Ellen Traynor was 'driving' as fast as she could.

In actuality, Deimos was doing the driving. The AI-powered car was pushing thirty over the speed limit on the 202, weaving in and out of traffic like a professional racecar. Under normal circumstances, Ellen would have simply been excited. But Deimos's driving was the farthest thing from her focus.

She'd been downstairs, acting as oh-so-gracious hostess at one of Bob's endless cocktail parties. It was one of the only things she still did with—or for, rather—her father, and even though she hated them, she couldn't bring herself to cut ties with him quite that thoroughly. Ellen knew he was using her. That her presence as a delver meant something—that it signaled to the other CEOs and corner office executive types that the Traynor Corporation was up to something new.

Ellen knew she was contributing to a lie and playing into Bob's hands. He'd benefit from this, and not only that, but he'd take it as a sign that she was coming around to his plan.

But he was still her father.

Still, when her monitoring system went off to report that her highly illegal egg had started to hatch, she'd excused herself so fast it was like she'd never been there.

There were family obligations, and then there were crises. She'd—Ellen hated even thinking it—she'd make it up to Bob later. She'd…owe him one.

Shit.

Deimos pulled into the apartment's parking structure. Ellen had her seatbelt off long before the car jerked to a stop next to the elevator; the silvery egg was jammed into her hip pouch, and she sprinted for the door, jammed her finger on the button hard enough to sprain it, and tapped her feet, waiting impatiently for the elevator car to open.

When it did, Kade was waiting for her, an expression of worry on his face. He didn't even glance at the ridiculous, revealing dress she hadn't had time to change out of. "What can we do?"

"And can I see it?" Jessie asked.

Ellen resisted the urge to face-palm. Instead, she pushed her way past them and started the elevator's journey back down to the ground floor. She had an idea…but it was a really, really bad one.

Ellen hadn't stayed long. She'd dropped the egg off—on my bed, of all places—and ran for the door. I hadn't even gotten her to tell me what her plan was. The only thing I knew was that she had one.

But I had a bad feeling about it. "Jessie, leave it alone," I said as I pulled my phone out. She was all but obsessed with Ellen's egg.

Kade: Have you finished your 4-skill merge?

Ellen: No. One skill's two levels short.

That confirmed it. Her egg was hatching, and she had no free skill slots to pick up Familiar Bond.

Kade: Okay. You have a plan?

Ellen: It's a really stupid one.

Kade: I don't care. Spill it.

Ellen: We kick the can down the road.

Ellen: I'm heading to the nearest GC training center. I'll send you pictures for how to make Familiar Bond work. You'll bond with my monster while I find something—anything—to get my skills leveled the rest of the way. Then I'll bond with yours later.

Kade: That could work. Problem: We picked them specifically. What will it change to have each other's eggs?

Ellen: Probably nothing? I have no idea. If this doesn't work, we're screwed. Pulling up to the GC.

Kade: Keep me posted.

Ellen's egg sat on my bed. It looked like it'd hatch any minute—and when it did, it was going to be messy. Really messy. I carefully picked it up after a moment and headed for the door, only to find Jessie standing there, wide-eyed. "What's going on?"

"Move, please," I said. She stepped out of the way, and I carried the almost-hatched, nearly-silver egg to the bathtub, talking as I went. "I'm going to end up with the wrong familiar, that's what's going on. Something went wrong, and Ellen couldn't finish her skill, so she's got no space for Familiar Bond."

The egg went into the tub, with a towel around it to hold it in place. In just the handful of seconds it took, the crack had grown larger; it ran almost eight inches down the ten-inch egg's curving surface. I snapped a picture, then sent it to Ellen.

Kade: Anything?

Ellen: Two minutes.

Kade: We might not have two minutes…

Ellen: Then stop bugging me about it. I'm busy.

She did have a point. Until she found the book we needed, that egg was a time bomb. The best thing I could do was let her work on it so I could defuse it, and in the meantime—

"Jessie! Get out of there!" I yelled.

