When Magda, the Paragon of the Sliding Surge, finally left Eugene’s world, he took a moment to collect his thoughts. Core bonding always left him a little unclear, and he normally revelled in it, but right now, he needed to focus. Kade Noelstra was still missing. The Placid King was still at large. Nothing had been solved.

  But he felt somehow better about his position. It was good, he reflected, to be distracted from his own ascension for a few moments. To be distracted from following Kade—and from all his other business. That was a gift that few entities could offer him, and Magda was one of the best at it. It was a shame that she was his rival’s servant; he’d love to bring her into the fold as a member of the Stormsteel Path.

  That was a matter for later, though. The God of Thunder reformed into his lightning dragon body and took to the air. Hovering over his red-and-blue domain, he turned his thoughts from the Placid King’s plotting to the very real, very immediate problem that he’d been putting off.

  His pupil was missing.

  The last he’d seen him was a minute or two after he’d entered the strange portal at the heart of that desert city he lived in. He’d pushed in deeper with a team of white-clad, low-rank delvers. Then, suddenly, Eugene had lost his sense of where Kade was or what he was doing. He knew the kid was alive, but nothing more.

  “What are you up to, kid?” he muttered to himself as he focused his attention on the portal. All his considerable will, all his inexorable power, bore down on the blue, E-Rank portal. It was the kind of weight that very few beings—less than a handful, in fact—could resist for long, and sure enough, the portal winked out after only a few seconds.

  Eugene’s awareness of Kade hit the lightning dragon like a mace.

  He stood next to a rapidly decaying facsimile of a house, sword in hand and the kneeling corpse of the portal’s boss in front of him. But his hand wasn’t touching the corpse. It reached out to brush against the lightning, and as it did, the kid—the lunatic kid—deviated from the Stormsteel Path again. Eugene almost materialized in the ruined, E-Rank portal world, damn the consequences. He was an instant from appearing there and demanding answers.

  Instead, he could only watch as a different Paragon arrived first.

  ?▼?

  The Fallen Delvers portal world shook.

  The last time a world had rocked like this, the God of Thunder had made an impossible appearance on Earth. I braced myself. So did the lightning knight I was pretty sure was Dad—or at least my memories of him. If it was Eugene, I was going to kill him.

  But it wasn’t Eugene.

  It was the hooded, cloaked, and naked figure who’d been haunting me with visions of my friends since the moment we started clearing the portal. Their finger pointed at me, skeletal and pale, and from the depths of their hood, two eyes glowed a deep gold. "Paragon of the Stormsteel Path, I congratulate you on your—“

  They didn’t get the chance to say more. I lunged. Nimbus Edge sliced through the air, and their shrouded hood and cloak fell away as the blade ripped across their throat. Taut skin parted, but the wound didn’t bleed. But the revealed monster forced me back a step in shock.

  Not one, but three faces, each watching a different direction, and all three spinning slowly on a single, too-thin neck. The golden eyes rotated away, scraggly beard replaced by a vaguely feminine chin with eyes the color of blood.

  They didn’t even move, save to raise their finger. “There is no need for that, Paragon. You have claimed the power you require, and that your friends do as well. Fate has been sealed, and my gift has been received.”

  I didn’t relax. The blade stayed at guard, ready for anything—but I also wasn’t stupid.

  Fateweaver Cruix: ?-Rank Monster

  That question mark, at my rank, meant only one possible rank. This was a monster on nearly the same level as the Crone or Eugene. If they wanted me dead, I’d give them my best fight. But victory? I wasn’t strong enough for that. Not yet.

  “The shadow woman and the shieldson. Those are the two you care about the most. The scriptmistress and the healing hand are important, and so is the bethroned one. But the shadow woman and shieldson are the most critical to your needs.”

  “Leave Jessie out of this,” I ground out through clenched teeth. Right now, I wanted to spend a minute with my dad—the blue-white lightning knight stood behind me impassively, watching as the unknown Paragon and I ‘talked.’ Then, when I was sure it was him, I needed to get moving. Every minute counted for my friends. This Paragon’s gifts didn’t matter; I had to help them.

  “Very well. The bethroned one is beyond my assistance at the moment, in any case. The shadow woman and the shieldson, then. The cores my Vision left behind are my gift to them. Let them use them well and spin their fates’ threads strong.” The Paragon’s head shifted. The young, vaguely female face disappeared, and a pair of black eyes stared at me from an androgynous face that couldn’t have been older than five.

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  And for the first time, I noticed the cores. There were two of them. The first crackled with green lightning, only for the electricity to be consumed by a black nothingness that welled up from the bottom of the perfectly round, portal metal-framed sphere. It felt warm to the touch, and it screamed for me to use it—to embrace its power and advance myself with it. We were compatible. I walked a path of the storm, but that storm was touched by shadow.

  I dropped it into my pocket and reached for the second one.

  It was cold. Not cool, but cold—the coldest thing I’d ever touched. Ice formed across my fingertips as I quickly dropped the blue-grey core into my pocket. To my surprise, the cold cut off instantly. The tips of my fingers hurt, and Stamina pushed into them. I stared down into my pocket at the core. It wasn’t the blue-grey of ice. No. This was different. It felt like nothing, looked like nothing.

