"Dariella. Any chance you're here to defect to the good side?"

The enemy cultivator sneered. "Thanks, but I'll stick with the winners. It's cute you and Laurel restarted your sect but I think we both know it won't end well. We have the planning and resources of an empire. And you have a bunch of children. You even brought one with you, how cute."

"Hold her," Devon muttered.

Standing around delaying a fight wasn't his style. A pulse of earth mana rippled the ground like a wave, pushing Adam further from the fight, and Martin straight towards Dariella. Devon dashed towards the vault, and that was the last thought Martin had to spare to anyone outside this fight. Dariella would be a challenge in an ideal scenario, and this was far from ideal.

He crossed the gaping pit in a handful of heartbeats. Not fast enough. A beam of sunlight lanced towards him. No time to dodge, he crossed his arms and coated them with earth mana.

It was enough to bleed off most of the energy, but deep burns still cut across his skin. Then he was on her. Martin reached to grab at Dariella, the earth around her flowing like water to crush the woman. Dariella smashed through before he could fully enclose her, leaping to a ledge closer to the gaping hole in the sky, letting in light.

Martin collapsed the ledge out from underneath her. She took the opportunity to leap across again. He swore to himself and launched towards the woman, his recently drained cultivation keeping him just a few steps behind.

Dariella looked to where Devon was coolly unlocking the vault, then towards the tunnel he'd tossed Adam into. The smile that graced her lips was all cruel triumph. The light in the room twisted towards her, a glowing aura coalescing from one moment to the next. One arm raised, a single finger pointed down the hallway.

He wasn't going to block it quickly enough, so he did the only thing he could think of and collapsed half the tunnel, just in time for the beam to vaporize the rock to dust. "Please be alive," he muttered.

Then it was back to the fight. He needed to get ahold of the slippery bitch, and she'd just given him such a nice gift. It wouldn't work on someone like Laurel, but Dariella was all about light, not air.

The dust swirled through the empty space in a thousand streams. Light lanced through the cloud, but there was too much for Dariella to blast apart entirely. He wrapped bands of stone dust around her, turning them solid at the last moment. Finally close enough for a strike, an ax appeared in his hand as he swung at the woman's neck. She twisted partially free to save her head, the blade biting deep into her shoulder instead.

Some of the weaker cultivators had made their way to the hole in the roof, peering down at the battle below. Couldn't have that. Martin deflected the next beam of light upwards, vaporizing the closest one. A few stone spikes flew at the others but he had no time to watch if they struck home.

They battled across the chamber, gaping wounds appearing in the earth to reveal the network of tunnels all the way to the surface. Dariella was playing with him. She danced just far enough away to stay out of his grasp to pepper him with attacks from a distance, but not pressing. It didn't escape Martin's notice that she was avoiding any direct attacks at Devon. They must have found the vault a while ago and realized they couldn't break in. Now she would let Devon do the work and tire him out to kill them both after.

He redoubled his efforts to stay close, where he had the advantage. Whenever a foolish Laskarian tried to take a peak they met a grisly end by collateral damage or intentionally redirection of an attack. Adam was nowhere to be found.

It was a mess.

*********

Adam sprinted through the tunnels, putting every speck of his impressive memory to good use. He had only seen a few flashes of the fight before the tunnel in front of him collapsed to block a death beam. He was not ready for this. Martin had been right to ask him to turn back.

The warren of tunnels was at least laid out in a pattern, once he got the hang of things. According to his mental map, his next turn should be coming up, and there it was. He barrelled around the corner only to crash into someone and send them both to the ground.

He scrambled back and found himself facing down a Laskarian. Dark hair, dark eyes, forgettable face, almost assuredly a better cultivator than he was. Young. No time to think. No time to plan.

A splash of ink twisted out of the flask at his side, splashing into the girl's eyes. Her head jerked back and she let loose an impressive string of swears. Adam raised his gun and shot once. Then he was running again. He blinked away the tears. At least now he had an answer. When it came down to it, he hadn't hesitated. Back to his headlong dash.

