The actual creation of Dimensional Anchor took less than a minute. I simply marked the location I wanted anchored—the hilt of my Stormsteel rapier—and followed the steps in the book. A single-use Script to make the Binding permanent. The Binding itself, etched into the portal metal. And enough Mana to force it to activate.

For a few seconds, it felt like standing at the center of a black hole as Mana was pulled in all around me. Then the Binding triggered, sealing it in place, and I relaxed.

"That was it?" Ellen asked. She'd been curled up next to me, alternating between reading over my shoulder and sleeping on it. I hadn't bugged her about it, but it was funny that she couldn't stay awake after lecturing me on focusing.

"Yep. One down, one to go." I stood up and stretched.

Skill Learned: Dimensional Anchor

The Nigerian mage Adebayo tore apart countless portals in his quest to understand how they worked. While he failed, his efforts were not fruitless. Among the many discoveries he made was an understanding of how portals affix themselves to the world. Dimensional Anchor allows the user to replicate this feat, binding an interdimensional link to a physical object in the world.

For the second skill, I had to metaphysically shove Cheddar into nothing. And that was a lot harder than it should have been. The winged serpent did not want to go into the nothing, and it took me a long time to figure out how to make him do it.

In fact, I didn't figure it out at all.

Ellen did. She woke up, stared at me as I tried to put a limp noodle into a tiny hole in reality, and shook her head. "What did you have for lunch yesterday? I know we skipped dinner, but you've got some food around here, right?"

"Right," I said. I stopped grappling with Cheddar, and he squirmed along my arm, looped across my shoulders, and flapped his wings, clearly annoyed. I felt the same way. "I ordered sandwiches."

"Anything left?"

"Yep. Jessie didn't finish hers."

Ellen nodded. "Perfect. Bribe him."

"Bribe him?"

"Exactly."

"Fine." I walked to the fridge, Cheddar furling his wings to fit through the door, and opened it. "I'll give you some sandwich if you go inside," I said. Then I sent hungry feelings, an image of the sandwich, and contentment across our bond.

Cheddar opened his mouth, revealing far too many teeth, and waited. I sighed and threw the sandwich into the air.

His wings beat, and he launched himself upward. The sandwich disappeared.

A second later, so did Cheddar.

"Told you," Ellen said.

Skill Learned: Spatial Sheathe

No true warrior would be caught without a weapon, whether it's a focus for spellcasting or a battle axe to cleave monsters' skulls. But not every situation calls for an openly carried blade. The solution is Spatial Sheathe. This pocket dimension barely counts as one—it's capable of holding a single object in stasis indefinitely until it's needed.

Upgrade Effects: 1. Each rank increases the maximum total size of the stored objects. 2. Each rank allows for an additional stored object.

I was ready. Three hours later, so was Ellen—although she'd fallen asleep again. Now, we just needed to get out to Hassayampa and level our skills.

Hassayampa was a wetland preserve.

The portal we'd entered was…not.

The walls of the cavern were lined with bone, and a dry, hot wind blew up from below us toward a dimly glowing exit. It felt way too much like Phoenix here; I reached for the water bottle I'd pocketed a month ago. It was full. I drained a quarter of it and put it back into my pack.

"Boneyard or Warren," Ellen said the moment we were all inside. "Surprised we haven't been ambushed. Expect weird bone monsters or intelligent humanoid ones."

"Before we move out, Ellen and I have something to share with you. There's a skill we both picked up that we need to talk about. It lets us summon an echo of a monster as an assistant. So, this is Cheddar." I summoned my winged serpent, who took to the air, then flopped to the ground when he hit the ceiling, hissing.

"And this is Pepperoni," Ellen said, flushing a little as she summoned hers from her own shadow. I noticed a few spaces of light disappear as the gray-scaled serpent appeared; she'd written him into her own shadow instead of into a weapon. "We picked them based on a Glade portal we cleared a while back."

Jeff laughed. "Let me guess? Jessie named them?"

"Yep," I said.

"Okay. As long as they're not threats to the team, they should offer a pretty big boost, and we're going to need it. We're undermanned, and we've got a lot of fighting ahead of us. Cheddar, Pepperoni, watch our flanks," Jeff said. "I'm on point, Yasmin's in back with Ellen. Kade, do your thing."

