Chapter 12

  Celeste moved before Kelix could fully register what was happening.

  Sheryl had taken one step toward the rift, eyes wide, body moving like she was walking through water. Celeste slammed into her from the side and drove her to the ground.

  At first, Kelix thought Celeste had lost her footing. Then lightning and miasma tendrils sliced through the air where Sheryl's head had been.

  Crimson arcs snapped past with a sound like tearing cloth. Black-magenta haze followed in sharp ribbons, not drifting, but cutting, like smoke that had decided it wanted to be a blade. The space above them lit and dimmed in violent pulses. The shattered remains of a popcorn stand exploded into splinters.

  Sheryl screamed. Celeste did not. Celeste kept her body over Sheryl's like a shield, jaw clenched, eyes locked on the fight with the cold focus of someone who understood that fear was a luxury and timing was everything.

  Kelix's throat tightened. He snapped his gaze to Finn. "Grab them. Go. Into the portal."

  Finn's head turned. His eyes flicked from Kelix, to the rift, to Endigo, and his body trembled with conflicting instincts. For once, Finn looked uncertain. Kelix felt anger flare, quick and sharp, as he relinquished the leash from his grasp.

  He understood Finn's hesitation, but this wasn't the moment to hesitate. More structures were exploding, and Celeste and Sheryl were pinned where they stood, their position collapsing under the assault.

  "Finn," he said.

  Finn's lips curled. He took one step.

  The world cracked again.

  A surge of crimson lightning and dark energy tore through the field, and Kelix and Finn both leaped backward on instinct. The wave hit the rides behind them. Metal screamed. Glass shattered. A section of the warped carousel frame sheared cleanly and collapsed in a rain of bolts and lights.

  Kelix hit the ground hard, rolled, and came up on one knee.

  The pavement beneath him crumbled. For a split second, his weight sank, and he felt the sick drop of falling. He kicked forward, trying to find purchase, expecting the ground to give way entirely. It didn't, and his next step landed solid. Then the next.

  The crumbling stopped in a neat line beneath his shoes, like the park itself had decided it would hold him up. Kelix's eyes narrowed. His right hand tingled, faint and irritated, and he hated that his brain immediately tried to connect it to the core's pulse.

  Not now. He forced his attention forward. Finn had moved.

  The Fenrir barreled past the fallen statue base with Sheryl thrown across his back like a sack of groceries. She clutched at his fur, face pale, breath hitching. Celeste was in his jaws. Not biting her, not like a kill.

  He was holding her by the back of her jacket like an unruly pup. Celeste fought him anyway, twisting and kicking, one hand still gripping her sword. Her eyes were furious, not at Finn, but at the situation, at being dragged, at being forced to retreat when her instincts wanted to strike.

  Finn did not care. He sprinted for the rift.

  Kelix dashed after them. He could see Damian already disappearing inside. He could see the suit man's construct lumbering through, its bulk distorting as it crossed the threshold. He could see the tear in space fluttering under the strain of the fight.

  He got three steps before something slammed into the ground in front of him, knocking him onto his butt. His ears rang as his eyes squeezed shut. The heavy object before him buzzed like an electrical current striking water. Heart racing, he peered at it.

  A five meter axe. Endigo Zest's axe.

  It sank into the pavement with a heavy, final thunk, the blade biting deep. The weapon's electrified crackle sent a tremor through Kelix's legs and forced him to stumble back, arms flaring for balance.

  Kelix's breath caught, feeling relieved he had survived.

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  A flash caught his attention. He looked up, toward his left.

  Endigo was on one knee. One knuckle pressed into the ground. Crimson lightning ran from its arm into the pavement in jagged veins, anchoring it, stabilizing it, or perhaps simply keeping it from falling apart.

  Particles leaked from its cloak in a steady stream now, dissolving into nothing as they drifted.

  Its skull face turned toward the rift, then toward Kelix. Endigo shook its head once. A small motion. A clear one.

  No.

  Kelix's stomach twisted. No to what? No to running? No to the dungeon? No to Kelix being here at all?

  The magenta-aura monster moved like an answer to that refusal. It stepped in and drove its axe-staff into Endigo's shoulder with a smooth, practiced thrust, as if pinning down an animal.

  The staff-axe did not go through.

  It lodged.

  Endigo's body jerked, but it did not collapse. Its lightning arm snapped up and clamped around the weapon's shaft. The grip crackled, crimson arcs biting into the etched symbols. For the first time, the cultured monster's expression tightened into real irritation.

  "Stubborn," it said.

  Endigo's empty crimson eyes flared. Then it gestured. Not toward the enemy. Toward its own axe.

  Kelix felt the air in front of him shift.

  The axe in the pavement shuddered, then tore free, ripping stone and sparks with it as it flew back toward Endigo like it had been yanked by an invisible cord.

