Chương 47: The Way Out

As I pushed myself to my feet and the dragon fell into a heap of bones, the others rushed into the bottom floor of the tower. Brawl's shield was a pincushion of arrows, and Morph's shoulder had taken a few hits. Brawl's pants had a few blood stains and holes in them, but he'd ripped the arrows out and Sage had healed him.

"I haven't released my Art yet, brother!" Brawl cackled.

"I think this is the most force I've banked up yet!"

"We just need to get to the top," I said.

"Lead the way, and blast anything that tries to stop us."

"As you wish, brother!" Brawl jumped onto the stairs and began sprinting up the spiral two flights at a time.

"What was that?" Anchor said, pointing to the heap of bones at the room's center.

"A bone dragon," Sage said.

"He killed a Titanium-tier bone dragon." I gave a casual shrug, then pointed up the stairs.

"We're on a tight schedule. Let's get moving." We followed Brawl up the stairs, our buglights illuminating the way ahead. As we rose, I held my spear ahead of me, poised to intercept anything that tried to stop us, but staying nimble enough to leap across the gaps in the stairs. Halfway up, a horde of skeletons crawled through the windows of a tower, trying to stop us, but Brawl triggered his Art, and a swell of raw force blasted out in front of him, shattering the skeletons before they could even fire a shot.

"How'd the sappers even set this challenge up for us?" I asked, my mouth gaping.

"I mean, I know you can lure monsters into a Labyrinth to keep it stocked, or just capture them, but how'd they get a dragon in here?"

"The skeleton hordes are far more organized than regular monsters," Sage said.

"They're the remnants of soldiers who lived many thousands of years ago, who the Labyrinth has decided to resurrect with necromancy. They're close enough in behaviour to orcs, and they're all irons."

"Just be glad we haven't captured any necromancers to bring down here, or we'd have regular undead civilians to stop us, too," Anchor said.

"Are necromancers another type of Path-walker?" I asked.

"A subset of Sorcerer," Sage replied.

"But it's almost impossible for men to become necromancers. You need an orc and its cold core. Usually, a necromancer is a powerful orc shaman that has learned such awful Arts."

"Cold core?"

"You saw the dragon beginning to develop one, correct?" Sage asked.

"Yeah."

"It uses the aspects of vorghul instead of the energies of mae."

"No idea what that means," I said, leaping over a gap in the stairs.

"Do you know what maegen is? And why it's different from Presence?"

"Not really."

"Presence is the sum of your ability to influence the Path. It's your will to change the universe around you. Maegen is a type of elemental vital energy that can be manipulated with Presence. It gives their Arts more… volume. I think high-level Dupes still have to make a maegen core, but I'm not sure about that."

"I appreciate the lesson, but let's focus," I said. I could split my Focus between the task at hand and a conversation about magic, but the rest of my team couldn't, and we needed to keep up our pace. When we reached the top of the tower, there were only a few skeletons left. I kicked one off the tower, and Brawl swatted two of them away with his flail. I grabbed the flag, wrenching the pole out of a slot on the ground, then said, "Is the objective complete?"

"We still have to make it back to the surface," Anchor said.

"There's no point in investing in a sapper if he kills himself completing his first obective—getting out afterward is part of the test." I nodded, then said, "Back down the stairs—""Wait," Sage said.

"I have an idea…and Morph trusts you guys." Morph set her down gently at the edge of the tower, then leaned over the edge. He hung his arms over the ramparts and extended them into vines. As they grew, his body shrank, until he was just a hook holding onto the wall, and the vines were dangling over.

"Rapell down," Sage said.

"What about you?" I asked.

"I'm…I'm light." I glanced at Brawl.

"Carry her?" Sage raised a finger.

"No one hears about this. Once we get down, only Morph carries me." Brawl lifted her by the back of her poncho like he was holding a cat by its scruff, then gripped onto the vine with his other arm and gave it a tug. The vine wouldn't budge.

