"Again: do you know what to do?" Ana asked.

"Yes!" Jisha said, with the level of exasperation that only a teenager can muster.

"Tell me."

"If anyone tells me to do something, do it. Stay behind you, and don't go more than five metres from you unless staying close to you is much more dangerous than staying back. Use the poleaxe unless something gets too close and I can't get back. And—" Jisha cleared her throat and affected an imitation of Kaira, "'Leave the heroics to Ana. She may be a lunatic, but there's no reason for you to be.' I cleaned that up a lot."

"Full points. Bonus if you smack Kaira on her bald head for me."

"I'll pass. like my hands where they are."

Kaira chose that moment to ask something of the girl in Wanteul. Jisha answered back, a few short words that had quickly had Kaira cackling. "Alright," the Evoker declared, "she's good. Anybody not ready to go, speak up now! No? Great! Let's do this!"

The rift in reality that would let them enter the Delve hung at the top of a steep hill, surrounded closely by tall, deciduous trees. Not quite beech, Ana thought — the leaves were pointy instead of rounded — but similar. The rift itself, like the previous two that Ana had seen, was impossible to miss in that it couldn't be seen. Not that it was invisible; it simply wasn't there. Nothing was. Around it reality split, leaving an ill-defined — possibly indefinable — space of nothing where Ana's eyes simply would not focus. There was a volume of air at the top of that hill that didn't exist. Ana knew this. She could see the effect it had on the light that tried to pass through it, which bunched and flowed around its edges. Yet her mind refused to accept both its existence and its nonexistence, leading to her eyes continuing unbidden past it whenever she tried to look. The same thing happened if she tried to turn at the neck or waist; she simply couldn't stop so that she'd be looking directly at the phenomenon.

This was, as Ana had been told time and time again, perfectly normal.

They were a small Party, and the order of entry was simple. Ana was the toughest. Everybody knew that, and no one argued the point. Thus, she went first, together with Tor. Close on their heels would be Kaira, crossbow loaded and ready to shape, along with Jisha and her poleaxe. Finally, Rayni and Om would come in with their bows, ready to switch to axes if necessary. With the size of the rift no one expected the entrance to be much of a challenge, but they'd thought the same of Ana's first Delve, where they'd almost died. Better overly cautious, they agreed, than dead.

They stood arrayed before the rift in their agreed order of entry, their packs and non-combat gear piled by the tear in space; they'd bring it all inside when the entrance was clear and safe. They stood two abreast, because that was how wide the entrance to the Delve was. And Ana and Tor were leading the charge, which meant, in practice, that nothing would happen until Ana was good to go.

She looked to her left, then up a fair bit. Tor met her eyes and nodded his readiness.

If you have anything to say, any warning to give me, this would be the time, Ana thought. She directed the words into the space in her mind where she could speak with the Wayfarer, the goddess of Splinters and Delves and hidden paths.

The goddess did not respond. Ana wasn't surprised. It had been over two weeks now since the goddess spoke to her regularly; the best she'd gotten lately had been distant laughter and the occasional sense of gratitude. Although, to be fair, speaking to her directly cost the Wayfarer something, and Ana hadn't visited the Temple or even touched the Waystone since she returned to the outpost. It was possible that the goddess was conserving energy. That, or being pissy. Ana wouldn't put it past her.

I'll take that as an all-clear, yeah? she said. And I'll visit the temple when we're back.

She might have imagined it, but she thought that she got a sense of expectation back in response to that.

"Alright," she told Tor. "Let's do this. Count down from three?"

"No speech this time, Marshal?" Rayni called from the back.

"Fuck you, Ray," Ana shouted back. "Kick ass, get rich! How's that for a speech?"

"I like it!"

"Great! Tor?"

"Three," Tor replied with a wry smile. "Two. One."

On the silent "zero," they moved.

Ana let Tor lead; between her Split Focus and her other advantages, she could easily match his pace so that they were perfectly in line. Her mind, body, and reality itself conspired to force her to look anywhere except the impossibility she was moving toward, but then they were there and that impossibility became all that there was. The world dissolved around her. She could see everything and nothing, now and then and forever, and after a sliver of time between moments which lasted an eternity, she was inside.

They hit the Delve, and it was like the two Ana had already seen. Black, translucent glass walls, diffuse, sourceless light, and cool air that was neither dry nor humid. They came in, and Ana didn't slow her step. Instead she pushed herself into a burst of speed, because in front of her were the walking bones of a whole pack of revenant wolves, their heads rising to turn empty sockets toward the two humans that had invaded their domain.

Whatever compelled the creatures to guard this entrance should have had them pay better attention. There may have been a whole pack of them, but Ana didn't care. She was fast enough that she had the element of surprise on her side and not the other way around, and the moment they reacted — too late — to her presence she was already among them, and her bonuses kicked in.

Along with the surge of power came a sense of near invincibility, and Ana didn't regret her choice to move forward for a moment. Messy was right. Every time Ana fought, no matter the situation, she felt better, more alive, more herself than she ever had.

