Jessica Gerald wasn’t in deep anymore. She was in over her head.

  The tent was the same one she’d sat in for her first sit-down meeting with the Crone. The table was the same, and so was the stench of incense. She ignored it all. Her entire will was arrayed like her brother’s chess pawns against an opponent who had nothing but queens. It’d take beyond brilliant play to win here—and the Crone would have to blunder. Jessie was pretty sure that was the right word. Blunder.

  “So, you want to bargain for your world?” the Crone asked, leaning back in her chair and stretching her spectral, moonlit arms behind her head. “I like that kind of arrangement. But first, I want to talk about fate.”

  “Fate?” Jessie asked. Mind Maiden Enolda sat in the corner, crumpled in a rough heap exactly where she’d landed the moment her strings had been cut. Jessie resisted the urge to stare at her. “What do you mean by fate?”

  “Fate. Doom. The inevitable end result of existing in this universe—leaving it behind, one way or another. It’s only natural to avoid it. We all want that, for ourselves and those we care about.” The Crone didn’t move. She stayed leaning back in her chair, seemingly relaxed. Jessie wasn’t fooled. “But even I, who rails against fate more than anyone, know that I only delay the inevitable. So, girlie, why do I do it?”

  “I have no idea.” Jessie stared at the ghostly woman. This was a waste of her time. “Can you save my city and my friends?”

  “Oh, yes. That task is nothing to me. But I wasn’t done discussing fate, was I? Why resist it? Your answer may be enlightening to you. It certainly will be to me.”

  Jessie’s fist balled. Not for the first time, she wished she was her brother. If she had his power, she’d solve this problem his way—with swords and magic and all the cool stuff delvers could do. Instead, she had to play the Crone’s stupid mind games. It was maddening. “It’s what people do.”

  “Elaborate.”

  “I mean, I’ve been using a cane or a chair since I was a toddler. Meanwhile, Kade’s got all the power in the world. He’s fast, assertive, strong, and he knows interdimensional monsters by their made-up first names. That’s fate for you. But I don’t have to like it, and I keep hoping that someday, my system will awaken and I’ll get to be a delver, too.”

  “Interesting. Continue,” the Crone said.

  Jessie rolled her eyes. This was ridiculous. Phoenix was literally on fire—she didn’t have time for this crap. “Fate’s not something set in stone. Even if I never set foot in a portal with a weapon, I’ve fought hard against it. And that fighting hasn’t been pointless. I’m doing stuff most fifteen-year-olds never even dream of. That’s worth a lot on its own.”

  “Thank you. That was indeed enlightening.” The Crone leaned forward. Her hands rested on the small table, and for the first time, Jessie felt her aura pressing in on her. It was almost suffocating. Almost overwhelming. “Now, as to our agreement, I propose the following.”

  A ghostly hand pushed a sheet of cracked parchment across the table. Jessie read it. Then she read it a second time. “That’s acceptable.”

  The two women—the most powerful in the universe, and a fifteen-year-old—shook hands. “Pleasure doing business with you, girlie.”

  Jessie opened her bag and pulled out the moonlight core, then opened a portal back to Phoenix. The city wasn’t saved—not by a long shot—but the mechanism to save it was in motion now, and the cost was payable. “The pleasure was mine, Crone.”

  I moved the second the Vision of Family stepped into the living room.

  A single Avatar of Lightning erupted into existence, sprinting across the carpet with its lightning blade already in a lunge at my not-dad’s chest. His own sword flicked out in a lazy arc and blocked the blow. Not parried or redirected, but caught it and stopped it dead. Then the sword spun out. I recognized the move; it was one Dad had beaten me with a hundred times. It looked slow and calm, but he’d always put everything he had into it.

  A moment later, the Avatar was gone. I dropped into Mistwalk Forms. The thing wasn’t my stepfather. But it did fight like him, and that was enough to make a plan. I’d never beaten Roger Gerald. Not once. Not at chess, or sparring, or any of the other things he’d taught me. He’d been better, smarter, faster, or just more knowledgeable about them until the day he’d died.

  That didn’t matter. I’d grown since then.

  His sword whipped out. I recognized it—a feint to get me off-balance. I was already moving the other way. Windwalk wasn’t as useful in this low-ceilinged room, but I used it anyway. The speed pulled me out of his follow-up blow’s path. The air parted where my head had been, but I was already countering. My sword crackled and cut across his chest, leaving a bright scar on his armor.

