It was weird, marching through these muddy halls without being shot at. Silas led the way in Ryan’s absence. Lea and Kyle almost fought for second place. Then came Jean and he, and they would have walked side-by-side if not for their luggage.

Micah watched their backs. Jean had his familiar to focus on and he his slingshot to help out with.

It was weird, also, being last in line while others led the attack. With the way things had been, he had half-expected he would have to spearhead the charge, but then Ryan had taken over negotiations and the planning session, and he’d almost come up with this plan on his own.

It was a worry and relief both, because he certainly hadn’t looked happy wrangling the lot of them like children, but he had also sounded so confident like he used to.

If everything went well, maybe he would keep some of that confidence?

‘If everything went well.’ It was on him to make sure that happened, too. Micah pulled his straps tight and kept up.

Their belongings rustled and their boots squelched as they followed the maps. They had made it surprisingly far already, heading in almost a straight line while the others looped around. The last time they had walked this long in here unmolested was coming in from the mine and they had been impatient then, unaware even of the shapes stalking them through the walls.

Then again, he had no idea if there were any there right now. They were being quiet, the tunnels seemed abandoned, and Jason and Ryan were hopefully distracting them … But there was always a chance the Kobolds were being equally quiet and preparing traps.

How would they know without Ryan? Silas wasn’t as perceptive. How long had it been since he and Jason had left anyway? It felt like ages.

Any moment now, it would begin.

Silas stopped at the next intersection half a tunnel ahead and peeked around the corner, then glanced back. He gave them a thumbs-up and wavered with his hand before jerking that thumb over his shoulder.

The same look, the same signal: the coast was clear but he was unsure about the Kobolds; should they head on?

Micah nodded almost on reflex, as he had before. They needed to hurry to make the most of Ryan’s distraction. He was eager to get something done.

Kyle marched on, about to overtake him if Silas didn’t move. We’re not stopping, his posture said. He was the same, though probably for different reasons. Ever since Ryan had asked about his glove, he’d looked insulted; almost betrayed. Had he expected them to just forget?

Silas turned the corner. Halfway down the tunnel, the first plick missed the [Scout] by an inch. He froze. A single bone dart clattered off the wall and fell to the mud.

They paused behind him and the moment they did, a storm of darts erupted around them.

Micah jerked to pull his makeshift coif forward. A dozen little hits rained on his armor like hail or someone throwing dirt. The walls whispered with sharp breaths and the stagnant curtain of air around them was puncture by dozens of tiny funnels of wind.

He spun to one wall and covered himself with his luggage and shield. Jean did the same, Lea had her shield, but Kyle could only cover himself up and run. When she followed, the darts seemed to follow them and left Jean and him alone. It was clear who the Kobolds preferred.

Fewer darts than the initial ambush. Micah imagined tiny scaled bodies crawling over one another in the dark, in a rush to get to the traps, either on each other’s shoulders or in multi-layered hollow roots in the walls, as darts flew from a single column of traps at different heights.

But, there were still so many. There had to be at least a dozen Kobolds to either side firing as fast as they could. Meaning, they had prepared this. They’d stalked them—and he hadn’t noticed a thing.

The quiet ticks and loud rustling of their run were expected. Kyle’s curse broke the silence for good: “Fucking dammit!”

“Don’t slow down!” Silas called back and did the opposite of his words, closing the distance between them and giving the Kobolds less time to prepare after he ran past.

Micah yanked darts out of his sides and agreed with them. He loved and hated traps, but he preferred Kobolds when he could punch them in their faces.

Let’s hurry up to get to that point.

“No duh!” Kyle shouted. “Go, you idiot!”

“Hey! Play nice!” Micah echoed ahead before he remembered just who had told Kyle that last.

“Fuck you!” he snapped back.

Yeah.

“Stop telling me to play nice like I’m some kid, you assholes.”

Sorry.

Now, whether they liked it or not, their charge had begun.

They abandoned all pretense of sneaking and ran as fast as they could, to get as close to the camp and apply pressure for the others’ sneak attack.

Kyle and Lea still attracted most of the darts, as they had the least armor, and the guy cursed under his breath, gripping his red axe in a vice like the couldn’t wait to pay them back.

Jean and he had trouble even keeping up with their luggage. He was also distracted by his familiar.

“False floor!” Silas called and Micah’s eyes snapped to the muddy ground, but he couldn’t find it.

