The throne room was no longer the breath of fresh air it had once grown to be. Brandis sat, a solemn man, as he stared at the space he had come to call his own. The red carpet that trailed from the entrance, up the stairs, and the platform leading to his throne had been walked upon by predecessors before him. Woven from the intestines of the dragon slain by the first king of Bandiv, it was a powerful thing.

  Or so everyone liked to think.

  The truth was that nobody knew anymore. Time had eroded knowledge and certain pieces of information weren’t really important enough to be recorded in a way that left the truth unarguable. If a cape was made from the flames of a dying volcano and forged in the heart of a leviathan, nobody cared unless it played a symbolic role, served a practical purpose or possessed actual qualities that were constantly displayed.

  If it did not, it was free to speculation.

  Brandis stared at the length of the red carpet. Its vibrance was nothing important. In truth, sometimes it looked dull. There were times when it shined as if it was something truly important, but those times came as often as a man’s need to scratch an unnecessary itch in his groin. It happened, it was memorable for the duration of the scratch, a little longer after the scratch, then it was forgotten.

  The beautiful red carpet, currently dull in his eyes, was as important to the Bandiv kingdom as a momentary itch in the groin. Brandis smiled sadly. This was why there was nothing to prove if it had truly been woven from the intestines of a slain dragon.

  It was, ultimately, importantly unimportant.

  Who knows, maybe after four more kings, people will think it was woven by the gods, Brandis thought. They would’ve taken the heart of the one true [Heretic] and gifted the kingdom a carpet fitting for a king.

  Brandis sighed. Taking his eyes off the carpet, he looked at everything else.

  The throne room was unnaturally quiet. Tall windows tried to cast long, pale shadows that would’ve stretched across the marble floor if not for the light within the room. Once upon a time, not even too long ago, the marble floor had been covered in circles and symbols, sigils and runes. A spell beyond mortal ken had stained it so gracefully that it had clearly been the work of one who had at least perceived the beauty of the universe.

  That beauty had brought forth the potential heroes of Bandiv… of Nastild.

  Those heroes were gone from the kingdom now, sent off in different directions. The purpose was to prepare them for the world—to train them to be powerful. It was Brandis’ hope that they would also learn of humanity during their travels. After all, they were just children. Blind to the reality of their own world, they were nothing but blind and deaf to the realities of Nastild.

  Sometimes, it was easy to forget that they were nothing but children when he thought of the weight of the responsibility that he and the [Sage] had put on them.

  Beyond the walls of the palace, the sun had long since set. The darkness encroached, filling the night sky, claiming its place during its time to reign. The lights from the orbs strategically placed on the walls of the throne room, banished the darkness from creeping within. The lights kept their king in their glow, kept the darkness weighing down on his heart from manifesting in the room he sat within.

  Brandis tore his gaze away from the throne room, from the marble floor and red carpet, from the walls of bricks and tall painted windows, from the vast silence of the room before him. Turning his eyes upwards, he rested his head against the tall backrest of his throne and looked to the ceiling. The enormous painting of a vicious fire dragon stared back at him. Its reptilian body curled in a restful manner, the only thing that told anyone that it was a threat was its size and the condescension in its eyes. The artists had truly captured the superiority in deep yellow eyes that seemed to glow even in the light of the room.

  Sometimes Brandis wondered if the dragon was painted there to give those who sat on the throne a sense of superiority or to intimidate those who came into the throne room thinking that they had all the cards.

  Brandis had never asked his father, and he had never known. Personally, he didn’t know and he didn’t care if he wanted to know or not.

  A soft sound to the side pulled him from the silence of his own heart, from the small voice in his head that said that power ruined good men, and he was no different. Since the news of the rising darkness, he had made decisions befitting a proper king but not a proper man. He had taken counsel from those whose natural inclination was towards doing what was necessary with no regard for what was good.

  He had thought that his own penchant for good would tame their demand for ‘necessary’, that his morality would bend their pieces of advice until it ultimately made them acceptable. He had been a fool to think so. A colossal fool.

  Brandis turned his head to the side. From one of the side doors leading out of the throne room, the woman he loved so greatly walked graciously into the room.

