The rain blotted out the domain around him, his footsteps heavy and squelching in the sucking mud.

  Kur came to a stop before a dead body. One of many that littered the muddy battlefield around them.

  “An Atlatl,” Leon said.

  Kur leaned down to have a closer look.

  He’d seen pictures of course, but they didn’t do justice to the tough green scales that would disguise the monsters amongst the heavy brush of the jungle, or the corded muscle that dominated its hunched body. It was a kind of reptilian monster, though it had a flat face and round, large nostrils.

  Sapient hands, no-claws, perfect for crafting and for holding complex weapons and tools, Kur thought. Bipedal, stable… Not a runner, but a long-distance walker. A hunter.

  “Do you have experience with fighting sapient looking enemies?” Calli asked, her tone gentle. “It can be difficult, at first. They look like us, and you might—”

  “We have killed many on our Climb,” Kur said, as it examined the creature's thick skull, which hinted at a tough, wide skeleton.

  “You have?” Leon asked, frowning. “Oh, the cannibals… Wait. How many did you kill? You never really went into detail.”

  “A lot of them,” Kur said. “A lot a lot. We will not hesitate, don’t worry. Row?”

  “We’ll kill anything that tries to kill us, no matter what it looks like,” Row said, as she too observed the dead Atlatl.

  “Whatever naivete we had, it’s long gone,” Tun rumbled, his voice like distant thunder in the outpour. “Have no fear.”

  At his side, Gad nodded, her all black eyes fixed upon the great golden gate in the distance, unflinching in the lashing rain coursing down her dark scales.

  The Gate of Golden Skulls was a gathering of fortifications built into the cliff separating the Jungle’s Clearing, the small area that separated the Lands of the Atlatl, the Jungle of Divide, the Dense Jungle, and the Gloom. The gate was but the first line of defense, a stalwart gate framed by two enormous towers, every inch of it covered in skulls of various sizes and beasts, all of them plated in gold to give the fortifications their name.

  On the cliffs on either side of the gate, hidden within the rugged rock, were corridors filled with arrow slits and hidden war machines, ready to rain death upon the besieging army.

  Breaching those gates was only step one in surpassing the Gate of Golden Skulls. Beyond it lay the Endless Climb. A muddy incline in between cliffs, lined with thick walls and towers, effectively forcing the beleaguered invaders to face the fresh melee forces of the Atlatl while the ranged shot and cast with impunity overhead. And the space was big enough for war beasts to maneuver in… and worse.

  Kur looked up from the dead monster and noticed Gad’s undaunted expression. As always, no matter how worried she was, she did not show it. And Gods be damned, but it always put his mind at ease to find her resolute, no matter what they faced.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s just go and get this over with.”

  “And you will do it?” Calli asked.

  Kur took a deep breath, turning his back on her, her brother, Row and Tun, Sej and Calli.

  “I will try,” he muttered. “No telling if anyone will actually let me be the raid leader.”

  And he took off before anyone could speak.

  They had left the others in the shelter of the ravaged and boringly named Illum town of Gloom’s Edge, with the rest of the congregating delving parties. Now, they rushed past the hundreds of dead monsters, Illum and Atlatl both, to reach Shrine of the Guardian that stood in the middle of the Jungle’s Clearing, where the leadership of the offensive would be decided.

  Kur had allowed the others to convince him to try and take it for himself, but given how Dak and Juf led much greater factions than his own, and that the two delving guilds were present, as well as the local delvers who had gotten trapped in that mess were also there, he doubted things would go as smoothly as that.

  “And do you really want somebody else issuing us orders? Isn’t that worse than what you fear?”

  Nar’s words echoed within his mind. Part of him balked from them, hiding in fear of the responsibility and weight they sought to place over his head, but another part, a growing part, heard the reason in Nar’s words. The truth in them. Kur cursed at himself for not taking the proper steps in the Circle to establish himself as a true third faction now.

  He sighed. In the end, his instructor had been right, and now, he was forced to go into that mess with a crappy hand.

  The Shrine of the Guardian looked different than in the pictures he’d seen. Its large, wide base, which originally housed the Heart and the exit of the Brightnight had sunken into the mud. It was now barred and shut until the delvers either returned with the Heart, or died and the jungle reset.

  Only a small, domed structure was left above ground, and it was from there that the raised voices were coming from.

