the same time, I realized that I needed to turn to smoke to avoid the shock--or minimize the shock--though I didn’t know if it’d work. Still, it was worth a try, I needed to--

The lightning hit me before I finished the thought.

Health: 39/55

Wren roared in pain and anger, then charged forward, aiming to take Kathina down in one sudden blitz--but the gemmed invulnerable crachen Tiral-ur emerged from the tunnel to block the charge, and swung a big-ass mace at Wren’s side.

She ignore the mace and punched him. The blow sounded like a grenade blast in the contained area. I swear I felt the shock waves, but Tiral-ur didn’t move. Oh, he grunted--he’d felt that, at least a little--but the impact didn’t send him flying.

The impact didn’t move him an inch.

So he wasn’t just tough, he also absorbed blows. Or absorbed momentum or something. With an guttural growl, he swung his mace at Wren. She dodged that time--barely--then blocked and darted inside, slugging him in the stomach with a sound like a tree limb breaking. Tiral-ur didn’t even grunt. He just kept advancing, kept swinging at her. Wren couldn’t hurt him, not with all her gemmed strength--at least no more than I could with my hatchets.

And while most of the next volley of crossbow bolts bounced off her gem-hardened hide, two pierced her thigh. She swore and Tiral-ur pushed her backward, closer to me, and closer to Tansy and Usim who’d retreated behind me somewhere, into the corridor with the courtyards.

Then the white-skinned infenti twins stepped from the left-hand path, both wielding what looked like boar spears. Two shieldmen appeared next, guarding Miss Kathina--as if she needed guarding--then the rest of the Sixers stepped into sight: eight or nine soldiers with crossbows and swords.

Average level: 8

Same level as me, but they weren’t gemmed. Well, I hoped they weren’t. They definitely weren’t archmages with magic spider powers. Still, they weren’t just regular troops, either. This was the elite of the Ryetown soldiers.

I hurled a hatchet at Kathina then immediately bamfed my second hatchet into the same hand and aimed at one of the shieldmen’s calves. Sure enough, the instant I threw the first hatchet, the guy raised his shield to deflect it, to protect Kathina--so my second smacked him on his armored shin. It didn’t do any damage, but it slowed him down.

Kathina called orders that I couldn’t parse with the blood rushing in my ears, but her crossbowers veered to one side, for an angle on Tansy and Usim.

So Wren bellowed and charged her, juking around Tiral-ur.

I guess we weren’t retreating.

I followed her forward, slashing at the gemmed crachen’s face with my hatchets, dancing around him, avoiding his blows. My blades barely scratched his carapace but Wren had more luck: she smashed into a shieldman and sent him flying fifteen feet to crash against a wall.

She bolted forward and was about to cut Kathina in half when her sword bounced off the lightning-shield--and electricity struck her again.

Full force.

Short range.

That impenetrable, sparking surface slammed into her. Wren reeled backward and I turned to smoke. Faster, that time. The lightning still struck me with a painful jolt--but not a debilitating one. As I wafted there in the gloomy, chaotic hallway, the Sixers kept advancing.

I was only ten feet from Kathina, when she dropped her shield to avoid electrocuting her allies. So I returned to my body and sprang at her, my hatchet already swinging.

Before my blow landed, a boar spear smashed into the back of my knee while another slammed my forearm hard enough to break my grip, sending my hatchet flinging away. Then the blunt end of a third spear caught me in the face and--

And three spears hadn’t hit me. Hell, two spears hadn’t hit me. That had all been a single spear. One of the twins was moving uncannily fast. Blurring with speed, and wearing--oh, shit. Wearing that same embossed, black-gemmed bracelet as Old Phil, the human vivisectionist in the prison. The one that granted super-speed.

Well, that wasn’t great news.

The other twin was no slouch, either, and he stabbed at me from behind with the sharp end of his heavy board spear. My senses twisted me at the last minute, and I dropped to the ground and chopped desperately at his calf.

I caught him, too. I caught him hard and sliced halfway through the bone,.

He howled in pain and collapsed beside me and I scrambled behind him--taking cover from his twin’s speed-empowered slashes--and one of the other soldiers, bloodied and mangled, hurtled through the air overhead. Slammed by She-Hunk Wren toward me.

I heard her bellow a moment later, as she turned to flee back to her son along the courtyard-studded corridor.

“Retreat!” she yelled.

The flying soldier smacked into the standing twin, giving me a moment’s reprieve. So I grabbed the wounded twin’s horn from behind, bowed his head backward, and put my axe blade to his arched throat.

That stopped his brother. Stopped the other soldiers, too.