  Kelix's mind made the worst leap possible.

  If that axe reached Endigo, then Endigo would stand. And if Endigo stood, the two monsters would collide again. And if they did, the rift might not stay open long enough for Finn and the others to get through.

  If Kelix did nothing, he would be running behind, chasing a closing door; or more likely, he would be incinerated before he ever got the chance.

  If Kelix did something, it would be foolish.

  He did something.

  He grasped the axe's handle.

  The jolt forward nearly tore his shoulder out of its socket. The force ripped him off his feet. His palms burned. His fingers screamed in protest, tendons shrieking, bones begging him to let go.

  He clung anyway. The world became motion.

  The axe pulled him through the air like he weighed nothing, and Kelix's brain went quiet in that razor moment where survival did not allow thought, only timing.

  Only release.

  He let go at the last possible instant.

  Kelix launched himself off the flying weapon, body twisting, knees tucking, fist drawn back with everything he had left. If he was going to go down, then he would not go down without leaving a mark.

  Farewell, world.

  His punch crashed into the magenta-aura monster's face. The contact felt wrong, like striking porcelain and finding steel beneath, and the shock rang all the way up his arm and into his teeth.

  The monster's head lurched sideways, its body staggering half a step, as Kelix's fist ignited.

  Not with blue heat.

  Magenta aura crawled over his knuckles, bright and thin like fire that refused to burn. Only now it burned the air, and the air hissed, smoking into ethereal tendrils. Kelix's breath hitched in shock.

  The monster's eyes snapped fully onto him. The calm vanished from its expression. What remained was cold disdain sharpening into anger.

  "So," it said softly. "You truly are the interesting one."

  It lifted one hand and slashed with two fingers.

  The motion was small. The result was not.

  A razor line of dark energy sliced through the space between them, too fast for Kelix to dodge fully. Kelix saw it, understood it, and knew he was late.

  Endigo Zest moved. Faster than perception, its lightning arm whipped outward, shield angling into the line of the slash. Crimson arcs flared across the shield's surface as the attack hit with a screeching hiss. The lightning arcs flared, colliding with the dark line in a violent crack that shook Kelix's teeth.

  Kelix blinked, stunned. He was unharmed. He believed it without thinking because he was still intact and his body had not started screaming yet.

  He was far too wrong.

  Kelix felt wind punch past his ear as he fell. The slash did not stop. It bent and it curved around the shield's edge like a knife that had learned to think.

  Kelix saw it coming at the last instant and thought, I am fine.

  Endigo blocked it.

  I am fine!

  The line passed.

  I AM FINE!

  Then the building behind him split.

  A dinner theater, half collapsed already, was cleaved cleanly from roof to foundation. The cut was so precise it looked unreal. The structure remained standing, as if it had not realized it was dead.

  Then it slid apart.

  The upper half toppled away in slow motion, crashing into the debris with a thunderous roar. Dust rolled across the plaza. Shards of metal and glass hissed through the air.

  Kelix realized his ears were ringing.

  He realized his body had stopped moving, then realized he had been wrong as a shockwave slapped him in the back and tore the breath from his lungs.

  Kelix finally plummeted, hitting the pavement hard. His magenta-coated fist dimmed as quickly as it had flared, leaving only the sting in his knuckles and the sick awareness that something was wrong… that something inside him had answered a power it should not have been able to answer.

  His legs buckled.

  He drew in a shallow breath that scraped. He tried to push himself up. The world tilted instead.

  He let out a slow, tired sigh he did not mean to make. It sounded pathetic in his own ears. Then a shadow fell over him.

  Kelix lifted his eyes.

  Aria's silhouette stood above him.

  Her hair fell like a curtain, swallowing the last scraps of dusk. Her expression was hard to make out in the shifting light, but her gaze was not.

  Magenta eyes stared down at him, unblinking and intent, like she had finally decided he was worth seeing.

  Kelix's throat went dry. He couldn't speak. He feared to look away… or to look down.

  For a moment, the fight behind her became distant noise, lightning and miasma reduced to thunder heard from another street.

  All Kelix could see was her, and the color in her eyes that matched the aura that had just ignited on his fist before everything went dark.

  The art of runesmithing died long ago. Once legendary runeswords have been reduced to mere decorations, their powers made irrelevant by the discovery of ethereal spirits. Techniques were forgotten, and any remaining runesmiths were ridiculed and shunned.

  Vivian is one such runesmith. Born as an orphan and adopted into a smithy, she and her adoptive grandpa persist with a dream. They wish to prove that runeswords are once again worthy of fighting monsters in the lands below.

  What Vivian never expected was for herself to be the one fighting. Alone in the underground with a crazed spirit that seeks to profit and grow from every monster in their wake. Below the earth awaits a subterranean labyrinth of monsters and demons, where ethereal storms ensure nothing stays dead for long…