When the Fallen Delver’s Tournament started, all I could do was watch outside. The portal—and the arena built inside—were space-limited. Three GC delvers stood guard around the edges of the steel room. The Spark of Life, Sarah Cullman, watched from the edge of the sparring room. And then there were the two combatants.

  Six people in at a time. That was all.

  Jeff, Ellen, and I sat in Deimos, a hundred yards from the stairs leading down to the underground portal. The courtyard around the memorial was packed, even this early in the morning, but none of the three of us wanted anything to do with the crowds of people. It felt like all of Phoenix was gathered outside, around the massive TV screens the GC had built around the memorial or the pop-up restaurant district that had moved into the streets around it.

  Ellen looked pale, and I didn’t blame her. Jeff and I had both had a sparring partner who was reasonably similar to our first opponents—I’d pretended to be the fighter Jeff was due to take on soon, while he’d done his best to copy Logan Fritch’s moves and tendencies. But we hadn’t had an archer to help her prep. Her fight wasn’t scheduled until tomorrow, but she was already stressing about it today.

  I put a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve got this.”

  “I know I’ve got this. You’ve said that five times in the last fifteen minutes, Kade. But I don’t feel like I’ve got this,” she snapped.

  “Sorry. I believe in you, Ellen. But you do have the hardest road to the finals out of us.” I didn’t pull my hand back, and after a few seconds, she relaxed under it. “You’ll make it. Just get through this round, and we can help you prep for everything except Harold. You should hard-counter him, though.”

  She didn’t say anything. I took a look, and her eyes were closed. She was physically forcing herself to relax, but it was only half-working.

  A phone buzzed. Jeff fidgeted around, digging his out of his pocket. “I’m up after this bout. Wish me luck, you two.”

  “Good luck, Jeff!” I offered a high five, and he took it. Ellen did the same, and a second later, Jeff’s door clicked shut, and he was gone.

  “We should probably watch his fight, huh?” Ellen said.

  I nodded, climbed out, and walked around to open Deimos’s driver’s side door. Then I helped Ellen out of the car. She was shaking again. “The nearest screen to the stairs is that one.”

  “Got it. Let’s go.”

  The current fight was an odd one. There was exactly one healer in the tournament—an independent. He’d gotten himself lined up against a Guardsman striker in the same bracket as Caleb and Ophelia, and right now, they were in a race. The striker couldn’t put the healer out of commission, and the healer didn’t seem to have any interest in trying to fight back. “What’s he doing?” I asked.

  Ellen stared for a moment. Then she laughed. “That’s the dumbest strategy I’ve ever seen. He’s using his Mana to try to wear down the striker’s Stamina. It’s a race to see who runs out of resources first.”

  “Will that work?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  We watched. And watched. Eventually, the fighting became so boring and repetitive that I stopped paying attention to the two combatants and started focusing more on the room itself. Deborah had fought another A-Ranker in a GC center’s sparring rooms once, and she’d combined four of them into one jumbo-sized battlefield for their fight. This was a lot like that—but the room wasn’t portal metal and concrete.

  Right now, it looked like a cavern covered in wooden spikes and skulls. I could practically smell the stench that permeated any Warren world. The striker dipped in for a would-be lethal blow, and the healer dodged, then kicked his attacker’s back. She slammed into a mat of spikes and screamed.

  “Match!” Sarah Cullman said quickly. She pushed healing energy into the injured striker as she slid off the spikes. The victorious healer grinned savagely, blood caking his face, and left.

  “I don’t think that’d work in real life,” I said.

  Ellen shook her head. “No. He’s taking advantage of the room’s fifty-percent damage reduction and evened-out ranks. The striker had to use all her Stamina attacking, and he only had to heal half of the normal expected damage. It won’t work forever, though.”

  “Oh?”

  “No. He’s going to be up against Ophelia next round.”

  “Ah. That’ll be a weird fight.” I stared at the screen as the room slowly reconfigured itself, transforming from a spike-filled Warren cavern to a dark-walled, trap-filled maze. Only the platform Sarah Cullman stood on remained unchanged. “I guess Jeff’s got a Dark Citadel. What’s going on with the room?”

  “I have no idea,” Ellen said.

  Jeff’s fight was…fast.

  Shockingly, disturbingly fast.

  The fighter charged him. I saw the trip wire. So did Jeff, but not his opponent. A spear took him in the back, and even with the fifty-percent reduction in damage, it still punched through his gut. Then Jeff’s shield slammed down on the back of his head, and Sarah called the match. It hadn’t even been thirty seconds.

