The siege dragged on.

  Whatever Angelo and the Governing Council had been planning, it hadn’t worked. In fact, it had failed so badly that no one had even gotten hurt. They simply lacked the firepower to break out of Phoenix—but the monsters outside lacked the firepower to enter, too. The 303 Wall glowed from thousands of defensive Scripts and Bindings, all powered by hundreds of cores’ energy. The Governing Council’s war chest, assembled over a decade or more, was paying off.

  The rest of the city entered power rationing that night, and I sat with Ellen and Jessie in the dim library at our headquarters. Jessie had her Hyperborean language papers, the ledger, and a stack of paper, plus a pen. I had nothing.

  And Ellen…Ellen held a core.

  Most B-Rank boss cores were portal metal and glowed red. They were warm to the touch, and they exuded a constant aura of pressure just like the bosses they came from. B-Rank cores were usually powerful enough to keep the lights on in a building like ours for a year or two, and were worth an incredible amount of money.

  This one reminded me more of the strange core I’d gotten from the trap portal—the one that had started me down the Stormsteel Path. It was white, ethereal, and glowed with the pulsing light of a full moon at midnight. It exuded something, but it wasn’t the aura I expected. Instead, it was a sense of nostalgia and…melancholy. And something else. Something I couldn’t explain.

  The strangest part about the core we’d pulled out of the Ghostdream portal, though, was its energy readings. They were low—so low that even an E-Rank core provided more Mana than it held. But that wasn’t why Ellen had grabbed it and hidden it from the GC rep when we exited the portal.

  “…so, in the end, Mother Mine was hiding inside the stars?” Jessie asked Ellen. She couldn’t stop staring at the core and licking her lips like she was starving and it was a sandwich.

  “Yep. When I darkened the sky, it forced her out. It was a tough fight, but not the hardest B-Rank boss we’ve beaten,” Ellen said. “If we’d had Kade, we’d have wrecked her. She didn’t move. She hardly tried to defend herself. Mother Mine was all offense, all directed right at Jeff.”

  “I mean, he needed a trip to the hospital afterward,” I interrupted. “It couldn’t have been easy.”

  “No, it wasn’t easy, but it was weird how single-minded Mother Mine was.” Ellen took a deep breath. “Anyway, after I got control over her starfire magic, the dream collapsed around her, and we killed her. But Kade said—“

  “That I saw her right after you won, yeah. She saved me from Mind Maiden Enolda, or…something. I think she made the puppet. Enolda referred to her as her queen, her star, and her goddess, but I don’t think it was romantic—she also said Mother Mine was her mother, and that last embrace before I left felt more familial.” I paused, then pointed at the core. “Tell us about that.”

  Jessie spoke up before Ellen could. “Yeah, and tell us why it has one of the symbols from the ledger.”

  Ellen shrugged. “I have no idea. Mother Mine had two cores. We sold the standard B-Rank one to the GC at a premium, but this one…I can’t explain it, but it felt important that we hang onto it.”

  “Well, you were right,” Jessie said. She reached out and touched the core, then hesitated. “Can I hold it?”

  “Sure.”

  Jessie’s fingers wrapped around the white, perfectly round boss core. The light poured through them, lighting up her skin and silhouetting her thin finger bones. I snorted; she looked ridiculous, like a child holding a flashlight against her hand. But to my surprise, she didn’t say anything or punch me. Instead, she seemed completely engrossed by the core in her hands. Almost obsessed.

  “Uh, Jessie, you okay?” I asked after a full minute.

  Ellen put a hand on my knee, and Jessie looked up just long enough to glare at me. “Shut up, Kade. I’m trying to think.”

  I shut up as Jessie slowly turned the core over in her hands. When she finally looked up, she was frowning, confusion across her face. “I don’t get it.” She slumped back in her wheelchair.

  “What don’t you get?” I asked.

  “I mean, the symbol written on this thing is right here.” She pointed at the ledger, at the first collection of ‘letters’ inside the front cover. “It means something, and it means something in relation to ‘Crone,’ but I can’t figure it out.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing, Kade. It should be the key to understanding this phrase, but it’s not giving me anything,” Jessie muttered. She glared at the core. Then she wheeled herself to face Ellen. “Can I keep it for a while? Maybe something will click while I’m taking a bath or something. I don’t know.”

