Chris Huisjen

Stormblade 3 C38: Guild Work (3)

38 - Guild Work (3)

Jessie sat in a comfy chair, curled into a ball, her phone on speaker in her lap. No one else was around in the Desert Wind’s library—or the rest of the building, for that matter—and she could be as loud as she wanted. She couldn’t say what she wanted until she got off this stupid call, but it wasn’t like some GC rep was going to come down on her if she talked too loudly.

“Y...

Stormblade 3 C37: Guild Work (2)

37 - Guild Work (2)

“Construct portal?” Ellen asked as we poked around the brass-and-silk machines outside the 303 Wall’s west gate.

There were almost certainly more of them. The group was too small to break through, and where there were a few monsters, there were always more. I kept my sword at the ready. Stormsong felt light in my hand, and my Mana surged inside of me. So did the battle trance I hadn’t qu...

Stormblade 3 C36: Guild Work (1)

36 - Guild Work (1)

Ellen’s match was the next morning.

I watched the screen, along with hundreds of other people. My attention was all on Ellen as she navigated a three-dimensional maze of Lithic platforms over a field of lava, searching for the archer. Meanwhile, arrows rained down on her, and she had to use Shadestep and Black Hole—a new, B-Rank spell—to warp the volleys away from her.

I wasn’t ner...

Stormblade 3 C35: Logan Fritch

35 - Logan Fritch

When the Fallen Delver’s Tournament started, all I could do was watch outside. The portal—and the arena built inside—were space-limited. Three GC delvers stood guard around the edges of the steel room. The Spark of Life, Sarah Cullman, watched from the edge of the sparring room. And then there were the two combatants.

Six people in at a time. That was all.

Jeff, Ellen, and I sat in Dei...

Stormblade 3 C34: Politics is a Continuation of War by Other Means

34 - Politics is a Continuation of War by Other Means

While her brother, Ellen, and Jeff spent time studying their first-round opponents’ fighting styles, skills, and tendencies—not to mention sparring in the Desert Wind Guild’s training room—Jessie had other things on her mind. School, for one.

Her recent brush with Phoenix’s civilian government had given her a new appreciation for her Civics class. She ...

Stormblade 3 C33: Registration

33 - Registration

The Fallen Delvers Memorial threw blue light up into the evening air as Ellen, Jeff, and I opened Deimos’s doors. The clean-up and restoration of our new headquarters was taking longer than expected, and the three of us needed to sign up now or lose our chance at signing up at all. Yasmin and Jessie were back at base, making sure the cleanup finished on schedule. The deep-cleaners, especially, seemed ...

Stormblade 3 C32: Home (2)

32 - Home (2)

Ellen wasn’t planning on spending much time in her own room.

But it was still her room. Not the one she’d grown up in at the Traynor manor. Not the hotel room she’d rented, or Kade’s couch or bed at his apartment. Her space. No one else’s. Just hers.

It wasn’t as dusty as she’d expected, either, although it was empty. That was fine. She’d spent far too ...

Stormblade 3 C31: Home (1)

31 - Home (1)

Deimos cruised toward a fortress of concrete and steel on the west side of Phoenix, Ellen’s hands on the wheel. She swerved, and the car swerved with her, around a city bus. Then she braked. I gripped the panic handle tightly. “Daddy…Bob…never let me drive Deimos. It was always autopilot. Now I see why,” she said as we drifted into a parking spot outside of the Portal Tyrant’s building....

Stormblade 3 C30: Dividends (4)

30 - Dividends (4)

Kade: Hi, Sophia. Can I talk to Ellen?

Sophia: Doesn’t she have her phone?

Kade: Not tonight. Hand me over.

Sophia: Hi, Kade. It’s Ellen. Did it work?

Kade: It worked. I’m on my way. We’re on our way.

Sophia’s room didn’t have a TV. The healer’s phone was internet-disabled—a condition the hospital she was in impo...

Stormblade 3 C29: Dividends (3)

Author's Note (Statistical Oopsie): Hello. There is a very reasonable chance that, in the "Aura" chapters, I accidentally depowered Kade's skills from C-Rank to D-Rank in his stat block. This was 100% unintentional, and they should have moved in the other direction. That has been corrected in the master text file. Oopsie.

