“Stranya, please,” Navid spoke and slipped his backpack around. “Do you think our families would allow us into the Tower without emergency gear?”
“Huh?”
“Correction,” the guild worker spoke into the letter opener, “I have six noble scions dressed to the teeth in their parents’ money. Is the target still headed our way?”
“‘Yes’,” Ryan repeated.
“Stop that,” he snapped.
Navid pulled a short walking cane from his bag. It expanded to its full length in the same motion, segments falling out like bricks. Gold lines filled in the gaps and it thinned out toward the bottom.
He cupped the stylized handle and drew a thin, vermeil blade from within and handed it to Shala but kept the sheath for himself.
The blade couldn’t have fit inside the cane originally, but Micah couldn’t see any way through which it could have expanded.
He looked at Anne, expecting something.
She noticed. “I didn’t bring my sword.”
Oh.
“His team is trying to distract the collector by grouping together. To group the scent of their items?” Ryan told them in a low voice. “‘Doesn’t sound like it’s working.”
“Tell us where to go,” Anne pleaded. “Repositions us. We can lure the collector where you want it to be, before it noticed us.”
“Or you can lend me your gear. Let me do it. You’re too slow. I can scale these walls as easily as I can drop from them. You’ll get everything back, I promise you that.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Navid said and stepped out, peering up the crevice.
Micah frowned. “Why not?”
“For one thing, because he still has not introduced himself to me— to us.”
“Oh! I’m Micah. It’s nice to meet you, mister …?” Micah said and held a hand out.
For some reason, everyone frowned at him, even though only Navid had introduced himself on their side, too. Fair was fair?
“For another, because it’s too late—”
Lisa pulled Navid back as a shower of rocks tumbled down the wall, then stepped out to look up. Micah joined her.
A giant bestial face stared down from the edge of the cliff, half-shaded against the sun. It looked carved from stone, or rusted metal, and was similar to the blocky faces carved into the doorways of the wells.
Its metal eyeslits seemed to glint. Its lower jaw dropped open like well-oiled hinges. A light began to twinkle in the back of its throat.
Micah thought of the breath attacks Anne had warned them about and stepped back.
Navid stepped out and held the empty sheath up, speaking, “Hold.”
The collector, large enough to rival Maria, held still.
Micah stared at Navid for a second and felt a glimmer of something in his chest, then snapped a glue shot up.
It was hard to track the pale ball in the shade. He thought he hit. Nothing happened. He couldn’t waste ammunition like this.
Lisa shot a cluster of curving flame arrows up. They splashed off its rusty hide, telling him all he needed to know about how tough it was, so his metal shots or pebbles wouldn’t do a thing either.
Another tumble of rocks fell and the creature seemed to lean closer. Was it … tipping over?
“If you have anything to add?” Navid said.
“Damnit,” the man cursed and brought his bow out. He aimed, plucked its string, and a thin blue bolt hit the far wall. A net of lightning fell into existence across the chasm from its arc with enough rope to give it slack. There was space to climb between it and the wall.
“Go!” he barked.
Navid and Lisa went last as she cast [Fireball]. Micah didn’t hear the first impact. He couldn’t miss the second, when the collector fell.
The unholy sound of its crash, and a wall of dust and wind, ran past them as they fought their way up through monsters hiding in the dark.
Sinking roots crawled across his vision—afterimages left by the net—and he looked back as though a wall of flames could climb up the closed space after them at any moment.
“Right here, then left!” the man shouted. “Take the winding route to the surface. Avoid the right-hand wall!”
“How do you—” Lisa began.
“We made a battle map. You think we didn’t prepare?”
“But— It fell!” Micah protested, looking back. “Shouldn’t we be using this chance?”
“We are. My team is. You need to move to distract it, and to get yourselves to safety.”
In the distance, he heard another impact and nearly ran into a wall. He threw himself back and ran press to the left on his way up, unsure of what he was avoiding.
“Some of us barely have any magic items,” Lisa said. “Why can’t we attack?”
“Can you hurt it?”
Anne thought they could. She must have thought Micah could be useful somehow … right?
They hadn’t finished their preparations. They hadn’t expected the monster to come to them or they would’ve had much more time to plan an approach, not to mention the element of surprise. All of that was gone now.
“Why does it want magic items in the first place?” Shala asked, and they stepped out onto a plateau they’d seen from afar. Rocky and drab, with splashes of color from a sparse copse of trees, weeds, and bushes.
