On the other side of the clearing, Liz, looking terrified, was pointing at Jane, obviously preparing to unleash a spell.

  I used my new Mimicked spell. A blade of condensed shadow materialized and drilled into Liz’s gut. She screamed and doubled over, hands grasping the wound, her own casting disrupted. Then a piece of rubble flew into the air and clobbered her in the back of the head, knocking her silly.

  “Not Liz, you idiot!” Burns shouted.

  “Wasn’t me,” Adam said as shadows roiled around me, forming into black bands that tried to restrain me.

  “Congratulations, Lucas! Mimic has captured Bands of Despair. Time remaining to re-cast spell: 15 seconds.”

  I instantly chose to make it a temporary spell, but waved away the notification with the full details and uses remaining. Before I could target Adam, the air split above us and an enormous lightning bolt ripped down from the sky.

  It struck Tomas on the shoulder of his new elven armor. His entire body flared with golden light and the impact hurled him away across the square. One arm tumbled away from his body, ripped right off by the blast.

  The lightning arced across to Ed, striking his chest, but something metallic flashed in the rain, even though Tomas he removed his clothing and armor. The lightning danced down his torso, blackening skin, before plunging through his stomach in an explosion of blood and gore, nearly bisecting him and hurling him away in the opposite direction.

  Both Lana and Andy were caught in the edges of the blast and catapulted in opposite directions too. I caught glimpses of all that as I to was tossed away by the sheer force, electricity roaring through me. My resistances were pretty high, and some of the elemental power was drained away by my armor, but it still rattled me pretty good.

  “Tomas!” I shouted, leaping back to my feet as healing power roared in from my Tesla Coil bracelet.

  Across the clearing, Nigel had pounced on Adam, driving him to the ground and sinking fangs into the annoying man’s back. Even as he hit the ground, Adam again disappeared in a cloud of roiling shadow.

  I activated Shadow Walk, and all the shadows within sight glowed in my vision. I was going to step to Tomas, but spotted Adam stepping out of a shadow right behind Jane, who was just climbing back to her feet from that master lightning blast.

  Growling with impatient annoyance, I stepped through the shadow, caught Adam by the back of the neck, and hurled him across the clearing before he could stab Jane. He smashed into a half-ruined wall so hard it collapsed over him.

  Then I cast Divergent Strike. I could blow Adam up with a direct hit, but I still needed answers, so I aimed the invisible blast about 10 feet to his left. The explosion reduced the pile of rubble around him to dust and smashed Adam bodily through yet another wall in a rumble of falling stone.

  A bloody, furious Tomas, still missing an arm, appeared next to him and clubbed Adam on the side of the head with the hilt of his sword, spraying blood and knocking Adam into oblivion.

  Nigel arrived a second later, roaring, swelled to full Mammoth Lion size.

  “I want everyone alive, if possible!” I shouted before he could rip off Adam’s head.

  Nigel growled, but glanced over, one big ear flopping in annoyance. I pointed up. “Can you take care of Burns’s drone before he hits us again with more lightning?”

  Nigel launched into the air and Tomas saluted with his sword, signifying he was okay enough for now. So I spun back to the fight, simmering rage at Burns stoked to white-hot intensity.

  Tony was beating on Burns with his sword, more rage than technique fueling his swings, and Burns was back-pedaling, fending him off with his boar spear, still looking far too calm as he repeatedly shouted, “Wait. Wait. Listen!”

  Then he shot into the air with a yelp of surprise, flipped upside down, and slammed headfirst back onto the cobblestones with a heavy thud.

  Jane.

  Tony kicked Burns’s spear aside and pushed him over onto his back. Burns was bloody, but conscious.

  “Why?” Tony shouted, sword poised over Burns’s throat.

  Burns sighed. “There’s more going on with this game than we’ve been told.”

  “Like now we need to murder our own?” Tony demanded.

  “You know I can’t say more.”

  “We’ll need a bit more than that to go on,” I growled, striding toward them.

  To my right, Liz was lying face down, body encased in a gelatinous goo, with a bloody-faced Lana standing over her. Meanwhile, Ruby was on her knees beside Ed, and Tomas blinked over to rejoin her.

