Archmund ran into the setting sun, towards the Dungeon, Rory and Xander at his heels. He’d made the trek before via carriage, but adrenaline and magic surged through his veins. He needed to run.

  The wind whipped past him, the drying grasses licking at his feet, the first aromas of night flowers and the night’s miasma licking at his nostrils.

  Were there dark shadows on the horizon, the unshaped forms of Monsters running wild, or was he imagining things in his fear and his terror? He was clouded by fear, anger, rage, regret, a whole slew of negative emotions blended together so tightly he didn’t know where one ended and the next began.

  But no. He could pinpoint one.

  Anger.

  A sick thrill, running through him.

  This wasn’t the malus of his Gemstone Sword. This was his anger.

  And excitement, as well.

  He would hurt them. He would make them pay. He’d show them what it meant to go against him, to challenge Archmund Granavale and disrupt his pns.

  He’d rend them limb from limb, turn them into burnt ends, fry them until there was only charcoal left.

  They would pay for hurting his people. For ruining his event. For making him look bad in front of the Princess.

  The thought made his mouth water.

  It really was sick.

  Weaponsmaster Garth Avant had told them all he knew about the threat. The Monsters were cavalry, a legion of horses, running down all those in their path. They had access to attacks at range. They were faster and taller than a man in armor.

  The tactic had to be the same as he always used: kill them before being detected. But — that didn’t necessarily work, in the dusk, where they were fully formed, and their eyes were adapted to darkness.

  His father would coordinate and lead the men of fighting age to defensible positions outside of the colosseum. Though they would be helpless against an army of the Monsters, they would be more than able to take out single scattered beasts, and their mere presence might even be enough to draw them from attacking Granavale Town. They would be funneled away from the Town and away from the Manor and into a pce where they could be killed.

  The other nobles — Gelias, Beatrice, Mercy aka the Princess Angelina Grace Prima Marca Omnio — would stay at the colosseum to keep civilians safe. Gelias and Beatrice would fight any creatures that broke free of the killing boxes the Lord Granavale’s troops created. Mercy would, with the aid of Sister Catherine and Raehel, perform some unspeakable and arcane magic in order to pce a stronger seal upon Granavale Dungeon.

  Archmund really should have asked more about that seal, he thought, as the air ripped its way out of his lungs as he sprinted full force towards the Dungeon. He had never been good at pacing himself, always needing to move, move, move. To put out the fires right in front of him. To make the problems go away.

  To make his enemies hurt.

  But he had his mission, and he had to trust they would fulfill theirs.

  “Granavale… slow down…” a voice called from behind him.

  He looked back and realized that he was a football field ahead of Rory and Xander. (It was very American of him, measuring distances in football fields.)

  Rory jogged up lightly, not particurly strained by the motion, but Xander was practically dragging himself on his feet. Archmund fought back a rush of anger. He hadn’t asked Xander to come, the boy insisted on coming himself because his brother was guarding the Dungeon. So what? It wasn’t as if an untrained, unsteady pair of hands would be at all capable of doing jack shit when it came to fighting off Monsters strong enough to run rampant through a full deployment of guards. It wasn’t as if he’d have to spend much of his focus making sure Xander didn’t get killed. Maybe it would be better to just leave him here, let him fend for himself against whatever might come.

  “What’s the rush?” Rory said. “Couldn’t have waited for the carriage to be ready?”

  “Are you fucking serious?”

  He said ‘fucking’ in English so Rory wouldn’t understand it, but the taller boy still frowned.

  “That sounded like a swear,” he said. “Look, man.”

  He pulled out a quarterstaff from his back. (He must’ve collected it after his matches.) Although much of its body was wrapped in woven cloth, its tips gleamed woody-red in the light of the setting sun.

  A Gemstone Weapon, Archmund realized. He tensed. Was he going to have to fight Rory, too?

  He could win, but he didn’t like his chances.

  But Rory simply dug the quarterstaff into the dirt and leaned on it.

  “Think about it,” Rory said, grinding the staff into the ground. “The Monsters already broke out. They fought your Weaponsmaster and his men into… well, they beat them. If you rush ahead without us, you’ll just put yourself into danger, and if you’re tired when you get there, you’ll just be a liability.”

  The gall. The absolute gall. The absolute fucking gall. Rory was giving him the speech he’d wanted to give Xander.

  His Gemstone Quarterstaff gleamed brightly. “If we go together, we can get each others’ backs. We won’t catch up to you dying ignobly on the horizon or getting trampled by an ambush.”

  Archmund took a deep breath and let it out. Rory was right.

  “His brother,” he said, gesturing at Xander.

  Xander’s jaw was tense. “I saw how Mr. Garth looked,” he said. “I know what we’ll probably find.”

  “So why’d you come?”

  He drew his Gemstone Rapier. “Because I feel this,” he said. “I feel like I can do something. I feel like I can make a difference.”