Odd fruit hung from one tree—
Not the time, Micah thought.
Something burst into smoke, and a woman with a warhammer looked at them. “Did you have to drag schoolchildren into this?”
“They showed up out of nowhere!”
On the other side of the chasm, another person shot arrows. A third threw a glowing bottle down.
A multicolored explosion rocketed out of the chasm, trailing a deluge of essences and broken pattern links.
Micah stared with wide eyes and tried to follow them, but they were too far away and broken to gain anything.
“We can help bombard it, at least,” Lisa said.
“I see a boulder over there,” Ryan pointed. “Madin, help me move it and we can drop it—”
“No,” their guide snapped. “And they won’t stop yapping. Listen. Stop asking stupid questions. Stop trying things. If you want to help, act like it and do your jobs. Go east”—he pointed—”someone will ferry you across the chasm. Stay. Wait for the collector to come. Let us do our jobs.”
“You,” he addressed Navid. “How often can you cast [Hold Monster] with that cane?”
Navid pressed his lips into a tight line and glanced at Anne. She looked excited to be here despite the chaos.
He answered, “Against it? Twice, maybe three times, but the cane can do other—”
“Don’t care,” he waved him off. “Our plan is similar to that maneuver just now, but our original staging ground was a little ways off. We have to reposition our traps and clear out the area, so when we try to debilitate the collector, and you see any complications, you have permission to aid us by using that spell and that spell alone. Nothing else.
“The rest of you keep him safe and away from its spit attacks. No careless [Fireballs] that could hit my team, no dropped boulders that could crush them—nothing. Am I understood?”
He stared at Lisa and Navid, singling them out because they’d done the most, or because they were eldest …?
Micah didn’t know. He was annoyed other climbers always had to be such jerks when he met them in the Tower. Outside, everyone always seemed so friendly.
Two-faced liars, he grumbled in his thoughts.
“Fine,” Navid said and walked away. Shala chased after him. Lisa shrugged.
“Eavesdropper,” the man addressed Ryan. “Keep them informed, got it?”
Ryan scowled and joined them, glancing back at them as an invitation to do the same.
Micah waited for Anne, who stepped up and asked, “Excuse me, sir. Do you all have a name?”
He scowled. “Are you still on about that?”
“No, Mr. Flor, I meant your team as a whole. Many teams give themselves names for fun like the adventurers of old used to do?”
He looked at her as though for the first time and said, “No. We do not. We’re a unit employed with the Guild. You can bring it up with them if you have any complaints; though we might have some of our own.”
“Oh.” Anne looked disappointed. “No, I simply wanted to know. Good luck out there.”
Micah remembered to ask at the last moment, “Uhm! Excuse me, sir, but will we get anything out of this if we win?”
Flor stopped before turning away. “Get something?”
“Like, loot …?”
He made a face of bewilderment and spoke as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “No.”
“Micah!” Ryan called.
Micah hurried to his side, frowning. Why were they doing this then?
Well, to help … though they seemed capable of handling this on their own. Because his friends wanted to, and they sort of didn’t have a choice? They’d dragged themselves into it?
Because it was fun …?
“Is this alright?” Anne asked, slowing down for him.
“Yeah. I just … hate meeting other people in the Tower, I think.”
“Why?”
“They’re always rude, and condescending, and territorial—and two almost killed me.” He threw an arm out and smiled with no anger behind it. Only frustration wrapped up in amusement. He didn’t know if that was a lie or not. He didn’t want to be angry?
“Bad experiences, huh? It’s not always that way. Collaborating with people can be fun!”
Ahead, a lichen-covered boulder disassembled itself into a horned crab-like creature. It stomped its pointed legs and snapped its pincers at them.
Shala’s sword—or Navid’s, rather—cut through those like butter and left golden lines in the stone. He stepped around and stabbed one foot, then slashed through its head.
The blade didn’t cut. The crab tried to snap at him but couldn’t move. Golden chains flashed in his sight and tethered it to the sword and each other.
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It … wasn’t hurt?
Shala pulled out a knife and set it against the bundle of chains around the blade. When he pulled back, Micah felt a palpable resistance from a distance, but they snapped, and so did the creature.
Bloodless chunks of meat fell apart and burst into smoke. Its crystal fell, unharmed.
“It shouldn’t be like this,” Navid said casually, waiting for Shala to finish. “Normally, when you meet another climber in the Tower, you can introduce yourself, be cordial, and inform them of your team and hunting grounds; maybe offer assistance or propose another form of cooperation, like trading maps and information. You don’t bark orders at complete strangers.”
