Odric’s knowledge of Floor 1 was spotty, if Sorin was being generous. ‘Useless’ was perhaps the more accurate term. He didn’t know where they were, he’d never seen monsters like those disruption hounds, and he had only a general idea which direction the floor guardian was in. That would be useful in a week or two when they’d grown strong enough as a party to challenge it, but for the time being, that only served to tell them which way not to go.

  “We need something weak enough to defeat but numerous enough to not require us to spend hours hunting each one down,” Nemari said. “Maybe we could find a kobold nest or something?”

  Sorin shook his head. “We’d never pry them out from their tunnels, and it’d be suicide to go in after them. Something we can fight in the open air is better.”

  “Maybe we should look for more of those dog packs,” Rue said. “We already know we can handle them.”

  “You’re aware that fighting them out in the open won’t be as easy as it was in their den? In a way, we got lucky to arrive there while they were sleeping. The lack of space and having walls to put our backs to kept them from surrounding us.”

  “Yeah, but it also made it harder for us to fight,” she argued.

  “More of a handicap for their side than ours,” Sorin said.

  “No more hounds,” Nemari interrupted. “One group was bad enough.”

  Maybe more hounds is exactly what you need. Learning to control your anima with their ability handicapping you is a good lesson, Sorin thought, but he was wise enough to keep his mouth shut. The team was on edge from their unexpectedly violent entry into Floor 1. Nemari hadn’t performed as well as she thought she should have, and Rue’s injuries, minor though they were, had shaken her confidence and inspired some concern from her older brother.

  After a few more minutes of debate, Sorin hit upon an idea. “Those cliffs,” he said abruptly.

  The others followed his gaze to see a thousand-foot-tall rough wall of pale yellow stone. Fissures and cracks ran the length of it, and festooned on that rough surface were hundreds of nests.

  “Harpies?” Odric asked, confused.

  “Exactly!” Sorin said. “They’re perfect for soulprint hunting. Harpies have physical and elemental soulprints, they’re territorial enough to come down and attack if you get their attention, and they’re all dumber than a box of doorknobs.”

  Namari regarded the cliffs speculatively. “Any chance of them swarming us?”

  “We might get two or three at once, but if we set up our kill zone inside the tree line, the canopy will help keep them grounded. Harpies don’t do great on the ground.”

  “Why would they follow us into the forest then?” Rue asked.

  “Just that stupid. Piss one off, and it’ll chase you forever.”

  “More importantly, how sure are you that we can kill one once we lure it down?” Nemari asked.

  “Completely,” Sorin announced. “The biggest threat is going to be their wind magic, but that’s also what makes them valuable—the wind elemental soulprints.”

  “Are those worth anything, though? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one at the Meat Grinder,” Rue said.

  “Every soulprint is worth something,” Odric told her. “I’m not sure anyone on our team could use one, but there is a trading post at the portal arch.”

  “Wind and fire elemental soulprints usually pair nicely,” Sorin pointed out, drawing a grin from Nemari.

  “Alright, alright. You’ve convinced me. Let’s give it a shot,” she said. “Rue, keep an eye out for anything trying to ambush us as we walk.”

  * * *

  It took an hour to reach the cliffs, mostly because the game trails running through the forest were thin, winding things that didn’t follow anything remotely similar to a straight line. Just keeping the group moving in a generally eastward direction was difficult enough. Fortunately, there were enough thin spots in the forest canopy to keep an eye on the sky overhead.

  “Why can we still see the sun?” Rue asked when Sorin stopped to orient their direction. “I thought we were inside the tower, now.”

  “Every floor is its own world,” Odric said. “I’ve heard that some of the higher floors don’t have normal skies, though.”

  Everyone turned to give Sorin a questioning look, but he just shrugged back. “Things get weird the higher you go. Some floors don’t have ground to stand on, let alone a sky overhead.”

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  “How does that even work?” Nemari asked. “Do you just swim through the air?”

  “Not unless you’ve got a soulprint for it. You fall until you hit something else that’s floating. Travel is… complicated. That’s why it’s best to have a well-rounded kit; some situations just can’t be overcome with quick thinking or determination alone.”

  Sorin pretended not to notice the looks the rest of his new team were giving him or the uneasy glances they exchanged with each other behind his back. Maybe I should have just played dumb, pretended to just be a guy down on his luck with a little bit of sword skills. But if I had done that, they probably wouldn’t have recruited me, and I’d have to downplay my abilities the entire time if they did. Someone would have gotten killed from not listening during a dangerous situation because they’d have no reason to trust my judgment.

  Sooner or later, they were going to start asking questions, and he didn’t know what he was going to tell them. The truth was too outrageous, and even if they believed him, then what? It changed nothing except that his secret would no longer be under his control. Whatever the ramifications of his origin in an alternate version of the tower were, he’d be subject to their whims. No, he needed a great deal more personal power before he even considered sharing with anyone at all, let alone a group of people he'd known for barely a day and who couldn’t help him solve the problem anyway.

