Legendary Beast Tamer: Every Beast I Raise Makes Me Stronger

Aiden spent the night on the edge of the second shelf, watching the bowl with his Perception and taking the problem apart.

Stop looking at it as a wall.

It’s a lock. A lock is just a set of decisions someone made. You undo them in the right order.

The huge beast’s fire coiled deep in the heart of the bowl.

The grove of black-barked trees grew around the outer ring of the bowl, on ground the sentinels patrolled, but the beast did not bother to occupy.

I don’t have to approach the middle.

I have to rob that beast’s pantry while it sleeps, past guards who walk a route.

That’s just a job with a bad route. I’ve had worse.

He watched the patrol until dawn, mapping the route.

Over a dozen sentinels. They walk a slow circle around the grove, evenly spaced, evenly timed.

There were gaps.

There are always gaps. A patrol can’t be everywhere at once. Every guard leaves somewhere unguarded.

He marked the gaps. He marked the trees closest to them. Then he marked one tree in particular, low on the grove’s edge. The one a fast beast could reach, bleed the sap out, and bolt for the exit in the breath between one sentinel passing and the next.

One vial. One tree. One gap.

The whole job is eleven seconds in a place I’m not supposed to be.

He had crept close enough in the dark to see one tree clearly, and it had unsettled him more than the sentinels.

Nothing rooted in ground that glowed orange should be anything but a stick of ash.

It was alive. Squat, thick, its bark cracked with glowing veins, like a coal that had decided to grow branches.

Things that grow where growing isn’t allowed either have permission or power.

I can’t tell which. Either way, I’d rather know before I stand under it.

From a split in the lowest branch, a single bead of sap had welled up.

Orange. Slow as honey.

Aiden watched that bead. He had looked at a fine coat through a shop window with the same face.

That bead brings Cinder to Tier Three.

That bead is the end of the Frost Wolf’s chase.

The problem was the ground.

A hundred yards of open black glass between the nearest cover and the grove. No man could cross a hundred yards before the next sentinel arrived. Shadow Step’s three meters wouldn’t cut it either.

The moment anything entered the grove, the patrol would break. Every sentinel would leave its route and converge on the intruder.

Then it stops being an eleven-second job and starts being a being-eaten job.

Cinder was lying beside him, staring at the grove.

"You’re the fast part of the plan," he told Cinder. "I ride you in. Eleven seconds. Through the gap, to the low tree. You tear the bark open with your claws. I collect the sap."

Cinder’s coat glowed brighter. She bit Aiden’s sleeve and pulled him to his feet. Then she bumped him with her flank, nudging him toward her back.

Alright. You’ve been staring at that bowl since yesterday, and you can’t even see what’s inside.

He put his hand in her coat and held her back before she could drag him toward the grove.

She let out a low, impatient growl.

"The sentinels will see you blaze when you run. You’re too excited to keep it down."

She tilted her head.

"I know you’re not scared, but whatever sits in the middle of the bowl will notice your blaze. You have to run faster than you ever have, and barely lit."

She held his eyes.

Then she lowered her head. The light in her coat came down.

You can do it.

Getting in wasn’t the problem anymore. Getting out was.

Once we take the sap, the patrol will close around us.

I need something to pull them away.

Aiden turned and looked down the trail.

The Frost Wolf was on the black glass below them, grey against the fire and still climbing.

Then he looked at the grove above, and the dozen guardians walking their circle around it.

Those beasts have watched the fire-country for longer than anyone can count.

In all that time, has a single one of them ever seen a winter beast climb to their doorsteps?

You thought you froze all my options. You thought you’d end us on this mountain.

No. You’re the solution.

I don’t need to make a distraction.

You’ll keep chasing Cinder. You’ll follow us to the bowl. You’ll invade the king of the mountain’s pantry.

It will look at you. Then it will send its sentries after you instead of us.

"Oh." Aiden leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. "That’s ugly. That’s the ugliest good idea I’ve ever had."

He turned toward Cinder, Miasma, Nyx, and the cat.

"Anyone else sick of that wolf? Good. Payback is the new plan."

Nyx wobbled along his collar, her pale eyes fixed on his face.

Miasma’s face didn’t shift, but her spines lifted slightly.

The cat glared down at the Frost Wolf, apparently convinced that the wolf was already intimidated.

Cinder kept her eyes where the grove was.

"It’s tracking Cinder’s heat. Fine. We let it. Straight up the slope, straight at the grove, straight into a ring of fire-guardians."

Miasma came up his arm to his shoulder.

She looked down at the wolf, then up at the grove. She turned to Aiden and raised her spines once. This time, they stayed up.

"I know. Dangerous and workable at the same time. That’s most of my ideas."

He looked back at the trees.

"Two predators that have never met, in one bowl. One made of fire, one made of frost. The sentinels will go for the thing that doesn’t belong in this mountain. The Frost Wolf will go for the biggest fires. Cinder will barely register beside them. While they tear each other apart, we take the sap."

He did not say the rest of it out loud.

If the sentinels don’t engage the wolf fast enough, or if the wolf decides Cinder and I are still the better targets, we’re not delivering a distraction.

We’re riding straight at the beast that already put her down, in front of an audience.

It only works if two things that want us dead would rather kill each other first.

I’ve bet my life on worse. Not by much.

Cinder nudged him, banked so low she was barely lit.

Aiden set his hand on her neck. She was leaning forward, barely holding herself from lunging.

You understood the part about waiting, even if you don’t seem to care about plans at all. Soon. We’ll get the Magma Sap for you. Together.

Nyx moved onto Aiden’s free shoulder, her pale eyes curved. She liked the payback bit of the plan.

Miasma kept her eyes closed, neither liking nor disliking the plan. Aiden couldn’t tell what she thought.

Maybe she’d worked out what he hadn’t said.

Or maybe she was waiting to see whether it worked before deciding what else to think of it. For now, it was simply workable but dangerous.

"On my word," he said. "Not before. Let them meet first."

The Frost Wolf climbed.

The sentinels walked their circle.

And between them, a wolf holding her fire down to almost nothing gathered herself to run through a door that had not opened yet.

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