  Rue Brandis moved with the grace of a gentle breeze, every step she took was fluid, effortless, as though the world beneath her lived for the moment she would walk on it. She was clad in a simple purple gown that flowed around her in delicate waves. The fabric caught the light of the throne room, shifting it with the rhythm of her stride.

  She held her hair up in a bun tonight. It was frayed at the top that made it seem as though she had put it up in a hurry, which she had. For all her meticulousness, Brandis could not understand why she always had no patience for her hair.

  Rue Brandis, unlike most queens that Brandis knew, past and present, always presented herself simply. But in her simplicity, she was always breathtaking.

  Tonight, however, her lips that were always kept in a teasing smile were curled in reverse. They bore the burden of a broken heart. A failed attempt. Brandis’ wife was not happy. But that was not all that there was to it, Brandis could tell as she walked so elegantly yet hesitated to meet his eyes as she crossed the distance leading to him.

  She was sad because she believed she had, in some way, let him down. She was sad because she thought that she had done something to displease him.

  As she approached him, her feet seeming to glide over the floor, soundless despite the heels she put on, Brandis wondered what piece of information she was here to give him.

  She came to a slow stop in front of him. Brandis frowned as she stood at a good distance from him, positioned where his subjects stood when they sought to approach him.

  “Why?” he said, a quiet inquiry, a question for which he feared the answer.

  His queen had decided to speak to him in an official capacity, where she was the subordinate and he was the king—her superior.

  “You do not stand there.” It was as much a statement of fact as it was a command. Brandis’ voice was oddly calm, careful. “What has happened?”

  Rue looked up at him, meeting his eyes for the first time. Then she curtsied. She was doing things that she did not normally do.

  The schemer that he knew his wife to be, Brandis often wondered what schemes she had in her head when dealing with him. It never worried him, though, because he could not find a place in his mind that doubted her. If she schemed with him in mind, it was always the simple things. A prank. Some new way to seduce him. Some new way to annoy him like the mischievous child their children did not know she could be.

  “I just finished speaking to the Department of Finance,” Rue said, her eyes never leaving his.

  If he could not bring her to him, then Brandis would go to her. Knowing this, he rose from his throne. There was something liberating in the action that momentarily took him by surprise. There was a lifted weight as he seemed to transition from a king slowly corrupted by the demands of the crown to a husband reaching for his wife.

  Rue frowned slightly but said nothing.

  “And what news have you brought with you from the Department of Finance?” Brandis walked down the four steps leading down from the elevated platform that housed the thrones, separating him from his subjects. His footsteps sounded like that of some wild, graceless, giant in his own ears as compared to Rue’s graceful steps.

  He stopped after the last step, standing in front of his wife.

  “What news have you brought me, Rue?” he repeated.

  She flinched at the mention of her own name. But she did not correct him, and that worried him. Whenever he called her by her name, she always corrected him, telling him that she was whatever form of endearment she liked, ‘babe’, ‘beautiful’, ‘sweetheart’, ‘darling’, ‘hatchling’—Brandis never understood that one—or something equally loving.

  A worried line creased Brandis’ forehead. “Hatchling?” he tried, using an endearment.

  “I’m sorry,” Rue said in a sad voice, looking up at him. “I thought everything was working according to plan. I thought I had it all together… I always do.”

  Her eyes grew rheumy, wet with unshed tears.

  Brandis nodded hurriedly, agreeing with her. “You always do.”

  There wasn’t much that he could say to console her. The most beautiful things rarely moved Rue. Falsehoods and kindly worded deceits annoyed her. Gentle words of affirmation and reassurances often left her pissed off.

  She was not like the women he’d had experience with growing up. The only way to console her was with the truth and with solutions. So what happened when he had no truths that could console her and no solutions?

  Rue sniffled, then comported herself. “The Department of Finance has informed me of large transactions going through the accounts of the summoned.”

  Brandis said nothing. Her words were another reminder of how low he had fallen from being the good man he once was. Rue had chosen to keep track of the transactions that happened on the accounts of the summoned. Knowing the necessity of it, he had allowed it despite it being an invasion of their privacy.

  “All the accounts?” he asked.

  Rue shook her head. “Only two.”

  Brandis had a feeling that he would not like where this was going. “Let me guess,” he said. “The Lachearts.”