The uphill sprint over a kilometers-long course would have been impossible before joining the sect. A hysterical laugh almost gave him away before he shoved it back down. His attention was so split he almost didn't notice in time when his route ended in a cliff face.

Clouds of dust coalesced into spears, blasted apart by beams of light, in turn blocked by more rock. It was a battle of titans that Adam had no place being near. He turned and looped around, he would find another route to the top.

*********

The fight wasn't going well. He was getting the worst of it while Dariella flitted around. Her strategy of tiring him out while Devon finished opening the vault was working. But even knowing all that, he couldn't break the pattern. If he stopped, she would just keep directing light down until he was a scorched husk. Or take a few minutes to hunt down Adam. Assuming he had survived.

Martin shoved the thought away. Losing focus now was a great way to get them all killed. He needed to shake things up. Dariella was in a rhythm but she had forgotten that Martin wasn't just an earth cultivator.

Water poured out of his tattoo. Barrels smashed against the ground, vats poured out into the air, splashing down to join the growing pool. The sudden deluge had caught her off guard. Tendrils whipped out towards the enemy master. Martin grinned as lines of blood bloomed across the pale skin of Dariella's face and arms. Spikes of earth shot in between the streams. Ice crystalized to a knife's edge, while mist obscured the rest. A few attacks combined razor sharp shards of rock with high-pressured jets of water, carving flesh out of the bitch in front of him.

A chime rippled through the mana, where it frothed and raged around Martin's battle. It started behind him, and he didn't need Dariella's narrowed eyes to tell him what was happening.

Devon was in the vault.

And Martin needed to stay alive long enough for them to escape. The pace of the battle got even faster. Dust filled the air, split by blinding lances of light that curved and bent in unnatural arcs. He dodged as best he could, a few landing grazing hits and leaving burns bubbling up from his skin. One dug deep into his shoulder, the light coalescing into something solid just before it struck.

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He retaliated with both his elements. A boulder hitting Dariella's raised arms with the power of a landslide, while he forced water down her throat in an attempt at drowning. She threw him off and jumped onto one of the few remaining outcroppings near the open sky.

"This has been fun, Martin, but time to wrap it up."

"Fuck off," was his eloquent reply. Banter was for hacks or when he was telling the story after the fact.

A lens, larger than the woman's torso, appeared from some spatial device Dariella had lying around. It floated to the center of the opening, orienting to catch the light. A shard of rock the size of a small lion slammed into the glass and bounced off. Martin grunted, it had been a long shot.

He kept his barrage up, tossing water, earth, and combinations of the two at Dariella and the lens she was so obviously planning to use to concentrate her strikes. Light in the whole cavern dimmed as she made her move. A beam of mana-infused light, concentrated through an impressive enchantment, struck the earth. Rock melted as the lens slowly rotated, bringing the beam towards Martin. It followed as he darted around the floor, avoiding the super-heated channels of earth. Until it cut off without warning. He could hear Dariella cursing his name as the film of dust solidified and fused across the lens. It would have been better if Dariella was exhausted from that display, but he could tell the enchantment was doing most of the work.

That was fine, he would do this all night if he had to.

*********

Another layer of wards flared and died, allowing Devon to move another step further into the vault. The walls were lined with treasures, beyond what most mortals could dream of. There were swords that would have Laurel drooling, and a thousand more interesting weapons besides. Enchanted artifacts that could revolutionize the lives of anyone they came in contact with. Legacies of some of the greatest crafters to ever walk the planet. Just within reach, Devon saw a pair of retractable wings that would let anyone fly, mortals included, a chalice that could give the drinker very limited visions of the future, and a construct that would germinate the seeds of any plant placed inside, with enough mana invested.

He didn't touch any of them.

