For a brief moment that felt like it lasted an eternity, the four of us stood there, staring at the closed and locked entrance to the dungeon. Even though Wolfbrand and his Codex Wights had been standing right outside the dungeon, I couldn’t hear a thing. I didn’t know if that was because the external walls of the dungeon were just that thick or if there was some magical force soundproofing the dungeon so we couldn’t hear anything from the outside.

  None of that mattered at the moment, however, because I was pretty sure that all four of us were never going to forget seeing Wolfbrand murder Sheminith right in front of us like that.

  Especially Jonah, who recovered faster than any of us and started slamming his fists on the door, screaming, “Open up! Sheminith!”

  Even though the dungeon entrance now appeared to be just an ordinary wooden door, Jonah’s fists did nothing to it. He picked up his fallen trident and started attacking the door with it, but again, the door appeared completely unharmed. He even attempted Bulwark Slam again, but it also left the door unmarked.

  Jonah then spun on his heel and pointed his trident at me, forcing me to back up to avoid getting accidentally skewered on its ends. “You! Aaron, right? Do whatever you did earlier to get me and that Codex Wight into the dungeon. Do it now before I take that stylus from you and do it myself.”

  I raised my hands defensively, still gripping my stylus in my right hand. “It’s not that simple. I managed to do it with the barrier, but my success rate was low, and I don’t think I could do it again. At least, not until tomorrow, maybe, after Nimbus’s Codex Bond effect gets out of its cooldown.”

  Jonah swore. “Has anyone ever told you how utterly useless you are?”

  “All the time, honestly,” said Nimbus, hopping up next to me. “But truth be told, Aaron is right. Even if he somehow managed to force the dungeon entrance open again, it would do us no good. Wolfbrand and his men would just barge into the dungeon, and then all of us would die rather than just your friend.”

  It always impressed me how Nimbus had the special gift of both insulting me to my face and yet coming to my defense in an effective and thoughtful way. Maybe that was just another one of his special abilities as a Codex Beast.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to sway Jonah much, because he glared at Nimbus instead and said, “What do you know about magic? You’re just a rabbit.”

  Nimbus sat up a little straighter and quirked his ears. “Excuse me, but I’m not just a rabbit. I am a Codex Beast.”

  Jonah huffed and looked at me again with anger and perhaps pain in his eyes. “But if we don’t help Sheminith, then—”

  “It’s okay, Jonah,” said Ruth. She put a hand on his shoulder, causing Jonah to look at her next. She wore a reassuring smile. “I don’t know you or Sheminith at all, but it’s clear to me that Sheminith wants you to focus on completing this dungeon rather than worrying about him.”

  I was impressed by how calmly Ruth spoke. She had also just witnessed someone close to her die not long ago, too. Though when I looked closely, I noticed she was trembling slightly herself.

  I would have nodded in agreement, but Jonah’s trident was still pointed at my neck, and I didn’t want to accidentally slit my own throat on it. “Yeah. Escaping into the dungeon was Sheminith’s idea in the first place. He somehow knew that Ruth, Nimbus, and I had First Access privileges and seemed to think that the dungeon would be a safe place for us to hide from Wolfbrand and his minions.”

  I would have added that I wasn’t sure if getting brutally murdered by Wolfbrand was also part of Sheminith’s plan or not, but I didn’t want to upset Jonah more than he already was. Though he acted tough, it was clear as day that Jonah was as shaken by Sheminith’s untimely passing as we were, probably more so, given how he knew Sheminith—unlike me, Ruth, and Nimbus. I even thought I saw tears starting to form in the corners of Jonah’s eyes.

  But then Jonah huffed and removed his trident from my neck. He turned away from both me and Ruth, staring at the dungeon entrance as if he could open it through sheer force of will. “You’re right. Sheminith gave us this opportunity that even Chapter Seven Codexers would kill for. And as a Silver Sword, there’s no better way to give one’s life than in battle against an enemy to save your friends.”

  It amazed me how quickly Jonah’s attitude changed, but at the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder if he had deliberately looked away from us so we wouldn’t see him cry. He wiped at his eyes in a rather obvious way.

  Ruth, however, didn’t seem bothered by Jonah’s gruff attitude. She just nodded. “Right. Well, let me look at your arms. And did you suffer any other wounds? I’m a Harmonic Healer, so I can heal your wounds.”

  Jonah grunted but nodded. He attached his trident to his back, which seemed to just attach there through some magical means, and sat down on the floor. He held out his arms toward Ruth, who then got on her knees and began examining them.

  Nimbus and I just stood there, feeling a bit awkward at how quickly things had changed. I still couldn’t get the image of Sheminith getting stabbed through the chest by Wolfbrand’s hook out of my mind, nor could I forget the way Wolfbrand looked at us as the dungeon entrance closed shut.

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  He had been glaring directly at me. He must have been upset that he hadn’t been able to kill me or kidnap Nimbus, who he obviously needed for whatever he was planning with the North Forest Codexium. Unfortunately, I couldn’t contact Isaac and let him know about Wolfbrand because the dungeon was blocking all communications from outside. I assumed that meant I couldn’t use NodeLink to send Isaac a warning.

  My thoughts were interrupted by a ping from my portable, followed by this notification—a glowing blue piece of paper—hovering into my vision:

  Alert! The fallen Word Core (+10 Words) will dissipate within the next 30 seconds if not claimed by a Codexer or Codex Beast in that time.

  “Go get it, Aaron,” said Jonah, who was still sitting on the floor letting Ruth heal his arms. He gestured with his head at the glowing orb where the Codex Wight had been standing. “You took out that Wight, so you deserve the rewards. It’s only ten Words, anyway. Barely anything.”

