Cass ran down the halls, the captain and a trail of ice behind her. Her feet pounded over the glass floor, faster and faster with every step. Around her, the wind whipped, telling her every movement of every being in the sealed space.

  Atmospheric Sense has increased to level 21.

  Atmospheric Sense has increased to level 22.

  Wind Step has increased to level 15.

  Stormstride Sprint has increased to level 19.

  Stormstride Sprint has increased to level 20.

  Stormstride Sprint has increased to level 21.

  Her skills sung within. Turned out, being chased by a man nearly double her level was great for skill leveling.

  They couldn’t catch her.

  The Concept of Wind wouldn’t stand for it.

  The captain reached out to grab her.

  She darted left, around a corner. Out of his reach, his fingertips barely brushing against her clothes.

  The Wind was Ephemeral. How could he hope to hold it?

  A paladin followed her around the corner, his shield raised, already glowing with gathered aura. Another waited down the hall ahead, the aura of his shield just a fraction dimmer in its growing accumulation of power.

  The one behind released, flying down the corridor.

  Stormstride Sprint flared in turn. Her Wind-enhanced Dex gusted forward, the air splitting around her. She darted around the paladin ahead, sliding past him as his Aura Bash burst to pincer her between.

  The Wind was Speed. How could they hope to beat her?

  She ran, not stopping to watch as Aura Bashes collided in an explosion of wild energy. Not stopping to consider left or right at the crossroads.

  She could see ahead, Atmospheric Sense showing her everything around her. Their huffing breaths as they ran. Their muttered curses as she dodged around their reaching hands.

  Enemies to the right. Enemies to the left. But more straight. There, the paths wrapped around, twisting in a loop. Ahead, the captain ran in an ill-fated attempt to cut her off.

  The Wind was All. How could they hope to trap her?

  A roar shook her.

  She stumbled as the dragon’s voice rocked the entire building. Perhaps it had shaken the entire Spire.

  She grinned. Salos had done his part. It was time to let the cultists reap what they had sown.

  She slowed just a step to let her pursuers catch up. Not enough to catch her, but enough that perhaps they thought she was tiring.

  She turned another corner, drawing their chase toward the released dragon. It was a storm of rushing air to her Atmospheric Sense, as unstoppable as a raging tempest.

  Pain spiked across her bond with Salos.

  You okay? Cass asked. She slipped away from the screams of the paladins and the roar of the dragon, leaving them to each other. For better or worse, she’d thrown them at each other.

  A long minute passed with only pain and silence from Salos. What had happened to him? Did someone catch him?

  I’ll live, Salos grunted finally. But I will relish this group’s destruction.

  It was macabre, but Cass couldn’t help but agree. These people needed to answer for their crimes.

  How are you doing? he asked, a request not to pry into his condition further filling the bond’s subtext.

  I’m flying! Cass said, Sprinting around another corner.

  Stamina: 63/141

  Focus: 237/522

  Health: 71/134

  Her resources were flagging, yet she still felt great. Every fiber of her being wanted to run. It was freeing. That an enemy chased her barely even registered at this point. They were nothing but a faceless obstacle, no more interesting than falling rain or road hazards.

  That is your Concept empowering you, Salos said. Hold on to that feeling. This is the difference between having a Concept and embodying a Concept. This is why you cannot simply take what Concept Gems give you. You need to make them your own.

  If this was why he protested Alyx and Pellen’s understanding of Concepts, she could see why. The feeling was intoxicating. It was more than power. It was a promise. Wind would not let them catch her. She would be free as long as she ran, as long as she let it blow.

  The screams brought her focus back to her current task. They echoed down the halls—paladins and priests shouting in terror and pain.

  She rounded another corner, and there he was, wreathed in fire and writhing down the comparatively narrow hallway.

  Feral Dragon (Lvl 38)

  Three paladins stood shoulder to shoulder across the hallway, their shields forming a wall against the dragon, their backs to her. Priests ran past her, paying her no mind.

