Shouting with effort, Jace dragged himself along the walkway. After a few pulls, he hauled himself back upright.

  Lessa lay sprawled on the walkway in front of him. He didn’t have time to register what was wrong, or whether she was even alive still. She wasn’t moving, let alone making a noise, and that couldn’t be a good sign.

  But her lifeflame barely flickered at the tip of her tail. Couldn’t be dead yet.

  It wasn’t fair. A mortal, no enhanced attributes, nothing. Like millions of others. But she’d saved him, and she’d made it this far. They couldn’t just leave her behind.

  Behind him, Kinfild slammed his staff down, then activated two technique cards. Both of his legendary curse cards at once. He stabbed the tip of his staff through both cards in sequence, targeting the wall of the cavern, where Rallemnon perched. The first flew off the tip of his staff, shaped like a miniature orange dragon made of light. The second followed, a simple whirling beam that crackled like embers.

  His smokestacks coughed out a cloud of darkness behind him, accumulating shadow or darkness or whatever that technique of his was. But the first of Kinfild’s techniques caught him in the chest. The dragon flashed and imprinted on Rallemnon’s metal ribs, marking him.

  That had to be the Incineration’s Mark. Jace had no idea what it did.

  The second technique collided a moment later, striking the incineration mark and exploding. The surrounding material glowed orange and white, and lines coursed through it, giving it the appearance of an ember-y piece of wood.

  With a shout, Ash attacked next. He triggered a new card, and though it was basic, when he clapped his hands around it, a pulse of pushing and pulling force washed away in all directions. It pushed Jace a few feet down the walkway, but he wasn’t the target.

  When the technique smashed against Rallemnon, it barely rattled him. He swayed, buoyed in two directions by the tractor beam Aes, and the metal ribs that Kinfild had cursed cracked, but otherwise, Rallemnon stayed intact.

  Then Ash swept his arms to the side, guiding his Aes in a wave. A burst pushed the already-reeling kyborg off the edge of the wall, and he tumbled through the pit to the base of the crust-lift’s mountings.

  That probably wouldn’t kill Rallemnon, seeing how much other abuse he’d taken, but it had to slow him down. They just needed to activate the crust-lift. It’d give them a few hours’, if not days’, head start.

  Jace limped forward and hoisted up Lessa, expecting the strain to be almost unbearable, but he barely noticed a difference. The weight of a mortal was barely a flinch. It’d been about thirty seconds. He triggered his fortification card just to be certain, and more to keep himself upright, then dragged himself down the walkway.

  “Well, Less, you get your wish,” he whispered. “However serious you were about getting carried back on the surface…” It was hard to tell what she was being serious about.

  As soon as they entered the crust-lift, they made for the central platform. Jace barely stumbled onto it, now a few steps behind Kinfild and Ash. The moment he made it on, Kinfild reached up and triggered the control panel.

  Gravity doubled, and they descended. Immediately, Jace doubled over, but he set Lessa down as gently as he could.

  First, he needed to take stock of his own injuries, process even what the damage was. He wasn’t sure what had happened to him, but he couldn’t help anyone else if he bled out before he could even tie a bandage.

  But the moment he looked down, specks whirled in front of his eyes, and the world darkened. The edges of his vision dimmed.

  “Oh…no…”

  He clenched his lip, trying to cling to consciousness.

  Then he focussed on his right hand. The fading adrenaline gave way to pain, and it became ten times worse when he saw what had actually happened. Something had cut the bottom half of his hand off. His pinky and ring fingers were gone, and the other two were bloody and mangled.

  He blinked once with grim realization, then collapsed, and everything turned black.

  Jace awoke in a small, dimly lit alcove. It was about the size of a school classroom. A curtain of roots hung from the far wall, blocking the one entrance, and a campfire burned in the center of the room.

  They didn’t need any extra heat. They’d descended far enough that the floor emitted a subtle warmth. Not scalding to the touch, not yet, but enough to be noticeable.

  Despite it all, a chill ran over Jace’s body, like he was just just coming down with a cold. Maybe he was, but he had bigger issues to worry about.

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  Everything hurt, but not as bad as he was expecting. He clenched his eyes shut for a few seconds, and in the darkness, envisioned his channels. His body was feeding Aes outward into his muscles, fuelling his Vitality stat. But instead of making him tougher, it was knitting together his wounds.

  And he sensed the residual tingle of a high-powered stim-shot. That had to help, too.

  He groaned, then pushed himself upright. He wore nothing but his pants, but it didn’t really matter. Bandages wrapped around his entire abdomen and right arm, and a makeshift tourniquet clamped down on his forearm, quelling the worst of the bleeding…at the cost of his flesh.

  He didn’t know how long it’d been like that, but by how pale the rest of his hand was, it couldn’t be good.

  The right half of his face was covered in bandages as well, and it covered over his eye, making him dizzy and his vision felt awkward. But, despite it, he could still see glimpses of light through the white fabric of the bandage. At least his eye was still working, even though he might have a nasty scar.

  “Ah, you’re finally awake,” said Kinfild.

