Rue was reasonably certain Sorin was actually asleep, but he was such a light sleeper that it was almost impossible to tell. With anyone else, she could measure by their aura fluctuations, which was how she knew that Nemari hadn’t been sleeping well for days now, but either Sorin didn’t actually sleep at all, or he somehow maintained absolute control of his aura even then. Even after over a week of studying him, she still couldn’t figure it out.
No way to know for sure, but if he’s faking, he’s a damn good faker.
She rose silently from her bedroll and crossed the camp to sit next to Nemari, who was propped up against a fallen tree covered in moss. “How are you feeling?” she asked in a low voice as she sat down next to her.
“Like shit,” Nemari said. “God only knows where I’d be without your brother.”
“Are you kicking me off the team?”
“What? No, why would I do that?”
Rue gave a small shrug. “It’s my fault you got hurt. I got lured into that ruin, and you all had to run in and rescue me.”
“That wasn’t your fault, though.”
“Wasn’t it? I knew I was snared in an illusion. I could have retreated. Instead, I ran toward the monster. By the time it was dead, I was already caught in the ruin. My bad decision almost got you killed.”
“You didn’t know that,” Nemari told her. “And yeah, I’m pretty hurt, but we all survived. We got more anima, which was part of the reason we were out here to begin with, plus a whole cache of tower-forged gear and a few new soulprints.”
Nemari hadn’t been happy with Sorin taking the soulprint off the ruin guardian directly into his soulspace, but considering the circumstances, she understood why he wasn’t interested in carrying around a hundred-pound tortoise foot until the group made a decision about what to do with it. Besides, it wasn’t like the rest of the team wouldn’t benefit from him improving his own power.
For her part, Rue was just glad she wasn’t getting booted. Some teams abandoned people out in the middle of a floor, and while she knew that wasn’t going to happen—and that, worst case, Od would stick with her—she’d been concerned about getting dropped back on Floor 0. She needed to make it to at least rank 2 before she struck out on her own, and the sooner, the better.
“There’s something else,” she said softly. Up to this point, Rue hadn’t been sure if she wanted to even say anything, but she kind of owed it to Nemari. “Sorin… I kept waiting to see, but no one else has commented on it. It makes me think that maybe my soulprint is the reason I can sense it.”
“Sense what?” Nemari asked. She glanced over at Sorin’s sleeping form before refocusing on Rue.
“Something happened after he fell into that sinkhole. He wouldn’t tell me what. But… he’s rank 2 now. I can feel it. Or… maybe he’s not rank 2, but his soulspace is the same size as one? I don’t know. I’ve never felt anything like it before. It’s like his aura is bigger, but the soulspace… I don’t know.”
“I am somehow not surprised that Sorin is keeping more weird shit about himself a secret. End of the day, I don’t think it changes anything,” Nemari said. “The plan is still to go clear the portal guardian and get to rank 2. Maybe we’ll take the portal right away and stay together until we can find the portal hub. After that… We’ll have to discuss it then.”
“Yeah… We’re also probably going to have to deal with those other climbers. Even though we had just as much right to the loot as them, I don’t think they’re going to see it that way.”
“In that, I fully support your decision,” Nemari told her. “I was barely even conscious, and I still know how much of an asshole that guy was.”
Rue nodded darkly. “He got three of the four soulprints off the ruin guardian, too. As far as I’m concerned, that’s about an equal split considering half the loot isn’t really that useful.”
“The necklace isn’t valuable, but that ointment will probably sell. My uncle told me once that the fourth floor has a lot of water and is perpetually fogged over. If nothing else, it’ll be good for anyone climbing there.”
“Hard to get a good deal when you’re haggling with someone who’s a higher rank than you, though,” Rue muttered somewhat bitterly. She’d dealt with enough climbers like that to know. In fact, those kinds of climbers were basically the cause of all her problems.
“Do you think…” Rue started to say before trailing off.
“What?”
“No, it’s nothing. Just a daydream.”
“About getting into the double digit ranks and squashing that fucker, Raf?”
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Rue let out a wistful sigh. “Raf, Jorn, and Eldart all at the same time.”
She’d never told Od who she’d bought her soulprint from or how much she’d paid for it. All the danirs he’d saved up hadn’t been a tenth of what she’d needed. Taking out a loan of a sort had been the only option if she’d wanted to start climbing before she turned thirty. Of course, the Black Hellions hadn’t wanted something as simple as interest on their investment.
Oh, they wanted that, too. More money was always better, but what they were really looking for was a spy, someone to scout out prospective climbers, to use the ability to sense auras to figure out who was strong and who was weak, who they could prey upon. A lot of fresh climbers flowed through the Meat Grinder, but Bradford didn’t let the Hellions past the front door.
Rue didn’t like to think about what the gang did with the info she supplied them. The knowledge that there were likely more than a few people robbed and murdered because of her was enough to keep her up some nights without getting into the specifics.
