It took an hour of sitting around in the torch-lit circle between our brightly painted tractor-trailers before the meal was finished.

The smell of popcorn, fried and baked beans, and lettuce filled the air, almost covering up the scent of diesel fuel from the trucks. And the Monster Eaters' voices had finally lowered to something approaching a normal yelling voice.

Every one of them was loud. Somehow, the kids were even louder than the adults.

And, true to their name, the Monster Eaters had served nothing but monsters. The popcorn smell had come from fillets of something they called 'Forest Walkers,' but that I thought were probably the mounds of dirt and vines I'd fought in a Glade portal world. Texturally, cabbage was the closest descriptor. Other monsters had tasted more like grilled peppers, charred sprouts, and even broccoli.

Not one of them had been meat.

And every dish had been fantastic.

Ellen leaned against my side. She'd put away almost as much as Jeff, and her eyes were closed as she digested quietly next to me. Sophia was still picking at her 'Field Hunter,' tearing into it to get to the seeds.

Yarrow stood up. "With that done, business. The truck's sufficient. We'll build a new base out of it. My daughter can run it. She's old enough for her own clan now. And in return, you've got safe passage from us until you hit the White Sands break, and on the way back."

"Thank you," the Light of Dawn said, bowing slightly. The whole thing was so ridiculous. Angelo was a city-destroyer. Yarrow was an unawakened human. But he did it anyway.

"Now, listen carefully. We're not here because we want to be. There's nothing for us this close to your city—you made sure of that with your looting and stealing. Globe's dead. So is everywhere else. We're here because the White Sands break's acting up." Yarrow glared to the east.

"What's going on with the break?" I shouted. Over the last hour, I'd realized that anyone could shout anything at anyone, and that if you didn't shout, you got ignored. That was a rule the Spark of Life hadn't explained, but it was one I'd caught on to fairly quickly.

"It used to vomit monsters every which way. Now, they're all pushing west. All of them. That's our territory, but we can't fight them. They're too strong. My son's base got destroyed when we tried. So we had to run west ahead of them. You're heading to Carlsbad, right?" Yarrow asked.

Angelo nodded. "We are."

"Find another route. You don't have enough fighters for the White Sands break."

That hung in the air for a moment. It was shockingly quiet. Most of the yelling and screaming had stopped, except for a handful of toddlers who weren't old enough to catch on. I watched as Yarrow and Angelo stared at each other. Then Angelo nodded twice. "I will talk to my staff and see if another route can be plotted. If not, we have no choice but to go through."

Yarrow grinned. "I figured. We'll spend the night here. You need the protection."

"Thank you," Angelo said again.

Ellen's sleeping bag was next to mine in the big tent our team shared.

We lay on top of them. It was too hot to get inside. She'd been in a food coma for most of the conversation between Angelo and Yarrow that had sprung up after the Monster Eaters declared they were staying the night. And now, neither of us could sleep over the howling and screaming that rolled over the desert like thunder and echoed off the trucks.

"How do the Monster Eaters fit in with the system?" Ellen asked. She'd propped herself up on an elbow, and she stared at me in the dark tent like I was anything but a blob of shadow. Maybe to her, I wasn't. She was a shadow mage, after all. "They seem like they don't, but…that doesn't make sense. Awakening is random, right?"

"Right. Kind of. I was in danger, and I had people to protect. A few others were like that, too. How about you?"

"Nope. No danger."

I sighed and stared at the tent overhead. "That shuts down my only theory, then. I was thinking that maybe, since they're always in danger, the system never acknowledges that they need more help. The Monster Eaters' baseline might just be too high for the system to notice they're in trouble. But that's not it."

Ellen leaned in, voice low. "I bet there's a different answer. I wonder if they do have system awakenings, but their delvers don't stay with the group."

"That…that makes a lot of sense in terms of the system, but why separate? They'd have to—"

"They'd have to know that delvers are necessary to hurt higher-ranked monsters. Their portal metal might work on E-Rank goblins, but a single bugbear could wreck their whole group."

