Tristan scowled, quickly flicking a lock of glittery golden hair behind his ear as another ‘Ratling’ leaned out from a nearby sewage tunnel with a glowing green crossbow bolt aimed right at him.

  His scowl deepened and he sent a surge of renewed power into his Skill. The ethereal golden bow in his arms turned opaque, an arrow made of writhing golden power appearing already nocked and then he let it fly.

  The arrow of Light tore through the air, flickering and crackling with power all the way until it blasted right into the disgusting rat monster’s chest. It didn’t even slow, tearing flesh, ligaments and bone to nothing but glittering dust as it went right through, leaving half of the ratling’s torso obliterated in its wake.

  Tristan wanted to scoff, his nose scrunching up at the smell and taste of the place. The scent of sewage and rotting monsters was so thick he could taste it, hell, he could probably cut it up with a buttering knife.

  He shot off another arrow into the tunnel, his Mana Sense alerting him of the approaching lesser monsters. This arrow split mid flight into a dozen smaller shards that all exploded in a burst of golden light in and around the monsters.

  [Sunseeker Bow] was the name of his first and most important Subskill, and so far it allowed him those two kinds of arrows. Simple ones, and splitting ones.

  He checked again with his Mana Sense, then turned and walked back over to the main tunnel.

  “All clear on this side,” he said, taking great care not to step into anything too disgusting.

  “Good work,” Jeff said, the man standing in the centre of the walkway running down the length of the main tunnel. At his feet laid the unmoving corpses of some gigantic cousins of the basic rat monsters. “Go help out Norm, he’s having trouble with his lot by the sound of it. I’ll go see what is keeping up Karl’s squad.”

  “Sure,” Tristan said sourly, once again thinking about ways to get the stink of shit, piss and death out of his hair once he was done with this shithole of a rift.

  He signed up for diving a rift with a fortress, or a forest filled with goblins. Not a damned stinking sewer. Fuck.

  Vaulting over to the other side of the tunnel, over the river of sewage running below, Tristan walked briskly towards the tunnel Norm had disappeared into a while ago.

  His ears twitched, taking up the sound of fighting and frantic heartbeats not belonging to the monsters.

  Something more dangerous than a ratling? Tristan thought, almost hopeful. There were few things that were a challenge to his Light Magic now that he was at level 10, so a small part of him was hoping that would change in this rift. But this shithole is just level 10. The goblin one was at least 15.

  Light was a strange element, and it took a while for him to get a handle on it. It had buffs, heals, so he had initially thought it was only for support mages and healers … then he’d checked his Skills.

  Light was wild, chaotic, powerful. It could do a lot of good, but it was also just so very perfect at destroying everything that stood in his way.

  That was what his skills used it for anyway, and he had no problems with that personally. Not when he could shoot off arrows that could punch through the armoured hulls of tanks like they were made of paper.

  He still remembered the face, as white as a sheet, of that obnoxious army ‘general’ when Tristan put a head sized hole through one of his tanks. It was glorious.

  Norm came into view, the large armoured man fending off the feral strikes of a … muscular ratling?

  Tristan paused for a moment, watching the two metre tall mangy beast with bulging muscles that threatened to tear through its hide and burst to the surface. It roared, swinging its large, rusted bastard sword down in a primitive overhead strike.

  Norm barely managed to parry it, letting it slide off his shield as his short sword bit out at the monster’s leg.

  Tristan saw the monster snarl, hate glowing in its beady eyes. Just as it was about to lurch forward to take a bite out of Norm with its overly large rodent-like teeth, Tristan blasted its head right off of its shoulders.

  No challenge, no hope, the thing just died like everything else that had stood in his way.

  “Tristan?” Norm asked, his breathing ragged as he whirled around. Seeing the elven man though, the adrenaline that kept him running drained away, and the man fell to his knees with his weapons slipping from his grasp. “Holy shit, thanks man. I thought I was a goner.”

  “Sure,” Tristan said easily, surveying the tunnel with his Mana Sense for a moment and shrugging as he found nothing. “This place’s clear. I’ll get going.”

  “Ah shit,“ Norm whispered, but Tristan’s ears easily caught it. “Can’t you help me a bit? I think something broke in my leg.”

  “Shout a bit,” Tristan said, unconcerned. “I’m sure one of the others will come running to help if you scream loud enough.”