  “Lessa,” Jace gasped. “Is she—”

  Kinfild knelt in front of him. “Worry about yourself first.”

  That wasn’t a good sign. Nausea built in his stomach.

  “Your Vitality is high enough that your body is healing exceptionally,” said Ash, stepping in from the side. “I knew the worldjumpers were skilled, but I didn’t expect one to be as exceptional as you.”

  “Exceptional. Yeah.” Jace rolled his eyes. He’d nearly died. Couldn’t even have a moment to celebrate his victory over Neikir without some robot thing messing up his plans. “Did you use a stim shot?”

  Ash nodded. “A high grade stim shot. It is resonating with your Vitality and increasing the healing process tenfold. But it…cannot regrow lost limbs.”

  Jace swallowed. “I…I see. I—”

  “Don’t think about it,” Kinfild asserted. “As soon as the skin heals over, we can remove the tourniquet. It…it might still be saveable, but I am no medic.”

  “Neither am I,” said Ash.

  When Jace was sure he wasn’t about to throw up, he climbed to his feet and looked around the room. It had a low ceiling, and there were some oversized amphoras in the corner, which reached all the way up to the ceiling. It was some sort of storage cellar in the dungeon. Probably on the eleventh level. Otherwise, the walls were plain.

  At the center of the room, where the campfire’s smoke was gathering, laid a bundle of blankets and tattered cloth.

  Lessa.

  Her head rested on his backpack like a pillow, and they’d all contributed their cloaks for blankets. “Is she—”

  “She is alive, though I do not know for how much longer,” said Ash. “It was terribly unwise to bring a mortal this deep into a dungeon. I would’ve insisted that she stay near the surface, even if it was Lady Fairynor herself.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think you’ve gotten to know Lessa,” Jace grumbled.

  “Sometimes, the best thing a friend can do is say no,” Ash continued.

  Jace knelt beside Lessa, then held his hand beside her cheek. She still radiated a little warmth, and though shallow, she was breathing still.

  He shut his eyes. Back in the Candleshire, when he’d first met her, she’d wanted nothing more than to get out and explore. She’d longed for something more, and sought it with every breath. Who was he to take away her dream all because of safety? “I can’t accept that,” he said. “I’m sorry. And I don’t think she would either.”

  Friends were supposed to advance together. But…when he got too strong, would he have to leave her behind? How about Kinfild, or everything else he had gotten to know about this world?

  Not good enough.

  Kinfild approached as well, then set a hand on Jace’s shoulder. “She will pull through.”

  “She saved me,” Jace said. He wasn’t planning on blaming himself, and he shut down the nagging voice in the back of his mind almost immediately. “What happened? How’d it happen?”

  “I didn’t see with my own eyes,” said Kinfild. He lifted the blanket back slightly. It hadn’t been anywhere near as bad as Jace’s injuries, not technically, but she didn’t have the Vitality to tank those kinds of hits.

  The best he could tell, beneath a thick layer of bandages, something had sliced through the side of her gut and pierced all the way through. Already, the bandages were starting to soak through with clear, waxy blood.

  Jace winced and turned away. “Is the stim shot helping?”

  “We gave her a low grade stim shot,” said Kinfild. “Anything higher is too strong for a mortal to handle. What she needs is a medic—and you as well, unless you want to run around with half a hand for the rest of your life. And…to help you with your face.”

  Jace raised a hand and touched the bandage around half his face. His body let out a twinge of discomfort. His cheekbone blazed, and whenever he swallowed, the pressure hurt the inside of his mouth. It might have been worse than he thought.

  “Who was that?” Jace asked. “Well…okay, I’m pretty sure that was Rallemnon. General Rallemnon. But who is he?”

  “An old Praxon general,” Kinfild said. “He fell in battle nearly fifty years ago, when the Praxons sought to conquer the industrial might of the dwarven Mining Guild Coalition and unify their slice of the galaxy. That is all I know.”

  Jace exhaled, then turned to Ash. The man sighed, and said, “He did not always have such a horrid form. He was once a Wielder, like you and I, and my father fought with him twice or thrice. But, according to all I have gathered over the past few years, he has returned in this form, and he serves someone known as the Generous Hand.”

  Jace raised his eyebrows. “Just like Stenol.”

  “This Generous Hand is gathering armies and preparing for something, though I do not know what,” said Ash. “The Watchmen are also under his command now.”

  “He must want the Halcyon Spear too,” Jace said. “If he sent a servant to acquire it.”

  “One might think.”

  “We need to get it before he does,” Jace said. “Whatever he needs it for can’t be good, and…a weapon like that? I’m sure we’ll need it before long, whatever it does.”

  Kinfild nodded. “And you will find your Watchmen, there, too. You will destroy them.”

  “But we can’t delve any deeper until we help Lessa,” Jace clarified. “First, we need a medic. We need some help. How long has it been?”

  “You have been unconscious for about two days,” said Kinfild. “Other scavenger raiding parties have reached this level.”

  Jace grinned, as much as he could. “Then I have an idea.”