All three of us were lying. Or at least, not being entirely truthful about Cheddar and Pepperoni's origins. We'd already told Jeff exactly what they were; I trusted him with that secret and more, and Ellen trusted me. But Yasmin wasn't quite there yet. Not for me, and not for Ellen. So, the lie was both simple and within the realm of possibility for our skills.

We'd come clean later. But for now, it was better if everyone thought Cheddar and Pepperoni were fully-controlled summons, not semi-independent monster familiars. It'd be less to explain, and we'd have less risk of getting the Governing Council focused on both of us.

I buffed myself with movement speed and deflection Scripts, then let Yasmin burn through her ridiculous Mana pool as she applied Mana and Stamina regeneration to everyone, deflection to Jeff and me, and a handful of other buffs.

Then we stepped up the tunnel. Dessicated bones cracked and splintered under our feet, tumbling down as we scrambled up the steep slope. By the time Yasmin passed, she wasn't following us, because our path had been reduced to nothing but sharp, spiky shards. "I'm pretty sure this is a Boneyard," Ellen said.

"You think?" Yasmin shot back.

Jeff disappeared out of the cave's entrance. "Oh, shit!" he yelled. Then the sound of fighting erupted outside. I summoned the Stormsteel rapier and breastplate, then sprinted after him.

Bonesaw: D-Rank

A whirlwind of bone-forged blades slammed into his shield, driving him back. "Wait for it!" he said. He'd used his Unique skill and was giving as good as he got, but even so, the monstrous tornado of bones was overpowering him. Or at least, that's what it looked like on the surface.

Deeper down, Jeff had control of the fight. It was in his movements.

He rotated slightly, moving the towering whirlwind away from us. Ellen started casting, throwing a single Shadow Box, then just as quickly dropping it. The spell landed, dug into the whirlwind, and faded—mostly. But its echoes from Arcane Resonator kept ripping into the monster, shredding bone and opening momentary views of the thing's core.

I committed to one of those views, dropping into a two-handed lunge and hitting something important. Bone shards exploded outward from the monster's front, slamming into Jeff's shield and embedding themselves into his armor. The monster whirled. I danced backward three steps, a Lightning Charge on the tip of my blade.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

My heart pounded. It was time to try something new.

I shifted stances, sliding into Cyclone. My sword drifted into a low guard, almost casually held facing the ground. And I summoned a single cast of Ariette's Zephyr. My spellcasting hand hovered just over my ear. I waited for another window as Jeff's attacks continued and the Shadow Box's effects faded.

I didn't have to wait long. Another weak spot appeared, and before it could close, I slipped the Zephyr inside. Then I consumed the Lightning Charge, and the impact echoed with Lightning Strikes Twice. The Bonesaw staggered, but didn't fall—and it stayed locked on Jeff. I followed it up with a quick stance switch back to the two-handed Thunderbolt form, then attacked the next weak spot I could find.

This time, when a gap in the bone storm in front of me appeared, I tried something different. The two Ariette's Zephyrs hadn't done enough, and I didn't want to waste more Mana. But Ellen's attack had hurt it, and so had my initial thrust to get the rotation started. I launched into my assault, but as the blow landed, I consumed the Wind Charge and used Howling Gale.

The single lunge echoed. Half a dozen swords made of wind stabbed into the Bonesaw's form. It shivered, reeled, then fell.

I'd felt it, there. The battle trance. My whole build felt online—like I could rotate fluidly to access any of the three forms' skills as needed. If I got better at this…

Dad had said that, at higher ranks, combat started to feel choreographed. He'd described it as a dance, with the portal monsters almost moving slow enough that he knew which step they'd take, and he could move with them.

I wasn't getting that impression so far. My dance was a solo one. But I was starting to see what Dad meant. It'd happen soon. By C-Rank for sure.

We kept moving. The dunes outside the portal world's cavern entrance loomed overhead. At first, they looked like the White Sands. I'd seen pictures of them—one of the most dangerous sections of the convoy route to Carlsbad Fortress. But these weren't sand. They were bones. Millions and millions of bones, piled up in every direction.