  Then I was on the defensive again. We traded blows back and forth as I danced around the room and the Vision of Family pressed me. I spent two Rainfall Charges for Mistform. The blow passed through my chest, and I stabbed into the monster’s flank, through leather and into flesh. He didn’t make a sound, only turned and kept pushing. Back and forth across the room we fought, and as we did, a plan started to take shape.

  Dad was unbeatable—or at least had been.

  But this wasn’t Dad.

  I needed space to maneuver. The living room wasn’t enough; I had to get outside. Outside, I could push Windwalk to its fullest, get in the air, and wear the Vision down with spells, then set up a Stormbreak. It would be a lot easier if I had that kind of advantage.

  So, as the Vision pushed me around the room, I started to maneuver for the nearest door. It was wooden—a lot like the particle board of the bathroom door Jessie and I had hidden behind over a year ago. When I kicked it with my full A-Rank strength, it exploded into splinters, and I backpedaled through it into the front hallway.

  The stairs were right there. The Vision pressed me. His sword lashed out to my right, trying to force me up them. I hesitated, then let him push me up as I parried and thrust at the monster’s armored face.

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  His assault redoubled. I hurried upward, finding the landing and taking a moment to reset my feet. Dad had always said that, in a proper duel, footing was the most important thing. As the Vision rounded the corner, I shifted stances and lunged. Rain-Slicked Blade punched clean through the monster’s armor and into his chest. He didn’t even flinch, and I had to rip Nimbus Edge free in a gout of black blood to block his crushing slash.

  Then I was outside the bathroom.

  And someone was inside it.

  Two people. Sobbing.

  “What is this?” I asked. Rage filled me for the first time, and I forgot all about my plan to lure the Vision outside. My vision narrowed. For a moment, I thought it was the battle trance that I so often allowed myself to fall into. But no. No, this was different. My eyes flicked closed.

  When they reopened, Phoenix was burning.

  The Governing Council building was on fire.

  I watched from above, just like before—but this time, I wasn’t alone. This time, there was another presence with me. The Paragon.

  “Their fates are still unsealed. The shieldson. The scriptmistress. The healing hand. All of them can be saved. Simply give your friends the power they need. Accept the gifts I offer, and seal their fates.”

  They were thin. Skeletally thin. Skin stretched too tight over their frame. Most of their body was exposed, while at the same time, their dark hood and cloak obscured any defining feature beyond that skin—skin so pale I could see through it. It was horrifying to look at.

  But the Governing Council building was on fire. Monsters swarmed over it—the scaling machines that had brought brass-and-silk horrors to the top of the 303 Wall, cloth mages made of metal, and automatons that dwarfed even Bernard the Wall in his full armor.

  They dwarfed Jeff, Yasmin, and Sophia, too.

  My three friends fought outside the door. Split-Second Shield flickered on and off, blocking the swarms of monsters and then letting them through as Jeff’s Mana flatlined. Yasmin had an axe—I had no idea where she’d gotten it—and she was trying, but her build wasn’t designed for fighting in melee. And Sophia…Sophia sat staring at the wall. Whenever Jeff moved close to her, she’d heal him, but she wasn’t focused on the fight.

  “Paragon of the Stormsteel Path, these three yet live. They yet fight. Even the shadow woman’s fate is unsealed—even at this hour. The absolute, inevitable has not yet happened.”

  Jeff died first.

  This time, he didn’t die quickly. It was a death of a thousand cuts. Monsters piled over him, blades and razor-knotted silk ripping into his cracked, dented armor until they found the flesh underneath. Sophia tried to save him, but a blade took her head off above her robes. And Yasmin died less than ten seconds later as the GC building rocked and shook from the attacking monsters’ assault.

  “You can change their fate. You can save their lives. Reach out and do it.”

  I ignored him. But I didn’t ignore that Ellen was nowhere to be seen. She should have been there—her presence, more than anyone else’s, might have swayed me. The scene replayed. Jeff fought. Sophia healed. Yasmin tried. But it wasn’t going to matter—not until the moment before Jeff fell to a knee.

  Then a blue-white flash appeared. A sword caught the lethal blow—one shimmering with lightning and portal metal melted together as one. Armor that looked like a cage of liquid electricity wrapped around a frame that was too tall and too strong to be me. And yet, of all the delvers I knew, only I could have been that figure.

  “If you will not give your friends the power they need, perhaps you will claim that power for yourself.”

