The air smelled much, much nicer out in the woods. They’d grown inured to the stink of the fortress after a few days, but now that they were back outside, there was a noticeable difference. It wasn’t just the blood and bodies from their wholesale gremlin slaughter, either. There’d been a staleness back in the fortress that Sorin could almost taste.

  Out here, there was none of that. Like most lower floors, the environments were fairly benign. They followed regular day and night cycles and lacked any vicious properties like acidic air or gravitational rippling. Even the temperatures didn’t fluctuate enough to require soulprints or specialized equipment to survive. Sorin barely even used his cloak for anything other than a pillow at night.

  It was their third day out, and one thought occupied his mind: his armor was supposed to be ready. It was certainly a risk returning to the portal hub to get it, but he wondered how long he could afford to go without it. The ogre fight had served as a grim reminder that one little mistake was all it took. Another inch to the side, and that ogre would have pulverized his knee instead of grazing him.

  Not that the armor would have helped with that particular injury, but it might when something spits a poison dart into my stomach or tries to crush my ribs.

  “Okay, I’ve made a decision,” he announced after they’d finished eating. “I’m going to make a sign here for Liminal Gateway and use it to return to the Floor 2 hub so I can pick up the armor I’ve commissioned. While I’m there, I’m going to try to get something for the two of you. Things are only going to get more dangerous, and Odric is struggling to keep up with our injuries already. We need to start mitigating that issue.”

  “Rue could use a self-healing soulprint like you’ve got,” Odric said. “I know how bad you were hurt, but it’s taking less anima to work on you than it is to keep putting her ribs back together, and that injury is from nearly a week ago.”

  “Well, sorry. I’ll try not to get stomped on again,” Rue said.

  “See that you don’t,” Odric told her with mock severity. “Quite irresponsible of you.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  They both started laughing, leaving Sorin feeling like he’d missed something, but then, it was hardly the first time. They had almost two decades of history with each other; there were bound to be some inside jokes and stories that he wasn’t a part of.

  He shrugged it off and got to work carving the seven-tower sign into the trunk of a tree. It would be easy enough to destroy when he was done if he decided he needed some other location more. Besides, it was far easier to carve lines into wood than it was stone, anyway.

  “I’ll be back in an hour or two, I hope. Depending on what it looks like at the hub, I might check for soulprints that are useful. How much space do you two have?”

  “I don’t have any extra room,” Odric said. “With two E-ranks in there, what I’ve got left is going toward ranking up Soothing Touch.”

  “I could take two or three F-ranks or one E-rank,” Rue said, somewhat hesitantly. “Or maybe upgrade Pierce if we’re worried about encountering more of those ogres. It did most of the heavy lifting in opening up injuries on it, and I’m worried that I’m not going to be able to do anything against armored opponents with my current options.”

  “By armored opponents…” Sorin trailed off.

  “Yeah, I’m talking about other climbers with higher ranks,” Rue said.

  “I’m not sure anything we can afford today will make a difference there, but I get your meaning,” Sorin told her. “I’ll keep an eye out for anything that can help you punch up a few ranks, but we should prioritize upgrades that will help you grow faster so you don’t have to punch up in the first place.”

  “I trust you. Just get what you think is best, and stay safe,” she said.

  “Will do,” Sorin promised. He finished carving the sign, collected their funds and loot to sell, then fell into his soulspace and activated Liminal Gateway.

  * * *

  Rue watched Sorin disappear with a frown. She knew he’d be back, but part of her couldn’t help but wonder. If this was his way of cutting off some dead weight, he’d done a damn good job of it. She and Od were basically stranded out here now. They’d have to fight their way back through the fortress to get to the trail leading down the ravine to get back to the portal hub if they wanted to go home, and that would be a lot harder without Sorin’s help.

  Shit, do I have abandonment issues now? Fucking Nemari.

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  “You alright?” Od asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said, perhaps a bit too quickly.

  “You’re not acting like you’re fine.”

  “And what about you?” she shot back. “I thought you two were getting together.”

  “We… never discussed anything like that. It seems like my feelings were more one-sided than I thought, though.”

  “It hurts.”

  “Yeah,” Od agreed. “It does.”

  “This sucks.”

  “Yeah. That too.”

  They were silent for a minute. Rue rubbed some oil into the leather of her scabbards and worked it through the material while Od scoured the pan they’d used for breakfast until it was clean. The simple rhythm of morning chores kept them occupied for a little while, but eventually they ran out of things to keep them busy.

  “You know what sucks the most about this?” Rue finally said, breaking the silence. “It’s that it’s real hard to blame her. I am deep in the shit, and somehow, as insane as it sounds, Sorin is even deeper. How does that even happen? He doesn’t know these people at all. No connection to them.”

  “Unless he does,” Od said.

  Rue shook her head. “No, Raf had no clue who Sorin was. He just knew the team had picked up a fourth, finally.”

