Toren Daen

I reached the top of the skyscraper with ease. I walked over the edge, setting foot on flat ground once again.

A moment later, Sevren Denoir shot straight up behind me. He slowed midair, modulating his weight. He threw his dagger forward in one smooth motion, the glinting thin wire spiraling behind it. The blade sunk into the concrete near me, and Sevren pulled.

He lurched forward, skidding to a halt next to me. With a quick yank, his dagger dislodged from the stone and returned to his hand.

“There are mana signatures inside,” Sevren said quietly, even though he didn’t need to. My sound barrier prevented any noise from leaving. “I think we’ve found our target.”

I nodded in agreement. The zombies down below had mana signatures, but they were strange. There was an aura that pervaded everything around them which made it difficult to sense their mana. The mana they exuded seemed to blend with the energy of every other undead.

I’d only made the connection as the packs of undead became consistent hordes, roving the streets far below. With such a constant cluster, the strange effect they had on the ambient mana was far more apparent.

Lady Dawn would have noticed this strangeness far sooner, a treacherous part of myself noted.

“Want to let them know we’re here?” I asked, stretching out my back.

Sevren looked at the rooftop access door. “It’s only polite.”

We flared our mana in near-perfect sync, the effect similar to a man blowing oxygen over a fire. For the briefest of moments, our mana signatures were beacons, casting light into the ocean of ambient energy.

Sevren and I waited tensely, side by side. It didn’t take long for us to get a response.

A mage pushed open the rooftop door, peering out with wild eyes. I could almost taste their apprehension, and I was sure they had a weapon readied behind that steel door.

“Hello,” Sevren said, taking a slight step forward and raising his hand in a peaceful manner. “We come in peace, with an offer if you’d hear it,” he said leisurely.

The eyes behind the door sharpened, and I could definitely sense them preparing their mana as they pushed open the door further.

I tensed, but considering I didn’t sense killing intent from the man, I settled for resting my palm on the hilt of Oath. The door cracked open further.

A man hunched there, a wild look in his eyes. He held an axe tightly in one hand, while the other was frantically imitating a ‘shush’ motion over his lips.

When I had been tasked with meeting this other team, I’d expected another group in a similar situation as the Unblooded Party. A slowly starving team, gradually whittling away under the strain of entrapment. They’d be gaunt, but they wouldn’t be at death’s door.

The man in the doorway shattered those expectations. Greasy brown hair clung to his face like reeds. His clothes were in rags, torn and burned in a dozen different places. What must have once been a sturdy cloak barely passed his back, the shreds hanging like a drowned corpse. His eyes were sunken and haunted, and old bandages wrapped themselves around his arm. They were nearly black, the linens old and crusty.

The part of me that had worked as a surgeon felt immediate concern. Considering the temperature of this zone and the rate it took blood to dry to such a dark color, those bandages hadn’t been changed in over a day. If there was a severe wound underneath–which the amount of staining in the bandage seemed to suggest–he had a highly increased chance of infection and rot in the damaged area.

Sevren seemed entirely unsurprised by the haggard state of the mage. “Don’t worry,” he said calmingly, “My friend here has a sound barrier erected around us. The undead can’t hear us.”

I collected myself swiftly. To demonstrate Sevren’s words, I brought my foot down hard on the concrete. The stone cracked, but no sound was allowed to exit. My spell held onto each vibration like a greedy miser keeps his coins.

The man’s insistent shushing halted. His hand slowly lowered, relief and another emotion I couldn’t discern warring across his face. He worked his jaw, which was covered in a patchy beard. “What do you want?” he said, the hand holding his axe clenching tighter.

Sevren replied evenly, undeterred by the mage’s increased tension. “We want to get out of this zone,” he said. “To that end, we’d like to talk with you. About working together.”

The mage narrowed his eyes suspiciously, shifting from side to side. “Why should we listen to you?” he said. His voice was gravelly from disuse, an almost painful rasp clawing its way from his throat.

“My name is Sevren of Highblood Denoir,” the white-haired striker said, nodding his head in a brief show of respect. He shifted a hand into his jacket, then retrieved something and held it in front of him. The insignia of Highblood Denoir radiated back in solid gold. “On my the honor of my Blood,” he stated seriously. “Know that we mean you no harm.”

The man’s eyes widened slightly, no doubt taken aback by the name uttered. The Denoirs were powerful. Their house was essentially the Rothschilds of Alacrya. Few families could match them in any Dominion.

But then the man shrunk backward. Sevren’s words seemed to have the opposite effect. Instead of taking reassurance in his status, as I’d expected, he shifted like prey in front of a predator.

I wondered briefly what he had experienced here. Ascenders who made it to convergence zones were among the greatest. This man must have once been a powerful, confident fighter. What had turned him into a shifting, paranoid shell?

You did, that dark part of myself acknowledged. He wouldn’t be here if not for you.

“We have food,” I blurted out. Sevren looked at me uncertainly, while the axe-wielding mage… his eyes lit up with hunger. I recognized that look.

