Oh, this was fun.

  Cade cursed as he ducked around a thorny vine, but it curved midair in an effort to stab him through the face. He formed a tight bundle of air inside his fist and released it over his shoulder as he rolled, shoving the projectile away just in time to avoid non-consensual impalement.

  “You really are the worst Lifekeeper I’ve ever seen! How are thorns even related to Life?!” Cade yelled as two of the other Lifekeepers circled him, both trying to stab at his back with steel-tipped pikes.

  Cade’s eyes narrowed as Bazz snarled, raising his hands like a maniacal conductor. The air thrummed with tension, and Cade felt the ground beneath his feet shift.

  He'd seen this already—Bazz's signature move.

  Sure enough, six vines burst through the vibrant soil, their tendrils reaching hungrily for Cade's ankles. But Cade was ready this time. He'd learned from the first time Bazz nailed him in the chest, and he wasn't about to fall for the same trick twice.

  With a grunt of effort, Cade clenched his right fist and brought it down hard. As his arm descended, flames erupted around his hand and forearm, a swirling vortex of orange and red. The moment his fist connected with the ground, the fire raced downward, eagerly devouring the emerging vines.

  Cade allowed himself a small smirk of satisfaction as the acrid smell of burning plants filled the air, but his victory was short-lived. A whistle of steel sailing through the air to his left caught his attention, and he instinctively threw himself backward.

  Sure enough, a pike sliced through the air where he'd been standing just moments before, its gleaming tip missing his chest by mere inches. Cade’s heart hammered in his chest as he regained his footing, adrenaline surging through his veins.

  He knew better than to let his guard down around Bazz. This fight was far from over, and Cade would need every ounce of skill and cunning he possessed to come out on top. With a deep breath, he centered himself, hands raised and ready for whatever Bazz might throw at him next.

  His breaths came in ragged gulps, but every cell in his body burned with energy.

  “I feel like you need a nickname,” Cade said, mostly to piss the man off. “How about Thornbrain? No, how about the Vine-Choked Halfwit? Ooh! I know! Brambletwat. I like that one.”

  Bazz screamed in frustration. “Will you just shut up and die?!”

  Cade rolled his left arm around the Morlanian parchment, glancing at it now and then while he continued to angle the Lifekeepers in front of him.

  “I’d rather not do either of those things, actually,” he confessed. “Terrible pastime, dying.”

  “How did you even find this place, you disgusting little abomination?!” Bazz demanded as he slowly paced around Cade.

  The aged wood elf’s fingers flexed and relaxed in an erratic rhythm. His subordinates waited for him to attack again, clearly aware that charging Cade wouldn’t work.

  The two scorched corpses near the entrance to this place were proof enough of that.

  Kallista had poured her green energy across their bodies, but it was too little too late. It did give Cade an answer to what the broad-nosed she-elf’s powers were, though.

  Healers were always far more dangerous than people realized. She would need to die next.

  Cade glanced down at his left arm again, scanning the scroll once more as his time continued to run out, but Bazz caught the movement this go around.

  “What is that scroll? Where did you get it?” The Lifekeeper demanded in a vicious tone.

  The glowing plants around the man throbbed and pulsed with energy as he stepped around them. Behind Bazz’s shoulder, the valley dipped toward the massive oak tree formed into a rough facsimile of a throne. And there, thrumming with power so great Cade could feel his magic screaming to go near it, was the Remnant. Now that he was close enough to see it, he spotted the glowing gem affixed just inside a thick net of thorns.

  The young thief started to walk slowly, dragging his feet behind him as he feigned exhaustion. He let his shoulders slump and his head droop, setting his trap for the Lifekeepers to trigger. The sweat that beaded down his brow was not fake, however.

  He would not be able to keep this up forever.

  Cade! Gavin’s distorted voice echoed in his mind. “Cade!”

  He flinched in surprise, and Bazz seized the momentary distraction. He leapt forward, propelled by thick vines growing behind him. He soared through the air, and though Kallista remained safely out of reach, the remaining four Lifekeepers also charged toward Cade.

  “I’m a little busy right now!” Cade sent back.

