Our approach to the portal was almost as perfect as we could ask for. It was quiet, there were no guards, and we made it in without alerting anyone.

Then, the moment we slipped through the red portal and entered the Dark Citadel world, everyone froze as Ellen started whispering.

"Okay, expect fewer traps than Abattoir or Oubliette, but a lot more magic. We're dealing with Scripts and Bindings absolutely everywhere. Kade, make sure we're safe here, then start moving. Knights like the ones outside, stone golems, Script mages."

I nodded. "This room's safe. Or, well, safe enough. Don't go through the north door." My danger sense was exploding, and it got worse every time I looked that way.

It took a minute to get ready for the portal: buffs, Cheddar and Pepperoni, and a battle plan. Then I crept toward the southern door and cracked it open.

Last time we'd been here, we stood on a long, wide wall surrounding the city below. That had been our entire portal world—that and the tower overhead where the boss had set his Script traps. But this time, the door didn't open to a rampart. It opened into another room—a long, narrow hallway lined with rusted iron bars. We peered down through a rough metal catwalk at the stone floor three stories down.

"A prison?" Jeff asked. "That makes no…"

"Shhhh." I pointed up. A single figure in translucent robes hovered in the middle of the room. He pointed and spoke in the same tongue Mardou, the boss of the D-Rank world we'd cleared, used. Just like Mardou, I didn't understand the words, but I understood his gesture as his stretched, thin arm pointed to the door at the far side of the prison.

And I understood as two suits of Script-powered armor grabbed a person—a human person, not one of the stretched-out monsters Mardou was—and dragged her through the door. She kicked and screamed in a language I didn't know.

Then the door slammed shut behind her, and the robed figure disappeared—but not before the system told me who he was.

Yaloum, Prison Experimentalist: C-Rank

"We have to—" Jeff started.

I put a hand over his mouth. He fought for a second, and his eyes narrowed, but the dueling blade was in my hand, and after a moment to think, he settled down.

"We have to keep quiet and move fast," I hissed. "But we don't have to piss off every knight and monster in this portal world. If Yaloum wanted that woman dead, she'd be dead already."

"He's a portal monster," Jeff said.

Sophia nodded. "Yeah. We need to do something. I can…I'm with Jeff."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm with Jeff, too. Yaloum's a portal monster. He's going to kill her. But we can't get ourselves killed to save her. That won't help us, it won't help her, and it won't help the convoy or Carlsbad. So let's focus, people. Let's do this as right as we can."

"Okay. How?" Ellen asked.

"Simple. We move fast, take advantage of our team's strengths just like last time, and get this place cleared out. Follow me."

The cells were empty. Filthy, unkempt, but empty of any people or monsters. But at every unlocked, iron gate, my danger sense screamed about Scripts and Bindings. Not the friendly, buffing kind, but the kind that triggered traps designed to kill—and not us, but whatever was inside the cages.

But after almost a minute of moving quickly across the catwalk, we still hadn't encountered anything to fight.

That changed at the end of the prison wing. I thumbed the latch on a thick, wooden door and pointed at Jeff. "Ready?"

He gave me a thumbs up, and I flipped it open. He charged in, and I followed him. The room was nothing but scattered tables, a few suits of armor—inanimate, at least for now—and a single monster.

Prison Keeper: C-Rank

She—and the figure, while stretched, was definitely female—wore long, flowing robes of black wool and a porcelain mask. She carried a hunting horn on her belt and a book in her hand. As Jeff charged her, she ripped a page free and dropped it at her feet.

The Script activated before he could react. The monster vanished. And a moment later, a blue-green haze surrounded Jeff. He started moving more slowly, like he was being tied down. Sophia ran toward him, but his hand raised up. "Mana…drain. Stay…away…"

I ignored him. If it was a Mana drain, he'd probably be fine in a minute or two; he hardly used the stuff. But the rest of us were in serious danger—Sophia and Ellen more than Yasmin and me. So, instead of helping Jeff, I looked for our enemy.

She rematerialized on the far side of the room. Her hunting horn came up to her porcelain lips. It sounded silently, and the four suits of armor on the room's north wall started glowing as Scripts activated.

Dark Citadel Warden: C-Rank

We had five C-Rank monsters to deal with, just like that.

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Jeff turned, moving more quickly as the blue-green mist dispersed. He charged the nearest armors, getting between our back line and them as they advanced with short axes and round shields. "Kade, the caster!" he shouted.

I was already way ahead of him.

The Stormsteel armor covered my arm and chest, and Tallas's Dueling Blade crackled in my hand as Cheddar and I rushed toward the Keeper.

She ripped a page from her book, but as fast as Jeff was, I was faster. When she'd dropped her last Script, he hadn't even started to swing at her. My sword punched through her shoulder, and her arm convulsed as electricity poured into it. Her fist crushed the Script's paper into a ball, then released it as an orb of electricity appeared at my blade's tip.

I backpedaled, and only caught a second of the mana-seeping aura, but even that was enough.

Stamina: 325/340, Mana: 420/440

The Keeper disappeared, and I waited—and stabbed one of the suits of armor in the back. It punched through even without Rain-Slicked Blade, but barely. The C-Rank Wardens were tougher than the suits of armor outside had been, and it barely slowed its attack against Jeff, even as shadows danced across its bulk.

Then I waited. The Keeper should be reappearing—now!

