“I knew there was something wrong about you,” Tanner practically shouted over the telepathic link the group shared while he grabbed the colr of her dress as if she might try to run away.

  Phoenix was startled as her entire party seemed to move as one, Rayna and Dazien both grabbing Tanner’s arm from either side of her to make him release her. Uriel pulled her backward towards him, a strong arm wrapped around in front of her to act as a physical shield, and Saiya held her hand as she felt the calming aura quickly encompass everyone.

  “Now listen here, you stuck up siva arse,” Rayna growled over the channel, fangs bared in obvious anger, “First off, never touch her like that again or you will lose this arm.”

  Dazien interjected at that point but didn’t refute her promise, “Second, we are on the same team, remember? Phoenix was the one who led us, the Adventurers, here. Think logically; why would a Soul Reaper help us find their base? She could have just let us go to the empty valley.”

  Tanner yanked his arm from the others, his Sapphire Caste Strength at a higher level than both of the others, “Shut it, Shiny! I can’t trust a single word spoken from your Talented mouth.”

  That caused Dazien to snort a ugh, and he covered his smile in apology, “Sorry, sorry, I know this isn’t the time or pce, but you actually just said that, and I can’t help but think that you have no idea just how talented my mouth truly is.”

  “You think this is a joke?!”

  Dazien sobered at that, “No, Mister Neired. It’s not funny that you’re letting your frustrations overtake your mind. Please trust me when I say that I can understand that feeling, but we don’t have the time to let that happen now.”

  He gestured back down the tunnel in the direction of the path they had come from and stated sincerely, “You are meant to be leading us, and right now we have a mission: get back safe and report about the Soul Reapers. You can voice your concerns about the potential of Noble Waynd being a traitorous spy ter.”

  Tanner gred between Dazien and Phoenix before turning to look back at his own companions, his gaze resting on Polissa who mentally voiced her advice, “We should return to the rendezvous point and report to Officer Wysmont. Even if you think Phoenix might be a spy, that’s for others to investigate. Not us, Tan.”

  He searched Po’s face for a long moment as if making sure the woman wasn’t under some kind of charisma spell before nodding in acquiescence, “Fine. I am putting this in my report to the AOA, though.”

  Tanner then moved towards his Familiar at the back of the group, the rge sivatherium taking up about a third of the tunnel’s width at this wider point, and began rifling through one of the packs slung over the aval’s back.

  After some searching, Tanner pulled out a small diamond-shaped crystal that she recognized as a Sense Stone that acted almost like a memory storage device, allowing a person to actually view and hear everything as if they were in the pce of the stone. He didn’t throw it up into the air like she had done during her Adventurer Trials, instead simply holding it out towards the ledge so that the enemies below hopefully wouldn’t see him as he recorded the scene before them.

  “What are you waiting for? Start portaling the others back,” Tanner barked over the communication line, and Phoenix jumped at the sudden command.

  Moving further back to hopefully not bring as much attention with the light from it, she opened the first ring of night her portal appeared as and Saiya led the rest of the Crystal’s through.

  Dazien paused before following the others and whispered in a private message directly to her, “Send Tanner through next instead. I don’t trust him alone with you right now, and Rayna should be enough of a deterrent from him trying anything.”

  She grimaced and nodded in understanding, “Don’t worry. We’ll be right there in a few minutes.”

  He gave her a soft smile, “It’s a promise,” he said, and walked through the portal which she dismissed to get rid of the light.

  Tanner and Rayna both moved to her side again as the leader pced the Sense Stone back into the pack on his Familiar while informing them in a soft whisper, “We might as well put some more distance between us and them.”

  It disturbed her slightly to realize they were out of range of Dazien’s communication ability now. His Crystal Caste passive only reached so far through the mountain range and they would need to use Offer Wysmont’s version instead, which behaved much the same but had an odd echo sound to it all—as though whispering in a cave. That would have to wait until they were closer to the camp, however, as they were still too far apart at this point from the parties that went in the opposite direction from them.

  They began walking back, her shadow aura still active to help their retreat. It was only a brief quiver against her yered aura that caught her attention as she gnced back and to the left to see movement in the shadows.