  “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  Archmund knew he was a hypocrite for saying that when he regurly risked himself for higher causes. But that was okay because he was a noble, so every cause he risked his life for was by definition of a “noble cause”.

  “He’s my brother, Granavale. I doubt you can rete.”

  “Yeah, well, all of my siblings died in the pgue,” Archmund said. But he slowed his pace to a walk.

  “Right,” Xander said. Then, after a minute, “I’m sorry. Sir.”

  Archmund knew he had a tendency to hold grudges and now was absolutely not the time to do so.

  “I accept your apology.”

  He could revisit this grudge if Xander was a liability in the upcoming fight, and of course there was no point in holding a grudge against the dead.

  “Remember,” Rory said, letting out a sigh of relief. “We’re all on the same side here. There are Monsters out there, we don’t really know what we’re up against—”

  “Horses,” Archmund said. “They’re horses. Monsters in the shape of horses.”

  “And we can’t afford to be squabbling with each other.”

  His Gemstone Quarterstaff fshed, and Archmund felt less tense than he had before. His mood was stabilizing as they walked towards the direction of the Dungeon, though at this rate they’d still be hours away. He could feel the vague sense of magic in the air, something foreign to the winds and scents of fall.

  “What does that staff do?” he asked Rory casually.

  “Well, whenever I hold it, I feel like I’m a lot better at calming people down,” Rory said. “It’s weird how it always seems to work.”

  ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’. That was the favorite saying of American President Teddy Roosevelt, and metaphorically it meant that when conducting diplomacy, a leader shouldn’t make threats filled with bravado — but they should ensure their words were backed up by significant military power.

  That was an intrusive thought. The relevant thoughts were that this was probably a Skill embedded within the Gemstone Quarterstaff, and it was probably some kind of ‘Calming Speech’. A buffing-type Skill. Though he’d have no way of ever actually knowing, since it seemed most people didn’t have a System interface. At best, he’d have Rory’s description and name for the Skill.

  His own rash impulsiveness was starting to catch up with him.

  Rushing ahead, powered by magic and his vague sense of noblesse oblige had been cool and suave and noble.

  But it wasn’t very practical.

  If he’d just pnned the slightest amount, instead of rushing ahead like a reckless solo hero, he would’ve taken a carriage — some of which were literally just outside of the colosseum — instead of rushing forward like an idiot. The carriage, as part of the wealth of Granavale County, was every bit as much part of his capabilities as his swords and Gems. Rory had a carriage. Beatrice had a carriage. Gelias had a carriage. The Princess had a carriage. Every other time he’d gone to the Dungeon it had been in a carriage.

  He could go back, still, but it would take 20 minutes, and that was an hour gone.

  If he was being honest, he’d just wanted to be alone with his thoughts for a bit.

  He’d gotten that, at least.

  Suddenly, his Gemstone Tablet started vibrating in the exact way that a phone set to vibrate would. It startled him — the physical sensation of a vibrating phone was something he’d never experienced in this life yet it reactivated all of the neurons associated with the memory from his past life.

  He pulled it out. There was a new interface on it, that he hadn’t seen before.

  Blue boxes popped up bearing in them messages.

  [Angelina Omnio: Granavale, what are you doing? Where are you? Do you really expect to run all the way there and still be able to handle the target?]

  He frowned. A message/DM system. It made sense, and yet it was farcical. Obviously if there was an omniscient System it could capture information and transmit remotely throughout the entirety of its scope, and so it followed that it could send messages. Which. Something about that logic didn’t satisfy him.

  What did it look like on Angelina’s side, since she had a magic book instead of a magic iPad? He tapped at the tablet and a keyboard popped up. It wasn’t exactly QWERTY, given that it was an entirely different nguage from English, but his typing muscle memory was aligned enough to use it to communicate effectively.

  [Archmund Granavale: wasn’t thinking clearly]

  [Angelina Omnio: I sent your carriage in roughly the direction it seemed like you were going after I realized you were being stupid.]

  She wasn’t this mean in person.

  There was a whinny behind him. The carriage had, in fact, just caught up with them.

  [Archmund Granavale: Thanks]

  “Huh,” Rory said. “What’s that?”

  “A Gemstone… courier,” Archmund said, going for the gentler lie that wouldn’t reveal his true power level. “I got it from the Omnio family.”

  Rory whistled. “Granavale, you confuse me deeply.”

  Xander didn’t seem to know what to make of it.

  They got in the carriage, and it rushed to the rim of the Dungeon’s pit.

  Archmund got outside, and the other boys did as well. He walked up to the rim of the Dungeon, kneeling for stability, peering down into it.

  In the shadows of the st rays of the sun, among the spreading fires of the camp, six bck horses ran amok. Scattered about their footfalls were dulling Gemstone armor pieces, and the dark figures of bent and broken bodies.