CHAPTER ELEVEN The Siege

  The corridor opened onto a ledge.

  Cade stopped at the threshold, the grinding of the collapsing tunnel still audible behind them, and stared at what lay below.

  A cavern. Massive, dome-shaped, stretching hundreds of feet in every direction. The silver luminescence of the corridor gave way to something warmer here—torchlight, maybe, or some equivalent, casting flickering shadows across a scene of organized chaos.

  In the center of the cavern, three enormous structures were taking shape.

  Trebuchets. Siege weapons, each one dozens of feet across, built from materials that gleamed with unnatural density. Workers swarmed over them like ants on a carcass—stocky humanoids maybe eighteen inches tall, gray-skinned and rough-featured, moving with purpose and coordination.

  "What is this?" Cade breathed.

  Rhys moved up beside him, her silver form pressed low against the ledge to avoid being seen. Her eyes tracked across the scene below, cataloging details with quick efficiency.

  "Construction," she said. "Military construction. And look there."

  She pointed toward the far wall of the cavern.

  Cade followed her gesture and felt something cold settle in his chest.

  A mural stretched across the distant stone—a Kindred city, painted in painstaking detail. Small forms moved through its streets, going about their lives, oblivious to what was being built to destroy them. Around the city, a ring of painted soldiers formed a siege line, their forces encircling the settlement like a noose waiting to be tightened.

  The trebuchets were aimed at that mural. At that city.

  "The objective here seems obvious," Rhys said quietly, "and once again, the same art style on the walls. I've never heard of three similarly constructed rooms in a row like this before."

  Zyrian nodded in agreement with Rhys's observations.

  Below them, the construction continued. Cade could see the operation's structure now that he knew what to look for. The trebuchet on the left was nearly complete—maybe eighty percent done, its massive arm already attached and being reinforced. The one in the middle was perhaps half-finished, the frame taking shape but the mechanics still incomplete. The one on the right was barely started—just a foundation and some initial framework, maybe twenty percent of the final structure. Smooth gray stone beams were stacked along the near wall, each roughly the size of Cade's arm, serving as the primary construction material. The workers nailed into the stone as if it were wood, somehow.

  A building sat between the trebuchets and the painted city—a two-story structure with a tower on top, clearly temporary but solidly built. A barracks, Cade guessed, the lower wide section for workers, no windows. The second floor, waist-high for him, had visible windows where furniture and tables with plans were arranged—probably meant for leadership, figures moving inside. A scout stood in the tower, watching the construction with bored attention.

  "How many?" Zyrian asked, his rust-red form crouched beside Rhys.

  Cade counted. Workers on the trebuchets. Workers transporting materials. Workers resting near the barracks. Figures visible through windows. The scout in the tower.

  "Sixty-something visible," he said. "Definitely more inside the building."

  "Around tier-three sized," Rhys observed. "All of them, from what I can see. Laborers, mostly. Some that look like supervisors."

  Foremen, Cade noticed. Larger figures moving among the workers, barking orders, keeping the construction on schedule. Their authority was evident but not brutal—firm direction rather than cruelty. The laborers responded with efficiency, not fear.

  No sympathy for any of them. These workers would fight if given the chance—this didn't seem like a "free the slaves" situation. The workers gave off an air of purpose, interest in their work.

  The grinding behind them grew louder.

  "The corridor," Zyrian said, glancing back. "It's still coming."

  "We need to move," Rhys agreed. "But where? The portal should be—"

  "There." Cade pointed to the far wall, directly beneath the painted city. A pedestal stood against the stone, similar to the ones they'd used before, the dull outline of a portal apparent. "The portal isn't active yet. We have to complete the scenario first."

  "Then we need to get down there without being seen."

  The grinding was closer now. Cade could feel vibrations through the stone beneath his feet—the corridor collapsing toward them, consuming everything in its path.

  "The noise," he said. "It's covering our movement. If we circle around the perimeter now, behind the barricade, out of sight, while they can still hear the tunnel... maybe the collapse will do some of the work for us." He eyed the workers nearest the entry ledge.

  Rhys nodded. "Go. Quickly."