I took a gamble and lunged. The sword punched through wool, and the Keeper screamed even as she rematerialized. This time, I'd only used one hand. The other held a blade of wind as I finished casting Ariette's Razor.

That blade ripped across the Keeper's neck, and I followed that up with a slash to her wrist as she tightened her grip on the Scriptbook.

It hit the ground. For a split second, I worried that it might've activated all the Scripts and Bindings inside. But the book stayed a book. None of the Scripts triggered. And a moment later, my dueling blade caught the monster in the chest a second time. Ribs collapsed.

Then so did she.

I hadn't even gotten to see what she could really do. It had been simple—predict her moves, then jump in and cut off her strategy. And then, it was over. Simple, effective Striker work, with a bit of intelligence thrown in on top of it.

I whirled and joined the melee against the remaining suits of armor. Two were already down, and Jeff was hammering away at a third. They were tough, but unlike the Keeper, the Warden armors didn't do anything special, and after almost a minute, we finally reduced the last one to scrap.

As soon as it was over, Sophia's hands were on Jeff's chest and stomach as she patched up bruises and cuts. Ellen, meanwhile, started poking around the room. Now that there weren't monsters trying to kill us, there were a surprising number of books—mostly ledgers and accounting books, but a few that looked more like journals. "Was this the prison's library?" she asked.

"I doubt it," I said. "This doesn't seem like the kind of place that lets its prisoners read."

She started rooting through the different books as Yasmin said something about how great it was that she didn't have to do first aid after every fight. I couldn't help but feel the support's eyes on me as she said it, but I ignored her.

Ellen was right, in a way. The number of books was out of control. I looked over her shoulder at the one she'd opened. "Is that hand-written?"

"Yes. I can't translate it, but the format makes me think it's someone's personal diary or notes. Maybe a prisoner's? I'm not sure." Ellen stared at it for almost a minute as Jeff recovered from his slogging, grinding fight with the armors. Then she shook her head. "I can't make heads or tails of it. Sometimes, there are hints. Something that looks like a date or name. But here, there's nothing. I'll take it with us. Maybe someone with the GC knows something about Dark Citadels."

"Good plan," I said. My Mana was slowly recovering from my run-in with the Keeper, and with Jeff back on his feet, I was ready to keep pushing.

The far door led to a flight of stairs, and as I worked my way down them, I triggered half a dozen Scripts that we couldn't avoid. Mistwalk Forms' danger sense helped; I was able to avoid the worst of the damage, and Sophia patched up the few wounds I did take.

Then we were on the second floor.

It was pretty much the same as the first floor, except that every cell held a monster's corpse, and none of them looked like they belonged here.

That bothered me. No, not bothered. It worried me.

The implications were…wild. When taken with what we'd already seen—the corpse of the monster we'd seen the armor dragging toward the portal and the woman—it implied that the Dark Citadel portal worlds were harvesting from others, or that the original world they'd been taken from had been doing so. And that meant that the portals weren't the only ways to visit other realities—or that they had control over their portals, maybe with a Script.

But it also meant that the Dark Citadel portal worlds could be more dangerous than any other we'd seen. They weren't imprisoning these corpses here out of some sense of justice or need to protect the universe from them. You didn't build a prison like this for protection. You built it for storage. And you didn't store monsters—or living people—unless you wanted to do something with them.

"We have to go faster," I said.

Jeff stared at me. "You were just preaching—"

"I know. But this place is bad. We need to get it cleared, and then we need to get out of here. Fast. The convoy needs to know. The GC needs to know."

"Know what?"

"That the Dark Citadel worlds aren't just filled with magic traps. That they may be breaking the rules we thought governed portals," Ellen said quietly.

I nodded. But it wasn't just that.

If they could leave their portals and visit other worlds, why couldn't any other portal monster? Say, a ridiculously powerful one. Something stronger than anything Earth could manage.

Why couldn't Eugene?

Angelo Lawrence's patience was wearing thin.

The convoy crept to the east at the slowest speed he felt comfortable moving at, and behind it, he watched for any sign of the A and B-Rank monsters that had forced the detour. He was lurking to the south, with almost two miles between him and the nearest group of delvers—the rest of the strike team.

It wasn't that his powers couldn't play well with others. It was that at the level of opposition he was facing, he didn't need a team. Fission was enough. If he didn't need Deborah or Terrel, their presence on any battlefield with him was just an unnecessary risk.

The radio crackled as Derrick tried to contact the scout team for the dozenth time. In response, he got nothing. Not even static.

That was enough information for the Light of Dawn. It meant the towers were out, and the one they'd found in Capitan wasn't an isolated problem. It confirmed that his enemy was out there, and that the portal boss was a thinking, planning foe—and possibly on the same level as the one lurking in the depths of Carlsbad Caverns. And it also meant that Roswell was the correct call, regardless of what lay inside its borders, and beyond them.

Angelo watched as a C-Rank monster approached. It was a bony, skeletal thing, with armored plates made of interlocking ribs. A remnant of the White Sands portal break. He stared at it. It stared back. Then his aura crashed down on it.

He didn't bother using a skill. His aura alone weighed literal tons, and bone broke under it. So did the nearby sagebrush and cacti as his weakest weapon smashed everything and pulverized sand into weak stone.

When he was satisfied that the monster was dead, Angelo moved on, his boots crunching the packed dirt back into sand as he walked. He smiled.

It was better than glass.

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