“Where?” Kyle thankfully demanded.

Silas landed, spun, and pointed along the ground just in front of him. “A little over a meter or so from here.”

“Or so?!”

“Just jump where I jumped!”

His bootprint was still visible in the mud, slowly filling in. Kyle tensed and leaped there, Lea a bit to the side.

“Catch!” Jean said and threw one of his sacks before he did.

She barely caught it, spinning around to fumble for it. Jean landed on bent knees with a splash, then surged up to take it off her hands as he ran on.

She overtook him soon enough.

Micah almost headed for the wall to use the same unreliable trick as before, but he hadn’t drunk a strength potion and wasn’t allowed to breathe essences anymore. There was nobody to catch if he threw a sack. He jumped. The ground gave beneath his heel. He dug his toes in to push himself into a stumbling run.

Only then did someone look to see if he had made it. Jumping off mud with luggage is hard, he told himself.

Glancing back, there was a dent in the floor. Clumps of mud clung to a cluster of hay or roots. They were close to the camp. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what was beneath there.

Stone shattered in the next tunnel, drawing his attention forward. Someone had snapped the hidden tripwire and an oily liquid pooled in the craters of mud and dripped down walls.

Fire potion.

After Silas, a burning tatter fell from the ceiling and ignited it. The flames were short and lazy, not an effective trap at all except if someone stumbled through and got it on their boots or pants, but the splash zone was smaller than the false floor had been.

Still. Fire.

As if these tunnels weren’t hot enough.

“Potions, soon!” Micah called as he took large steps through the gaps. The others had theirs. He had his strength potion.

“Once we get closer!” Silas called back. He had good hearing, if not as good as Ryan.

Of course, Lea had to add her two pennies, “The traps won’t do anything if we slow down!”

So?

It took him a moment to figure out the argument. It was something they’d discussed: How would the Kobolds react? The point was to draw attention, to act as bait, but to get there, they had to make them feel ineffectual so they’d use resources—spells, poison darts, numbers.

Cavern Prowlers.

“Sooner,” Micah gasped and caught his breath, “rather than later! Poison and scrying bowl!”

She had to help him with that. And if the Cavern Prowlers attacked them when it was time, it would be too late.

“Got it!” she echoed Jean. Arced lines shimmered off him every now and then as he prepared a spell.

If Micah had switched to his [Affinity Sight], he could have seen more than glimpses. But he couldn’t risk impairing his vision right now and missing a trap or step. With the bags and mud, running faster and longer, his right leg began to act up already. He could have smacked it.

Lea sped up to Kyle’s side, without his consent judging by the glare he shot her, but blocked most of the darts on his right side. He could focus on hiding behind his pack on his left.

But as they made their way in, the holes reached higher and higher and grew large enough to fit spears and he soon had to protect his neck and face as well. He couldn’t block them all.

Silas slowed at the next crossroads and looked from one path to the other. The floor twisted in places beneath the mud, the walls curved, and shallow grooves formed gauges in the stone—mining marks.

The paths didn’t even lead from side-to-side anymore, but left and right at an angle down.

Had the clear difference in structure made him stop? They stumbled up behind him and Micah inspected the ways with a heaving chest, but noticed a clear depression on the ground on the right.

Pitfall?

Then the other … A stone hid the view of the ceiling and he immediately searched for a tripwire below.

Silas noticed them, slipped his backpack around, and brought out a tarp and some tools. He hammered two pitons connected to it into the stone wall in short order, giving them cover.

“Why,” Kyle gasped, “do you always take the trapped routes? They slow us down and I get hit for it.”

“You think the Kobolds want us to take the ways that are untrapped?” Lea asked. She squared her shoulders and leaned back to take a deep breath.

Silas pointed at her and put the hammer away. This time, both options were trapped and he didn’t know where to go …?

The moment he could get past the hot, torn feeling in his throat, Micah stumbled up to Kyle and said, “Let me see your wounds.”

First things first. Poison darts. They were too close. Between Jean, Lea’s items, and him, they could maybe do something about it—if they noticed soon enough. They hadn’t been willing to test it with the scorpion he had caught.

He slapped his hand away and said, “No. Get off me.”

“C’mon, Kyle—” Micah stepped forward to get a look at his wraps to look for puncture wounds.

He ripped his arm away and snapped, “No. If I’m hit, you’ll find out when I’m choking on mud, not sooner. So piss off!”

