Jessie’s message to her brother was only three words long.

  She wanted to tell Kade more, but she was terrified to say anything else over a device. The lockdown let up after hours, and she and Yasmin were finally able to leave the GC Headquarters’ lobby. It had been a stressful, anxiety-inducing evening in downtown Phoenix.

  Yeah, sure, there was a battle for the city’s survival going on, and her brother and friends were in the middle of it. Whatever, no big deal. Those happened all the time, and the Jessie trapped in the headquarters building wasn’t the Jessie who’d had to confront her brother’s supposed death in an S-Ranked portal months before. She’d grown up. Kade being in danger was…becoming the new norm for her. Not that it was fun, but it was…numb.

  Jessie pushed that out of her mind and climbed into Deimos’s passenger seat as Yasmin lay back and closed her eyes in front of the wheel. The car started, and some of the tension left her shoulders. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “Better than whatever Jeff’s doing,” Yasmin agreed. Then she opened her eyes and stared at Jessie. “What was that?”

  “Not now. Later.”

  “What?”

  “Not now,” Jessie repeated. She looked out the window at the GC Headquarters building as the car pulled away, then shook her head. “Later.”

  The rest of her meeting with the portal people—she needed a better name for them, and she was close to finding out their real one, but for now, Hyperboreans was the best anyone could do—had only lasted thirty seconds. Maybe less. When she’d written her sentence across the table, most of them had just kept staring at it like it meant nothing. Then the oldest two had turned and walked away, the woman shaking her head slowly.

  But Jessie wasn’t fooled. She’d seen another woman’s eyes widen for just a moment. She’d watched the woman’s eyes move, and while she hadn’t seen reflections of her paper scraps in them, she had a general idea of where she’d been looking. Up, Down, Left, Down, Left, Right, Up. Jessie was pretty sure the woman hadn’t meant to give her an answer. It was a reflex, or a habit, not an answer.

  But for the next hour, she’d fiddled with the cards, moving them randomly and intentionally leaving things out when she didn’t do things on accident. The GC hadn’t seen it. There was no way the GC had seen it. But she had.

  And by the time the lockdown lifted and she and Yasmin drove away, Jessie knew something she, as an unawakened, unranked human from Earth, wasn’t supposed to know.

  Jessie: I know Crone.

  It was almost midnight when the GC issued the stand-down order, and I finally let my body relax.

  We’d been killing the whole time, but for the last hour, it had all been the mages.

  The last Scaling Construct to climb our section of wall had made it halfway up, and that had been almost two hours ago. Its wreckage had disappeared into the steam fog that hung only twenty yards from the wall and towered overhead in a massive dome thousands of feet up. All the monsters’ wreckage had been pulled back in by something. Cheddar’s mental images were vague as to what it was, but whatever it was, it was big.

  My eyes kept drifting to the fog dome overhead and the incessant rain—and I wasn’t the only one. The C-Rankers we’d fought with couldn’t stop staring, and even Ellen took a look in between yawns. It lacked the ominous anger of Queen Mother Yalerox’s sieging storms or the fury of the Eye of the Storm. Instead, it was almost tranquil. Calm. A monotone of yellow-orange-white lit up by Phoenix’s city lights below. It was like being trapped in a snow globe, but with rain and humidity instead of snow.

  No matter what, the assault was over, and the siege had started.

  As the commandeered city bus pulled up across the street from the Desert Wind’s parking garage and dropped us off, I relaxed even more. The building’s lights were on, although Jessie’s was off. She had school tomorrow morning, and I was happy to see that she was asleep—especially because Yasmin’s light was on.

  And she was waiting for Jeff in the lobby. “We need to talk,” she said.

  “Yeah. Yeah, we do,” Jeff nodded. He walked over and sat in one of the armchairs Ellen had ordered to upgrade the ones that had been left there. Then he nodded to me. “Good work today. I’ve…got some ideas for the future. But now’s not the time. I’ll catch up to you.”

  “Thanks for the cover up there,” I said and headed for the elevator. Ellen followed me up, and I let her.

  She didn’t even bother heading for the bathroom to change, instead stripping down in the open space and pulling on her pajamas. I didn’t have the energy to admire the view; I was doing the same thing. “I’m completely drained. I mean, my Mana is fine, but I’ve got nothing left in the tank for Stamina.”

  I turned as she collapsed into my bed. “That was…a lot. And they want us reporting in again tomorrow at eight. It probably won’t be Wall duty, but it’s not like Phoenix can just sit around and let itself be sieged.”

  Ellen nodded and rolled over, pressing her face into a pillow. Her battle pigtails were out, and she’d left her robe on the floor in a pile. She muttered something into the pillow.

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘Did you level anything up?’”

  “Didn’t even check. I’m so tired,” I said as I pulled up my status.

