Jace shot through the air. He had targeted the trailhead on the other side of the ravine, out of harm’s way, but everything seemed to pull back on him. He dropped his last stoney knife in exchange for more speed.

He couldn’t wait to have ‘limited interaction’ become ‘no interaction’.

He flashed through the air and ended just short of his target—and just out of reach of the edge of the trail on the other side. He reached out and gripped the stone below with a single hand. His fingers latched on, but just barely, and his body slammed down, ribs impacting the rock. Immediately, his grip slipped, but he reached up with his other hand and rammed his fingers into a crag.

He wanted to take a break, but there was no time. The corpsestealers pulled their rifles’ bolts back and ejected the used casings, then pushed the bolt back in and took aim.

Jace threw his leg up onto the ledge and tugged himself up as fast as he could. A barrage of plasma struck the stone ledge where he’d just been. He sprinted down the trail, away from the edge and out of the corpsestealers’ line of fire.

He had hoped it would be over—that he would find the final clearing (whatever the task might be) and that he could get out of here. But ahead of him, there were two more corpsestealers, each armed with a rifle.

Jace didn’t break his pace. He dropped down as soon as he saw them and slid along the mud. They fired both shots into the empty air.

Leaping to his feet, Jace formed fists with his hands. He punched one of the skeletons in the forehead, and its skull crumbled. It was old and weak. As its body began to collapse into a heap of bones, he tore the rifle out of its hands and smashed the other skeleton with its stock. The creatures were flimsy and their bones were old.

When the bodies began to decay into dust, a mouse-sized creature made of slimy black fog slithered out of the corpsestealers’ dead skulls and scampered off into the forest on six fog-tendril limbs.

Jace kept the stolen rifle. It felt heavier than the hunting rifles he was used to, and there was no wood anywhere on it—just pure, black steel. He pulled the bolt back, then transferred the unused shots from the other skeleton’s rifle into the one he currently carried. The extras, he stuffed into his pants’ pocket.

He followed the path for a few more minutes, holding his rifle ahead of him, ready to shoot any corpsestealers that tried to intercept him. In the brief reprieve, he gave Lessa back the technique card—and he encountered no foes, let alone anything he needed a hyperdash for.

He sprinted around an especially thick glass tree and passed through an archway of branches ahead, then wound up to a rocky plateau with a view over the forest.

A corpsestealer stood at the top of the plateau, wandering across the fifty-meter-wide ridge of rock aimlessly. As Jace had come to expect, the Vault had led him to the largest foe, and this [Level 14 Elite Corpsestealer] was nearly twice as tall as the other skeletons.

Instead of a single body’s worth of reanimated bones, it was a heap of mismatched bones and shreds of armour that retained a vaguely humanoid shape. A trio of skulls waited between its shoulders, fused to one another into a ugly caricature of a face.

One of its arms had a collection of four plasma rifles attached to it, and a few of the rifles had bayonets.

Jace lifted his head slightly higher over the rim of the plateau. The moment his chin poked over the rim, the corpsestealer’s head whipped towards him. It pointed its rifle-arm and fired a barrage of plasma blasts.

Jace ducked back behind the ridge, avoiding the spray of sparks, molten rock, and stone chunks.

But the skeleton’s four rifles were still bolt-action. A bony clunk rattled out as it prepared another shot in each of its rifles. The bones of its arms shifted unnaturally, gripping the bolts and manipulating them.

It gave him a few seconds. He scrambled up over the plateau’s ridge, then scampered around the side of the corpsestealer. It fired again, four shots at once, and the blasts chased where he had been standing. An explosion of stone nearly threw him off his feet, but he kept running.

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Another barrage chased him—again, aiming where he had been, not where he was. The shots kicked up an explosion and made him stumble, but not enough to kill him.

But he needed to regain his balance and fight back. He requested the hyperdash back from Lessa.

As soon as the corpsestealer fired a third barrage, he used the card—spiritual pain be damned—to launch himself over to the other side of the clearing. He doubted he would make it all the way with the card in its current state, but he didn’t need to. He just needed to get around the skeleton and earn himself a second or two to take aim.