  “Maybe not, but it sure does sound like someone a bit higher up in the gang recognized him.”

  “I guess that’s my fault, too.”

  Od finished repacking his gear and stood up to stretch. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. I should have been more proactive about this. I just… I screwed up, too, okay? This is both our faults, and we’re going to fix it.”

  Yeah, right. No way we manage to climb ten or twenty ranks before they catch up to us.

  But she didn’t have a better idea, so she just finished her gear maintenance and waited for Sorin to show back up. The sun slowly inched higher into the sky, and there was no sign of him. An hour passed, then two, then three, and still he didn’t appear through the weird symbol he’d carved into the tree trunk.

  Rue’s thoughts started oscillating back and forth between worry that he’d been captured and worry that he really had abandoned them, after all. Either way, she didn’t know what she’d do next. Od was no help, of course. He’d just forced her to sit still for another healing session.

  It wasn’t that she wasn’t grateful, of course. Without his soulprints, she’d be looking at weeks or even months of downtime. That she was up and fighting after a few days was practically a miracle. But she couldn’t stand the waiting. Whatever had happened, she needed to know, and she needed to do something about it.

  At least there’s actually room to pace around the camp, she noted with a wry smile after doing her fifth lap in the last half an hour. Od just watched her silently while he sat there, completely motionless.

  A ripple in her Aura Sense announced Sorin’s return, fully five hours after he’d left. He practically fell out of the tree and rolled across the ground with a groan. “Holy crap!” Rue shouted, scrambling to reach him, but Od beat her there.

  “What happened?” he asked as he got to work.

  Sorin was covered in burns, and his left arm was turned completely around so that the palm faced the wrong way. He had a black eye and a broken nose, with dried blood running down his face. A scalp wound only added to the mess, and the eye that wasn’t swollen shut was practically gummed closed.

  “Got some good news and some bad news,” he mumbled. He reached out with his non-broken arm and patted a pack. “Got the armor for us. A new soulprint, too.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “Ran into Nemari when I was on Floor 0. Shit got complicated. I don’t understand exactly what’s going on, yet. We need to get through the fortress and back down the trail.”

  “What, why?”

  Before Sorin could reply, Od placed a hand on his chest and gently put pressure on him. “You need to hold still. God at the Top, the way you’re going, I’m going to have to specialize in bone repair soulprints just to keep up.”

  “That?” Sorin looked down at the twisted appendage. “Spin it back around and splint it up. I’ll be fine with one hand for now.”

  “You most certainly will not!” Od scolded him. “Now. Hold still, or I’ll make you.”

  “Can you tell us what happened?” Rue asked. “Are we in danger? Is someone coming for us?”

  “Coming for us? Yeah, that’s why we got to go.”

  Sorin was definitely slurring his words. At first, she’d chalked it up to the swelling, but the more he talked, the more she was sure that wasn’t it. “Does he have a concussion?” she asked.

  “Some kind of head wound, for sure.”

  “Asshole bounced my skull off his shield,” Sorin confirmed. “I returned the favor, though.”

  “Can you fix it?” Rue asked her brother, ignoring Sorin. I don’t think we’re going to get a coherent story out of him otherwise.

  “I’m working on it,” he said. “Give me some time.”

  “Quickly,” Sorin said. “Gotta go.”

  It wasn’t quick, though. More than an hour passed before Sorin started making sense and they could get the story out of him. Od ended up running dry well before he could get to the broken arm or even start to work on the burns, which meant Sorin was left in a lot of pain and in no condition to move around, but at least he could answer questions now.

  “Okay, let’s start from the beginning,” Rue said, still trying to coax some semblance of a cohesive narrative out of him. “What happened when you got to the portal hub?”

  “The pick up went fine,” Sorin said. “Armor fits like a glove. Lenn even had an extra set about your size. Odric was a bit tougher to find, but I got something I think will work.”

  “What went wrong, then?”

  “Well… Remember how Nemari specializes in fire magic?” Sorin hedged.

  Oh, no. She didn’t… She wouldn’t…

  * * *

  Two Days Earlier…

  Nemari groaned and woke in her bed. Her eyes opened slowly, and she wasn’t sure if her pounding headache was due to the light currently trying to stab into her brain or if she’d just been poisoned. She could barely remember the night before. She’d gotten home without an issue and sat down to discuss the Black Hellions with her father.

  After that, everything had gotten blurry. They’d had a meal—thankfully not something off Uncle Nat’s menu—and then… And then… I don’t remember. I fell asleep? Passed out at the table. That doesn’t sound right.

  With another groan, she crawled out of the bed and almost collapsed onto the floor. It was a mountain of effort to get her legs under her, but she was too stubborn to give up. Slowly, so slowly, she staggered to the door of her room and turned the handle.

  What? Why is this… Is it stuck?

  It took her a few tries before she realized the truth. The door wasn’t stuck.

  She was locked in.