  His wife nodded. “I thought I had him with the enchantment. He was so awe struck by it. I watched him recognize the complexity of it.”

  “How much?” Brandis asked. “How much did they move, love?”

  “The older brother moved everything,” Rue answered, composing herself once more. She was often like a trained soldier when she needed to be.

  “And Aiden?”

  “At first, he left some,” she explained. “But a few hours ago, he withdrew what was left at one of the banks in Elstrire.”

  They had decided to move. The Lacheart brothers were cutting ties with the kingdom—the one thing Brandis, Rue, and the [Sage] had been hoping to prevent. But, while they were smart enough to know that they needed money, there were some loopholes. Their plan was incomplete if they were trying to disappear.

  With the new design of bank cards, the banks were in charge of keeping people’s coins safe. It lifted the responsibility of your coins from you so that you didn’t have to worry about things like being jumped by bandits on the road. And every bank card and account was only issued to people lacking any real criminal records or, at the very least, those who had actual reliable life tracks. You needed a trusted and verifiable source of income to get one. So if you were waylaid by bandits or people with questionable characters, they would be unable to take your precious gold because bank cards can only transfer funds to other bank cards.

  There were loopholes to the entire thing. You could always have whatever you had on you stolen, you could also be unlucky and run into people that just wanted to kill you.

  In summary, all transactions involving a card could be tracked. So all they had to do was track what accounts the transfers were made to.

  “Where were the funds transferred to?” Brandis asked. “Did he and his brother transfer to the same account?”

  Rue shook her head.

  Brandis frowned. “They withdrew them? You said that they were transfers made.”

  “The Department of Finance could not track them,” she explained. “According to their records, it was a transfer to a nonexistent account. To a card tied to no accounts.”

  “How is that…” Brandis’s voice trailed off as he realized what was happening. “Forgeries.”

  Rue’s nod was all the answer that he needed.

  But how?

  It would take a very high level of sophisticated forgery to pull off what the kingdom had been working on for the past month. They had required high level [Enchanters] and [Mages] and [Artificers] and [Crafters] to pull off the bank card concept.

  This was the reason Brandis hated the underworld. They ruined good things and did so very quickly.

  “But how did he get his hands on forgeries so quickly?” he muttered. “Who would’ve…”

  His eyes widened in realization. If Aiden had gained access to something as banned as an [Enchantment of Lesser Confusion], then there wasn’t much of a reason to be surprised. The underworld worked that way, after all. All you needed was a foot in for it to swallow you whole.

  He placed his hands on Rue’s shoulders trying not to let his sense of hurry show. “The vambraces,” he said. “The one that you said he got for the soldier, Ded.”

  Rue nodded. “I’ve already sent people to speak with the soldier. People have already been sent to confirm the location of said shop.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Just after I got the update from the Department of Finance.”

  “What is the status of the shop? Did we find anything we can use or at least just crack down on some illegal organization?”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Rue shook her head. “There was a fight, some people died. Ultimately, nothing of use. We caught one man alive and we’re hoping he gives us something useful.”

  Brandis took a step back and sat down on one of the steps. He blinked very intentionally, as if he was reminding his body that he was still in active control of it. He blinked again.

  “So, nothing so far,” he muttered.

  Rue moved to him, squatting in front of him. “We have the prisoner.”

  “Having the prisoner does not tell us where the Lachearts have gone.” Brandis paused, remembering something else that was more important to him than the Lachearts. “What of Witty?” he asked in a hurry. “What of Elaswit’s transactions?”

  “Her card is still intact.” Rue placed her hand on his hand to calm him. “But you know that she’s not coming back, not anytime soon. While I did send her out with Aiden to be closer to him, it was also so that she could explore the world. She needed it, love. She needed time away from…” she gestured at the throne room with one hand, somehow encompassing the entire castle. “This,” she finished. “We showed her too much too soon. Her departure was for her. It was necessary. Attaching her to Aiden was just my final effort to foster a relationship between them even if it was not a romantic one. A friendship would have sufficed.”

  Brandis knew about it—his wife’s scheme with their daughter. The only reason he allowed it was because she never forced them to do things they hated. They did things they were uncomfortable with, but never things that besmirched their principles or twisted their sense of morality.