Micah met his scowl with a look of his own, then deliberately looked away and asked, “Lea?” His nerves from someone shouting at him were somehow worse than the adrenaline in his veins.

Fucking Kyle.

“I’m fine.” She swallowed and tapped the ring on her chest. “I would have noticed if not.”

“Okay.”

Silas gave them a wary glance and nodded down the way. “A little further?”

“Further,” Kyle snapped.

Jean nodded without speaking, distracted.

Silas moved and Micah raised his voice before they could run off again, “Potions first. The traps are getting worse; no way we’ll fight longer than they last.”

Thankfully, they nodded and yanked the bottle off of whatever belt, pouch, or … torso holster, in Silas’s case—Micah wanted one—and drank them. Even Kyle. At least, something he could help out with.

“Traps are also what I wanted to say,” Silas said and wiped his mouth. “The left isn’t wired but it has something, likely dangerous. I wanted to warn you, because we’re going that way.”

He collected his pitons and held up the tarp.

It made a degree of sense. Worse traps were more likely there to defend something the Kobolds wanted to protect.

Lea glanced down the tunnel and said, “I got this.” She summoned Spike, tied a rope to it, and began to swing the poor stone hedgehog in circles as she walked down the tunnel, longer and longer. Once she got close enough, she flung it up at the ceiling past the jutting stone.

Micah stared. That was … lame. Totally lame. Absolutely lame. Lisa could probably have just made Spike walk on walls or something.

He scoffed.

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But a moment after the summon disappeared, the grinding noise of emerald spikes piercing through stone echoed through the cavern and the rope went slack.

He cringed back like he would from the sound of a dentist’s tools scraping against teeth.

Kobolds cried out. A slide of rocks tumbled from the ceiling and flung mud in waves. They cracked against each other and the tunnel, at least twice the size of the rocks the tan Kobolds collected in their mines—large enough that, without a helmet, they could crack a skull.

He checked his helmet was tight and moved forward.

Kobolds snarled, darts fired from the walls ahead, and Spike plopped down off the pile of rubble, rope still attached like a leash, and ran to its owner. A single crack in its shell leaked mint green light like smoke.

“Shields up!” Lea called as she swooped her summon up and threaded through the rough terrain.

A few lone rocks still tumbled down after her. Micah dodged, then bashed one of the smaller ones aside.

Silas was last, collecting his tarp and using it as a makeshift shield on his way past the traps before he took the lead again.

They only ran a few more bends before they realized they couldn’t anymore, in these halls. The traps simply weren’t the type you could trigger from afar and run past; they weren’t forgiving.

They couldn’t risk it, especially if the Kobolds attacked, so they slowed down, caught their breath, and prepared to make their stand.

“Jean.”

“On it!”

In the next intersection, Silas put his tarp up and Jean wrenched his pack around to scry.

Kyle kept a look out, though he should have been blocking dart traps. Lea turned to him and Micah prepared ingredients of his own: water, poison shots, a bit of poison he had harvested. He crushed them with his pestle and whisked it up, preparing [Dissettle] in his mind.

“[Lens: Affinity Sight]. Get ready.” His world changed.

Lea jerked. “What, already?”

“Yes, already.”

What was he doing this for? Mana flickered around them as they stood on opposite sides of a dart trap, waiting to make sure it would actually fire.

“Uhm, guys,” Silas said and rushed back from the end of the next tunnel. Two split off from the intersection. “I think we are going to get company really soon.”

He saw they were busy, turned to Kyle and said, “Protect Jean.”

Kyle grunted.

Micah took a deep breath, leaned down, and breathed it into the bowl as he cast his spell. Yellow fog overflowed and a hazy, thin shell of green mana caught and guided it to the dart trap.

A dart shot through, breaking the stream, and Lea jerked back as it came close to her hands.

Micah scowled and immediately took sharp breaths to guide back. She pushed the shell at it, too, but it was like mopping up the bathhouse floor: the fog flowed around their directives and spells more than it flowed into the smaller hole. And even when it did, it didn’t travel.

If only he could breathe it in himself. He needed a container to keep it, the jar was too shallow, and needed something … something like a funnel to guide it into the trap with more force.

His body could be that, a tool to be used. If only it didn’t slowly poison him from the inside-out.