A swarm of worms made from bone rushed us. I shifted back to Cyclone, fired a single Zephyr, and immediately back to Thunderbolt. A set of bleached-white jaws clamped down on my leg. I slashed reflexively, and the dry teeth ripped through my pants, pulling a chunk of my calf away with them. The pain was…manageable, especially when I pushed my Stamina into it.

Ellen started casting, but I held up a hand. "Save it for the survivors."

"What?"

This time, when I used Howling Gale, it echoed onto every one of the worms. None of them died, much to my disappointment. But every one of them lost fragments of bone as blades of wind sliced across them, cleaving deep gouges into their thick spines and shattering ribs.

Ellen snorted. "Alright, I saved it for the survivors. My turn."

Then she used Shadow Box again. The worms died. All of them. Chunks of bone—shredded from my Skill and perfectly squared off from hers—littered the crushed bone path we were on.

I rolled my eyes. "Fine. You win this round."

"Good job, team," Jeff said. "Whatever you just did, be ready to do it again. We've got a lot more to kill."

For the next hour, we killed, and we killed, and we killed a little more.

I used Headwind, consuming a Wind Charge and slowing down a monstrous crab so Ellen and Yasmin could get behind Jeff.

Cheddar and Pepperoni ripped apart a bone worm, tearing it in half mid-air.

Lightning Strikes Twice echoed a cast of Windsplinter. The air hammered into two quick-moving, eight-legged spine striders, launching them into the air and smashing them against a bone dune.

And then, there it was.

The boss.

"That's a turtle," Yasmin said. "That's one hundred percent a turtle."

Jeff shook his head. "No, it's a tortoise. Turtles have flippers, tortoises have legs."

"And I'm telling you it's using the flipper bones as legs. Why would a bone turtle use flippers out here?"

"Guys, it doesn't matter," Ellen said. "I'm ready."

We'd holed up behind a bone dune to wait for everyone's resources to recharge. The good news was that the boss was both loud and slow, and with both Jeff and Yasmin watching it, it wasn't likely to sneak up on us. We could pick the fight we wanted.

The bad news was that, turtle or tortoise, it was going to be an incredibly tough nut to crack. It was a good nine feet tall, dwarfing even the pillbug the Mage-Knight Errant had ridden in the Arboreal portal. Its legs might have been a weak point, but each was as big around as a very, very old sajuaro's stem, and covered in bristling bone spikes just like the giant cacti in and around Phoenix. As for the shell? There was no way we were going to crack that. It was almost certainly thick enough to ignore even Shadow Box.

I might be able to punch through it with Rain-Slicked Blade, but if Jeff did his job right, I wouldn't get the chance to gain Rainfall Charges, so that wouldn't be reliable.

Ossified Beast: D-Rank

"Okay," Jeff said, "Stick to the plan, do your jobs, and let's kill this turtle."

Yasmin glared at him as she reapplied her Scripts. "Tortoise."

"Whatever." Jeff started out over the bone dune, and the rest of us followed in his wake.

The turtle—I'd made up my mind, even if I was wrong—was down in the valley below us, currently facing away from us. Its location in the middle of three semi-connected bone dunes, each with steep slopes, gave us a massive advantage. I checked my resources as Ellen traversed to the left-most dune and began to fire up her skill.

Stamina: 221/250, Mana: 197/300

That would be plenty.

I stopped halfway down the slope, grabbing a gigantic femur to stabilize myself. Ellen was off to one side, while Yasmin had set up on the other. Jeff, meanwhile, continued his sliding descent. In fact, he'd gotten his shield under him and was approaching the boss at a literally breakneck speed. Both familiars followed, high above Jeff but keeping pace like two kites in the wind.

I summoned an entire handful of Ariette's Zephyr, burning almost half my Mana. Then I waited.

Jeff managed to get his shield in front of him just before he made contact. He flew through the air, obviously out of control, and used a skill. When he made impact, the gonging sound from his shield echoed from the dunes. So did a horrible cracking noise.

That was Ellen's cue.

She finished using Shadow Box. Square cut-outs appeared across the gigantic turtle's bone carapace. Then, as quickly as they appeared, they faded to almost nothing. We'd been expecting it to do very little damage, though; it wasn't the armor resisting so much as Ellen starting up a second Shadow Box. Then a third. The remnants danced across the turtle's shell, Arcane Resonator letting the spells overlap and echo for longer than they normally would.

