“We need to have a serious conversation,” Nemari said about three seconds after Sorin vanished.

  “We really, really, really don’t,” Rue told her. “We already had this conversation, several times, both with and without Sorin’s presence.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “No. Shut up. I’m not doing it again.”

  Nemari’s jaw hung open. For that matter, so did Od’s. Rue just huffed, then went back to digging out a fire pit with the tiny camp spade they had. With all the dry grass they were surrounded by, the last thing they needed was to start a fire that got out of control. Nemari had already done that three times today, but now they didn’t have Sorin’s ice magic to slow the flames down.

  “What’s gotten into you?” Od asked quietly as he squatted down next to her and began placing the stones he’d gathered into a ring.

  “She knows what she signed up for. If she’s changed her mind, she can go, but I am not going to suffer through yet another session of her whining about how we can’t trust Sorin or this or that or whatever. Did she seriously already forget how he saved her ass from her own family? Because I still remember him stumbling out of nowhere with his fucking hand on backward, and I’m willing to bet he hasn’t forgotten either.”

  Rue glanced up at Nemari, who was standing twenty feet away and peering at the rough-cut circle Sorin had made in the stone. She reached out to run her fingers across it, tracing the pattern over and over again. Nothing happened, of course. Without that soulprint that Sorin said was weird for some reason or another, it was just a symbol.

  “She’s gone through a lot. Maybe cut her some slack,” Od said.

  “I’ll cut her as much slack as she cuts Sorin.”

  “Rue…”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I meant it when I said that. I’m sticking with him. Whatever happened to him, he’s doing the best he can, and if he’s not ready to share, well, it’s hard to blame him. It’s not like we’ve been super welcoming. It’s a fucking miracle he hasn’t ditched us yet. If I were him, I might not bother coming back.”

  “You know he will,” Od said.

  “Yeah, I do. And so do you. And that’s why I trust him. If Nemari would pull her head out of her ass, she’d see that, too. Now change the subject.”

  Mercifully, Od listened. They got the fire going, and he produced a small steel pot. Dinner that night was climber’s stew, which consisted of whatever ingredients a hungry climbing team could find to throw into the pot. Under Od’s direction, it almost always turned out at least tolerable, and usually much better than that. He had a way with spices and seasonings and some sort of knack for balancing out the taste.

  They ate in silence, which suited Rue just fine. She could read Nemari’s mood from the way her aura bled out, all snarled and tangled around itself, and that was more than enough exposure for Rue at the moment. Her own aura was harder for her to see, but she knew it wasn’t smooth either. Od was trying to play peacemaker, but neither woman was particularly interested.

  Sorin walked out of nowhere, but this time he wasn’t covered in blood and burns. The only thing different about him was the color of the packs he was carrying and that his right hand was covered in a gauntlet made of odd, burnished metal plates. They were a striking shade of green so dark it almost bled into black, and from the way they seemed to connect to his aura, she was completely sure they were magical.

  “Welcome back,” she said, startling the other two. The camp had been quiet for the last hour, all of them lost in their own thoughts. “New toy?”

  “Strength enhancing gauntlet,” Sorin explained. “To help compensate for having to do things one-handed for now. I’ve got some other goodies for you guys, too.”

  He had three bags. The first one got passed to Od—food and seasonings, as well as a small flask that Rue recognized the two men having shared occasionally. She hadn’t seen it in a week, but hadn’t thought to question where it had gone. Apparently, it had just needed a refill.

  The second bag was more exciting, at least in Rue’s opinion. “Anti-toxins,” Sorin explained, holding up four glass vials full of glowing green liquid. “I asked Bradford to get them for us for the floor guardian. We probably don’t need them, but a little insurance is worth a few danirs, right? I also got us some infusion rations for the fight.”

  “That’s… expensive,” Nemari said.

  “If the Black Hellions are going to make a move on us, the floor guardian is the place to do it. It’s the only place on Floor 2 they can be sure that if they wait long enough, we’ll eventually have to show up. I want us at our best for the fight so we can end it as quickly as possible and disappear again. If we’re lucky, I’m just being paranoid, and it’ll make for some wasted money and an easy win.”

  “Maybe we should be a bit more frugal with our extremely limited funds. There are better things we could be spending the money on,” Rue said, giving Sorin’s left arm a pointed look.

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  He shook his head. “Bradford got me a quote. Five hundred danirs. By the time we save that much up, I’ll be able to fix it myself. No point in leaving money unspent now when we could be strengthening ourselves with it.”

  There was also a spool of rope that glistened wetly in the firelight, though it was perfectly dry to touch. It was called cling rope, and it was a danir a foot. Sorin had bought a thirty-foot length, simply stating that he didn’t want them trapped in a ruin again. No one argued the point with him.

  There was also a bigger set of harvesting gear, including storage jars, which wasn’t all that exciting regardless of how practical it was. They’d been operating with a piecemeal set Od had scavenged or bought over many months, but this was a brand-new, matched kit made of fine steel. Rue wasn’t even sure why half the knives had hooks or points at weird angles, but she didn’t doubt that Sorin and Od knew the uses for each and every one.

