“That’s gotta be it,” Caden told Oli.

  “Are you sure?” she asked. The two were crouched in amidst the thick green growth of a bush, and Olivia had to move a branch aside to look at the unimpressive cave mouth. There wasn’t much to see, just the craggy outline of the cavern entrance, like the maw of some hungry beast, angled so that little of the afternoon sunlight entered the cave itself. It was too dark for even Caden’s enhanced awareness to make out what was inside of it.

  The celestial considered using a Soul Surge to be sure, but decided against it. He knew he was right. “Where else could it be? This is where the map led us.”

  “It doesn’t look very large, though…”

  Caden rolled his eyes. “Have you ever been in a cave before? Even when it looks like nothing, there’s no telling how deep it could go.”

  “Okay,” Olivia relented. The eclipsed girl was fully mooned up, her cloak spread open behind her, her clothing functional and ready to fight. Still, Caden refused to think of her as Oliver–even if she was presenting masculine, she was still Olivia. The celestial refused to let the girl move backwards. “So then…”

  “We stick with the plan,” Caden said firmly. “You ready?”

  Olivia blew out a breath. She flexed her fingers, as if wanting to draw her sword, but she held off. “Ready as I’m going to get.”

  “Good.”

  Without another word, Caden simply stood up from their hiding spot and simply walked towards the cave mouth itself.

  “Caden!” Olivia hissed. The eclipsed girl shifted, but didn’t quite follow him. “What are you doing!?”

  “Egin has an awareness boon,” Caden reminded her. “A better one than me, too. If he’s here, he probably already knows about us.”

  “And if he doesn’t!?”

  Caden shrugged, unconcerned. Why was it that he always felt so blandly overconfident when he was being lunar? It probably said something about the young men he had grown up around. “Then he certainly knows now!”

  “Sure do.”

  The words drawled from the cave mouth, spoken loudly enough for both of the youths to hear. Closer now, Caden could just make out a figure leaning against the wall of the cave, just past the boundary of the shadows.

  Olivia hissed in alarm and finally broke from cover, running after Caden, but it was too late. With a lazy throw, the figure tossed a clay bottle–an urn of some kind–out of the cave and into the morning sunshine. The moment the bottle hit the ground, shattering against a stone Caden suspected had been placed for just this reason, a greenish fog began coalescing, as if it had been contained inside the bottle.

  Aton had warned them that the bandit leader had at least three specters at his command. One, Rose and Oli had destroyed weeks before, on their way to Jellis. The second, Rose had banished during the bandit’s big attack on the caravan. That left one more of the immaterial undead.

  Fortunately, the two had prepared for that possibility.

  [Soul Surge] activated

  Speed attribute boosted

  Caden’s right hand flew down to the canteen at her belt. By the time the specter finished forming, taking the shape of a massive, twisted skull with two hands of claw-shaped bones, all made of translucent greenish fog, Caden had already taken the cap from his canteen and sprayed its contents on the undead.

  The enriched water had been Olivia’s idea, as Caden had never heard of the stuff. Apparently, it was simply water infused with life magic. While it had a mild healing effect if you drank it, Olivia had bought a few flasks of it in Jellis specifically for fighting undead.

  As Oli had promised, the specter shrieked in agony as the sprayed water made contact with it. Rather than simply running through the immaterial undead, the water seemed to cling to it, sending up streamers of pale white steam.

  The ghost flailed, and its claws arched, ready to fly at Caden, but Olivia had reached the fight now, and she sprayed the specter with her own flask before it could get to Caden. They had discussed what to do next, and so far, things were going exactly according to plan.

  As the undead reeled back once again, both the youths moved. Caden pulled out his bow, which he had strung beforehand, and fit an arrow to it, while Olivia crouched in front of Caden and lifted a simple, light steel shield–the same one she had taken from Garret’s corpse days before. Even crouched, their height difference was enough that Olivia all but eclipsed Caden.

  Fitting, Caden thought to himself with a tight smile.

  Olivia’s shield came up just in time, as not even a full second later, there was a hollow sound of impact as the squire blocked an arrow sent out of the cave by Egin.

  They didn’t give the bandit time for a second, relying on his surprise over the arrow’s failure to buy them a precious moment. Olivia lowered her shield why Caden, still moving faster than he should’ve been able to, stepped to one side of the squire and sent an arrow humming at specter.

  A vitalwood arrow, enhanced by the ability he had copied from Olivia earlier that day.

  [Gift Reflection] - Active, Soul - Copy one gift ability from a nearby target. Gift abilities operate at Novice level regardless of the target’s level. Abilities from certain gifts cannot be copied. This ability has a one hour cool down, but the copied ability is retained until it is used again.

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  [Gift of the Vanguard] reflected

  [Reckless Strike] - Active, Attack - Make a special attack with potency increased by two tiers. Major stamina cost.

  The undead, already weakened by two sprays of enriched water, took the potent, life-aspected arrow head on–and with a final shriek, it abruptly dispersed, leaving behind only the lingering scent of mold and rotting meat.

  Two more arrows thudded into Olivia’s shield, but by then, the squire had gotten her sword in hand, and sent one of her barely-visible Wind Slashes, then another, and a third, at the mouth of the cave.

  It worked! Caden had to take a moment to marvel at that. As they walked, the two youths had spent hours discussing what they knew of their enemy, what they expected him to do and how they could counter him. His arrows were a known factor–with the coordination and awareness boons Olivia claimed Egin’s gifts gave him, his lethal talent with a bow made sense. Oli expected that he must be using quite the weapon, too–even without strength or potency boosts, Egin’s arrows had managed to punch through Beryl’s cloth of steel tunic during the attack on the caravan.

