It took another few minutes before everyone accepted that they were trapped. Truth be told, Sorin was confident that if they absolutely had to leave, if they were backed into a corner with monsters coming at them from every direction, he could find a way over the wall. He was even confident that Rue could follow him. Nemari and Odric, however, wouldn’t make it.

  Part of it was that the wall had grown higher, a full fifteen feet now as far as Sorin could see in either direction. But another part of it was a sort of malicious intelligence that ruins had. They weren’t sapient, but they could and did often change things while climbers were inside of them. Those changes were never anything good, and escaping an unconquered ruin meant being fast enough to stay ahead of the tower itself.

  But if I tell them that the only way they’re getting out alive is to kill everything here and plunder the ruin’s treasure, while I could still escape on my own, all that will do is sow even more seeds of distrust between us. Better to let them think we’re all in this together. That way, they won’t question my motivation.

  They hadn’t made it more than a hundred feet from the wall when Rue said, “Something’s here.”

  Sorin immediately turned his focus inward to his soulspace to break the illusion, then killed the monster watching them from a second-story window a second later. It tried to duck out of the way, but the creatures didn’t appear to be that fast. Without their illusions to hide them, it was easy to take one out and difficult for them to pull off an ambush.

  “Well, this is a lot easier with Rue here,” Nemari said. “It makes me wonder how they tricked you into the ruin in the first place.”

  “I can’t see through the illusion. I just feel the presence of the monsters.”

  Sorin believed that, to an extent. Sensing anima would allow Rue to feel that there was an illusion around her, and the monsters weren’t strong enough to mask the anima that went into their magic like something from the higher floors could do. On the other hand, Rue wasn’t an experienced climber, and it was entirely possible that just because her soulprint had the potential to do something didn’t mean she was actually capable of pulling it off.

  Regardless, she was good enough to notice nearby monsters, and they didn’t seem to be able to cast their illusions from long range, so other than needing to move slowly to keep an eye out for any hidden traps, they moved along at a good speed. The few traps Sorin did find were easily disabled or bypassed, their owners being too reliant on their abilities to hide them. Without a monster nearby to throw illusions over the trip wires and spring-loaded launchers, there was no real danger.

  “Where are we going?” Odric asked after ten minutes of walking. “Are we just going to take random streets until we find something?”

  “Not quite,” Sorin explained. “The tower tries to build out the ruin from a central starting point. It can get more creative than that, but it probably won’t on such a low floor.”

  God, how many times have I thought that was true in the last week only for this place to immediately throw something that doesn’t belong on Floor 1 at me? I can’t just assume the ruin will follow the rules when nothing else is.

  Sorin dismissed the thought and added, “Even if it does, the center is still where we should start our search. Best case, we find the ruin seed and take care of it. Worst case, we cross one section of the ruin off the map and hope there are some clues as to where we actually need to be. The monsters always like to cluster around the seed anyway, so as long as the attacks get more frequent, we’ll know we’re going in the right direction.”

  “There’s something coming,” Rue said suddenly. She froze in place and peered around. “A lot of somethings, actually. At least ten.”

  Nemari followed Rue’s gaze and asked, “What do you mean ‘at least?’ Is it ten or not?”

  “Ten, no, eleven so far that I can feel,” Rue said, her voice tight. “Twelve, thirteen. They’re gathering around us.”

  Sorin took a second to confirm he wasn’t being blinded by illusions and looked around. Whatever the monsters were, they were hiding the old-fashioned way. "Not those gray-furred monkeys?"

  “I don’t think so. This feels different.”

  Monsters didn’t live in harmony with each other, not even in a ruin. They could be working with the monkeys, but it was just as likely that this new variety was hostile to everything. That was honestly the best-case scenario. Different types of monsters working together could be far more dangerous than fighting either breed individually if they possessed synergistic abilities.

  “Where are they?” Sorin whispered to Rue.

  “All around us. Three of them behind that house. Another one on the roof over there. Two hidden by the debris in that alley. We’re up to sixteen now.”

  “We can’t just stand here,” Nemari said. “We’ve got to push through their line now before they attack or we’ll be fighting them off from every angle.”

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  There was some truth to that, but Sorin was loath to rush down the streets and lose someone to something stupid like a simple trap, especially when they didn’t even know what was circling them yet. It could be something so weak that even in numbers, it wasn’t a threat.

  “How strong is the anima from these things?” Sorin asked.

  Rue hesitated, then said, “Maybe as strong as those hounds from when we first got here. The adults, I mean.”

  “We should pick a house, make sure it’s not trapped, and stand our ground,” Sorin told Nemari. “If we go running, we’re going to get picked off one at a time, either by the monsters or by a trap we run into.”

  They quickly ducked into the nearest house. It was split into three rooms with a staircase leading up wedged between two of them. None of the rooms were that big, certainly not big enough to make it convenient for multiple people to fight in. But there were doorways that could be held to prevent the monsters from overwhelming them with sheer numbers, and that was the goal.