  They descended from the ledge, keeping low, using the jagged rock formations that lined the cavern's edges as cover. The construction site was surrounded by barricades—wooden walls and checkpoints arranged like a military encampment, but the perimeter wasn't heavily guarded. All attention was focused inward, on the trebuchets, on the work.

  The grinding followed them as they moved, the sound echoing through the cavern, masking their footsteps and whispered coordination. Cade led the way, his larger body harder to hide but his speed helping them cover ground quickly. Rhys and Zyrian flanked him, darting between rocks, pausing only when a worker's gaze swept too close to their position.

  They reached the far side of the cavern just as the corridor's end became visible.

  Cade watched, fascinated despite the danger, as the collapsing tunnel reached the cavern entrance. The grinding reached a crescendo—and then the fold simply... merged with the wall. The tunnel opening sealed itself, stone flowing into stone, leaving no trace that a passage had ever existed.

  The grinding stopped with its integration.

  Silence fell over the cavern, broken only by the sounds of construction—hammering, sawing, the shouts of foremen directing their crews.

  "Well," Zyrian said quietly. "That wasn't the distraction we were hoping for."

  They huddled behind a cluster of boulders, hidden from the construction site, close enough to the pedestal that Cade could see its details. The portal space beside it remained empty. Cade's focus flicked to the progress meter, always available, showing about a third full.

  "We need to take them out," Cade said. "All of them, presumably, to stop the siege from succeeding. That's the scenario."

  "Eighty-odd tier-threes against three tier-fours." Rhys's tone was calculating rather than worried. "The numbers favor them, but the tier difference helps us. If we're smart about this..."

  "We can't fight them all at once," Zyrian said. "They'd swarm us. Even with our advantages, that many bodies would be overwhelming, considering what or who they may have inside that building and out of sight."

  Cade studied the construction site, his mind working through the problem.

  The three trebuchets dominated the space, their massive frames creating natural barriers and sight lines. The barracks building sat between them and the painted city, blocking direct approach to the pedestal. Workers moved in predictable patterns—material runs, construction shifts, rest rotations.

  "The building," he said slowly. "That's where the leadership is. The ones who can organize a defense. If we take them out right away..."

  "The workers panic," Rhys finished. "Or at least, they lose coordination. Fight as individuals rather than a unit."

  "But the building is in the middle of everything. How do we get to it without being seen?"

  Cade looked at his companions. Rhys, small and agile, millennia of experience behind those silver eyes. Zyrian, experienced but relatively younger, fast and deadly, eager for combat after the frustrations of the corridor.

  And himself. Too big to hide, too obvious to sneak, but strong enough to demand attention. He put his adept strategy-game mind to work on the issue.

  "We split up," he said. "Three approaches, three objectives."

  "Go on," Rhys said.

  "These barricades should be nothing to us. Zyrian—you take the building from above. Jump the barricade and scale the city-facing wall where there's no entrance, go in through the scout tower. Start at the top and work down. Kill everyone you find."

  Zyrian's eyes gleamed. "Finally, something direct."

  "Rhys—" Cade turned to her. "See that worker? The one heading toward the loose rock pile they're collecting from to fill in and weigh down the foundation?"

  A lone laborer was walking away from the main construction and outside the barricade, apparently tasked with gathering stabilizing materials from a pile of stones near the perimeter. Isolated. Vulnerable.

  "Kill him quietly. Take his clothes. They're all dressed the same—protective gear for construction work. You're small enough to squeeze into their outfit and make an effective disguise... at a distance."

  Rhys nodded slowly. "And then?"

  "Enter the building through the front. You're just another worker, coming in from a shift. Make your way to the second floor, the leadership section. Catch them between you and Zyrian."

  "And you?"

  Cade looked at the trebuchets. At the workers swarming over them. At the twenty-percent-complete structure on the right, its foundation still mostly exposed, its framework low enough that he'd be visible over it from the other construction sites.

  "I start killing," he said simply. "The right trebuchet first—it's got the most workers in the open, and the frame is low enough that I can't hide behind it anyway. I hit them hard and fast, make as much noise as possible."

  "Draw their attention," Zyrian said, understanding.

  "Every eye in this camp on me. While you two clean out the building. By the time the workers realize their leadership is dead, half of them will already be dead too."