  Olivia thought the weapon had to be magical in some way, while Caden was convinced it was a simple, but effective, recurved bow. Either way, Olivia’s Reinforced Defense combined with her new shield had successfully countered the bow’s advantages, letting her block the bandit’s ranged attacks even as the pair’s carefully sequenced attacks destroyed the specter before it could do much of anything.

  And it had all happened in mere seconds.

  Caden wobbled a little, and took a quick drink from his flask, the same one Storyteller had given him before the adventurer vanished. The stamina potion it held helped to make up for the ridiculous cost of the special attack she had reflected off Olivia.

  Dust and debris were thrown into the air in a cloud as the three attacks hit the dirt and stone surrounding the cave mouth. Only moments later, a shadow appeared in that cloud, a vague shape that quickly resolved into Egin, flying out of the cave.

  The bandit chief had probably been handsome at some point. A little shorter than Oli, he had strong, handsome features, with lustrous black hair and a muscular frame. Unfortunately, any appeal in his face had been indelibly warped. His eyes were inhuman, glassy amber orbs with no whites. His mouth bulged with over-large fangs, and his hair was sparse, interrupted by patches of dun fur.

  Caden had met plenty of totem gifted in his life, including his own mother. None of them showed the same bestial warping as Egin, so Caden assumed it to be a product of his paired totem gifts. That was a supposed impossibility, but there was no denying that Egin was benefiting from the gifts of two animals at once. A pair of massive, tawny-feathered wings sprouted from his back, still angled as he used them to throw himself forward. From the elbows down, his arms sported the same dun-colored fur that showed in his hair, and they ended in massive, feline paws.

  The man still flew forward as Caden examined him, the celestial’s observations accelerated by his lingering speed Surge. Still, as fast as Caden was with his buff, he barely had time to nock a second arrow before the bandit leader slammed into Olivia’s upraised shield with a resounding crash.

  Immediately, a horrid, metallic scraping filled the air, as Egin began to rake his claws against Olivia’s shield, as if trying to claw straight through it. That was confirmation of just what Caden had guessed, that the two gifts produced some sort of potency as an augment. The claws weren’t quite enough to rend the metal, but they were far more effective than they would’ve been if they had met the shield’s potency without matching it.

  Still, Caden couldn’t just let the man keep up his attacks. Every time Olivia’s defense triggered to defend herself, it would take a minor focus cost, a penalty that would steadily accrue and take its toll on her. So Caden hastily lifted his bow, pulled back, and fired an arrow at Egin from mere feet away. The green-fletched arrow, packing its own potency, shot straight into the man’s side, right under the ribs, sinking halfway to the fletching.

  The bestial bandit reared back with a roar of pain, the sound an uncanny mix of a human cry, a feline snarl, and an avian shriek. He whirled on Caden and leaped in his direction instead, dark claws flashing in the afternoon sunlight as he tried to attack her. Still, for all the ferociousness Egin had gained from his bizarre transformations, he didn’t have the speed to match Caden’s Surge. The celestial quickly hopped back from the attacks, a step here, a skip there, dropping his bow in the process and pulling out his raidblade.

  The odd weapon made the bandit hesitate, his glassy eyes locking on it. “How do you have that?” he growled, his voice as semi-human as the rest of him.

  “I took it off a corpse,” Caden told the bandit, completely honestly.

  That answer only seemed to surprise the outlaw more–which had been the whole point of responding in the first place. That was when Olivia struck again, her sword thrust out in a sudden stab at Egin’s back.

  Still, it wasn’t enough. Even without a speed boon, the bandit had the awareness to know that the attack was coming, and he threw himself to one side a moment before the attack landed, earning himself a ragged cut in the side but little more.

  Not enough, Caden thought. His potency advantage, it must be enhancing his entire body, not just his limbs.

  Olivia came a little closer, standing to Caden’s right, a little bit in front of him, scarred shield and bloody sword in hand. Caden switched his raid blade to his left hand and pulled his hatchet from his belt. He tossed it in the air once before catching it by the haft, a simple feat with his Surged speed.

  A dozen feet away, Egin crouched, his wings tucked close to his body, his paws flexing and digging his claws into the soft dirt underneath him. His eyes–the eyes of a predator–flicked from on to the other, as if looking for signs of weakness. From this perspective, the wounds they had left weren’t even visible, hidden by his wings. He looked as powerful and feral as ever, a demi-human out of a fable.

  Did that make them the adventurers of this story?

  All three tensed, ready for the fight to explode into motion once more. Egin’s upper lip twitched in a minute snarl, displaying one of his oversized fangs.

  The moment dragged on, until the bandit finally broke it.

  “Enough of this. Parley?” His voice was like a body being dragged through the underbrush, sharp and full of cracks and grinding.

  Olivia looked back at Caden. “Parley?” she mouthed, looking doubtful.

  He understood. He was at least as suspicious. “Parley?” Caden called back. “Seriously? What is this, a ring novel?”

  The transformed man shrugged, the motion making his wings ruffle in place. “Seems worth a shot. Why not talk it out?”

  “Because you might’ve killed my friend!” Olivia called back, her voice heated. “You’re a bandit! Why would we take the time to talk to you?”

  Another tiny snarl. “Because. You’re not sure you can beat me.”

  “We seem to be doing well so far,” Caden pointed out.

  “Maybe. But you’re Novices. Your stamina and focus will run out before much longer. Do you think you can kill me before that happens?”

  “I think you know we can,” Caden said, “or you wouldn’t be making this offer.”

  “Maybe,” the man growled again. “Maybe not. I’m no more sure than you.”

  Olivia and Caden traded another look. He could see the same reluctance he felt reflected on the eclipsed girl’s face.

  Unfortunately, Caden was forced to admit it was the smart decision.

  “Fine.” Caden straightened, tucking first his raidblade, then his hatchet, back into his belt. “Parley.”