A hail storm of ice struck the warbler in the face and throat, not because Sorin thought he could kill it that easily with such a weak soulprint, but because if he could damage its throat, that would remove most of the danger from this particular monster.

  “Go!” he barked at his team. They stared at him in dull incomprehension for a second before snapping out of it. Nemari turned to start running but stopped when she saw she was the only one.

  “Rue,” Odric yelled, grabbing the girl by the shoulders. “Come on, we have to go!”

  “We’re all going to die,” she whispered.

  “The fuck we are,” Sorin said. He gave her a shove in the right direction and added, “Now snap out of it and run, damn it!”

  Two more warblers appeared behind them, their throats already flexing as they started croaking at the humans in their territory. Sorin released more ice darts at both of them, but they weren’t surprised by the attack and hurriedly ducked away. He used the distraction to dash in and slip past their guard with his sword, killing one instantly.

  Then the magic hit him, a sense of deep fatigue. His sword was so heavy, and there was no point, anyway. I’m going to die, on Floor 1 no less. God, if the monsters didn’t kill me, the humiliation would. I’m the best climber in the tower, and this is all it takes to finish me off?

  Mixed with that sensation was a healthy dose of rage that fought back against the impulse to just give up. Rationally, Sorin knew what was happening, and he knew what he needed to do. It was just getting his body to do it. Where motivation failed, discipline took over. He refused to stop fighting, to let some weak rank 1 frogs be the end of him.

  The warbler’s surprise was complete when Sorin’s blade flashed up and slashed at its throat. It barely even started to move its makeshift spear to block, and even if Sorin wasn’t moving at full speed, he was still too fast for the monster.

  That ended two of the frogs, but there were at least twenty more closing in. The closer they got, the stronger the effect of their magic would be. Rue was fully under their spell already, so much so that Odric had picked her up and heaved her over his shoulder. He shot a worried look back at Sorin, obviously torn between getting his sister safely away and not abandoning his teammate.

  “Go,” Sorin told him. “I’m right behind you.”

  If he wasn’t so concerned about Rue, he’d probably be standing in a daze, too.

  Odric took off in a long, lumbering gait, his steps awkward as he tried to balance the weight and ignore one of Rue’s sword hilts pressing into the side of his face. There was no time to stop and adjust how he was carrying her, though.

  Firebolts arced overhead, descending between the trees into the tall grass and bushes. They vanished as the anima fueling them was eaten, but there was enough heat, especially with Flare helping things along, to set small fires where they landed. It wouldn’t stop a warbler frog, but it might slow them down.

  Or not, Sorin thought as four more of the bipedal frogs scrambled out from under some burning branches. Everything was too green for the fires to really catch and spread, but the firebolts raining down from the sky were still making them cautious. Rather than rush to get in close where their hypnotic croaking would be strongest, they advanced in a wary line. Their attention was split between their human prey and the sky, which was smart of them. As soon as Nemari saw them in the open, she targeted them specifically.

  That was enough of an interruption to their tactics for Odric to kick through the line, literally running one of the warblers over and trampling it. Sorin flowed in behind him, rage driving his blade even as magic infected his mind and told him to stop fighting. The croaking in front of him was completely scrambled, which helped keep his thoughts clear, but there were more warblers in the background. No matter how many Sorin killed, there were always more.

  He laid about with his sword, not even trying to finish anything off. All he cared about was wounding them enough to make them give up the chase. Even so, warblers weren’t physically impressive. More often than not, a single strike was all it took to kill them, confirmed by the feeling of anima pouring into his soulprint.

  Something flashed through his peripheral vision. Without thinking, he whipped his sword out to intercept it. A crude spear tumbled out of the air, cleanly split in half. “Shit,” Sorin swore. A single glance was all it took to see six more warblers, their throats vibrating loudly, with spears ready to throw.

  They were fifty feet away, too far to fight with his sword but not too far to hit with some ice darts. Sorin hurled them out four at a time in a frozen blitz, but it wasn’t enough. He knew he couldn’t do it even as he tried, and part of him cursed himself for wasting anima and energy. Shut up, stupid brain. You’re being tricked. Just do what I tell you to!

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  The intensity of the warbler’s cry lessened under his assault but didn’t disappear completely. Even as the ones he attacked gave up the fight, a second and third group appeared. Sorin turned his ice darts on them, but it wasn’t enough.

  “Too many,” he muttered. Pointless.

  He wasn’t sure if it was the draining effect of their power that made him think that. Looking at it objectively, there were more than thirty of the monsters and only four of them. Even if they could have fought without the handicap, they still might lose. It didn’t matter; he was too spiteful to quit.