"Let's go," I said.

"I will see you at the bottom, brothers," Brawl said, then swung himself and Sage over the ramparts. They descended as quickly as they could.

"I'll keep watch until you're down," Anchor said.

"Got it." I nodded.

"Thanks for covering me."

"Indeed." I held onto the vine and descended after Brawl and Sage, and when I reached the bottom, Anchor followed, sliding down the vine before jumping off at the last moment and landing in a graceful crouch. Sage gave Morph a tug, and he unhooked from the top of the tower, before tumbling down and reforming. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. Brawl held Sage out to Morph, and the forest golem picked her up again.

"Let's go," I said.

"Back the way we came, and a little faster this time." We were halfway to our stairway when an arrow clattered across the ground in front of my feet. I stopped, and Anchor shouted, "Up there!" He pointed to a rooftop. Plume and his squad stood on the roof of a nearby building, their buglights dark. One of them held a bow, and another one of them held a flag. They'd completed their assignment, too.

"Damn. If Choppup was a better shot you'd be dead, Atoning," Plume said.

"You'd kill him?" Sage exclaimed."

'Course. He's an Atoning. He doesn't belong here."

"I can see why you got along with them," I told Anchor.

"Not even I would go that far," Anchor muttered.

"These guys were practically sent here by the Warlord himself, though—they're here at the request of the Portreeve of Oschester, one of the Warlord's distant nephews. They might get away with it."

"Maybe," I said.

"Plume, leave us. You can qualify, we can go one our way, and no one will be the wiser."

"Or I kill you," Plume said.

"Choppup will shoot better next time."

"If he draws another arrow, I'll kill him where he stands," Anchor said, whipping an arrow out of his sheath and drawing it.

"You shouldn't have abandoned your squad's sniper."

"Fine, then," Plume shook his head. Today, he wore chainmail and a leather cummerbund, but he had no helmet.

"Get down there, boys. Take their flag and kill the soulstealer. I'll be right behind you."

"They're not going to get away with this," I said.

"Same formation as before. We'll take them head-on. No lethal blows—that's going to be too much of a headache for us, and we won't get away with it like they will." The others nodded. We turned to face them approaching Dupes. I didn't have any Presence to work with, but that didn't matter. They had to be running low too, and they were all Irons still, like us. Plume's squad jumped down in a disorderly fashion.

Their druid raised her staff, using an ability to suppress Morph, and I said, "Anchor, can you destroy her staff?"

"On it." He launched his arrow and blasted it through the gnarled length of wood, using his last Presence for the resonance Skill. The staff shattered, splitting in the center, and the druid leapt back throwing both halves down like it had just exploded. Morph, freed from his arcane constraints, rose back to his full height. Plume's two other Dupes rushed toward us, but Brawl swung his flail in a wide arc, keeping them back. One tried to dart in as he recovered.

I reversed my spear and struck the Dupe beneath the chin, sending him skidding back. Brawl struck the other with his shield, sending him sliding back across the road until he came to a halt in front of an ancient storefront. Plume rushed in with his axe, aiming a killing blow at me. I darted to the side, and their druid conjured vines beneath me, trying to trip me. I whirled my spear, and this time, I struck the elf girl in the side of the head with the haft, knocking her unconscious.

Only one other of Plume's men stood up, holding their flag like a walking stick.

"You still wanna do this?" I asked. Shouting, Plume raised his axe and charged forward. Anchor shot it out of his hand, and Brawl caught the Dupe in a headlock. I knelt in front of him, then glanced at the last of Plume's men—who was now slowly raising his hands.

"Sage," I said, "take his flag and destroy it. They don't belong in the SAP."

"It would be my pleasure," she said.

"That's what he gets for punching me in the nose." Before Plume could try anything, I jabbed him in the forehead with the blunt end of my spear, and he fell limp in Brawl's arms.

"Let's go," I said.

