Isaac and I ran through the halls of the Codexium. Isaac was shockingly fast for such an old and brittle-looking elder. He stayed ahead of me the whole time, making his way through the halls without missing a beat. It was frankly impressive how fast he ran, especially considering how drunk he was. I wondered where he got that speed from. He must have had higher stats than I did.

  Still, I managed to stay right behind him, shouting over the alarm that never stopped ringing, “An intruder? Here? In the Codexium?”

  Isaac nodded without looking back at me. “Has to be! No idea who or what it is, but better safe than sorry. Maybe it’s those bandits.”

  I felt a chill run down my spine. “Bandits?”

  Isaac shrugged. “Can’t think of who else might want to invade a Codexium—Ah! Here.”

  Isaac stopped in front of a stone door, then yanked it open and ran outside. I followed him as quickly as I could, but then ran into his back and fell onto the ground on my bottom.

  “Hey!” Isaac glared at me from over his shoulder. “Watch where you’re going, kid. You could have knocked this old man down.”

  Rubbing my behind, I said, “Sorry, Keeper Isaac. I wasn’t—”

  “Paying attention, I know.” Isaac looked around at our surroundings, flipping his knife in his hand with expertise. “Now pay attention to your surroundings. If we are under attack by a bunch of bandits, then we’re going to be in for the fight of our lives.”

  I scrambled to my feet and drew my Fangblade, which felt heavy and awkward in my hands, but I had no other weapons. I then scanned our surroundings.

  We had emerged into what looked like an outdoor courtyard behind the North Forest Codexium, encased on all sides by tall, crumbling rock walls. The rock walls appeared ancient, with holes where some of the rocks had once been, but they still held up remarkably well considering their obvious age. The courtyard was covered by the tall trees overhead, providing some relief from the summer sun, its rays peeking through the tree branches above us. It smelled of dew and earth out here, though the faint scent of summer flowers was already noticeable.

  My attention, however, was drawn to what looked like a shrine in the middle of the courtyard. A semicircle of rocks surrounded what looked like a broken Node, with a bunch of rusted tools and weapons lying in a huge heap before it. It looked like a junk pile, to be honest, making me wonder if this was where Isaac threw out his garbage.

  More importantly, I didn’t see anyone else other than Isaac and me. A few birds chirped in the trees above us, and the alarm bell still rang inside the Codexium, thankfully much more muted outside. It hadn’t shut off, though, indicating that whoever the intruder was, they were clearly still around. Or at least the Codexium’s security systems continued to sense their presence.

  Gripping my Fangblade’s leather handle in my hands, I looked at Isaac and whispered, “I don’t see anyone else here. Do you think it was a false alarm or—”

  I was interrupted by the sound of movement within the pile of junk in front of the Node shrine at the other end of the courtyard. Isaac and I immediately snapped to attention, looking at the shifting junk pile attentively. There must have been something hidden inside it, though I couldn’t see what it was. It must have been small, however, because the junk heap wasn’t very big or deep.

  So either the thing that tripped the alarms wasn’t a bandit at all, or we were dealing with the world’s smallest bandit. The former seemed more likely to me than the latter.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Nonetheless, Isaac and I said no words to each other. Isaac went to the left, and I went to the right, the two of us slowly advancing on the wriggling junk heap as quietly and carefully as we could. I didn’t know what could be hiding in there, but if it tripped the alarms of the Codexium, I wasn’t interested in getting taken by surprise by it. My mind flashed back to the malformed Codex Entry I had been nearly killed by during my trial. It seemed unlikely that we would run into another malformed Codex entry in the real world, but just as Isaac said, it was better to be safe than sorry.

  We reached the junk pile at roughly the same time, with Isaac on the left side and me on the right. The junk heap had stopped moving, but I suspected that the creature—or whatever—hiding within it was still there. Hopefully, it hadn’t noticed us yet.

  I looked at Isaac for guidance. The elderly Codex Keeper held up a single index finger to his lips before pointing at his own knife and then at the pile. Magical energy—glowing pink and blue—ran along the length of Isaac’s blade. He carefully pointed it at the junk heap, no doubt about to cast a spell to drive out whatever creature was hiding in there.

  I immediately understood what he wanted me to do. He was probably intending to cast a spell that would scare whatever was hiding in there, and then I would attack it with my Fangblade. Seemed a tad risky to me, given my lack of combat experience, but I readied my grip on the handle of my knife nonetheless and took a couple of steps back to avoid getting hit by flying debris—or getting in the way of Isaac’s casting.

  Then Isaac pointed his knife at the junk pile and fired some kind of beam of magical energy at it. The magical energy bolt, which I didn’t recognize, struck the junk pile and made it explode …

  And a familiar snow-white rabbit with glowing golden eyes leaped out of the junk pile at the last second, right before Isaac’s spell struck it.

  The snow-white rabbit landed with a thump a few feet away from me. I was so surprised to see it again, however, that I didn’t attack it. I just stared at the rabbit in recognition. “Nimbus?”

  The cloud rabbit—which I was almost certain was Nimbus, the same Codex Beast from my trial—looked up at me with his big golden eyes. He was carrying what looked like a black metal rod in his mouth, kind of like a dog carrying a stick. The metal rod was much too long for him and looked more than a bit unsightly in his mouth.

  But then Isaac pointed his knife at the cloud rabbit again and shouted, “Got you!”

  Another magical energy bolt fired out of Isaac’s knife toward Nimbus. But Nimbus thumped his foot and teleported out of the way of the energy bolt, which smashed into the ground where he had been standing a second ago. Nimbus reappeared a couple of feet away from me, his golden eyes wide with terror. He was also breathing quite quickly now, staring at Isaac with pure fear in his eyes.

  Isaac took aim with his knife again, but I raised a hand and shouted, “Isaac, wait!”

  But Isaac completely ignored me and fired another energy bolt at Nimbus. This time, Nimbus didn’t even try to dodge. Whether out of fear or tiredness or whatever, the cloud rabbit didn’t seem to have it in him to avoid the next attack from Isaac.

  Fortunately, I had been expecting Isaac to do that. I quickly, if clumsily, traced the glyphs for the spell called Minor Shield in midair using my fingers and pointed at Nimbus. “Minor Shield!”

  A shimmering blue shield made of mana erupted into existence between Isaac’s magical bolt and Nimbus. Isaac’s magical energy bolt slammed into the mana shield and destroyed it, sending shards of broken mana flying as they dissipated.

  But at least the shield had protected Nimbus, who stared with shell-shocked eyes at me for a second.

  Smiling as kindly as I could at Nimbus, I raised a hand toward him and said, “Hey, buddy. It’s okay. You can trust us. We aren’t trying to—”

  “Kill!” said Isaac in a manic voice, once more pointing his glowing knife at the rabbit.

  But Nimbus appeared to have finished being scared, because he dropped the metal rod at my feet before darting toward the crumbling stone walls on the other side of the courtyard. He practically launched himself through a surprisingly small gap in the wall before disappearing from our sight. A moment later, another magical energy bolt from Isaac crashed into the stone wall that Nimbus had escaped through, smashing a hole in it—but still missing Nimbus.

  Before I could say anything, Isaac was already lowering his knife to his side, a satisfied smirk on his lips. “There. Ought to teach that rabbit a lesson.”

  He then looked up, as if only just noticing my stare. “What’s your problem, kid?”

  patreon.com/LucasFlint

  Codex Trial sign up and download page