  “Hold on, Jessie. I don’t think..” I let the sentence die. My sister was giving me the look, the same one she’d given me as she cried and begged me to let her work at the Governing Council. She knew I’d crack. And I did. “Okay. Rules, though. You cannot try to use the core, no matter what. You’re an unawakened human, and I don’t know what it’d do to you, but it wouldn’t be good. You have to tell me before you try anything that involves…I don’t know…breaking it. And if you have a revelation, the guild needs to know about it.”

  Jessie nodded. She swallowed painfully, then whispered, “Okay. Thanks, Kade.” Then she started wheeling herself toward the library door, core in her lap. Whistling, like she hadn’t just been about to cry.

  Ellen had the grace to wait until Jessie was gone before she started laughing. She turned to me, eyes squeezed shut, and managed to choke out, “Kade, you got….you got played by a…by a pre-teen.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “She’s sixteen, Ellen,” I said.

  “Doesn’t make it better.”

  User: Kade Noelstra

  Reforged Core, B-Rank

  Stamina: 460/460, Mana: 575/590 (+10)

  Skills:

  1. Stormsteel Core (B-05 to B-06, Unique, Merged, God-Touched)

  2. Thunderbolt Forms (B-06, Altered, Merged)

  3. Mistwalk Forms (B-04 to B-05, Altered, Merged)

  4. Cyclone Forms (B-05, Altered, Merged)

  5. Stormlight Bond (B-01 to B-03, Altered, Merged)

  6. Shadowstorm Battery (D-10 to C-02, Altered, Merged, Dual)

  7. Stormbreak (D-03, Unique)

  Path: Stormsteel Path

  Aura: Negative Space

  Laws: First Law of the Stormcore, Law of the Shadowed Storm, First Law of Darkened Lightning, Third Law of the Sirocco, Second Law of the Stormlight

  I stared at my status, anger and frustration building inside of me with every second. My head sat on the floor in my suite, and behind the words was the off-white ceiling and recessed lights. I glared up at them.

  At Stormbreak.

  The rest of my skills were leveling up nicely. My first five would be ready to push to A-Rank soon—and after that, I’d be ready to push to A-Rank. If the siege continued and the Fallen Delvers Tournament stayed postponed, I might be able to rank up and challenge the strongest remaining delvers on truly equal footing. But there was one massive problem with that plan.

  Shadowstorm Battery was C-Rank. That was fine—A-Rankers usually had two C-Rank skills. It was expected, since only five skills could typically be merged or Unique. But I’d been studying my core for the last hour as Ellen took a nap on my bed, and the conclusion I’d come to was pretty simple.

  If Stormbreak didn’t start leveling up, that D-Rank skill would act just like the C-Rank bottleneck, but at the trial between B and A instead of C to B. It was just too unstable in its current form, too unpredictable.

  I had time, but I had to start using Stormbreak, and…

  Why wasn’t I?

  I had been. I’d used it a few times after Queen Mother Yalerox. Then I’d stopped, and I had no idea why.

  My mind raced back to the first moments my system had awakened. To what I’d done to our house—and to the neighborhood. Jessie had gotten lucky. To this day, neither of us was sure how she’d survived Stormbreak, but she had. They’d found her in the bathtub, but that couldn’t have protected her. She’d gotten lucky. So had I—incredibly lucky.

  And then the second time, when I’d had no choice but to use it against the Hobgoblin Summoner and the Shadow Ogre. We would all have died. I’d saved Jeff’s life, and Sophia’s. But Carlos had died because of Stormbreak. People had died over and over because of Stormbreak.

  “People are going to keep dying because of it if you don’t get yourself together,” Ellen said.

  “What?”

  “You’ve been talking to yourself for almost two minutes, Kade.” She stood up and walked over, then put a hand on my head and scratched my scalp. “Stormbreak isn’t your enemy. Think about your Laws. They’re teaching you something about that skill, and about yourself. It’s just a tool, and if you’re not using it, it doesn’t matter how amazing your toolkit is.”

