Kaius bent over, tugging on the straps of his sabatons and making sure his armour was in place. With his Guardian rewards he was garbed in a motley collection — halfway between light plate and scale mail — but it meshed together well enough. Each piece was of a subtly different style, and as intricate as it was, he still hadn’t yet grown instinctively familiar with all the straps.

  As far as artefact rewards went, they were relatively mundane. Each piece focused on three things: physical durability, resistance to shock and force, and leaving him swift of foot. Half the reason he had to check his armour was that, with his new physique and the empowered tier-two enchantments it held, it almost felt weightless.

  The centrepiece was the breastplate: a solid piece covering his chest and ribs, with reticulating plates over his stomach so he could bend and flex freely. A tier-two Unusual, it held an enchantment that blunted impacts in a very specific way, stopping him from being flung across the battlefield whenever something hit hard enough. Instead, the force was rebuffed and pushed sideways. Underneath, a padded gambeson offered Magic Resistance, isolating him from temperature shocks and other nastiness, while his undershirt aided his endurance through wounds.

  Fiddling with his buckle one final time, Kaius rose to his feet. His team had similarly prepared, dripping in new artifacts. They were ready. Behind him, beyond the corpse of the Guardian, a portal awaited. The delve was over. They had squeezed every scrap of benefit out of it they could. Even if it hadn’t begun by choice, they had twisted it to their own ends — and their enemies would rue the day they ever let them slip through their grasp.

  At the thought of his captors, fire smouldered in Kaius’ belly. He had pushed the anger aside to focus on the delve, but now that they were about to leave, Old Yon and his men consumed his thoughts. They couldn’t let the remnants of that organisation run free. They had to pay for their crimes — but more than that, they knew too much. Leaving such a naked blade at their backs was folly. It was a problem to be dealt with, one of the short list of things to wrap up before they moved on from Deadacre.

  “Is everyone ready?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Porkchop replied.

  His brother let loose a bass rumble that kicked Kaius in the chest. He craned his neck o look at him. “Rotten roots, you’ve gotten massive. Have you managed that size control you mentioned?”

  Porkchop shrugged, his fur rippling in the light. They hadn’t managed to get his old armour or even his earliest rings over him — the resizing enchantments were simply too low grade

  “Somewhat. Enough to fit through a door, but not much more.”

  A moment later, Porkchop frowned and his flesh rippled, a lesser cousin to the transmutation of his bloodline evolution. With a few pops of joints, he shrank by a stride and a half, leaving him as tall as Ianmus at the shoulder.

  “Good enough,” Kaius grunted. “At least Hensch — he’s the innkeep I told you about — has a tavern with big enough doors. You should fit through even at full size.”

  “Oh, I can’t wait for him to find out you talk,” Ianmus chuckled. “You’re gonna shock them stupid.”

  Across from him, Kenva smiled as she strung her new bow, bearing her weight down on the limbs. Her old family heirloom was safely stashed away in her ring. This one was nearly as tall as she was at a hair under six strides, powerful enough that Kaius wouldn’t be surprised if it could punch a mundane arrow through a handspan-thick steel sheet.

  “I’m looking forward to meeting him,” she said. “I’ve never heard anyone speak so fondly of an innkeep before.”

  “He’s a gem,” Kaius replied. “I think you’ll like him. I can already see his flustered face when we get back. He’ll probably have a fit, trying to get us new rooms now that we’ve got another party member.”

  “How’d you get to know him so well?” Kenva asked.

  “For one, he’s shockingly gregarious,” Ianmus said, retightening the sash on his robe and closely inspecting his staff. “For another, when we weren’t on the road we were at the Dusty Stables, mostly in the common room. When we weren’t training, there wasn’t much to do but eat, drink, and chat. Though we kept our distance from the other teams, Hench has a way of worming in.”

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  Kaius nodded to the ranger, who slung her bow across her back before summoning bundles of arrows tied with twine. Each was fully wooden and grown from the trees of the twenty-ninth layer. The mana was dense there, and the trees were naturally potent: harder than steel and as flexible as willow. Even the broadheads, grown rather than forged, could punch through armour like bodkins.

