1

Harper intended to follow the same course of action she’d used on the first bridge, creating ten-foot Bridge of Vines sections. Her stats were marginally higher this time, leaving her with a mana pool of 211 versus 207 and a spell consumption of 7.68 MP per second.

“That leaves me twenty-seven seconds to cross, whoop-de-doo,” she muttered.

She cast the spell over the three-foot-wide platform and started moving quickly to make it across with time to spare. Beneath her, she had a dizzying view of the first bridge and, below that, the splintered wood of the Rukh’s remains.

The nervousness crept in on her again, but Harper felt more in control this time, knowing she could trust her spell. Still, her hands were getting clammy as she reached the midway point of the vines. Just take a deep breath, she urged herself. You’ll be across in no ti—

A powerful force punted her body to the right. Losing their grip, her legs fell over the side and dangled over the empty space under the bridge. Her waist slipped below the edge of the orange stone. Instantly, gravity pulled at her body, and Harper screamed. Vaguely, she could hear her teammates gasp.

She squeezed tightly onto the mesh of vines that clung to the bridge. Her teammates yelled instructions, but their calls were lost in Harper’s state of panic. Suddenly, the vine bridge slipped a couple of inches. “Oh, god. No!” she cried. Her bladder wanted to let go. She heard more desperate calls from the Inmates.

With her legs pinwheeling below her, Harper hooked her elbows, pulling with all her strength. Her body raised a few inches. Releasing her left hand, she grasped further up the vines and pulled herself higher, even as her left shoulder ached where the spider had injured her.

If I can only get the top half of my body over, she thought desperately. She took a deep breath. A stiff breeze blew in from the opening in the Rukh room, chilling her legs. Throwing her right hand forward, Harper clutched at a new patch of the vines and pulled.

Sweat dripped into her eyes and stung them. She shot her arm forward again, hauling her chest over the top of the bridge. She yanked one leg onto the bridge.

Harper exhaled.

As she teetered on the edge of the bridge, the Inmates shouted at her. She glanced at them, and another bead of sweat trickled into her eye, blurring her vision. Harper tried to discern what they were collectively saying.

“… out, look out. The bridge has—”

Suddenly, something very hard punched her. Her leg fell over the side again, but she maintained her torso’s position. She looked in the direction the hit had come from.

There was nothing on the bridge with her.

Harper noticed a hole in the green mesh. Oh my god, the vine spell! she thought. She quickly checked her mana total.

24… 16… 8…

The vine bridge shrank. Harper’s torso thumped against the hard surface, expelling the air from her lungs. As her wet hands squeezed against the sides of the bridge, she took a breath and willed herself not to move her legs. Start cartwheeling those legs, this time, and you’ll be doing it all the way to the bottom, she told herself, then felt instantly nauseated.

Her hold on the bridge was tenuous at best. Her hands felt slick, but at least for the moment, they were secure. Her legs hung below her, perfectly immobile. She couldn’t risk moving without losing her precarious grip on the bridge. Just the thought sent images through Harper’s mind of her plunging to a grisly death.

As her sweat-dampened hair matted to her face, Harper checked her mana regeneration. In the ten seconds since the spell disappeared, her mana had climbed back up to 73. Thank god, I have a high MPR. She quickly did the math and discovered it would take another forty seconds to reach her maximum of 288 again. At that point, I’ll cast it again and pull the rest of my body up.

As she waited for her mana to regenerate, her teammates continued to shout exhortations and advice. Wanting to cut through the noise, she sent a single thought to Damon only. Any words of wisdom, Damon?

Interestingly, the other Inmates stopped yelling and waited for Damon to respond, which he did immediately. Yeah, the bridge is alive.

2

Damon then spoke to her audibly. “What pushed you off was a stone hand that rose out of the bridge.”

Fearing talking would jar her loose, Harper didn’t reply audibly. Were there two of them?

“No,” Damon said apologetically, “that was the same one. It got you twice. We tried to warn you about it, but I guess you didn’t hear us.”

Okay. But next time, if there are many people yelling, I want you to talk to me telepathically. Everyone else, shut the hell up. Now, where did the hand come out from?

Harper was facing the guardrail, and Damon pointed to a spot behind her. “You’re probably very close to it,” he said, “on the other side of your body.”

And you didn’t see anything happen elsewhere on the bridge?

“No. Just there.”

Okay, just so you know, I’m going to rebuild the vine bridge on your side then pull myself up. Do you see any issues with that?

