I’d assembled everyone I could find.

  Sophia and Jeff were at the headquarters, but they were both booked with interviews for the E and D-Rankers we wanted to bring in. Raul had a date or something, and Yasmin was with her family. That meant that everyone I could find was Ellen and me.

  We stood in the sparring room. It had been completely depowered, with the exception of the automatic, delver-resistant doors that had trapped a horde of E-Rank goblins in here for who knew how long.

  Jessie, for her part, sat at the door, watching us. I shot her a thumbs-up, and she nodded, then shut it behind her. She’d been working on her theory—and on inscribing the message she thought would work when exposed to the core’s light in a dark environment. The word she’d mirrored translated, according to her, as either ‘ghost’ or ‘silhouette.’ We were working with the second one.

  Then I took a deep breath, summoned the Stormsteel armor and my weapon, and readied myself. I didn’t put Mana into either the armor or weapon; the long rapier was little more than a portal metal stick, and the framework sat over my shoulders and arm like a vine rather than something that would protect me. But for what we were about to do, speed was of the essence.

  If we’d been any kind of smart, we’d have called in S-Rankers to handle this.

  Instead, I thumped Ellen on the shoulder.

  She pulled the duffel bag she’d been carrying open, and light poured into the room.

  It covered everything. Not a single crack, not a single shadow, survived. Ellen stepped behind me like we’d planned, but that didn’t help. After a second, it was like a full moon night. After two, it was a sunny day. And after three…

  After three, it was like walking on the surface of the sun. The only spaces that weren’t burning bright were the shadows of the words Jessie had inscribed.

  “Cover it!” I yelled. Jessie was outside, and whatever we’d done, it was out of control. The light grew and grew. It was bright enough that my eyes ached even through closed eyelids. I poured Stamina into them, focused every ounce of my healing on them—and still, it wasn’t enough. “Cover it!”

  “I did!”

  Shit.

  The light kept growing. Everything was light; if I’d been able to see, it probably would have poured through the two of us like we weren’t even there—like when Jessie held the ghost core in her hands, but a million times stronger.

  And then, suddenly, it was pitch black.

  It took almost a minute to see anything at all. When I finally registered anything, Ellen was behind me. Her healing was slower, and she had a single hand on my shoulder as she blinked quickly. But we weren’t alone, either.

  Mind Maiden Enolda: ?-Rank

  I summoned Stormsong. Lightning crackled around it, and I prepared to fight for my life. But before I could make a move, the puppet’s arm rose from her crumpled body—it looked like someone had tossed her to the ground like a child’s doll. My sword disappeared.

  An S-Rank monster was in our training room, and we couldn’t deal with it. I started running for the panic button, leaving Ellen behind. We were both dead anyway, and Jessie needed to know. Everyone needed to know.

  “Hold, Paragon Kade Noelstra. I have three questions for thee.”

  I turned. Mind Maiden Enolda stood upright, her head bowed and spine bent. And she stood between Ellen and a softly-glowing, moon-white portal. A white portal. I’d never even heard of a white portal before. What did it mean? According to the God of Thunder, S-Rank was the most powerful that could exist on Earth, and that was gold. What was white?

  She spoke right through my horror and awe. “First, why hast thou attempted to slay Mother Mine? And second, what business dost thy sister have with the Crone?”

  “And the third?” I asked. I wished I had a weapon, or a spell, or anything I could use to fight the puppet in front of me. But I didn’t. She knew about Jessie. She knew my sister was here, and that she’d been trying to understand the Crone.

  What else did she know? What was she?

  The Mind Maiden laughed politely. “The third I reserve for after I hear thy answers to the first two.”

  Ellen spoke first. “Before we can say anything, we need your word that your presence here isn’t a threat. An S-Rank monster in the middle of our world is cause to panic.”

  I nodded. My progression partner was buying time, and even though I didn’t know what for, I recognized that she had a plan.

  Mind Maiden Enolda stared at Ellen for a second, then nodded. “True. I hath no intention of bringing injury upon anyone not in this room, with the exception of thy sister, Paragon Kade Noelstra—and that remains undecided. If her intentions art not true, her attempt to contact the Crone is a grave affront. Thou art wrong about one thing, however. I am not S-Rank.”

