I hiked my knees up to my chest and, with a blast of Ki-strength, shoved my work boots into the beetle’s armored underbelly. It flipped over my head, landing with a crunch on another bench. Its legs flailed, trying to right itself, but a broken corner of the bench was poking through its abdomen like a stake. It was caught.
I staggered to my feet, sucking wind. Hungry Ghost was keeping me stocked on Miasma, but even with the internal alchemy running, the rush from my adrenaline was fading and I was slowing down, running out of energy for this fight.
Behind me, Dead Reckoning freaked out, but I wasn’t fast enough to spin out of the way this time. Instead, I ducked and covered the back of my neck and head with Death Metal. A huge chitinous body slammed into me from behind. It was the second beetle, the one whose wing I’d chopped off with the scythe while blinded. It crunched down, trying to bite my shield in half. When that didn’t work, the thing reared back and slammed into the shield again, bearing down with all its weight. Pain shot through the knife scars in my messed-up ribs, and my legs buckled. I dropped to one knee.
The beetle twisted around to chomp at me from a different angle.
Cussing under my breath, I grabbed the beetle’s greenish-black life point. These things weren’t leaving me any choice. Before it could snap me in half, I clamped Dead Man’s Hand down and killed it.
The huge dead bug slumped to the floor in front of me, spiked head down, like it was bowing.
Something stirred inside my chest. Bowing made sense, didn’t it? I was Death. Everything and everyone bowed to me eventually. Even if this beetle was some kind of sentient being, it had deserved this. It would’ve killed me, Rali, or Warcry without a second thought, and it had been helping these Contrail a-holes run this glorified slave pen for God knew how long. Death was its reckoning.
My brain snapped back to sanity for a second, realizing what I’d just thought. What the heck was wrong with me? Was Devil Corruption from the scythe turning me into some kind of psycho?
This is not Devil Corruption, Hungry Ghost said. Death cultivator was being pragmatic. Enemies return from unconsciousness. They do not return from the grave.
I can’t deal with you right now. I shoved him out of my head and used a blast of Miasma to freezer burn the nerves in my messed-up side. Rali wouldn’t like me screwing up what he’d just started fixing, but then he wasn’t going to like any of this. I was running on fumes, mentally and physically. I just needed to keep going until we were out of this hellhole.
Footsteps ran up behind me. I hit the Ki-reinforcement, muscles shaking with exhaustion as I spun into a skull-shattering elbow.
Warcry slipped the shot. “Watch yerself, grav!”
“Sorry.” I dropped the attack. “Rali’s waiting for us at the elevator.”
“Let’s move, then.”
We ran for it.
Clear the Tower
RALI WAS WAITING FOR us, the green girl cowering in the freight car and a pile of unconscious goons at his feet. When he saw us, he grinned and swung his walking stick up onto his shoulder.
“Just in time.” He backed into the elevator with the girl. “Going up?”
I got in with them. “Just two more floors to go.”
Warcry cussed as he climbed aboard. “If this supposed angel’s even in this location. You heard what that cove said about the fighters selling fast.”
The doors slid shut, and the car started up.
“It was only yesterday when we saw her fight,” I said, leaning against the wall to take advantage of the few seconds’ rest. “She’s got to be here somewhere.”
“Who are you looking for?” the green girl asked.
“An angel with—I mean, a woman with white hair and white skin and silver eyes,” I said. “Have you seen her? She’s wearing dirty, torn-up white robes, and she has a massive scar across her stomach.”
The green girl nodded slowly. “I saw them lead her past my cage yesterday. Once to the fight, once coming back from it. We’re both being held on L2.”
At the same time, Rali, Warcry, and I glanced at the lit-up floor buttons on the wall. L2 was our next stop, with L1 being the last floor before you came out in the little shack.
For a second, the only sound was the creaking of the freight elevator.
“Fine, I’ll say it,” Warcry growled. “We don’t need to raid both floors, do we. Not if we know which one she’s on. We grab her and we get out. Less fighting, less chance of dying down in this hole.”
“Not happening,” I said, thinking about the cages I’d seen through the wire door as we descended the first time. The sound of crying and someone begging to be let out. “You can grab the angel and leave if you want, but I’m finishing this.”
“There was never going to be any ‘just this floor’ or ‘just this girl,’ Warcry,” Rali said, an amused smirk on his face. “With Hake, it’s all or nothing.”
Warcry grunted. “Someone had to point out the smart move while your sister ain’t here to do it.”
Rali eyed Warcry and me. “You do both look like you’re about to slosh down into your boots as goo-puddles. Hang on.”
He took a deep breath and shut his eyes, then put one hand on each of our shoulders. Healing Restoration washed away the overwhelming exhaustion and overloaded my internal batteries. It felt so good that I had to shake out my arms and bounce on my toes a couple times to use up some of the zinging energy.
“That should get us through a few more floors,” Rali said, reopening his eyes.
“So, they know we’re coming, yeah?” Warcry said, his voice louder than necessary in the small space. Maybe he was feeling a little overcharged from that boost, too. He stabbed