  “How far do you think we’ll come out from Deadacre?” Kenva frowned as she untied a bundle and refilled her quiver, then stacked the rest neatly for storage in her ring where she could instantly summon them to hand.

  “It’s impossible to say. I kept our heading, but with the way distance warps we could pop out at one of the closest delves, or a week’s journey away. Hells, it’s even possible we’ve overshot by hundreds of leagues. We could exit as far as that boggart warren you told me about.”

  Kaius hummed. That presented a problem. He was almost certain they were being tracked. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. A man like Old Yon, a man of the Onyx, wouldn’t leave a vault with four storage rings undefended.

  “What do we do when we get out?” Ianmus asked, clearly thinking along the same lines. “Make a break for the city? See if we can reach the guild?”

  “And why would we do that?” Porkchop growled, aggression rolling across their bond, stoking Kaius’ anger a little higher.

  Ianmus cocked a brow. “True enough. It’s a problem that needs to be dealt with — and we’ve grown.”

  “It is,” Kaius agreed. “A burr like this shouldn’t be left to fester, not after everything they’ve done. More importantly, I struggle to reconcile the reality: we’ve been handily dealing with Guardians that normally require full teams of Golds. Let Old Yon come. Let him bring Silvers and men. It’ll just mean fewer problems for the people of Deadacre to deal with.”

  “So we’re in agreement?” Kaius said. “We fight.”

  “We fight,” Porkchop snapped, his jaws squealing metal on metal.

  “We fight,” Kenva agreed, nodding firmly.

  Ianmus rolled his eyes. “By the bloody forsaken hells, when do we not fight? Of course we’re going to kill them. They flayed us alive. I’ll have their hides.”

  Kaius smiled, showing teeth as his hand drifted to the pommel of his father’s gift.

  They trudged toward the portal: a glowing circle of runes shining bright, solid and stable despite seeming to be written in mud and reeds. In full formation, they were ready for anything — anything could have been waiting for them on the other side.

  As they stepped forward, Kaius reached out toward the runic ring.

  “Gods, it’ll be nice to see the sun again. The real one,” he heard Kenva mutter.

  Kaius smiled and made his intent known to the system.

  **Ding! Portal Entered!**

  **Descend?**

  **Exit?**

  **Personalised Guardian Loot will be provided on selection of either option.**

  “Exit.”

  …

  Sunlight and the crisp air of the frontier beamed down upon them.

  Kaius shaded his eyes, ignoring the small pile of loot beside the standing stone at their back in favour of getting his bearings. “Kenva, do you know the land well enough? Where are we?”

  “From the looks of things, we’re still roughly east of the city,” she said, looking around. Their surroundings were entirely wild. There were signs of game trails and cleared fields, but that could mean anything from six hours to a week from the walls.

  The ranger spun in a circle before turning to Porkchop. “Toss me,” she asked, vines coiling around her legs.

  He nodded, holding out one paw. Kenva stepped on comfortably with both feet before crouching low.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready,” she confirmed with a nod.

  Porkchop reared up and hurled her skyward with all his strength. At the last moment, the vines on her legs exploded outward, boosting her further. She shot into the air, fifty long strides, twisting and contorting mid-flight to scan their surroundings. As she fell, the vines extended to catch and slow her descent.

  “I don’t know the area like the back of my hand, and the city’s far enough to be over the horizon — but I think it should be four or five days in that direction,” she said, pointing west. “Judging from what I remember of maps, and the hills and elevations I’ve seen.”

  Kaius nodded. Far enough that Old Yon would feel confident making a move.

  He clapped his hands. “Right then, let’s make camp. As far as we’re concerned, the delve isn’t over. Two at watch at all times, three-sixty coverage, no wandering off to piss, and no going into the tent. Ianmus, check over what we got from the Guardian and see if there’s anything useful.”

  When the mage nodded, Kaius sat down in the lush grass, pulled out his frying pan, and set about making them a celebratory lunch for finishing their delve. A little faux-relaxation might be exactly what their potential tails would need to commit to a strike.

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