  So she’s really gone, Brandis thought. It was a bitter feeling. For a moment he had held hope of her return, then his wife had crushed the hope into countless pieces.

  Now his daughter was out there in the world doing the gods knew what. Just like his brother.

  “What of Valdan?”

  “No transactions on his account,” Rue confirmed. “A [Knight of the Crown] is often always loyal. You and your predecessors have always known how to pick them.”

  Brandis shook his head. “Valdan is no longer a [Knight of the Crown].”

  Rue frowned in shock. “You stripped him of the title?”

  Brandis nodded.

  “Why?”

  He smiled sadly and met his wife’s gaze. “Because he asked it of me, my love. It was the least I could do. You cannot enforce a responsibility upon someone who doesn’t want it.” He reached a hand out and cupped her face. “You know this.”

  Rue’s eyes darted about in her socket, thinking. Brandis knew that she understood the weight of titles and being given titles that you did not want.

  “Carrying a title you don’t want is nothing more than a burden,” Brandis explained to her. “No matter how many benefits come with it. I could not do that to Valdan. Not after all that I’ve already done to him.”

  “We,” Rue corrected. “Not after what we’ve already done to him. You did not make the decision alone. You didn’t even come up with the plan.”

  “Perhaps.” Brandis pressed his lips into a thin line. “But I still put it into motion. I still said yes. I declared the punishment. I gathered the enemies… I swore the Oath.”

  Derendoff had refused to fight against Valdan, claiming that it was beneath him. That he did not trust the king not to interfere. He had been the only person at the time with the level of power neccessary to really test Valdan. He had also been the only person at the time within the required level of strength and skill that was also entirely expendable.

  To convince Derendoff of the fairness of the fight in his favor, Brandis had sworn the Oath. In hindsight, he should’ve found another way. But there hadn’t been time. He’d only had less than a handful of days to work with.

  “Does he at least still carry the title of [Knight]?” Rue asked suddenly.

  Brandis could almost see the wheels spinning in her head as she thought of far too many things.

  “It’s his to drop,” he answered. “That’s what I told him. He’s still affiliated to the kingdom, but I don’t know if he still holds the title.”

  “So we don’t know if he’s coming back or if he’s with Witty,” Rue mumbled.

  Brandis watched the light in her eyes fade at the realization that she had potentially lost her daughter. It was a rare thing for her to show such levels of weakness. Rue was a believer in playing the part of a trainer not a mother the moment her children started gaining levels. She became less of a mother and more of a kindly-worded instructor.

  To see her crestfallen at the possibility of their daughter out in the world and not protected made him want to smile and tell her that Elaswit would be fine. It was a crack in her logical disposition to be an instructor over her emotional disposition to be a mother.

  Before he could decide on if he should do so, however, the moment was gone. Rue blinked and her sadness was gone.

  “She will survive,” she said. “Or she will not.”

  Brandis sighed. The moment was gone. The motherly concern had left his wife. “And if she doesn’t?” he asked. “Does that mean that she is weak?”

  Rue shrugged, noncommittal. “Not necessarily. It would mean that she is weak, and that we failed to prepare her for the world properly. It would be more of our fault than hers. But there is no need for us to dwell on the possibility of sadness, only on the problem at hand.”

  Brandis nodded. “You are correct, hatchling.” He got up from the step and she moved with him. “Right now, we need to find the summoned.”

  “If we do, are we bringing them back?” Rue asked.

  They had already begun walking towards the exit and her question made Brandis pause. Would they be bringing them back?

  Nastild was a deadly place, a dangerous place. Bringing them back would be safer for them. No matter how strong they were, they were still young, still in need of training. It was only…

  Brandis shook his head. Have you really fallen so far?

  Here he was, justifying the need to bring back two people who he had practically kidnapped from their world against their own will. He wasn’t saving them by bringing them back. Objectively speaking, he was recapturing them.

  “We are not bringing them back,” he said in the end, shaking his head. “They want to be free. We cannot hold them captive if they don’t want to be here.”

  Rue opened her mouth but closed it without saying anything.

  “I don’t need council on this, my love,” he told her. “It is my decision.”

  “Then should we stop tracking them?”

  Brandis shook his head. “No, keep trying. It is safe to know where they are, but only so that we can help them if they need to be helped. Nobody is bringing them back. Their freedom is theirs. It is the least of what we owe them.”