  Odric had slowed to a stop and was barely on his feet, and a glance up ahead showed Nemari in a similar situation. Three warblers had cut her off and were stabbing at her with their spears. She was putting her staff to use—the first time Sorin had seen her use it—trying to keep them back, but her movements were too slow to fight the frogs off.

  “Move,” he snarled at Odric as he ran by. Another trickle of warbler-anima seeped into him as he got a lucky shot with an ice dart. It went right into the warbler’s open mouth and pierced the soft tissue there to strike brain matter. The anima gain was only a sliver, but it was enough.

  The soulprint was at capacity, too full to handle the anima. There was only one thing it could do: grow. Normally, Sorin would wait until he was in a safe place to guide the change. Letting a soulprint grow to the next rank without direction rarely resulted in good changes. But that required time, something he sorely lacked.

  Power now. Fix it later.

  Sorin let the transformation happen, ducking into his soul space just long enough to trigger it. He wished he could stay there to guide the growth, but there was no time. Anima poured out of the soulprint, wrapping around it and expanding the pattern. New channels opened instantly, and within moments, Ice Dart was an E-ranked soulprint.

  He ran anima through the expanded soulprint and was pleased to see the dart formed as quickly as always. Without his conscious direction, the soulprint had taken on the characteristics he’d been manually adding the whole time. It was bigger now, more stable, and far, far faster.

  He would have chosen to focus on a single aspect that best suited how he wanted to use it, but there were far worse outcomes to an uncontrolled rank shift. Hopefully, the next time it filled with anima, he’d be able to guide its growth. But right now, it was his only hope of escaping with his life.

  The new weight and speed gave the darts far more of a punch, enough that even if they couldn’t kill a warbler, a concentrated burst was enough to knock one out of the fight. Unfortunately, with the improved rank came an increased anima cost to use it. Sorin could feel his soulspace rapidly emptying itself.

  “Move!” he bellowed again, and with another five warblers down, Odric snapped out of their hypnotic suggestion. He wasn’t the only one either; on his shoulder, Rue lifted her head for the first time.

  “Let me down,” she said as she started to squirm. “I can fight.”

  “You can run,” Sorin corrected her as she slipped free. “We’re outnumbered at least five-to-one still.”

  “We can take them,” she insisted, though she kept moving with the rest of the team.

  “No, we can’t.”

  Sorin threw three ice darts at their pursuers, more to disrupt them from coordinating and getting their hypnotic croaking back up to full strength than out of any thought to score more kills. Blue blood spurted from their wounds.

  Shit. Still not enough.

  The improved darts were slowing the warblers down. They might just get away if they ran fast enough. Nemari’s bombardment had died off, probably because she was as low on anima as Sorin himself, which meant they were out of time to stand and fight. “Faster,” he urged.

  With Rue running on her own now, they started to outpace the warblers. All they needed to do was break through any of the monsters still ahead and link up with Nemari. A spark of hope blossomed in his mind, bright enough to drown out the doubts the warblers had sown.

  That lasted for another three seconds. Then they ran under a tree and three warblers leaped down on them, their undulating croaks filling Sorin’s head. The magic demanded he stop resisting, that he take the easy way out, but it wasn’t so strong. He fought it off, but not before one of the warblers landed on him.

  Luckily, they were lightweight. Sorin staggered forward a few steps before he threw the monster to the ground and stomped hard on it. Odric, similarly unbothered by the extra weight, quickly hurled his attacker away. Rue, on the other hand, was far more lacking in the self-confidence needed to even try to fight. She stumbled when the weight hit her, then collapsed to her knees and sat there, unresisting, as the frog monster secured a better grip.

  “Get away from my sister!” Odric roared as he lunged for the monster.

  Ignoring the big man, it brandished a jagged chunk of stone and started to bring it down into the side of Rue’s neck. Sorin fired off an ice dart that struck its elbow, completely severing the limb and sending it flying end over end. The next instant, Odric ripped it free and hurled it into the dirt, where it received the same treatment as the one that had jumped him.

  He helped Rue back to her feet and gave her a good shake to snap her out of her funk, then set her to running. Sorin saw a line of red blood on the man’s arm and realized his enlarged ice dart had clipped Odric, but neither had time to stop and talk about it.

  A minute later, the croaking song of the warbler frogs started to fade. “I think we’re out of it now,” Sorin huffed out. “Too far away from the water.”

  “How many do you think you killed?” Rue asked.

  “Not enough. Where’s Nemari?”

  As if in answer, the booming roar of an expanding firebolt filled the air a few hundred feet away. All three of them whipped around to face the flash of light barely visible through the trees. “There shouldn’t be any of the frogs that way,” Rue said with a confused frown.

  “Blind run. Who knows what she ran into? We need to hurry.”

  There was no arguing with that logic. They started running again.