The siege wasn’t over.

  When I woke up the next morning for my fight with Rob, the steam cloud hadn’t changed at all, and we rode to the Fallen Delvers courtyard with rain pattering across the windshield. It was just Ellen and me today; Jeff and Sophia were both eye-deep in getting the prospective guild members into an E-Rank portal to see what they were about, and Jessie had school.

  She was pissed about it, but there was no reason for her not to go, and she knew it.

  The cloud was starting to become normal. I hadn’t seen the sun except as a glowing spot in the haze in a while, and the rain was so constant it had started to blend into the background. The 303 Wall’s defenses hadn’t been seriously tested since the monster wave’s first assault, and Angelo and the other S-Rankers hadn’t been able to break through the encircling monsters. Everyone seemed content to wait.

  “Rumor is, the West Coast cities are going to break the siege,” Ellen said.

  I shrugged and tried to engage. The clouds were there. So were the monsters. Unless something changed, neither was going anywhere. But Rob was a problem I could deal with, and he was the problem I had to focus on now. I had a plan. But it wasn’t a good one.

  “I’m not sure they can, though,” she kept going. “Not with what they have. There isn’t enough firepower in Phoenix to break out, and the Wall’s got a decade and a half of cores piled up.”

  “Stalemate,” I muttered. “It’s a stalemate.”

  Then the car stopped, and I got out. My clothes soaked through in seconds, and I glared at Ellen—and more importantly, at her umbrella. She chuckled. “Still haven’t gotten one?”

  “They’re sold out everywhere. You can’t buy an umbrella in this town.”

  “Pays to be prepared, then. Listen, you’re sure about this?” Ellen asked. She pulled me in for a one-armed hug. I returned it, intentionally getting her as drenched as I could. My hug was tighter than I meant it to be, and she winced. “Not a hundred percent, Kade. Take it easy.”

  “Sorry. No. But if every other plan fails, this one’s the best option I’ve got. Plus, the God of Thunder taught me a lot yesterday. I think I’ll be okay. I’m going to find a way to win. It’s what I do.” I let her go and walked through the downpour to the stairs that led down into the Fallen Delvers Memorial—and to the brilliant blue portal inside of it.

  Rob was waiting halfway down, chainmail armor under a leather jacket and C-Rank mace over his shoulder. He nodded. “Kade Noelstra. How’ve you been?”

  “Good,” I said.

  “That’s good.” We walked to the portal together, but didn’t enter yet. Sarah Cullman was nowhere to be seen, and we couldn’t start without her. Rob leaned against the wall and fiddled with his armor, and I dropped into a lotus position. After a few seconds, he cleared his throat. “I owe you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I owe you for that portal. The E-Rank one. It was my first portal, and I had a fighter Unique. I was fighting like one—and I was doing alright, but I didn’t love it. I didn’t have a build plan, but delving was going to be my future, and my mom’s. She’s been bouncing from job to job and apartment to apartment since before I was born. I was going to be stuck with fighter forever, and I was okay with that if it meant keeping her stable.

  “And then you showed up.” He pushed himself off the wall and walked toward me, mace still over his shoulder. “I didn’t understand until you almost killed that boss by yourself. Then I started digging into your build. Skill merges. Unique merges. Whatever that familiar is. Over that month, I pieced together a skill build that makes sense to me. And I’m good at it. I can do anything, for any group—just like you, but a little different.”

  Rob stared at me, hand out. I stood up slowly and took it, and he shook my hand. “So, thank you. You don’t know it, but this is all because of you.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could think of the words, Sarah Cullman appeared on the stairs. “Alright, you two ready?”

  Rob nodded, eyes hardening as he did. After a second, so did I. It was flattering that he thought that one E-Rank portal was so important, and that I’d influenced him into choosing the build that would define his career as a delver. In another time or place, I’d have sat down with him, bought him a drink, and talked business.

  But this wasn’t another time or place, and the moment the Spark of Life, Rob, and I walked through the blue Fallen Delver’s portal, he became my opponent. Not my enemy, but an enemy.

  We had business to take care of, but our weapons would do the talking.

  The arena was choked with branches. Some of them were thick enough to drive a car across, but most were thin—only a foot or two wide or narrower. There was no floor, only fog down below with branches and leaves pushing up from it. And, aside from a few glimpses, I couldn’t see twenty feet in any direction. Cobwebs hung from some of the branches, trapping leaves in their webs as the breeze blew through the boughs.

  Arboreal. It had to be the tangle of branches high above the elves’ tree cities.

  I stepped out carefully. In my last fight, the first phase of the battle had been a mad dash for the center. Here, though, there were choke points, but every one of them could be bypassed. Speed wasn’t part of my plan, either—at least not at first.

  Rob’s mace’s golden glow filled the air. He was moving. I pushed myself just a tiny bit faster and met him on one of the wider, street-sized branches.