  A shimmering white dome materialized around them, partially obscuring them. Probably Ruby’s new Healing Bubble. Good, it would boost regeneration and provide a lot more defense.

  Burns frowned at me. “I thought you knew.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You mean, you haven’t . . You don’t?”

  “Haven’t what?” Tony exclaimed.

  Burns looked honestly torn with an inner struggle I knew too well, but I was starting not to care. With that master lightning bolt, he’d nearly killed Tomas, and he might have just finished off Ed.

  With an effort, I reined in the fury enough to say, “Burns, we need a clue about what the Amadeus you’re doing, or I’m going to rip off your head with my bare hands.”

  That didn’t seem to faze him as much as it should. He looked from me to Tony. “Think back to the announcement of points.”

  “You committed murder to win some VIP points?” Tony roared, lifting his blade as if preparing to plunge it down.

  “No, you idiot,” Burns snapped. “The announcement covered more than the points. Think. You have to think.”

  He was trying to tell us something, and I read that same frustration in his eyes that I’d felt so much in the past 2 weeks. What, though? I thought back over the announcement. Cyrus had explained about viewers and points and . . .

  “You got a sponsor!”

  Burns flashed a grim smile and raised an eyebrow, then winked. I didn’t know enough about sponsors, but part of me felt immensely relieved that Cyrus hadn’t somehow set him up to murder Ed. Cyrus could be manipulative and harsh and merciless, but he’d always seemed to want us to grow strong enough to make a good showing for Earth.

  “Your sponsor told you to murder some of our people, and you did it?” Tony demanded.

  “Not exactly. I can’t tell you more. I literally cannot.”

  Green glow.

  “Then I don’t believe it,” Tony said.

  Burns sighed and spread his hands. “You’re right. Under any other circumstance, I would agree.”

  “Then what are we supposed to do?” Tony demanded, his tone pleading.

  Suddenly twin daggers slammed into Burns’s throat and ripped sideways, opening up his neck on both sides. Blood erupted out of him in a gory blast, although it deflected away from me just like the rain. It totally coated Tony’s entire body and he staggered back with a horrified gasp.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Stop listening to his poisoned words,” Jane said, settling to the ground beside me as her daggers lifted into the air and returned to her hands.

  “He was talking!” Tony roared just as Liz screamed and twisted in the gelatin prison. For the moment, she seemed helpless, though, and she settled down when Lana leaned over her, crossbow pointing at her face.

  “He was lying,” Jane said simply. She was wrong about that, but I didn’t see how the confrontation could have ended any other way than with Burns’s death.

  To our left, Nigel slammed to the ground with Burns’s fantasy quad copter clamped between his powerful jaws. He smashed it down, then pounded it with lightning-fast strikes from his oversized paws until he reduced the unique prize into a splintered pile of rubble.

  Tony started to shout something, then gasped. When I looked down, I blinked in surprise too. Burns was already leaping off the ground, totally healed and glowing with a soft, golden light. He had a second final escape token!

  Before any of us could react, he slammed into Jane, and lightning ripped through her. She spasmed, one eye bursting in a spray of lightning while sparks danced between her teeth. Then she crumpled straight to the ground as purple foam from from her Death Catcher waffle exploded around her in a protective wave.

  I reacted on pure instinct, punching Burns in his side hard enough that I should have broken every rib and probably smashed my hand most of the way through his chest. The golden glow surrounding him flared and my fist stopped mid-swing like I’d punched a mountain.

  Burns danced back, holding up his hands in a false sign of peace. “Lucas, I will need your help to save Earth. Sometimes hard decisions must be made.”

  The golden glow surrounding him winked out. Some kind of temporary impervious defense to help him escape when his last chance artifact saved him. Nice feature, except he’d wasted the chance to run.

  I lunged again, punching him in the sternum so hard his chest caved in right through his armor. The impact sent his lifeless body tumbling end over end all the way across a nearby canal and over piles of rubble beyond.

  “I’ll make sure it’s really over,” Tony declared, his voice breaking with emotion. He soared into the air, feet and hand thrusters firing instead of just using a Water Flight potion.

  I left him to check on Burns and make sure he didn’t have another life-saving artifact. He’d invested a lot more heavily in protective gear than I’d realized.

