Revayne was probably the last person I was expecting to meet on my way back to the temple. But honestly? I was glad that I had. Because otherwise, I would never have remembered that tonight was the night that the Guards of Zairgon were going to storm the Thralls’ hideout in Seethescale dungeon.

“It’s tonight?” I cursed to myself. “I can’t believe I forgot.”

Revayne had gone back to looking into her book like the secrets of the universe were written on it. “I mean, I wouldn’t expect you to remember. You’ve had your hands full with your own matters, yes? Plus, you have no real part in what is about to happen. Although, since you’re here…”

“Wait, why are you here?” I went on before she could say that I had just asked the same question earlier and she had already replied. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the dungeon too?”

“No, the Commander is handling things there. I remained behind, to handle things here.” Revayne moved away. “Come on, we don’t have much time to lose. I thought I saw one of them…”

My heartrate picked up. One of them. As in, one of the Thralls. That sounded a little crazy to me. I would have understood if we were in Ring Four, but this was Ring Three. There weren’t supposed to be any Thralls here.

“What’s going on?” I asked. My voice was lower now I followed her, but insistent nevertheless. “We’re hunting Thralls here?”

“That is correct.”

“Why—how did you find out Thralls were in Ring Three? And how long? And—”

I had way too many questions, but I didn’t want to overwhelm her, so I shut myself up and let her get back to me when she could. Revayne had said that we were currently following a Thrall, or something along those lines. If we were, or had been, then we surely had to have been spotted by now and said Thrall was long gone.

“I was following up on the investigations we did a while back,” Revayne said. “You remember them, yes?”

“The cave-shepherd?”

“Correct. Well, just shepherd. He just herds cave-sheep.”

“And you found out more clues that led you…” I looked around. “To the middle of Ring Three?”

I still hadn’t figured out the mystery behind the cave-sheep or how it might have ended up in the dungeon. The obvious thing was that it had fallen through a hole into the dungeon or perhaps been carried off by one of the Thralls.

But that didn’t help us narrow down to the specific location where this back entrance might have been.

“The missing sheep was the clue,” Revayne said. We were turning another corner. I surveyed the area, though Revayne kept her gaze fixed on her book still. “I followed the trail that the shepherd and his flock went, discovering that he had gone to the Healer’s Guild for veterinary services. If you remember, he mentioned losing his sheep after that.”

“Wait a second.” I looked around again, spotting a familiar location in the distance. The hospital. “Are we tracing his steps again?”

“Not quite. I have done so already.” For just a second, Revayne looked up. Then she hurried off in a different direction. “And in fact, we’re a bit off course.”

“Are you navigating with the help of your book?”

“Of course.”

Of course

. Like that was a completely normal thing people did every day. What in the world was that book of hers?

“Unfortunately, I couldn’t acquire a Writ of Investigation to check the Healer’s Guild itself,” Revayne said. “With how long the Council can take on such matters. Bureaucracy. But there was a different location not far from it that could potentially satisfy our theory rather well.”

“Which is?”

She didn’t need to answer. Said location was appearing right in front of our eyes. I stared at the edifice growing bigger and bigger.

“I’ve seen that place before,” I said. What I had actually done was get lost and end up there, despite having no intention of doing so. “What is that?”

Revayne moved unerringly straight towards the building, sidestepping a broken cart without looking up. “One of the Plants used to draw up the volcanic waters from within the mountain and supply it throughout the city.”

I blinked. “No way…”

“Which part are you so amazed at?”

“I’m amazed that any of the Scarthralls are smart and brave enough to use pipes used to draw boiling hot water to enter and leave the dungeon.”

“Well, it’s more likely that their Scarseeker leader is the one who devised such a plan. And the bravery… well, hot water isn’t exactly going to kill them.”

“I assume it still hurts.” I paused for a second, recollecting my experiences. “They did scream when I punched them, though considering I had a stake stabbing through one of their chests, they recover pretty quickly yeah.”

Revayne didn’t reply. It was pretty dark. There weren’t that many streetlamps near the Plant, and the building itself wasn’t lit up well. My skin started crawling the closer we got. I didn’t see the shadows that Revayne had chased not that long ago, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that we were walking towards conflict.