  I stiffened at the mention of my sister. Blood pulsed in my ears. This wasn’t like Carter. No. This was a stated threat—and it was one I couldn’t do anything about. But Ellen nodded. “Understood. Do you have a rank?”

  “I doth not. My questions?”

  Ellen glanced at me. I took a breath and got to it. “Our city is under siege, and your portal was a threat. Our job’s to deal with those threats. We dealt with it, and that meant killing the portal’s boss. I’d gladly do it again.”

  “Thou may yet have the opportunity,” Enolda said mirthlessly. “So thy appearance in Mother Mine’s Ghostdream was chance, not intended? Interesting. And the other?”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “She’s curious. Or maybe she’s got a plan she hasn’t told me,” I said.

  “Unacceptable. She is thy charge, is she not? Thou art responsible for her actions, correct?”

  “That’s not fair,” Ellen interrupted. “Jessie’s more of a force of nature than you are, and you’re one of the most powerful beings on Earth right now.”

  “Hmmm.” Enolda cupped her chin in a wooden hand, seeming to ponder what Ellen had said. Then she leaned down and stared at the door. “Very well. I hath made a decision. I shall restrain myself from violence.”

  “Thank you.” I relaxed.

  “However, thy sister must appear before Mother Mine, and the Crone must meet her as well.”

  “No.” The relaxation vanished, and I got ready to fight with my fists if I had to, but a voice echoed in my head before I could.

  “Kid, you’re outgunned. That thing’s boss is a world-ender like me, but without the mercy and good attitude. I’m with the Crone right now. Come with the puppet. Enolda’s not a monster, and she doesn’t follow our rules. You’ll be safe from her,” Eugene said. “Or you could not go and try your luck against her. Your choice, but she’s beyond your world’s S-Rank in power.”

  “And the Crone? Will we be safe from her?” I asked. Enolda’s face shifted to look at me, and I shook my head quickly.

  “I didn’t say anything about her.”

  “That’s not filling me with confidence.” I closed my eyes tight, then made a choice. It was a bad one, but it was the only one I had. The only other one ended with me failing to keep my promise to Jessie—and to Dad. This way, I’d still have a chance. “Alright. Let me get Jessie, and we’ll go together.”

  Jessie had no idea what was happening in the Desert Wind’s sparring room, but she was furious to be missing it.

  And, yeah, a small part of her was worried about Kade—but it was Kade. He’d be fine. Probably. Hopefully. She ignored her balled fist and the untrimmed nails digging into her palm, and her other hand messing with her hair. He’d be fine.

  The cameras had popped about three seconds into the process. The audio recording system had fried two seconds after that. Right now, all Jessie knew was that a dozen different alarms were going off silently, all across the room, and that she’d been the one who’d muted them. Something was happening, and she couldn’t even witness the results of her—

  The door opened.

  Light poured out of the sparring room like water.

  Kade stepped through. “Jessie, we, uh….”

  He trailed off, or maybe he didn’t. Jessie wasn’t paying any attention to her brother—or to Ellen. Her jaw had gone slack enough to hurt, and every other muscle in her body had tensed. The thing that had followed her brother out of the room was dressed in blue, with a wooden body under its dress. It loomed over both him and Ellen like a mantis, four arms hanging loosely as its eyes…her eyes, the thing was obviously supposed to be female…shifted around the room.

  “Guildmeister Jessica Gerald, thy presence is required at Mother Mine’s court. There, thou shalt explain thy investigations into her world and works.”

  Jessie didn’t say anything at all. She couldn’t—and it wasn’t because the monster had done anything to strike her dumb. She was in awe. When she’d described the orb as, possibly, the key to understanding the ledger, she hadn’t even suspected that it might be an actual key. She’d hoped for a Rosetta Stone, not for this.

  The door that had opened wasn’t one of language, but she didn’t care. The white portal behind the puppet monster beckoned. “You want me to go into a portal world? Sure. Absolutely. Let me grab my notes!”

  Kade sighed in defeat. Jessie ignored him and wheeled across the room to find her notebook and the ledger. This was the opportunity of a lifetime!

  “Mother Mine’s world hath rules,” Mind Maiden Enolda said quietly as the four of us stood in a moonlit clearing five minutes later. Ellen’s eyes kept scanning the tangled, hostile-looking treeline, and so did mine. Jessie was too busy looking at the trees themselves, and as an unawakened human, there was a real chance she couldn’t feel what we could, but it was almost overwhelming to me.

