Ophelia St. Vrain had never understood people.

  She’d never had to. People were a complexity she didn’t have the energy for. Working hard enough to understand them would have meant sacrificing what she wanted. To get stronger. To learn. To be left alone.

  Her employer didn’t understand. When he’d shifted his tone on his daughter, Ophelia had thought she’d won. After all, the shadow mage had been gunning for her spot, and the Traynor Corporation had promised, in writing, that the spot was hers. It was a commitment, and she’d expected the Corporation to be honest like her.

  The job should have been hers. But her employer insisted on sidelining her completely. Her core was fine. She hadn’t felt a single crack in it, and she hadn’t seen a Stability Warning, either. She could keep pushing and fighting.

  She’d prove it.

  Then, when she’d proven herself, her employer would have no choice but to get her back in the field.

  To do that, she’d have to beat the A-Rank tank. The A-Rank tank had almost killed the shadow mage last round, but Ophelia wasn’t worried. She’d seen something in that fight. It wasn’t much. But it was a moment. A single breath. And that single breath was enough to know that she could win.

  Ophelia St. Vrain stepped into the arena.

  We watched Ophelia and Deborah’s fight on the TV in the Desert Wind’s living room. All five of us—Ellen, Jeff, Jessie, Yasmin, and I—sat around the giant screen and took in every second of the semi-final match.

  It was a shadow-covered world. Pillars threw darkness across the entire space in a confusing maze that’d make most spellcasters struggle, but Ellen groaned in envy as she looked at it, and I gave her a quick hug. “I know, that’d have been perfect for you.”

  “It really would have.” She leaned into the hug.

  Ophelia St. Vrain looked quickly from one side of the room to the other, then stepped behind a pillar. Her Unique skill pushed out, but only a few feet from her body. Dust billowed up around her, then stopped. When it settled, she was all but invisible in her black dress and hood, pressed against the pillar and tucked into the shadows.

  Across from the Lonely Mage, Deborah Callahan stalked into the arena. She wore her battle armor—not the set she’d worn on the Wall, but the lighter, quicker set she’d had on for her previous fights.

  “Okay, pay attention. This is our last chance to figure out what she’s all about,” Jeff said.

  “I know,” Jessie shot back. “Shut up.”

  “You shut up,” I said absent-mindedly.

  The Lonely Mage was trying exactly the same strategy Ellen had used in a few of her fights, but with two key differences. First, she had her exclusion zone instead of Darkness. That gave her more protection but less concealment, and she was relying on her clothing to make up the difference. The dim room gave her an edge Ellen hadn’t had, and instead of her own magic, she was mostly focused on using the arena against Deborah.

  The other key difference was that Deborah had started on the far side of the maze of pillars. Neither of them had seen the other yet.

  A dozen seconds ticked by. Then another. Deborah walked through the maze, seemingly not in a hurry. I watched her helmet, trying to see her face. Every second was being recorded, but even so, Ophelia had already lasted longer than anyone since Harold the Herald.

  Her Mana had to be dropping, though.

  “How’s she doing?” I asked.

  “She’s pulled herself in as small as she can. Exclusion zone’s barely covering her body now. I have no idea how she plans to win,” Ellen said. “Last round, she cornered Caleb, but I doubt she can do the same thing with Deborah. She’s a much different animal.”

  “She’s got a plan,” Jessie said.

  “Shhh.” Yasmin pointed at the screen, and I refocused.

  Deborah was less than ten feet from Ophelia. Only the pillar stood between them. Her sword hung in front of her, held almost casually, and her helmet shifted back and forth. I’d seen that move; a lot of armored delvers used it if their vision felt restricted by their visors.

  She stepped around the pillar, and Ophelia unleashed her aura.

  It hit Deborah like a truck. The A-Rank tank flew backward and crashed into a pillar, and in the split second it took her to stand back up, Ophelia—

  “There!” Jessie said. “I saw it!”

  “Shhhh!” Yasmin said.

  The Roadrunner’s second-in-command had already recovered, and she wasn’t moving slowly anymore. She lowered her shield and rushed around the next pillar, then the next one. Ophelia was waiting for her. The aura slammed out again.