And I’d prepared for it. I withdrew a single bag of rice. It was easily twenty pounds, but with my mana-enhanced strength, I didn’t even feel the weight. Without further adieu, I grabbed the bag with my telekinesis rune. The rice floated slowly toward the mage, keeping low to the ground so as not to startle him.

I saw the conflict of hunger and anxiety in the man’s stiff posture. When I let the bag drop in front of his door, he eyed it critically.

“That’s all we have on us,” I said. I wouldn’t make the same mistake I did in East Fiachra all those months ago when I’d nearly been attacked by men looking for a lifetime fix of blithe. I wouldn’t let myself be a viable target. “If you’re willing to hear us out, we can get you more easily. But only if you listen.”

That seemed to be the last nail in the man’s self-restraint. He lashed a hand out to the rice, snatching it up in a spindly claw. He looked from the bag to me and Sevren, then back to the bag.

“Fine,” he said. “Just… keep to yourself inside. You better keep your promise, Denoir.”

The man turned around, sparing us one glance as he clutched the rice to his chest. Sevren and I moved to follow after a beat.

“This is worse than I expected,” Sevren said quietly. I made sure only I was able to hear his words, the sound drifting to me alone. “This man is a shell. If his entire team is in a similar state, they’ll be a hindrance rather than a help.”

I felt my throat clench. I didn’t want to think about that. “I’m going to help them regardless of their ability to help us,” I said, keeping my eyes forward.

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I owed them that much.

Sevren gave me a strange look, but I ignored it.

When we went down a floor, we were greeted with a sight that made my spirits sink even further. This must have once been some sort of CEO’s office. The taller ceiling and wide, panoramic view of the city below was the perfect display of power. Sleek wood furnishings might have given the room an air of refinement and poise.

But instead, haphazardly conjured walls of earth covered the windows. The only light was the overhead bulb, casting grim shadows over the room. The furniture had been moved to the edges, providing room for bedrolls in the center. The walls felt like they might swallow me whole.

I’d walked into a makeshift bunker.

There were only three other people there besides the brown-haired mage we met first. One was a bronze-skinned woman with hair kept in a boyish cut, though it was clearly growing past the intended length. She was leaning against the couch with her eyes closed. The woman was missing a hand, the stump wrapped haphazardly and splotched with dark residue.

She perked up upon seeing us enter, her thin eyes narrowing. She snatched the shield with her other hand, gripping it tightly. But I could see the futility of the action.

It was a shield designed to be held with two hands.

The other two young boys were nearly identical, even in their dishevelment. Both had dark hair streaked with silver, wearing what must have once been high-quality armor. But their chainmail had been torn as if by a savage beast. Dark bandages peeked out underneath. They looked to be having a restless sleep, shifting and grunting.

Their only apparent differences were in their weapon choices. One clutched a mace tight, even in the apparent nightmare. The other held a sword close.

They both appeared to be asleep, but a kick to the shins from the one-handed shield startled them awake. The twins stirred immediately. Their eyes were a pale, icy blue.

“Are those things here again?” one of the boys asked bitingly, holding his mace tight and looking around with unease. “Is that why you woke us up?”

“No,” the shield said, her focus trained on Sevren and me. “Something new. We have visitors.”

That got their attention. The twin boys, while clearly gaunt and having missed a shower for weeks, didn’t look quite as battered as the one-handed shield and shifty axeman. The one on the left narrowed his eyes at me with suspicion, while the other snarled. “Why did you let strangers in?!” the one on the right snapped, pointing his sword at us. “They’ll try and take our food!”

“They gave us food,” the axe-wielding striker said wearily, hefting the rice in his hands. Once inside, much of his anxious fidgeting had sloughed away, leaving a tired man who looked twice as old as he truly was. “Wouldn’t make sense to take it.”

Sevren raised a brow. “The Frost Twins,” the Denoir heir said. “I’ve heard a lot about your-”

“We should take the rest of the food they have,” the mace-wielding twin said, interrupting Sevren. “It’s only fair. We’ve been starving for weeks!”

The axe wielder immediately recognized the foolishness of such words. “They came here to talk about an offer of alliance,” he snapped, waving the rice in his hands before pointing at Sevren. “With the assurance of Highblood Denoir. It would be foolish to attack them.”

The Frost Twins glared at Sevren in sync. “But he’s from the Denoirs,” the twin on the left said. “Nobody will ever know, rules be damned. We should just take his–”

“Shut the fuck up,” the axe wielder snarled, marching over to the twins. He shoved the rice into the shield’s surprised hand. “I have had enough of your sniveling. All these weeks I’ve put up with your shit. Telling us we failed you as a team. Mocking Jana for losing her hand, which she did to save you. But not this time. This isn’t the Frost estate. This is the Relictombs. Either you take opportunities to survive, or you die.“

I frowned, feeling slightly uncomfortable watching this team spat. I realized another thing, then. The Unblooded Party had a unity that was rare.