  “Ah, fuck.” Norm breathed, now not bothering to whisper the words. “Don't you have a healing skill? Come on man, don’t leave me hanging like this.”

  At least he wasn’t trying to threaten Tristan. That would have been a mistake that would end up with the man having to crawl back to Jeff with a few more broken bones.

  “I don’t,” Tristan said, mouth curving down into a snarl. “I’m an archer, not a damned healer. You’d think the glowing bow and arrows are obvious enough, but apparently not. Have fun crawling Norm.”

  He really didn’t have a healing Skill, since his healing wasn’t a skill but an inherent aspect of his element. Light was so thick with Positive energy that he could just … fill someone up with it and they would heal … most of the time.

  Light was chaotic after all, and while healing was an aspect of it, so were chaos, growth and life. He had killed someone with that.

  It wasn’t his proudest moment, but how could he have known the woman had early stage cancer? Not even the woman herself knew, so it wasn’t Tristan’s fault.

  His mana had gone wild, he remembered feeling it gather up strangely in the woman’s head. He remembered being confused, afraid, terrified even as her eyes shot wide in panic then cried tears of blood.

  The way her head popped like an overripe watermelon when her brain tumour grew to the size of a basketball was not a memory he was ever going to be able to forget.

  Since then, he hadn’t healed a single person aside from himself. Light was meant for destruction, for killing, he decided. It was so damned good at it so why would he use it for anything else?

  “Norm?” Jeff asked as Tristan hopped back over to him, Karl’s team of five standing behind him in various stages of messed-up.

  Tristan glanced at Silvie, the healer of the group. The woman had some Water based healing skill, not the best one, but all the better ones under the leadership of that bunny woman told Jeff to eat dirt.

  It had been a joy to watch the impassive man’s face twitch and grimace at the slew of expletives thrown his way by an apparently helpless healer. The way her fluffy ears flopped about in her mad triage of curses only made it harder not to burst out laughing for Tristan.

  “He’ll be crawling back in a minute,” Tristan said, shrugging as he strutted up to the dark tunnel extending forward. In there, somewhere, was a Rift Guardian. A monster powerful enough to bend a whole three army battalions over its knee and spank them till they couldn’t sit.

  A monster that might be a bit of a challenge for even Tristan. Though not if Jeff and his stupidly overpowered magic had anything to say about it.

  For all he knew, Jeff would just tell the monster to ‘Die’ and it would oblige him. Freaky mind magic, it made his skin crawl. But Jeff was strong and logical, he’d saved Tristan’s life from a damned murderous rabbit on the first night of this shitshow and so Tristan owed him. He owed him his life.

  It was the only reason he still kept with the man and was not out and about, hunting for Rifts by himself.

  He saved my life, so I’ll stay around until I can save his life. Once. One save, then I can leave. Hopefully, this Rift Guardian will be strong enough to get that done here and now.

  Jeff looked unconcerned by Tristan’s apparent disregard for Norm’s fate and just waved Karl over, sending the younger man to sulkily trot over and into the tunnel.

  Not long after, he came back out with Norm over his shoulders and Silvie rushed over to heal the man.

  They were all so fragile. A broken ankle would have barely kept Tristan from running, healing between one step and the next.

  I suppose that just goes to show why I’m a High Elf and they are not. Or is it the other way around? Hmmm. Maybe I’m a High Elf because I have a Full Light affinity and that’s also why I’m so much better than this rabble.

  Shrugging, Tristan activated his second Sub-skill, [Eyes of the Sunseeker] and a golden glow lit up his eyes. The dark tunnel before him gained a luminescence only his own eyes could see.

  He saw traces, lingering scents flying in the air, the clouds of broken mana. Looking back at his delving party, he saw them too.

  Jeff, like a pillar of darkness, Norm, like a man made of fiery power and Karl, like a vague shape made of pulsing earth.

  He thought back to using this very same Skill on that other team that ended up going into the goblin rift instead of them.

  He remembered the chill that went down his spine, the goosebumps on his skin, the crawling feeling of debased beauty in the back of his skull.

  Halvyr. His instincts spoke to him the answer to the question he had been asking, to the question that was ‘what is she?’. Royalty. Fae. Broken. Halfblood. Disgrace. Unforgiven. Halvyr.

