It felt as if the world pulsed, and the volcanic glass beneath the two men’s feet lit up in a blinding orange radiance for a heartbeat. I blinked away the spots that had momentarily seared their way across my vision, expecting to find the two men locked in a vicious melee, but instead I was surprised to see Jorge striding towards me.

  Markas hung suspended in the air, arms stretched out to either side and held by blinding chains of orange and gold that dripped molten mana to the ground with each passing moment. Not a single part of him moved, except his blazing serpentine eyes, which tracked Jorge as he strode over to me. They seemed to eschew a hatred more powerful than a hundred suns in that moment, and I could only hope that this man would die quickly down here in the dark.

  “Easy does it, lad” Jorge said with his usual gruff charm as he levered me up. “You’ve got less than a 10th of a bell to get yourself clear of here before he breaks out and everything goes to shit.”

  He gestured vaguely at the most powerful man I had ever met, restrained in the air and completely helpless so far as I could tell. Well, second most powerful, I suppose.

  “Right, lad, look at me. I can’t leave him here, and this battle will be messy. Despite what I said, there’s no guarantee I’ll make it out of here, even. Get to Vera and the others, alright?”

  He slapped me lightly in the face, my eyes glazing over slightly as my knees gave out for a moment. “Hey, with me, lad,” Jorge said before he checked me over, sucking in a breath as he saw the gaping gash in my forearm, leaking life-blood even now.

  I had lost too much, I knew that now. My vision was blurring just from standing in place, and I felt feverish and cold. Jorge unstoppered a flask he had retrieved from somewhere, and pressed it to my lips with urgency, and I relented. The warm liquid slid down my throat and warmed my stomach from within, spreading like fire through my system and going some way to rejuvenating me.

  He then uncorked a bottle of something that smelled suspiciously like hard spirits and handed it to me. I regarded it with scepticism for a moment, but Jorge just thrust it harder into my hands. “Trust me, lad, you’ll be wanting this,” he said.

  I shrugged and upended the bottle, chugging as much as I could before nodding to him as I tried to hold down my gorge at the scalding bitterness across my tongue and throat. I grimaced and set my teeth as he took hold of my injured wrist, and then he jerked his hands and I nearly passed out again, a scream ripping its way out of me once more. He hastily slapped a bandage on it and passed me another bottle.

  It took me a few moments to stop sobbing in pain and compose myself enough for another drink, but thankfully this one was simply a small potion bottle. Down the hatch it went, and after another few breaths, I started to feel the knitting of tissue below the bandage. It hurt. It hurt more than the re-setting Jorge had just done, but instead of coming on all at once, the sensation crept upon me like the dawn – sneaking, creeping and ever so slow.

  “Fuck me, that hurt” I gasped out once it was done, and Jorge gave me a hearty slap on the back in response.

  “Good to have you back, Lamb.”

  I managed a weak grin, though the trauma was still bubbling along under the surface. Adrenaline had a hell of a way of making major events seem minor when compared to the next moment though, so I managed to push away the terror and pain and focus on what came next.

  “What’s the situation?” I asked the old man.

  “A mite complex, I’d say,” said Jorge, and I smiled at the likely understatement. “Vera and Nathlan are holding the north tower, pretending to have a fight with the rebels that are assaulting it. Nathlan took down some of the wards, the canny little bastard, so they’re just biding their time before Vera strikes at the duke.”

  “What’s the duke doing?” I asked.

  “Oh, right! He’s fighting the Sultanate. The Sultan and his forces have lain siege to the castle, and the duke is busy trying to push them back. Fandar and his group are at the north tower, as I said, and Jacyntha and Sadrianna are fighting with the duke currently,” Jorge explained.

  “…Unless it’s all gone to shit since I left, mind you,” he added with a chuckle.

  I absorbed all of that, and then focused on the present once more. “Shall I get Vera down here to support you? I’m not sure there’s much I can do myself, to be honest” I said with a sigh.

  “Look at me, lad. Just get out of here. Markas is my problem to deal with. You just let Vera know that it’s him I’m down here with and she’ll understand. Her focus is the duke, and your focus needs to be supporting her and the rest of the group, aye?”

  He held my eye even after I nodded, clearly expecting something more. “You keep them safe, lad. You keep them alive. Understand?”