It wasn't going to be enough, though, and we all knew it. The plan even called for it to not be enough.

That was why Jeff had handed me his only Mana potion instead of Ellen. She'd done her job. Now I needed to do mine. As the turtle slowly turned toward Jeff and began stomping a thick, bone-covered leg down onto his shield, I stared at the thing's back leg. Jeff had hit it, and a handful of Shadow Boxes were still working it over. And I'd heard the crack. It had to be broken. I just needed to—

There. I fired all five of Ariette's Zephyr, aiming for the fracture in the boss's leg. All five hit, but only one caught it dead center.

And the boss went ballistic.

It went from trying to crush Jeff to surging directly up the slope, right at me. Its back leg moved with a clear limp, but I didn't have a clear shot for more Zephyrs, and it was too big for a Windsplinter to affect. I stared it down, drifting into a defensive, one-handed stance and keeping my feet under me as the bone dune collapsed beneath them.

This was going to suck. But it was also going to be awesome.

I hadn't gotten any charges yet, but as the monstrous turtle filled my vision, its foot slammed down, and my danger sense went ballistic. I dodged right. Bones slid out from under me. Some cut my arms and legs; I ignored them. Instead, I fought my way back to my feet and switched to Cyclone. A single Zephyr appeared in my hand, and I immediately flung it at the boss. It hit, but did nothing. The Ossified Beast didn't even flinch.

That was fine, though. I'd gotten a Wind Charge and a Rainfall Charge out of that exchange, and I was in Cyclone stance. I used the Wind Charge, applying a speed debuff to my next Zephyr with Headwind. Then I launched the attack. A second Wind Charge appeared, and the turtle slowed down.

Perfect. The battle trance had me, but that was perfect, too. Everything was still going according to plan.

I switched stances, this time back to Mistwalk's defensive form. An attack came in, but I half-parried and half-dodged it. The blow set my entire arm shaking, but it didn't crush me. Then I used Gustrunner and accelerated rapidly as wind built up behind me. It stacked with my movement speed Script and pushed me even faster.

I was as fast as lightning. The turtle was as slow as…a turtle.

It was perfect. Everything was perfect. Even Jeff struggling up an avalanche of bone, and Ellen trying to find the Mana to cast another spell, was perfect.

Cheddar and Pepperoni both dive-bombed the monster, slamming into its damaged leg and raking it with their fangs. It roared and whirled to cover its wound. Bones flew everywhere as its thick legs crushed the dune below it.

The turtle loomed overhead, but I was already gone, flanking around it in an attempt to get to its injured leg. I nearly slipped on a ribcage. My feet got back under me before I could hit the ground. Then I was behind it—and the crack was right there. I shifted to Thunderbolt stance.

Rain-Slicked Blade activated, consuming the Rainfall Charge. Then I lunged, and the Stormsteel rapier sank into bone like it was paper. I twisted the water-covered blade, then pulled it free.

Then, before the boss could react, I cast a Windsplinter—right into the open wound.

The Ossified Beast roared as its leg fractured, then blew apart in what felt like slow motion. It wasn't; I was just that fast. And the monster didn't die like a wound of that magnitude should have made it. But it did open up a glaring weak spot.

And it unbalanced the turtle.

It tumbled off the dune. Bones crashed all around it as it roared again, a horrible cacophony of different creatures' voices mixed with what sounded like a barrel organ or harpsichord. I lost my vision on it, struggling to stay above the boneslide and in the safe zone. The Ossified Beast seemed to fall slowly; it wasn't just my stacked movement speed this time, either. It took almost thirty seconds for it to slowly drift to a stop.

Upside down. With dozens of cracks crisscrossing its shell like hatch marks.

"Well, I guess that's that," Ellen said. She'd started down the hill toward it as soon as the battle on the slope started.

I glanced around. "Where's Jeff?"

Ellen barely looked up. Then she pointed at a pair of flailing legs stuck in a bone avalanche. "There. I guess we'd better save him, huh? Then let's finish this thing off and get moving. There's going to be another portal to clear. And another after that."

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