  With a curse, he sliced his hand diagonally. Flames thicker than his torso followed behind his attack in a smoky wave. It was an attack aimed right for the elf actively trying to kill him, but a new vine shoved Bazz to the side just in time to avoid the blaze.

  One of his other Lifekeepers was not so lucky.

  The woman screamed into her helm as Cade’s fire engulfed her. Though Cade shifted his stance, ready to fire another shot, a vine whipped across his neck and sent him flying to the side. He landed hard into the rich soil, inches away from a massive stalagmite that interrupted the sweeping field of glowing grass that enveloped this place.

  “Ow,” Cade said dryly.

  “You disgust me,” Bazz said from somewhere above Cade.

  The thief twisted onto his back in time to see the old Lifekeeper suspended by over a dozen vines like some archaic spider.

  “That’s incredibly creepy,” Cade confessed.

  “A bug,” Bazz continued, either because he didn’t hear Cade speak or because he was intentionally ignoring the jibe. “That’s all you are. You squandered every chance our goddess gave you to repent. To accept her offers for freedom from your wretched existence and rejoin her embrace as a new creation. But no. You held onto your life like some cockroach, unwilling to accept your rightful place in this world.”

  Cade’s fingers dug into the dirt, his nails carving easily through the loose earth. His backpack dug into his spine, but he ignored the pain. Once he’d carved the last of the runes into the soil, he finished his work and slowly got to his feet.

  Blood soaked his mouth, and he wiped his lips on the ripped hem of his sleeve.

  “You know, Bazz?” He responded calmly. “There’s really only one problem I have with your metaphor.”

  The suspended Lifekeeper raised an eyebrow and maneuvered his vines so that he leaned forward in his perch. “Just one? What would that be?”

  Cade cracked his neck, still tracking the position of the other Lifekeepers in his periphery. None of them had shown any real magical prowess, but he would not dismiss the danger they still posed.

  “Yeah.” He raised his chin and met Bazz’s incensed expression. “Cockroaches can’t read fancy books about wards, arrays, and enchantments.”

  Cade raised his left hand and snapped his fingers. The Morlanian scroll disappeared in a burst of flame and ash. The magic it had contained seeped into the soil, moving beneath Cade’s feet like a mist over a lake. A surge of power followed. He felt his connection to it even now as it coalesced in each of the spots he’d been carving into the dirt since the start of the fight. Over nine pockets of the destructive magic swelled with raw magic.

  “What are you—” Bazz began, but his words were drowned out as the sharp retort of a thunderclap blasted through the cavern.

  Cade smiled as thick plumes of nauseating yellow gas erupted like geysers from nine different spots around the cavern. One was almost directly beneath Bazz, who had to sever several vines to swing out of the way of the spreading storm.

  The other four Lifekeepers, however, didn’t have time to react.

  The woman Cade had burned was enveloped almost immediately, while all those around Cade attempted to flee the nauseating fog. Where the yellow mist went, death followed. The grass withered and dissolved to dust, while other plants turned gray and brittle in its wake.

  “What have you done?!” Bazz screamed, genuine terror coating his words for the first time.

  Gone was the smugness. The superiority. In their place was raw, unfettered, fear.

  “No! NO!” Bazz zoomed for his troops, but all of them were enveloped in the dense clouds of acidic mist before he had the chance to do anything about it.

  “You wondered about the scroll, right Bazz?” Cade stood up tall, rolling his shoulders back to address his would-be executioner. “It’s just a little something I picked up from Stephen. The original spell was pretentiously entitled: Blightstorm. I discovered in that book I got from your order that certain spells could be augmented by forming specific runes in the space where the magic is cast. It’s simple, really. All they do is use the ambient energies to amplify whatever spell they are attuned to.”

  “Stephen did this?!” Bazz demanded incredulously.

  Cade shrugged and started to walk, moving swiftly toward the bottom of the small valley. With a smooth gesture of his arm, the blightstorm rolled out of his way. The clouds grew thicker by the second, and he saw bright flashes of green from somewhere within their folds.

  Odd.

