Adam was lying prostrate on a ridge, sandwiched between Martin and Devon, looking at one more piece of undistinguishable rocky scrubland. His head peeked just over the edge, looking down at a cave entrance. One just like a half dozen others they had camped in over recent weeks.

Unlike those caves, this one was occupied. Even worse, it wasn't a bear or spirit beast making its den, but two cultivators. The pair was young, probably Cooper's age, fully grown but not yet realizing the fact. They were also armed to the teeth. Rifles leaned against the cave walls, pistols and knives gleaming on their belts. If Adam's usual luck held, there would be a bevy of magical armaments squirreled away as well, to add even more problems stacked against them.

Of course the secret entrance was being guarded.

It was all too much. The anxiety welled up from his stomach, into his throat. A giggle he wasn't going to be able to hold in. A hand clamped over his mouth before he could give them away. With a tug they were backing away down the ridge. No one spoke until they were at their camp, an hour's hike back into the hills, hidden in yet another of the local caves.

"Two adepts. We can be past them before an alarm gets out." Martin said.

Devon agreed, nodding along. "Should be quick enough. I suppose it was too much to wish that Dariella didn't think to look for alternate entryways."

"Wait a minute there." Adam interrupted. He had been looking back and forth between the other two as though an explanation would spring forth from nothing. "What are you talking about? What should be quick?"

His companions shared a speaking look and Adam felt the panic reaching for him again.

Devon plowed on where Martin hesitated. "Those two need to die. And quickly, so they don't get an alarm signal off."

"What? No!" He looked to Martin, desperate for him to contradict the enchanter.

"Yes. I'm afraid so. I don't see a way around it."

"We could literally go around. Find a different entrance or tunnel in ourselves." Adam was grasping at straws and he knew it.

"The rest will be caved in, we talked about this." Devon said. And he was correct. There had been a long discussion about routes in and out of the cave complex, most of which were set to collapse in given circumstances. Like catastrophic failure of the enchantments. Devon didn't give him time to rebut before he went back in for the kill. "Even if we could use them or tunnel in, that much magic will be pretty fucking obvious to anyone else."

"We could sneak past the guards," Adam said. "Laurel has the technique she used to get into places without being noticed."

"Oh?" Devon said, the bite to his voice becoming more pronounced. "And were any of those people she was sneaking around cultivators? Or are you secretly a grandmaster with an illusion aspect and you've just been fucking around this whole time? Maybe –"

"That's enough Devon." Martin cut across the other man's tirade.

Adam had the sudden realization that Martin might be terrifying to his enemies.

"He's looking for a way to avoid slaughtering two people. You don't have to be a jackass about it."

"It's not like I want to kill anyone. But these people are sitting around and defiling my home. Looking for whatever riches they can strip out and steal. So forgive me if I'm not ready to play what-if. We only have so much time."

"I know. None of us are here because we want to kill people." Martin looked at both of them like a pair of naughty toddlers. His voice gentled as he continued. "But I really don't see a way to avoid it. I've been in a lot of fights, and a lot of bad situations, and I just don't see a future where this doesn't get messy."

Adam's shoulders sagged as he accepted the inevitable. Murder. Not defending himself in a fight, but a planned, calculated killing. Intellectually he knew violence was likely on this trip. Laurel hadn't been shy about what the magehunters had done to Borin. Or what she had done to them in turn. The stories when George got tipsy and opened up about his past were worse. If that hadn't been enough, Martin had made it clear when he offered to let Adam turn back, or wait anonymously in one of the cities for the other two to return. He had walked every step of the way with his eyes wide open. Was he really going to balk at the last step?

"Won't the others come looking when these two don't come back?" he said at last. Despite the tension, Devon hadn't interrupted the few minutes it took Adam to come to terms with things. For now.

"We'll make it look like an animal attack," Martin said. He was still speaking in that damnably kind tone of voice. "I have enough beast parts stored away. We'll put them unconscious, then use some claws and make it quick."

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Even having just agreed, Adam felt his stomach turn at the thought. "That's pretty disgusting."

"Yeah, it is." The normal grin was nowhere to be found.

"I don't suppose there's any point waiting around then," Adam said.

He moved through the camp in a daze, gathering up what supplies he might need. Everything else went into Martin's tattoo. Win or lose they wouldn't be coming back.

"You don't have to be the one to do it," Martin said as they began the hike back.

"Isn't it a bit cowardly if I leave the dirty work to you and Devon?"

"Shying away from violence isn't a bad thing, Adam. It's probably one of your better qualities, that you've gotten so far and haven't hardened yourself. Besides the outer shell, at least."

"Shut up. I'm a cultivator now. I'm supposed to be hardening myself."

Martin leaned against him for a heartbeat. "You're supposed to be challenging yourself. Growing. Defying the natural order. That doesn't have to mean becoming an asshole."

"Exactly." Devon spoke for the first time since they set off. "Just because that's what happened to Martin doesn't mean it will happen to you."

It was a bad joke and worse timing, but Adam appreciated the effort all the same. Conversation lapsed after that as they returned to their viewing point. In another world Adam might have laughed at the absurdity of walking an hour, having a ten minute conversation and walking back. In this world he just wished the distance would keep stretching out forever. All too soon they were back and peering down at the same pair of guards.