  His mace whipped forward. It wasn’t as big as Andrew’s axe, but when I stepped back and it slammed into the bough below us, splinters erupted from the impact. I lunged to kill in the second before he recovered, but one arm let go of the weapon, and he punched my sword off-target. It grazed his helmet instead of catching him in the face.

  Light erupted from his armor, and I staggered back a step. He’d used that spell before, but I hadn’t expected the Binding instantly. In his past fights, he’d saved it for later. I blinked afterimages away as the paladin closed in and his mace slammed down. Stance-shift. Mistwalk Forms. Stormsong came up. The two weapons met, and sparks flew.

  Then I danced backward and to the right. Rob followed. Magic surged from his fingertips, and a quartet of brilliant yellow beams shot out at me. They punched into the swirling Stormsteel breastplate and dissipated. I fired back with a Darkness, and his boots’ echo cut off as he stopped running after me. Left. My feet thudded on the wood as I pushed myself to a full sprint. Another stance change, this time to Thunderbolt’s one-handed grip. A lunge as Rob broke free from the Darkness.

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  It caught him in the side, above the kidney. Lightning surged. I pulled back to defend.

  Pain. The hammer crashed down on my sword shoulder, and yellow light exploded out from it. I pumped Stamina into the impact zone. Bones shifted oddly, but I got the blade up to block Rob’s follow-up.

  Then I backpedaled, shifted again, and cast Polarity Shift with Lightning Strikes Twice.

  Rob was on me instantly. The mace rose in a one-handed grip as a shield of golden energy erupted in his other hand. That was fine. The Polarity Shifts both fired. I dodged right. Rolled on the branch. The mace struck out like a snake biting. The shield followed. Both missed, and I cast a third Polarity Shift and Touch of Shadow.

  I hadn’t thought I’d get this far into the combo, and my strategy changed instantly. I got to my feet in time to block the mace. The shield crashed into my chest a moment later; I recognized the fighting style from a sparring match I’d had as an E-Ranker, but couldn’t do anything about it right now. The impact knocked the breath from my lungs and drove me to the branch’s edge.

  Thunder Crash. Six green-black bolts of lightning. They all surged down as one helix of electricity, racing toward Rob like a serpent. As they hit, I cast Darkness, then checked my Mana as I backpedaled.

  Stamina: 397/460, Mana: 342/590

  I was burning through it, but that was okay. In the second I had before Rob recovered, I summoned Cheddar into the darkness. The Stormlight Serpent took off for the ceiling, hovering in between the branches just like Pepperoni had during one of Ellen’s fights.

  The Mana problem was solved.

  But as I stared at the Darkness, Rob didn’t come crashing out of it. Something was wrong—or if not wrong, then at least unexpected. I cut off the spell. “Dammit.”

  He was using healing magic on himself. The wound in his side was almost completely closed, and the only evidence of my combo was a handful of scorch marks on his chainmail. He grinned sheepishly. “Sorry.”

  “I bet you are,” I muttered. Then I dropped into Thunderbolt stance again—this time the two-handed variant. Aggression was the only solution, and I had a fight-changing haymaker still in reserve. Rain-Slicked Blade punched through Rob’s armored stomach and doubled him over. I lashed out again, leaving a cut across his face. The shield flickered out as the spell ended, and the mace shifted into a two-handed grip.

  Golden light erupted from Rob in a nova of energy. It burned. I staggered back, and in that moment, I started losing the fight. Parry. Roll. Impact. The blows rained down faster than I thought possible. He was relentless. Every blow hurt, and my Stamina was stretched thin. How was he doing this? I’d landed a few good hits—enough to beat Logan, a C-Rank tank. How could he still be going?

  I only had one option. I rolled to the left, got back to my feet, and switched into Mistwalk stance again. Then I used Stormbreak.

  The zones formed around us—negative for us both—and I jumped as I focused on neutralizing my zone. Windwalk caught me. I dashed through the air. Two seconds. Beams of light slammed into me, boring through my armor. Four. I found a branch. A pair of eyes stared at me—a pair of familiar ones. A woman’s eyes. Sarah’s. She had a positive field around her, and I laughed.

  Stormbreak fired. Lightning filled the sparring room. Branches caught fire, leaves disintegrated, and my vision went black.

  Then Sarah stood up from her seat. She cleared her throat, and I saw—against all odds—that Rob was still on his feet. The Spark of Life’s hand went up, and she opened her mouth.

  “Wait,” I said. I pushed myself upright, too. She couldn’t call the fight. Not yet. I hadn’t won yet.

  Every muscle in my body screamed for Stamina to dull the pain the lightning had left in its wake. I rationed it out. Not everything mattered. Most of my body could hurt and still work. Only my heart, lungs, and enough muscles to keep fighting needed to be protected. The rest could—

  “Kade Noelstra, you’re in no condition to—“

  I cut the Spark of Life off. “I said, ‘Wait.’ The fight’s not over yet.”

