The actual act of hiking sucks. Putting one foot in front of the other, trudging through the monotony of repeated motions for hours at a time is the kind of mind numbing that we authors both crave and despise. It gets the blood, and the anima I guess, moving through our bodies, which stimulates our minds, which start pinging without an empty page to focus on.

As I walked up the mountain, turning from switchback to switchback, navigating treacherous rocky areas which were slick with melted snow, I started thinking about the Midnight Beach trilogy that I was working on back at home.

I’d promised the denizens of Midnight Beach that I’d finish telling their story, and I meant to fulfil that promise. At the same moment as I started a gentle rock climb section, my mind turned to my kids. It would be a week before I had them again, and I needed to really start making arrangements if something went wrong on one of these missions.

I had a will in place, sure, but I hadn’t updated it in a long time, and technically Emily and I were still married. There was a part of me that still loved her, or maybe it was just the things we’d been through together and survived that I loved now.

She’d made the choice to move on, and I needed to make sure that my books – my legacy – would go to my kids and my kids alone.

Suddenly Naginata floated into my mind. I’d sworn off relationships, and the love of another was something I hadn’t really given much thought to. The only people I wanted to give a shit about were my kids, and there was a part of me that thought that maybe Emily was right.

Maybe there was something wrong with me, and it was better that I didn’t fuck things up with someone again. Being alone makes sure that’ll never happen again.

Although I sure did miss having someone to confide in, and someone to confided in me. Those little moments and in-jokes that only came from prolonged close proximity with another human being that shared your own brand of crazy. Emily and I had been perfect for each other once, but we both grew indifferent directions until the crazy that had brought us together tore us apart instead.

The way that Naginata treated Kaiser made my heart swell with affection towards her. I’d started to think of Kaiser as another one of my kids, and to see her take such a protective stance with him already made her a deadset legend in my books.

Was I confusing decent human interaction with affection?

Maybe.

Still, I couldn’t get her out of my head. The memory of the way her eyes crinkled closed when she smiled made me smile in turn. An image of Kaiser’s eyes closed, tongue lolling out the side of his grinning mouth, with Naginata’s hand scratching behind his ears swam to the surface of my mind’s eye.

There was some kind of connection there between Naginata and me. Whether it was anything more than a professional working relationship or friendship I couldn’t be sure, but the hour it took me to reach the top of the ridge was dominated by thoughts of her.

I will admit that there was maybe even a little self-indulgent fantasizing about holding hands and making kissy faces, but nothing further. I couldn’t bring someone else into our family without knowing they were in it for the long haul. Not with my kids.

There was no room for flings or crushes in my life.

I was still a fair way from the actual lodge building on this mountaintop, but that was a good thing. The whole place was crawling with people wearing Edgebreaker uniforms. It wasn’t just Bastard and the others in their chopper then. Other Edgebreaker soldiers were already here, and there was another helicopter waiting in the snow near the ski lodge.

That could be our way out of here.

Maybe.

I wondered if any of our team knew how to fly a helicopter. I’d written about flying all kinds of stuff in my books, but that was something way beyond my own abilities.

I checked the tracker again, and my heart sunk when it confirmed what I feared. The rest of my team appeared to be quite a few storeys under ground level, directly beneath the lodge.

So the EDGE Force facility was hidden in plain sight, right beneath this tourist trap. What kind of shit were they up to here?

I needed to find a way in without alerting any of the patrolling guards, which would get a lot easier as time passed. The sun was already kissing the horizon, just about ready to set for the day. I might be able to use the cover of darkness to make my approach.

I counted about a dozen Edgebreaker soldiers patrolling around the place. They all wore the same uniform and were armed with a variety of firearms. Those posted at the top of the ski lodge carried massive rifles, whereas the others that patrolled around at ground level had assault rifles and shotguns. As darkness fell, the snipers would be at a disadvantage, and I’d be able to sneak up on the others much more easily.

The patrolling soldiers all had a shortsword in a scabbard hanging from their belt, and a shield slung over their backs. They had been outfitted to be able to engage us EDGEs. Probably to break us, what with it being in their name and all.

I did note that these soldiers all looked fairly generic. Homogenous. Almost like they were expendable foot soldiers.

Rushing headlong into this would get me killed. I had to be patient, which was incredibly difficult seeing Kaiser’s tracking dot pacing back and forth in fear and confusion beneath me.

Xiphos, Stiletto, Naginata and Khopesh hadn’t move at all since I arrived. Whether they were dead or restrained I couldn’t tell, but either way it was bad news.

