“I got something,” Taylor announced after a while, causing Leo’s eyes to snap open and the remaining power he was still working with to dissipate from his body as he tossed out the scraps from the magical beast gem he’d been cultivating. “At least, I think I do.”

  “How close is it?” Leo asked, opening his map and preparing to jot down directions.

  “Roughly eight miles that way,” Taylor said, pointing a finger. “Just about as far from the entrance rift as physically possible.”

  “That makes sense,” Leo muttered, marking the location on his map. “They wouldn’t want anyone accidentally stumbling upon it after all, and we’re currently six miles from the rift. Are you sure this is it?”

  “Not at all,” Taylor admitted with a shrug. “The Scrying skill is weird. I tried searching for holes in the ground and nearly passed out when every single individual burrow from those beetle monsters was highlighted to me. Then I narrowed it to holes large enough for a person to fit through, and found a few hits. Four of them look like quick, temporary shelters one of the gem holder teams dug here and there to presumably spend the night in, but one of them looked like a tunnel going down into the earth. I can’t exactly pivot what I see, and I couldn’t think of any other way to narrow down the skill.”

  “That’s good enough, it sounds like what we’re looking for,” Leo said, snapping his journal shut and holding out two gems for her. “Your speed gem dissipated during the search, but I just killed a camouflage spider a little bit ago. Is the Injection Bite skill alright?”

  “Not like we have any other options,” Taylor said, spitting the large Scrying gem into her hand and trading it for the two gems. Popping them into her mouth one after another, she tucked them each into one cheek, sighing as the dark cat’s Natural Weapons skill would soon be returned to her. Despite their current time crunch, Leo couldn’t help but give her a curious look.

  “Can you do that? Absorb two skills at the same time?” Leo asked as he placed the Scrying gem back into the white gem box and tucked it once more into his pack.

  “I don’t see why not,” she shrugged. “They're both going to the same place anyway, right?”

  “Fair enough. Come on, we’ve got eight miles to cover, and not a ton of time to do it.”

  Unfortunately, until she finished absorbing her skills again, Taylor was currently about as helpless as a brand-new gem holder. Normally, someone with a soul-rank of 18 would still be quite strong compared to a regular person, but they’d already discovered how weak Taylor’s weird body became when it was completely empty of skills. With that in mind, Leo utilized his impressive strength, shifting his pack across his chest and pulling her onto his back. Once she was settled, she grinned.

  “I think I like being right-side up on your back more than upside-down.”

  “I think most people would agree with that,” he snorted, hopping out of the tree and landing with a small explosion of dirt from the long fall. “Hang on tight!”

  Leo did his best to run in a straight line in the direction Taylor had pointed him in, but unfortunately, the giant trees making up the forest didn’t make it easy.

  And neither did the magical beasts.

  “Now is not the time!” Leo shouted, cursing as he dodged to the side just in time to avoid a camouflage spider he’d missed nearly dropping onto his head. He hadn’t been fast enough to outrun the spiders before he’d started lugging Taylor around, which meant he definitely wasn’t fast enough now. Without hesitation, the spider lunged for him the moment its legs touched the ground, covering the distance between them in moments.

  With a grunt, Leo swept up with his gauntlet, blocking the spider’s attempt to latch its fangs into his shoulder. He tried ramming his other gauntlet into the spider’s open abdomen, but the beast yanked itself back with some thread, scurrying around him in an attempt to strike from behind. Even after its initial ambush failed, it maintained its annoying camouflage skill, making it difficult to tell exactly when it struck with its legs.

  Very conscious of the weakened Taylor on his back, Leo fought defensively, not willing to accidentally allow the spider to stab her or, Lords forbid, somehow snatch her off of him and run away with her. One leg at a time, he managed to whittle down the spider, until it was teetering back and forth on only four of them. Finally, its speed was limited enough that Leo managed to duck under another swipe of its legs, ramming his gauntlet straight up into its head and killing it instantly. Panting, he felt a warm pair of lips press against his cheek.

  “Good kill,” Taylor smiled, the gems clacking against her teeth as she spoke. “I should have the skills before long. Keep going!”

  Needing no further encouragement, Leo took off once more, thankful not for the first time that he could pretty much run indefinitely at this point.

  Just as Taylor had said, she hopped off his back only a short while later, declaring herself fit for combat and immediately helping him shred his way through a handful of burrowing beetles. She seemed oddly quiet, for whatever reason, but Leo simply chalked that up to the fact that they were running against a ticking time bomb. Both of them had experienced the horror of their home planes collapsing around them, something very few people could say they managed to survive. Even if Taylor couldn’t quite remember the experience all too well, he doubted the knowledge that the exact same thing might happen again any minute now was making her feel very good, and he redoubled his efforts to get them to the hole she’d scried as soon as possible.

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  “Don’t worry, one of the rifts you located is less than a mile from the tunnel you found,” he told her as they ran, hoping to alleviate some of her concern.

  “Hm? Oh, that’s good,” she said, returning his smile as she ran next to him. “Where do you think it might take us?”