  The lightning warrior ripped through monsters like a storm across the desert. It was a thing of beauty, the fighting style neither mine nor Dad’s, but something in between. It took only a minute before my friends were safe, and I found my eyes flicking to the V-shaped crack in the wall. Ellen was out there. She needed—

  No.

  This wasn’t real. I forced my eyes open again—and in the moment before I regained consciousness, the Paragon laughed bitterly. “Very well, Paragon of the Stormsteel Path. If you will not seal their fates yet, perhaps you simply need more incentive.”

  My shoulder slammed into the bathroom door. Particle board crumpled under the impact, and a pair of voices inside screamed. They sounded impossibly young. It had only been a bit over a year—how could they sound so young?

  I didn’t have time to think about it more. I spun. Nimbus Edge caught the Vision’s arm, but its sword crashed through the railing. Splinters of wood rained down into the front hallway below, and I rushed backward, ramming my bedroom door open.

  Then I crashed through the glass window on the other side, shielding my face from the shards as they cut my cheeks and arms. Stamina rushed into the wounds, and I hit the ground in a roll.

  It was dirt. Not gravel, not the plywood covering over the pool, but packed dirt. We weren’t outside at all. This wasn’t my house, and the thing that followed me out of the window wasn’t my dad. He was something just like the visions the Paragon had shown me—a trick or a trap. I couldn’t do anything but fight.

  He hit the ground, kicking up a storm of dust. I was already casting even as he recovered. Cyclone Forms. Polarity Shift. Avatar of Lightning. Rolling Thunder. A Stormfire Lance crashed into the Vision’s chest. None of the Avatars I’d summoned moved, even as I cast Darkness and summoned a fourth.

  They were waiting. Waiting for the order.

  This wasn’t Dad. But the Vision of Family had all his power. All his strength and skill. The Paragon had created this place—this entire portal world—as a test for me. It was my world. That meant they knew Roger Gerald’s strengths just like I did. And of course they did. They’d pulled Dad from my mind.

  I knew that the intent of the test was to force me to accept one of the gifts the Paragon had given me, and that the Vision was the consequence of failing it—or of passing it. But there was another right answer—and this one was correct.

  Because the moment I’d realized that the lightning knight jumping in was me, and that the Paragon—whoever they were—was trying to make me stop pushing by offering it to me, I’d rejected it completely. I didn’t need a Paragon of fate, doom, or anything else to hand me power. Not anymore. Eugene had been helpful, yes. But he’d had his own motivations.

  This Paragon did, too. And I didn’t have to accept his offer of power—for myself, for Jeff, or for Ellen. I could simply take it. It belonged to me anyway. It was Dad’s power, and I was the only one who could inherit it.

  “Go,” I said, as I stepped back.

  The four Avatars of Lightning rippled forward as one, swords flashing as they attacked the Vision of Family. Lightning sparked from blade to armor, arcing across the gaps between the combatants. The Vision gave as good as he was getting, though; within seconds, one of the Avatars was gone, and another was missing an arm.

  But they’d done their jobs.

  For the first time, there was an opening in the monster’s armor, right over his heart—and for the first time, I pushed my aura outward.

  The tiny sparks of lightning arced out into the Vision of Family, and as they touched, electricity surged through the thing’s body—not just through his armor, but through the body underneath. It rippled and crackled, and for a half-second, the Vision froze.

  Then the Avatars of Lightning hit him in the chest, one after another—three massive peels of thunder as their lightning bodies ripped into Dad’s armor and into the body beneath it. The Vision of Familiarity shook. Then it collapsed to a knee.

  But a second version of him, with lightning for joints and limbs, stood where the boss had been. I stared at him; I’d last seen him the day he’d died, but the God of Thunder had—briefly—taken his form on our first meeting. But this wasn’t Eugene. This was Dad.

  I reached out. My hand touched the lightning knight, and electricity surged into my core. It crackled across the eight Stormsteel rings and rippled across the sky, over my mountain. And as they did, a pair of system messages appeared.

  Unique Aura Learned: Stormkin Avatar

  An Avatar of Lightning is a powerful weapon. An Avatar empowered by the memory of fallen family is a force to be reckoned with, even by the most powerful. A zone of charged energy covers the area around you, increasing the damage your lightning-based spells do to nearby enemies. The Stormkin Avatar can form a separate, independent fighter, sacrificing the aura’s effect to summon an ally in the shape of your chosen family member at the cost of Mana.

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