  The feeling of overwhelming wrongness filled the space around us in an aura.

  The God of Thunder was here, but that wasn’t what I felt. No. This was more like an S-Ranker’s aura, but so strong I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It had frozen both Ellen and me in place the moment we’d arrived in this world, and it confirmed something I’d suspected.

  The white portal was far, far beyond S-Rank. We were in over our heads, but Jessie was so far underwater she didn’t even know she was drowning. I gritted my teeth and tried to listen even as the aura strengthened. I couldn’t tell whose it was, but it was coming closer.

  “First, thou shalt not fight within the Ghostmarket. Second, thou shalt not steal from Mother Mine. Third, thou shalt treat Mother Mine with the respect she is due. Fourth—“

  “That’s enough of that. Silence, foolish girl!” a voice echoed from the woods.

  Mind Maiden Enolda collapsed into a heap of tangled limbs. Her eyes clacked closed, and her jaw unhinged like a ventriloquist’s dummy. I stared at her, then at the perfectly-shaped pine trees just past her.

  “Hello, dearies,” an ancient woman said as she hobbled forward on a cane. Every bit of her was the same color as the moonlight, the portal, and the starlight that had filled our sparring room; only her eyes were different. They were pools of black abyss, just like Mind Maiden Enolda’s. Her moonlight shawl and robe cast shadows across themselves as she moved, leaning on her stick. “Welcome to my world. Let’s have a look at you.”

  Behind her, a knight made from lightning and carrying a spear over his shoulder walked slowly, keeping a healthy thirty feet of distance. Eugene nodded, but to my surprise, stayed silent. Instead, he took a knee when the old woman stopped.

  “You must be the Crone,” Ellen said. “I think we killed your mother yesterday. Sorry.”

  “Nonsense. You aren’t sorry at all,” the old woman said, smiling toothlessly. “She’s not my mother, and you couldn’t kill her if you tried. That’s a very special portal you cleared out. It’s the key to everything I’ve been working for millennia to get, and I was a little worried you’d damaged it. But no, Mother Mine is harder to kill than that. She’s me, after all.”

  “Kade, you’re in the presence of the Crone,” Eugene said quietly. He didn’t sound quite like himself. His voice was soft and clipped, almost as if he was under attack or incredibly overstretched. “Restrain your Dual Skill partner’s tongue before—“

  The Crone’s hand raised, and the God of Thunder fell silent. And in that moment, I understood the power dynamic at play here. The God of Thunder was the most powerful being I’d ever met. The Crone, whatever she was, was far, far stronger. I reached out and took Ellen’s hand before she could say something to either of the gods in front of us that’d piss one of them off. Then I squeezed it once, as comfortingly as I could. “I’ve been here before, Ellen. I know how to handle him, but the Crone’s a mystery to me. Let’s play it safe.”

  She squeezed my hand back.

  Jessie, though, had no such restraint. “So, you’re the Crone? Cool. Maybe you can help me with something.”

  I stared at Jessie as she wheeled herself toward the old, ghostly woman. The two locked eyes, Jessie’s wide, pain-filled ones meeting the abyss and looking right into it, and the abyss staring right back. She wasn’t scared, and I had no idea why.

  There was nothing I could do. But at the same time, I was ready to do whatever it’d take to get Jessie back through that glowing white portal and into Earth. If this monster thought she was going to punish my sister for talking to her, she’d have another thing coming. I’d—

  “Fascinating,” the Crone said. She looked away, breaking eye contact as Jessie stared straight ahead. “You have no idea how powerful I am, do you?”

  “No clue,” Jessie replied. She shrugged, wincing. “But these are your words, right?”

  She reached behind her and pulled the ledger out of her wheelchair, then handed it to the glowing, translucent woman. The Crone accepted it, flipped through it, and then shot a stare right at Jessie. The aura around us redoubled, and she snapped the book shut and tucked it into her moonlight shawl.

  “Girlie, you got that from the elves, didn’t you? They weren’t supposed to do any trading on the side. I’ll have to sit them down for a nice little chat later.” Then she smiled widely, showing too many sharp, needle-like teeth. “Now, what can the Crone do for you?”

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