Heart hammering in her chest and adrenaline singing in her veins, Sasha followed Lilly and Mel back to where the Claws were guarding the entrance to the tunnels. After combining Silent Step with a pair of Lilly’s devices, the women were utterly quiet, nearly invisible, and shielded from magical detection.

  Once the jailbirds were in sight and the crew made sure that nothing had changed during their absence, Sasha crept into position with Mel at her side, while Lillian circled around to get a clear shot at the scout hiding in the trees. She kept Silent Step running even after leaving the range of Lilly’s device, since the skill’s rank-two upgrade had muted its mana signature to the point where it was weaker than the ambient magic filling the jungle.

  Fortunately, Lilly didn’t need Sasha’s skill to remain undetected. The woman was a veteran monster killer and even stealthier than Riller. She could conceal her presence to an incredible degree, even without her skills—techniques that worked just as well against human predators as those of the monstrous variety.

  When everyone was in position, Lilly unlimbered her boltcaster and made her move. She was going to open the fight by using Transparency on the jailbird hiding in the canopy, since the skill was ideal for assassinating highly perceptive targets.

  She took aim for the convict sitting in the branches, waited until the man was distracted by a giant dragonfly passing overhead, then fired. Her bolt became visible after planting itself between the prisoner’s shoulder blades. The missile punctured a lung and almost grazed his heart, causing the man to plummet from his perch without sounding a cry.

  The instant the scout’s leather-clad body tumbled from the branches, Sasha committed to her attack, charging the Claws with Mel a half step behind. She ignited her core and activated Flame Imbuement along the way, causing a layer of fiery mana to coalesce along the point of her spear.

  Meanwhile, Lilly advanced on the wounded convict, who was stunned but still breathing. It wasn’t a surprise—stage-two warriors were resilient and took quite a bit of punishment to kill unless you struck a vital area. Punishment that was achieved and exceeded when Lillian came to a stop beside the man, pointed the business end of her magitech weapon at his nose, then fired Scattershot twice back-to-back.

  The skill’s payload dispersed quickly, but the shadowkiller was firing from point-blank range. She reduced the man’s head to a weeping mass of meat, then turned to assist Sasha and Melenia.

  The warriors had looked away when they heard their comrade’s body hit the forest floor, giving the women a chance to close the distance. The Claws turned back in time to see them arrive, at which point a vicious battle ensued.

  Sasha exchanged a series of strikes with the shield-bearing jailbird, but she couldn’t break through his guard. The man was using a skill that she wasn’t familiar with, which automatically pulled his shield into position to block an incoming attack. She thought it would be possible to get past it by getting him to move the shield out of position, but the convict was clearly expecting the move and ready to counter.

  Meanwhile, Mel traded blows with the hammer-wielding Claw in a battle of heavy weapons. They were both Power-focused builds and seemed evenly matched in both combat experience and physical prowess. Good. They are both late stage-one. We have a good chance of winning this fight.

  Sasha only caught a glimpse of their battle since she was busy with her own, but she saw a Force Cleave out of the corner of her eye, followed by a Static Slam of the prisoner’s hammer that sent electricity arcing along the ground.

  From the percussion of their exchange—punctuated by a series of emphatic curses—Sasha could tell that Mel was holding her own. Lilly should be in position any second, once she finished relocating to an angle where she didn’t have to worry about hitting her own crew.

  Over the next breathless minute, Sasha did her best to break through her enemy’s guard, taking several minor cuts from his sword in the process. She was having a hard time, but she didn’t have to win—just hold out long enough for her allies to come to her assistance. She saw that Lilly was heading for Melenia’s opponent, so she was on her own for at least a few more seconds.

  That was when the jailbird she was fighting slipped in a patch of mud. He regained his balance almost immediately thanks to his superhuman Reflex, but it gave her the opening she needed to assume the offensive.

  Sasha ignited her core and gathered her concentration. As the mana flowed out from her reactor and coalesced in the air in front of her mouth, she took aim and blew. A searing cone of flame shot forth as Fire Breathing bathed the jailbird in a cracking wedge of blaze. He moved the shield to protect his chest and head, screaming as fire washed across his shins. It wasn’t a crippling wound, although it was one hell of a distraction.

  Better still, the move had momentarily obstructed the warrior’s view. Before he could recover, Sasha charged. She moved her grip higher on the shaft of her spear as she ran and then braced herself for impact. When she came into range, she swung her shield down hard. The convict’s shield automatically came up, since the skill didn’t need the man to see an attack in order to block it… which was exactly what she had been counting on. Sheld Bash.