  For the moment, they were united in common purpose: challenging the tower and growing stronger. Their soulspaces were freshly expanded and ready to be filled with anima and soulprints taken from fallen monsters. All that mattered for today was that.

  “Here,” Sorin announced as they approached the edge of the woods. The underbrush had thinned out enough to not be a nuisance even if they didn’t stay exactly on the trail, but it still provided a natural wall between the tree trunks, all of which towered up fifty feet overhead with spreading branches far beyond their reach. Ideally, the canopy would have been no higher than twenty feet, but this was as good as they were likely to find, and more than sufficient for their purposes.

  “You’re sure you can convince a harpy to chase one of us into here?” Rue asked. “I know you said they’re stupid, but I can’t imagine anything that has to flap its wings to move would willingly come here.”

  “I’m sure,” Sorin said. “And if I’m wrong, well, we won’t be any worse off.”

  They quickly set up their positions, with Nemari at the far end of the kill box to pepper an incoming harpy with firebolts as it wove through the trees. From her location, she had a mostly clear line of sight on the area. Odric was set up near her, tasked with getting in the way of any harpy that tried to close in on their mage, and Rue lurked near the edge of the forest, hidden and waiting to ambush harpies that entered the forest flying low.

  “Why would they come in this low, though?” she asked.

  “Diving to attack me as I come running in,” Sorin explained. “Trust me, it’ll work.”

  Maybe working with a team was a mistake. I’m splitting my anima harvest and any soulprints four ways now. No, that’s the wrong way to look at it. I’m carrying the group right now, but as soon as we go to fence the loot, they’ll take things over for me, he thought as everyone got into place. With a nod from Nemari, he stepped out of the trees and into the open.

  There was a thin strip of grass and wildflowers, only a hundred or so feet wide, between the forest and the cliff. A few harpies were winging through the sky overhead, possibly looking for their next meals, but the majority that Sorin could see were settled into their nests. Given the haphazard construction of their homes—they were mostly just large branches that had been wedged into the stone at random angles until enough of them came together to provide a perch—he decided the best way to get their attention was to attack one of the resting harpies.

  His ice darts didn’t have a lot of range or power, but he could overcharge the soulprint with anima to offset the deficiency. He chose the closest nest he could see with a harpy perched on it, held up a hand, and sent a burst of anima out through it. The dart that formed was more than three times larger than normal, and it fired out with a tearing sound as it cut through the air.

  Ice wasn’t the heaviest magical projectile, not even among F-ranked soulprints, but with him throwing it, it got the job done. The dart slammed into the branch the harpy was perched on, causing it to shake violently and loosen. The harpy itself screeched in protest and tumbled out of its nest, doing a full spin as it fell before it flared its wings and regained control.

  Harpies had more in common with birds than just wings and feathers. Like most aerial predators, they had excellent eyesight. It had no issues spotting Sorin, and, even if it wasn’t smart enough to prove that he was the source of its problems, it was stupid enough not to care. It came swooping down, easily covering the hundred feet separating them, but he was already sprinting back to the kill box.

  Sorin deliberately slowed enough to let it catch up, timing it so that it was diving for the kill, talons outstretched, when he cleared the trees. “Coming in low,” he yelled as he passed by Rue’s hiding place.

  Pivoting sharply, he threw himself into a roll just in time for the harpy’s grasping talons to miss raking across his back. Part of him wanted to reverse course, to pepper its delicate wing joints with weaker ice darts that would ground the monster so he could finish it off with his sword, but he reminded himself that this hunt was a team activity. If he killed everything himself, the others wouldn’t gain experience, and they wouldn’t absorb any of the anima from their defeated enemies.

  Rue sprang out of the shadows, both blades flashing as she brought them around in a far more controlled arc than the one she’d used when they’d first been sparring. Live combat, even the few fights she’d been in just since yesterday, had bolstered her skills significantly.

  Blood and feathers flew through the air, and the harpy’s shrieks turned from rage to pain. Rue’s attack carved two deep lines in its body, one in its wings about halfway to the shoulder, and the other in its hip from where she’d used her second sword to block the monster from turning its talons on her. Neither injury was that serious, but they were enough to hinder its flight and leave it open for Nemari’s follow up: a firebolt right into its ugly, jagged-toothed mouth.

  The two women finished the monster off in short order, almost before Sorin was able to turn around and get back in the fight. It was soon dead on the ground, little more than a pile of bloody, tan flesh and dusty yellow feathers. Sorin eyed the body for a second, seeking the anima still within it, hoping against hope to get lucky.

  With a sigh, he shook his head. “No soulprint,” he said. “I’ll go get the next one.”