The God of Thunder laughed as I lay on the ground, lightning surging through my unprotected veins.

  He laughed. Stormbreak washed over him, lightning arcing from wing to tail and thunder cracking like a massive whip in the air. “Kade Noelstra, even if you were to go all-out, with every ounce of your strength, and I were to stand perfectly still, you couldn’t hurt me.”

  I glared up at the lightning dragon as he circled the forest, disappearing behind trees and reemerging next to me, already back in his human form. His spear hung over his shoulder, and he stared at me from inside his full-body Stormsteel armor. “You want to try, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said instantly. Then I hesitated. Stormbreak had tickled him…maybe. I wasn’t ready. Someday soon—sooner than Eugene thought—I’d be strong enough to give him a fight. And Stormbreak had hurt. It was healing far more quickly than I was used to, but even so… “But not yet.”

  “Smart kid,” the lightning dragon said. He sat on the forest floor. “You’ve used it before. When you got the Stormsteel Core.”

  “Yeah. When everything’s on the line. And when I know it’s safe to use it.”

  His eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward, spear sliding off his shoulder and into his grip. The weapon sparked and crackled against his gauntlet. “Stormbreak is a weapon. It isn’t supposed to be safe, kid. It’s supposed to end fights and be a tool in your kit. A carpenter knows a saw can hurt him, but he still uses it.”

  “How do I use it if I can’t promise I won’t hurt people?” I sat in the dirt next to him. My arm sent waves of pain across my chest as the muscle and skin the wolf had shredded slowly stitched themselves together.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? Think about that while we keep hunting. I’m sure you’ll find an answer, kid.”

  I matched his gaze. Then I pushed myself to my feet and resummoned Stormsong.

  Stamina: 175/460, Mana: 480/590

  My Mana seemed strong, even if my Stamina was far lower than I wanted it to be. I’d have to be more careful during our next wolfpack.

  As I followed the God of Thunder deeper into the forest, I thought about the question. How could I use a weapon that would hurt my friends the moment I used it? The fight against Yalerox had been one of desperation. So had the last-ditch effort in the D-Rank trap portal. No one would have survived either of those without Stormbreak. But I’d used it a few other times after the Yalerox fight—in the Arboreal portal, for instance—and it had turned out okay.

  “Two wolves. I’ll take the left. Survive the right. Stormbreak when you think it’s time.”

  I nodded to Eugene and readied myself. This time, I focused almost entirely on the blade, the wolf’s massive jaws, and nothing else.

  Almost nothing else.

  Darkness. Lightning Chain. The first spell dropped almost on top of me, blocking the wolf’s view of me—and mine of it. The second threw an arcing, blue-white binding of electricity between us. I stared down the line, not pulling or letting myself be pulled. As long as we were linked, I’d know which direction the wolf—

  The chain jerked to the right. I steeled myself and stepped to follow it. Stormsong shifted. The S-Rank Packmaster crashed out of the Darkness, massive jaws closing where my thigh had been. They clacked shut, and I offered a single quick slash—little more than an annoyance even to an equal enemy—before dropping back into my Mistwalk stance.

  The wolf circled. I tried to keep up, but its S-Rank speed was ridiculous. I couldn’t. Even if I could get two Wind Charges, Windwalk wouldn’t be enough to even the scales. My Bindings hardly helped, either. The sheer difference in ranks was too high to make up for physically.

  Magic could help. I’d proven it just a few seconds before.

  The wolf lunged. I brought my lightning sword across the moment it moved. The impact knocked me back a few feet, and dirt shot across the woods as I rolled to let the wolf’s sheer bulk fly overhead. Another small cut bled for a few seconds before the monster’s healing scarred the wound over. “Now?”

  “I said use it when you think it’s time,” Eugene said. I stole a quick glance as the wolf spun, growling. He’d beaten his and was sitting on its still-breathing body. “It’s up to you.”

  I took a deep breath and waited, ready for the monstrous wolf to attack again. It was a puzzle; my finisher was strong enough to beat the wolf. I knew it was—but only if I could weaken it. Meanwhile, Eugene was on top of the other wolf; he’d be hit for sure.

  We traded blows for a few more frantic seconds, then I used Windwalk. I threw myself into the air, stepping on nothing. Ten feet up. Twenty. “Separate!” I yelled.

  The God of Thunder moved. One moment, he sat on his wolf, watching me. The next, he was thirty feet away. Good enough. I slapped Stormbreak’s exclusion on him and used it again.

  Lightning.

  Negative and Positive.

  More lightning.