Neither debris nor sound could penetrate the vault in this state, but his spiritual sense was enough to paint the picture of the battle raging behind him. Every treasure in the vault had individual wards attached. There was no time to stop and loot them all. And the true prize was further back, in the heart of the vault and the sect itself. Through it all he kept working on the wards.

Another step forward.

He could see the Legacy Stone, perched casually on a purpose-made plinth as though the area outside the vault wasn't being ripped apart. The deep crimson of the mana crystal was broken up by drops of orange and yellow, the whole thing shaped into a stylized flame from generations of crafters adding their collected insight.

The area around the Stone was sparse on treasures, and instead was lined in workbenches with every tool imaginable. And a few even he didn't know the use for. The legacy of the Thousand Hands Sect wasn't the magic library of the Eternal Archive. They were crafters; masons, smiths, enchanters and a dozen other professions. Their knowledge needed to be acted out, felt. When active, the Stone brought the workshop to life, the sect member accessing the knowledge would be led through the technique.

Two more steps.

So close. The vault had a few side-passages branching off, which he ignored. The ward nets weren't so closely packed back here and his progress sped up, from a snail to a turtle. Martin was barely holding his own but Devon forced himself to stay cautious. Recklessly sprinting ahead would serve no one. As if fate wanted to prove him right, he paused, balancing on one foot, realizing there was an extra ward line he almost missed unraveling. Having a limb amputated right now was the last thing he needed.

Finally, finally, he reached the Legacy Stone. The enchantments protecting it were just as complex as the rest of the vault, but he had a right to be here. Devon let his mana infuse the area around the stone, coaxing it to recognize him. He was a master of the sect, he'd been here before, he was allowed to take what he needed. One by one, he peeled back the layers until the Stone was bare before him. But there was no time to commemorate the moment. He threw it into his spatial ring. The useful accessory was partially degraded from his time underground, but it could still hold the Legacy Stone and what he would need in a fight. Just not much else.

He turned back. For a single heartbeat he mourned the masterpieces throughout the rest of the vault. Then his mana flooded out of him.

Devon sprinted back the way he came as every ward in the vault went off at once. There was a reason each of these items had ended up in the most secure place in the sect. They were all dangerous. As such, the wards protecting them all had failsafes to destroy the items if someone brute-forced their way in. Devon had no intention of leaving anything left for these scavengers. He reached the edge of the vault in a shower of fire, ducking to the side to avoid the explosive edges of the cascading enchantment failure.

Dariella paused to shoot him a cruel smile, which Martin punished with an ax to the bitch's leg. Both of them looked ragged, held together more with mana and willpower than anything else. Devon stroked his hand down the front of his shirt, feeling his armor in place and activating it with a thread of mana. Then he dove into the fray. Now they just needed to get away.

*********

Adam had built himself up to sneak out past the guards, or eliminate them if he couldn't. It turned out to be unnecessary. If guards had been stationed there before, the magical battle unfolding below had drawn them away. Sunset had almost given way entirely to twilight as he snuck out of the tunnels and into the camp.

He heard a rustling noise and ducked into the nearest tent to avoid whatever caused it. His luck held, no one was in either of the cots. Adam forced his breathing to slow down and thought about next steps. What could he do to help? Martin and Devon would win the fight below. He had to believe that, or else he may as well offer himself up to the Laskarians now. After that they would need to get away.

He stuck his head out of one of the flaps and did his best to survey the camp. Nothing stood out to his city-boy eyes. It was just a larger version of the camps they had been making for the last couple of weeks. Cookfires smoldering, tents lined up in a ragtag formation that spoke to a group that didn't work together often. Further out there was a collection of horses in a makeshift paddock. Adam made a face but forced himself to leave the imagined safety of the tent and approach the beasts.

The only people he saw were a pair of younger cultivators, huddled together near one of the fires. They couldn't be more than seventeen and they were obviously terrified, and not expecting any intruders in the camp. Adam was able to slip past them behind a few tents without any worries. An explosion broke the more constant noise of the battle that made its way to the camp, while all the moonlight seemed to drain from the surroundings pulled by an impossible vortex into the cavern below.