  User: Kade Noelstra

  Reforged Core, B-Rank

  Stamina: 63/460 (+20), Mana: 317/580 (+30)

  Skills:

  1. Stormsteel Core (B-02 to B-05, Unique, Merged, God-Touched)

  2. Thunderbolt Forms (B-03 to B-06, Altered, Merged)

  3. Mistwalk Forms (B-02 to B-04, Altered, Merged)

  4. Cyclone Forms (B-01 to B-05, Altered, Merged)

  5. Stormlight Bond (C-10 to B-01, Altered, Merged)

  6. Shadowstorm Battery (D-07 to D-10, Altered, Merged, Dual)

  7. Stormbreak (D-03, Unique)

  Path: Stormsteel Path

  Aura: Negative Space

  Laws: First Law of the Stormcore, Law of the Shadowed Storm, First Law of Darkened Lightning, Third Law of the Sirocco

  Spells: Darkness, Lightning Chain, Polarity Shift, Thunder Crash, Touch of Shadow

  I had. I’d grown a lot in the all-afternoon fight that had raged into the evening. The biggest jump was to Cyclone Forms—which made sense. Lightning Strikes Twice had been getting a workout, and then there’d been the wave of string mages; I’d finally gotten to push Cloudburst to its limits and then watch as Jeff, Raul, and the C-Rank team’s tanks had mopped up the helpless casters. The most spellblade-oriented stance had been perfect, and I’d cosplayed a caster a lot up there.

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  But I’d also leveled almost everything at least slightly. Everything but one skill: Stormbreak remained D-03. I closed my eyes and thought back to all the fighting we’d been doing. Then I bit back a curse. I’d had at least three opportunities to use my most hated skill, and I hadn’t done it. Why? Why couldn’t I Stormbreak whenever I wanted to? The Unique skill was a perfect finisher. But it was also…terrifying was the wrong word. It was less full-body and more pit-of-the-stomach.

  “Did you level up Shadowstorm Battery?” Ellen asked. “I got mine to D-10.”

  “Same,” I said. I shook my head to push Stormbreak out of it. I’d do better tomorrow. There’d be plenty of chances—especially with the whole team at full strength for the first time since Sophia had broken down.

  Ellen started to sit up. Then she yawned.

  I rolled my eyes. “The skill will keep until tomorrow morning. Let’s get some sleep, okay?”

  She nodded. I pulled off my filthy combat clothes and found a pair of flannel bottoms. The rain poured down on the Desert Wind building’s windows with no sign of stopping, and I slid into the bed next to Ellen. She lifted an arm, and I wrapped her in a hug. Then we breathed together until she fell asleep.

  I didn’t, though.

  Jessie: I know Crone.

  My sister’s message had confused me for a while before I realized she was deliberately leaving out every bit of context she could. Once I knew that, it was a simple matter of deciding to ignore it. And that had been easy while the four of us were on a bus with a few dozen other delvers. It had even been easy while I had skill level-ups to review. But now, in the dark, with the warm glow of Phoenix’s lights pouring in and the rain on the windows, it was the only thing on my mind.

  I know Crone. What did that mean?

  The next morning wasn’t pancakes and flour explosions in the kitchen.

  It was breakfast cereal at 5:30, before the desert was even properly lit up by the morning sun. Ellen and I were both groggy, and Yasmin and Jeff looked like they’d gotten even less sleep than we had. Unlike us, though, they both looked…happy. They kept shooting each other looks—the flirty kind.

  My looks were reserved for Jessie, and they were irritated ones. She was the only one in the kitchen who’d gotten enough sleep last night, and I could tell she wanted to burst with excitement over something.

  But before she could start, Jeff cleared his throat over a bowl of corn flakes. “Kade, I want out. The team’s not something I can handle. I talked to Sophia late last night, and she feels the same way.”

  Jessie stopped, spoon halfway to her mouth. “What?”

  I echoed her, and Jeff stared at his bowl. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Look, the reality is that I can’t keep up against A-Rank monsters. We got lucky that the only ones in our section of the Wall were the Scaling Constructs, but I’m at my limit, and I’m smart enough to know that. And Sophia is…look, she’s not going to survive another death or two. The two of us need to stop.”

  “So, you’re done?” I asked. The accusation wasn’t intentional, but the moment I said it, I felt the tone in my gut. “Sorry, that came out wrong.”

  “No. It’s fine.” Jeff took a deep breath and held onto his spoon like it was a sword. “Neither of us wants to be done delving. We can still do a lot of good. But…I’ve been talking to my parents. They’ve really helped me figure this out. I need to play to my strengths, and so does Sophia—and the best thing we can do for the guild is work on strengthening it as a whole. We want to start running with groups of E and D-Rankers, act as recruiters or trainers, or something.”

  Yasmin nodded. “Jeff and I talked about it last night—and about some other stuff. I think it’s a good idea.”