  As they resumed their walk out of the throne room, Brandis shifted his attention to more immediate matters. He was only a step away from learning how to absorb the [Liquid Life] from the [Sage]’s broken staff. He knew it. He could feel it in his soul.

  He was just missing something.

  Once he succeeded, he would return to the black pillars that reached from the ground to pierce the heavens, the gateway to the truly magical side of Nastild. He would challenge the leviathan that had continued to defeat him once more.

  Until then, they had an underground organization to wipe off the face of Nastild.

  “Do you think he will talk before morning?” he asked Rue as they left the throne room.

  Rue shrugged. “I like to leave things to play their part.”

  They shared a look and Rue smiled.

  “I’m joking,” she said. “Faronal is in charge of the questioning. He’ll break before morning.”

  Brandis nodded. That was good.

  …

  The ride back was annoying, to say the least. The air was tense with anticipation, disbelief and a touch of doubt. Elaswit had kept her tongue, sharing only the most important things in the conversation for the past three days.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Letto muttered, seated atop his jepat. He looked like a man who had just found out that what he’d thought was the truth of the world his whole life was a lie.

  “Believe it,” Sam said. There was a touch of pride in his voice, but it was mixed with terror. “He did it. I saw it with my own two eyes.”

  Sam was Elaswit’s newest problem, one she’d had to deal with since they’d left the small town near Elstrire.

  “All those people,” Drax said. His lips were pressed in a frown, Elaswit could see a touch of righteous rage there.

  It would not last long.

  Ariadne, the only other summoned, was simply quiet. She’d been quiet the entire ride back. No words had left her lips. She replied to anything with nods and shrugs or shakes of her head.

  “He cut through them like a heartless psychopath,” Sam said. “I had to escape through one of the windows.” He shivered very visibly, too visibly. “I knew there was something wrong with him but I didn’t think it would be that bad.”

  Letto shot him a very dark look. “He must’ve had his reasons,” he snapped, but there wasn’t much confidence in his words.

  Letto sounded like a child trying to convince himself of something by pushing the narrative onto another person.

  After Fjord had reported Aiden’s words to Elaswit and gone off on his own, she had found the knight, Sir Thompfer. Usurping command of the entire quest had been easy after listening to the knight’s update.

  They had gathered the rest of the summoned after that, Sam finding them before they had even found him. Elaswit had set eyes on him and it had been all she could do not to try and put him down.

  But she hadn’t, she had played oblivious to the crimes Aiden had levied against him. Her presence had been a surprise to Aiden’s colleagues. She’d explained her presence and how she’d arrived in town with Aiden and Sir Valdan. Sadly, before she could speak more on the subject and decide on how best to handle everything she knew, Sam had been more than happy to claim witness to the massacre that had wracked the town that morning.

  His words had sent a deep wave of terror through his colleagues and Elaswit couldn’t blame them. She had seen the scene before they’d left. She had seen what Aiden had done. It had been brutal, inhumane. If she hadn’t known that they were [Cannibals], according to Aiden’s information, she would’ve been repulsed by what Aiden had done. But she knew what they were, believed what Aiden said they were. So she was not repulsed. However, she was still terrified by what he had done.

  “Are you sure he’s not responsible for what happened to Anita?” Ariadne said, speaking for the first time in three days. She had a smooth voice, designed for singing. It was difficult to hear it seem so broken.

  “He could’ve,” Sam muttered with a disgusted scowl. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  Elaswit’s grip tightened on the reins of her jepat. “I already told you that he didn’t. We arrived there that night, and your friend had been in that state for longer than ten hours. It could not have been Aiden.”

  In the beginning, she had taken Aiden’s word that Sam was the culprit simply because the words had come from Aiden. But in the last few days, any time their dead friend had come up, Sam had been quick to blame its possibility on Aiden. Elaswit guessed it was easier to blame it on a culprit who was already responsible for another crime, on the run, and hated by everybody.

  She was determined not to let that happen.

  They were in the capital city now, riding slowly through the streets to the castle. With her shawl still concealing her face, the citizens around moved about their business completely ignoring her. Right now, they could see the castle gates as they drew closer to it.

  “I still can’t believe he just ran,” Letto said.