He raised a finger, asking her to wait. Equipping his bone-axe and grasping it just under the blade, he extended the handle toward Harper. The wooden shaft ended about two feet away from her. “I’m going to keep this in position, in case you need to grab it,” he said.

Thanks, Damon.

Harper’s checked her mana. It was at 288. She cast another Bridge of Vines toward the guardrail and allowed it to grow to eight feet. She took a deep breath, then lunged for the vines.

3

Harper knew her body was going to go back into free fall as soon as she released her grip, so her lunge had to be long and accurate. She used her arms to propel herself forward, then reached forward as quickly as she could. Her hands closed on the vines.

The mesh slipped.

Oh, no! she thought. It didn’t stick!

Then it did stick, and Harper realized it was just the flexibility of the vegetation that had fooled her. She pulled her legs, which were hanging at an awkward angle after her lunge, onto the flat surface of the bridge.

“Look out!” Damon cried. “Your legs!”

Harper squinted and bent her knees, sending her calves into the air. She heard a sound like two stones hitting together and quickly turned her head to have a look at her assailant. Morphing back into the surface was a hand constructed of the same orange stone as the bridge. It was twice the size of the orcs’ hands. The hand molded back into the surface of the bridge, completely undetectable.

Harper exhaled and glanced back at Damon. Thank you. She turned the Bridge of Vines spell off and allowed her body to drop onto the surface of the bridge. She shuddered and slowly got up to a sitting position. “So, how do we get across now?” she asked, feeling dazed.

“I think we have to draw it out and kill it,” Damon replied.

Harper nodded. “Yeah, but how?”

“Maybe we should roll that Boulder spell across the surface and see if it does anything,” Emma suggested.

Harper smiled. “Yeah, that’s a great idea.” She stood up. “Can I get you to do that, Emma? And I’ll charge up a Fire Bullet.”

Emma agreed and waited for Harper to charge her spell. Then the Grimalkin member walked to the guardrail and started rolling the marble ball along the bridge in front of Harper. The boulder rolled just a few feet before Harper had a good look at the enemy. Emerging from the surface, the hand reappeared and Harper’s Creature Description details came up.

KA-BASH (Level 5)

HP: 107

MP: 0

STRENGTH: 10

CONSTITUTION: 10

DEXTERITY: 3

INTELLIGENCE: 1

WISDOM: 1

XP: 31

DESCRIPTION: Stone hands of the devil.

The stone hand, which was roughly two feet square, reached for the rolling boulder but missed it. The rock fingers bashed together.

Harper released her Fire Bullet. The fireball slid off the hand’s stone exterior, doing no damage. A moment later, the ka-bash descended back into the bridge. Emma turned her Boulder spell off and sighed.

“I can go across and try bashing the hands with my hammer,” Damon suggested.

Harper shook her head. She felt personally invested in destroying the thing and asked Emma to run her spell again. As the boulder moved along the bridge, Harper cued up her own Boulder spell and waited for the stone hand to ascend. When the hand reached its highest point, Harper fired at the ka-bash. The boulder’s hard stone pulverized the softer orange stone, blasting a shower of rock over the courtyard. The ka-bash’s hit points plunged to zero.

Emma didn’t turn off her spell. Her boulder continued its roll across the bridge. Another hand rose from the stone and reached for the rolling ball, missing it like the previous ka-bash.

They miss the ball, but they got me, Harper thought with dismay.

By the time the boulder reached the end of the bridge, six stone hands had reached for it.

Harper turned to the Inmates.

“Okay, this should be easy.”

4

Happy that all the Inmates had the Boulder spell and its range was one hundred meters, Harper arranged for Jordan, Angie, Zack, Damon, and, finally, Ethan to take their shots after her. She asked Emma to get the ball rolling. As she watched the boulder roll across the bridge, Harper relished another opportunity to take revenge on the monsters that had almost knocked her off the bridge.

Sitting cross-legged on the top of the orange platform, she brandished her staff. When the second ka-bash appeared, she swung her staff at the monster and sent the projectile speeding toward it. The hand exploded, just like the previous one.

“Jordan, you’re next,” she called out, but he was ready. When the third hand appeared, Jordan’s cannonball made quick work of it. All the Inmates got their shots in. The experience points from the ka-bashs were a measly 31 points, so no one leveled up.

With the stone hands taken out, the journey across the tower’s highest bridge was relatively uneventful. Harper went back to using Bridge of Vines for herself and the hunters. The orcs went across without the safety net.

When they got to the other side, they found themselves in another small room. Another green portal waited for them there. Before stepping through, they looked back at the room they had just left. Janna was back there.

And the portal, their only way of getting back, was destroyed.