  Gad squeezed his shoulder as he paused. With a grim nod, Kur stood up straight, and strode forward into the gray light of aura lamps.

  “Kur!”

  A smothering silence halted the arguing at the call, and Kur and his people swept into the gathering of leaders.

  With a glance, he located Juf and Dak amidst the Tsurmirel party leaders, a man and a woman that seemed to lead a group of brown and cerulean clad delvers, and an aged woman whom he assumed lead the assortment of locals around her. He also found Rov, Ger and Kos, an altei, a lengos, and a trugger, the other three party leaders in his faction and who, predictably, stood in between Juf and Dak’s people.

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  “I apologize for the delay,” he spoke, his eyes on the three of them, but his voice carrying across the gathering. “We had to take a detour into the Canopy to steal an aelix egg, and ended up having to take down Silver Fists as well.”

  “You killed Silver Fists?” one the local delvers asked, his eyebrows raised in disbelief.

  “He didn’t take too kindly when we set fire to the aelix tree,” Kur said. “Quest specifics, no [Stealth] allowed and all that, but it’s a long story.”

  “So that’s what was happening,” one of the other locals said. “I did see the tree go up in flames!”

  “And we did kill the Lord of the Giant’s Canopy,” Sej said, her tone almost bored.

  “And just how did you manage that, Kur?” Dak asked, a playful smile glinting on his razor sharp morsvar’s mouth.

  Dak stood at ease, arms loose at his side, his back effortlessly straight. His people gathered around him as though to take shelter in his mere presence, and his eyes met Kur’s with an unflinching darkness reminiscent of the eternal dark of the B-Nex.

  “Well, we happened to answer an aethermancer party’s call for Crystal’s Mercy, and we have been traveling together ever since,” Kur said, nodding towards Leon and Calli. “This is Leon, a paladin of the Order of the Holy Winged One, and his strategist and sister, Calli. Together, we have faced many foes and trials that we wouldn’t have been able to with just mine and Row’s party, and our gains have been tremendous.”

  “Really?” Dak asked, his smile widening into a grin.

  “Oh, yes. Nar is practically a party in himself now,” Kur said, chuckling. “You should see him. He actually soloed Silver Fists for a while!”

  “What?” one of the guides within Juf’s faction asked, and again, Sej nodded.

  “Damned nearly killed him before I got there,” Leon spoke, his strong, honeyed and commanding voice carrying through the hubbub. “It was a sight I will never forget, the two of them wrecking the Altair of Winds in that mighty battle!”

  Out of the corner of his eyes, Kur spotted the locals bunching in together to whisper furiously between them. The wizened old woman, from a race Kur had never seen before, nodded as she stroked her chin, a third eye upon her pale, purple forehead moving out of rhythm with her two other eyes.

  “We all know that Nar is something special,” Juf spoke at last, cutting through the conversations. “And no doubt having three parties instead of two would allow all of us to achieve similar gains. But it is also true that Leon and his party were chased here by a band of assassins, which already provoked the Grounding up on the Jungle Tops, ending two parties and killing ten more of ours.”

  Grumblings erupted amidst her faction.

  “Not only that, many of us were delayed by the fungal nightmare that mysteriously decided to take residence in the Gap, delaying our journeys here,” Juf continued, her eyes not on Kur or Leon, but on her own people. “Most of us would’ve left this jungle before the Heart was stolen, or at least been nearby to assist the Illum in defending the shrine.”

  “The War Quest was triggered, girl, and there was nothing you could’ve done to stop it,” the leader of the locals spoke, before Kur or Leon could rebuke her. “And in the jungle, anything goes. If you die, you have only your own weakness to blame.”

  Juf fixed the woman with a cold fury.

  “I believe there were casualties amongst your people, too?”

  “Yes, and the rain is wet,” the woman said. “What matters now is that we’re all trapped in here, and we’ll all need to work together to get that damned Heart back.”

  “And who do you suggest should lead us?” the man clad in brown asked. “You? These kids?”

  “Hey, the kids are the same level as you,” one of Dak’s party leaders said. “What’s that say about you, huh?”

  A vein popped on the man's, pale-white forehead. “Our guilds have been preparing for this for months! Months! You have no idea what you’re doing! Unless your thieving guilt prepared you all for a campaign, already intending to steal it from us, then you have no idea what you’re doing or talking about here.”