  Rhys was studying him with an unreadable expression. "That's... surprisingly tactical."

  "I've been thinking about it since we started moving. The layout favors this approach."

  "And if something goes wrong?"

  "Then I'm a very large, very obvious target, and you two can take them from behind while they're focused on me." Cade shrugged. "But I don't think it will come to that. They're tier-threes. I'm tier-four and much bigger. And there are a lot of them to crush."

  Silence stretched between them. Then Zyrian grinned—a sharp, eager expression that showed too many teeth.

  "I like this plan."

  "Of course you do," Rhys murmured. "It involves violence."

  "The best plans do."

  They moved into position.

  Cade watched Zyrian eye the scout and time his scaling of the back wall of the barracks with practiced ease, his rust-red form blending into the shadows between torchlight pools. The building's city-facing side had no doors or windows on the ground floor—just smooth stone, designed to present a unified front to the siege line. But Zyrian found handholds where none should exist, his tier-four strength letting him dig fingers into mortar and pull himself upward.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Within a minute, he'd reached the scout tower. A brief struggle—barely visible from this distance—and the scout slumped. Zyrian disappeared inside.

  Rhys had already intercepted the isolated worker. Cade hadn't seen the kill—she was too fast, too quiet—but he saw her emerge from behind the rock pile wearing ill-fitting, too-short construction clothes. She walked toward the barracks with the shuffling gait of someone tired from a long shift, her silver skin hidden beneath rough fabric, her face obscured by an oversized hood.

  No one gave her a second glance.

  My turn.

  Cade circled toward the right trebuchet, keeping the other two structures between himself and the majority of the workers. His heart was pounding—not from fear, exactly, but from anticipation. From the knowledge of what he was about to do.

  Sixty-five creatures. He was about to try to kill sixty-five creatures.

  They're labyrinth constructs, he reminded himself. They don't really suffer. This is just a scenario, or my oath would be activating.

  But they looked real. They moved like real people, talked like real people, worked together like real people. The foremen joked with laborers between shouted orders. Workers helped each other with heavy loads. Someone was humming a tune that Cade didn't recognize but that clearly had a melody, a structure, a culture behind it.

  He pushed the thoughts aside.

  The right trebuchet's foundation was surrounded by workers—maybe eighteen of them, arranged in an L-shaped line. Some were on the ground, passing materials upward. Others stood on the partial framework, receiving beams and securing them in place. The construction was efficient, coordinated, and almost beautiful in its synchronization.

  Cade gathered himself.

  And jumped.

  He soared maybe thirty feet into the air—his tier-four body launching with power that still surprised him—and came down in the center of the L-shaped work crew.

  The impact sent shockwaves through the stone. Workers stumbled. Heads turned.

  Cade kicked.

  It was a wide, sweeping motion, designed to catch as many bodies at ground level as possible. His leg scythed through the packed laborers, catching them in the chest, the head, the shoulders. Two stone beams got caught in the same sweep, flying away from the impact.

  Bodies flew.

  Cade's shin connected with the trebuchet's foundation—solid stone, harder than it had any right to be—and pain flared up his leg. But the workers between his leg and the stone fared worse. Three of them were crushed against the unyielding surface, their forms instantly dissolving into gray mist.

  In the barracks, a door opened. Rhys slipped inside.

  In the tower, Zyrian began his descent.

  Cade spun with the momentum of his kick, facing the upper section of the L configuration—six laborers at waist height, frozen in shock, the beam they'd been passing now falling toward his right foot.

  He stretched his arms wide. Extended his fingers.

  And clapped.

  The workers arranged in a line between his palms had no time to react. His hands came together with crushing force, their bodies unable to withstand the pressure. The sensation was horrifying—wet and crunching and wrong—but the remains dissolved before he could fully process what he'd done.

  The small, very solid beam landed on his toe.

  Cade waited for the pain. For the agony he'd felt when the beetles took his toes in the corridor, or when he'd smashed his toe on Earth.

  It didn't come. Just mild discomfort—a sharp impact on flesh that was now durable enough to handle it.

  Tier-four against almost normal materials. The scaling matters.

  He kicked the beam aside and turned to face the rest of the construction site.