She'd gotten past me and was staring at the egg. In the bathroom. Next to a hatching monster that could easily kill her. I summoned the Stormsteel rapier and breastplate, applied both of my Scripts, and thought about setting up some spells. Then I shook my head. No. Once cast, Ariette's Zephyr needed to be thrown or shot to get rid of it. Best case scenario, I'd have to break tiles with it. And Windsplinter was absolutely not going to be helpful in an enclosed bathroom against an unknown enemy.

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"I'm serious," I said. "Go to your room."

Jessie stuck her tongue out at me. "You're not my dad."

I sighed. We glared at each other until the egg cracked a little more with a popping sound. Then she stepped to the side. "I'll watch from the door."

"Fine."

The seconds ticked by. I stood there, armed and armored, ready for whatever came out of the egg. Jessie 'took cover' behind the doorframe, but only barely. If the monster hatched, I'd have to keep her safe, because she wasn't doing a damn thing to protect herself.

And then…

It happened.

Ellen: Images attached.

Ellen: Images attached.

Ellen: Images attached.

Ellen: Okay, those should do it. I'm on my way to find a portal. Good luck.

The egg cracked again, and I got my first glimpse of what was inside as I started scrolling.

So did Jessie! "It's so cute!"

'Cute' could describe many things. Bunnies. Attractive delvers at the gym. A puppy.

But I couldn't figure out what my sister saw in the thing that was slowly pulling itself free from the egg.

It was long. Almost three feet of body had already emerged behind a head that was both snake-like and dragon-esque at the same time, and there was no sign of its tail thinning. The serpent was a pale red-white that managed to not be pink, with an opalescent tint to it, like someone had dipped it in an oil puddle on the freeway. Two…I guessed they'd be wings when they were cleaned and dried…extended out a few inches behind the head; they were folded and twisted, but I still put them at a foot and a half to two feet long, minimum. Ugly, sodden feathers lined its wings.

Its eyes were closed, and if it used its tongue to sense prey, it hadn't yet begun to. I had a few brief seconds before things went bad.

And I put them to use, desperately scrolling through the attached images Ellen had sent me. I had until this thing woke up to start the Familiar Bond, and that meant…

"Jessie, I hate to do this, but I need your help. You're going to have to coach me through it. Here's the phone. Don't hit screen lock, focus on what I need, and whatever you do, don't come through this door."

Then I shut it in her face and locked it. It was a scummy move. The last time someone had done that to her in a similar situation, it had been Dad, and he'd died less than a minute later. Now, I was repeating the same thing. I shivered. But I had no choice. I needed a barrier between her and the…

Lightfeather Hatchling: E-Rank

"What the hell, Kade?" Jessie shouted through the door. "I was watching you!"

I focused on the monster. "Not now. What do I do first?"

"I want to see what's happening!"

"No. I promised Dad I'd keep you safe. You'll get to name this thing, but only if it works. Now help me!" I readied the Stormsteel rapier, then stopped channeling Mana into it. The lightning blade winked out, leaving me with a thin portal metal rod and a sharpened point. "What's first?"

"Okay. Okay." Jessie went quiet for a while. The serpent's eyes opened, but didn't focus on anything. It mewled, like a kitten. "Was that it? Sorry, focusing. You're going to need to make physical contact. Uh, and maintain it for the whole process."

"Great." I looked at my new cuddling partner.

The hatchling had freed itself from the shattered remnants of the egg. It was four feet long, and at no point was it bigger around than my sword's grip, with the exception of its shoulders and head. Its scales were covered in slimy, sticky egg yolk. And it was starting to move.

This was going to suck.

I unsummoned the Stormsteel rapier completely. Then I threw myself at the half-blind monster and grabbed it behind the head with one hand, wrapping the other around its still-folded wings and pinning them to its body. It thrashed, and my hand slipped. Before I could grab it, my danger sense flashed, and I jerked my wrist back as the monster's jaw shut on the air where it had just been.

