As her kidnapper smiled at her from a few meters away, and with the threat of once more having her mind caged within a useless body that she would have no power over, Phoenix gred at the cruel cinderen and asked, “Why are you doing all this? I’ve done nothing to you.”

  Her captor returned her gre as he hissed, “Because of you, my daughter is dead!” He walked closer to her and ranted, “You walked into our lives unwanted and stole her most beloved treasure from her. When all she sought justice, she was brutally murdered by your rabid mentor!”

  Murinah’s father was fuming as he spoke, carefully maneuvering through the ritual circle to get closer to her, “But now I’ll have my own revenge. With this,” he held up the creepy-looking bck hand that was currently opened as if to offer a morbid high-five.

  He gave that malevolent smile once more, “Waynd will see you as the weak and pathetic creature you are. He’ll be forced to kill you just like any other monster.”

  “You’re the monster,” Phoenix replied through gritted teeth, trying to calm her panic at the Magi’s proximity.

  “I should have done this to begin with,” he continued with a smirk as though not hearing her words, “If I had just taken care of you and that arrogant Padin as soon as you came to Tulimeir, my daughter would still be alive, and I would have a powerful pawn under my command.”

  “Has anyone told you before, that you’re delusional?” Phoenix asked, trying to get her enemy to move slightly closer as a pn started to form. She would have to risk revealing her secret key for a chance to escape.

  Lord Ruwena’s smirk vanished as a snarl repced it, “Coming from a foreign peasant who has no real power and clings to a Fallen Padin who thinks himself above the w.”

  “Better an avenging Padin than a complete psychopath like you,” Phoenix taunted, needing him just a bit closer.

  The nobleman took another step forward, lifting his free hand as though to sp her, and Phoenix shifted herself quickly, utilizing the movement techniques from the Silent Stealth Stance of the Weapon Wielding Warrior that had been magically ingrained in her mind. Since absorbing the martial knowledge months ago, she had come to realize that her body itself was a weapon; one that she had now spent countless hours honing control over.

  Phoenix’s first kick nded, knocking the device out of the Magi’s hand as her second kick nded on his chest hard. The force was enough to push off of him and unch herself back and upwards, flipping to wrap her legs around the chains. She tried to pull against them, attempting to dislodge the spike in the ceiling holding them in pce.

  It wouldn’t budge.

  The lord was starting to recover from his unexpected tumble already and she maneuvered her body further up the chain. In an awkward bend, she brought the barrette in her hair up towards her hand and snagged the small rectangur metal hooked in it. She smmed the key into the colr portion around her neck and released her pent-up breath as she heard the click of the csp unlocking.

  As soon as it fell from her neck, she triggered two abilities in quick succession. The first one was her portal ability, willing the floating ring to appear below her to catch her as she fell. The second was her gravity ability as she clenched her teeth, targeted the ceiling, and pushed it away from her.

  Phoenix quickly realized that two things had gone terribly wrong.

  As her body flung itself away from the ceiling, the chains were secured more than the bones in her hands could force. She yelped in pain as her thumbs dislocated, and she was fairly certain one of her wrists had broken from the magically reinforced cuffs.

  Then, instead of falling through her portal, her back smmed against the stone floor, knocking the air from her lungs and making another breath nigh impossible. She y there for a moment, stunned, confused, and in pain, but forced herself to move, rolling over before her captors might chain her again.

  “Stop her!” Ruwena’s voice yelled from somewhere nearby.

  As Phoenix got to her feet, Phoenix was smmed into the wall behind her, opposite the only door to the room, and she felt the little breath she had managed to gain escape her again as her head swam. She triggered [Ruler of Retivity] again, this time pushing against the Sapphire Caste Arktis that had smmed into her and punctured her gut with both of the katars on Arktis’s fists.

  Phoenix felt the crushing force of her own ability as there was only a stone wall behind her, but it did manage to push her assaint back a few paces, leaving gaping wounds where thick bdes had been. She conjured her own weapons, trying to ignore the pain in her thumbs and wrist that her regeneration hadn’t healed yet, and tried to give it a boost by casting her healing Spell. “As surely as the sun will rise again, I will see the dawn of tomorrow.”

  Her flesh instantly began to mend, and her grip fixed itself with the triggering of the high-cost variant of her healing spell. Despite the pain she was still in, she prepared to face her enemies in combat, though the enemy being a pair of Sapphire Casters made her odds fairly abysmal.

  Death would be better than becoming a Caged monster, she thought grimly.

  Phoenix was still confused about why her portal hadn’t appeared, and then she realized that the silver ring was there, floating in the air, but the sheet of night was missing from inside of it.

  Lord Ruwena’s chuckle sent a shiver up her spine as he said, “Your portal won’t work in here. Nobody gets in or out except through that door,” he gestured to the solid metal sb behind her, “And you won’t get past Arktis or me. You can’t escape this time.”