  Mana went surging into her shield, and when the diamondback-leather surface collided with the prisoner’s round steel shield, Sasha’s skill released a powerful shockwave, transmitting through the metal and straight into the man’s arms. The powerful vibration caused him to drop everything he was holding, revealing his surprised face.

  By this point, she was already midway through her rising thrust, aiming her spearpoint toward the man’s chin. Even though the prisoner had been caught by surprise, his Reflex, Speed, and Control exceeded her own. He almost got out of the way in time, but it wasn’t quite far enough. Sasha’s spear plunged into his chin, passed through the roof of his mouth, and penetrated his brain, killing him instantly.

  She looked up in time to watch Mel Block a heavy swing of the convict’s hammer, then Force Cleave after shoving him back. The skill almost claimed his head, but the prisoner spun to one side at the last possible second… which was exactly what the guardswoman had been counting on.

  The move took the man directly into Lilly’s line of fire, and the shadowkiller already had a Vortex Bolt primed and ready to go. Accompanied by a fierce gust of wind, the fast-spinning bolt erupted from the end of her magitech weapon, crossing the battlefield in the blink of an eye.

  The powerful attack hit the Claw square in the back, penetrating his leather armor. When the missile sank into his torso, it fused with the surrounding tissue. Which, in this case, included both lungs, his heart, and some other vital organs that weren’t quite as vital as those three. All that rotational energy created a blender of force, pureeing the prisoner’s insides and shattering his spine. He dropped bonelessly to the ground as Lilly blew at a residual plume of aether wafting up from the end of her boltcaster.

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  The battle had been hard fought, but thanks to the women’s teamwork and ambush tactics, all three Claws were dead. All that was left was to enter the tunnels, find Trapper’s group, and hope they could escape before the other gang members noticed this crew was missing. Sasha was wounded, and it looked like Mel was too, but it wasn’t too bad, all things considered.

  That was when matters took a dramatic turn for the worse between the drawing of one breath and the next.

  Five more jailbirds appeared from the south—a group of warriors that must have come from the Savage Garden, since Sasha had never seen any of them before. It seemed that three versus three had just become three versus five, and the crew had lost the element of surprise.

  There were two women and three men among them, and Sasha could tell at a glance that four were stage two and significantly stronger than the crew she’d just defeated. The jailbirds were injured too, but her team had blown through a ton of mana and weren’t in shape for another engagement against a superior force. Lilly flashed a hand signal that said, “Look for an opening, then make a break for it.”

  The shadowkiller began reaching for a magitech device while Mel’s hand darted down to grab a consumable from her belt pouch. Sasha ignited her core and got ready to let loose with Fire Breathing. But before she could cast the spell, mana went flowing out from the closest convict’s core and gathered around her limbs.

  She tried to resist but was overpowered as her arms were forced behind her back with her wrists held together. At the same time, her legs pressed together, and her knees bent as far as they could go, sending her crashing to the ground and foiling her line of fire.

  She struggled to break free, but the jailbird’s magic was too strong. She felt Lilly create a Disruption surge as the shadowkiller fell to the ground beside Sasha and Mel, but the brief expansion of her natural antimagic field didn’t cancel out the mana-forged restraints.

  “Sorry, foxy. That won’t work. Limb Lock is paired with Counter Disruption and has to be broken with brute force, which doesn’t appear to be your forte. The redhead looks like she might have it in her… if she were stage two. I wonder, should we take you with us and have a little fun before we break out the knives?” The man let out a bloodthirsty chuckle. “Naa, Tiburón would just take you from me anyway, so let’s start cutting now.”

  While the rest of the jailbirds offered a chorus of mocking laughs, the convict who had spoken raised his sword—ready to cleave Sasha’s head from her neck. Lilly was straining to reach one of the magitech devices strapped to her belt, but she wasn’t going to make it in time.

  In that moment, Sasha knew she was experiencing the final seconds of her all-too-short life. I’m fucked. She bucked and strained against her mana-forged restraints, but they didn’t so much as budge. There’s nothing I can do.

  Half a heartbeat before the blade came down, the tip of a rune-covered iceblade burst through the man’s chest, releasing a thick spray of blood that froze before it hit the ground with a series of bizarrely musical notes.

  The jailbird gasped, convulsing before his heart was encased in a block of ice, killing him on the spot. The frost-rimed corpse toppled to the ground, revealing the muscular profile of a man with spiky black hair, hazel eyes, and angular eyebrows.

  The hunter was covered in a crimson mantle of magic, and his core was burning so brightly that he had to be stage two. Sasha didn’t recognize the magic, but she would know that face anywhere. “Edge.”