  When the afterimages cleared from my eyes, Eugene was stabbing the wolf I’d been fighting to death, I was on the ground, and the wolf he’d taken out of the fight was a charred spot on the forest floor. Trees were cracked and broken for twenty feet in every direction, as a bomb had gone off.

  “Better,” the God of Thunder said, smiling. “Much better. You hesitated, but this time, your mind was working while you waited. Even with Stormbreak as weak as it is, you can’t rely on your allies. The best you can do is pick one who might be able to pull off a victory if you tip the scales in their favor and keep them safe. In this case, picking me is always the right choice. Who would you pick on your team if you needed one person to finish a boss fight?”

  “Ellen,” I said immediately.

  “Really?”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I took a breath. “No. No, she’s not the best soloist in the group. I’d want Raul or Jeff. Probably Raul, because he outranks Jeff. But it’s situational. There’s no one better against a swarm than Ellen.”

  “Good.” The God of Thunder shouldered his spear. “You’re an emotional person, Kade Noelstra, but emotions can’t guide a weapon like Stormbreak. Not alone. You have to let go of them and rely on both understanding and instinct. Now, get up. We have a lot of hunting to do if you want Stormbreak to rank up.”

  Everything hurt. Nothing was injured, but after two Stormbreaks, it all hurt. I pushed myself to my feet; plenty of Mana and Stamina, even after casting and using Stormbreak. “What is this place?”

  “The Crone’s personal portal world.” Eugene said. “It follows similar rules to my own. Enjoy it while you can.”

  Stormbreak.

  Dead monster. Recover. Discuss. Hunt.

  Stormbreak.

  The pattern continued. The God of Thunder and I stalked through the woods, wolves among the wolves. It was grueling. Eugene didn’t want to stop, no matter how exhausted I got. Instead, as my Mana plummeted into Shadowstorm Battery range, we moved our hunting grounds to somewhere my negative zone would be effective—against spectral banshees whose screams felt like they were breaking down the bonds between my cells.

  And the whole time, Eugene and I talked about the skill, about the scenarios I found myself in, and about the best way to use Stormbreak. It took a long time, but after what felt like hours of fighting, a familiar feeling washed over my core and mind.

  “It’s ready,” I said as I stared at the ruined village around us. We’d destroyed most of what was left of it with our fight against the banshees, but it hadn’t been in good shape to begin with.

  The God of Thunder’s spear flashed out and pinned one last monster to the wall. Then he turned to me and talked, leaving the weapon in place as the spectral ghost slowly died…or re-died. “It is. But do you understand what I’ve been trying to teach you?”

  “I think so,” I said. “In a way, it reminds me of something my Dad told me after one of my playground fights.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah.” I took a deep breath to buy time to think. “I’d hurt a kid. Pretty bad. Suspension—but I was used to that. He’d been picking on some girls on the playground, and I’d watched the teacher try to stop it. She couldn’t. It just kept happening, over and over. And I did something I’d never done before.”

  “What was that?” Eugene asked. He leaned against a ruined stone wall; it groaned ominously, like it’d go over at any moment.

  “I asked Dad what to do.”

  The conversation had been long and painful. I remembered the taste of chocolate milkshakes; we’d each gone through two, sitting in his car outside of an ice cream place while he and I worked through my options. Every time I thought I had a solution, Dad had taken a long, slow drink until I second-guessed myself.

  And when I’d finally worked myself into a state of absolute confusion, Dad had put a hand on my shoulder. He’d looked me in the eye, and he’d said what I needed to hear. ‘I’ll talk to your principal tomorrow and let her know what’s been happening. If nothing changes, and you decide you have to do something, I won’t punish you for what happens. You’ve done everything you can to avoid violence, Kade, and I’m proud of you. You’re growing up.’

  I cleared my throat and looked the God of Thunder in the eye. “I didn’t know those girls. I barely knew the boy, other than that he wouldn’t leave them alone. But Dad had given me options. I used them. And then, when they ran out, I used the only one I had left. I didn’t come back to school for three days, and when I did come back, that boy wasn’t there, either. He ended up transferring to a different school.

  “The point is, the tools you have are the only ones you have, and now that I understand Stormbreak, I’m ready to use it, not just as a last resort, but as a weapon.”

  “Excellent,” the God of Thunder said. Then he paused. “The boy lived, right?”

  I nodded. “I’m not a monster.”

  “Good. Not all enemies must be killed, kid. Knowing which weapon to use is important, but so is knowing how hard to hit with those weapons. Now, you know how to use this one. Let’s get back to your sister and your partner. It’s time for you to leave before something happens you’ll all regret.”