  This time, Deborah was ready. She braced. Her portal metal sabatons dug trenches into the stone floor as the force of Ophelia’s magic pushed her backward. Then she started walking forward.

  It was slow. The whole thing reminded me of a man I’d seen trying to walk against one of the big Phoenix dust storms. But step by step, she closed the gap. Ophelia backed up. She pushed even more Mana into her aura and exclusion zone. It didn’t matter; Deborah’s boots glinted with energy, and her shield looked like a comet breaking through the atmosphere, but she was still moving forward.

  Ophelia’s back hit the sparring room’s wall.

  Deborah took another step forward. Then another. Her sword went up.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Ophelia said something, but I couldn’t hear it.

  “Match,” the Spark of Life said.

  Deborah’s sword came down slowly. It slid back into its scabbard, and, without saying anything, she turned and walked to her entrance, then vanished.

  As Jessie started going on and on about what she’d seen, and the others argued with her, I watched Ophelia. The Lonely Mage’s brow wrinkled. She looked like she wanted to cry, and I couldn’t blame her. She’d gotten closer than anyone else had to beating Deborah, and to drop the fight at the end was rough. But at the same time—

  Something shifted.

  It was subtle enough that I only caught it because I was looking for anything. But it was there. One second, the Lonely Mage was an exhausted wreck. The next, the shadow of a grin flicked across her face.

  Whatever she’d seen, it was way more important than the tiny detail Jessie and the others were about to have a fist-fight over. It might even be the key to the fight. I stood and walked to the elevator, then took it all the way up to my suite.

  I had to talk to Ophelia, and I had to do it soon.

  Later that afternoon, Deimos pulled up outside of a cafe in downtown Phoenix, a quarter mile from the Fallen Delvers Memorial, and Ellen and I got out. It had taken an extra half-hour to find a route that wasn’t flooded, but it was worth it not to have to rely on Yasmin.

  Jessie had insisted on coming too, but I’d put my foot down. The text I’d gotten back from the Lonely Mage was extremely clear. I could meet with her, and Ellen could be there too, since she’d seen Deborah from a different angle. But no one else.

  The cafe smelled like coffee beans and rainwater. Everything in Phoenix reeked of the latter—that myth that rain freshened the air wasn’t true at all. It just removed scents and let the real smell of a place shine through, and Phoenix’s real smell wasn’t great. We ducked inside before we could get too wet, then looked for Ophelia St. Vrain. We didn’t have to look hard.

  She wore torn jeans, a hoodie with a big skull on it, and oversized boots, and she sat in a booth that was tucked into a niche in the wall. I hurried over and slid in across from her, and Ellen found a spot next to me.

  Ophelia nodded. “You’re going to help me.”

  “We are?” Ellen asked. “I don’t see how we can do that.”

  “I do. You can beat Deborah Callahan for me.”

  “How?” I asked.

  A waitress stepped close, then cleared her throat. “Anything for you two?” She stared at me for a while, eyes widening. Her lips moved, but I didn’t catch what she said.

  “Yeah, two black coffees,” Ellen said. “Extra cream, sugar on the side.”

  The waitress nodded and left, though her eyes lingered on me for a few more seconds before she did, and Ophelia kept talking. “I will trade you information about what I saw during my fight with Deborah Callahan for a detailed, complete report on what you find in the Fallen Delvers portal after you win. You can relax, Eleanor. The report will not find its way to your father.”

  “What do you want it for?” Ellen asked. “If Bob’s not interested—“

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t interested. I said I wouldn’t give it to him. There’s a big difference.” Ophelia’s dead, empty eyes turned to me. “I assume you want that information, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Here it is. Deborah is not a tank. She fights like one almost all the time, and I prepped for the fight like I would against a tank. The idea was to beat her at her own game. Out-endure her, then pin her down. It had worked in several of my previous fights, so I didn’t think it would fail against her.

  “I don’t have a backup plan. My build has no sources of damage, so I require a surrender to achieve victory. The moment Deborah resisted my aura’s second shove, I’d lost.” Ophelia took a breath as if calming herself, but she didn’t seem upset at all. She seemed just as even and monotone as she always did. It was a little unsettling, honestly, but I needed to hear this. “I changed strategies. My goal was no longer to defeat Deborah Callahan and step into the Fallen Delvers portal myself. It became to learn what was inside of it second-hand.”