  The dragon slammed into their wall. The middle paladin stumbled back. The remaining two tried to close the gap, but the dragon was faster. Its jaws snapped shut around the right side paladin, crushing him before throwing him against the wall.

  The left paladin swung across the dragon’s neck, his sword grating across the dragon’s scales with the sound of metal on metal.

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  The dragon’s head swung back like a hammer. It struck the man in the chest, knocking him to the ground as well.

  Its maw opened and a blast of flames spewed over the three paladins and rolled down the hall.

  “Stand firm!” the captain roared and slammed his shield’s lower edge against the floor. Fortitude’s Aegis appeared between Cass and the dragon’s breath, but did nothing for the three already shrouded in flames.

  Cass could feel the heat through the wall. It scorched her face even indirectly. The glass bricks of the walls dripped on the far side of his shield.

  She did not want to get caught in its flame breath.

  “Get the demoness,” the captain ordered. “Form a line to contain the dragon!”

  His men surged forward, bolstered by his command.

  Aegis fell and the dragon snaked toward her, roaring in return.

  Paladins behind, dragon ahead, it looked like a rock and a hard place. But Cass was the Wind.

  She Stormstride Sprinted at the dragon, a gust of wind rising around her.

  She Stepped.

  “No!” the captain shouted, raising his foot to stomp. To disable her skill.

  She dissolved into the wind, flying toward the dragon. Over his shoulder. Along his flank. Across his wings.

  The captain’s foot went down. A shockwave burst down the hall.

  It knocked her from the wind, her skill fizzling out.

  She fell, crashing into the dragon’s tail.

  It whipped across the hall, throwing her off and into the wall.

  “You, you, and you!” the captain shouted on the far side of the dragon. “Go around. Kill her! You, you, and you. Form a line! You two, with me!”

  She staggered to her feet with a smirk. The dragon didn’t have enough space in the hallway to turn around. It could only attack the paladins in front of it.

  With any luck, it would rout them, and they’d be forced to flee their looping halls, releasing her as well. The dragon could more than handle the rank and file with his fire breath. It was only the captain who worried her.

  They had a two-level gap, but monsters had more stats, didn’t they? Were dragons monsters?

  Her stomach rolled. She hoped she hadn’t miscalculated this match up.

  The wind gusted around her. Atmospheric Sense shouted there was fresh air. The loops dissolved into straight halls with slow but moving air.

  Cass Sprinted for the exit. She wasn’t close. If she understood Atmospheric Sense correctly, it was near the cathedral doors, and she was near one of the far ends.

  Had the cultists broken already? She’d expected the captain to put up a longer fight before the dragon. But maybe the dragon was too dangerous for their priests to weather the storm?

  Distantly, she could feel the dragon ravaging the paladins she’d left behind. Men were mauled under its claws and crushed in its jaws. The heat was so intense from its breath that the ever rising updrafts muddled further details from Atmospheric Sense.

  But, no. This wasn’t the rout she was waiting for.

  No one was leaving.

  Instead, several bodies entered. Two large, four-legged creatures, pony-sized and scaled. Two slight humanoids. A smattering of heavily armored humanoids in a tight formation surrounded the first four.

  More prisoners.

  The first two were the dragonlings, obviously. But what about the other pair? Not priests of the cult. The clothing was too close-fitting for priest robes, and besides, who kept their squishy support personnel so close to inherently armed dragons?

  More prisoners made sense, but who else would they have kidnapped? More demons? Were there really that many demons wandering Velillia?

  These were questions for later. Now was for escaping. This was her chance.

  Cass pressed harder into Stormstride Sprint, summoning every bit of Wind-enhanced Dexterity to send her flying down the corridors. Wind Step would have been faster, but it was still disabled.

  A group led by a large, armored man met them at the entrance, the air he displaced significant. He was at least as big as the captain.

  The paladins marched their prisoners down the hall. The cathedral doors swung open for the prisoners.