  She pulled up her magically constructed dagger just in time to intercept the teeth trying to rip out her throat. Falling onto her back from the weight of the giant, bck and red, cat-like creature that seemed to be more machine than beast as it smmed into her. Her free palm braced against the bde caught in its fanged maw and it cut into her palm as the stiletto acted as the only barrier from instant decapitation.

  Rayna was quicker to react than the startled runeforged, activating [Beyond the Boundary] to hurtle through the space and have [Gem Encrusted] tails strike the side of the rge feline machina. The strike sent it off of her and into the tunnel wall with a loud crash, the concussive force of the song damage reverberating the very air and appearing like distorted ripples of wind.

  They all quickly sensed it was a Sapphire Caste machina monster that tried to behead the Wayfarer. The glint of intelligence in its molten red eyes as it detached itself from the wall was almost more terrifying to Phoenix than the razor-sharp teeth and cws it wielded.

  As it lunged towards Phoenix again, it was intercepted by a gauntleted fist that time, knocking it off course enough that she was able to jump back onto her feet. Using a combination of her martial skills and gravity ability, she put a bit more distance between herself and the angry metal cat.

  “What is with this thing?” Rayna asked in confusion as the Shatter Bard sprinted after it to follow up her punch with even more strikes.

  Tanner frowned at the unusual behavior of the monster that seemed ser-focused on destroying her, “That thing is one of the Caged, right? It feels weird.”

  Phoenix gave a shrug as she cast [Lunar Dream] to try and distract the creature, “Let dreams become reality.”

  Then she turned to call back to Rayna, “We need to move! We’re being too loud. They could send more!”

  “Right, start running back towards the valley!” the bard yelled after them, grabbing the mecha cat by its tail which seemed to be one of the few fleshy parts of its body to try and keep it from attacking Phoenix again.

  When it dispyed that it was stronger than the freshly ascended Sapphire Caster, Rayna seemed to decide to switch tactics and maneuvered around, smashing a foot on the ground between them to trigger [Sonorous Stomp], and knocking the creature back off the ledge towards the army of monsters.

  Phoenix winced, knowing that if the Soul Reapers hadn’t heard them before, a giant cat crashing into them would definitely let the enemy know they were up here.

  Tanner and his siva Familiar were already running, the loyal steed trailing after its master while he was on foot. The low ceiling of the cave made it more of a hazard for him to ride with the siva’s moose-like antler often knocking into a low stactite.

  As she felt her portal come off cooldown, she cast it ahead of them and yelled to him, “Go through! Rayna and I will follow after!”

  She was relieved that he didn’t argue with her as he went through the sheet of night, but she almost screamed in fright as another rge metallic cat, this one bck and green instead of red, seemed to come from a side tunnel. It smmed hard into the sivatherium before the bonded Familiar could follow through the portal.

  Blood sprayed everywhere as the new mecha-cat tore open the long neck of the gentle aval, and she could feel its aura flicker out of existence before it even nded on the ground; the critical attack of the machina completely severing head from body.

  The cat moved towards her portal and she hurriedly dismissed it, not wanting to risk it going through to attack the others that were expecting an ally, not an enemy. Tanner could at least warn them to be ready for the next one.

  Phoenix risked a gnce back towards Rayna, who was quickly beside her and yelled, “You should have gone through it!”

  Rayna didn’t wait for a response, though, as she ran forward and triggered [Blink Step] to teleport behind the new enemy. She unleashed the effects of the [Impetus] Boons that had quickly stacked up, sending the beast flying past Phoenix. Both of them were momentarily grateful for the new effects granted by the Acceleration Spirit Gem to that particur ability.

  Css Ability: Swift Encore

  Type: Utility (movement, magical, song)

  Cost: Moderate mana per second.

  Cooldown: None.

  Current Caste: Sapphire 1 (12%)

  Crystal Effect: Accumute instances of [Impetus] while attacking.

  Sapphire Effect: Instances now accumute faster based on total unresisted damage your abilities deal.

  Impetus (boon, magical, song, stacking): Your speed is slightly increased. Consume all instances to deliver a burst of Song damage with your next attack that scales with the number of instances consumed.

  Phoenix ran forward, grabbing the bag off the dead Familiar that she remembered Tanner putting the Sense Stone in, and slinging it over her shoulder. She then moved to catch up to the fast-moving bard as she finally expined, “I can’t leave you here! You need the portal and Tanner already used that one!”