It was absolutely intoxicating.

She moved around the side of the pack, spending her momentum on a strike with the hammer side of her weapon that absolutely obliterated the skull of the right-most revenant. As she followed through, spinning to face the back of the now five strong group of revenants, the snap and crackle of shattering bone filled the space before being swallowed by the walls. She didn't stop to think. She didn't put any distance between herself and the five remaining revenants. She didn't need that. She was in her element, fighting to destroy creatures that wouldn't hesitate to kill her and every other sapient creature in the Splinter. Already some of them were turning toward Tor, who hadn't hesitated to follow her into battle. She punished them for ignoring her.

With her massive Effective Strength, boosted even further by Bone Breaker for the purposes of, well, breaking bone, Ana struck with the speed and force of a jackhammer. While she quickly struck down two of the three distracted revenants, the two others came for her; she fought them off with contemptuous ease, her shield shattering the jaw of one and a stomping kick snapping off the front leg of another. She didn't bother separating or destroying the skulls; there'd be plenty of time to finish the revenants off after they were incapacitated. She could even leave them for Jisha! That'd be nice; get the girl's contribution up a bit and get her some higher-tier Crystals.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Actually…

"Don't destroy them!" Ana shouted as Tor closed in. Behind him Kaira and Jisha entered, shrinking, growing, fading and flashing into existence all at once as her mind tried to make sense of their sudden appearance. "Leave them broken if possible! Let Jisha finish them!"

"Easy for you to say!" Tor shouted back, but he dutifully fended off the revenant attacking him with his shield and hacked at its spine with his heavy sword, rather than trying to take it down permanently.

"Love it!" Kaira laughed behind him. She didn't attack immediately beyond unloading her crossbow, instead circling for a better angle. Meanwhile, Jisha threw herself enthusiastically at the revenants. At least that was how Ana chose to interpret what she did; her eagerness to close in might have been because she wanted to get within the seventeen-foot radius of safety around Ana, the wild look on her face might have been from fear at seeing a number of walking skeletons with bits of flesh clinging to them, and the determined way that she hacked at the revenants might have been because she desperately wanted them to not exist. All those things were entirely possible. But that wasn't how Ana chose to see it.

"Good girl!" she told Jisha as she kept breaking limbs. "Aim for the heads! You need to break or cut off the skulls to destroy these things."

Jisha's reply was a feral shriek that Ana chose to call a war-cry, and a wild overhead strike that clove through the spine of a revenant whose back legs Ana had already taken off. Not particularly effective, but the right general idea. And the poleaxe was a good fit for Jisha. With a six-foot haft she could put a lot of force behind a swing, and the ten-inch wide bit was very forgiving when it came to accuracy.

The fight continued with Ana and Tor dismantling the revenants, Kaira, Rayni and Omda cheering from the back. All the while Jisha hacked away at the revenants, more deliberately with each swing, and one by one they turned into nothing more than piles of flaking skin and chipped bone.

When the notification finally came, telling them that the revenants were all destroyed, there was a resounding cheer and a round of applause. Jisha panting and with her knuckles white on the haft of her weapon, looked around wild-eyed for a few moments, as though she expected some new attack at any moment. Then she straightened a little, smiled uncertainly at Ana, and gave off an embarrassed little laugh as Ana approached and clapped her shoulder.

"Good job," Ana told her. "We'll need to sharpen that axe, but you smashed the shit out of these revenants! Did you get a good reward?"

Ana herself hadn't gotten much, but that was to be expected. A low Threat Rating — the revenants had all been Moderate or Weak to her — and deliberately holding back meant that she was never going to get much out of the fight. 2 Leasts and 6 Shards, and that was all. No Skill Levels, either.

Jisha, though, shone up as she checked her notification. "5 Mediums! And a Major! And I got the Polearms Skill, too! That's so much! That's so much Experience!"

"Not just Experience. You should—"

Jisha's label changed from Fighter (5) to Fighter (6).

—consider keeping some to sell, Ana finished silently.

"Two Levels in two days!" Jisha squeaked, bouncing with glee — which, with a six-foot poleaxe in her hands, was one hell of a thing to see. Ana couldn't even be annoyed at the girl's impulsiveness. And not only because she'd done pretty much the same thing on her first Delve. As close as Jisha was, the joy in her aura was strong enough that all Ana could do was smile wryly and shake her head.

"Kaira!" Jisha whirled and shot off a long string of Wanteul, which the Evoker answered just as enthusiastically, rushing over to sweep Jisha into a hug. Over the girl's shoulder, she gave Ana a look that seemed to say, "See what I had to deal with?"

Ana responded by rolling her eyes and walking over to Tor, who was talking with Rayni and Omda and shooting the rest of them amused looks. "Hey, good job, Tor," she said as she got close. "And thanks. Jisha got some good Experience from that."