29 - Dividends (3)

Ellen hated the plan.

Partially, she hated it because, for ...

Stormblade 3 C28: Dividends (2)

28 - Dividends (2)

Jessie hated to admit it, but Kade had been right.

If she’d had it her way, she’d have dropped out of school the second she got her GC rep job. She didn’t need it. It was a waste of her time, and she knew how the world really worked thanks to her trip into the GC’s inner archives. It’d be better for her to climb the Governing Council’s ranks, take a seat on their council, and...

Stormblade 3 C27: Dividends (1)

27 - Dividends (1)

Ophelia St. Vrain didn’t understand people. She never had. It had always been a weakness of hers. They were just so confusing. Saying one thing, doing another. Not like her. She was always honest. If she told someone she’d lie for them, she’d lie for them. If she told someone she’d tell the truth, she’d tell the truth. Somehow, though, that hadn’t made her many friends.

She definitely...

Stormblade 3 C26: Spellcraft

26 - Spellcraft

“Think she’ll be okay?” Ellen asked.

Deimos was idling outside the GC Headquarters building. We’d just dropped Sophia off there; she’d burned herself down to nothing trying to save the first team’s survivors. There’d been three—half the team. Two of them were in the same hospital Jessie had therapy at, while the last one had been airlifted to the GC’s own facility here at the headq...

Stormblade 3 C25: Aura (4)

25 - Aura (4)

Jeff was happy for Kade.

He wouldn’t lie to his best friend. Not about that.

But he was also frustrated. He’d had a long talk with his mom and dad, then another, and then dinner with them. And they’d—very, very gently—told him that he’d chosen this consequence. That he’d known what he was getting into. That they loved him, and they forgave him.

It was at that dinner�...

Stormblade 3 C24: Aura (3)

24 - Aura (3)

Two days later, Ellen, Jeff, and the rest of our team stood outside of a red, B-Rank portal, waiting. We’d gotten there second, and that made us the backup team. The initial team had done something we’d never thought about, though, and it was brilliant. They’d sent a member out after confirming that it wasn’t a trap to tell the GC what type of portal they were up against. That meant we knew what to ...

Stormblade 3 C23: Aura (2)

23 - Aura (2)

Compared to my C-Rank consolidation—the grinding, five-Laws-and-a-consolidation push that had started my core’s fracturing—this was going well.

Really well.

I felt great, and even as I dropped into my lotus position and closed my eyes, my core wasn’t sending pain signals. Five Laws—plus the two I’d already consolidated to get this far—and there was hardly any pressure. The...

Stormblade 3 C22: Aura (1)

22 - Aura (1)

“Why’d you just give up?” Jessie asked me from her blanket nest.

I stared at her. “What do you mean? That was Deborah Callahan. The real question isn’t why I gave up. It’s why she was even there. She shouldn’t have been anywhere near that portal.”

“You think she was there for you?” Jessie asked. “I don’t know. That seems far-fetched. It’s a high-rank portal breaking in ...

Stormblade 3 C21: Annuities (3)

21 - Annuities (3)

Jessie was a hundred yards from the portal when it broke.

Time-out breaks were uncommon, but the Governing Council still had a procedure for them. Her training took over. As the red portal began to spin and vibrate, Jessie ran. She needed to be at least two hundred yards away in the next minute and twenty-three seconds, because they had exactly that long before monsters started appearing.

T...

Stormblade 3 C20: Annuities (2)

20 - Annuities (2)

Shit was fucked.

As leader of the Roadrunners, Deborah Callahan got reports on every upper-Rank portal that appeared in Phoenix, in addition to sitting on the Inner Council. Every B-Rank, A-Rank, or God forbid, S-Rank portal came in on her phone and the computer screen in front of her.

So did the teams delving into them.

And so, three hours forty-five minutes ago, Deborah Cal...

Stormblade 3 C19: Annuities (1)

19 - Annuities (1)

Eighteen years ago, Eleanor Traynor had been a toddler, and the Traynor Corporation had been a newborn idea in Robert Traynor’s head.

He’d invested his life savings into both of his girls, into making sure his daughter had exactly the education she’d need to keep his company alive, and into making sure the company would be worth inheriting when the time came.