The mace-wielding twin puffed his chest out, jumping to his feet. “You don’t get to talk like that to us, unblooded!” he said with a sneer. “You were far more subservient when that woman was–”

The boy didn’t even have the time to process what happened as the shaggy axe wielder’s fist struck him in the sternum. The boy-mage gasped, crumpling. His brother cried out in alarm, but a hard glare from the axe wielder silenced it to a whimper. The shield had set down the rice and was holding out her hand uncertainly, a conflicted expression on her face.

I winced, remembering what it felt like to get struck in the mana core. My hand tightened on Oath at my side.

“Go on,” the shaggy axe-wielding mage said to the other twin, who was still on the floor. His face was twisted into something savage. “You know what your brother was going to say with that little mental link of yours. Say it to my face.”

The boy’s eyes were wide, looking to the shield for support. She looked at the stump of her hand instead.

“Say it!” the axe wielder said, huffing with rage.

The boy curled into a ball, whimpering and refusing to stare the enraged striker in the eyes.

The axe wielder turned, ignoring him and looking at us. “You shouldn’t have had to see that,” he said. The anger was still visible in the flush of his face, his jaw working as he tried to forcibly calm himself. “My name… My name is Alun. Alun Phorus. I’m the lead striker for the Twinfrost Party. Or at least I will be until those rats tell their father about what I did.”

“Toren of Named Blood Daen,” I said slowly, trying not to think of what punishment this man would get for punching what seemed to be highblood heirs. Even if his actions were very understandable. “We came here to offer our assistance in helping you out of this zone. The rest of our party is making the same offer to the other mages we detected in this zone.” I looked at the twins on the ground, feeling disgust at their entitlement curdle in my stomach. But I had made a promise. “I can eliminate sounds in an area around me. It gives us a good chance of sneaking past the hordes and to the island where the exit portal is.”

The shield perked up, finally taking her eyes away from her hand. “You know where the exit portal is?” she said with clear hope in her voice.

“We do,” Sevren affirmed, giving the woman a sympathetic nod. “Our sentry was able to get its general location, and it was further confirmed by our striker.”

“Our sentry…” the shield said after a moment. “She, well…” The woman wilted, and that same anger flashed in Alun’s eyes.

I could guess the rest easily enough. “We planned to gather all the teams together to discuss a viable escape plan,” I said, forging ahead in an attempt to change the topic from death. I pulled out the map from my pocket, unfolding it so Alun could see the points marked in red. “We’re planning to meet here. It’s the midpoint between your locations.”

“You said there would be food?” Alun hedged, looking at Sevren. It seemed he trusted the words of Lord Denoir more than I thought.

“We’ll bring you several sacks of rice before the meeting,” the white-haired ascender affirmed.

“And bandages,” I added, my gaze lingering on the long-soiled linens every mage here wore. “You’ll get bandages, too.”

The shield woman, whom Alun had called Jana, lowered her head. She seemed almost ashamed.

I looked at the twins. They were glaring at us silently. But the looks on their faces I recognized. I made a similar face whenever I concentrated too long when talking to Lady Dawn.

“You know what your brother was going to say with that little mental link of yours,” Alun had said.

Those two were communicating telepathically.

“And I assume we won’t have any problems?” I asked, keeping my gaze steady on the highblood brats. Their glares faltered when met my own.

“None,” Alun said through his teeth. “My job was to help the twins learn, not let them kill themselves.”

“Good,” Sevren replied in my stead. “This is supposed to be a team effort. Not a two-man game.”

After a few more exchanges of information and assurances of places and times, Sevren and I left the claustrophobic room and Twinfrost party behind. The breeze outside was cold, reminding me of the necessity of mana.

“That went both better–and worse–than I expected,” I said, gazing toward the Unblooded Party’s resident skyscraper. I couldn’t see it from here, but I knew the direction.

“We can’t trust the twins,” Sevren said, mirroring my own thoughts. “The twins are named Bered and Numar. They’re popular talents from Highblood Frost. I’d heard many good things about them. Now I’m wondering how much of that was paid off.”

I thought of the last time I had met an entitled Blood heir. It hadn’t ended well for them. A shard of my broken shackles had severed an artery in his leg, and I’d watched as his lifeforce extinguished. Lawris Joan had died a pointless death.

“It’s ‘we’ already, is it?” I said, sparing Sevren a wry smirk.

“We do make a good team, though, don’t we?” he asked, sounding genuine.

There was truth to that. I had felt an intuitive flow between the Denoir heir and myself in that negotiation; each of us maintaining a steady push and pull. However, I did get the sense that Sevren’s patience for the twins was even lesser than my own.

Which was why I made the point about the twins’ potential problems to Alun, instead of letting Sevren do it, I realized.

“I suppose you’re right,” I said, giving the man a smirk. “Though you still can’t keep up with me in the field.”

Sevren smiled wryly. “We didn’t declare a winner for that, did we?”

I leapt off the roof in the next instant, feeling the wind against my cheeks. It wouldn’t take long to get back to base.