  “Some place very dry, without so much as a speck of water to be found!” he teased, earning a snort from his partner.

  “I can do a little water. I just don’t like getting soaked,” she said, reaching out to punch him in the arm. Blinking, she shook out her fingers and gave him an appreciative look. “That Vigor skill is impressive. Your muscles are much harder now. It’s like punching a tree.”

  “Yeah… at least in a round about way, Steel will end up playing a critical role in helping us save all these people.”

  “For Willow and our new friends,” Taylor nodded, narrowing her eyes as she focused on the forest before them.

  The two of them ran and fought, waiting all the while for the telltale sign of a pulse of power to radiate out from ahead of them and inform them that they’d been too slow and that the plane was going to collapse. Leo’s heart was already racing from all the running and fighting, and he honestly wondered if the accumulation of stress with each passing minute would have ruptured something if not for his current soul rank.

  At long last, as the sun began lowering across the sky and the plane’s lengthy day drew to a close, they reached the tunnel. Actually breathing a bit heavily from their desperate run for the first time in recent memory, Leo peered down into the hole.

  Seeing nothing but darkness.

  “Damn it,” he muttered, shaking his head as Taylor glanced questioningly at him. “I had to give up Darkvision to take the new Vigor skill. I can’t see anything down there.”

  “It heads down in a straight line at a heavy slope. Looks like there are curtains or something set up partway down,” she said, peering down for the both of them. “Do you need a torch?”

  “If I’m going to be of any use to you, yeah, I need some sort of light,” he admitted, wondering if he’d made the right decision.

  “I’d rather you not fly into an uncontrollable Rage than have the element of surprise,” Taylor said, giving him a quick hug before getting started on a simple torch. All it took was some fabric scraps, a stick, and a bit of Leo’s cooking oil, and before they knew it they had a light source ready to go. “Do we have a plan?”

  “Yeah. Go in there and kill anyone we find,” Leo said, his face hardening as he ignited the torch and raised it up high, casting light down into the dark tunnel. “Anybody down there is actively working to collapse a plane and kill thousands of people. I don’t care who they are or what they say, there are no second chances for something like that.”

  “Agreed,” Taylor said, cracking her neck and flexing her claws as she flashed him her feral grin. Leo blinked as he swore he saw the tips of her sharpened teeth turn black for a moment, but he shook his head as the sight passed. That wasn’t how her Injection Bite skill worked, so it must have been a trick of the dancing lights from the torch. “Let’s go.”

  Prepared for what they had to do, the two of them headed into the tunnel, descending down into the heart of the plane itself. Leo kept his torch held high over his head, illuminating the path before them and ensuring that they didn’t trip on anything. While tumbling down the tunnel probably wouldn’t hurt either of them, the path was steep enough that if they slipped, they might actually roll all the way to the bottom. It would be a rather fast method of descending, but probably wouldn’t end very well for them when they hit the end and found themselves staring up at who knew how many powerful gem holders.

  How many can we actually take? Leo wondered, peering at the eager Taylor at his side as they walked. Despite having actually found the tunnel, Leo still wasn’t one-hundred-percent committed to launching this attack. If they made it to the end, only to discover a solid dozen elite gem-holders waiting for them for example, he’d grit his teeth and turn right around, allowing the plane to collapse and thousands of people to die. Like Taylor said, they had a far grander goal of saving the millions of lives within the Nexus. They couldn’t fall here, or a far worse calamity would occur than a few thousand deaths. But if it were only two or three people left behind to carry out the plan…

  Two each, Leo decided, feeling like that was a fairly decent compromise. If there are no more than four people, we’ll attack. While the two of them were only soul rank 17 and 18, Leo was pretty confident in their fighting ability. Curiously, other than Cartographers who were used to doing so, most higher-rank people actually fared worse in lower-tier planes than people of an appropriate rank to the plane’s tier. Few people bothered training to fight with their souls dampened, and it wasn’t easy suddenly finding oneself without the strength or speed they’d come to expect from years of practice.

  It was somewhat strange hoping to run into people with soul ranks so far beyond their own, but Leo would take fighting someone with a soul rank of 30 who was dampened over fighting someone at their regular strength any day.

  As long as they weren’t a fellow Cartographer. He’d lost enough bouts against both his parents to know Cartographers could fight with their souls dampened to any rank.

  Eventually, he and Taylor reached the curtains she’d spotted from up above. At this point, they’d traveled at least a solid hundred feet down into the plane. The walls of the tunnel had gone darker and were filled with chunks of pure stone, indicating they were nearing the core. Leo didn’t know who or what they’d find behind the curtain, but one way or another, this was it.

  “Ready?” he whispered, hoping that the thick curtain didn’t let the light of his flames go through and reveal their presence just yet.

  “Ready,” she grinned, her black eyes reflecting the flickering firelight as she looked at him. Sharing one last nod, Leo turned, mentally preparing himself to do whatever it took to save everyone. Taking a deep breath, he threw the curtains open, rushing inside with Taylor right by his side.

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