It had started with const...

Stormblade 3 C18: Alias (2)

18 - Alias (2)

As Ellen and I sprinted out the front door, I searched for the portal. If we could find it, we could get inside and start clearing it—or at least securing it for a proper team. The sooner it went down, the sooner the situation outside could clear out.

I didn’t expect to find it, and I wasn’t disappointed. I did find Carter, though. He stood next to Deimos, staring at the car as it idled on the ...

Stormblade 3 C17: Alias (1)

17 - Alias (1)

Power surged through Ellen as she started casting Shadow Shapes. Her mind cranked into overdrive. Details pushed into her thoughts, then were discarded.

Kade had shoved her to the side and jolted the wheelchair. Jessie was awake; her head pivoted around as she tried to get her bearings. The hooded figure stood behind Ellen’s favorite chair. Everything else in the apartment was the way it always was...

Stormblade 3 C16: Family Matters

16 - Family Matters

Going public with what we knew about core breaks was one thing. I was all for that. It was probably the right thing to do; the information was buried in the public GC archives, but while some delvers were aware of it, it wasn’t common knowledge. Most delvers never advanced even close to fast enough to get the warning. But the risk was there, and delvers needed to know about it—especially the Trayn...

Stormblade 3 C15: Investment (3)

15 - Investment (3)

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Ophelia said. She stared past us at the two suited delvers, eyes empty. Completely empty. The lie came out perfectly, emotionless and without any tells—or anything else. It was just words.

The Fritch twins looked at Ellen, then at me. I had Tallas’s Dueling Blade in one hand and armor on. Ellen was obviously mid-cast. And Ophelia had definitely just used her magic. T...

Stormblade 3 C14: Investment (2)

14 - Investment (2)

There was a storm outside—a rare Phoenix rainstorm. The thunder was a low rumble through the Traynor building’s walls and the thick glass window, but the rain ran down the glass diagonally from the wind. It almost matched the storm inside my core.

I stared at Bob from across the desk as he stood up and pushed his chair in. “Let’s move somewhere more comfortable. We have a lot to discuss ...

Stormblade 3 C13: Investment (1)

13 - Investment (1)

Ellen had garbed herself for battle.

Light blue dress—a touch more formal than expected at a ‘casual’ cocktail party like this, but not black-tie formal, either—to hide her shorts and workout top below. A necklace and bracelet with quick releases, non-dangling earrings, and flats, not heels. And her hip pouch, where she carried the few items she’d need for delving.

She wasn’t h...

Stormblade 3 C12: Breaking the Storm

12 - Breaking the Storm

I was so back.

And Ellen was so strong. She hadn’t broken a sweat the whole time we’d been working out. Even as a mage, C-Rank weights and my maximum speed didn’t push her the way she wanted to be. And then there’d been the sparring. I hadn’t won a single time. Her rank was just too high for me to compete; it felt like fighting the hobgoblins back when I’d been an E-Rank support....

Stormblade 3 C11: Guild (2)

11 - Guild (2)

I’d said Carter Richards was poison. That he’d rot Deborah Callahan from the inside.

But I’d been wrong. He was poison. A mess of a person. Dangerous to everyone he touched because of his ambition and his self-importance. I read through his letter for the seventh time as I rode the bus out to the Portal Tyrants’ main guild hall. But he’d figured out a way to redirect his poison awa...

Stormblade 3 C10: Guild (1)

10 - Guild (1)

The next morning—or as close to it as we could get—the five of us sat around my living room. Jeff had cleared off his couch, and he and Yasmin had occupied it. Ellen had her chair secured. And Jessie and I had pulled up blankets and a kitchen stool, respectively.

Jessie started us off. “Before we get into…whatever happened last night, I’ve got more important stuff to say. Three things, actu...

Stormblade 3 C9: Coat-Tails

9 - Coat-tails

I stood in front of a mirror in the fanciest bathroom I’d ever set foot in. The shower and tub were separate, and in separate rooms from the sink and toilet. I stared at myself, and I didn’t recognize who I saw.

A gray—Ellen insisted it was charcoal—suit jacket. Pants somewhere between khaki and brown, mismatched with the jacket in a way she said was cool. A button-up dress shirt and...