  “Does that mean you’re out for today?” Jessie asked. Something about her looked vaguely smug, but I couldn’t place it. “The GC’s going to need to know if—“

  “Absolutely not,” Jeff interrupted. “But we can’t handle A-Rank portals. When you get there, we’ll start running low-ranking ones and building up the guild. Uh, if that works for you, Jessie.”

  Jessie sat there for a second. Then she nodded. “It does. We can work on getting to Tier Two Guild status, with enough teams to cover Surprise and poach a few portals from our bigger neighbors. They won’t mind—they’ve been doing the same thing to us since we got established. I’ll need to figure out the paperwork for a second team, and we’ll have to be smart about who we bring in. More rules, more bureaucracy, all that fun stuff. But we can do it.”

  “Great.” Jeff looked relieved. My stomach twisted. I’d known this was coming—it had been inevitable—but even so, the reality of it hitting now was crushing. “Any other business, since this turned into a breakfast meeting?”

  “Yeah,” Jessie said.

  Ellen cleared her throat. “Kade and I need to go do something.”

  Jeff’s eyebrow went up, and I rolled my eyes at him. “Not that. We’re going to rank up a skill as soon as we’re done here. We would have done it last night, but we were both beat.”

  “Can it wait ten minutes?” Jessie asked. “Please? I’ve been wanting to tell you this all night!”

  I nodded. “Ten minutes? Sure. But we’re a little crunched for time, so let’s make it fast.”

  “Okay. Yesterday, Yasmin and I met with the people you guys pulled out of that portal.” Jessie stood up and shuffled over to her wheelchair. I winced. She’d overdone it again. Then she pulled out a stack of papers, sat on the floor, and started arranging them in a large rectangle in front of her. “I tried everything I could think of to talk to them, but nothing worked…until…”

  She finished, then added several smaller rectangles to a few of the papers, pointing the symbols on them in different directions. “When I laid it out like this and started this phrase at this word, one of them recognized that combination of symbols. From there, I was able to play with it for a long time. Probably fifty different combinations.”

  “A hundred. Maybe more,” Yasmin said. “She did it the entire time we were locked down.”

  “Okay, sure, but at least half of those were fakes to confuse anyone who was watching.”

  “Sure, whatever.”

  Jessie stared at Yasmin for a moment until the support nodded and waved for her to go on. “Anyway, the point here is that I already knew a single, specific word, and when I used a phrase with that word, I got a reaction. From there, I was able to start solving by guessing from where she’d looked. It’s rough, and it could be wrong, but…”

  I got a sudden bad feeling—a feeling like we were being watched. But before I could stop Jessie, she continued. “I’m pretty sure the Crone is a Paragon, and I’m even more sure this array here is how we make contact with her.”

  Eugene was starting to get frustrated.

  There were now no fewer than four Paragons involved in Phoenix. Four. The God of Thunder had missed something about Earth, and he was paying for it. If he’d been more ruthless, there wouldn’t be anything for them to be involved in. The world would have been his, just like the Blood-Drained Light had claimed a portal world for itself. Eugene was strong—much stronger than a C-Rank Paragon. He could easily claim a world for himself. He’d done it before. But he couldn’t do it while other Paragons had a foothold on it—at least not the most powerful of the newcomers.

  He could destroy the first—its portal world had been connected to Earth for years, and in that time, the monster within hadn’t so much as ranked up beyond S. It wasn’t weak, but compared to the God of Thunder, it wasn’t anything worth worrying about.

  But the other two…they were problems.

  He’d been digging into the first one for several days now, and he hadn’t made a single bit of headway. It wasn’t that Eugene had missed an important clue. He was confident that he had all the available information he could get. It was more that there were no important clues.

  All he had to go on was the Paragon’s strength, subtlety, and wisdom, and those three clues weren’t enough. They only told him that whatever the Paragon was, it was likely SS-Rank or higher. Possibly even an equal to him. Worse, the human who’d made contact hadn’t done so a second time. If they had, Eugene would have been able to figure out the offending monster’s identity—and to kill it and either take its portal world for himself or let it fade and waste away.

  Whoever it was, this Paragon was playing the game the way it was meant to be played.

  “A worthy opponent,” Eugene muttered to himself as he lay in mid-air, the blue-and-red portal world he called home far below him. “Maybe this will be interesting after all.”

  And then there was the final Paragon.

  He knew that one. And that made the situation worse, not better, because the God of Thunder and the Crone had an arrangement—an agreement. And, strictly speaking, Eugene would be on the losing end of that agreement if the Crone elected to hold him to it. He’d have to be careful.

  Eugene was powerful, but he wasn’t powerful enough to ascend. The moment he was, he’d be gone. He’d worked toward that goal for millennia. But the Crone had been that powerful since before he’d hit D-Rank. She could leave any time she wanted to.

  She just didn’t want to. She was too busy having fun.

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