  My phone buzzed.

  GC: Kade Noelstra, your match begins next.

  I sighed and hugged Ellen, holding her for a minute. “It’s my turn, I guess.”

  “Be careful. That room’s lethal,” she said.

  “I will be.” I turned and headed for the stairs.

  Somehow, I missed Jeff.

  The blue portal hung behind Logan Fritch and me as we walked into a smooth, hospital-white tunnel. Sarah stood between us, her aura barely contained—a not-so-subtle clue not to try anything until we were in the room. Logan’s own aura flickered against it; he had a wall-of-force one, and behind it, his anger lashed out at me.

  “Welcome to the most unique portal world we’ve seen near Phoenix. Logan Fritch, Kade Noelstra, this portal takes on different characteristics based on its occupants. The delvers guarding it and I have spent time attuning to it, so it appears to be nothing. It should begin changing now that the two of you are—yep, there it is. Sometimes it’s slower on the uptake, but this time, it went quick. Interesting.”

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  The cavern’s walls shifted as we moved. One moment, it was smooth and white. The next, the ground below my feet turned to toxic mud thick enough to suck at my boots, and roots punched through the walls.

  “Morass. Fun,” Sarah said distastefully. She stopped outside a massive hut with three doors, then pointed to the two farthest ones. “Those are for you. Good luck, both of you.”

  I stepped through and onto a tiny room’s muck-covered floor. According to the briefing, I’d have a minute or two to prepare myself, so I summoned the Stormsteel gear, got my sword in my hand and crackling, and applied my Scripts. Then I waited—and thought. This wasn’t my first trip into a Morass portal world. I’d cleared a couple before, and there wasn’t too much that was a threat, save the toxic water if my head went under and I had to breathe it in, or the monsters that shouldn’t be a problem in the hut arena.

  That left Logan as my biggest problem.

  I’d been thinking about this fight a lot—the rematch from before that he wanted and I really didn’t. His brother was still in the hospital. I hadn’t checked up on him, but the fact that he was alive was a good sign. He’d survived the worst parts of his core break, and now he’d be on the road to…not recovery. Most people didn’t recover fully—I was probably the only one. But to something.

  Logan was still on the Traynor guild’s payroll, and even though Bob had given them all a few months off from delving, he, their archer, and Ophelia St. Vrain had all signed up anyway—stretching their cores even further. I didn’t want Logan’s core to break. The longer he pushed himself, the more likely a break became. The fight was going to happen, though, so there was only one possible solution.

  He was also B-Rank, so I didn’t expect to feel any slower than normal while fighting him. We were matched, and the portal’s unique effect would hurt us evenly. That was to my advantage.

  The door opened, and I stepped through into the arena.

  Most of the floor was swamp water, up to my waist. But there were a few spots where plant life stuck up through it, leaving a maze of trails across the wide room. It stank, too—of rot and fetid, standing water. And across from me stood Logan—shield, axe, and armor. He looked ready; his face was set, his eyes were locked on me, and his anger was slowly transforming into determination and fury.

  I’d been there before. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, the battle trance had taken me.

  Logan charged along one of the paths. Water splashed behind him as he sank into the mud with each step. I joined him, pushing my aura out. It slammed into his, and they grappled for a minute before passing each other. Static filled the air, and tiny strings of electricity looped between us.

  His axe crashed down. I parried it. One Rainfall charge. Then a second. It hit, gouging my arm to the bone. Pain welled up. Stamina pushed that down. I focused on the blade in my hand. My stance shifted, and I thrust. Rain-Soaked Blade activated. Stormsong slipped through the tank’s defenses and punched into the space below his ribs. He coughed pink, then coughed a second time as the wound started healing.

  One Lightning Charge.

  A second when I stabbed into the space between his shoulder and chest.

  Then I shifted stances again. The Negative Space aura crackled. I cast Polarity Shift. Lightning Strikes Twice doubled it. I poured the empowered lightning effect into a third Polarity Shift, then doubled that again and added Touch of Shadow.

  The whole time, I backpedaled, Logan’s axe slashing the space in front of my face—and carving lines across my breastplate and gauntlet. I parried what I could, but most of the damage, I weathered. Cuts to my arms and legs. One across my face. Blood dripped into my eyes, but I didn’t counterattack. It wasn’t time yet.

  “What’s your problem, Noelstra? Do you want to lose?” Logan spat. His axe went up, and his shield filled my vision as he rushed me. I sidestepped. The kite shield’s spiked base hit my rib. Something popped, and my vision blurred for a moment. It hurt all the way to my core. “I can kill you now if you’re so eager.”

