The stairs set off warning bells in Sorin’s head. Floor 1 was very much themed with what were known as natural environments. Forests, grasslands, mountains, and other biomes tended to dominate the early floors, and any signs of intelligent life were to be treated as extremely suspect. Sure, it could be a sign of human life. Some people did possess the ability and desire to just disappear into a floor to get away from Floor 0.

  Or it could be the tower trying to bait unwary climbers in. Usually, there were signs. Much like the ruins, the tower seemed to be able to replicate humanity’s architecture, but it had issues putting together a coherent whole. The scenes it presented could seem real at a casual glance, only to fall apart under closer inspection.

  On the other hand, sometimes, whether through coincidence or luck or tower fuckery, it got things exactly right. That was the case with the stairs here. Each one was smooth cut, even and level. The edges were a bit rounded from age and weather, exactly like Sorin would expect them to look like. There were even channels in them from where rain water had collected and drained away.

  “What’s got you so moody?” Nemari asked when she noticed him staring.

  “Just wary. Stuff like this out in the middle of nowhere is a huge red flag that the tower’s set up some bullshit to try to kill you with.”

  “To be fair, it kind of has. Those are the steps leading up to the shrine.”

  There were about a thousand steps or so, all carved into the side of a mountain. They curved around the slope, disappearing behind an outcropping that hid the shrine at the end. It was a fantastic spot for an ambush. Fighting on stairs was difficult to begin with, and having a large blind spot where they wouldn’t be able to see the enemy hiding was less than ideal.

  “I’m almost tempted to just hike up the slope through the trees,” Sorin said. “At least if something attacks us, we won’t be fighting on the steps themselves, and the trees will give us just as much cover as it gives them.”

  “We will be safe,” Odric assured him. “There are no records of anyone being attacked on the way up to the shrine.”

  Which means nothing if all the people who were attacked there died. And it’s a damn good spot for an ambush.

  “Just do me a favor and stay on your toes,” he said. “No reason to get sloppy just because we’re close to the end.”

  Rue’s cheeks flushed as she scowled. Just the day before, she’d gotten overconfident and been blindsided by a thorn finch. It had struck her from behind, and she hadn’t seen it coming at all despite Aura Sense giving her omnidirectional awareness. Odric had healed up the injuries, but it had been a humbling experience for her.

  “Alright, enough chatting. Let’s move it,” Nemari ordered the team.

  They started up the stairs, Sorin in the lead and Rue bringing up the rear. Blind Sense didn’t have near the range Aura Sense did, but everyone trusted Sorin to catch an incoming monster before it reached the back line. He was tough enough to hold it in place even if he couldn’t put it down immediately, too.

  None of the others were expecting trouble, which to Sorin meant that it was practically inevitable. Letting their guards down while on a climb was never a good idea, not even when they thought they were safe at a portal hub. Novice climbers would call that paranoia. The experienced ones had all lived long enough to know it was completely justified.

  They stopped for a break halfway up. None of them were that winded from just a few hundred steps, but Sorin paused there anyway. “There are some tracks on the slope. A few animal trails through the grass. I haven’t seen anything that specifically points to monsters, but there’s definitely some wildlife out here,” he explained. “Best to take a few minutes to refresh ourselves before we tackle the other half.”

  “I think you’re being overly cautious,” Nemari said, “but I guess it can’t hurt.”

  “Caution keeps climbers alive,” Sorin said absently as he scanned the tall grass growing between nearby trees. “I just can’t shake it. There’s something…”

  His instincts were finely honed, and they were all but screaming that this area was ripe for an ambush. Everywhere he looked, the landscape only reinforced that opinion. That was why he wasn’t surprised when something started rushing directly at his team, the rustling of the grass it darted through the only thing giving away its position.

  A blade of ice flashed through the air, striking flesh and startling out a pained yip from the monster. At the same time, Sorin drew his sword and pivoted to face a second monster that had been attempting to complete a pincer. It leaped out of the grass, barely five feet away.

  “Holy crap!” Rue yelped as she scrambled to her feet.

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  Steel flashed, slicing deep into the flank of a small wolf creature. It couldn’t have been more than seventy pounds, making it probably the smallest wolf Sorin had ever seen. Its fur was black and spikey, but not magically so. Huh. I don’t think these are monsters. Just some hungry animals looking for prey. That’s probably why Rue didn’t sense them—no anima.

  The big tell was that the wolf howled in pain and shied away rather than circle around to attack from another angle. A few more wolves closed in through the grass, all running at full speed to join the fight, but by then everyone was ready to repel the attacking beasts.

  Heat bloomed around Nemari, blackening the grass and starting small fires as she laid out with a stream of firebolts from her wand. She’d rarely gotten a chance to use the tool, which increased the speed she could throw spells but also the rate at which she burned through anima. Generally speaking, her staff was the better choice for most fights.