  Shouts erupted between the apprentices and the two guilds, and Kur let them at it as he approached his small faction.

  “Did you actually kill the giant gorilla?” Kos, the trugger asked.

  Kur smiled and nodded at her. “I can embellish a little here and there, but we did killed it. Gad, Raf, Mul, and Teb almost died for it, and Nar did solo it for a while. Even if the beast was battered and down to twenty percent HP, it was still a titanic struggle, and his aura and he beast’s fists nearly took down a tree the size of Tsurmirel.”

  “Crystal,” Ger whispered.

  “You better remember your promise to let our people have one-on-one training with him,” Rov said, grinning.

  “Of course,” Kur said with a chuckle. “But, let’s get out of here alive first. What are we looking at? Also, Ger, Kos, Rov, met Leon and Calli, and Leon and Calli, met Ger, Kos, Rov, the best party leaders amongst us.”

  Ger snorted as they traded nods. “Not even close. But, to business, as you O-Nexers say. The Scimitar is the smallest party here. With a couple casualties and parties having left already, there are just over six hundred of us. The guilds have about a thousand two hundred delvers, and the locals have about a thousand and five hundred.”

  “So three thousand and three hundred people,” Row said. “Even if we account for people in transit, and those hiding this out in the jungle, we are still half a thousand short of the Brightnight limit.”

  “Some were killed when the Atlatl came for the Heart and they tried to stop them, but you have the two guilds to thank for that. They’ve been limiting access into the jungle since Tsurmirel showed up,” Ger said. “That means practically everyone in the Brightnight is here.”

  “And the Atlatl forces number at least twenty thousand, and that’s just the combatants,” Calli said, glancing at Sej for confirmation.

  “That is a good average estimate,” a towering woman said instead, her long, lustrous black horns shining in the gray light of aura, her crossed, bulging biceps exposed. “But it can go upwards to thirty thousand.”

  “That is an outlier, Lumevon,” Sej said. “And you know it.”

  “An outlier is a possibility, and we must be prepared for every possibility.”

  Sej sighed and conceded the point.

  “But the Illum will be fighting on our side. How are they doing?” Kur asked. Meanwhile, it seemed that every single group had devolved to discussing amongst themselves as well, tired of shouting at each other and getting nowhere.

  “Not good,” Lumevon said, and three-party leaders and the two other guides seeming content to let her do the speaking. “They are ravaged, starved, and scared, and at best they’ll mop up ten thousand fighters.”

  She shook her head, pressing her thick orange lips. “They’ll be cannon fodder against the Atlatl. Unless our raid leader uses them well.”

  She eyed Kur up and down.

  “Think you have what it takes?” she asked.

  Kur half-sighed, and glanced at the gate. “I will have to, or nobody is going home.”

  Lumevon snorted, shaking her long ears.

  “Well, at least you’re humble. Our chances of survival have just gone up,” she said. “That is, if you can convince the rest of these people to follow you. Any plans for that?”

  Clapping silenced the arguing and debating before Kur could answer, and a new party stormed into the gathering.

  Out of the corner of his eyes, Kur noticed Leon drag Calli out of sight, standing protectively in front of her as the armed delvers took position in the center of the shrine. Gad and Tun stepped forward to protect Kur’s faction.

  “Everyone, bow before his lordship, Lord Yezathiel Cranevir Sarthfier, of Low-House Sarthfier!” a woman declared.

  Oh. For. Fuck’s. Sake, Kur thought, his jaw dropping. He rushed to follow everyone else and bowed his heads to the noble. You’ve gotta be fucking kidding! This can’t be real!

  A male delver strode forward, a tall, buff man donning heavy and expensive looking armor. He looked like an altei, except his skin was green, and his jaw somehow managed to be even more square and thick than Kur’s. In his hands, he held an enormous two-handed sword that glowed red. A thick, blazing jewel was encrusted into the blade, and sporadic licks of flame emerged from its ruby depths.

  “It’s good that you are all gathered here already,” the noble spoke, with the tone of one unfamiliar with being challenged. “I am Yezathiel. From now on, I am your raid leader.”

  Gods’ dammit, Kur thought, disguising a sigh. Why can’t I ever catch a break?