  He still didn’t know what to do with that information — if that confusing mix of feelings, emotions and ideas could even be called ‘information’ —, but just looking at the enthrallingly beautiful, yet strangely revolting pink haired girl was … an experience.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  His instincts flip-flopping between being enthralled by her mere presence and utterly disgusted by it the next was not something he wanted to relive. Not ever, if he could help it.

  Then there was the thing that had been standing next to her. His instinct couldn’t give a name, not for that creature, but the tingling touch of primal terror at the back of his neck was enough for him to know that it was dangerous. They made him feel small, weak, like he was being hunted with no hope of escape.

  Those crimson eyes had been haunting his thoughts ever since. Turning his Skill off midway through and seeing the gorgeous redhead those eyes belonged to gave him whiplash strong enough that he just … stared for the remaining few minutes of the meeting, like an idiot.

  Maybe I should start practising how to keep my instincts in check. Tristan thought as he started down the dark tunnel, his glowing eyes easily cutting through the darkness.

  Neither of the girls could be much stronger than him, level 10 was the top while there was no Obelisk in Graz after all, so he decided that his instincts were likely blowing things hugely out of proportion. He doubted they could take an arrow that went through a tank. Yes, he would need to learn how to tune his bloodline-given instincts down a notch or two.

  I always thought they just had positive effects, but maybe that’s not so. What if I had to fight that ‘halvyr’ and I felt a sudden need to kneel before her? Fuck, that would be the most embarrassing way to die, having my head blown off while I was busy trying to kiss my enemy’s toes.

  *****

  Mia sat perched atop the highest branch of what looked to be an ancient oak tree. She had an arm around the trunk next to her, hugging it for support as her other hand was up above her eyes to provide some shade.

  Her eyes roamed the sea of swaying green, enjoying the sound of the softly rustling leaves and the gentle breeze. It helped dampen the prevailing sense of wrongness that pervaded every inch of the Rift.

  I’m inside a pocket dimension. So weird. It was hard to wrap her head around, and hardly the time to dwell on it, anyway.

  “See anything?” Mia asked, squinting into the distance.

  “Yeah,” Carmilla said, pointing in one direction from her spot on the opposite side of the trunk. “There. ‘Fortress’ is overselling it, but it looks like some large wooden fort. Probably our target.”

  Mia followed her finger, squinting as she tried to make her eyes pierce through the heat mirage clouding the more distant parts of the forest. She saw a spatter of brown mixed with the greens, but she never would have guessed it to be their goal.

  It was so far away, and she’d been looking for some grey castle either way. Well, it was good Carmilla climbed the tree along with her.

  “I guess?” Mia said, shrugging. “You sure that’s it? I can’t see that far.”

  “I'm pretty sure,” Carmilla said, looking over at Mia. “Want me to help you get down?”

  Mia looked back at the vampiress, then at her left arm wrapped around the trunk for dear life. She wasn’t afraid of heights, but she felt them in her stomach like a deep pit. The call of the void was getting stronger too.

  But she could handle it.

  “Nope,” she said, carefully heaving herself off the branch and swinging down to the one below. She had agility and flexibility in spades, helped by weird muscle memory woven into her body likely by her bloodline that helped her step on each branch just right to keep her balance. “Coming?”

  Carmilla just gave a small smile, then swung herself off the branch. If Mia was gliding down between the natural footholds, Carmilla was bouncing from one to the next like she was a spring.

  Mia huffed, speeding up a little in her descent as the vampiress overtook her. Still, she had little hope of outrunning the redhead when she didn’t want to be outrun and so by the time Mia landed on the ground, Carmilla was already there.

  “About four kilometres?” Brent asked, an eyebrow up in his hairline. “Are you sure? That’s going to be a damned slog to get to in a forest this dense.”

  “Yeah,” Carmilla said, shrugging. “I guess Rifts aren’t obliged to dump us down near the main group of monsters.”

  “That’s pretty big for a Rank 1 Rift,” Lina mused, looking around at the foliage like a goblin was about to jump out at her any moment. “Four kilometres … according to the books, only at about Rank 2 do they get that large.”

  “Well, this one’s supposedly been gorging itself on ambient mana,” Mark said, kicking at the dirt like it was somehow going to hurt the Rift itself. “That’s what all those notifications at the start said, didn’t they? That our ambient mana levels are too high or something like that.”