"We already wasted enough time with these guys." We set off at a light run, retracing our route back through the city. On the way out, there were only a few monsters. The ruin-hounds and their mother were fighting over the corpse of the Shamblers that we'd slain, and we killed them too on the way out. As Sage explained, monsters from the Bane-lands were fallen beasts. They'd been infected with the will of the void. Their souls were in various states of decay, and most had lost their souls entirely.

These monsters only knew how to destroy now, they only knew hunger and anger and rage and had nowhere to put it, and there was no chance of reasoning with them. When we reached the stairway at the edge of the massive cavern, we raced up to the balcony, then followed our route back through the regular tunnels of the Labyrinth until we reached the room that we'd entered through. I was expecting a line—to have to wait for a few minutes at least for the sappers to process us. But there were only two teams ahead of us.

"What…?" I breathed.

"I…I didn't lose?" Brawl tilted his head.

"We didn't lose, brothers. We didn't lose…"

"We'll see how the points shake out," Anchor said.

"But…it's a good sign, I have to admit." Sage gulped, then said, "I didn't think we'd make it work…" Brawl grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me in front.

"It would not have worked without Levi. I will be casting my stone to make him our sergeant."

"As will I," Sage said. Anchor grimaced and looked at us for a few seconds, sucked his cheeks inward, then exhaled hard. He whispered to me, "Good work, sergeant. You led well." Then, he cleared his throat and said, "For a soul-stealer, he has valour, I'll give him that. If I have to be trapped with your squad for a little while, then so be it." We walked up the last few steps, then stepped into the cellar at the top of the Labyrinth entrance. There, a few senior sappers holding clipboards met us.

They took our flag and jotted our names down, then said, "Please proceed back to your barracks and clean yourselves up. You have the rest of the day free, and you are permitted to leave the castle estate. Your results will be announced tomorrow—be back in time." I laid the flag we'd captured down on a rack, then turned back to the others.

"I say this calls for a little celebration, don't you?"

"Indeed, brother," Brawl said.

"There's a village to the west of the estate, a half-hour's walk," Sage said.

"I'm sure they could use our patronage at the taverns." I winced.

"I don't have any money…"

"That's not a problem," Sage replied.

"You're dealing with a Lady, mothbrain. I can put it on the Ealdorman's tab." ~ ~ ~ The Drillmaster, known to the Fleshknitters as MK-903 and to his friends as Rib, watched from his observation post—a room built into the ceiling of the main Labyrinth cavern—or, perhaps not the main cavern, but certainly the highest up, and the only cavern that they had direct control of. It was more like a wooden basket than anything, given its sloping walls and lattice windows. But thankfully, the windows could open.

That way, he wouldn't have to peer through the slightly warped glass diamonds. He held a Perception-enhancing monocle up to his eye and used it to observe the candidates far below. At first, he hadn't given much thought to squad seventy-six—that was the number assigned to the squad of rejects led by the Atoning—but according to his lieutenants, who were also observing alongside him, their squad was performing above expectations. Rib dipped a quill in an inkwell, then made a note of it on his clipboard.

Then again, and again, as the squad performed admirably against the tower challenge. The Atoning had taken charge, it seemed, and identified the situation almost immediately. Rib was about to dock them points for rushing into the tower without reforming their squad, but the diversion had been an effective way to save time and leverage their healer—instead of leaving her behind and letting her clean up after them. The bigger problem was letting an Iron face a bone dragon alone, but— But he defeated it.

They had climbed the tower, taken their flag, and descended again, then dealt with that unseemly squad of miscreant Dupes, before escaping with ease. Oh, Plume thought he could be subtle by snuffing his buglight, but Rib saw them nonetheless. The Portreeve of Oschester would be upset that his appointees lost out, but alas… Rib preferred Squad Seventy-Six to Plume's bunch. And without their flag, Rib couldn't allow them to pass the examination, no matter what. Seventy-Six had played their cards right today.

Rib blew out an amused huff.

"What a fascinating squad…"