  I reached up and put a hand on hers. “I know, but—“

  “But Jessie, and but Jeff, and but me, right? The city’s under siege, and the tournament’s going to restart at some point. You’ve got a gift, Kade. You’re a maniac, and you don’t stop, and for some reason, a ridiculously powerful monster thinks you’re his apprentice—and he’s giving you even more power. If you don’t use Stormbreak, you’re not using that gift to its full potential. I’m not saying ‘fire it off every chance you get,’ but if you get a good chance, and the risk is low enough, take it.”

  “How do I know when the risk is low enough?” I asked.

  “Any time you can do it, exclude enough allies to make it worthwhile, and end fights, you should be doing it.” Ellen pulled her hand free, then offered it to me. She pulled me to my feet without even straining, then wrapped me in a hug. “We all trust you, or we wouldn’t keep clearing portals with you. So promise me, okay?”

  I thought about Jessie, and Carlos, and all the other times Stormbreak had been the wrong call—or the right one, but with consequences. Then I nodded. “I will.”

  “Great. Now, if you’re done moping, we’ve got work to do.”

  “Maiden, Mother, Crone,” Jessie muttered to herself.

  She’d had the revelation the moment Kade and Ellen finished telling her about the Ghostdream portal. It hadn’t been hard to figure out or anything, and the symbol on Mother Mine’s core only reinforced her theory that they were related. They had to be, but the core on its own still wasn’t enough. She had to know what the symbol meant, and right now, she didn’t have it. Neither did her friends.

  Dr. Teller could probably figure it out if she gave him everything she knew. He understood language. She was just brute-forcing things. So far, she’d been able to stay ahead thanks to the ledger, but that wouldn’t last.

  She turned the core over in her hand, letting the glow wash over the library around her. It was almost brighter than the single lamp overhead, painting the bookshelves in a soft but pervasive white light.

  Maybe giving the ledger to Dr. Teller was the solution. She could make a copy of it, put it on an anonymous, encrypted drive, then give him access. If Jessie gambled right, he wouldn’t scan for any Trojans, and she could piggyback off of his work. It’d give her access to an actual expert instead of relying on her online friends for help. That help had dried up over the last day as the siege tightened, power rationing cut into her allies’ online time, and everyone outside of Phoenix got cut off by the steam cloud outside.

  “No, not yet. I’ll give it one night with the core and the ledger. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll try the Trojan strategy.”

  She flicked off the light and cast the library into what should have been darkness. Instead, the core’s light expanded to fill the empty void, washing the room in its soft, calming light. The star-like core itself didn’t heat up at all, and as far as Jessie could tell, it wasn’t expending any more energy than it had been, but the light had at least tripled in strength.

  Jessie made a choice. She abandoned the ledger; it wasn’t the solution at all. It would be, but only after she understood the core. Instead, she flicked the light back on, let the core dim to a reasonable brightness in her lap, and wheeled herself to the door.

  Ellen and Kade walked past as she pushed into the lobby. “Hi, Kade. Hi, Ellen. Whatcha doing?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Uh, we’re going to run through Ellen’s strategy for beating Deborah again,” Kade said. He wasn’t wearing any gear, but then again, he never did. Ellen was dressed for a fight, though. “Hitting the gym.”

  “Okay. Can you do me a favor and power down the sparring room when you’re done?” Jessie asked.

  “Yep,” Ellen said.

  Kade, though, raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

  “Oh, just trying to help out with the rationing,” Jessie said. She raised the same eyebrow as Kade had. That usually worked—or at least, it was usually enough to let him know that she was working on something, but she wasn’t ready to talk about it out loud.

  But this time, he didn’t take the bait. “Jessie, what are you doing?”

  “Dammit,” Jessie muttered under her breath. Then she sighed, turned her chair to face her brother, and held out the core. “I’m running an experiment.”

  She spent the next twenty minutes running through her theory. It was messy, and halfway through, she had an idea that required her to change everything she’d thought up in the library. But by the end, Kade was nodding along with her.

  “That tracks. Tonight, then. We’ll use the sparring room. That should be secure enough—and it’ll definitely be dark in there.”

  Jessie stood up, wrapped her arms around her brother, and squeezed until her shoulders hurt. Then she flopped down into her chair, tension melting from her back and neck. It was good to be listened to.

  There are 30 more chapters on . Come see! I'm blown away by the number of people checking it out.

  I'm offering a single chapter in advance for all free members on Patreon. If you're interested in reading ahead, please feel free to join for free. Thank you.