  Sorin initially thought they’d be fine, but his confidence started to waver when Rue’s running count reached thirty. He wasn’t sure exactly what her range was, but if there were already that many of the monsters hiding around them, there could be dozens more still lurking nearby.

  And I’m starting to worry about how big they are. Anima reserves aren’t an indicator of physical mass. These could be bugs for all we know, but if they were, there’d probably be a lot more of them. Still, might be something small. Trying to hold them at a door could be pointless if they can slip right past me. Large monsters don’t usually group together in these kinds of numbers.

  “They’re moving in,” Rue said.

  “Final count?”

  “Thirty-three, but I think there are still more out there.”

  “Shit,” Sorin muttered.

  He’d placed himself at the doorway with the highest concentration. Rue had the other doorway, and Nemari was right behind her. Sorin and Nemari had the ranged attacks, though she was better at dealing with groups of enemies right now. He could cast faster, more accurately, and keep going longer, so he figured it would about equal out.

  Odric was in the center of the room, his hands clenched into fists at his side. Without knowing what it was exactly that they were dealing with, their healer didn’t know what kind of magic he’d need to use. Despite being the most experienced of the trio, Odric was the least reliable in a fight. After the monsters were dead, he’d be useful, but he really needed to find some way to contribute to getting to that point.

  “They’re here,” Rue hissed, her eyes locked onto the seemingly empty street.

  Sorin wanted to watch over her shoulder, to use her anima sensing ability to direct him to the monsters, but he had his own side to cover. The room he was stationed in front of had an empty doorway leading into a yard and two windows flanking it. A third window sat on the adjacent wall, meaning there were four possible entrances he needed to watch.

  Fire flashed behind him and Nemari crowed in victory. “Got one!”

  Don’t celebrate, stupid! Tell me what we’re fighting!

  It was irrelevant. Two seconds later, the first monster leaped through the empty window frame. It was long, a short, bristle-furred torso the same gray as the illusionist monkeys, but with four stubby legs and a curling tail. Its face was two eyes set behind a nose with a few long, straight whiskers sticking out of its muzzle. The ears were triangular and swept back, and it showed a mouth full of needle-like teeth as it screeched and chittered.

  Some sort of rodent. A foot long, not including the tail. Fast and agile. Can’t let them leap onto me or I’ll never get them off.

  Even as the first ice blade was forming to shoot off and skewer the monster, three more of them barreled into the room. Not a one of them stopped or even slowed down. As one, all four of the weird rat-like monsters charged at him. He pinned the first one to the floorboards, leaving it to screech out its dying cries while its brethren lunged forward.

  A second ice blade killed the closest rat monster, and Sorin’s own sword neatly bisected a third. The fourth leaped an impressive six feet up, targeting his face, but he ducked low and lashed out with his free hand. The stunned monster flopped past him to land in the room, where Odric promptly descended on it and crushed the life out of the thing with a heavy stomp.

  The trickle of anima flowing into his soulspace was all the confirmation Sorin got, four slight but distinct trails of it. That was good; he didn’t have time to check and ensure Odric had killed the last one. Two more of the rats had already replaced the first wave, and even as he killed those, another three appeared behind them.

  Constant whooshing noises and flashes of heat told him Nemari was hard at work at the other door with Rue acting as her spotter. Despite the numbers arrayed against them, both sides were holding well, though the occasional monster got past Rue’s flashing blade to sink its teeth into her. Odric was always there to keep her healed up while Nemari drove the monsters back, the trio working in harmony.

  Sorin couldn’t spare much effort to watch them, not when he had his own constant stream of monsters to battle. The only thing saving him was that they never seemed to appear in groups of more than four or five, but they were seemingly never-ending, and if he didn’t work quickly enough, two or even three groups could fill the room at the same time.

  Ice blades flashed through the air, manifested three at a time as he tried to keep from being overwhelmed. Anima poured into his soulspace steadily, enough that Sorin was certain he’d need to revise the lap they were taking to reach the floor guardian. At this rate, he’d be completely maxed out on anima before they even left the ruin.

  “Something else is coming!” Rue cried out. “Something big! I think it’s going up to the roof.”

  Shit, and the waves of smaller monsters aren’t slowing down at all. We cannot handle another threat from a different angle. Maybe I can back up to get the stairs in front of… No, if I do that, I lose the angle on two of the windows.

  “If it starts coming down the stairs, one of you is going to need to meet it there,” Sorin said.

  He left it unsaid that they were only holding their side because all three of them were working together. If Nemari was left to do it herself, there was every chance that she’d falter without anyone to point out targets and kill the monsters that got close. If Rue was the one guarding the door, she’d quickly be swarmed without any sort of ranged attack.

  “I’ll do it,” Odric announced, moving into position behind Sorin.

  Not great to have the healer holding a line by himself, Sorin thought. But not like we have much choice.

  He could hear something thump onto the floor above him.