Mist and Miasma swirled around everything as we slogged through the muck. I expected the fog to burn off when the blue sun came up, but clouds rolled in before that could happen, turning the world dark and gray. Thunder cracked, and the rain started pouring down in buckets, battering the fog back down into the water.
By the middle of the day, Kest and Rali were the only ones still enjoying the novelty of never-ending rain. Warcry and I had had about enough.
“After Ghost Town, I never thought I’d get tired of rain,” I said.
“But here we bleedin’ are,” Warcry muttered.
In addition to the downpour, the number of bog ferals had picked up. Strangely, it was less like these ferals had been after us and more like we’d intercepted them by accident. The last group that we’d fought had even been plodding in the same direction we were. They still tried to kill us once we caught up to them, but it was like we weren’t their primary objective. Luckily, Kest and I remembered to loot these guys.
It was just after day sun high when we came over a rise and saw where all the ferals were headed.
There was a building off in the distance on a small hill. Through the curtain of rainwater, the place didn’t look like much—just a low brick building—but it matched up with the coordinates Biggerstaff had sent us for Dragon Heartchamber 2. Bands of bog ferals dotted the marshy land between us and the building, every one of them stumbling and trudging up the hill toward it.
“Huh,” I said, eyeing the place. “I kind of expected something bigger.”
“I told you, you can’t build up in Bogland,” Kest said. “The ground’s too unstable to support a large structure. I’m not even sure how they keep a foundation that long from cracking apart.”
“Must be a lot of Spirit collected there to be drawing the ferals like that,” Rali said, leaning on his walking stick.
Warcry checked the time on his HUD. “Bit early, ain’t we, grav?”
“I bet we won’t be once we’re done fighting our way to the doorstep,” I said.
Red flames ran down his head and arms.
“Best get started, then,” he said.
Heartchamber 2
“AH, ME BLEEDIN’—” WARCRY hopped sideways out of the range of a feral’s swiping arms, his every move off-balance and wobbly. His junky prosthetic was locked up again.
I jumped into a shield-bash, tearing open the feral’s skull before it could touch him. Rotten brains and rainwater slung off Death Metal in an arc.
“We’re almost there,” Kest yelled, glancing up the spongy hill at Heartchamber 2, just a few hundred yards away now. The weight on the end of her chain gauntlet shot out and punched through the decomposing eye of an attacking squid feral. “I’ll take another look at it when we get inside. Just hope the door’s not locked.”
The straightest path to the front door of the Heartchamber had taken us straight through three bands of ferals, and the noise from the fights had drawn others from the surrounding area, so by then we were being swamped by at least half a dozen packs of them.
Rali darted through us, hitting Warcry and Kest with Spirit boosts. Since I could take a power up from the ferals whenever I needed it, I’d told him to focus on the other two. Although the more often I used the ferals’ life points for power ups, the sicker and more sluggish I felt when they wore off, to the point where I’d stopped using Dead Man’s Hand unless one of my friends was in danger and I couldn’t get to them or I really needed the boost to keep moving.
A break came in the line of ferals.
“Let’s run for it,” Rali suggested.
“Sounds good,” I said.
The four of us took off for the steel door on the front side of the Heartchamber. We were up out of the water, but that last push up the hill was not an easy one. Even with Ki-speed, we were all sucking wind by the time we made it to the brick building.
As we approached, the steel door opened. Biggerstaff, the catfish-headed recruiter for the Eight-Legged Dragons, stepped out under the wide eaves and held the door open. He was back in street clothes today, jeans and a button-down shirt, no fancy tailored suit like he’d worn to the tournament.
“How was the trip?” he called.
“Wet,” Warcry snapped as we sprinted inside.
“Watch that step,” Biggerstaff said.
Kind of an understatement. A few feet inside the door, the floor ended in an abrupt drop-off.
Kest, Warcry, and I skidded to a stop. Rali’s wet sandals slipped on the tile, but I grabbed him before he went under the waist-high railing.
“Whoa,” he breathed. The lace in his eyes thinned out as he looked down.
“Whoa,” Sushi whispered, poking her head around my leg.
Instead of a mudroom or foyer, we were standing on a walkway that went around the perimeter of the building. At the center was a twelve-story drop. Doors lined the different levels, and people came and went. On the bottom floor, tables and chairs were set up around a blue-watered fountain like a mall food court.
I let go of Rali and grabbed the railing. That was a long way down.
“Of course,” Kest said, leaning over the rail beside me. “If you can’t build up, you build down.”
“Good for defense, too,” Biggerstaff said. “You’d be surprised how hard it is to infiltrate a place that’s ninety-nine percent underground.”
Kest nodded slowly, then straightened up.
“Well, we got you guys here,” she said to me. “Rali and I should be going. We’ll message you when we get to Jade City.”
My stomach sank. I hadn’t expected her to take off so soon.
“Slow down a minute, Miss Iye Skal.” Biggerstaff put his hands up to stop her. “You two came this far; you might as well spend a few nights, see how things operate around the Heartchamber. Are you still considering the Dragons’