  The final piece of gear from the second bag was a worn and pitted stone. It was about six inches across and looked like it would crumble if Sorin dropped it. It also came enclosed in its own silk bag. “This is called a wither stone. When exposed, it causes all plant life within ten feet to start to die. You’d have to leave it out for a few days to do more than yellow the grass, so don’t worry about it being all that harmful. But it does hurt sentient plants, so this acts as a sort of cheap, mobile ward when you’re in places like the Witch Wood.”

  “Too bad we already left,” Od said.

  “Yep. Exactly right. But that won’t be the last place with carnivorous, blood-drinking plants we see. I’m sure it’ll come in handy at some point in the future, even if we got hold of it a little too late this time around.”

  After unceremoniously dumping all those supplies back into the bag, Sorin shoved everything aside and reached for the third bag. “I saved the best for last,” he said with a grin.

  The first thing he pulled out was a steel ring. It was a plain thing, completely unadorned by any sort of decorations or engraving. He tossed it to Rue. Before she could ask what it was, he dug back into the bag and fetched a brooch made of silver and set with a chunk of polished amber. That went to Od. A wand made of wood and cut with a spiraling pattern got handed off to Nemari.

  “Kinetic pulse ring,” Sorin said. “Use it when you need to create a little distance or to throw a monster off balance to get a killing strike. The crafter Bradford hired took that chunk of steel skin ore and reshaped it into that brooch. Fill the amber with your anima. Once it’s full, you’ll be able to use steel skin for probably about ten seconds.”

  “The plan was to turn it into a steel skin soulprint,” Od said.

  Sorin shrugged. “You got Stone Skin instead. It felt a bit redundant, especially when you’ll be able to upgrade your current soulprint. This gives you an emergency defensive measure, plus you can use the anima as an external reservoir if you run dry. The conversion ratio’s garbage, but if one healing spell is the difference between life and death, you’ll be glad you’ve got it.”

  The wand Nemari had received in the Antechamber was gone, stolen by her family, so Sorin had acquired a replacement for her. An enchanter had done some work on it, enhancing it with delicate lines of runes that Rue couldn’t begin to decipher the meanings of. Fortunately, Sorin explained that, too.

  “It’ll still increase your channeling speed like before, and by a bit more, too. But it’ll also let you hold a few firebolts in reserve for about thirty seconds. Use it for a devastating opener, or if you’ve got some time behind cover to save up a few spells.”

  “Hmm. Good for quickly eliminating summons in a guardian battle as long as we know when they’re coming, as well,” Nemari said, tapping the wand against her knee as she thought. “I like it.”

  “Thought you would. Thank Bradford when you see him. He arranged all of this.”

  Then came the soulprints, and Rue couldn’t stop herself from leaning forward eagerly. Her eyes sparkled as he started pulling out strange objects. A finger-sized statuette made of iron was first. “Iron Body,” Sorin explained. “Exact same as the one I have. Good for stopping mosquitoes and gremlin claws. Still dodge, but expect to withstand glancing blows if you mess up.”

  She also got a severed animal paw that contained a soulprint called Shadows, which Sorin promised would make her harder to spot visually at night. It wasn’t that great on its own, but he swore up and down that it was an excellent soulprint to build on in pursuit of a true Invisibility soulprint later on.

  Od received a feather that had a modification soulprint called Zephyr’s Whisper. Using it in conjunction with any of his healing abilities let him target someone from ten feet away, with promises that the range would increase substantially past F-rank. He also got a shard of slate that contained Earth Spike, the basic elemental blast spell that functioned similarly to Ice Dart.

  “I don’t understand why I want this,” Od said when Sorin explained what it was.

  “Once you get to rank 3, we’re going to work on anima control, and I’ll show you how to merge it to Stone Skin to grow spikes off your body. Instead of popping someone in the jaw with your elbow, you’ll drive a shard of stone six inches up through their skull.”

  Od’s mouth formed a small ‘O’ of surprise, and he didn’t protest anymore. Rue didn’t blame him. She kind of wanted her own Stone Skin and Earth Spike combo now that Sorin had explained the future potential.

  Nemari got a broken section of shell that contained a basic kinetic Barrier soulprint, a softly glowing red and black stone with Heat Resistance, and a pointed, green severed ear with Sharp Ear. The first two were easy enough to understand, but the last one confused her.

  “First, we should all have sensory soulprints. That’s just good planning. Second, this will allow you to find targets by sound, so you can fire blind from around cover with high accuracy. It’ll also make you a bit more resistant to stuff like those Warbler frogs, but it’s not absolute, so don’t rely on it to save you.”

  Shuddering, she nodded. The warbler frogs had nearly gotten them. Any defense against that kind of insidious attack could only be a good thing, and if most of Sorin’s picks were only moderately or situationally useful right now, he promised greater returns in the near future.

  Now we just need to live that long.

  “What did you get for yourself?” Od asked.

  Sorin sighed and shook his head. “I did get two soulprints, but I’m going to hold off on adding them to my soulspace for now. Hopefully in a few weeks, I can use them.”

  “You really think you can fix your arm?”

  “Yeah. I just need another two ranks at most. I might even do it in one if I’m lucky.” He shook his head again. “Okay, enough of that. Let’s get the watch set up and get some sleep. I want us moving early tomorrow so we can maximize our time in the foothills. We’ve got a floor to conquer.”