  Rue and Odric worked together behind Nemari to fend off a trio of wolves that were circling them, but the majority went for Sorin. He’d deliberately moved about fifteen feet away from the rest of the group, and the wolves swallowed the bait without hesitation.

  They growled and snapped at him, trying to force him farther away from the group, to isolate him so they could bring him down with the weight of numbers. That drew the majority of the wolves away from the rest of his team, though, which was exactly what he wanted. Blind Sense proved its worth then, allowing him to react to wolves coming at him from every direction.

  Monsters had a tendency to fight to the death, or at least not to retreat without a struggle. Animals did not do that. It only took one or two hits for a wolf to start rethinking whether it wanted to keep attacking him, and within thirty seconds, he’d broken the pack’s spirit. Most of them turned and fled back into the trees, starting with a trickle of a few of the more injured members and turning into a flood as the rest fled after them.

  The fight was over in less than two minutes. Sorin was uninjured, but Odric had taken a nasty bite to his knee and was sitting on the stairs, his leg extended as he worked his magic on the injury. “Don’t even say a word,” the big man said when he saw Sorin approaching him.

  “I’ll say it for him,” Nemari muttered. “The info was shit. Take it as a lesson not to trust anything.”

  “They weren’t monsters,” Rue said. “Just animals. Our bad luck that we happened to be here when they were out looking for a meal.”

  “Unusual animals, though. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such small wolves. I wonder if that means something.”

  “You… uh… seen a lot of wolves?” Rue asked.

  “Mostly the monstrous variety, but occasionally the regular ones come sniffing around a camp. Some climbers even use soulprints that allow them to bond with animals. Wolves are a popular choice, for obvious reasons, though I can’t recommend the practice without a few other supporting soulprints. Having a partner that lacks hands or the ability to speak comes with a whole host of problems.”

  Their break ended up taking half an hour instead of five minutes, but nobody argued against it. Eventually, they got moving again. The mountain got steeper, the trees thinned out, the grass gave way to rocky, bare soil. It turned out the bend in the steps was only the halfway point, prompting the team to take another breather before they made the final push.

  The shrine’s entrance was a cobbled path worn smooth from the passing of thousands of climbers, or at least that’s what it seemed like. It did not escape Sorin’s notice that those climbers had apparently failed to leave a mark on the stairs, which just confirmed that the architecture was tower generated.

  Two carved posts flanked the end of the path, leading into an enormous circular arena easily a few hundred feet across. It was simple, hardpacked earth dotted with a few dozen stones. Some of them were shin-height. Others were ten feet tall. None of them were worked or shaped in any way, instead appearing as if some incomprehensibly giant figure had casually tossed out a handful of stones.

  In the center of the arena was the portal guardian, or so Sorin assumed. It looked like an old granite statue of a massive wolf, six feet tall and probably a quarter ton if it had been flesh and blood. The statue was posed rather sinisterly, with the wolf crouched low, fangs bared in a snarl. Mist flowed out from between its teeth, pooling around its legs.

  “That’s some impressive artistry,” Sorin said. “The mist doesn’t even look like stone.”

  It was dusty and discolored, with specks of moss growing on it and stains from being exposed to rain running down its side. For all that, if not for the stone color and texture, he would have thought it was a real wolf frozen in time. Then again, considering that it was a portal guardian, that wasn’t exactly an inaccurate description.

  “Are we ready to get this going?” Nemari asked.

  “I could use a few more minutes, but it’s not likely to make a difference,” Odric said.

  “If you need them, you should take them,” Sorin argued. “The last thing we want is the healer running out of anima. It could mean the difference between someone else’s life or death.”

  “He’s right. Let’s take a quick breather, but no one go past the shrine posts. That’s supposed to be what triggers the portal guardian. And let’s not get complacent again,” Nemari said.

  “Got it,” Rue replied. She stepped a few paces off to the side and found a low rock to perch on while Odric eased himself down and started rubbing at his knee.

  A quick breather turned into an hour, one Sorin spent in quiet discussion with Rue about various sword-fighting tricks. Though he wasn’t a fan of wielding two weapons at a time, he was passable at it, and he helped her adjust some of her own tactics to be more effective against small quadrupedal monsters.

  “Alright, I’m in about as close to top shape as I’m going to get,” Odric eventually announced.

  “Great.” Nemari had been pacing back and forth off to the side, clearly worrying over the upcoming battle and just as clearly trying—and failing—not to let it show. “Sorin, you’re in first. Rue, you’re my eyes once the mist starts covering the battlefield. Odric, be ready to cleanse us as needed.”

  Sorin drew his sword and walked past the posts, his eyes on the statue. He kept expecting the granite to crumble away like an eggshell, and the monster to emerge from within, but nothing happened. Ten feet turned into fifty, and still there was no reaction.

  “On your left!” Rue yelled suddenly, just in time for Sorin to catch sight of a small voidling rushing across the arena from where it had been lurking behind one of the boulders. It ignored the other three people nearby and came straight for Sorin, its inky black form devouring the distance between them.