  “Meaning we better destroy this rift before it can swell up even more,” Aiden said, fire dancing in his eyes. “I doubt we could take on Rank 2 monsters.”

  “True enough,” Clive agreed. “Better get to hiking then.”

  And hike they did, for hours. The air was thick and humid, clinging to the skin like a wet blanket and making it a struggle to even breathe.

  It didn’t help that as they got closer and closer to the supposed fortress; the foliage went from what might have been a familiar alpine forest to a dense jungle.

  Every metre was a challenge and Brent had to cut a path through the thick ferns and bushes in the way while the group had to repeatedly manoeuvre around thicker trees and climb taller trees to make sure they kept heading in the right direction.

  The goblins weren’t going to let them have an easy time of it either. Bunches of them hid in the mud, or dropped from high branches, or popped out of a bush, covered in shoddy camouflage. They weren’t a danger, not in the numbers they were coming at them and especially not so because Mia’s ears always caught their green little hearts beating and the suppressed cackles they were trying — and failing, badly — to hide. No, they weren’t a danger.

  What they were, was a damned chore.

  “Another one,” Mia said, her voice a fatigued sigh. “Drop-goblins. Again. That tree.”

  Aiden didn’t even wait for her to finish, a sphere of flame already jumping off his fingers the moment she gave him a target to shoot at. The man was a one-trick-pony, but Mia had to give it to him, he did that one trick well.

  The sphere was dense, not crimson, but light orange in colour, bordering on yellow. As it smashed into the thick trunk, the explosion sent a burst of charred wooden shrapnel flying and made the ancient tree creak in agony.

  Half of its respectable metre thick trunk was gone when the bright mana flames disappeared, and Mia saw it tilt dangerously.

  She followed the monster presences with her Spirit Sense, then grabbed Helene by the arm and pulled her to the side. A goblin splattered across the ground she’d stood on with a wet crack a moment later.

  “Thanks,” Helene whispered, squeezing Mia’s arm as she stared at the remains of the goblin that would have landed right atop her head. There was a chance that the Lesser Ward on her would have saved her life, but likely would not have been enough to keep all of her bones intact. Mia just nodded, her face still drawn in a serious frown.

  Two more goblins crash landed with lethal finality, but she could still feel some moving up in the canopy.

  “Three more managed to jump ship in time,” Mia said, just in time before the ancient tree finally crashed into the ground with a thunderous crash that sent an echo through the earth beneath their feet. “Coming right at us from above. Get ready.”

  Christine slipped away, disappearing into the forest while Carmilla took up the post in the middle of the group, her predatory gaze aimed up at the leaves.

  Mark, Brent and Clive took up position, each standing next to one of the mages protectively. Mia ignored them, her eyes flickering about, following sounds and movements the naked eye couldn’t see.

  Over the last few hours, she’d learned not to send spells blindly up into the canopy or just about anywhere in this damned forest. The trunks and branches were fucking tough, and even one of her piercing Bolts barely got through a thicker branch with any power left over.

  She’d likely wasted a good third of her mana pool blindly shooting at monster presences and striking only waist thick trunks.

  So she waited, she listened, and she watched. Her wand was at the ready, as was her runic-model and mana.

  A branch moved, not in tandem with the rest and against the wind. Mia’s wand pointed up just in time as a snarling goblin came crashing through with a rusted dagger aimed to sink right into Mia’s neck.

  Her spell shot off, punching a finger-thick hole through its chest and hopefully its heart too. The one problem with piercing Bolt having such a thin impact and large piercing power was that it didn’t do much for stopping the downwards momentum of the now-dead goblin and the dagger clutched in its dead fingers.

  Mia saw it getting closer and closer, her eyes widening in terror as her gaze locked in on the tip of the blade. There was no light in the monster's eyes, she’d killed that, but even that couldn’t wipe away the self-satisfied grin it had on as it fell towards Mia.

  Before she knew what had happened, Mia was knocked into the dirt, getting a mouthful of it as a large shadow blocked out even the thin rays of the sun getting through the canopy.

  “Ooooof,” Mia heard someone say, then heard metal creaking as a wet, splattering crack sounded far too close for comfort. “That was a quick shot. You are quite the marksman.”