Towards an ambush.

“I suspect that the confrontation in the dungeon is already underway,” Revayne eventually said. Her voice was had lowered to a whisper. “Since it’s a confrontation against almost the full might of the guards, it’s reasonable to suspect that the Scarthralls will be pushed back.”

“Doesn’t that depend on if anyone in your guards have the ability to actually kill the Thralls?”

I had beaten them and cut them up and fought tooth and nail. It was hard work, crushing their hearts and tearing apart their bodies to make sure they couldn’t regenerate. The only reason I had managed to kill the Greater Brillwyrm Scarthrall was because I had possessed Escinca’s Blessed knives.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Perhaps,” Revayne admitted. “But regardless, the Thralls will be overpowered in short order. Nothing we have seen so far suggests they could pose a threat to well-drilled squadrons of Silver- and Gold-ranked guards.” Even with her face behind her book, I caught her stiffening. “But that doesn’t mean they will die or be defeated.”

Right. Because we were coming up on their escape route, on the path they could take to get away from the guards.

“Couldn’t you have told the other guards about this?” I asked. “I feel like a small squad here would be better than just you and me.”

She didn’t turn her head, but I caught the corner of her mouth curving up. “Why? You don’t think you can handle some Thralls with just me by your side? You may want to reconsider underestimating me.”

I scowled. “You may want to pull your face out of your book. We’re here.”

Revayne didn’t do so. Instead, she snapped her fingers. “You can take us over, right?”

I grumbled, but I did so. Just a small use of Field Manipulation allowed us both to float over the gate, landing on the other side.

“What would you have done if I hadn’t been here?” I asked.

“Found a different way inside, obviously.”

“Obviously that

wasn’t my question.”

“Wasn’t it?”

I was starting to wonder if she was taking this whole thing seriously. She almost sounded like she was having fun, in her own weird way. I for one was extremely creeped out at being in what looked like an abandoned, part Industrial Age, part steampunk factory, with way too many pipes running everywhere.

Thankfully, Revayne seemed to have some clue on where to go. On my own, I’d have gotten pretty lost before long. Since she was doing the navigating, I decided to keep my eyes and other senses extra sharp.

“We’re nearly there,” Revayne said.

“Nearly where?” I asked.

We were climbing up, now. Well, floating up. Who needed climbing when Gravity Man was present and could float everything, including other people, straight up to where they needed to be?

Which was how I found myself with Revayne, standing on a small railing next to one of the highest pipes in the entire Plant.

“This.” Revayne said. “We have arrived. This is the pipe that starts the section of the water conduits that are currently dry. Unused for the entirety of the season, so far.”

I stared at the yawning dark maw of the pipe. “Please don’t tell me we’re going inside.”

“Adventurous as that might be,” Revayne said. “We have less uncouth means of reconnaissance.”

Before I could ask what exactly she meant by that, Revayne flipped the pages of her book with a rapid flurry. Moments later, small birds made of pure ink floated right out of the pages, making me stare agog.

“I already sent some out to scout the area and see if they could catch any Thralls,” Revayne said. “One did drop through this pipe, which is why we are now here. Unfortunately, the timer on my Aspect ran out so I’m having to create a new one.”

“What is your Aspect?”

“It’s called Aspect of Escapism.”

“Huh. Let me guess, Gold-ranked, if not higher.”

“What a rude question. But yes, I’m nearing Opal, actually. Half a year, and I should get there. Assuming the breakthrough cooperates.”

It was odd to just stand on top of the pipe and talk like that while a bird made of ink shot into the oversized pipe. I briefly caught new words appearing on the pages of her book, though I looked away because it felt like I was somehow invading Revayne’s privacy. Not that I could decipher anything on it anyway.

Then she stiffened.

“Ah, it looks like they were one step ahead of us,” Revayne murmured. “Troubling.

“What?”

I stared at her as she looked at me straight on. No book this time. Her eyes might have been inverted in their colours, but the deadly seriousness in them made my spine tingle with foreboding.

“Can you get us down quickly?” she asked.

