Rue was the freshest in the group, largely due to the fact that she hadn’t actually fought in the previous fight. Sorin was taller and faster, but he was already wiped out both physically and mentally, so when their team’s youngest member sped off in Nemari’s direction, neither he nor Odric were capable of stopping her.

  “Wait, Rue!” Odric called, but she ignored him and ran. Both blades were in her hands now, as though she was determined to make up for failing against the warblers. Sorin didn’t blame her for that; she was the newest and youngest climber on her team, one who already had confidence issues. Warblers were the perfect enemy to exploit those vulnerabilities.

  Too bad she’s doing something stupid out of some misplaced sense of guilt. Whatever Nemari’s fighting against, rushing in blindly is a good way to get yourself killed. But we’re running in right behind her, so I guess we’re idiots, too.

  He’d still feel a lot better if he was in the lead. Sorin had decades of combat experience—he’d been climbing for longer than Rue had been alive—and could adapt to unknown situations far better than her. There was a distinct possibility that she’d rush in and immediately get herself killed fighting against something she knew nothing about.

  “Get back!” Nemari screamed as Rue approached, and a moment later, Sorin knew why. The buzzing was hard to hear at first, but it got louder with each step until he caught up to their group’s scout and saw what was going on.

  “What the hell is that thing?” Rue whispered when Sorin stopped next to her.

  Nemari was in a small ring of burnt plants, their leaves shriveled and their branches charred black. Covering the ground like a carpet were thousands and thousands of black beetles, most of them small, but some bigger than Sorin’s thumb. If that had been the worst of it, he wouldn’t have worried, but there were still hundreds more in the air. Their wings flickered too rapidly to be seen without some sort of perception soulprint as they circled around her.

  Even that was probably within Nemari’s ability to handle. Firebolt wasn’t really a good attack for swarms, but it was better than anything else their team had. Combined with Flare, she could pump it up enough to make it explode, which she’d obviously done at least once already. That didn’t explain the heat rolling out of the area though, which meant she had a third soulprint that was keeping the beetles off her for now.

  No, the real problem was the monster hunkered down about thirty feet away. It was an ugly, revolting thing, a mass of porous, rubbery flesh with twenty or so thick, segmented limbs each six feet long. The limbs had barbs running their length to help haul its bulk around or to hold onto whatever prey it caught. The main body was difficult to see under all the beetles crawling around on it, but Sorin knew that it most closely resembled a squished version of the bugs it carried, all flattened out with a slight depression forming a bowl in its back.

  A mound of loose dirt was piled up there, a home for its smaller kin, but it looked like it had been kicked over and most of it was spilled all over the ground. Probably how Nemari caught its attention to begin with. These things don’t normally run around above ground.

  Their usual pattern was to bury themselves in the dirt and let their beetles do the hunting for them, moving only at night to find new sources of food, and even then, only rarely. In her panicked flight, Nemari must have literally run into it and stirred it up.

  “It’s a roaming hive,” Sorin said. “The beetles are all psychically connected to it. Don’t get any closer.”

  “What do we do then?” Rue asked.

  “You do nothing. You don’t have the tools for this.” At least she stopped when Nemari told her to back off. Sorin raised his voice and said, “Nemari, can you burn the rest of the swarm?”

  “I’m trying! Running a little low on anima.”

  “Same. I think I can get a few more shots in. I’m going to nail the hive base, won’t be enough to kill it, but if I can hurt it enough, it might stun the swarm for a few seconds. We’ll run, the swarm will chase, and you can turn around and hurl the biggest firebolt you can at them when they’re all coming at us from one direction.”

  Small licks of fire flashed through the air around her, seemingly doing nothing but somehow keeping the bugs away. “I don’t think I have enough left in me to pull that off,” she said.

  “You don’t have a choice,” he coaxed. “Get ready to make a break for it.”

  “Sorin,” she said. “I’m serious. I can’t do it.”

  “Going in three, two, one…”

  “Sorin!”

  Ice formed in front of him, nearly a foot long and wickedly edged. It hurtled across the clearing an instant later, just outside the ring of bug-killing heat surrounding Nemari. Dozens of beetles died as the ice dart plowed through them, and the hive itself let out a high-pitched chittering squeal of pain as it thrashed around, its legs kicking and spasming randomly.

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  By the time the ice vanished, Sorin was already yelling, “Now!” He turned and started to run, dragging Rue with him as they went.

  “God damn it!” Nemari practically screamed as she took off after them. In that first second of fleeing, the buzzing stopped completely, leaving only the sound of their heaving breaths and footfalls on a background of falling beetles that sounded almost like rain.

  The next second, however, renewed that angry buzz as the beetles recovered from the feedback of their sentient home being damaged. They surged after the fleeing trio of humans, intent upon biting and digging now that Nemari’s aura of heat was gone.

  Exactly as planned. Now we just need Nemari to pull off the finisher.

  The beetles chased them in a long stream, perfect for being torched by a single, massive firebolt. They wouldn’t get a better opportunity than this, but it all came down to whether the climbers could muster the strength to clinch their victory.