  Jessie was in deep.

  She sat in a tent the size of a stadium that, somehow, she hadn’t noticed until the Crone led her through the door, on the opposite side of a table from the spectral, moonlight-colored hag. It stank of incense, like a high-schooler’s idea of cool—she had to keep her eyes from rolling until that thought left her head. The tent was completely empty. No bleachers. No rings. This was a no-ring circus, with no audience, and the performance was just her and the Crone.

  “Now, Miss Gerald, let’s discuss business,” the old woman said.

  No, not just her and the Crone. Mind Maiden Enolda stood ten feet from the table, four arms behind her back, waiting. Her puppet eyes were locked on the ground, and her wooden body stood motionless. Jessie wanted to glance at the marionette. Was she here as a threat? No, that couldn’t be. The Crone could probably kill Jessie without even using a skill. Enolda was overkill in every way.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I mean, girlie, that the Ghostdream is expensive to maintain, and your brother and his friends tore through it like a bunch of hooligans. If I were that dragon, or any other Paragon, it’d be enough of a slight to kill them all—or destroy your world with my presence. But I’m not. I’m a forgiving monster.”

  Somehow, Jessie didn’t believe the Crone. Not at all. She was in deep, and she was alone. The reality was that, whatever Kade was up to, he couldn’t stop this monster any more than he could fight Eugene and hope to win. It was all up to Jessie. But Jessie had no idea what to do. There was too much she didn’t know, didn’t understand. “I understand that part, but I don’t understand what you want.”

  “Ha! Straight to the point. I like you, girlie.” The Crone’s hands shot onto the table and deposited a pair of parchment scrolls. “I’ll level with you, Miss Gerald, since there’s nothing you can do to even the balance of power, no matter what you know. I am extremely powerful. The other Paragons believe that my power is enough to crush them. It is. But most of my power doesn’t go into fighting. It goes into creating and maintaining the Ghostdream and this portal world, and into tethering myself to them to avoid my inevitable fate.

  “So, with that in mind, my business proposition. You and your world become members of the Ghostmarket. I take a tiny cut of the Mana that’s expended inside of it—just a fraction of a percent—and that allows me to keep it running. And—“

  “What about the portal people?”

  “The who?” The Crone asked. Her eyes narrowed slightly.

  “My brother and his delving team found people in a Dark Citadel portal—people who didn’t belong there. They managed to save them, and we’ve had them in our world since. They’re unawakened humans, but thin,” Jessie said. She took a breath, swallowed, and pushed ahead. She was in deep, and the portal people—the Hyperboreans—were her best play to even the odds.

  “We’re calling them Hyperboreans, but that’s an Earth thing. No one’s been able to talk to them, but I kind of tricked them. They know your name—or at least, they know the symbol for it.”

  “And?” The Crone’s voice was deathly quiet. Behind Jessie, Enolda stiffened, and her hands dropped to her sides.

  “And, they weren’t there by choice.”

  “I fail to see your point, girlie.”

  “Okay, I’ll be blunt. Is the Ghostmarket a slave market?”

  “No.”

  “Then where did the portal people come from?”

  The Crone went still. So did Enolda. Jessie didn’t breathe. For a few seconds, the tent felt balanced on a razor’s edge, and Jessie thought she could feel the power in the air.

  Then Enolda turned and left, moving faster than anything had the right to. One moment, she stood still behind Jessie. The next, she was through the tent flap, moving like a blur within a blur.

  The Crone’s eyes narrowed. Jessie wanted to flinch, but before she could even do that, the old, moonlight woman cleared her throat. “It would appear that a member of the Ghostmarket is abusing their privilege. Come with me, girlie. This place is about to be exceptionally dangerous. I’ll keep you safe, though. And don’t worry. The Ghostmarket is strictly voluntary. I would never coerce anyone into participating, much less allow someone entry as a product, and no vendor who did would last longer than it took me to notice.”

  The Crone stood, and Jessie wheeled herself along behind the woman as she stalked toward the tent flap. She held her tongue. The Crone was lying—she’d just been blackmailing Jessie. But the balance of power had shifted. Jessie might not be in control. She doubted it was possible to be in control against the Crone. But at least she could reach the surface for air now.

  If she could find Ellen, everything would be fine.

  There are 30 more chapters on . Come see! I'm blown away by the number of people checking it out.

  I'm offering a single chapter in advance for all free members on Patreon. If you're interested in reading ahead, please feel free to join for free. Thank you.