When the whoops of joy and general hubbub of Klaarson’s friends mobbing him and smothering him with hugs finally dies down, I call for everyone’s attention and deliver the bad news.

  “We’re not finished yet, Klaarson.”

  He chuckles. “I know! Nothing comes easy.”

  “I need time and planning for the final steps, so we’ll tackle that problem once we rejoin the caravan.” I lick my lips, feeling queasy about what I have to say. I’m not looking forward to this next part. “For now, I need you to sit this fight out.”

  “But I can use the flames!” he protests, a stricken look on his face. “I’m useful again. I know it.”

  I hold up my hands and try to look sympathetic. Placating him is hard for me, especially when I know that I did a terrible job following similar advice to take it slow when I was recovering from my wounds.

  “I don’t doubt that, Klaarson. No one accused you of being useless. But you need time to heal. Trust me; you don’t want to rush things and set yourself back weeks, or even months.”

  That gets through to him. He straightens immediately, his eyes going wide, and nods in agreement. “Right. Mum used to warn me not to get so greedy for the stray copper right in front of me that I lose sight of the gold at the end of the job.”

  “Exactly! Smart woman.”

  “Yeah, she was,” Klaarson says with a small smile that’s simultaneously sad and proud. “Everything good in me came from her. She kept us afloat after my father died.”

  I resist the urge to tell him that we have that in common. Not everything has to be about me all the time. Instead, swallowing my original words, I try to ask questions to distract him from the discomfort of his internal systems.

  “Did you two have a place you liked to visit?”

  He nods eagerly. “A little floating dock by the riverside. I miss the water, now that work keeps us in the Barrens. It’s been real nice traveling overland with your team, since we get to see water and grass and trees again.”

  “Don’t forget flowers,” Marta puts in.

  “Never could! Mum would have loved to make a bouquet every night,” Klaarson says. His eyes soften as he recalls the memory fondly.

  “Here’s a fun question,” I say, changing up the mood. “What did she scold you about the most?”

  Klaarson’s face puckers up. “C’mon! You can’t expect me to air all my dirty secrets.”

  “Can’t be that bad compared with me,” Club grunts, his first contribution to this emotional interaction. His words seem to take everyone by surprise. He glances around, as though uncomfortable with the sudden attention on him, then shrugs.

  “I mean, I used to be a [Cudgel Enforcer] for a nasty crime lord too big for his britches. When things went belly up, I got out and started over with Yuvaan. Everyone knows he’s the man to see if you need second chances.”

  Just like that, Klaarson and the others know Club’s mysterious Class. It’s a relief that I won’t have to watch what I say, since I’m bad about blurting out secrets.

  “You do have a combat Class. Ha, I was right. No wonder you’re so good at smashing bugs,” Trevour says. “That’s awesome!”

  Club seems dumbstruck at the response, clearly bracing himself for a bad reaction that never comes. He smiles tentatively, showing off a few shiny teeth, and nods toward Trevour, Marta, and Klaarson in turn.

  Something about the revelation seems to tie everyone more tightly together, if the bonds of significance my [Arcane Domain] picks up is anything to go by. Maybe secrets don’t always have to divide.

  Conversation picks up after that. Club’s admission is the pebble that starts a rock slide, and soon they’re chatting away merrily.

  “Klaar, any favorite foods your mum made?” Marta asks after a while, her head tilted to the side in a pose that I’m quickly recognizing as her default position for thinking.

  “Oh, yeah! A fantastic potato-stuffed dumpling with savory herbs. Haven’t had it in a long time. The Barrens aren’t exactly known for growing much food.”

  “Silaraon has potatoes!” I exclaim. “Maybe when we get back home we can find some potatoes and seasonings in the market.”

  “You offering to buy?” Trevour asks, his eyes glinting as though he senses a deal.

  Klaarson nods eagerly. “Let’s go shopping! I’d love to make the dish for all of you.”

  “You better!” Marta and I say at the same time. We catch each other’s gaze, seeming shocked that we’re actually aligned for once.

  Trevour snorts. “Are you friends now? Maybe doing fire magic makes you think like a [Mage]. Look out, folks! Marta’s about to get super smart.”

  “I’m already super smart compared with you,” she says, laughing at his aggrieved look.