  It wasn't the vibrant, living green of Kallista's magic. No, this was something far more insidious—a creeping miasma that reeked of decay and whispered promises of oblivion. From within its roiling depths, a figure began to take shape. Tall, lanky, with limbs that seemed to stretch and twist in ways that made Cade's stomach churn.

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  Cade's prize was so close he could almost taste it, the tantalizing whisper of the Remnant’s power just beyond his grasp. But every nerve in his body screamed danger, a primal instinct that made his hair stand on end and his muscles coil like springs.

  He raised his hands, feeling the familiar tingle of magic surging through his veins, ready to unleash hell on whatever monstrosity was clawing its way into existence.

  For several breathless moments, the figure within the mist seemed to warp and twist, as if reality itself couldn't decide on its final form. Cade’s eyes strained to make sense of what he was seeing, his mind recoiling from the wrongness of it all.

  Somewhere beyond this conjured wall of death, Bazz's voice cut through the eerie silence. His words were lost in a scream of incoherent terror, a sound that sent ice racing down Cade's spine. Whatever was coming, it was bad enough to terrify even the Lifekeeper.

  Cade gritted his teeth, his fingers curling as he gathered his power. He’d faced monsters before, stared death in the eye and lived to tell the tale. But as the miasma parted and the figure within finally stepped forward, a small voice in the back of his mind whispered a chilling truth: this time might be different. This time, he might not walk away.

  The figure strode out of the mist, wearing a wide straw hat and farmer’s attire. In their grasp, they carried the burnt corpse of Kallista in their bony fingers.

  “Thanks, Cade,” the figure said. “I’ve got it from here.”

  Stephen the Lich.

  “Oh, thank the gods.” Cade let out a relieved breath, even as the lingering sense of dread bubbled through the air. “How are you here? I thought liches couldn’t leave their domains.”

  “Oh, but I’m in my domain right now,” Stephen said with a sinister grin.

  Kallista clutched at his skeletal hand as it wrapped tighter around her throat. She gurgled out words that even Cade’s enhanced senses couldn’t make out. With a flash, the wood elf’s green healing magic sizzled across Stephen’s arm. He cursed and threw her down the gentle slope of the valley. She was a crumpled mess of flesh, her arms and legs still sizzling from where the blightstorm had eaten away at her.

  “You honestly went above and beyond with that little spell I gave you,” Stephen said. “But I can’t believe you actually thought some random child of ruin entrusted me with a spell of that caliber. I will admit, it was supposed to burn you up in the process to guarantee the success of my domain expansion, but using the abundant energy of this place with an array was genius, boy! Truly, I never thought I could be this impressed by a gutter rat like you.”

  “Damn it,” Cade muttered as he realized his mistake.

  He should’ve known better than to trust a monster, even one that had invited him over for tea.

  “You…” Bazz hissed from above them.

  In unison, Cade and Stephen looked up, only for vines the size of tree trunks to burst out of the ground beneath Stephen. They ripped the lich’s body limb from limb, as if he were made from cheap parchment.

  It should’ve been a death blow.

  It wasn’t.

  The lich merely laughed, his head continuing to giggle manically even after it was severed from his spine. When Bazz’s vines finally stilled, Stephen’s skeleton was in a dozen locations around the valley. Yet, just as easily as they had been ripped apart, they flew through the air and reconnected as if nothing had happened.

  Gone was the farmer’s attire. Now, Stephen was a bejeweled skeleton, with over a hundred various gems rooted to the lich’s bones. All that remained of his old self was the large straw hat, though Cade could now see a crown of gems gleaming through the thin breaks of the thatched material.

  “Ahh, it feels good to stretch my legs,” Stephen said in far too jovial a tone.

  Bazz cursed and lunged, but the lich raised his hand, and a wall of toxic green miasma rushed from the ground to meet the elf. The Lifekeeper pivoted around the blast, narrowly escaping instant death, and the two combatants collided in a flurry of blows Cade could barely follow.

  “You vile murderer!” Bazz bellowed, parts of his gray beard singed and missing. His robes were in tatters across his surprisingly muscular form.