“He was busy,” Anne defended him. “Hunts like these are stressful, so he probably didn’t have time to stop and chat, and we did kind of ruin their plans.”
“He could have said as much! Why could the Guild not have concluded their missions before summer break began anyway? They should have known ‘schoolchildren’ would be swarming the lower floors today.”
Navid snatched up the crystal as they walked by.
That was true, though Micah thought he wasn’t being entirely genuine in his reasons for not liking the man. He’d immediately been angry at being called a noncombatant, even though Lisa called him worse twelve times a day … and Navid was sort of prone to hanging back.
The comment wasn’t entirely undeserved?
Ryan jogged away from another boulder he had poked—it wasn’t a crab—and said, “I met you in the Tower.”
“Huh?”
A bit of a non-sequitur.
“You hate people you meet in the Tower?”
“Oh.” Micah rolled his eyes. “You’re the exception. Always. And we knew each other before.”
… Although, his instructor had been super mean if he remembered right. It was hazy, and he didn’t like to remember. He scooped up a couple of rocks.
The sounds of combat picked up behind them. The adults barked orders, and the collector fought to free itself.
Ahead, near the edge of the plateau, someone was supposed to ferry them across to a lower cliff across a chasm but Micah couldn’t see anyone.
He was about to ask Ryan when a gloved hand slapped over the edge from below. A woman vaulted up with the one hand and glanced at them. A thick bundle of rope hung from one side of her backpack, a metal net from the other, and two more ropes trailed off into the abyss from a harness.
“You the nobles?” she asked and give the bundle slack with unnatural fluidity. It didn’t make that hot running sound Micah was used to.
“Some of us are, Ms. Krazny,” Anne told her and gestured, glancing at Navid as she did. “My name is Anne, and this is Navid. These are our classmates, Sion, Lisa, Ryan, and Micah.”
She stiffened but didn’t stop. “Huh. Well, I’m going to shoot a line across and secure it. You three.” She gestured. “‘Got any climbing harnesses?”
“Uh, n—” Micah started.
“No,” Ryan answered.
“Not a problem. I have spares for when ours break.” With her other arm, she slipped her pack around and pulled a few belts out which she tossed over.
Ryan caught them and handed them out.
“Put those on. Doesn’t have to be a perfect fit. We’ll only need them for one trip.” To Anne, she threw another bundle of shorter ropes. “Attach those. You know how this works?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She attached the rope to a modified crossbow bolt and loosed. As it sailed, she gave the rope a tug. It looped in mid-air. The bolt struck, the loop fell over a snag like a lasso, and she pulled it taut before she secured it.
One last tap and a flicker of a sheen passed over the material. Ms. Krasny dropped, holding on by one hand instead of her harness as she zip-lined across the chasm.
The rope barely buckled under her weight and the weight of her equipment.
“Wow.”
“[Rangers],” Navid scoffed.
Micah’s eyes went wide and he stared at Ryan, over to the zip line, and back again.
“What?”
“You have to learn how to do that!”
“Put on your harness.”
The belt seemed insistent on getting stuck against the tip of his boot, and the ground shook as the battle continued—but this time, people called out warnings.
Looking back, the collector had managed to climb the cliff despite the bombardment. It didn’t have the thin, pointed legs of a centipede, but thick ones like a turtle and many little single-segment feelers like a millipede at its side.
The woman with warhammer broke a part of the ledge off entirely and the automaton threatened to fall.
A cone of golden light extended from its open maw, and the rocks hovered like they were floating in oil. The collector continued to use them to drag itself up.
“Micah, now,” Ryan said.
“On it.” He finished and crouched next to the zip line, where Anne handed him a short rope he attached to his belt and the line itself with two metal pieces.
Lisa had already left, testing the line before any of them. Sam held onto her shoulder.
Ryan gave them one last look and dropped, sailing away.
Navid went after, then Shala.
“Go,” Anne told him.
“What about you?”
“I’m right behind you.” She gave him a shove, and Micah dropped.
The rope jerked and the belt pulled taut. It cut into his pants and legs, but he sailed over an open chasm and the ground was so far below him then. The looming fall distracted him.
He looked ahead, where the first of them met the opposite cliffside and the lady had secured the line. Lisa got there and stumbled against the rock, but she helped her up. Ryan was next and she was still distracted.
