Blake jumped back and pulled his staff from his backpack straps, then took hold of it in both hands. The ground shuddered.

  The spiker had passed out of sight. It dipped beneath the ledge they stood on and slammed into the supporting rock, causing shudders to erupt through the ground. Blake widened his stance, but there was nothing he could do about the weak rock. It collapsed beneath them.

  “Get back to the wall!” he shouted, sprinting toward the inside of the ledge. A hunter ahead of him jumped and made it, but the rest in their split group fell.

  Blake spun himself around and dug his heels into the wall of the ledge that didn’t collapse, slowing his fall, then sprang off and rolled across the debris. He braced himself for a surge of pain, anticipating a broken arm or a shattered leg. Nothing came. His shin clacked against a rock, but it broke the stone, not his bone. The skin, on the other hand, didn’t fare so well.

  He staggered to his feet, coughing and waving the dust away from his face. A few other hunters had fallen and survived, and many more remained on the ledge above. Ulfreld himself hadn’t fallen, and he pushed to the brink of the ledge above. Nearly a hundred feet up.

  “Leave us, Elder!” shouted the hunter who had pushed them back and split their group in the first place. “Whatever spooked it is still here, and you need to leave! We will catch up if we live!”

  Ulfreld gave a curt nod, then motioned to the rest of the hunters. They turned away from the ledge and continued moving at a brisk pace.

  “What does that mean for us?” Blake breathed. He glanced around. Iver, Froskur, and two other cultivators had survived the fall, and one had died, a rock crushing his skull.

  “Did the spiker survive a ledge falling on it?” Froskur groaned, nursing his leg. It had twisted at an awkward angle, and the shin seemed broken.

  “It may not have,” said the cultivator who’d pushed them back. He was at the first stage of Foundation, and if Blake remembered right, his name was Detil. “I estimate it was about stage four of Foundation.”

  Stage six, Ethbin corrected inside Blake’s mind. Blake kept that to himself. He was tempted to take off the ring, but if he did, Ethbin wouldn’t be able to help him in this fight. Something told Blake he was going to need all the help he could get.

  The mists encroached on one side. Something hollered in the distance, letting out a deep bellow that climbed a few octaves to a shrill screech. On the other sides, the mountains and the slope formed a wall in front of them, or debris blocked them in. They could climb it, but not quickly.

  Blake took a fighting stance, waiting. Maybe the spiker was dead. But if it was as strong as Ethbin thought, the chances of a rockfall killing it were slim. He clenched his teeth and raised up onto his tip-toes, ready to spring into action. As the seconds passed, nothing happened.

  Then one of the cultivators ran to the ledge. He put his toes in a foothold and tried to scramble back up to the pass wall. He only made it a few feet off the ground before the heap of stone debris shifted. A black, leathery hand shot out and snagged the hunter at the waist before pulling him down beneath the debris. Bones crunched, and he screamed.

  The spiker erupted from the pile of debris, covered in dust and mildly injured. One of its arms hung limp at its side, and one of its eyes was closed. Blood weeped out from beneath its eyebrow.

  “It’s still alive!” Blake shouted.

  “Stay close!” Detil called, his beard and ponytail swaying. “Stick together, and hammer it with Smite techniques!”

  Blake ran toward the man, though he couldn’t hit it with a Smite technique without coming in contact with it. He ducked to the front of the formation while Iver and the others formed up at Detil’s sides. Iver supported Froskur with one arm like a crutch.

  Screeching, the spiker lumbered forward. It licked its lips, slurping up the blood of the cultivator it had eaten, then clenched its working arm into a fist and slammed it down on the ground. The shockwave made Blake stumble, and stone debris shot up out from the ground in a wave. Some struck him in the chest, flinging him back to the edge of the mists.

  But he’d taken the worst of the blow, breaking the wave of stone, and the formation of cultivators remained. Detil infused a spear with white light and flung it at the spiker, Iver mustered a ball of flame on his wrist, and the other hunter created a technique out of glowing blue feathers. She was a Blended with feathers for hair.

  As Blake pushed himself up, the spiker lumbered forward. It shrugged, knocking Detil’s spear aside, then lifted its chin to take Iver’s fireball without even flinching. The feathers did more damage. They were each a tiny dagger, and they cleaved gashes in the spiker’s cheek. It bellowed, creating a rush of wind and sound. A wave of invisible force rocked through the formation, flinging them aside and shattering the formation.

  Then it went for the feather cultivator first. It saw her as the biggest threat.

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  It slammed fist after fist into the ground, but she rolled away from all of them, until it kicked out with its feet as well. Its clawed toes sliced her in half at the waist, and Blake looked away, grimacing at the spurt of purple blood.

  Don’t fear, Ethbin said. You can still win this. Get up.

  Blake poised to rush back to the fight, but a glimmer of blue light caught his attention in the corner of his vision. River. “What are you doing here?” he hissed. “Get yourself to safety! You’re going to get killed! Or seen!”

  “Blake needs help,” River said.

