"You're sure about this?" Yasmin asked.

The six of us—Ellen, Jeff, Yasmin, Raul, an archer named Karina, and me, plus Jessie—were holed up around a table outside a breakfast place downtown. We'd been there for a few hours, and Yasmin hadn't stopped asking.

Jessie hadn't stopped responding the same way, either. "Yep. I can sign you guys up for a portal the second it opens, but if we're not at the portal, we can't check it, and if we can't check it, we can't know if it's what Kade needs."

"So, why aren't we spreading out so we can check as many as possible?" Raul asked. He didn't talk much—mostly good questions.

"Because we're not looking for E-Rank portals. We need, at the very least, high-D," I said. "More likely, C. We need as many of us at C-Rank in a month as we can get, so we need to be taking advantage of the toughest portals we can—"

"Got one. Three blocks north. C-Rank. Go check it out!" Jessie interrupted.

Not for the first time, I wished I still had Dash. Using Flashstep and Gustrunner in a portal was great, but I quickly fell behind Raul, who had a movement skill, and Jeff, whose C-Rank just made him faster than me. By the time I'd dodged through traffic and weaved through the crowd forming outside of the bright, shimmering yellow-gold portal, the two of them had already staked a claim.

But until Jessie and Ellen pulled up, we couldn't be sure.

Deimos honked and drove slowly through the group of people. Then the passenger door opened, and Jessie popped out. She hobbled over on her cane, stared critically at the portal, and raised an eyebrow. "I think this'll work. I was expecting more of a metallic tint, but it'll do. Delver Carlson, your team is clear to enter the portal, kill the boss, and close it. Get it done." She fiddled with the tablet as Deimos parked nearby and Ellen got out. Then the six of us stepped through the portal.

"Okay, full disclosure, we're here to kill two bosses, not one," I said as we stared down the massive tree. Unlike our last time in an Arboreal portal world, we'd started at the top—and also unlike our last time, the world wasn't wrapped around a single tree trunk.

Delicate, spider-silk suspension bridges crisscrossed between thick boughs and branches, connecting pale white pagodas with thin, graceful arches. The closest was nearly a hundred feet away. I stared at it.

Something flashed between the carved wooden pillars. A moment later, an arrow slammed into the portal behind us, shattering. Karina didn't waste any time; before the archer on the far side of the bridge could react, she'd fired an arrow. Someone screamed. "Go, go!" she yelled.

Jeff took off, closing the gap across the bridge with his shield raised to protect his face. I hesitated only long enough to summon the Stormsteel breastplate and Tallas's Dueling Sword, then followed as Yasmin started applying Scripts to Ellen and Karina. We'd be fighting this first battle—as so many first battles went—without all our buffs.

The first elf intercepted Jeff halfway across the suspension bridge.

Boughguard Sentinel: C-Rank

When Jeff's shield slammed into the armored elf's braced tower shield, the shockwave shook the bridge, and I staggered in my headlong sprint. Raul piled up behind Jeff, spear at the ready to take advantage of any gaps, but the elf's defense was solid, and the narrow bridge offered no flanking. Worse, a pair of archers had opened fire; an arrow stuck out of Jeff's pauldron, and a second had stuck into his shield.

A lance of sunlight surged down from the sky. Cheddar hovered high overhead, his jaws open. But the Sentinel blocked it; his shield didn't even seem scorched. Clearly, my familiar wasn't going to be the answer.

I thought about a spell, but Slicing Bolt and Thunder wave would both hit Jeff before they hit the Sentinel, and Ariette's Zephyr and Razor didn't pack the punch to break through the shield.

Another arrow sliced across my face, leaving a thin line of blood across my cheek. "This isn't working! Boost!" I yelled. Then I backed up, took a deep breath, and sprinted toward Jeff's back.

As I got close, he lifted his shield and crouched, forming two steps with his back and bulwark. Raul stared for a second, then lunged around Jeff's side and slammed his spear tip into the tower shield. The elf hunkered down, and I stepped up Jeff's back and onto the shield. He pushed up, and I jumped at the same time.

I flew through the air. The sentinel's sword whipped at my legs, but missed by inches. Then I hit the delicate suspension bridge hard enough to shake it, rolled to my feet, and took off toward the two snipers.

Behind me, someone screamed in agony. I didn't turn around to see who it was; if it was one of us, we'd deal with it. And if not, it meant we were winning.

