When Tamra didn’t move, I put a hand on her shoulder. “They won’t heal him. Not yet.”

She shook me off, part of her wild red mane stuck to her face from sweat or tears. “I know, Sett!” she snapped. “I know!” She let go of Aldric, stood, and then sprinted after Celeste.

I hadn’t expected her to take off running that quickly, and the only reason I was able to catch up was that she was limping on both feet, cursing as she did.

“What did Celeste do to you?” I asked when I matched her. “I didn’t see any sort of attack.”

“Neither did I, but something stabbed my feet.”

“Through your boots?” In the Crim, we received the best leather than Misfell could produce – or, the second best after the Tower. So, I had trouble understanding what could have hurt her besides a targeted attack.

“Obviously,” Tamra growled, clearly in no mood for this conversation, not after losing Aldric the way we had.

I didn’t press her on the issue, but I did try to look at her feet to see where the strikes may have come from. However, even with her running in fits and starts, her boots were too dark for me to tell if anything had come through the top, and I needed her to stop to see the bottom, which I knew she wouldn’t do.

On a path above us, two Warriors were fighting. The sight of them spurred Tamra faster, but we were faced with yet another climb. She didn’t hesitate, hoisting herself up the uneven surface. I joined her, positioning myself below in case her injured feet gave her trouble. If she fell, I wouldn’t be able to stop her, but a misstep I was confident I could assist with. Tamra started breathing hard halfway to the top, and eventually stopped, muttering to herself.

“Take your time,” I told her, to which she just growled back. The break gave me a moment to look downward, and I was surprised to see that we had come some halfway up the mountain. Bodies were strewn about, in a mixture of different colors like holiday confetti, most of them still. Those that moved caught my attention, and I saw two in yellow being trailed by one in red: Ivun, with his flail. As I watched, he caught the pair, his first swing wrapping around the long stick Holry held in front of her. He ripped it out of her hands, and on his return swing, he struck her on the side of the head with a few weighted ends despite her attempt to dodge. She went down in a spray of blood, and oddly, the boy she was with, Penn, brought a hand to his head, as if he was the one who had just suffered the blow. Ivun lifted the haft of his flail high and Penn wailed in fear, a stream of sparkling blue gushed from his hands, splashing into Ivun’s chest. The odd attack made the Warrior pull up short for a moment and then he crushed Penn’s skull, the same as he had done to Holry only a moment before.

Or so I thought: Holry was starting to rise, a shaking hand held up as if that would ward off Ivun, which it did not. His flail rose and fell viciously, turning her yellow tunic just as red as his.

I looked away. There was no point in what Ivun was doing; the Healers were too far away to possibly win and he wasn’t becoming a better fighter by thrashing such feeble opposition. I told myself it was my disgust that turned my head away and not the sickness in my stomach. Tamra had managed to progress while I was distracted, so I moved quickly to make up the distance between us. I expected my limbs to be near exhaustion, especially after hanging there as I had, but they moved where I willed, only a touch slower and sorer than normal. I wasn’t sure if I should thank the Aspects, Boast, or the Tower itself for the gift of my mantle, so in my heart, I praised them all.

Heaving myself over the edge, I found Tamra crouched over the bodies of the two Warriors who had been fighting.

“Did you –” I started, but stopped when I saw their injuries. Hyro’s side was caved in, and Fia’s face was missing its lower jaw, tongue lolling out, surrounded by blood. I dry heaved, but nothing came up. Perhaps this was why they hadn’t given us any breakfast.

“All strength and no defense, eh?” Tamra said, and I managed to nod, wiping spittle from my lips with my arm.

We looked up at the paths we could now take: one to the left, another to the right, and one that curved around a jutting chunk of much too smooth stone and then presumably led upward. As I knew she would, Tamra chose the last path, but before we reached it, a flash of green and gray streaked in from the side. I turned to see that it was Winri, her mid-sized stick flashing at Tamra’s face. Though Tamra’s feet were injured, thankfully her arms were not, and she expertly blocked the attack with her sword, using Winri’s momentum to position the Beast Kin Neophyte closer to the edge.

Tamra then kicked the other girl in the chest with the bottom of her foot, screaming in pain; Winri screamed as well as she was sent sailing off of the mountain.