I shrugged. "Could it? We're stronger than them for sure. But that fight we dodged earlier wasn't going to be an easy win. I think there's more going on with Yarrow than meets the eye. If they were all howling, screaming fighters and no thinking, planning plotters, they'd have died out. So, they're up to something."

"And it involves the GC truck they took."

"The GC truck Angelo gave them, yes," I said.

"What do you think's got the White Sands break riled up?"

"I'm not sure. I bet Angelo and his team have some ideas, though. What I'm more concerned about is whether we try to dip south to avoid it."

"Yeah. I'd rather we do that than tangle with A-Rank monsters," Ellen said.

Jeff snored by the tent's entrance. Yasmin had her head on his chest; she was asleep, too. Good for them. They'd been meant for each other since Yasmin had joined up in that Arboreal portal world. All their back and forth felt like an old married couple.

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Ellen rolled onto her back. One hand flopped close to me, then pulled back. For almost fifteen minutes, we listened as the Monster Eaters' screaming slowly stopped.

Then another ten went by. I was almost asleep when Ellen whispered, "Kade, I can't sleep."

"What?" I asked.

"I can't sleep. I've never been out of the city overnight before, and there are too many sounds."

I hadn't ever done this either. And to me, it sounded quiet. Phoenix was a loud place; there were always cars moving, the hum of air conditioning, and people talking. With the Monster Eaters quieting down, though, the desert had grown almost silent. "I can't hear it."

"Really, Kade? You can't hear any of it?" Ellen asked. "It's faint, but it's there."

I closed my eyes and listened.

Something shuffled through the sand under a trailer nearby. It was too small to be a portal monster—even an E-Rank would have been louder than what I was hearing. Small scrabbles in the sand. A wingbeat overhead. Howling in the distance. Not the Monster Eaters' howling, but something more animalistic. It reminded me of the wolves from the Glade worlds I'd fought in, but higher-pitched and shorter.

I listened to the sounds of the desert for a long time. For long enough that I didn't notice when Ellen's hand ended up in mine, or when she fell asleep on my pillow. The desert was alive out there, and it wasn't just portal monsters. They were there, too—we'd killed too many goblins, Swamp Squids, and other stuff to ignore—but they hadn't managed to wipe out Earth's native animals in the twenty years since the Portal Blitz.

There was something reassuring about that.

Ellen wasn't asleep.

Her eyes were screwed shut, and she was keeping her breathing carefully under control. Her hand was still in Kade's, but all she could think about was Bob. Not the sounds of the desert. Just Bob.

That idiot. That complete, utter idiot. He'd screwed her over. The world was a lot bigger than he'd ever let her learn.

For the first fifteen years of her life, her world had been Phoenix. Phoenix and the Traynor Corporation. She hadn't even realized Tucson existed until she'd turned sixteen and, in a fit of stupid teenage angst, told her first car to take her south out of town.

That trip had been eye-opening.

She hadn't even gotten through Tucson's gates. The delvers there wouldn't let her in. But just the fact that another city existed beyond the one Bob had convinced her was the entirety of her world was enough to shake her faith in everything else he'd taught her. Not enough to let her do anything about it, but enough to plant the seeds of doubt.

Not once had Bob told her about the Monster Eaters. But she recognized the cars' black 'armor.' It wasn't armor at all. They were electric—they ran on solar power—and the only company within five hundred miles that made solar panels at all was Updike Industries. Updike was owned by Smithers Group, and Smithers was a subsidiary of the Traynor Corporation.

Bob was selling solar panels to the Monster Eaters. His fingers were everywhere. And if he'd had his way, Ellen would never have known about them at all. She'd have been a quiet, demure, respectable woman—a hostess for parties, and nothing more.

Kade's fingers patted the back of her hand. She resisted the urge to shiver and loosened her grip a touch. Her breathing slowed a little as she forced herself to relax.

Ellen had thought it before—that Kade was the key to getting out from under Bob's thumb completely. She'd even believed it. But it was increasingly feeling like her best—and only—option.

She put her head on Kade's pillow and finally let herself stop listening to the coyotes in the distance—and stop thinking about her stupid dad.