  Workers were staring at him. Foremen were shouting. The entire camp was shifting, orienting toward the sudden chaos at the right trebuchet.

  Cade extended his mist.

  The fog billowed outward from his body, dense and white, obscuring everything below chest height. For him, it was a curtain—he could see over it, could track the positions of the larger foremen and the distant overseers. But for the eighteen-inch workers trying to approach him, it was a blinding wall.

  They charged anyway.

  Cade started grabbing with his hands while unfurling his tail behind him. The appendage extended several feet out, sweeping in wide arcs just above ground level through the mist. To him, the tail felt narrow—maybe as thick as a hotdog—but for these eighteen-inch creatures, it was as wide as their heads. A solid bar of muscle moving through the fog they couldn't see through.

  He felt impacts through the tail as it swept. Satisfying thunks of bodies being knocked aside, sent tumbling, their approach disrupted before they could reach him. Some tried to dodge, but they couldn't see it coming through the mist. Others grabbed on, trying to hold it, but the tail was too strong—he whipped them loose with a flick.

  No need to worry about hitting Rhys or Zyrian. They were in the building, dealing with their own targets. He could sweep freely.

  His hands found bodies in the mist—small forms, struggling, trying to fight back with fists and tools. He grabbed them around the waist and squeezed. Felt them compress, collapse, dissolve. Dropped the remains and grabbed another.

  Three per second. Sometimes four, when they clustered close enough for him to catch multiples.

  Something sharp bit into his calf.

  Cade glanced down through the mist and saw a laborer with a knife—a small blade, maybe two inches long, barely longer than a letter opener to him. But it had found flesh, drawn blood, the weapon just barely capable of piercing his tier-four skin.

  He crushed the attacker and focused on the wound. The cut wasn't deep, but it stung. On instinct, he transformed the damaged flesh to water—felt the injury dissolve into liquid, the blood mixing with his essence—then solidified it again.

  The wound was gone. Not healed exactly—more like reset. The flesh remembered what it was supposed to be and returned to that state.

  That's useful.

  A hammer caught him in the thigh. Then a chisel to his hip. The workers were getting bolder, more desperate, swarming him with whatever tools they had. Most attacks bounced off his tier-four durability, but some found angles, found soft spots, and drew blood.

  Each time, Cade transformed the wounded area to water and back. The pain flared, then vanished. The blood dispersed, then reformed as unbroken flesh. It wasn't instant healing—the transformation took focus, took energy—but it was far better than accumulating injuries.

  His tail kept sweeping, kept knocking workers away, kept buying him space to work. He could feel them trying to approach from behind, feel the impacts as they met the muscular appendage and went tumbling. A few tried to grab it, to weigh it down—the tail turned to water for a split second, let them fall through, then solidified and whipped back around.

  The foremen organized faster than he'd expected. They shouted commands, tried to coordinate the laborers into something resembling a defensive formation. But the workers were panicking, rushing toward the threat rather than away from it, and Cade's mist made coordination nearly impossible.

  He crushed them as they came.

  Thirty. Thirty-five. Forty.

  Something hit his shoulder.

  The impact was sharp and solid—not a fist, not a tool. Something that punched through his tier-four flesh with contemptuous ease and lodged there, sending pain radiating down his arm.

  Cade momentarily lost the strength in that limb. His wide mist apron ebbed lower as his concentration wavered.

  He looked up, searching for the source.

  On the far side of the cavern, near the mostly complete trebuchet, a figure stood apart from the chaos. Taller than the laborers—maybe two feet—with a bearing that suggested authority. In its hands, a stone spear gleamed like polished steel. Six more of them, planted in the ground before it, ready to throw.

  The overseer.

  Another spear was already in the air. Arcing downward unnaturally fast.

  Cade jerked sideways, but not fast enough. The projectile caught his eyebrow, slicing across the skin, and blood immediately began flowing into his eye.

  He couldn't see properly. His shoulder was nearly useless, though some strength was returning faster than he would have expected. Workers were rushing toward his legs, taking advantage of his distraction.

  But he'd found his target.

  Cade charged.

  The overseer drew from the ground and threw its third spear. Cade ducked under it, expecting the sharper downward curve from the last spear, still running, blood streaming down his face, his good arm pumping to build speed. The distance closed—fifty feet, forty, thirty—

  His foot caught on something.