I closed the gap toward the graceful-looking building. An arrow punched into my leg. I pushed Stamina at the wound, sliced the shaft and fletching off with the dueling sword, and cast Slicing Bolt. A wave of wind and lightning slammed into the offending archer; she twitched in her leaf-covered robes, and an arrow fell from her hand.

In the moment before she recovered, the dueling sword lashed out across her neck. Blood pooled on the floor. I lunged as the wound electrically cauterized. The blow punched into her stomach. She doubled over, and I kicked her corpse free. She'd been a D-Rank Wood Tower Sniper—just like the enemies we'd fought in our last Arboreal portal.

The second archer dropped his bow. A two-handed curved sword appeared in his hand, and he rushed me. I parried with the dueling sword, cast Ariette's Razor, and slashed at his face. He tried to block. He failed; the razor simply went around his scalpel-thin blade and sliced a thin, deep groove across his nose and left eye.

He backed off. We traded blows for a few seconds, parrying and dodging, until an arrow seemed to grow from his throat.

I stabbed twice, leaving two deep, crackling wounds in his chest. Then a spear caught him in the shoulder, and a ball of shadow hit him dead in the face.

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"Gotcha!" Ellen called. "Good job disrupting them; it helped us force the bridge."

"Don't relax yet. There may be more," Jeff said.

He was right. I looked around; the closest building was fifty feet away, across the next bridge. The whole portal world looked like a maze of them. But no arrows cut the air as I stared at it. "I think we're clear for now."

"Great. Let's get buffed up, Yasmin. Then, we've got a monster to hunt."

The only good news was the lack of spiders.

Everything else was rough. There were archers everywhere. I'd burned half my Mana on fighting back against them, and both Ellen and Karina were busy all the time. Jeff had been forced into a defensive position, blocking arrows so the girls could do their thing. That left Raul and me as the melee pressure—and without a shield, we couldn't push against them.

But there was one bit of news that was double-edged.

Windtouched Boughguard: C-Rank

The elf's rapier howled as a gale formed around it, and I dropped into a defensive stance with one hand behind my back. The other was covered with the Stormsteel gauntlet; it ran up to a thin, narrow pauldron at my shoulder.

Raul was busy with two elves outside—one of which was a string mage—and the rest of the team was bogged down on the bridge, dueling three snipers.

The battle trance rose inside of me, and I readied myself as the Boughguard lunged. The dueling sword whipped up. Our steel met, and the air suddenly stank of ozone.

I thrust experimentally at the elf's face. His blade intercepted, then countered. I stepped back through the door. He pressured me, and I retreated around the narrow, guardrail-less walkway. Three thousand feet of air threatened me from the right. To my left was a series of arched windows and a thin, wooden wall.

I parried a second time, and a second Rainfall Charge appeared around my sword. I consumed it almost instantly for Cloudwalk. There was no reason to hoard them, and damage reduction meant minor cuts would be almost trivial. In a duel like this, I'd have to take a hit to win.

Then I shifted to Thunderbolt stance. Both hands gripped the sword, right next to my ear, and I put my full weight into a single lunge.

He dodged, pressing himself against the wall. I tried to turn the attack into a slash. His blade got in the way, and his riposte punched into my unarmored arm. Cloudwalk did its job, and between it and my Stamina, it was like I hadn't been hit at all. I whirled. My whole body went into the cut; the Boughguard ducked, and my sword sliced through the tip of his ear instead of his neck.

But I was winning. I retreated again as he launched another series of thrusts and lunges. A few cut into my arms and legs, and one punched through the side of my neck. I ignored them all, let go of my sword with my off-hand, and switched to Cyclone.

I had a Lightning Charge, and I used it. Thunder Wave cast, then cast a second time. Dozens of tendrils of lightning reached for the only nearby target: the Boughguard. He tried to parry, then to dodge. But there was nowhere to hide. Arcs of electricity linked him to me, and a moment later, his skin and muscles had charred as thousands of volts poured into him.

I kicked his twitching body off the edge and kept moving. The fact that he'd been Windtouched boded well for me; I had a feeling I'd be learning a new Law soon.

A half-hour later, we stopped at an intersection. A pair of dead elves littered the floor in front of an absolutely gorgeous, caryatid-carved gateway. The path beyond it curled down into the massive tree's main trunk.

