Page 102 of Red Ruin

Sarcastic chuckles mix in with the crowd’s mutters and nods.

They know the score.

“I’m not going to waste your time pulling some half-baked defensive strategy out of my ass. You know your jobs and your territory. I’m just a Guide keeping the commander’s post warm. But for now, I’myourGuide. Any Sentinel who needs help. Any Guide who needs a break. I can’t promise much else, but I never abandon my own. As long as I wear this badge, every one of you is mine.”

I sweat more from Vhex’s poison than from the speech. He and Remy keep up a subtle seethe, making the A-class Sentinels avoid my eyes. Everyone below B-class quakes.

“Enough.” I grab their wrists. A touch settles their upset magic. The longer I hold on, the more desperately their energy strokes and sucks.

I shiver.

All that power, preening just for me.

“I’ll handle the dukes. What else needs to happen for us to have a fighting chance?”

“Dorset,” Cherise barks. “What’s up with our walls?”

A Sentinel with her hair in a long braid offers a fist-to-palm salute. “They’re fucking toast, Warden. We can fix the masonry again, but what’s the point? We don’t have enough supplies to repair arrays that size.”

Vhex and Remy don’t react; they lack both short-term memoryandshame.

“Then we retreat to the keep,” Warden Dell proclaims, sparking a wave of groans.

“The keep?” I ask. “What keep?”

“Fort Lombardy,” she explains. “The old castle in the mountains? This base was built for comfort and access to the town. It was never meant to survive a siege.”

“Clearly.” I wince at Remy’s floor-to-ceiling access hole. It’s a miracle the building hasn’t collapsed. Even our location is a hazard—a solo office building making itself a target on a flat plain. “If it’s more secure, why isn’t the keep the Farguard’s main base?”

“Location. Amenities.” Cherise ticks the points off her fingers. “General lack of resources. The spawns are constant that deep in the mountains. We don’t have enough Sentinels to run proper patrols.”

“Yeah, and no plumbing either,” Sentinel Dorset complains, dropping back into her seat. “It’s bad enough we can’t have phones. Now you want us to shit in pots and haul water?”

Warden Dell snorts. “Do you want toilets or working defenses?”

I keep my mouth shut.

If we’re doomed, I choose plumbing.

More fighters mutter. I peek out a few silks to read the room.

The group’s main energy is pissed-off resignation.

That’s better than despair.“Do we have time to relocate everyone and enough supplies?”

“We can move fast,” Warden Dell answers. “Even faster if Lord Azrid lends us his shadows.”

“He will.” I drag Remy forward.

I want them to see who’s holding the dukes’ leashes.

Those leashes are covered in poison and teeth, but I’ve got steady hands and I’m too stubborn to let go first.

“Do you remember where to find the seal?” I ask, smoothing Remy’s energy. “You’ll need to show the scouts. We have to get an official power reading on this monster.”

S-class Sentinels are technically borrowing monster power, so they’re always at some disadvantage compared torealmonsters at the same rank.

If the monster in the mountains is S-class or S+, we have a chance of beating it with the three S-class Sentinels on our side.

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