  A net. Two foremen had stretched it between a boulder and the trebuchet foundation, anchored on both ends by wrapping it around the larger masses. Cade's momentum carried him forward even as the net tangled his legs.

  The net snapped—his tier-four strength and weight were too much for what the material was meant for—but not before it threw off his balance. He lurched forward, falling, arms pinwheeling.

  The overseer threw its fourth spear.

  The projectile sailed over Cade's falling body, missing by inches, not anticipating his lurching fall.

  And the overseer followed it up immediately with a leap, soaring an impressive horizontal distance, directly at Cade's face. Its remaining spear gripped in both hands like a lance. Its eyes—small, dark, utterly focused—were fixed on his eye socket. One strike, perfectly placed, and even a tier-four body would be vulnerable.

  Cade extended his tail forward beneath him while throwing down his injured arm—two points of contact to catch himself rather than one. The tail went tense as it hit the ground, absorbing the impact, cushioning his fall, while his weakened arm buckled but slowed him further.

  He still ended up on his side. But controlled. Not helpless.

  And his good hand was free.

  The palm became liquid at the last moment—just as the overseer's spear drove toward it, intending to pin his hand to his face. The weapon passed through the water without resistance, emerging from the back of his hand, and Cade solidified the water around the shaft.

  The spear was trapped, the overseer's grip on it halting its motion as well.

  The overseer tried to yank it free. Once. Twice. Then it released the weapon, dropping to the ground, drawing a short sword from a sheath at its waist as it fell.

  Too slow.

  Cade backhanded the creature with his water-trapped spear. The motion was awkward—the weapon protruding from his palm like a bizarre growth—but effective. The spear's tip, pointing outward from the back of his hand, caught the overseer in the chest. Its sword fell to the ground two feet below.

  The creature was impaled on its own weapon as Cade drew that hand back toward his chest, rolling further onto his side, the overseer still stuck to the back of his hand by its spear.

  Cade leveraged his elbow against the ground, reached his bad hand up, and grasped the overseer's head. Squeezed.

  Pop.

  Gray mist billowed, and the overseer was gone.

  Cade focused and pushed the spear free from his water-palm using the water itself, the weapon dissolving into nothing as soon as it left his liquid flesh. He let the hand return to normal—flesh and bone and blood, no trace of the impalement remaining—and stood up to face the remaining workers, his mist still obscuring most of them.

  His tail retracted along his spine, having served its purpose.

  Twenty or so workers remained. Foremen and laborers, their coordination shattered, their leadership hopefully dead by now along with the overseer he'd just dispatched.

  They rushed him anyway.

  Cade crushed them one by one, his movements mechanical now, the violence becoming routine. Grab. Squeeze. Drop. Grab. Squeeze. Drop. When a blade found his flesh, he transformed the wound away. When a hammer connected, he dissolved the bruise before it could form. The damage was far too localized to be a real threat. His mist swirled around him, hiding the carnage from anyone who might be watching, though there was no one left to watch.

  When Rhys and Zyrian emerged from the barracks, the construction site was silent.

  Cade let his mist dissipate, revealing the empty space around him. Bodies had dissolved. Tools had vanished with their wielders. Only the trebuchets remained, incomplete monuments to a siege that would never happen.

  "What took you so long?" he asked, rolling his injured shoulder. The spear wound was the one injury he hadn't been able to transform away—too deep, too complex—but even that pain was already fading, his tier-four body healing faster than he'd expected.

  Zyrian wiped something gray from his hands. "Two stone-essence types inside. Overseers, like the one you fought," he said, eyeing the remaining spears planted in the ground across the cavern. "They could harden their skin, making themselves nearly impossible to damage."

  "And a tier-four general," Rhys added. "Trained fighter. Took both of us working together to bring him down."

  "The laborers were easy," Zyrian continued. "Panicked the moment we started killing. But the leadership..." He shook his head. "They knew what they were doing. If we'd tried to take them head-on, without the element of surprise, it would have been much harder."

  Cade nodded. The strategy had worked. Divide and conquer. Hit them before they could organize.