He looked back, Anne behind him, the climbers fighting, the collector at the edge, and knew the exact moment Ryan arrived, because without her help, the raincoat cushioned his fall.
The collector’s head jerked up to stare. It reared its body up and unhinged its maw—
“Lisa!” Micah shouted. “Navid! Ward! Ward!? Incoming!”
It spat. A glob of oily liquid sailed through the air. Someone tried to intercept and missed. It wasn’t aiming at the guild workers. Micah wanted to cast [Freeze] or blow at it, as if that would help, but it was too far away and he was racing through the air—
Lisa flung a fireball and the glob splattered into hot rain above them.
They huddled beneath arms and shields. Where the liquid hit, it tore into their clothes and armor, the grass, stone and—
Rope.
They jerked down a fraction.
Navid made it. Ryan dragged him up to safety. Sion hit the side of the cliff. The lady helped him.
The moment the metal piece on Micah’s rope passed over a section of frayed rope, it snapped.
He grabbed the part behind himself with one hand, thinking, Anne, and tried to brace for impact. If he could find a grip with his other hand—
He hit rock, everything went blank for a second and suddenly he was falling with no up or down. He no idea what to reach for except the burning rope around his glove.
Something whipped past him and yanked him to a halt. All of the air thrust out of his lungs as an unbearable pressure dug into his legs above his knees.
The lady must have lassoed him somehow, and it felt like it was cutting him half. He tilted down, ass over teakettle.
Below him, Anne ground against the cliffside with her gloves and knees, and he held onto the rope to slow her fall, even as it squeezed the marrow out of his bones.
She came to a stop—the pressure eased up around his hand—and she yelled, “I’M FINE!”
Micah tried to answer, felt a lump rising in his throat, and snapped his mouth shut.
I am not going to throw up.
He didn’t even know if he would, if he tried to speak—maybe not—but all his blood was rushing to his head. He groaned instead.
“You two okay?” the lady asked.
“Hey, are you okay?” a man at the bottom of the chasm yelled. He had a hammer and strange blue sticks in hand. Pitons?
Micah struggled to focus as his vision swayed.
Two more guild workers had sacks of supplies in their arms; the patterned light of glowing potions crawled over their skin.
Right. They were moving traps.
“Micah?” Ryan yelled.
He groaned again, trying to make it sound like an, Mhm.
“I told you this would happen!” Lisa yelled down.
“I’m fine! Everything is fine!” Anne insisted. She glanced at him, winced, and said to herself, “Everything will be fine,” instead.
Micah realized he was hanging there like a corpse and gave her a thumbs-up. Or a thumbs-down, technically, since he was almost upside-down.
“I’m going to slowly pull you up, okay kid?”
“Anne!” Shala yelled down. “Can you climb up?”
“Uhm, it might be better for me to climb down? You said your team cleared the area, ma’am!? Is there an escape route I could use?”
Micah stretched his thumb in the other direction and hesitated when he parsed her words. He was not leaving without her.
He sunk, then rose up a fraction—being hauled up.
“Uhh … Greg?!” The rope lady’s voice sounded strained.
“Yeah, uh, if you climb down, head left for a little over a hundred meters. You should find a cave!”
Micah rose another fraction in a jerked motion, then began to steadily rise. “Wait,” he said, “if she’s climbing down, so am I!”
“Look, kid. I really don’t care, but we have to hurry— Oh, fuck.”
There came the sound of fire tearing through the air. Someone cursed. Micah barely glimpsed the collector, upside-down, near the edge of the plateau they’d come from.
An iron arm and hand—human in shape, slightly larger in size—extended from an indent at its side like a circular shutter and held a red, single-edged blade that looked like layered waves.
The arm swept the blade out and another [Swathe of Flames], five times the size of Ryan’s, rolled toward the guild workers with a wall of smoke. They were trying to stop it. Stop it from—
It was running right at them.
Navid and Ryan were on the cliff. If they tried to stop it from getting to them, it would fall.
That was the plan. The people down there were preparing traps, but Anne would be down there.
He squirmed, found a grip in the wall, and pulled his knife out.
“Stay calm! Don’t panic! I’m pulling you up,” the lady said and began to hurry.
“Micah!” Ryan hissed. “Stop!”
Micah sawed.
Her voice changed, going up in indignation. “Oi, don’t you dare cut my rope!”
Too late. It snapped, Micah hung there with one hand and both feet on the wall, and awkwardly kicked his leg free while not trying to drop the knife.