  Drax’s lips tightened in a barely restrained frown. “There are crimes that you cannot atone for. When you commit them, you know that your only way to survive is to run.”

  “Ted, too?” Ariadne asked, her voice cracking as she mentioned the name of Aiden’s older brother.

  “He is his brother,” Drax said simply. “It is commendable that he chose to stick by his brother’s side, but a proper brother would’ve brought him in. Ted has done Aiden nothing good by running with him.”

  He sounded so righteous in his words. Like a priest judging a man to be a sinner deserving of death. Or a man too bound by his principles to be flexible.

  “That is enough of that,” Elaswit said, unwilling to listen to more slander about Aiden. “Like I said when we left, investigators have been dispatched from Elstrire to find out what really happened in the building. This is Nastild, not your home world. For all you know, Ai—Lord Lacheart might have found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and had to fight his way out. We will only know for certain when the investigation is done.”

  “And how long will that take?” Sam asked.

  “We should have an answer already,” she answered. “Once we get to the palace, it should be knowledge that my father possesses. As for Anita, I’m sorry but the state of the scene has made any chance of deducing the culprit impossible.”

  Sir Thompfer’s grip on his jepat’s rein twitched ever so slightly, but the knight held his composure. Elaswit hoped that no one had noticed it.

  “And what will Aiden’s punishment be?” Letto asked.

  “Death,” Drax said simply. “It is only fair, unless his actions are justified.” He paused after that, solemn, thoughtful. In the end, he added in a mutter, “It will be hard to justify such a massacre, though.”

  “Punishment in this case,” Elaswit pointed out, “is my father’s to give.”

  If they were [Cannibals] as Aiden had claimed, then the investigation would prove it. It would leave his actions justified. There was no way her father would expect him alone to apprehend all those people. Killing was a great crime on Nastild, but there were circumstances that permitted it, forgave it.

  When they got to the castle walls, the portcullis was already raised and the soldiers guarding the gates were at attention. Elaswit took a deep breath once the portcullis was dropped and her jepat slowed to a stop.

  Everyone else’s jepatts followed. Everyone waited.

  “Is there a problem, Princess?” Sir Thompfer asked.

  “Yes, Sir Knight,” she answered.

  Pulling her shawl down from concealing her face, she revealed herself to every soldier present, including those standing at the top of the walls.

  When she spoke again, it was with a raised voice, she turned and said to all who could hear her.

  “Sir Thompfer and all soldiers under my father’s command!” she commanded, then pointed at Sam. “You are hereby ordered to apprehend this boy, Sam, by whatever means necessary.”

  Sam’s eyes widened in surprise, then fear. To Elaswit’s surprise, the reaction of his colleagues was to distance themselves from him.

  “Should he refuse to go willingly and quietly,” she continued as archers from the top of the wall took aim at Sam and Sir Thompfer leveled his weapon on him, “then his life becomes forfeit by my order.”

  “What’s going on here?!” Drax demanded as the world froze in anticipation. “What is the meaning of this?!”

  Elaswit ignored him and focused her attention on Sam.

  “Sam,” she said, refusing to afford him the respect of addressing him by his title or his family name, “you are hereby ordered to surrender yourself to the king’s soldiers. You will be imprisoned until the day you stand trial to be decided by the king of this great kingdom for the crime of the murder of Anita Rodgers.”

  Sam’s colleagues were stunned into silence. Drax’s silence came with an enraged snarl directed at Sam. As for Sam, his eyes were already darting around, his mind racing.

  A part of Elaswit wanted him to try and escape, to make a run for it.

  Give me a reason, she thought. Give me an excuse.

  After what looked like a very long moment, Sam raised his hands and held them above his head.

  “I surrender.” He met Elaswit’s gaze. “But you are misunderstanding a few things. I have done nothing wrong, and I will plead my case to your father.”

  He sounded a little too confident in his words as Sir Thompfer approached him.

  It made Elaswit wonder. Was her father aware of Sam’s killings in the palace, too? Had Sam pleaded his case and gotten away with it?

  Once upon a time she would’ve thought it impossible. Now… she didn’t know what to think. But there was a solution to that.

  As she nudged her jepat forward and towards the palace, there was only one thing on her mind.

  It was time to speak with her father.