  He clears his throat, wisely moving past the subject instead of protesting. “All right, that was good for morale, but there’s too much chit chat around here. We already came up with a battle plan while mister [Mage] over there was torturing Klaar, so let’s go kill that bug!”

  Club and Marta jump up to their feet, clearly eager for the fight, though I groan at how easily the nickname “Mister [Mage]” seems to have stuck. The other two caravan workers trot after Trevour, heading toward the massive bug’s lair, and we wave farewell.

  I summon a scrying mirror so that Klaarson and I can watch the battle from afar. “All that talk about food made me kind of hungry. Too bad we don’t have snacks to go with the show!”

  “We left in a rush. Didn’t pack any. Some caravanner I am, always forgetting provisions,” Klaarson says, his face turning red.

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  “Don’t beat yourself up about it,” I say with a little half-shrug. “Everyone makes mistakes. You know what the best way to make up for it is? Stop perseverating about the past. Just do better next time. Eyes forward, not backward.”

  “Thanks,” he murmurs, but his emotions are still frothing beneath the surface. His knee bounces up and down, his body refusing to stay still as he stares at the scrying mirror.

  “Aren’t you worried about them? What if the monster is too strong for them?” Klaarson asks. All the while, he fiddles with his knife, staring intently at the scrying mirror as though he can jump through and help his friends if something goes wrong.

  I waggle my hand side to side. “Only a little. My golem should be able to intercept the worst of the attacks. No one should get hit unless someone pulls a really stupid stunt.”

  He shifts uncomfortably, wincing as his mana swirls in an eddie for a moment before he untangles it and gets it flowing freely again. “You realize you’re basically describing Trev, right?”

  “Give your friend some credit. He might be reckless, but I don’t think he’s stupid.”

  I pause, wondering how well I actually know the young man, and cough into my fist. If he’s anything like me, that might actually be a problem. “You know, better safe than sorry. I’ll keep a close watch on him just in case.”

  “Thank you,” Klaarson replies stiffly.

  I don’t respond for a little while, and the silence stretches between us—quiet, but far from empty. I notice his constant shifting and smile broadly at him, pouncing on a new topic of discussion just to keep the uncomfortable silence at bay. “Itches inside, huh? Tough to ignore the irritation in your channels.”

  “Argh! I was just making progress,” Klaarson grumbles. “I finally succeeded in taking my mind off the discomfort for all of twenty seconds, and you had to go and bring it up again.”

  “Sorry. Bored,” I admit. “They’re taking forever to get there, so I’m babbling.”

  He leans forward, squinting at me. “You’re nervous, aren’t you? All your big talk, but you don’t know if they can pull it off.”

  “Your team reminds me of my friends,” I finally say with a heavy sigh. “I miss them. I’d be worried sick about them if they were heading to a big fight without me, even though they’re all ridiculously strong and talented. Maybe I should trust them more. They’d be a strong delving team on their own. They don’t need me, strictly speaking. I like being needed, though. Ahem. Sorry, babbling again.”

  “Huh. Pretty normal for someone as eccentric as you. Caring for each other is what friendship is all about,” he replies sagely.

  “Another quote from Mum?”

  He snorts, but the movement seems to distract his concentration on his internal flow of mana, because he winces in response to losing control again. “Nah, just common sense.”

  Whatever pithy nugget of brilliance I was about to drop slips my mind when I glance down at the scrying mirror and see that the battle is about to begin.

  Klaarson lets out a low whistle. “Whoa, there it is! Ugly creepy crawler. That thing’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be.”

  We both lean forward to get a better view of the fight, even though I made a mirror as large as a dining room table and it’s easy to see each detail.

  Klaarson is right; the guardian of the final room in the Rift is enormous, easily twice the size of the average wagon in the caravan. Chitinous armor covers its bulk. Feather-like feelers sprout from its sides, too many to count. Thankfully, it only has four legs, more like a horse or a dog instead of a spider or a millipede. That ought to make Club and Trevour feel better.

  Trevour takes the honors of the opening strike, sprinting straight at the bug with his glass knife raised. He leaps to the side at the last second as a stream of acid hurtles through the air.

  Controlled by the mana manipulation of the creepy monster, the stream of acid follows his dodge. His eyes grow wide as he stares at the incoming attack.