Micah wanted to keep up hope, smile, and find some other solution. If he could make this work, it would break the Kobolds’ ranks and cause mayhem. It would help his allies so much.

But darts still fired out of the holes Kyle hadn’t covered in mud and one struck Jean in his shoulder as he concentrated.

Lea looked like she was afraid to get close to the poison fog, when it really wasn’t that bad.

Screams sounded in the distance.

“Dammit, guide it right—” Micah winced, because he wasn’t doing much better than her.

“I am. I’m not an expert.”

He glanced to the side, but Jean was preoccupied with something more important. He was failing. Again. They should have practiced this yesterday. He should have freaking thought of that.

He needed a win.

“Guys,” Silas said, inching back a little as the first echoed screams came down the tunnel.

Micah glanced back just as the fog overflowed. Lea jerked her hands away and kept them up as she backed off, shaking her head.

“Nope. No. It’s not working. And we’ll poison ourselves at this rate.”

“What are you? A baby? C’mon—”

“No.” She pointed down the tunnel where the screams were getting louder and louder with the beating of his heart; his fear of disappointment. “I’ll go fight those.”

And then she left him on his own, poison fog overflowing onto his hands, and Micah looked around helpless for something to make this work. Sure, he could do it this one last time with his lungs but that would be another kind of failure and he wanted to be better than that.

He needed tools. Wanted them. He had thought his body would do, almost knew that it could do, but if Lisa was right, he needed alternatives. Like a blowgun. Like a funnel. Like that piton—

“Jean!” he almost shouted and placed the poison jar on the mud. For now. It spilled over but he could recover the losses later.

He rushed over to the [Witch].

“Busy,” he hissed, a heavy cloud of mana around his head and hands. He needed to empower the bond to his familiar to draw on its information, then shape it into a light spell to see.

“Micah,” Silas warned him.

“Just one question! You keep your team’s supplies, right? Does that include the stone piton?”

“Uhhh …”

“Jean?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah …”

Micah crawled over him and rummaged through his pack even while he finished the spell and blinding light flashed in the corner of his eyes like a waterfall of information.

He glanced over for just a second, because it reminded him so much of his appraisal training, but then his frantic mind pushed him back to the task at hand.

An image flashed onto the dark liquid, of the Kobold camp, and Jean turned his head to scowl at him.

But wrapped in a dirty cloth, Micah found his prize and rushed back to his poison jar in the mud. “This works with glass, right?”

“What? No. I mean, we didn’t test—”

Too late. Micah picked up the jar, flooded the spike with mana, and stabbed the glass bottom. Something cracked—but it did not shatter. As the fog swirled in the jar, he caught glimpses of curled glass like wet clay with jagged edges. Cracks ran through the bottom of the jar.

It had half-worked. He’d had a feeling that it might. Good enough.

Even more poison dropped through the hole in the bottom when he yanked the piton back out.

The screams reached a pitch and a tide of shaggy grey bodies crashed around the bend.

“Help me with this!” Micah said, taking quick breaths to keep it all where he wanted it to be.

Jean glanced from his bowl to the wave of monsters headed for them, to Micah’s jar of poison, to him; cursed and pushed himself up to help him. He wove threads of mana that already looked much better suited to wind magic from his hands than whatever Lea had tried to do.

They ignored what was already on the floor, but salvaged the yellow curtains trailing down and Jean kept the contents in the jar as Micah set the large opening press against the wall, took a deep breath, and used the hole he had made to breathe the entire contents in with another push of wind essence and [Dissettle].

In a single tearing rush, the push emptied the jar’s contents into the dart trap and the Kobolds beyond cried out as their tunnels were flooded.

Micah gaped, then grinned, and wanted to scream in joy. It had worked! Somewhat. Some had escaped through the uneven—

A clump of mud hit him in the face and a Prowler slammed into Jean. The guy twisted and threw it off, but stumbled to the mud where half of the lost fog had pooled below.

Micah wiped the mud off his face and sputtered, but didn’t miss the look of panic on his face when he found himself face-to-face with it. He scrambled back.

A second Prowler jumped off the wall at him, this time, and Micah ducked and twisted as Jean had to throw it before it could even latch on.

They were everywhere. A third was already headed for the [Witch] running through the mud with one paw against the wall as if for balance or to push off soon, just a few steps away from the—

The bowl.