But there was a second route. It wasn't obvious at first, but the wind howled through a crack in the gigantic branch next to us. The passage across was little more than a few thin branches, without so much as a walkway to rely on. I pointed with Tallas's Dueling Sword. "That's the way I need to go."

"Is it?" Ellen asked. Her eyes narrowed. Then she nodded. "Okay. Lead the way; we'll be right behind you."

"You're sure?"

"Yes, we're sure," Jeff said. "We're here to kill your Paragon, then clear the portal, so let's kill your Paragon, then clear the portal."

"Okay." I stepped out onto the first thin branch. Surprisingly, it didn't move at all under my weight. I bounced on it a few times, then nodded. "It's more stable than it looks. I think we can get Jeff across, even though he's a little heavy."

"Har, har." Jeff followed me as I moved across the makeshift steps toward the crack in the branch, and Ellen followed him. As I got closer, the wind picked up, all but sucking me off my perch; I braced with one hand.

The final gap was too wide to step across. "I'm going to have to jump for it!" I yelled over the howling gale. "I think the wind will help!"

"Okay!" Jeff shouted.

"What?!" Ellen asked.

I didn't bother answering. Instead, I threw myself toward the crevice. My hands reached out, but before they could get a grip, the wind seemed to pick up, and I tumbled into the hollow space beyond it.

And there it was.

Khalir the Windlord: C-Rank

I'd imagined a massive bird—or perhaps a winged serpent like Cheddar. A swirling tornado elemental, or a magic-using elf with wind magic. But I should have expected exactly what I found.

A spider.

A spider with limbs made of howling gales and a body that was little more than a whirlwind. Only its eight eyes staring at me from inside the tornado gave a hint at its physical body; everything else was covered in swirling dust and thrashing storms.

I hated spiders.

I readied Tallas's Dueling Blade and pulled up my resources.

Stamina: 131/310 (+10), Mana: 103/400

Then I threw myself at the Paragon, and it moved to counter.

Angelo Lawrence's phone buzzed on his desk, and he carefully picked it up.

When Councilwoman Myers called, it was in his best interests to answer. "Yes?"

"We've identified the breach yesterday. It took a long time to verify, because the hacker was both incredibly clever and unbelievably careless. The suspect's name is Jessica Gerald. She's the daughter of a deceased C-Rank delver, has very high computer skills for a high-schooler, and also has a half-brother whose identity you'll be very interested in."

"Kade Noelstra," Angelo said.

He didn't need Councilwoman Myers to confirm it. The moment she'd said the hacker's last name, he'd made the connection. But she did anyway. "Yes. I've got my personal team digging into exactly what information Miss Gerald was able to uncover, and I've deployed a team to arrest her and bring her in for an interview—"

"That would be a mistake," Angelo said quietly.

"How so? She broke the law."

"Yes, she did. I cannot deny that. However, you are certain she did not disrupt any of your files? If that is the case, she was not attacking you. She was looking for something—and she found it. The intrusion lasted less than fifteen minutes."

"Correct. But she almost certainly saw things she wasn't supposed to. If it goes public—"

"If it goes public, Jessica Gerald is a fifteen-year-old girl. The Governing Council can survive anything in the sixth-tier secure files by denying and reminding the public that she is a teenager, not a reputable source of information. But if Kade turns against you…" Angelo trailed off.

Councilwoman Myers cleared her throat. "You really think this kid is something special?"

"No. I do not think it. I am sure of it. Kade is hiding things from us all, and he does not trust my guild. He most likely mistrusts the others as well. Right now, the Governing Council represents the organization most likely to learn what is so special about him. If you arrest his sister, that ends."

For a moment, Councilwoman Myers went quiet. Then her phone went silent, and hold music played. Angelo Lawrence snorted in amusement—and annoyance. It had been years since anyone had been brave—or foolish—enough to put the Light of Dawn on hold. Anyone other than Myers, that was.

Then the music stopped, and Councilwoman Myers's voice returned. "Okay, I've ordered the team to stand down. We'll keep an eye on Miss Gerald, though. If she tries anything, the Governing Council is prepared to defend itself."

"Understood." Angelo Lawrence cut the connection, set his cell phone in its place, and stared out at the desert below. A bullet had been dodged, but he had a feeling more danger was on its way. After a moment, he pulled up the battle plans for the Carlsbad relief convoy and went over them one more time.

After all, it was his convoy to command, and it would be handled as precisely as he could.

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