  “Stay.”

  He sprinted back toward the fight, raising his staff up. Detil had grabbed his spear back up, and now, he stood in front of Iver and Froskur. Iver threw Froskur’s arm over his shoulder again, trying to help the frog-blend boy get away.

  Detil deflected one hit with his spear, then drove the tip through the beast’s hand. It pulled back, taking the spear with it like a toothpick. After taking one glance at its hand, it raised its arm with immense effort and slammed it down.

  Detil wasn’t as nimble as the feather cultivator had been. He dove to the side, but the spiker’s open palm crushed one of his legs. His scream was cut short when the spiker stepped on his head, crushing it.

  It was just Blake, Froskur, and Iver now. His eyes widened. The spiker raised its hands, preparing to slam them into Blake’s friends and crush the two boys.

  Honour surged in Blake’s channels. Black fire roiled in his gut. He couldn’t let his friends die. They’d helped him so much, and they needed him.

  This wasn’t a fair fight. The spiker was so much stronger than him. It would be a slaughter.

  Blake rushed to help anyway.

  He whirled his staff as he approached, building up a Black Palm and transmitting it through the staff’s wood. It swirled in the serpent designs at the staff’s head, sparking and popping.

  He slid along the ground, then slammed the staff into the bottom of the spiker’s hands. Black lightning surged up from the ground and struck the spiker’s palms with a cold crack. A shockwave blasted off the impact point, and the entire beast reeled backward, stumbling and swaying.

  Iver took the opportunity to blast it in the face with flame, charring its fur and flesh and searing its one remaining eye. Blood boiled, and it smelled like burnt rubber. Roaring, the spiker wheeled around, swiping wildly.

  Blake tackled the other two boys to the ground, and the spiker’s hand passed overhead.

  “I’ll distract it!” Blake called. “Look for a weakness.”

  “I don’t think it has any!” Iver shouted. “Brother, its back is covered in rock-hard spikes and it survived half a mountain falling on it!”

  “Well, so did we.”

  Spikers have a very thin skull on the top of their heads, and they know instinctively to protect it, Ethbin said. That’s why it tilted its chin up to avoid Iver’s fire.

  Blake nodded in understanding. “Hit the top of its head,” he said. “I’ll try to make it bend down for you.”

  “Understood,” Iver replied.

  Blake rushed to the side. He didn’t have to do much to draw the spiker’s attention—it already saw him as the most dangerous target. It swiped at him again, but he smashed an aftershock of the Black Palm into its hand, driving it down to the ground.

  Remember, Blake, Ethbin said. You have practically unlimited Honour reserves like this. You can hit a full Black Palm every time. They’ve already seen your lightning.

  Blake nodded in understanding. He dodged and jumped and conducted Black Palms through his staff at will, trying to get the spiker to expose the top of its head, but it was no use. It was just too tall, and Iver couldn’t get a good hit. Froskur used a water-based Smite technique to try to help, but it didn’t do much good. It only sent the spiker into a greater fit of rage.

  Worse, Blake couldn’t just use unlimited Black Palms. There was still a slight drawback: the Aes meridians he used to create the technique, when cycled so quickly, began filling with an ethereal black char, and it grew harder and harder to push Honour through them.

  Then the spiker struck Blake in the chest with the back of its hand. His bones didn’t crack, but his skin ripped, like he’d just gotten the worst rugburn ever, and the air fled his lungs. He flew back over the rocks and tumbled to a halt at the edge of the rock pit.

  Back where he’d been before. He’d accomplished nothing.

  The spiker prowled toward him, walking on its knuckles, gnashing its teeth. It had sharp, pointed fangs.

  Of course it wanted to eat him in particular.

  Wincing, he tried to push himself up, but all the injuries he’d suffered these past few days were catching up with him. His arm was still bleeding from where Svarikson had hit him, the wound reopened, the gashes and scratches Mingel had given him were weeping again, and it took too much effort to push himself back up.

  Was this actually going to be the end?

  But then a faintly cold watery nose nuzzled his shoulder. His Honour echo was still flaring, and Ethbin was saying something inside Blake’s mind, but Blake couldn’t perceive it. His ears were ringing and his entire spirit was trembling.

  He shut his eyes, trying to tune it all out, but he only ended up envisioning his siphon and the Honour echo on the other side of it.

  It pulsed, surging and resonating. If he could make his internal sense squint, as if it was looking at the sun, it would’ve. The Honour echo dimmed slightly, revealing…indents? The echo was about the same shape as him, but there was an indent on his forehead, on his shoulders, on his hips, in his gut—all across his body, there were seven…no, nine.

  The indent in his gut filled with blue light. It surged bright and powerful, and veins of watery light flooded out around his channels, clearing the char and imbuing his muscles with greater strength and renewing their energy. It was a cleansing effect.

  His eyes sprang open to find River pressing a hoof against his shoulder. Had she just bonded her echo into his?

  He didn’t have time to question it. The spiker was still approaching, and he had to find a way to finish this.