I answered by using Field Manipulation to jump all the way from the top of the pipe back onto the ground. Revayne followed soon after. She dashed off, and I followed as fast as I could, though I figured she was slowing down just enough for me to keep up. I didn’t even need to ask what was going on.

“They’re aware of the attack in the dungeon,” she said. “The bird spied them moving out and heard one of them saying something along the lines that this was foreseen.”

“Does that mean they’re already here?”

Her silence was all the answer I needed. My blood pounded, my brain trying desperately to not to overwhelm itself with worry. A traitorous part of me was trying to look at it in a silver lining way—this was Ring Three, not Ring Four, so everyone down there should be comparatively safer.

It was a terrible way to think though, regardless of my feelings of how Zairgon treated Ring Four. I didn’t have to be like them.

We came to a jerking halt. A shadow, likely one of the ones that Revayne had first followed here, materialized out of the gloom, taking on the familiar, zombielike but aware state of a Scarthrall.

“Well, well, well, looks like we were finally spotted,” he said, his fangs already bloody like he had been chomping on something living not that ago.

Revayne stepped forward, a pure-black sabre of ink emerging from her book. “Funny you say that. How did you find out about the attack?” Her voice sharpened. “Who was the mole?”

The Scarthrall grinned. “Why, one of your very own, of course.”

I swallowed. A Scarthrall in the guards too? This was getting way out of hand way too quickly. All this time, we had been thinking this was an issue relegated to Ring Four, with the Scarthralls targeting poor humans who didn’t have the power or resources to fight back, nor the significance to make the rest of Zairgon really take it seriously.

A brilliant feint.

I pulled out my mace and gloves from my dimensional storage bag, quickly pulling on the latter. Good thing I had remembered to stuff them in there earlier.

Before the fight began, more of the Thralls appeared. I wasn’t surprised. This was the dungeon all over again, except this time, we had a different worry to contend with. Casualties. Mostly arising from the fact that there were enough of them that just dealing with one or a few would give others free reign to rush out of the Plant and into the surrounding neighbourhoods.

There was no time. We had to—

“This is Ring Three,” Revayne said, almost like she was reading my mind.

I scoffed. “Fair enough.”

“But it’s not Ring Four, which is where I suspect the rest of them will be heading, so we still need to kill them fast, though.”

I was tempted to stare at her, though of course, I didn’t dare take my eyes off my opponents. “Why did you even bother consoling me then?”

“Who said I was consoling you?”

“Keep ‘em at bay, you lot.” A woman Scarthrall near the entrance to the Plant grounds hissed at us. “We’ll go deal with the rest. Blessed by the Woven Way, this night will be ours!”

With a chorus of rousing hisses and shrieks, the nearby Scarthralls all rushed at us.

I didn’t get time to see what Revayne was doing at first. The first Thrall was almost on me, closer to me than any of them was to my sole ally.

Fast though it was, it wasn’t anywhere close to Gutran or Khagnio levels of speed. I had enough time to push threads of mana into my trust mace, to keep it ready. As soon as impact was imminent, I swung with all the Power I could muster, forcing Infusion to turn the threads heavy-purple and weigh down my mace the moment it connected my target.

The Thrall went screaming and flying backwards, his chest caving inwards at the blow. He admirably did his best to rise, his wound already fixing itself, but Mana Injection had infused his ratty shirt with more threads.

Threads that I turned heavy with a flick of my will.

With a squawk, the Thrall was forced to the ground, his chest stuck to the street.

“Good idea,” Revayne said.

As her thralls attacked, she rushed through them. It was almost magical how she simply swerved past five different ferocious attackers in one flowing motion, her sabre leaving deft little nicks and scratches on every single Thrall. The wounds didn’t look like much to me, which surprised the Thralls.

But just as they were about to attack again, the Revayne flicked her wrist with a flourish. Much of the ink around the sabre dropped away, the remainder of it hardening until it was the size of a pen.

Wait, no, it was a pen.

With the quickest motion I had seen yet, she swiped her pen across a page of her book, one again open before her.

And every single Thrall went still like they had just been petrified, every tiny wound Revayne had left now bubbling and pulsing with writhing ink.

And it had all happened in the space of a blink.

“There,” she said, giving them all a satisfied once-over. “Now we can end this.”