  Already, the air was stagnating.

  She ran.

  The cathedral was ahead. For once, she wasn’t approaching from the center path but rather one of the right side corridors. No, in this reversal, the center hall was her goal.

  The loops re-coalesce around her, slow but steady.

  Her window was closing, the hallways overlapping.

  Atmospheric Sense warned that three waited down the hall. But she couldn’t let them stop her.

  She ran.

  A sharp left through the intersection where the five halls met. The open cathedral doors at her back.

  Three paladins in front of her.

  Order of the Copper Crescent Captain (Lvl 40)

  Order of the Copper Crescent Paladin (Lvl 33)

  Order of the Copper Crescent Paladin (Lvl 34)

  Hell, the leader of the receiving group wasn’t ‘at least as big as the captain,’ that was just the captain!

  What was he doing here?

  She shoved the thought aside. He was here. She could figure out the how later. Her window of escape was closing.

  Already, the space behind him oscillated, one moment connecting to the world outside, the next linking with another section of hall, then the outside again. Back and forth.

  “Stop her,” the captain ordered, squaring up behind his shield. His men’s shields butted up against his, forming an impenetrable wall of steel.

  She jumped, launching herself over them.

  Space shifted. The exit was in front of her, green walls giving way to blue. Now, another hall. The exit again. Green, then blue.

  Each time, the connecting halls were different. First, near the dragon. Then, near the training hall. Then, near the storage room she and Salos had hidden in. With each cycle, the shifting shortened. Faster and faster.

  The captain dropped his sword. He reached up. His hand grabbed at the ends of her aura cloak. It tugged.

  She willed it incorporeal. His hand phased through it.

  She landed behind him, her feet sliding over green glass floors.

  The threshold was just ahead. The blue walls and floors of the main temple. The exit.

  Cass reached for it. Her hand brushed against the threshold.

  Just as the space beyond became the hall outside the dragon’s prison again.

  Space twisted. The ground shifted. She stumbled, falling through.

  The captain spun after her, reaching out to grab her again.

  But the space was no more stable for him. One moment, the hallway outside the central cathedral was behind her, the next, she was alone in an empty hall.

  One moment, the air flowed chaotically around her, the next, it had returned to the lethargic loops.

  The captain’s skill had re-engaged. She was still trapped.

  She dropped to her knees, the wind pulled from her sails.

  She’d been so close.

  If the captain hadn’t been there. If Wind Step had been available. If he hadn’t grabbed the end of her cloak.

  Why was he there? Why wasn’t he with his paladins, fighting the dragon?

  She understood why the paladins crumpled before the dragon now. He must have left to open the passage to let the dragonlings in. Had he expected her to make a break for it when he did? Was that why he’d waited there?

  “Cass?” Salos walked out of the room ahead of her, the one the dragon had been kept in. “How did you get here?”

  Cass shook her head. That wasn’t important now. “The dragonlings are here.”

  “It was a matter of time,” Salos said.

  “They took the dragonlings directly to the cathedral.” How much longer did they have until they were sacrificed? Even if she could escape this second, could she return with help before the dragonlings were murdered?

  Cass shook her head. They were out of time. “We need to stop their ritual.”

  “How?” Salos asked. “The captain is no more vulnerable. We are no less outnumbered. No less trapped.”

  He wasn’t wrong. Killing the captain was the most straightforward method of stopping the sacrifices, but it was infeasible.

  But killing him was hardly the only way, was it?

  In fact, what was wrong with her existing plan?

  A smile slipped across her lips as she pushed herself back up to her feet.

  “You have a new plan?” Salos asked.

  “Not a new one,” Cass said.

  Salos sighed. “Oh.”

  “Come on, we need to make sure all the guests make it to the Order’s party.”

  Salos jumped onto her shoulder. “I would be more on board with this plan if it didn’t sound like you intend to use yourself as bait again. Please tell me you have a different method in mind?”

  “I do not.”