  Unfortunately for the beast, my shield golem is too fast to allow it to score a quick victory. The sturdy glass construct scuttles into place in a heartbeat, interposing its big shield between the writhing ribbon of bright green death and the brave caravan worker.

  The acid splatters on the shield, bursting into a fine mist for a moment before each of the tiny droplets pulls back together. I stare in horror. Instead of splashing harmlessly on the shield, the sickly glow of the toxic magic rebounds from the glass, reconstituting and bending out of the way of further blocks.

  Sinuous and deadly fast, the mana-controlled acid attack coils up and prepares to strike anew. Slithering around the glass shield like a snake, the acid is poised to burrow into Trevour’s vulnerable flank despite my glass creature’s best efforts. The massive insectoid beast’s control is way faster and more precise than I realized.

  So, naturally, I do what [Mages] do best.

  I cheat.

  Reaching out through my Domain, I shove aside the Rift’s feeble attempts to contest a foreign influence, and zero in on the boss battle. I smack the side of the monster’s head with an ethereal slap, disrupting its connection to the dangerous magic.

  It staggers, its head whipping to the side, and its mandibles open wide as it bites at an invisible assailant. The toxic attack falls to the ground and hisses harmlessly against the stone, nothing more than inert sludge now that the monster’s mana is no longer animating it.

  Trevour scrambles to his feet and dashes back into position behind the golem’s tall tower shield. He opens his mouth and shouts something at the monster, but I realize belatedly that I never inscribed any runes for sound magic into the shield golem.

  “Shatter it all,” I mutter in irritation, swiftly manifesting a version of my more traditional scrying golem, complete with both audio and visual feeds.

  “Sorry, give me half a minute to fix my oversight. Stupid of me,” I say.

  “What’s wrong?” Klaarson demands when he sees my glum expression.

  “We can only see their fight through my Domain, and not hear the epic banter that Trevour is surely indulging in right this very minute. My bad.”

  He scoffs in derisive disbelief. “That’s what you’re worried about? Seriously?”

  I shush him, even though we aren’t listening to the clash in the creature’s lair.

  “Banter is essential to any good fight!”

  Klaarson pinches the bridge of his nose, as though he can’t believe he’s stuck here with me. For thirty achingly long seconds we watch in silent anticipation as Marta and Trevour draw the monster’s aggression and frantically dodge its homing acid attacks.

  All the while, Club works his way through shadow, inching close enough to smash his cudgel into the monster’s hind left leg. He darts from stalagmite to stalagmite whenever the beast turns its attention toward the other two fighters, eventually reaching a short pillar of rock maybe ten feet from the hideous insectoid boss.

  Marta jumps out from a hiding spot across the cave. Glass knife held high, she snarls at the creature and slashes, launching a blistering, fiery blast.

  The monster intercepts with a stream of acid pulled forth from a gland on its bulbous body, and the fire explodes on contact, destroying both of their energy projections. Quick as a blink, it creates two more acid attacks, hurling them at Marta and Trevour before they can hit back with more flame strikes.

  Exquisite mana control, I admit grudgingly.

  Club takes advantage of the barrage of mana attacks, sprinting to ambush the beast. An ominous red glow covers his massive war club, which I swear has tripled in size since we last saw it. Empowered by Club’s mana, the swing blurs almost too quickly for my sight to follow, smashing directly into the main joint of the monster’s hind leg.

  Klaarson and I leap out of our seats, cheering raggedly when the bug’s leg snaps in two. Recoiling, it staggers sideways under the force of the [Cuddle Enforcer]’s sneak attack, its bulk crashing to the ground and sending up a cloud of dust.

  Three things happen all at once.

  First, and most important as far as I’m concerned, my scrying golem arrives just then and provides us with front row seats to the visceral screams of the huge monster.

  Second, both Trevour and Marta take advantage of its disoriented stumble, launching perfectly synchronized flame strikes. The arcs of fire slam directly into its pale, multifaceted eyes, popping them like grapes under a heavy boot.

  Third, and by far the most concerning, the density of chaotic mana in the Rift surges to almost twice its previous level.

  “Oh. This is bad!” I hiss under my breath. Ignoring Klaarson’s look of horror at my words, I marshall my own mana in response, prepared to fight to the end to save my new friends.