  I dropped to my knees beside Jane, but Tomas appeared before I could touch her. In place of his missing arm was a gleaming steel limb. He snatched up Jane and blinked away again, returning to Ruby’s side. She poured in a healing potion, then returned to work on Ed while Tomas bent over his love.

  The sight of so much pain and near death of people I loved made me want to smash something else. I glanced at Adam, who was now lying face-down, hands behind his back, with Andy standing over him, one sword resting alongside Adam’s neck.

  I leaped the entire distance to them, then swept my convergence mana around us both using Mana Control, changing all the ambient mana to convergence mana. Adam blinked up at me, defiant but fearful.

  “What did you do to the mana?”

  “Changed it.”

  He still had mana inside, so could use his spells, at least for a while. I was about to smash an Impotence potion over his head, but got another idea.

  Activating Spellseer’s Gaze, I focused on my Mana Strings ability, my Mana Control ability, and Runesmithing. The world seemed to come alive as the colors all around deepened and became more vibrant. Every drop of water glowed sapphire with water mana, which overwhelmed most other mana in the area.

  I wrapped mana strings around Adam’s hands, then applied runes of iron and binding, linked with modifiers to drain his strength and mana to reinforce them. The mana strings glowed soft white from my convergence mana and the runes I mentally inscribed flared to golden life as soon as I activated the script.

  Immediately, the mana strings glowed brighter, like a bright LED rope light. Adam sagged and groaned. “How are you doing that?”

  “Magic. How do you feel?”

  He spat out a string of curses, but Andy tapped the side of his head with the flat of the sword. Still glaring, Adam said, “Weak, and my mana is draining fast.”

  “That’s what I expected.” The rune script was working even better than I’d hoped. “If you struggle or try to use magic, the drain will double.” He wouldn’t want to test out that little lie. “Give us any trouble, and Andy will remove your head.”

  “With pleasure,” Andy said grimly.

  Adam scowled, but didn’t struggle. “You killed Commander Burns, didn’t you?”

  I nodded, but across the canal, sounds of shouting and fighting rang out. How many protective artifacts did Burns have?

  Jane staggered to her feet, her missing eye re-grown. “I’ll kill him again.”

  “You’re still not 100%,” Tomas warned, but she flashed a grim smile. “I’m well enough to boil his mind to jelly.” She shot into the air and across the canal.

  I took a step to follow, but Nigel said, “I will help.”

  He leaped away, soaring all the way over the canal and the rubble. He made it look like a single, graceful jump. He was getting really good at incorporating Water Flight.

  Tony could finish off Burns with their help, especially since Nigel had busted his drone that he used to channel that master lightning bolt. Tomas and was still working on Ed, and Ruby shifted over to do something with Tomas’s shoulder. I couldn’t see exactly what they were doing from that angle, but they’d set things right. Lana gave me a thumbs-up from where she stood over the gelatin-bound Liz.

  I took a deep breath, releasing some of my white-hot fury. The fight seemed to be well in hand, so I crouched beside Adam. “What did Burns tell you?”

  His glare didn’t soften and he spat, “Nothing you didn’t just hear. In order to win the game, we could not afford to let the weak die with no purpose. Killing them today could make the rest of us stronger.”

  “How?”

  He tried to shrug, but it was hard lying face down with his hands bound behind his back. “He didn’t say. I didn’t ask.”

  “Why not?” Andy asked.

  Another almost shrug. “Commanders keep secrets. Not my place to question. I trust him to lead us to victory.” He spat at my feet again. “Trusted him to. Now you’ve killed him and maybe sealed Earth’s doom.”

  He was a true believer, like a fanatic. Had Burns gotten his hands on some kind of mind control spell to twist followers like that? Maybe Jane could make some sense out of it once she returned.

  I rose to ask Liz the same questions, but Tony was returning with Jane and Nigel. Tony’s faceplate was down, but Jane looked troubled. Had something gone wrong?

  Before I could call out a question, I got a message.

  Jane: “Burns is gone. Tony killed him the final time, but then he got a weird look on his face. Some kind of epiphany, or maybe worse.”

  Lucas: “What do you mean?”