  But Logan was right where I wanted him.

  “Check and mate, Logan.”

  I used Thunder Crash.

  The combo was simple.

  The first two Polarity Shifts had gone into the third Polarity Shift, which had increased the effect of each when I doubled that with Lightning Strikes Twice. Then Touch of Shadow had added a second element to my next spell, and the Negative Space aura had increased my damage even further.

  The resulting green-black lightning storm caught Logan Fritch in the back. Half a dozen bolts the size of my torso ripped out of the sky and into him, entering just below his shoulder blades and erupting into the mud below his steel boots. He stood for a second, then another. Then he hit the mud, slamming into the ground, unmoving. I pushed his head to the side with my sword so he wouldn’t drown in the mud.

  “Match,” Sarah Cullman said.

  Forty-five seconds. Not as fast as Jeff’s fight, but still fast. I’d completed my objective.

  As I left the portal, Sarah’s healing magic still clearing my wounds, I took a deep breath and got ready to face Ellen and Jeff. They were both going to be pissed; my battle plan hadn’t been the battle plan we’d discussed. But it had been effective.

  “What were you thinking?” Ellen glared at me from the driver’s seat as we left the Fallen Delvers courtyard. She wasn’t just pissed; she was furious. “In a tournament like this, you never reveal everything in your toolbox if you don’t have to. That was a full-on Polarity Shift combo, wasn’t it? You’d never used it before outside of our training bouts. You shouldn’t have used it against Logan!”

  I weathered the storm, but Jeff wasn’t any more supportive of my choice. Eventually—around the time we turned off the main drag into Surprise—I managed to get a word in edgewise. “Logan doesn’t know it, but I did him a favor.”

  “Oh, did you? Because from our view, you danced around him, took a few flesh wounds, and then blew him up with one spell. This is supposed to be an even tournament, right?” Jeff asked.

  “And you were more entertaining?” I shot back.

  “Not my fault the poor guy had never cleared a Dark Citadel. If he had, maybe he’d have been ready for the trap. The kindest thing I could do after that spear hit was end the fight and let the Spark of Life have him,” Jeff said. “But yeah, Logan’s gonna be pissed.”

  I groaned and glared at him, then at Ellen. “I was doing the same thing, guys. Ending the fight before he got hurt.”

  “What do you mean?” Ellen asked.

  “I mean, Logan’s core is about to break. His twin’s already has. By getting him out of the tournament, I’m giving him a chance to recover—if he’ll take it. I had to end it fast, though, because every fight he’s in and every moment he draws on his skills is more pressure on his core. So, the value of taking him out fast was greater than the value of hiding my Polarity Shift combo.” I closed my eyes and counted to five. No one said anything. “I didn’t tell you because you’d try to talk me out of it, and I didn’t want you to succeed.”

  Ellen’s eyes didn’t soften. She still looked mad, and I didn’t blame her. But I didn’t apologize, either. I kept going. “I know he hates me, but no one deserves what I went through, and I don’t think the Portal Tyrant’s going to figure out how to fix a core break, even after I tell him everything I know.”

  Jeff nodded slowly from the back seat. “Yeah, he’s strong, but he’s nowhere near what you claim Eugene is.”

  “He doesn’t have Eugene’s resources, either.”

  “Right.”

  Ellen didn’t say anything until we pulled up into our parking garage. Sophia’s car was missing, but a new one sat in one of the spots—a massive truck with semi-style exhaust towers. I stared at it for a second; Raul must have bought something new. Then, without unbuckling her seatbelt, she cleared her throat. “So, what now, Kade?”

  “Now, we do what we can to get you through your first-round matchup, start prepping you for your second match, and try to relax as much as we can,” I said.

  She nodded, and we went inside.

  Jessie was working in the lobby, her laptop on the coffee table. She nodded. “Did you see Yazzie’s new ride out there?”

  Jeff blinked. Then he spluttered. Then, without another word, he headed for the stairs. I just laughed. “What are you working on there?”

  To my surprise, Jessie blacked her screen the moment I got a view. She shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to share it yet. It’s super-secret Outer Council stuff, and until we’re ready to act on it, I don’t want to risk tipping them off that I might talk about what I’ve learned. But trust me, it’s big. Really big. World-changing big.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Alright, Jessie. If you need Ellen or me, we’ll be in the sparring room.”

  “Got it.” Jessie went back to her screen, and I disappeared into the gym, Ellen right behind me.

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