It was working to his advantage. They deserved something to go right today, and the horses were fidgeting and restless with all the excitement going on. Adam had no intention of getting closer, so he found the gate and pulled it open.

The stampede he had envisioned didn't quite happen, but one of the horses stepped out and wandered a few meters away to chew some untouched grass. He swore under his breath and crept around to the other side of the enclosure. Adam was aware that whatever store of luck had gotten him this far was going to run out soon.

A better horseman might climb on top of one of the animals, lead them away in a valiant charge. For his level of skill, Adam pulled out a flask of ink he had taken to keeping on his person at all times. All his concentration honed in on the ink, a utilitarian black he could buy in bulk at any supplier. Shaking, and losing a few drips, it rose from the flask. Adam thrust his hand forward, and the ink whipped out, striking the nearest horse on the rump. It chuffed and took a few steps but otherwise didn't react. Adam went down and repeated the same thing on the next two horses with similar results. He looked around frantically for anything else he could use to frighten a horse. Why were the horses he was forced to ride so quick to anger but the magehunters of Laskar got the most docile beasts on Decorra?

In the end it was Martin who made it work. Or maybe Devon. Or Dariella. Or some combination of the three. Whichever was responsible, another explosion of light and quaking earth set the horses off, and this time they had somewhere to run. The first animals bolted, and the rest followed, seeing their fellows find freedom. That at least got the attention of the teenagers hanging around, who sprinted after the animals.

There wasn't much else he could do in the camp and he began making his way back towards the fight, this time above ground. His instincts screamed at him to run the other way, but he forced himself forwards instead. He was the Loremaster of the Eternal Archive, he would find a way to contribute to this fight.

The master cultivators below once more saved Adam from discovery. The lackeys were spread around the lip of the excavation watching slack-jawed at the destruction being wrought by the battle. He found a vantage point further back, letting him peer down without exposing himself to the crowd. A move made pointless a few moments later when Dariella came rocketing out of the ground, followed by Martin and Devon on a rising tide of earth.

He frantically scrabbled for something to signal them with. Stories he had translated of past cultivators ran through his mind and he went for broke. It wasn't like there was any subtlety left in the evening. In the stories, cultivators announced their presence by 'flaring' their mana. Laurel had shown him how to do it before they left but it hadn't been at the top of his list to practice until right now. Turning inward, Adam forced his mana to circulate as fast as he could, far faster than it moved without his direction. Then he dropped his veil and let the mana leak into the air around him.

Martin's head whipped to the side and a relieved grin spread across his face. Just in time for a beam of light to come within a hair's breadth of beheading the man. Only Devon's quick reflexes shoved Martin out of the way, diverting the light with some metal contraption that appeared from the enchanter's clothes. Too close. They just needed to get away. Adam patted himself down, as though he would find a cultivation technique hidden in his pockets. He paused when he realized that was exactly what he had.

His fingertips slid over the metal, still cool despite being pressed against his body all night. He pulled it out, but in the dark he couldn't see the thousands of whisper-thin interlocking seams. For all he could tell, it was a brick that Devon had given him for comfort, but he didn't think so. The battle had spilled across the former sect grounds, scattering most of the Laskarians into hiding. Most but not all. A few had taken it upon themselves to start pulling out and setting up a dangerous looking gun, now that the fight wasn't taking place several stories underground. The cluster of cultivators was bad news for Devon and Martin, shielding against bullets was apparently a huge pain, and not easily done when fighting off other kinds of attacks. And Dariella was far from defeated.

There was no more time for second-guessing his instincts. He inched as close as he dared to where the Laskarians were rallying, only stumbling a few times in the chaos of it all. Adam cupped the metal in his hands and recalled Devon's instructions. His mana was depleted, he'd yet to master the ability to pull in ambient mana at all times, and use it to power his techniques. But there was enough left for this, he hoped. Adam took everything he had left and forced it into the metal.

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