Micah body-slammed it to the wall and kicked it while it was down. A second one fell on him and raked his back and shoulders as it held on. He spread his legs to keep the one trapped against the walls and squared his shoulders to keep the other far from the bowl on the ground.

The image showed the [Summoner] on its ramshackle, wooden podium around one of the pillars, giving frantic orders to Flamescale Kobolds on the ground. It looked like … it was sending some south-east? The direction was off—Jason and Ryan should have been further along—until he remembered the time delay. What he was seeing had happened a minute or two ago.

Still odd.

The bowl began to tip as the mud shifted up and he had to focus on other things. He tried to use one leg to push the mud the other way to equal it out again, but the image just flickered.

Jean roared and pushed a Prowler off him to throw himself at the bowl. Immediately, the light solidified again.

He tried to look, and Micah would have told him, but the Prowlers they’d shaken off ran at him.

“Behind you!” Micah called just as the beast on his back screamed right into his ear.

He flinched, then jerked his helmet back with an audible crack as it hit its canines, and elbowed it in the temple.

Jean was drawing his pair further down the tunnel. Micah shifted and pushed his left leg out as if he were doing the split to push the bowl on a mound of mud away from him, and pressed his knee-guard into the other Prowler’s throat on the ground.

It started slapping and slashing his leg, hitting his leg-guard most of the time. It drew blood on the others.

He grimaced, slipped a dagger from his hip, and stabbed the eye and neck of the one up on his shoulder over and over. Much better than an elbow. His ear still rang and pulsed, and felt hot as if he could feel lines drawn on it.

The beast howled and tried to scramble off—right in the direction of the bowl he had just pushed to safety.

Micah panicked and kicked it in mid-air, sending it tumbling toward Jean who fought two on his own. He overreached, tilting back too far, and slipped in the mud to land on the one beneath him.

Something flickered in the air. A wave of brine slapped his face, making him cough and sputter.

[Lens: Nature Sight], he finally remembered.

The essences rioted around him and the octopus spirits coiled inside and around the Prowlers’ bodies flailed wildly.

The Prowler tried to scramble on him, arms thrashing and sending mud everywhere, and Micah wrapped an arm around it and stabbed its chest and side until it screamed in his other ear in a wild panic and then burst.

The blue-grey essence mixed with the yellow fog around him and he held his breath, already out of breath. But the panic in his chest was better than the numbness he would feel if he breathed any of that in.

He could have pushed it away, but the bowl was right there and if he sloshed it at the same time—

He turned the other way, tilted his chin up, and sucked in clean wind essence through his nostrils, then gasped it all out as a cough down the right side of the tunnel. The essences pushed around his allies’ legs and billowed rather than flee like a river. He had to catch his breath to try again.

He checked on them. Without Ryan here to block the tide, the Prowlers had torn through their lines and grouped up on everyone. Silas used a sword and stayed quick on his feet to escape them and pulled back into the right tunnel, Kyle cut his way through the hoard on the left, and Lea was left with the leftovers the middle, which she finished off with ease thanks to her axe and summon.

Every time Spike retracted its namesake emeralds, it waddled up to another pair of Prowlers and did to them as the Kobolds hoped their pits would do to climbers, killing in an instant.

With them fighting like that, it might have been best to leave his fog where it was between Lea and him.

Darts still fired from beyond the tarp and a few meters forward to his right … beyond where he had flooded the tunnel with poison. It really had worked.

His joy was short-lived, though, as bestial screams echoed far away and he worried their screams really had deafened him, that his ears were hurt. But no, as Micah groaned and pushed himself up on wounded legs, a second wave of Cavern Prowlers crashed into the right tunnel ahead of Silas.

Micah’s eyes went wide and he immediately breathed the poison down that side after all.

“Fall back!” Lea called for him as she rushed for Spike.

A Prowler tore the tarp off one of the pitons as it went for her. Darts immediately shot from the uncovered traps.

Micah scrambled for the jar, but Jean was fending off three Prowlers down the tunnel and taking hits so he ran to him instead. He thrust his dagger into one of the beasts’ backs and tore it off him.

It arched its back and tried to spin around to swipe him, but he leaned into the strike and drove it into the mud. He was tempted to breathe in to rip that wound open. Instead, he reached down, focused for a second, and did it by hand.

The damage wasn’t as broad as his breath would have been, but he ripped a chunk of its back out and that chunk burst into a mushroom plume of blue and grey smoke as he flung his arm up.