She wondered what would happen if Jorn tried to jump Sorin. He was rank 5, but Sorin was Sorin. Wouldn’t be surprised if he beat the hell out of the man. Rue smiled at the thought, but the next instant, the smile soured. Of course, they’ll just call out one of their double-digit climbers to hunt Sorin down. There’s no getting away from them.
Rue fervently wished no one knew, but unfortunately, Raf had caught up with her one day while she was with Nemari, who had immediately recognized the man. She didn’t know the details of Rue’s ‘arrangement’ with the gang, but she knew enough to know it was a problem for Rue. She’d asked if it was going to adversely affect their team, and Rue had told her it wouldn’t.
That had been good enough for Nemari, and they’d left it at that. Funny how she was so willing to extend trust to me, but is constantly suspicious of everything Sorin says or does. The truth was that the Black Hellions knew far more about Nemari’s soulprints than she’d want them to, but they also weren’t going to fuck with Rue’s team. That would just devalue Rue as an asset, either getting her killed or giving her a bad reputation as the sole survivor of a team wipe under suspicious circumstances.
“Wouldn’t matter even if I did,” Rue said. “Not with them.”
“You ever regret it?”
“Most days.”
Nemari’s reply was cut off by Rue’s upraised hand. She glanced over at Od, who’d rolled over in his sleep. His aura shifted with him, briefly spiking into that fuzzy, almost-but-not-quite awake stage, before settling back down.
“We’ll probably be ready to challenge the portal guardian by the end of the week,” Nemari said, offering a change of subject. “One step closer to your dream.”
“Hopefully it takes less tries than the Floor 0 one did.”
“It’s… we need to be careful. Uncle Nat told me they lost three out of six people when he killed the guardian. It’s a great big shadow wolf that breathes out darkness. Breathing it in makes you weak and sick, easy to kill, and the clouds linger in the arena. I can burn it away, but I’m going to be relying on you to sense where everyone is so that I don’t hit them, too.”
“No pressure or anything,” Rue muttered.
“Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to progress this fast. We’ve been very, uh… efficient.” Nemari shot a look at the shadowy lump that was Sorin on the other side of the campfire. “More so than anyone has a right to be. But I can take care of the guardian’s primary control ability, and despite any other issues I might have with him, I trust our frontliner to do his job. As long as we finish gathering the anima we need to be at full strength when we get there, I think we can do it.”
Rue was less convinced and not thrilled with having such an important job in the upcoming battle. She wanted to stab things, not be the linchpin to a strategy. If anything went wrong, it’d be on her, and she’d already screwed enough stuff up with the ruin. Her greed in going after that monster had drawn her into a trap, and she’d damn well known the smart thing to do was to retreat.
“Maybe we should have a backup plan, just in case my soulprint isn’t strong enough.”
“Maybe,” Nemari said. “But I’ve got faith in you. Hell, half the reason I recruited you was for this portal guardian. I know you can do this.”
“What was the other half?” Rue asked.
“Your brother’s a healer.”
Figures.
She thought about it, though, about how much better she was at being a climber now than she’d been a month ago, how much she’d learned and all the new soulprints she’d gained. That Rue was a weakling compared to her today. She had the power now. She just needed some time to practice and gain enough anima to fill all her soulprints. Even if she couldn’t spontaneously rank up like Sorin, she could still get even stronger before they reached the portal guardian.
If he can do it, I can do it. I won’t be the weak link just because I’m the youngest.
“Why don’t you get some sleep? It’s probably about time for my watch anyway,” Rue said eventually.
“Yeah,” Nemari agreed. “I should. Don’t know how much sleep I’ll be getting tonight, though.”
Nemari was in that stage between the pain taking her out and being healed enough to ignore it. She was in no danger of dying, but it was going to be miserable just existing until Od could do some more work on her.
“Right. Well… just try to rest,” Rue said. Then she stood up and walked a slow circuit around the camp, watching both the shadows beyond the campfire and her teammates for any sign that they were faking being asleep.
Nothing. She knew Od well enough to be sure he wasn’t faking. Sorin, on the other hand, could be as still as a rock. Just because his breathing was light and steady didn’t mean a damn thing. If he was awake and had overheard her telling Nemari about his quasi-rank up, he hadn’t cared enough to chime in, though.
She wished she knew how he’d done it. The fact that no one besides her seemed to have even noticed meant he could hold a great deal of hidden power, and she would very much enjoy being in a similar position. Out of all the secrets their mysterious new teammate possessed, this was by far the one Rue wanted to know about. It was also the only one she believed him about when he’d claimed not to know how it had happened.
It couldn’t have been the ruin. If there was a ruin that let someone’s soulspace exceed their rank, everybody would have known about it. She’d be the first to admit she didn’t know much, but she couldn’t imagine not having heard about something like that.
If she couldn’t wield that power for herself, though, maybe she could just ride along behind Sorin on a more traditional path. As long as she got strong enough, quickly enough, the Black Hellions wouldn’t be able to touch her. That was all that really mattered in the end—getting her freedom from them.