  A small voice inside Phoenix agreed with the maniac. She smothered that nagging part of her and took her dual-wielding stance as she unleashed her aura. Pushing against the pair of Sapphire Caste ones that seemed to shudder under the force of her own. That made her realize that despite being Sapphire, both of them were actually rather weak.

  Even though her aura read theirs as in the mid-range of the Caste, there was an odd… taint to them. It made them almost feel akin to monsters, and she wondered if that was the effect of Monster Seeds that her mentor had warned her about.

  As her form became obscured in darkness from [Embrace of Shadows], the mercenary lunged at her again, and she barely managed to duck under the bded fists that almost took her head off.

  “Don’t kill her, idiot!” the lord yelled at his niece, “You’ll ruin my pn!”

  Phoenix ignored the irate Magi as she swung her bdes at the assaint. An elbow smashed through her [Sun Shell] and nded on her face before she could blink, and smmed her into the floor.

  She used her gravity ability once more to push herself away from Arktis, who was shouting at the blinding Bane and rubbing unseeing eyes, as she put more distance between them, sliding against the stone ground.

  Phoenix changed target, and thus direction, as she used the [Ruler of Retivity] against the wall, and flung herself past both enemies. She lifted herself towards the door only to feel a body crash into her once more and thought she felt a rib crack as she was smmed into another side wall. Arktis was fast—much faster than she was despite the overall weakness the assassin had for her Caste.

  Phoenix reactively used her gravity power to disentangle herself from her attacker and found herself in a far corner. She met Ruwena’s gaze once more, and her resolve hardened as she lifted her dagger and sword towards the pair. “You won’t turn me into one of the Caged,” she announced and was gd her voice didn’t waver.

  The nobleman ughed, lifting up a rge crossbow that she hadn’t noticed before, “You can’t possibly win. You’re not powerful enough to defeat Arktis, let alone me,” he taunted and loosed a silvery bolt from the weapon.

  She dodged to the side only to feel the slice of a bde bury into her thigh, and she swiped her own weapons towards Arktis, who stepped back from the attack with a snarl and a fresh wound across the arm. As she spent the mana to resummon her shield of light, her little [Starlight Companion] was the next sacrifice, and it exploded in a shower of silvery glitter when it intercepted another arrow from the Magi across the room.

  Phoenix found herself mourning the loss of Ta, not because she couldn’t just resummon the Familiar, for she knew that Ta’s demise wasn’t a true death, but because the little bird had become both a valued ally to help support her in these dire circumstances.

  Another shout came from her side as Arktis attacked again, only to be blinded by her translucent shield once more. Before she could conjure another repcement, however, a poisoned-tipped bolt buried itself into her thigh, and she clenched her jaw to keep from crying out in pain.

  A cruel ugh came from across the room, “Give up, girl. It’s only a matter of minutes now before the Creeping Heartvine makes you sleep once more.”

  Her mind was in overdrive, and she went through her options. Trying to buy a bit more time to pn, Phoenix kept the conversation going, “I don’t need to defeat you. I just need to escape.”

  “Are you deaf? You can’t escape,” he reiterated and gestured to the intricate enchantments adorning the walls, “Built-in anti-teleportation and a Sapphire Caster that’s faster than you, along with a door that won’t respond to anyone but the family, means that you aren’t going anywhere. You will be beaten, broken, and chained. Then you will become one of the Caged.”

  Another small voice spoke in the back of her mind, telling her to just kill the insane man and put a permanent end to the threat, but she balked at it. Anger rose up at the thought of lowering herself to Murinah’s level. Even if she could, she didn’t need to kill these two; she just needed to escape. This pce and the information she had gained would surely be enough now to nd the corrupt noble in a prison somewhere.

  Her foe was right, though; she couldn’t escape. There was no running as the feeling in her legs bled away, and she slumped against the wall behind her. No portal to run through. No key to the door. No hope.

  No.

  The word resonated within her, a faint memory of defiance rising up. The first time she had felt this way, her body had felt like it was being burned to ashes in a hospital bed, but she refused to give in to death.

  Phoenix had been running for a long time before even coming into this world.

  She had been fleeing further and further into darkness as her friends and family died around her. The st time she had felt this sudden resistance to the seeming inevitable despair, she had stood against a foe stronger than her and won. Sure, she had died, but she had still stood her ground and defeated the Frost Lurker.

  Coming to this world, meeting Paul, and gaining new friends had slowly been pulling her back toward the light, but this insane family’s actions threatened to drag her back into the lonely abyss. She would not let them.

  There was always a way. How many times had she read about heroes who had triumphed over and over again during the darkest of times and most dire of circumstances? Now, it was her turn to prove that there was always hope. Her turn to stand against evil.

  Her choice to keep fighting.

  Phoenix took a deep, steadying breath of air and exhaled her fears and anxieties. She met Ruwena’s malevolent gaze with her own determined one and resolutely said, “I will always fight for my freedom. Until my very st breath, I will remain unchained.”

  Then Phoenix threw her sword toward the Sapphire Caste Magi only to trigger [Ruler of Retivity] one st time to pull the sword back before it reached the noble and took her own head.