Adam stayed on the ridgeline, feeling like an absolute bastard of a coward and incredibly grateful at the same time. The others went to work without speaking, like they'd done this before. For all Adam knew, they might have. He was reminded forcefully that there were still decades worth of stories he'd never heard, and it's not like Martin or Laurel had made a secret about being the fixers for their sect. Sent in to win the unwinnable fight, or infiltrate the impregnable fortress. It was all too easy to imagine as he stayed in his hiding spot, tracking Devon and Martin until they slipped behind another outcropping and he lost his line of sight.

With dread pooling in his stomach, he turned back to watching the guards. They were livelier now, chatting and joking with one another over the kind of meager wilderness meal Adam would never get used to. All his instincts screamed to close his eyes until it was over but he couldn't look away.

They made it quick. Martin descended on the leftmost guard with no warning. His hands gripped the man's head, one clamping over the mouth. In the same moment, Devon appeared on the right and pressed a metal rod against the other guard's neck. Both slumped into unconsciousness. It was only the beginning.

The corpse of a massive beast appeared, courtesy of Martin's storage space. Adam watched as Martin leveraged the jaws open, yellowed fangs standing out against forest green fur. Without preamble, Martin snapped the jaws shut around the sleeping guard's head and neck. Flecks of blood and bone speckled the carcass when Martin wrenched the jaws back open. The sight of what remained of the guard was too much for Adam. He only made it to his hands and knees before losing the dried fruit and biscuits that passed for breakfast in the wilderness.

He got control of himself and walked down towards the cave. There was no one to hide from any more. Mercifully, he missed whatever Devon did to the other, and the enchanter was already dragging the body towards some trees growing off the top and sides of another nearby ridgeline.

Adam angled his approach to avoid the mess, but the splatter was more robust than he had realized from further away. But it was the smell that got to him. He hadn't known death had a smell quite like that. If there was anything left in his stomach he would be retching again on the approach.

Martin was standing off to the side, angled to avoid direct eye contact and acknowledged Adam's arrival with a jerk of his head. "I'm sorry you had to watch that," he finally said.

Adam made a noise from the back of his throat. "I'm sorry you had to do it. Stars above Martin, this is insane."

"It is. Fuck." He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "I'm not usually so put out by a mission. But this is just a waste all around. Because those fuckers weren't satisfied with just breaking the world. They had to rip out everything valuable they could find at the same time."

Devon reappeared and joined them, nimbly avoiding the cooling pool of blood. "It's done. Dragged it to the trees. Ripped a limb off, and then put the rest of the body in my storage ring. Now let's get this done so we can go back to Verilia and drink until we forget what just happened."

There wasn't much else to say and Adam followed him into the gloom. Martin joined them a moment later, whispering "footprints" as though that explained anything.

The further in they went, the more obvious it was that this was anything but a natural cave. The entrance was normal enough, a rough gash in the rock indistinguishable from hundreds of others. But the tunnel they were in never narrowed too far, or stooped too low. No side tunnels branched off, nor were there any animals to be seen. Not even an insect. As they rounded a corner and the sunlight could no longer reach, Devon took out a mana stone and tapped it in a complicated rhythm. A warm yellow light pulsed out, settling in a high glow, then the stone lifted off of Devon's hand and hovered a pace behind his shoulder. Adam dodged his head out of the way when it drifted past him. Martin did not, just let the rock shove against his head until Devon angled himself to the other side.

A few more minutes brought them into a room, hewn out in a rough cube beneath the earth. There was no further passage or door that Adam could discern. He hated feeling the fool, but he hated not knowing something more.

"Where do we go from here? Was this the wrong tunnel?"

"No, this is it." Devon said. "It's an emergency exit, there isn't really supposed to be a way back in." He stroked the wall with an odd expression on his face. It took Adam a moment to identify it as sorrow. "The tunnel should be behind this part."

"Are we sure there's still a tunnel? Wouldn't it have caved in if the magic was gone?"

"It's there." Devon gestured back towards the entryway. "The enchantments were made to be subtle, but if you know what you're doing you can feel them active, pressing you to go back, explore somewhere else. When the cosmic mana was cut off, this tunnel sealed itself, but it was structurally sound to begin with. I would bet the enchantments are running again."

"Martin will provide the power and I'll be the key."

Putting action to words, Martin stepped up beside Devon and spread his stance wide, both hands pressed against the wall. In the space of heartbeats, he pressed forward, the stone flowing until his forearms were buried in the rock. Sweat beaded across his brow.

"This rock does not want to fucking move Devon. Do whatever it is you're going to do."

Devon pulled out a knife and carved a shallow gash across the back of his forearm. He pressed the bleeding appendage to the wall. Instead of dripping down to the floor, the blood moved against gravity. The wall drank it in and Adam shuddered. It was a bad day for his future dreams.

Where Martin had been struggling, like he would push the wall apart with strength alone, things now went smoothly. His back and shoulder muscles unclenched as the rock pulled away, leaving nothing but a gaping hole and a faint dusting of earth along Martin's arms.

The newly formed entryway was black as night. The glowstone hovered only a few paces away, but the light was swallowed instead of penetrating the unrelenting black.

"It won't stay open forever." Devon said. Without any further explanation he walked in, sending the cavern into darkness as well. Somehow their path was still darker.

"Stay close." Martin said before he too walked in.

Adam took a moment to breathe. He had killed today. Or just as good as. Violence was never a theory he intended to put into practice, and now here he was, sneaking into a compound crawling with Laskarians, very likely a place he'd be fighting his way out of. But he couldn't quite bring himself to regret continuing instead of turning back when the chance was offered. He wasn't sure where he could go from here, but the only way out was through. Adam stepped forward and joined the others in the black.

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