  There was a pause, where it seemed like all three of them were checking their progress gauge on the scenario that no one had thought to look at until now. To Cade, it looked just on the edge of being 100% complete.

  Rhys suddenly moved back toward the barricade, disappearing around the corner where she'd killed the worker for his clothes. A few moments later, she returned empty-handed.

  Cade looked at her curiously. "Couldn't kill him, or his clothes would have disappeared."

  "Ah."

  As her words landed, the trebuchets dissolved into gray mist.

  One moment they were there—massive structures of stone and wood and metal, hours of labor made manifest—and the next they simply weren't. The dissolution started at the edges and worked inward, the materials fading to translucent gray before disappearing entirely.

  The barracks followed. Then the barricades. Then the tool piles and material stacks and all the other evidence of the siege operation.

  Within seconds, the cavern was empty except for three figures, two fruits, and a newly shimmering portal.

  Anima flooded into Cade.

  The sensation was overwhelming, more energy than he'd ever absorbed at once, pouring into him from all directions. The kills had been saved, he realized. Held in reserve until the scenario completed, distributed all at once rather than piece by piece.

  His body grew.

  The expansion was dramatic this time. His perspective rose, his limbs lengthened, his frame scaled up to accommodate the massive influx of power. When it stopped, he was nearly seven feet tall again.

  He looked at Rhys and Zyrian.

  And stared.

  They were his height.

  Both of them had grown with the anima distribution, their tier-four bodies expanding to match the energy they'd absorbed. Rhys stood his exact height now, almost seven feet, her silver form suddenly substantial, her features sharp and clear and impossible to dismiss as "small." Zyrian, also the same height, his rust-red skin gleaming in the torchlight, his body muscled and proportioned in ways that reminded Cade of climbers back on Earth.

  They were people-sized. Adult-sized. His size.

  His exact height, Cade pondered. In a world where size means power, individual variation could cause confusion. Maybe everyone is a uniform height at the same tier and anima accumulation.

  "Well," Zyrian said, looking down at himself with obvious satisfaction. "That's an improvement."

  "Tier-five threshold," Rhys observed. "All three of us, from one room. The labyrinth has been generous."

  Cade was still staring. He couldn't help it. For weeks, he'd been traveling with creatures he could hold in his palm. Now they were looking him in the eye.

  It was disorienting.

  And then he noticed the other change.

  He was aroused again.

  The arousal had returned with the anima—immediate, insistent, impossible to ignore. His newly expanded body responded to stimuli that didn't exist, demanded attention he couldn't provide, created a visible problem once again. Cade created the mist skirt in a narrow dense area around his waist. It wasn't just anima and advancement—he'd felt it slowly returning since the break area—but the influx definitely amplified it for some reason.

  "Shit," he muttered, turning away. Then realized it might not be so bad anymore. He had a reset method, and he could help Rhys turn her new body into the form she wanted at the same time.

  "The fruits," Rhys said, either not noticing or politely ignoring his condition. "We should examine them before advancing."

  Right. The fruits.

  Two of them had appeared where the barracks had been—sitting on bare stone now, growing from simple stalks, waiting to be claimed. Cade forced himself to focus on them rather than on his body's betrayal.

  The first fruit was brownish-gray, roughly oblong, covered in fine fuzz that reminded him of a kiwi. Its coloring matched the stone spears the overseer had thrown, the beams the workers had been carrying. Earth essence, probably?

  The second fruit was pale peach with white swirls—not unlike his own skin tone, he realized with a start. Perfectly round and smooth, almost inviting to touch.

  Rhys continued, "Tier-five is where it starts to get dangerous. I have died many times on tier-five advancement. Unless we want to stay at tier-four a while before advancing, we may want to consider taking these essences to secure our advancement." She directed her words at Zyrian.

  "Earth essence maybe?" Zyrian said, approaching the gray fruit. "The overseers were manifestation specialists, and that's possibly what's encoded here."

  "And the other?"

  "I don't know." Rhys circled the peach-colored fruit, studying it from multiple angles. "The coloring is unusual. Could be several things."

  Cade looked at the two fruits, then at his companions, then at the portal shimmering beside the pedestal.

  Two essence types. Three people. They should use them—he had already used two.