  “Cade!” Gavin’s voice cut again through his awestruck demeanor at witnessing two gold-rankers fight. “Please! I need your help! You’ve got to get up here as soon as you can! I’m about to die!”

  Cade fished in his pocket for the focal stone and activated the rune that let him reply. “What’s going on? What’s the challenge?”

  “It’s a gauntlet, where one wrong answer requires the sacrifice of a teammate to move forward. But I don’t have anybody here to sacrifice! I’m going to die. I’m shit with riddles. I am absolutely going to die. It’s a miracle I’ve made it this far. The other teams haven’t been so lucky,” Gavin sent in a panicked rush. “You don’t understand how—”

  “Gavin!” Cade shot back with as much force as he could.

  The lycanthrope went silent.

  “Hold on,” Cade told him. “I’ve been… delayed, but you can do this. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  No time to lose.

  Cade charged forward, his eyes locked on the colossal tree looming before him. Its gnarled branches reached toward the sky like grasping fingers, a silent promise of power and secrets untold. But Stephen, ever the spoilsport, wasn't about to let him claim his prize so easily.

  With a disappointed click of his tongue—a sound that seemed to carry more menace than any battle cry—Stephen unleashed his next assault. The ground beneath Cade’s feet erupted, vomiting forth pillars of roiling miasma that reeked of death and decay.

  Cade’s momentum betrayed him. He skidded to a halt, his boots leaving furrows in the once-pristine grass, but he wasn't quite fast enough. A searing pain shot up his left foot, as if he'd stepped into liquid fire. It took every ounce of his willpower not to yell in agony.

  Instinctively, Cade’s magic surged to the affected area, a desperate attempt to stave off whatever foul curse Stephen had unleashed. He could feel his body temperature skyrocket, his blood seeming to boil in his veins. The glowing grass around him withered and died, unable to withstand the heat radiating from his form.

  But Cade wasn’t about to let a little pain—okay, a lot of pain—stop him. He grit his teeth, forcing one foot in front of the other. Each step was agony, each breath a struggle against the urge to collapse. But he kept moving forward, his eyes never leaving the tree. The Remnant beckoned, and Cade answered its call, one agonizing step at a time.

  A crash shook the cavern.

  Cade turned to see Stephen plastered to the ceiling, Bazz directly below him with two quivering hands raised above his head. The Lifekeeper met his gaze, and a strange understanding spread between the two of them.

  End this.

  The young thief nodded, and Bazz returned his attention to the cackling lich.

  “You can’t stop me! I now have the domain of Life to fuel my expansion, you fleshbags! My Lord will be delighted to know I have subsumed this disgusting place once and for all!” Stephen yelled in joy even as Bazz’s thorns ripped his body apart again and again.

  Cade barreled forward, ignoring the lich as best he could. His eyes were fixed on the colossal tree before him, its roots twisting and writhing like barbed chains. They were the last obstacle between him and his prize, and Cade was damned if he’d let a bit of overgrown shrubbery stop him now.

  As he skidded to a halt at the base of the monstrous trunk, a single word escaped his lips.

  “Shit,” he whispered.

  It wasn’t fear that made his knees wobble like a newborn colt’s. No, this was something far more primal. The sheer force emanating from the tree was like the raw magic of both life and death had been distilled into its purest, most lethal form.

  It pressed against him, an invisible tide biting into every pore, every breath, every fiber of his being.

  Silver threads of Cade’s magic rose up in desperate defense, but it was like trying to hold back a tsunami with a sandcastle. The intensity of the tree’s magic was poison, pure and simple, its tendrils probing and pushing against the barriers of his core.

  He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to remain upright even as the world swam before his eyes. This was what he’d come for—power beyond imagining. Well, here it was, and it was doing its damnedest to unmake him before he could even touch it.

  Cade was dying.

  The Remnant was just a few feet away. He could feel his connection to it vibrate within his innermost being. It called to him, promising relief from this agony if he could just free it.

  He was so close.