  Jane: “Burns was weird. He kept coming back. We had to kill him 4 more times. I couldn’t get a sense for what artifact he was using, but it honestly felt like it let him die before reviving him.”

  That was weird.

  Lucas: “Some kind of CPR spell?”

  Jane: “I couldn’t tell, but I got flashes of his thoughts. He was not afraid of dying, but got more and more angry each time we killed him.”

  Lucas: “I bet. Dying’s not fun, even with a save artifact, and I doubt he had the money to buy more.”

  Jane: “Maybe, but something was off. I tried to sense if he was still himself, or had been possessed, or cursed, or something, but couldn’t get a good read.”

  Oh. I understood her worry finally.

  Lucas: “You think somehow Burns might have transferred a murder curse to Tony?”

  Jane: “That is my fear, but there’s no way to know. The look on his face was like surprise, wonder, and some kind of realization, but I couldn’t sense exactly what.”

  Lucas: “Thanks for warning me. Hopefully it was nothing, but we’ll keep an eye on him.”

  Tony was a leader and he’d killed a lot of monsters, but now he’d killed a man he’d considered a friend and co-leader. I’d respected Burns, but Tony had been a lot closer. Having to kill him would mess anyone up. This game forced us to do truly horrible things, but having to put down a good friend who had turned mad was one of the more psychologically damaging ones I’d seen.

  Maybe Burns had just gotten manipulated into believing murder was the only way to save Earth. Hopefully Liz would be more willing to explain what the hell was going on.

  “He’s finally dead,” Tony said, his voice cold.

  “What are we going to do with these 2?” I asked, gesturing at our captives.

  They’d attacked us, but honestly, I didn’t want to kill them. We were supposed to be allies. Now they’d backed a friend-turned-psycopath and helped him murder other friends, but it seemed Adam and Liz had just been obeying orders.

  Tony marched up to the bound Liz. “I’ll deal with it.”

  “We did it to save Earth,” Liz said through fresh tears.

  “And I do this for the same reason,” Tony stated. His sword appeared in his hand and he lopped off her head with a single swipe of the black weapon. Blood sprayed in a fountain, and Lana stumbled back with a scream, then turned and retched loudly.

  Adam shouted, “Murderer!”

  Priceless, coming from him, with the ground still littered with the people they’d just murdered.

  “I wanted to question her,” I told Tony as he marched toward Adam.

  “Do you really think she could tell you anything useful?” Tony asked.

  “Probably not.”

  Adam struggled mightily against his restraints, but the constant drain of his strength and mana made escape impossible. Andy backed away, eager expression suddenly grim as Tony approached. The execution was probably necessary, but I didn’t like killing humans.

  Tony killed Adam with a single stroke too, the execution mercifully quick but leaving me feeling dirty. Tony stood over the corpse, breathing heavily, body tense, sword half-raised again.

  “Tony?” I asked, struggling to decide how I felt about the killings, with Jane’s warning still fresh. Was he going to try killing all the rest of us? I definitely didn’t want to kill another friend today.

  He didn’t attack, just stood there. Part of me was relieved he’d done what had to be done. Could I have done it? I wouldn’t have wanted to. Hell, I’d been thinking maybe we could find a way to keep them alive, make them fight with us.

  That might be impractical at best and result in more murders at worse, but would it have been worth trying? They were loyal soldiers, doing what their insane commander had ordered. What a stinking mess. There weren’t enough of us left for this infighting.

  Tony straightened, his voice grim. “It had to be done.”

  Andy hurried over to crouch beside Lana, who looked as traumatized by the executions as the fight with Burns.

  Tony added, “My team is almost here. There’s nothing left to do, so I’ll send them to take down those monsters you spotted earlier. I . . . Need some time. See you back in town.”

  He lifted into the air and flew slowly south.

  Should I follow to make sure he didn’t kill anyone else? I nearly did, but he’d sounded wrung out, not hyped up on the killing. For now, all I could do was trust him.

  With a sigh and a wave of my hand, I Looted Adam and Liz. Most of the team spread out to loot the other fallen victims, returning them all to pristine, if mummified, forms. No one talked as we worked. Tomas kept working on Ed, who looked much recovered already.

  Finally, Andy straightened from the corpse of a slender, black-haired woman and said, “What a mess.”