"Sure," Tor said. "My take wasn't great, to be honest, but, hey—" He gestured to where Jisha was still talking a-mile-a-minute at Kaira. "Worth it."

"Yeah," Ana said. This far from Jisha she didn't feel the joy anymore, but it was still amusing to see how excited the girl was. The gratitude and awe in her eyes when they'd talked hadn't hurt, either.

This particular Delve had a small entrance, according to the more experienced members of the Party, with two ways to go. "Might be a big loop," Kaira said, "or one way could be a dead end. Only one way to know: we'll just have to pick a direction. Let's ask the new girl!"

Jisha liked the left-hand path, as determined when keeping one's back to the exit. There was a tension in the group as they went to bring their packs; Wandak and his Party may not have had any problems with their Delve a few days earlier, but Ana had still worried that the Sentinel might have done something to this particular one. She sighed softly with relief when first Tor, then Ray and finally Om left, coming back in seconds later with their gear. The Delve, she thought, was safe.

"I can't believe this. That bastard! That void-begotten bastard! I'm gonna melt his face off! I don't care if he's a god — I'm gonna Ascend, become a goddamn goddess myself, and I'm gonna melt his face off!" Kaira stopped her screaming rant for long enough to raise a double two-finger salute to world around her in general and take a deep breath, then roared, "You hear that? I'm coming for you! Lord of Order, my tits! Lord of being a worthless, backstabbing coward, more like!"

Perhaps, in a world where gods were demonstrably real, someone should have stopped Kaira in her sacrilege. Perhaps vowing to reach apotheosis for the sole purpose of mutilating a god was not the best idea. But Ana wasn't going to be the one to tell her that. She may have been more reserved than her Evoker friend, but that didn't mean that she didn't share her anger.

The Sentinel had it out for her. She wasn't even entirely sure why. Because she was the Wayfarer's Chosen, most likely, but no matter how strong she was, she was one woman, and he was a god. Yet even after he'd lost, the spiteful sack of crap was still fucking with her.

They'd taken the left-hand passage. They'd cleared a few side-tracks, absolutely merking three lone demons one by one while letting Jisha do most of the work. Not that she minded. She was ecstatic, riding high on the Crystals she was gaining, especially when she got a bonus for one of them. She hadn't hesitated to use them, either; barely three hours into the Delve, Jisha had gained her 7th Level. She was doing so well that Ana had finally just asked what she'd been wondering: "Why don't people do this for lower Level acquaintances all the time?"

The answer, it turned out, was simple: they did. But since Jisha was taking pretty much none of the risk, and was the only one making any real gains, anyone seeking to be in her position would need to either have very selfless friends, people who owed them some favors, or be rich.

"Or be some rich shit's kid, more likely," Rayni had said, with no small amount of bitterness. "Some rich folks just buy their kids the Crystals, some pay for them to be carried through Delves, so they at least pick up some Skills on the way. Fucking unfair either way. Not that I begrudge Jisha anything; hells, I'm here, right? And she gets in there, too. But none of us should talk too loud about this when we get back. Our young friend's already an outsider because of how she got here and from not knowing the language. We don't need to add jealousy to that."

"It can build some really bad habits, too," Tor added.

Beside him, Omda nodded. "All the Levels, no experience. Bad combo."

Right around that point in the conversation Ana had felt a tingle in the air, but by the time she recognized it, realized what was happening, and stopped to warn the others, it had already been too late.

"Fucking barrier?" Kaira screamed, continuing her torrent of abuse aimed at one of the more popular gods in this world. "Trapping me behind another fucking barrier?! You think that's going to hold us? Fuck you! You'd better hope gods aren't immortal, because the shit I'm going to do to you—!"

She continued like that for a while, but Ana tuned her out. Instead she turned her attention to Jisha, who had only the vaguest idea of what was going on, having spent the entire time they were in the Trap Delve at the entrance with the rest of the non-combattants.

"We're trapped?" Jisha asked anxiously, her eyes constantly flicking between Ana and Kaira. "Is that what's happened?"

"We're not trapped," Ana said, shaking her head gently as she put on her most confident and reassuring mask. "The Sentinel can't actually trap us in here. All he can do is annoy us and make it harder to get out."

"Oh. Good." Jisha paused for a moment, and the relief in her aura was like a cool breeze. "What is Kaira saying?"

Ana snorted softly. "She's swearing to become a goddess herself so she can exact fiery revenge."

"Is she serious?"

"She is right now. In a week, who knows?"

"Mes dieux," Jisha said slowly, like she was tasting the words. "Kaira doesn't aim low, does she?"

"I never had her figured for an Ascender," Ana said honestly, "but I wonder if this might do it."

It was Omda, of all people, who got them moving again. "Kaira, you're done," he stated suddenly, his rumbling voice cutting her off mid-rant. When she'd quieted he continued, in a softer tone, "Thank you. We shouldn't loiter. We know how to get out: the same way we always intended. All we've got to do is do it. Let's go."

Nobody argued.

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