  Somewhere behind him, Bazz screamed in pain. Cade fell to his knees, his vision blurring. The Life energy swept into his mouth and nose and eyes. It tasted like honeysuckle, and yet he choked on it. It was suffocating him, killing him from the inside out for his insolence in daring to come this close to its prisoner.

  A hysterical laugh bubbled up in Cade’s throat. Of course it couldn’t be easy. When had anything in his life ever been easy? But he hadn’t come this far to back down now. Prize or poison, power or oblivion—whatever this tree offered, he'd take it.

  With trembling fingers, he began to etch a pattern near the base of the tree. One way or another, this ended now.

  He could barely see. His core trembled inside of him, threatening to shatter as more and more of Life’s dominion seeped inside of his body.

  “I’m sorry,” Cade whispered to the tree right as he finished the final rune.

  The tree itself hadn’t done anything wrong, after all. It hadn’t attacked him. It had simply existed. It wasn’t at fault for being a blight to Cade’s very soul. It didn’t deserve what was coming next, but he needed that Remnant. It would have to die so that his team could live.

  Cade snapped his fingers.

  The blightstorm runes exploded outward, viciously bombarding the roots of the tree with yellow mist.

  And, to Cade’s surprise, the tree screamed.

  The deafening sound was an ancient and unholy creaking of wood and bone. The vibrant green leaves shivered and quaked as more and more of Stephen’s domain leached into the base of the massive tree. The leaves began to shrivel and fall. It was just a few at first, but more descended with each passing heartbeat. The roots writhed wildly and many of them surged forth to break the geyser of yellow mist apart.

  Cade hurled himself forward with reckless abandon, a blur of motion and instinctive dodging. The tree’s roots, those gnarled guardians of whatever secrets lay within, lashed out at him with thorny whips.

  But they were too slow, too predictable.

  Pain blossomed across Cade’s skin as he barreled past the writhing mass of roots and thorns. Dozens of tiny wounds opened up, a constellation of cuts and scratches that burned like fire.

  Okay, so they weren’t that slow and predictable.

  As he plunged deeper into the tree’s defenses, Cade's eyes locked onto something hidden near the massive trunk. Bark peeled away to reveal a stone wall, half-concealed by shadow, looming before him. But it wasn’t the wall itself that made Cade's breath catch in his throat.

  No, it was the runes.

  Hundreds—no, thousands—of arcane symbols covered every inch of the stone surface. They pulsed with a magic so intense, so blindingly bright, that Cade’s eyes watered just looking at them. It was like staring into the heart of a sun, if that sun had been carved with the secrets of the universe.

  Cade’s mind reeled as he tried to make sense of the insanely intricate array before him. There were more runes here than in all the dusty tomes he'd pored over in his life, more raw magical potential than he'd ever dreamed of harnessing.

  And there, at the center of this dizzying vortex of power, sat his prize.

  The Remnant.

  It pulsed with an otherworldly energy, a beacon of power that called to something deep within Cade's very being. Everything he'd fought for, everything he’d sacrificed—it all led to this moment.

  Cade reached out toward the Remnant. Once he got that, this nightmare would be over. His team would be safe. He would survive. Scorn would be happy and, gods willing, leave him alone for the rest of time. All he had to do was take it.

  Cade’s heart screamed with yearning. He was so close.

  Five feet left.

  Three.

  Two.

  He grabbed it, his palm pressing against the gem, and the whole world seemed to fracture.

  A crack formed like the arc of a lightning bolt across the stone. It spread deep into the earth as a chasm spread through the underground valley. The entire cavern shook uncontrollably. Even the muffled sounds of Stephen and Bazz’s fight dropped away as the shaking accelerated in speed and ferocity.

  Despite the destruction all around him, Cade’s brows furrowed in confusion. He held the Remnant tightly in his grasp, the green and white crystalline object oddly jagged and misshapen.

  Another crack formed in the earth, and Cade decided it was time to go. The tree shook in time with the cavern, as if they were one and the same. The young thief pocketed the Remnant and lifted his shirt. He found the central rune he had drawn there this morning in ink and smeared it away.

  The world flashed with light as the teleportation runes reactivated and swept him away right as the cavern imploded around him.

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