  “And the best way you can do that is to help Kade through it.” Ellen coughed once. “I understand.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “What?”

  “No, you don’t.” Ophelia kept talking without a single pause. “The last fifteen seconds of the fight taught me a lot about Deborah Callahan. How she wants to fight. How she can fight. And, most importantly, how she’s empowering herself to move as quickly and forcefully as she has.”

  Ophelia fell silent. I waited. The silence stretched, and I realized that the cafe’s music wasn’t coming into the cubby we’d sat in. It was protected by a sound barrier—or maybe Ophelia was keeping an exclusion zone around it. After a moment, she coughed and continued. “Talking this much hurts.”

  “Tell me about it,” Ellen agreed raspily.

  Ophelia nodded. “You understand. Deborah Callahan isn’t a tank. She’s a striker mage hybrid.”

  “No, she’s not,” I said. “All her builds have been pure tank.”

  “True,” Ophelia said. “But also demonstrably untrue.”

  “Kade, she’s—“ Ellen started, then stopped herself.

  “Deborah Callahan is a striker mage hybrid,” Ophelia said again. “She’s not built like one, but she’s an A-Ranker with a guild, so there are—“

  “No up-to-date builds in the GC archives.”

  “Correct, Kade. I don’t know how she was able to change her skills around, but I do know that Deborah Callahan acts like a tank, fills the role of tank, and is one of the best tanks in Phoenix—all while hiding at least one skill, or maybe two. I know this because my exclusion zone had to manage a large assault of Mana in the last few seconds of our fight. The additional pressure strained my defenses, and I couldn’t hold them or push against her.”

  “And what does that mean?” Ellen asked.

  I didn’t say a thing. I didn’t even smile. But inside, I was redlining. Deborah Callahan had seemed like an impossible puzzle only a few hours before, but now, I had two new weapons to use against her. The first was the knowledge that she was relying on Mana more than any other tank did. And the second was the split-second moment that Jessie had caught after the initial aura-burst had knocked Deborah across the room. It wasn’t much, just a slight hesitation. But I’d seen it.

  “And in return for this, you only want an explanation of what I find in the Fallen Delvers portal?” I asked.

  “That is correct.”

  I stuck out my hand. After a moment, Ophelia reached across the table and grasped it. We shook quickly, and as soon as Ellen and I finished our coffees, the three of us left the cafe. I had a lot to think about.

  I had three days. Maybe four.

  The siege was still going, and while it was running, the GC didn’t want a hard-and-fast schedule for the tournament. Taking Deborah and me off the line was one thing, but all eyes would be on us for the final round, and the 303 Wall was too important for the delvers defending it to be distracted.

  It wasn’t a lot of time, but it’d be enough.

  I had four Laws ready. The Third Law of the Sirocco, the Second Law of the Stormlight, the Second Law of the Unbroken Storm, and the Fourth Law of the Thunderhead were all waiting for one more before I could consolidate them. Cyclone Forms, Mistwalk Forms, and Stormsteel Core were all close to ranking up to A-Rank.

  There was a good chance that the Second Law of the Unbroken Storm wouldn’t work, though. I’d need two of those skills at A-Rank—at a bare minimum—before I could push myself to A-Rank.

  And I had no guarantee that A-Rank would be enough. Deborah had done something I’d only ever heard of one delver doing—added a skill late in her progression. And I’d only done it with outside help. If she’d adjusted her whole build around a brand new skill and ranked it up to the point where it could kill Ellen instantly, she was either beyond A-Rank or would be very soon.

  But even with both Ophelia and Jessie’s observations, and even after strategizing with Ellen and Jeff for hours, I only had my first move figured out.

  If that worked, I’d buy myself time to figure out a second or third, and I needed to be as strong as I could get to capitalize on that time. So, Ellen and I were going to push. She was close, too. Not as close, but she’d get to the cusp of A-Rank around the time I hit it, as long as we could stay busy.

  And, luckily for us, Phoenix was under siege, so there was plenty of delving work to go around.

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