  He met her gaze for half a heartbeat, smiled, then turned to face his next opponent.

  Before the Claws had time to react, a jet-black chain emerged from Edge’s left wrist, surging through the air like a flying viper. The living links wrapped tight around the arms of a woman wielding a morning star, binding them to her sides.

  Then the black chain retracted, and the convict went staggering back toward Edge—only to be cut down by his iceblade, and a ghostly copy created by Double Slash. By this point, the remaining three Claws had recovered from their surprise and burst into motion, moving to surround the hunter who had ambushed them from behind.

  Before they could land a blow, Edge reached out and ignited his core. An intense pulse of mana erupted from his fingertips a fraction of a second later. Repel Water picked up two of the convicts and sent them flying. They landed hard and went rolling in the dirt—removed from the fight for a critical moment.

  The final jailbird was the one who had cast Limb Lock, and he was the toughest of the bunch. He had withstood Repel Water and dispelled the chain with a well-timed Disruption surge and engaged Edge before he could activate more skills.

  They exchanged a vicious series of swipes, billowing chips raining from his iceblade as the Claws’ sword met the crystal weapon time and again. The man screamed as the subzero cold conducted through the metal and began freezing his hands—although he was tough enough to shrug off the pain and keep his eyes on his opponent.

  Meanwhile, the other two gang members regained their feet and spread out to come at Edge from three sides at once, making their advance from beyond his field of view. “Look out,” Sasha cried. “They’re trying to blindside you!”

  For a moment, she thought he was in trouble—that her friend was going to die, despite his dramatic arrival and lethal new skills. But Sasha had underestimated just how much Edge had grown during his stay in the Savage Garden.

  Before the convicts could converge on his position, he opened his mouth as mana gathered in his throat—so dense that it warped the air around it. Then, to Sasha’s astonishment, he opened his mouth and Roared.

  An incredible volume of magic was packed into the soundwave, and it crossed the air as fast as thought. While Edge’s spell didn’t do anything to Sasha, Lilly, or Melenia, all three jailbirds froze in place—limbs shaking as their eyes went wide with terror. The one with Limb Lock seemed to shrug off part of the effect and forced himself back into motion, but it was already too late.

  A moment later, the sinister black chain burst free from Edge’s wrist for a second time. The man dodged its initial lunge, but when Edge charged to draw his attention, the living links curved and came back around for a second pass, binding his arms to his sides. Sasha had seen Edge use a chain to steal skills before, but never like this. He’s grown so much stronger since I saw him last. It seems our luck has finally changed.

  He slew the confined convict before the man could break free, but the other Claws were starting to shrug off Roar’s paralysis. They came at Edge from two sides at once, but the jailbird’s death had freed the women from their bonds. While Edge engaged the prisoner in front of him, Lilly raised her boltcaster and fired, landing a Vortex Shot in the side of his neck that shattered every vertebra in his spine and crushed his skull like a tin can.

  Meanwhile, Sasha and Mel came running to back Edge up, and together, they made short work of the final Claw. Unfortunately, there wasn’t time for a lengthy reunion. Instead, Sasha filled him in on the situation as they fought to catch their breath.

  “We were planning to head into the tunnels to rescue Trapper’s team. But after making that much noise, someone is sure to have noticed, and more Claws will be headed this way. We’ll have to withdraw and try again later. We should pick up some of this gear before we leave. Everything we take is one less weapon in our enemies’ arsenal.”

  “Why settle for some of their loot?” Edge smiled wide. “When we can have it all.”

  By this point, Sasha wouldn’t have believed that anything the man could do would surprise her ever again. However, that turned out not to be the case. Because that was when, to her utter astonishment, he picked up one of the bodies and ignited his core.

  She thought Edge was planning to hide it… before the fresh corpse shimmered and then disappeared with a pop of displaced air. He repeated the process one by one until all seven jailbirds had vanished without a trace—gear and all.

  “I can’t do anything about the mess, but this should keep them guessing and help cover our tracks. We can sort through their equipment later.”

  Sasha knew they needed to go, but now that the Claws were dead, she took a few seconds to enjoy the moment. As Lilly and Mel came to a stop beside her, she smiled wide, turned toward her savior, and said, “I thought you were dead.”

  “Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated,” he replied, then returned her grin. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

  Then Edge’s expression turned serious once more. “Let’s get out of here while we can. I’ll fill you in on the details later, but there are more Claws coming. Everyone who survived the dungeon is headed this way. We can catch up once we’re safe.”

  With that, hunters turned and left the way they had come—thrilled about their reunification and worried about the dark days ahead.