From my position far away from the lodge I used the trees and rocky outcroppings to conceal my movement as I circled around. I reached out with my claws and touched a nearby tree, trying to get a sense for how Balaur’s anima network was integrated into this area.

My senses were immediately overloaded with a vein-like network of anima tracks that covered this whole ridge. The veins pulsed green, the same colour as the claws at the ends of the fingers on my left hand. These veins stretched into every tree, sensed every rock, spread into every blade of grass, and even surrounded the ski lodge itself.

I couldn’t see it, but I sensed that there was a vulnerability at the rear of the lodge. It was almost like Balaur’s network was an extension of my consciousness and I could spread myself along it for a certain distance from my physical position. I knew there was something behind the lodge, but from my position I couldn’t feel what it was.

So I moved. I stayed hidden as best as I could and approached the back of the ski lodge. This is where the cable car would have arrived, but now the two massive cables lay on the ground, draped over the side of the mountain.

Standing by another tree I used the claws to reach out into Balaur’s anima network again. It revealed to me that there was a cave-in behind the ski lodge, which had once been a tunnel that led directly into the facility hidden beneath. It’s hard to describe how I knew what it was and where it was, because moving my consciousness through the anima network was not like seeing, hearing or anything I could easily explain with my normal senses. It was more of an expansion of self, and the impression of things that touched the farthest reaches of where that expansion of my mind could travel.

Over the years, soil had filled the cracks between the rocks in the cave-in, and the roots of trees wound themselves between those rocks. Whether it was to strengthen the blockage of the cave-in or not, I couldn’t tell, but I knew that I could use anima to move those rocks out of the path. All I needed was anima and to get close to the trees whose roots ran deep into the cave-in.

The sun dipped under the horizon, painting the western sky in a fiery display of reds and oranges. That only lasted for a few minutes before night descended and it became truly cold. The wind had a bite to it the moment the sun disappeared, and I was very glad we’d taken the time to line our armour with cold resistant upgrades.

The soldiers felt the cold too. Their breath billowed out in front of their faces, and many of them took shelter from the wind where they could.

There was a place where I’d be able to get one of them alone right near the control hut of the cable car. There was a good thirty seconds where my approach would be unnoticed. The gap came from the patrol coming around one side of the ski lodge and another the other walking around the back of the lodge. Then I’d slip into the control room and grab the next patrol as they walked past.

Attacks from stealth did double damage, and these guys weren’t wearing helmets.

Amateurs.

I waited until my chance, then used Forest Strider to cross the gap from the forest’s edge to the lodge. The ability wore off as I left the embrace of the woods, but the boost had worked well enough. I reached the little control box without detection and slipped inside. Another twenty seconds and the guard walked past the open door just like I’d expected, and I was ready.

Hatchet in hand, I fell into step behind the guard. His breath crystalised in the air as I brought my edged weapon down on the back of his skull, which split open with a terrible crack. I activated my claws and sucked what anima out of him I could. He twitched as his life energy drained away, and soon became a lifeless lump that I had to lift and lay over my shoulders.

I carefully retraced my steps along the patrol path so as not to raise suspicion, before dumping him behind the door of the cable car control hut. I gained another nice chunk of experience and invested the anima into experience points.

The next guard that came by suffered the same fate. I drained him of anima and converted it into experience points again. More patrols came by and I repeated this strategy again and again, banking more experience points as I converted it all.

Level 12 came soon, and I sunk that next skill point into Learned Scribe, which sent a wave of transformative anima through my eyes and brain. It would now translate any language into English and allow me to understand it.

To test it out, I looked around the cable car control hut and suddenly all of the instructions were in English. I’d need to sit down with that Romanian myths and legends book at some point soon and see what new information I could glean.

I kept about 100 anima in my tank and headed out to the place where the cave in supposedly happened. Placing my hand on a nearby tree I expanded my consciousness into the root system, which was intertwined with the rocks that blocked my path. I pushed anima into the tree and told it what I wanted it to do with my mind.

Move the rock, open the passage.

To my surprise, the ground opened before my eyes. It split apart, moving with a rolling, mulching motion. The dirt and stones pulled to the side, revealing a tunnel that was braced by old wooden beams. They were in remarkably good shape.

I left the path open, because we might need to make a quick escape in this direction.

There was a door at the end of the tunnel, and my team tracker showed that the rest of my team were only about a storey below my current position.

I took a deep breath, then opened the door.