Shouting and yelling awoke me before dawn.

The camp was already in chaos as the Monster Eaters went about their mornings. Food was everywhere; by the time I'd finished brushing my teeth, I'd had three plates of plant-based monsters shoved at me.

Ellen's shampoo scent was still in my nose. She'd woken up in the night and moved herself back to her own sleeping bag and pillow, which I hadn't minded. It let me get my own sleep and wake up early—although I'd hoped to have some quiet time in the morning to work on myself.

We had an hour, and I'd already talked to the team about my core. They knew what I needed to do, and they'd agreed to deal with the tent and free up my time, just a little.

So, as the chaos swirled around me, I sat on a stack of crates atop a flat-bed trailer and closed my eyes.

I opened them on a mountain in the White Tank Mountains.

The storm that had greeted me the last few times I'd been here was off in the distance instead of overhead. Instead, bands of portal metal covered the sky, and the few clouds in the distance appeared to be trapped by it. The air felt sticky and humid, and sweat poured down my back within seconds. I ignored that.

Instead, I focused on the cracks in the massive bands of portal metal that wrapped around my core. They'd been damaged by my push to learn and consolidate five laws in one fell swoop, and even the fights we'd had yesterday—which had all been fast, efficient ones—had put a strain on my core that I couldn't risk making worse.

That meant exercising it. Stretching it and pushing it just to the point of pain, and no further.

I pushed Mana out of it in a thin, controlled stream overhead. The air rushed through the gap I'd opened, wind howling as sand whipped up around me. Then, almost as quickly as it had started, I let it stop. The portal metal bands had begun popping ominously the second I started releasing Mana, and it took them a few seconds to stop.

Then I did it again—but smaller. Even more controlled. It took fifteen Mana to cast one Ariette's Zephyr. I let out three. Then two. Then three again. Over the next forty-five minutes, I sat on the mountaintop and gradually stretched my core as far as it would let me—to seven Mana. I held it there until the strain was too much, then slowly scaled back down until my core was sealed again.

I could cast spells. The reality was that my core wasn't going to collapse from magic. It was going to collapse if I attempted to push toward B-Rank, though. Until it was healthy and strong again, I couldn't risk that. And this was the only way I could think of to make it happen. As my time ran out, I opened my eyes, smiling. Jessie would think this was hilarious—me having to meditate to take care of myself.

Deborah Callahan stared at me for a full five seconds, then looked away, snorting and shaking her head. "Glad you're joining us. Your team's assembling for patrol duty. Get moving."

"Any surprises today?" I asked as I stood up from my pile of boxes. "We weren't supposed to see the Monster Eaters here. What else do I need to know about?"

"There shouldn't be. You're still on the northeast. The southeast team has it the worst. If those crazies are right, they'll be the first to see White Sands monsters."

"And what are the White Sands monsters? What kind of portal is it?"

"A-Rank. Boneyard. It's hard to clear, though, and it's never been a problem before. It got established before we could get a team to it, and now it's almost impossible to reach the portal. If the guild leaders and the Spark of Life worked together, they could clear it. They might have to, if it's as bad as the Monster Chow says it is."

I nodded. Deborah shot me another glare, making it abundantly clear that her hatred for me hadn't disappeared. Then she made it even more clear. "Noelstra. Fuck. Listen, if Angelo's right, we're going to need to work together for the next couple of weeks. Let's talk later. Alone."

Alone? I couldn't trust Deborah Callahan as far as I could throw her—although, at C-Rank, I could probably get her a good twenty feet if she let me. She wouldn't, though. I shrugged. "We'll see."

"He doesn't think the White Sands break's changing directions on its own. He thinks something's pushing it toward us," Deborah said.

"We'll see," I said again. "I've got a patrol to get to."

Then I jumped down from the trailer, landed on the outside of the ring of slowly-starting diesel trucks, and jogged toward the rest of my team. I had almost no intention of meeting with Deborah. She'd tried to get me killed, after all. But two questions kept bouncing around in my head.

First, what could push an A-Rank portal break into changing its behavior?

And second, could the convoy handle it?

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