Tamra turned back to me, barely letting the foot she had used for the kick touch the ground. “Saints that hurt,” she said, hissing through her teeth.

“You can lean on me if you like,” I offered.

“Or me.”

I turned to see none other than Maphen approaching us cautiously from the path opposite the one Winri had been on. His face was bruised, blood trailing from one ear, and he walked with a careful step, though not as bad as Tamra.

I motioned him forward without hesitation, and he picked up his pace toward us, looking relieved. That was until Tamra raised her sword.

You again?” she said, sounding almost like Aldric. “This time it’s everyone for themselves. I should gut you.”

“I notice you two aren’t stabbing each other,” Maphen said. He sounded more worried than jovial and had stopped a few meters away.

Tamra looked to be readying something sharp in response, whether it was her tongue or blade, so I stepped in-between them, making sure none of us had to find out.

“We’ve succeeded as a team before,” I said, looking side-to-side. “And we can again. To everyone’s advantage.”

Surprisingly, Tamra quick-stepped around me before I could stop her, but then only pointed her sword at Maphen instead of running him through. “Can you still freeze things with magic like when we killed that little demon?”

Maphen looked questioningly at me and then back to her, and I was struck by how much less sure of himself he seemed. Were his injuries worse than they appeared or had something else happened after we had parted ways at the Scrying Pool?

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“I can,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “When we see Celeste, I want you to –”

“Who?” he interrupted.

“I’ll point her out,” Tamra snarled. “You just do the magic bit.”

He lifted his hands in mock surrender, and she spun around, walking up toward the jutting stone. Maphen and I followed, and he wisely chose not to comment on Tamra’s limping pace. Instead he asked me in a low whisper, “What happened to Aldric?”

“Celeste got him,” I answered, and his eyebrows lifted in understanding.

I was going to ask what had happened to him, but a cry from above yanked my head in that direction. Tall Gimit was dropping from the mountain, falling through the air until he hit a jutting outcropping, which his body folded around with gruesome finality, and for the second time I nearly sicked up. He slid off the angled stone, continuing his drop, but he was silent except the thuds of his corpse against the rock.

To see him that far above us after previously spotting him behind had to mean that the Greater Strength Mastery was much better for climbing than I had considered. But why had he fallen?

I scanned upward, looking for the answer, and caught sight of Chorazin in his purple tunic, smiling grimly. He couldn’t have pushed someone of Gimit’s size off. Could he?

“Had to be magic,” Maphen said, as if reading my thoughts.

“From the Thresher?” It almost struck me as unfair that those who had learned words of power during that time got to retain them – what I would give for the spear I had picked up. But, as with everything, I was sure the Elders had a greater plan, and with Maphen now on our side, we could use their design to our advantage.

“Maybe,” he said. “There’s lots of books in the Summoner’s Hall, and he was reading one before we left this morning. He might have learned it from there.”

“So you are a Summoner then.”

He gave me a pained look. “Not quite.”

We were interrupted again by whimpering up ahead. Tamra had slowed, and over her shoulder I saw another of our Order lying on the ground: short Emsi. Near her I was shocked to see Tevo, his blue tunic slashed from Emsi sharpened knuckles. Getting closer, we discovered that his throat was slit and it was Emsi who was whimpering. Foam had bubbled from her mouth, and her tongue looked thick and swollen. I expected her to focus on us, but her eyes were glazed, and she didn’t move, other than to continue to softly whine.

“Is this…” I heard Maphen say, and I turned to see him crouch down, picking up a piece of something from the ground that glowed softly yellow. It took me a moment to place the strange object: it was part of the bars of light people had purchased from the Healer Devout before the Melee began.

“Come on,” Tamra said to both of us, stalking past the bodies. “While we’re alive, we move.”

I gestured for Maphen to follow, and he popped up, both of us falling in behind Tamra. He was still looking at the piece he had recovered, a frown on his bruised face.

“Well?” I asked him, and he glanced my way.

“I think…” Maphen said, catching my meaning, “that he made it poison somehow, and fed it to her.”