  “Aye, Jorge. I’ll see it through,” I said with a confidence I didn’t feel, my legs still wobbly and hands still shaking.

  “Right, off you go. Not much time now.” He dismissed me with a warm smile and a hearty backslap, and I started stumbling towards the wooden scaffold that bracketed the smooth cut obsidian. I looked back as I passed the first set of stairs and saw Jorge pacing around in front of Markas. Serpentine eyes tracked me as I rose though, ignoring Jorge entirely, and I worried about what that could mean.

  “Run, Lamb!” Jorge called to me as I slipped and nearly fell, righting myself at the last minute. “And to think – I was considering calling you ‘Surefoot’!” he added with a slightly mad cackle.

  It was a sound I’d never before heard him make, and I worried about what that implied too. Was he more nervous than he let on? I hoped he had been honest with me, and didn’t plan on dying down here, but there was nothing I could do either way. He was right – my other companions should be my focus now.

  “And remember, lad…When the sky is full, keep your eyes on the ground!”

  I turned back to him once more intending to ask about the cryptic advice, but by then I was a good fifty or so meters away, and he had turned back to face Markas. I followed his advice and picked up the pace. My wrist was no longer throbbing, and I twirled it as I ran, feeling the tendons move smoothly and the muscle respond to my commands with ease.

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  Any other niggles and pains seemed to have been sorted by whatever Jorge had fed me, and I focused on putting as much distance between myself and the coming calamity that the fight between two 4th tiers was sure to be.

  End Of The Hunt I kept active to keep at bay the dread aura of the Ashkanian Vault – I didn’t need any help fearing for my life currently, and the familiar pressure of my pathbound skill reassured me as I fled.

  A part of me wanted to turn back, to face Markas alongside my mentor. Running from a foe was difficult to square with the skill’s intent, after all. But still, the gulf of power between me and the two old monsters below was so astronomical that even my perpetually defiant skill seemed to acknowledge the sense in retreat.

  I spent every breath for nearly a tenth of a bell just running. It took me back to how I had begun things in Tsanderos – running for my life. Stride The Edge guided me over difficult terrain as surely as Cloven-Hooved ever had, and my enhanced attributes helped propel me to new speeds as I danced across crooked wooden beams, vaulted over stairs four at a time, and scampered up scaffolding in places where the switch-backing path seemed slower than climbing directly.

  I knew the moment Markas and Jorge clashed for the first time.

  It felt as if the vault itself, the great pyramid that I stood upon deep within the earth, shook to its foundations. But it wasn’t the obsidian blocks that moved. Instead, the air itself shivered. The first blow of glaive against spear or shield – or so I assumed, anyway – shook the void and made me dizzy from the impossibility of it.

  Each step became confused, as if I was moving underwater in thick currents – the space before me seeming to twist and writhe and my feet moving in unpredictable ways – landing a foot to the left or a hair to the right from where I intended. I looked up in despair, knowing I was still a good few hundred meters from the entrance tunnel above the top of the pyramid, and knowing equally that I would be unable to reach it at my current pace. I felt as if I was moving through molasses.

  But I focused on my goal. Nathlan, fighting alone in a sea of blood. Vera, fighting the demon within that craved vengeance, only held back by her desire to protect her friends. Sadrianna and Jacyntha, risking death beneath a foreign sky with only the trust that we would come for them soon to see them through the chaos.

  I poured mana from my core into End Of The Hunt, and winced in spiritual pain as I felt my soul strain against both the pressure of the battle far below, and the recent injury caused by Markas’s soul attack. Nonetheless, I grit my teeth and pushed through, flaring my aura around me like a cloak.

  I pushed it further, first a cocoon and then a bubble enveloping me and the surroundings a few feet in each direction. Within, I was dominant. I was the retaliation that haunted the hunter’s steps. I was untamed, wild and utterly without peer.

  With the full force of my soul, I proclaimed my pre-eminence in this small area of space, and felt the weight of the peak existences below fall away. My feet landed where they should, the air no longer wavering. I pushed on, my full speed unlocked once more, and I sprinted the final distance towards the top of the pyramid.