  …

  “That’s just brutal to watch,” Aiden muttered.

  He stood, watching eight green spiders as large as a wagon wheel assault a monster as tall as a tree, bringing it down to its knees until it finally collapsed and died.

  “Brutal but effective,” Ted said with a proud smile beside him.

  Aiden wasn’t sure of what to say. The spiders had killed the monster by taking countless bites out of it. The monster would’ve easily died from the pain of being eaten alive if that had been an option given to it.

  All eight spiders crawled up to him and Ted, arranging themselves in a straight line in front of them. Ted smiled like a proud commander before turning to Aiden.

  “They’re still too weak, seeing as I lost three,” he said. “But what do you want me to kill next?”

  Aiden had his answer to that. But it was not yet time to have him kill his next monster. So, he moved the topic in a different direction.

  “Let’s go see how Valdan is doing with his [Great Serpent],” he said.

  When he turned and headed in the direction the sound of Valdan’s fight was coming from, Ted was more than happy to follow, humming casually as if out on an evening stroll in some garden.

  Aiden could’ve easily fallen into the same level of comfort if not for the many legs scuttling across the ground behind them as eight large spiders followed them.

  He was currently doing his best to level Ted and Valdan. If they were going to be useful in helping him to secure the [Crystal of Existence], Ted needed to be at least level fifty.

  And Valdan had to be stronger.

  It was a funny thing to think about since Aiden was yet to level himself beyond the threshold.

  A level forty-nine [Weaver] helping a level fifty-eight [Knight] was definitely unheard of. But who cared, Aiden’s very existence was definitely unheard of.

  “Oof,” Ted winced as Valdan shot past them and crashed into a tree. “That’s got to hurt.”

  In the direction he’d been sent flying from, a snake the size of a house uncoiled itself, rising as high as a storey building.

  Valdan pushed himself to his feet and tightened his grip on his sword.

  “You good?” Aiden asked in a casual tone.

  Valdan turned his head and spat a glob of blood to the side. “I’m good,” he grumbled, clearly annoyed.

  “Need a limb?” Ted asked. “Or…” he looked back at the troop of spiders trailing behind him. “Maybe sixty—four?”

  Valdan looked at him, then his eyes settled on the spiders. He looked back at Aiden.

  “I still can’t decide which one of you is worse,” he muttered.

  In the distance, his opponent hissed angrily. Valdan was a mess of blood and bruises, but the snake wasn’t any better.

  “I don’t think your date likes being kept waiting,” Aiden said, smiling.

  With an irritated growl, Valdan charged the creature. When he was close enough, he leapt over twenty feet into the air.

  It seemed somewhere in the past three weeks since they’d left Elstrire, he had gained the [Leap] skill.

  Good for him.

  As Valdan clashed with the [Greater Serpent] once more, Ted nudged Aiden with his shoulder.

  “What?” Aiden asked, eyes still fixed on Valdan’s fight.

  “How many levels higher than Valdan is that thing?” Ted asked.

  “Eight, I think,” Aiden said. “It should give him a tough time but I don’t think we should be worried about him dying.”

  “I see,” Ted muttered. “Another question, Aida.”

  Aiden rolled his eyes. “Yes, Teddy.”

  “Do you think we might be enjoying this a little too much? I mean watching him struggle, because my beast was just five levels ahead of me.”

  Aiden considered it for a moment, watching Valdan struggle against the monster. He looked more annoyed than worried by the monster’s regenerative abilities.

  Aiden shook his head. “Nah.”

  “Just checking.” Ted clapped him on the back. “So when are you fighting against your own monster?”

  “Ted,” Aiden said.

  “Talk to me,” Ted replied.

  “What do you know about the level fifty barrier?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  Aiden nodded, finally taking his eyes away from Valdan’s fight to look at his brother.

  “Well, then… Let me tell you about it and what it takes to overcome it. Let’s take a walk.”

  They turned and started walking, making sure they didn’t go too far from Valdan. Ted resumed a very low hum as his spiders remained in place, an audience to Valdan’s fight.

  As Aiden and his brother talked, Valdan’s annoyed roars as he faced down his foe was an accompaniment to their conversation.

  It would not be long before proper preparations for the [Crystal of Existence] would begin.