Before it could pull back, I grabbed it again, then put my body on the thrashing snake's, pinning it to the linoleum floor. "Got it! Next!"

"Uh, uh, now you need to enter its mental space."

"What?"

"Working on it. Okay. Uh, you're going to need to make eye contact with it—this is like ducklings! Make eye contact, push Mana. As much as you can, as quickly as you can. Find its core."

I rolled my eyes, tightened my grip on the serpent's head, and rotated it so it faced me. Its eyes were a brilliant sapphire marred by egg goop. It dripped from its nose and covered its face. I ignored that. Instead, I started shoving Mana at it.

It felt like shoving Mana at a brick wall. There wasn't a gap in the thing's defenses. "Jessie, not working! Any ideas?"

"No, you're the delver and monster expert," Jessie sounded a little panicked. "Just keep trying, and don't kill it! I've got the best name ever for it."

I didn't want to know. I'd find out soon enough, anyway.

My Mana surged at the monster's defenses; I'd never tried anything like this, so I didn't know if all monsters' cores were this hard to break through to. There had to be a weak point, or a different approach angle, or something. A place where I could spin Mana just right and get through.

"Hey, your phone just buzzed," Jessie said.

"Ignore it."

It took a minute—and a ridiculous amount of my Mana—but I found something. A tiny, unprotected gap, hidden deep within the hatchling. The moment I made contact with the monster's core, it absolutely lost its mind. The thrashing redoubled, and it started hissing and screeching. I resisted the urge to club it over the head; something told me if it was unconscious, this wouldn't work. "Next!"

"Okay. Uh, this is mostly for Earth animals. This is gonna be a little weird. It says their core's like a seed, and you want to water it with your Mana to make it grow. Like, uh, there are structures inside of cats and birds and stuff, and you can increase the speed they grow at—and how they grow—to match your own Mana. I'm not sure how—"

"Got it." I didn't have it. But Jessie didn't need to know that.

The trouble was that the Lightfeather Hatchling already had a tree growing out from its fully developed core. I couldn't grow something where something already existed. It just wasn't possible. And if I couldn't do that, I'd have to either find another way to enter the monster's mental space, or…

Or burn it all down and start over from scratch.

But I didn't know if I could do that. It was very possible that it'd kill the monster. How much did they need their cores? No one had studied non-boss cores since realizing that they contained about as much power as a double-A battery that'd been in use for a year. They just…didn't have the value a boss's core did for powering everything. In fact, they weren't even worth looting.

So, the question became 'Are the cores part of the monster, part of the portal world, or part of the system?' If it was the first answer, this would almost certainly kill the Lightfeather Hatchling. It'd be like ripping out its heart. If it was the second, that was my best chance. And if it was the third…I'd think about that later—if it was the third—because that had some unpleasant implications for delvers. I didn't want to think about whether I was technically a monster.

I just wanted to tame this one.

"Okay, Jessie, I'm going to try something. It might get loud." The only good news was that it was midday, and our neighbors were mostly gone. Otherwise, we'd probably already have people banging on our door. "Get ready to tell me the next step."

My Mana surged again. This time, instead of searching for a connection, I poured the storm's fury—and my own—into it, and willed it to scour away the monster's core. And everything attached to it.

The storm listened.

The tree caught fire as lightning ripped into it. The fire spread like…wildfire…as the gale caught its sparks and scattered them through the monster. I grappled with my own Mana. Guided it as best I could, forcing it toward the hatchling's core. And as the flames spread, I started packing Mana into a dense, tiny ball. As much as I could. As tightly as I could. I squeezed it tighter and tighter with my will.

The Hatchling's core burst into flame.

I pulled it free from the monster as it screamed an ear-piercing scream.

And then I shoved the condensed, tiny ball into the freshly vacated hole in the monster's being.

Before I could do anything else, the ball of Mana crackled and sparked with lightning, and the flames redoubled.

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