  Ruth nodded. She was running her staff up and down Jonah’s arms, casting a soft white light over his bloody wounds that healed them more quickly than normal. “I agree with Jonah. If you don’t pick it up, it will be gone for good.”

  That must have meant that Jonah and Ruth had gotten the same notification about the Word Core that I did.

  But before I could run over and collect it, Nimbus phase-stepped over to the Word Core and snatched it up in his mouth. The Word Core glowed brightly for a second before it was seemingly absorbed into his mouth.

  Nimbus then clicked his teeth and licked his lips with a grimace on his face. “Yuck. Definitely not as good as a banana, but I’m not saying no to easy Words.”

  I scowled at Nimbus. “Hey! That was supposed to be my Word Core.”

  Nimbus looked at me like he just remembered I was there. “You snooze, you lose, Aaron. I was just trying to make sure that those hard-earned Words of ours didn’t go to waste. Besides, you’ll get some of them back through the spellchain at some point, so really, it’s like you didn’t actually lose them at all if you think about it.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not how it works, Nimbus. And you know it. I don’t take Words directly from you through the spellchain. The spellchain converts your mana into Words that I can use for wordcasting. Meanwhile, the Words that you just collected from that Word Core are just going straight into your Word count for your current Page.”

  Nimbus hopped into the air and clicked the heels of his back feet together. “I know! And guess who is now on the second Page of his current Chapter? That would be yours truly, of course, thanks to that massive amount of Words that we got for discovering this dungeon in the first place.”

  That was a good reminder that I had about 200 Words that I needed to distribute between my Banked Progress and Casting Pool at some point, but before I could sit down and do that, Jonah spoke up. “I don’t know what ‘Wordcasting’ and ‘spellchains’ mean, but you should prioritize picking up Word Cores when you see them. Most aren’t worth more than five or 10 Words, but some big ones hold as many as fifty or even one hundred Words. They’re a useful way to increase your progress.”

  I raised a questioning eyebrow at Jonah. “If Word Cores are so useful that way, then how do you get them? I have never seen them before.”

  “They’re usually only available in dungeons—either as rewards for completing the dungeon or as loot drops from certain Codex mobs that you find in a dungeon.” Ruth had finished bandaging Jonah’s arms and stood up. She dusted herself off as she looked at me and Nimbus. “That’s probably why the Verdant Seal converted the Codex Wight into a Word Core. Codex Wights are pretty common in lower-difficulty dungeons, so it makes sense that the dungeon turned that Wight into a Word Core, though it is a bit surprising when I think about it, seeing as that Codex Wight wasn’t a natural dungeon spawn.”

  Jonah scowled at the dungeon entrance again. “That Wolfbrand guy was a Wyrdbinder. That’s probably how he was able to turn all of his bandits into Codex Wights. I’ve heard all sorts of crazy legends and rumors about what Wyrdbinders can do, and I don’t know if I believe half of them—though I believe more of them than I used to after seeing Wolfbrand in action.”

  I scratched the back of my head and glanced at the dungeon entrance myself. “What is a Wyrdbinder? I heard someone call it a forbidden Discipline, but I didn’t even know that Disciplines could be forbidden.”

  Ruth pursed her lips. “I learned about them a bit in school. There’s no definitive list of forbidden Disciplines, but they are generally Disciplines outlawed in some or all of the Nine Kingdoms due to their inherent instability and corrupted glyph logic. Some people even claim that they are evil and can corrupt a person’s soul, though I’m not sure about that last part.”

  “And Wyrdbinders are some of the worst.” Jonah rose to his feet, using his trident for support, though he was already looking much better after Ruth’s healing. “They specialize in using corrupted glyphs, parasitic runes, and all sorts of other unnatural and forbidden magic to do things that no decent human being would ever think of doing.”

  I thought of Barlow when Jonah said that. “Like using Enslavement Protocols on a Codex Beast?”

  Jonah nodded. “Or on human beings. Trust me, there is no low that someone like Wolfbrand won’t stoop to achieve his goals. I’m just frustrated that we didn’t kill him. We severely underestimated him, which makes me feel even dumber than I already do.”

  Ruth brushed a strand of hair from her face and frowned. “I’m trying to figure out how a bandit like Wolfbrand even got a forbidden Discipline like that. Forbidden Disciplines are only available if you discover a forbidden Node and complete its Arcane Simulation. Though Arcane Simulations from forbidden Nodes are notoriously unstable to the point where they are almost impossible to complete without suffering some kind of severe mental or physical damage to oneself.”

  That reminded me of my and Nimbus’s Arcane Simulation not long ago, which had also glitched and threatened both of us if we hadn’t been able to deal with the corrupted Codex entry. “It’s not just Wolfbrand. His sister, who is dead now, was also a Wyrdbinder, though I think she was weaker than he was. At least, she didn’t turn her fellow bandits into mindless Wights or create hex fields that make it impossible to spellcast, at any rate.”

  Jonah grimaced. “One Wyrdbinder is bad enough, but two? I’m glad she’s dead. Who killed her?”

  “Salome the Shadow Scribe,” I said without thinking. “It was pretty impressive, too, because she blew up Jezebel’s portable, which was her earring attached to her ear, so when her portable blew up—”

  “Hold on,” said Jonah in an alarmed voice. “You know Salome?”

  Nimbus nodded. “We sure do! And she’s really nice for a mass-murdering terrorist.”

  Before I could answer that question, all three of our portables pinged at the same time, and a new notification unfurled before us:

  Welcome to the Verdant Seal, a newly discovered Basic Node Dungeon! When you are ready to begin exploring the dungeon, remember to link your portables with the dungeon Node and form a Codex Party.

  You have one week to complete the first floor of this dungeon. May the Logos guide you in all that you do!

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