He finished it off, kicked the other one in the face, and scrambled up to stab it in the throat.

Jean finished off the last one and immediately went for his bowl. A clump of mud had fallen in and the image was flickering between colors and silver smoke wildly.

It might have been the flickering and shaking, but the camp looked even more in disarray.

“I can’t see,” Jean shouted. “I don’t know? It looks like— Chaotic. Do I give the others the signal to attack?!”

Micah held a hand under the hole in the jar as he filled it with ingredients, then water, and crushed it all with a muddy pestle. It slopped out over his glove, imperfect.

Silas waved a hand and shouted as he ran back, fleeing the horde, “Do it! We’re not gonna’ get much better than this. There’s a delay until they get—”

“Dodge!”

Lea pitched Spike like a baseball and Silas threw himself to the wall. It hit the middle of the charge and stuck in mid-air as a dozen thorns impaled beasts around it, and more and more impaled themselves on the ball of spikes as they couldn’t stop themselves in the wet and mud.

But some of those spikes were cracked and fading like sand, just like Spike’s shell. Minty green light leaked from it in streams and the hedgehog winced with every new impact and body.

One too many hit, the shell cracked, and Spike burst into light. Its crystal fell and a wounded Prowler trampled it into the mud.

Silas turned and Lea joined him to meet the charge.

Micah was almost done with his second round of poison, but he didn’t know where to use it. If he breathed it at the horde, it might slow them down, but it might also hit his allies. If he breathed it into the tunnels, he might stop the darts from firing and if they snuck a poison one in—

Or, more importantly, he might take out one of the fire Kobolds and break down their chain of command.

It seemed like it was worth a shot, even if might not help with the immediate situation, but—

The decision was taken out of his hands. Literally. A Teacup Salamander dove through his arms and knocked the jar into the mud. A second one landed on his shoulders and Jean cursed.

Mican turned. The guy had been distracted by finding the fire lizard; neither of them had noticed the third hoard of tamed monsters attacking from behind, a few Kobolds in the far back.

Where had they even come from?

“This better be worth it,” Jean said before he crushed the red shape in his hand and turned to face them.

Now, Lisa’s charge would begin. They had to endure here long enough to make it worth it.

A Prowler threw itself at him. Micah spun aside, ignored the [Firebolts] the Kobolds flung at them, and wrenched a bottle off his belt to down its contents as quickly as he could. So quickly, it felt like he might puke. The dry liquid soothed his ragged throat and gave him what he needed.

Micah threw the empty bottle at the Prowler’s face and heard:

[Skill — Surging Strength obtained!]

He blocked a giant centipede with his shield, drew his sword, and hacked through its segmented body in one go. The Prowler mauled a Whip Spider before throwing itself back at him and he impaled it. But right after it came the next centipede, and the next Teacup, and the next.

There were so many.

The Prowlers actually attacked the other monsters, and Micah thought they might be able to use that, but they were so divided. Both the monsters and his allies who fought them.

He dodged, blocked, bashed aside, and cut down what he could, covering for Jean and Jean for him, but they had the easier opponents. And when he got a free moment, he looked ahead to check on the others, hand ready to snatch up his slingshot if he had to help them.

Silas and Lea fought an entire wave of wounded Cavern Prowlers together, without Spike or spells.

Kyle had cut his way to the end of the left tunnel and stood there heaving, looking left and right with wide eyes.

Micah’s breath caught. More monsters?

He didn’t know if they could handle a fourth wave. They might have to regroup, flee, or do something.

But as he fought and glanced back, Kyle still stood there with his arms down, axe at his side, not surrounded by any monsters. He glanced right, leaned there, and took a single step.

Micah blocked a [Firebolt] and hacked up a Teacup Salamander, heart aching as his blade came back with blood, and stumbled out of the way of Jean stumbling back.

He glanced.

Kyle’s gloved hand clenched his fire axe before he took another step. He looked less and less like he was afraid of monsters, and more like he was frustrated, indecisive, like he wanted to go.

It all made sense then.

Micah would have cried out, shouted at him, said something, but his throat felt as hot as his skin burned where Prowlers’ claws had torn into him, and he stumbled or limped from foe to foe.

He’s going to abandon us, he knew but couldn’t say, to fight the camp and Guardians on his own like an asshole!

“Dammit, Kyle,” he groaned.