I hadn’t expected that, just as I hadn’t expected someone from one of the support Orders to make it this far. But I had guessed something similar about the Artisans, the ability to change objects, so it stood to reason that an Alchemist could have a related ability.

I nodded at his assessment. “Makes sense.”

“Just like that?”

“‘When you face the unknown, assume it’s power to be vast,’” I quoted.

“You really think The Book of the Guardian is relevant to this,” Maphen pulled a face as he asked, and then winced, the move obviously causing him discomfort. “Saints’ balls, am I tired of hurting.”

“‘Pain can be a teacher,’” I quoted from a more recent source.

“Shut up, Sett,” Tamra said from ahead, not bothering to turn around.

Maphen smiled with the half of his face that wasn’t bruised. “Yes, Sett, I do believe you should shut up.”

I knew that Maphen was only trying to find some humor, but in case it would help my companions, I was silent as we marched upward. This section of the mountain construct was quite steep, to the point we sometimes needed to grab onto parts of the stone that jutted up for support, or each other, but we were able to stay standing as we did, which made the journey faster.

None of our brothers or sisters came from behind us, and ahead, when the path tilted back to nearly flat, we reached a half circle that surrounded that final height of the mountain, perhaps another ten meters up. The open area, which was part of where Aphos and Risahned had fought, had a number of people already there. It seemed a last battleground of sorts, where everyone was desperately trying to stop anyone who looked like they might make the final ascent to the plinth that activated the flames. I saw Celeste and Shanel, Chorazin, Chikra with his spear, and even pounchy Koffer.

Tamra let out a cry, dashing toward where Celeste was, but Chikra blocked the way with her long weapon.

“What do you say to a duel?” the other girl said with a grin. “It seems fitting since we’re the only ones smart enough to be armed. Or we could truce for a time.”

Tamra’s answer was to spit in Chikra’s face, which made the other girl stumble back in surprise, and Tamra shoved past her.

“I get that spear, and I can do something,” Maphen said beside me, and I shifted my course from following Tamra to going straight for Chikra.

She got her center back before I could land a hit, slashing the point of her spear at my face. The only weapons I had tried my skin against were the blades at the entrance of the Warrior’s Hall, but it had held well there. So, instead of trying to move, I pulled up short so I could focus on toughening my cheek and neck. No sooner had I done it than the blade connected, and I could feel it press into the flesh of my neck. Unlike with the punches earlier, I felt pressure and a sliver of pain.

Chikra looked rather shocked by the outcome, but the use of her chosen weapon didn’t falter. She jerked the spearhead back, whipping the shaft around her body to gain momentum as she then thrust it back at me, aiming for my stomach this time. If the side of a spear could hurt me, I didn’t know if my skin could stand up against the power of her weapon at such a singular point. So, I stiffened my hands, and moved them in front of my stomach just as the spearhead reached me for a second time. It pierced through my first hand in a shock of pain but then came to a stop partway through my second.

“Why you –” Chikra snarled, but then Maphen spoke a word I could not comprehend, and she was suddenly still. My opponent frozen, I extricated my hands from her blade, gasping as lancing agony shot through my fingers and up both forearms.

“Pain can be a teacher,” I whispered to myself, cradling my hands to my chest, but that didn’t stop a worrisome amount of blood from bubbling out of both of my palms. I wished that Maphen could somehow freeze my injuries like he had Chikra’s whole body, but the thought gave me an idea. Focusing, I stiffened both hands again, and sure enough, what had before been a gush of lifeblood slowed to a trickle. I hadn’t expected that power when selecting Toughened Skin, but I was certainly grateful to have it.

I looked up to see Maphen grunting, trying to pull the spear from Chikra’s frozen fingers. Unlike Emsi, Chikra’s eyes were on us, and she looked absolutely hateful. In fact, I noticed her arm jerking a millimeter forward and then the same for her lead leg.

“Come on,” I told Maphen. I could only paw at his off-white tunic with my stiffened hands, not grab.

“I can get it,” Maphen insisted. “Right as she –”

Someone said something beside us, the word sounding similar to the one Maphen had used and yet not, and suddenly Maphen slammed into me. The impact sent both of us flying, and I stiffened my whole body, praying that we didn’t go over the edge, and knowing that if we did, there was nothing I could do to stop it.