  “What kind of gift is this?” I asked.

  There was no reply. The black-eyed child’s face stared at me for a long moment. Then they nodded. “Your fate, too, is sealed. Paragon of the Stormsteel Path, this will be our last meeting, and that saddens me. I would wish you luck, but beyond the Path of the Unwoven, you must make your own. Goodbye, Paragon.”

  And then, just like that, they were gone.

  ?▼?

  I took a long, deep breath and stared up at Dad. Or, more accurately, at a memory of him made real by the storm. Nimbus Edge crackled one last time as I unsummoned the sword, and I reached out to touch the lightning knight’s hand.

  He reached back. We touched for just a moment, and I knew. I knew that Dad was in there. It wasn’t all of him, and I didn’t want it to be. But it was my memory of him. Of how he’d fought. How he’d thought. Our chess matches and sparring sessions, and the grueling exercises he’d put me through. Our conversations after a fight on the playground, where we’d broken down what went wrong, how I’d handled things, and what I could do better. His insistence that I learn to meditate.

  The promise I’d made to make him proud.

  That was in there, too. It was all in there. Everything I remembered about the man Roger Gerald had been.

  I let go of the lightning hand, and the lightning knight that was everything I remembered my father being slid his sword into its scabbard. He stood, not at attention, but at something similar to a parade rest, like he was waiting for orders.

  Somehow, that hurt more than I expected. Dad—the Stormkin Avatar—was a part of me now, and he was a weapon. He’d keep fighting for me for as long as I used my aura. Even now, he was straining my core’s reserves. He was, in many ways, exactly like the Avatar of Lightning spell. Nothing but a figment of Mana.

  At the same time, though, he was more than that. He was all my memories. All the countless spars and chess matches. He wasn’t a temporary thing; he’d be the same Avatar every time I summoned him. He might even remember his fights—and if he didn’t himself, I would. I’d add them to the Stormkin Avatar, and Dad would get stronger as he fought more and more. But there was one critical question: if this was Dad, was he here willingly?

  I took a deep breath. “Do you want this?” I asked.

  Dad didn’t say anything. But he nodded.

  Good enough. I nodded back.

  He watched as I fiddled with my core, removing the Avatar of Lightning spell and replacing it, once again, with Thunder Crash. The Avatars would never be as strong as my dad. Ever. It didn’t matter that he’d capped out at C-Rank, because Stormkin Avatar wasn’t using his power. It was using my memories of his strength and who he was.

  It took a few minutes, but Thunder Crash was a familiar spell, and I still had plenty of time to start making my way out of the portal. My friends were out there, fighting for their lives, and I had the tools they’d need to turn the tide.

  “Let’s go, then.” I dragged the lightning knight into my core as I pulled my aura back and started running for the portal exit. The timer ticked down under forty-five minutes. I could wait it out, but every second counted—and making Dad proud was just one of the promises I’d made.

  ?▼?

  The Crone couldn’t intervene directly.

  Jessie understood, intellectually. The God of Thunder had rocked Earth with an appearance that had lasted less than two minutes, during which he hadn’t fought or used any of his power. If the Crone were to arrive ready for battle, that would have consequences for the world. It wasn’t built to handle Paragons of that power—even a Paragon’s core could affect the world if it wasn’t restrained somehow.

  But as she watched the wall of steam slowly collapse into eastern Phoenix from her brother’s suite window, she didn’t understand emotionally.

  She’d lived in Mesa. Gone to school there, briefly. Had a few friends out there—both in-person and online—who’d hopefully gotten evacuated. Now it was completely consumed by steam and monsters. The fires reflected up into the cloud overhead, painting it a grey-orange color in the otherwise black night. There were a half-dozen TVs running, all tuned to different channels, and Jessie had them all muted.

  All she could do was wait. Wait for the Crone to make a move in the circles she had influence in. That was her offer. A sort of soft power, a finger on the scale. She knew Paragons who knew Paragons, and all of them owed her a favor. If she wanted the siege to stop, it would stop. All Jessie had needed to do was offer her something of value.

  Jessie didn’t have anything of value to someone like the Crone, but she knew people who did, and that was enough to pique the old hag’s curiosity. To buy Phoenix a place in the Ghostmarket.

  And, while she was waiting for the Crone, she could also wait for Kade. He was deep inside the Fallen Delvers portal, probably having the time of his life. Jessie wasn’t jealous, though. The Battle of Phoenix had turned into a three-way race. If the Carlsbad portal’s monsters won, the city would be gone—and so would she. If Kade won, he’d probably pull some obscene power out of his rear end, save the day, and become The Unbroken Storm, the delver who’d won the tournament, cleared the Fallen Delvers portal, and broken the Siege of Phoenix in one night. Such bullshit could only come from Kade.

  For the first time, though, Jessie didn’t want her brother to win.

  If he won, all the work she’d done to cut a deal with the Crone would be a waste, and she and the Paragon had a dog in this race, too. Jessie didn’t begrudge Kade his status as a hero—but she wanted to be one, too.

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