A body fell past him—Shala—and he almost reached out to catch him, before the guy thrust his sword into the cliffside.
Those same gold lines appeared as it passed through the stone. Phantom chains flickered, connecting to the blade, and he did something to make them materialize in fits and bursts, slowing his fall.
Oh. He’s … fine?
Micah awkwardly began to climb after him, slow and steady, one hand incapable of gripping properly, thinking, Show-off.
Navid spoke, “Hold.”
The collector was at the edge. It held. For now.
Lisa yelled, “What now, dumbass?!”
“Uhm.” Micah was beneath the automaton. He could see more of the circular shutters on the side of its body; parts of it were damaged. Some shutters were open. Metal arms held magic items—shields and potions.
He was almost halfway to the ground, halfway to the ledge, and Navid’s command wouldn’t last forever. Micah wouldn’t make it in either direction. He couldn’t fall like Shala. He needed—
“Shoot a line!” Micah yelled. “Can you make it frictionless?”
“You better fall damn well or have a cushion!” she yelled back, hands moving. “You’ll break your legs!”
Cushion?
Lisa was on the cliff. She didn’t know [Featherfall].
Damn.
Micah really did not want to break a leg again. He remembered weeks of walking with crutches, the cold discomfort of having a needle shoved into his spine to get ingredients for a gel, healing cramps, being benched while everyone pitied him—
A sharp, primal fear welled up inside him, but it was that or stay stuck to a wall while a battle raged around him.
Somehow, he still found the latter option more appealing.
A modified crossbow bolt shot past him at an angle, and the rope attached to it went taut.
He’d have to figure it out. He put his knife away and thrust himself at the line in a full-body hug, sliding down into the chasm.
Okayokayokayokayokay, his thoughts raced with himself on the way down. I can do this.
Fall exercises. They did those all the time. Combat training. Agility training. With practice mats, though. Gymnastics. He had [Lesser Agility].
… Or he could use his backpack to cushion his fall?
No, it wasn’t big enough and there were valuables—
The ground rushed toward him and his legs dropped to brace himself.
Suddenly, Anne and Shala were there, hands-free, and waved, yelling at him to … let go?
“We’ll catch you!”
Micah dropped without hesitating. He slammed into them and they stumbled back, a tangle of arms and limbs that almost toppled over. They did hit each other as they tried to figure out how to—
Oh, the harness. The now-useless metal piece that had secured him to the rope was caught on a shoulder.
They managed to get his feet on the ground. Anne steadied him as she asked, “Are you good?”
“Uhm, yeah,” Micah breathed. Aside from a lump of guilt that wouldn’t go away when he realized he’d accidentally hit her.
“Want to do it again?”
“Yea— No,” he caught himself at the last moment but frowned, remembering the thrill of it. “Maybe?”
She chuckled.
Shala dragged them away and pulled his sword out from where it stuck in the ground.
Above, the collector loomed, frozen. It had somehow managed to break a chunk off the ledge and hurled it across the chasm, then frozen it in mid-air with a golden cone of light. It had been using the hovering stones as a makeshift bridge.
That was three. Wasn’t that the limit?
“Tell me again how you thought we could have beat that thing?” Shala asked as they jogged.
“I didn’t know! About the magic items?”
A long line of circular indents extended along the waist of the collector. Out of some, metal arms held rings, potions, a rug, and that flame sword.
It was frozen. Couldn’t someone just … pluck it out of its hand? Micah wanted to do it himself, despite his aversion to fire. Something flashy like that would sell.
“Even without—”
“It would have worked. Someone—Ryan probably—could have distracted its face while we broke its legs. It’s too long and slow. Immobile. Like one of those big island turtles?”
More and more shadowed figures appeared at the edge of the chasm. He recognized two but didn’t see their teammates.
The guild workers on the ground were working overtime to hammer blue pitons into stone.
Nobody seemed intent on stealing from the collector, so Micah was about to stop and try it himself with a well-placed [Aimed Shot] when a multi-colored explosion rocketed out of its maw. Its golden light failed and the collector fell.
They ran, Shala pointing at the cave, Micah craning his head back as he followed blindly.
It twisted in mid-air, breathed bronze fire in a futile retaliation, and hit the side of the chasm. The metal arms scraped past rock, disappeared, and when he saw them again, half were mangled beyond recognition. One held a lonesome, red hilt.
The shattered pieces of the flame sword fell.
“C’mon!”
It hit the ground.