  When I reached the tunnel, I risked a final look back and saw nothing but hazy darkness in the cavern below. The near-black pyramid hung silently in the void, swamped by depthless darkness all around. An orange glow bloomed far down on the left-hand side of the structure, and then a silver flash on the right. A sonic boom echoed out a moment later, and a plume of dust shook itself free from the ceiling, and that was enough to convince me to run for my life.

  Tunnels passed by in a flash, and soon enough I began to relax my aura skill, allowing mana to flow once more into my core from where it was nearly spent. I would need it soon enough for my own battles, no doubt. A crossroads passed me by, and then a couple of tunnels to my right, spaced apart by a mile or so each, and then I was nearing the end of the tunnel, the regular wooden support beams and mage-lights giving way to unworked stone and wall-mounted sconces filled with mundane torches.

  I could no longer feel the punishing auras of the 4th tiers, and so took a few moments to catch my breath and drink some water from a waterskin in my storage ring. I ran on for a few more moments, slipping through the corridors of Castle Ryonic and seeing not a soul as I did so.

  Soon I came to the heavy iron-banded door that separated the inner courtyard from the keep itself, and I took a moment to think through my next move. Then I took out my armour and began to dress, slipping out of the simple tunic and cloak that had made up my disguise.

  I also took a few moments to review the notifications I’d received from killing Estan.

  You have killed a Human (Fortunate Son - level 69). Experience gained.

  Skill ‘A Frozen Pyrre’ has increased in level. A Frozen Pyrre – level 6

  Skill ‘End Of The Hunt’ has increased in level. End Of The Hunt – level 5

  I still had 15 attributes to spend from the last level up as a result of killing Varden, the guardsman messenger, and immediately put 5 into agility and 10 into strength. This coming battle was to be a chaotic brawl, and I would need both to avoid death and overpower my foes.

  Ancestry: Titan-Forged Human (evolved)

  Level: 65

  Class: Blood Of The Mountains

  Titles: God-touched

  Attribute allocation:

  Strength: 150

  Agility: 130

  Endurance: 85

  Perception: 85

  Cognition: 75

  Available attributes: 0

  Current skills:

  A Frozen Pyrre: Level 6. Passive.

  Axis-Shift: Level 5. Active.

  Stride The Edge: Level 5. Passive.

  Break-Step: Level 6. Active.

  End Of The Hunt: Level 5. Active.

  Myrmiddion Spear: Level 4. Passive.

  Shatter Point: Level 5. Active.

  The Mountain’s Gate: Level 4. Active.

  Soon the humble God-Touched was gone. In his place stood Lamb, 2nd tier warrior, blood of the mountains flowing through his veins and conviction strong is his heart. It was a little ostentatious and arrogant to think of myself that way perhaps, but I was about to risk my life in battle and after what I’d just been through, I needed the confidence that an ego boost could provide.

  “Lamb of the Mountains, Wielder of Resolution, Surefoot, World-Walker, Titan-Forged and Unbroken.” I said into the silence, starting as a whisper. I strapped the last buckle of my armoured leather vest, reinforced with plates of steel sewn within, and Corrinian Rhai skeletal slivers banding the hard material.

  “I have endured the predations of the Crimson Lions, and beaten them and the Wielders of Azlan both,” I said, strapping the silver-steel gauntlet to my right wrist, covering the scar left over from its near-severing only a fifth of a bell prior. The tanned flesh was stained red from the blood that I’d lost, as if I was clothed in it from forearm to shoulder on my right side.

  “I am the pack’s last hunt, have ended bandits and mercenaries, skeletons and wild beasts beyond counting,” I called into the corridor, daring anyone to disagree. The shield of the Corrinian Rhai carapace sheathed my left arm from elbow to fist, a single spike emerging over my knuckles like a gauntlet blade.

  “I have treated with the Subakir, have wondered The Lost Grove and scaled the depths of The Hollow Mountain,” I shouted as I strapped my hatchet to one hip and my fang dagger to the other.

  I took a final breath, pulling Resolution free and expanding it to its full war-form with a gentle caress of my mana. It responded with fervour, the red-lacquered haft gleaming in the firelight from the torch behind me, the white wolf-leather grip soft and supple in my hand.

  “I am Lamb of the Mountains, and I am lost no longer,” I said quietly, before kicking open the door.