  It wasn’t. I’d used every fight-ender in my kit. Every ace in the deck. The combo. Stormbreak. And somehow, Rob was still standing. I wanted to talk to him and figure out how. Maybe after the fight, I’d be able to. But right now, I had one advantage over the paladin, and I was going to take it.

  Cheddar was draped over a branch somewhere high above. He was unconscious—he’d had a positive circle, too. But his Mana was slowly filling up. That meant, thanks to Shadowstorm Battery, that mine was, too.

  Stamina: 124/460, Mana: 21/590

  It wasn’t much. But it was more than Rob had.

  I turned and ran down the branch, closing the gap. Behind me, Sarah Cullman sat down, blinking as her Mana recovered and she started slowly healing her own wounds. I smiled. The fight was still on—and I was going to win it.

  I started the combo the second I saw Rob. He raised his hammer and charged, feet thudding on the branch below him. His face was a rictus of pain, but his eyes blazed with the same golden-white light he’d used for his magic. He’d managed to cast a single spell, or maybe it was a leftover from before Stormbreak. Either way, he was more ready than I’d hoped.

  But not as ready as he needed to be.

  Polarity Shift. Lightning Strikes Twice. My Negative Space aura. A second Shift. Thunder Crash. My Mana bottomed out, but the combo limped to the finish line.

  This time, when it hit him, I didn’t bother with Darkness. I switched to Mistwalk stance, used Windwalk, and closed the gap in a full airborne sprint. Stormsong went up as Rob’s armor smoked and hissed.

  “Stop.”

  I froze. Rob’s hand left his mace, and it hit the wooden branch, bounced, and rolled against my foot. My sword hovered inches from his chest, where I’d pulled my blow.

  “Stop,” he repeated. “I yield. You win.”

  “Match,” the Spark of Life said, and Stormsong’s lightning cut off as I unsummoned my weapon and armor, breathing hard.

  We stood outside the portal.

  Rob’s armor was charred and blackened from my attacks. My arm hung limply from my shoulder. The Spark of Life had given us all the healing we needed, but after Stormbreak, she didn’t have the Mana to fix everything instantly. I hadn’t expected the skill to hit her; if I had, I’d have excluded her earlier.

  “Well, Kade, that was enlightening,” Rob said quietly. “I thought I had something here. I’ve been soloing D-Rank portals pretty consistently, and I was about ready to try a C-Rank by myself. The build’s going to cap out at A-Rank, thanks to some shenanigans I can’t talk about, but I expected it to do well in this tournament.”

  “The tournament’s built for it to do well, but that’s a good solo build,” I said. “What I’m doing is a little beyond most delvers’ capabilities. I can’t talk about it either, but it’s pushing the limits of what B-Rank can do.”

  “I bet. You shouldn’t have had two mage-level finishers on top of swordplay and speed,” Rob complained. “It’s ridiculous.”

  “Yeah, I agree.”

  The small room at the bottom of the stairs was quiet for a moment as Sarah emerged from the portal. She stared at me. “Next time, don’t hit me with your overtuned, broken skills.”

  “Got it, Sarah. My bad. I literally didn’t see you until it was too late.” I said.

  “Sure. Tell your sister I said hi,” she said, and she headed up for the surface.

  I let the silence hang for a moment. Rob was the first opponent in this entire tournament that I felt comfortable talking to. He’d fought hard—harder than either of my previous two—but he’d also stopped. Something about that struck me as odd, and after a moment, I asked the question that’d been bugging me since the fight ended. “Why’d you stop?”

  “Easy. The fight was over. You have better resource generation than I do. After you burned my Mana, I was just a fighter with fewer skills than I needed. You were still you. Fighting would have been pointless.” Rob nodded slowly as he leaned against the wall. “It wasn’t dishonorable to give up at that point.”

  There was a lot to unpack there, but I nodded along with him. Then I glanced at his arm. His leather jacket had been shredded from one of my attacks, but unlike almost everyone in the tournament at this point, he didn’t have a guild armband.

  An idea hit me, and I pulled out my Script book. I scribbled a phone number down. “You said you’ll max out at A-Rank, right? If you’re looking for a delving team, my guild’s in a little bit of flux right now. My team’s tank and healer are both capped—different reasons for each, but same result—and they’re going to run a low-rank clear team. Our mage, fighter, support, and I need a couple of people we can rely on. If you’re interested, give this number a call. And, uh, sorry in advance.”

  “Why?” Rob asked.

  “Because that’s the guild leader’s number, and she’s my sister.”

  “Ah.”

  I turned, raised a hand, and headed for the stairs. Ellen awaited—and so did the next match, later in the day. It was going to be a doozy, and it was also the only match where I didn’t have a favorite in mind.

  Caleb Richter was scheduled to fight against Ophelia St. Vrain.

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