  “Burn them!” Sorin cried out.

  Still cursing, Nemari stumbled to a halt, spun in place, and poured anima into her soulprint. Immediately, a firebolt the size of her head jumped away from her open palm. It doubled in size in an instant, then again before it reached the leading edge of the beetles. By the time it passed the back end of the swarm, it was ten times bigger than when it started.

  And the beetles died in droves.

  Almost all of them were incinerated, and the leading wave of what did manage to survive splashed up against the scorching effect of whatever that other soulprint was that Nemari had. By the time that flickered out, all that was left were a few dozen scattered bugs, no threat to anybody.

  Sorin jumped forward to catch Nemari as she swooned, but Odric had already charged past him. Having finally caught up, the big man scooped her up in his arms and started using his healing soulprint. It wouldn’t fix the exhaustion, but a bit of help with some bug bites and muscle strain would make her more comfortable, so Sorin didn’t say anything.

  “What now?” Rue asked. “Do we go back and kill that walking pile of dirt?”

  “No. They’re too durable to kill. Even with the beetles dead, I wouldn’t want to try it. Notice that despite Nemari setting everything around her on fire, it was completely unharmed until I overcharged an ice dart to shoot into it.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  “Find a place to set up camp and recover,” Sorin said. “Today’s been a disaster.”

  No one argued that point. Nemari’s eyes flickered open a minute later, and she groaned in Odric’s arms. “Put me down,” she ordered him. Once she was back on her feet, she took a moment to look around. “We’re safe?”

  “As safe as we can be out in the middle of Floor 1,” Sorin said.

  “Safe from the warbler frogs?” she clarified.

  “Yes. The river’s a few miles away. We’ll take a long, long detour to get by it later.”

  “Right…” Nemari straightened herself up and said, “I want to apologize.”

  “For what?” Rue asked.

  “I ran. I left you all.”

  “We were all supposed to run,” Odric said.

  “And you didn’t. I was the only one who ran.”

  “If anyone’s apologizing, it should be me,” Rue said. “I froze. I let those stupid fucking frogs get into my head. Od had to literally pick me up and carry me while Sorin covered him.”

  “Which he shouldn’t have had to do alone,” Nemari argued. “I could have stayed to help, should have stayed, but I didn’t.”

  “Why don’t we just say we all could have done better and leave it at that?” Sorin suggested. “Nobody was perfect today. Everyone made mistakes. We survived, and we’re in one piece. We even got a decent soulprint out of the deal, one that’ll probably sell well thanks to how difficult it is to farm the monster we got it from.”

  Nemari shook her head. “I’m the leader. At least I’m supposed to be. I didn’t do my job today.”

  Oh, no.

  She looked at Sorin. “If anybody should be in charge, it’s you. You’ve got the experience and the knowledge, and you’re way stronger than all three of us together even with a single soulprint.”

  “Nope,” he said. “This is your team. You’re the boss.”

  “But—”

  “Not interested.”

  “If you’d just listen to me—”

  “What part of ‘no’ is not clear to you?” Sorin asked.

  “But why not?”

  Because I’ve known you guys for less than a week. You’re all barely novices. I don’t want this responsibility when I'm not even sure if I'll do another climb with you after we finish this one. There’s no way you’ll be able to keep up with the pace I’m planning to set, and I don’t think I can afford to take it slow for you.

  But what he said was, “Because this is your team. I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that I wanted to take it over. I don’t want that. I’m just trying to keep everybody safe.”

  Plus it’s hard to break four decades of being in charge, especially when you’re so new that you’re still learning how to do your job.

  Some things were better left unsaid, and Sorin liked his new team well enough that he was happy to nudge them in the general direction of competency. Stealing Nemari’s spot wouldn’t do that for her. She needed to practice now while mistakes were easy to recover from.

  “Keeping everybody safe while we climb is supposed to be my job,” she said bitterly, “but I failed at it, and you had to step in.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself. Look, it’s been a bad ten minutes. Let’s find a safe spot and take a break. You’ll feel better when you get some anima back in your soulspace.”

  Nemari just sighed and let Odric help keep her upright as they walked. Rue had a thoughtful frown on her face the whole way, and Sorin could practically feel her eyes burrowing into the back of his head. I sure hope that’s not a bad sign, he thought.

  They didn’t find anything as secure as their previous campsite, but since nobody wanted to go back that way now, and they weren’t going to be able to sleep, they just needed a place to take a breather. Sorin opted for something wide open so that nothing could sneak up on them, and that was easy enough to find. They sat down to rest and eat some of their rations, all of them quiet and introspective after their brush with death.

  Rue kept staring at him whenever she thought nobody was looking. It was like she was trying to figure something out, and he was the key. Whatever was on her mind, he expected he wouldn’t be happy about it. But she didn’t say anything, and when their break was over, they started the long trek around the warblers’ territory.

  There was no more talk of Sorin taking over the team, not that day, but he suspected he hadn’t heard the end of it just yet.