  “I have the emergency teleport scroll! They didn’t give you one, so now I need to stay to protect you from those!” Rayna yelled, gesturing back toward the pair of machinas. The red one somehow made its way back up the cliffside and now sprinted towards them as the pair of Adventurers ran for their lives.

  “So use it! I can just die and—”

  “Absolutely not!” Rayna yelled, “Dazien and Paul will literally murder me if I leave you here alone to definitely die. We can do this! Just keep running and we can make it back together!”

  Phoenix grimaced as she maneuvered her way around the winding path, breaking free of the cave a moment ter, and sharply turned to run down the snowy path.

  The heavy clouds were beginning to release their burden as small snowfkes fell around her. Rayna covered their retreat with gemmed fists and tails, which she could barely follow with her lower Caste senses. The bard only paused at the entrance to the cave to scream at the mechanical monsters with her ability that had been enhanced by the Burst Spirit Gem.

  Ability: Siren’s Cry

  Type: Spell (channel, magical, song)

  Cost: Moderate mana per second.

  Cooldown: None.

  Current Caste: Sapphire 1 (9%)

  Crystal Effect: Let out a cry, inflicting Song damage and [Deafened] to anyone in a cone in front of you.

  Sapphire Effect: Also knocks back and inflicts [Punishing Shriek].

  Deafened (bane, magical, song): Hearing is greatly impaired.Punishing Shriek (bane, magic, song): When another Bane is added or removed, gain an instance of [Melodic Tears]. This Bane cannot be cleansed while other Banes remain.Melodic Tears (bane, magical, song, stacking): Consumes five instances of this Bane to deal a moderate amount of Song damage.

  Phoenix could feel the cooldown on her portal winding down and was itching to use it the moment she could, hopefully before the enemy recovered from that attack. She knew luck was never on her side, though. Whatever god oversaw that concept of the world obviously did not favor her. That was confirmed when the metallic cats roared at the retreating backs of the Adventurers determined to annihite them.

  She gnced over at Rayna, who was clutching a bleeding side, having apparently gotten swiped by a cw from one of the pair when Phoenix had been focused on not slipping down the mountain. They both looked back again to see the monsters gaining on them once more.

  “Don’t let go!” Phoenix yelled as she grabbed Rayna and used [Ruler of Retivity] against the green cat. It unched them away from the sloping mountain path in a burst of speed as she poured her mana into the ability, then triggered her tattoo mid-flight to replenish the lost mana.

  Rayna gave a scream as the bard desperately clung to her.

  “As surely as the sun will rise again, you will see the dawn of tomorrow,” she incanted, healing Rayna as they fell through the air before stumbling a bit on the nding, but the talented nomad was able to keep them upright as they continued running.

  “From the depths of the universe I summon forth the shards of annihition,” Phoenix began chanting after releasing her grip on the bard.

  Rayna looked at her incredulously and yelled, “Are you seriously going to try aiming one of those right now?”

  She nodded and suddenly stopped to turn, aiming between them and the enemy as she ended the rest of the incantation for her [Meteor Shower] ability, “May the wrath of the cosmos descend upon all who dare to oppose me.”

  Phoenix immediately used the st of her mana to open a portal beyond Rayna, who was a few meters behind her now. After she downed a mana potion, she shouted back to her friend, “Go through! I’m going to push them back into it which will fling me through the portal!”

  “Right!” Rayna said, and hopped through the portal right as Phoenix started moving backward from the force of her [Ruler of Retivity] pushing the red mecha-cat back toward her meteor’s point of impact.

  Instead of the feeling of going through a portal, however, she fell against something solid that let out a pained wheeze from getting crashed into, both of them sprawling into the snow. She looked up and sputtered, “Tanner?! What the sh—”

  “Where’s Silvie?!” he yelled, sitting up quickly, puffy red rimming his eyes that were no longer the silver color she remembered. His hair was also now jet bck, and he searched the area in an obvious panic, “Where is she?! She was right behind me!”

  Outrage, annoyance, and pity warred within her as she muttered, “Oh, you hopeless idiot… I’m so going to die now.”

  Then her meteor struck the mountainside.