He dashed. In a flash of golden light, he emerged on the other side of the skeleton, having passed between its legs. As quickly as he could, he knelt and aimed, pointing his rifle at the skeleton’s rifle arm. He lined up the sights—aiming for the center of the bony mass that held the skeleton’s rifles—and pulled the trigger.

Bones shattered and armour clattered. One of the rifles fell off the corpsestealer’s arm, and when it tried to fire the rest of them, its bone-structure wasn’t there to help out. None of the rifles went off.

With an enraged howl, the corpsestealer swiped its arm at him, slashing with the bayonets like they were claws.

Jace rolled back and reset his rifle, ramming the bolt back and forth until the sticky mechanism chambered another bullet, then took aim at the corpsestealer’s head. He fired. One of the fused skulls exploded, but the beast didn’t stop charging.

Jace pushed himself back and scampered through the dirt, retreating. He reciprocated the bolt, then fired another shot into the corpsestealer’s head. A chunk at the top shattered, but the corpsestealer didn’t stop—even when it reached the edge of the plateau. One of its feet reached over the edge. It stumbled and collapsed onto its front, half-hanging over the edge of the rock and writhing.

Jace ran closer. He wedged the weapon up against its exposed spine and fired a third shot into it.

Finally, with its neck vertebrae shattered and melted, the corpsestealer fell still. It decayed into black dust, and a cat-sized wisp of six-legged darkness crawled out. Jace fired another shot at it, breaking it in half, then bludgeoned it with the stock of his rifle until it dispersed entirely.

The stolen rifle disintegrated in his hands. Within seconds, the Vault faded. After a few more, he returned to the muddy dreamspace plane.

He walked back to the sapling, arms hanging. Golden flecks poured into his chest. “Lessa, how’s the card looking?”

Last rune…last one…ahah! We are done!

A wave of satisfaction rolled through his limbs. He looked down at the root-map of his body, but there were no more attribute shards to use.

He forced his eyes open, tugging himself out into the real world, and sat up as fast as he could. The world spun a little, and his stomach growled—possibly because of the scent of food. A silver tray had been placed on the opposite side of the bars.

As he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, he approached the tray. He grabbed it and dragged it under the bars.

There were two bowls. One held a white slop that reminded him of rice pudding, and the other with a brown kibble. He couldn’t be picky, though. He began to shovel the food into his mouth.

“So, you two?” Kinfild asked. “Did you succeed”

Jace dragged the tray back to the wall and leaned back. He rested his head against the metal behind him and sighed. Between bites, he said, “I think we’re ready.”

“And what is the skill description now?”

After a glance over her shoulder, Lessa handed Jace back the card. She smiled, jittering, then whispered, “You read it! You read it!”

The title was the same, but when Jace called up the description, the sheet of swirling dust now read:

[Once every ninety (90) seconds, allows the caster to trigger a hyperdash in a chosen direction. Caster will not interact with solid objects. Distance limited by fuel cell Aes output and scales with caster’s Resistance rating.]

He read it aloud to the others.

“And there you have it!” Lessa said.

Jace nodded, then looked back at Kinfild. “Whenever you two are ready, then. I should be able to pass through those bars.”

“Now, hold on,” Lessa said. “We can’t just do this without a plan, right? We’ve gotta get out, but we also have to survive afterwards. Well, I’d like to survive afterwards. Oh, it’d be such a shame if this adventure was just a ride in a big metal box…then getting melted by a plasma blast.”

“I’ll break out and grab my stuff,” Jace said. He needed his backpack and other card back, and besides, he’d need the Whistling Blade to cut open Lessa and Kinfild’s cell.

Jace stood up, ready to attempt his new hyperdash, when Kinfild held up a hand. “If we break out now”—he tilted his head towards the glow of hyperspace outside the thin window slit—“we’ll have nowhere to go. No, no…we must hold on for another half-hour or so until we arrive. In the meantime, I think I know how to pass the time…”