  Mia rolled around just as the shadow, and the force keeping her down relented. Clive stood there, trying to wipe goblin splatter off of his tower shield.

  “Thanks,” Mia said, a bit dazed as she stared at the remains of the goblin she’d killed. Clive had likely saved her, at the very least from having a bunch of her bones broken and a knife pried out of her shoulder and at worst from death.

  Clive, who’d been a total stranger just hours ago. She’d come to trust Brent, Lina and Carmilla enough to rely on them to shore up her own weaknesses until she could shore them up herself, but … Clive?

  “Sure thing,” Clive said. “This is why I’m here. But really, that was one hell of a shot and a quick reaction … but you froze up after. I’ve seen you move before, I thought you’d move out of the way easily … ?”

  The man left the question hanging in the air and Mia averted her gaze uncomfortably. If his tone and demeanour weren’t so friendly and genuine, she might have taken his words as an insult. Instead, he made it sound like he was just worried for her health.

  “Sorry,” Mia said, huffing out a small breath before she stood and dusted herself off. “I … freeze up sometimes when I see an attack coming right at me. I don’t really know why.”

  “I know what you mean,” the man nodded easily, giving her an understanding smile barely showing under his helmet. “I used to do the same, just freezing up and holding onto my shield, hoping for the best like a statue. In my experience, only practise or, well, combat experience helps.”

  “I’ve been fighting monsters practically since day two of this thing,” Mia said, grimacing as she glanced over at the others.

  Carmilla had taken one of the other two goblins by pouncing on it mid-fall and throwing it away like a wet sock, the other ended up missing the mark when it tried to get a drop on Brent, but the man just sidestepped it.

  Said goblin also seemed to have a good chunk of its torso missing, the wound seared clean telling Mia that the silent Amelia got a good hit in before the monster went down.

  “It’s like stage fright, but with death,” Clive said, shrugging. “You do it more, you stare into death with eyes wide open, the less it bothers you and the more used to it you get.”

  “That a quote or something?” Mia asked, a smile tugging at her lips. “Sounds poetic.”

  Getting used to staring death in the eyes was not something Mia wanted to get ‘used to’. That would mean she was in lethal danger an unhealthy amount of times, which wasn’t something she wanted for herself.

  On the other hand, getting used to it would mean she would be less likely to actually die. What a conundrum. But the option in which I’m less likely to die seems like the obvious choice.

  “It is, if just me saying it makes it one.” The man shrugged with a light laugh. “Do you feel well enough to continue? The fort is close and I know you mage-types need mental focus just as much to work your magic as you need your mana.”

  “Sure,” Mia said, shrugging. Her mana pool was still acceptably full, thanks to her rather unashamed use of the team’s allocation of mana potions and her mental state was only slightly shaken. More so by Clive’s save than almost dying for … she lost count how many times she’d come close to dying.“ Anyone injured? I’m guessing Zeigler will be asking for his stash of healing elixirs back after the delve so don’t be shy in using them. Even for just sprained ankles and stuff like that.”

  Both mana and health potions had a limit, one straining the Spirit and the other the Body with every vial taken. Mia wasn’t feeling it yet even after half a dozen potions went down her throat, but she’d been told overusing mana potion makes you feel like someone ran your spirit over with a road roller.

  “I’m tired and I think a mosquito bit my eyelid just now,” Aiden said. “Would an elixir help with that?”

  “A greater one probably would,” Mia shrugged, mostly just guessing. “But we only have ten of those, so that’s about the one thing we shouldn’t waste. You can get one after we’re done with the delve and we don’t need it.”

  “Sounds good,” the man said, shrugging before his face twitched and he slapped himself over the face. “Damned bloodsuckers. I swear if this Rift made monster mosquitoes I’m burning the whole place down.“

  With that ominous declaration left hanging in the air, the party set off again at a careful pace. Their target was within reach and not ten minutes later, Mia felt the edge of her Spirit Sense brush up against a mass of wrongness.

  With the finish line within sight, Mia felt her anxiety growing, and adrenaline flooded her bloodstream. She saw more and more of the wooden fort, which was teeming with monsters, as if they were stacked up in there like sardines.

  Okay. Maybe we really should go with the pyromaniac’s idea. That place could sure use a wildfire right about now.