A sharp pain in his arm finally tore him from his stupor, and Leo hissed as he turned to find Taylor looking at him with watering eyes, her jagged teeth lodged in the meat of his forearm. Letting him go now that he’d snapped out of whatever it had been holding him in place, she shouted.

  “We have to go! Now!”

  “Right,” he managed, painfully forcing one leg in front of the other as they gave the now foot-wide hole into the yawning abyss a wide berth and retreated to the ladder. With Taylor’s broken arm and his strained back muscles, the two of them struggled to slowly climb the ladder, all the while hearing crack after crack spread out from the chamber beneath them. Leo knew that the larger a plane, the slower its inevitable collapse would be once it started, but even so, that wasn’t all that reassuring.

  The collapse stretched from the breach-point outward, and they were at ground zero.

  “Come on,” Taylor said, reaching down with her good arm and helping him up out of the shaft. Every part of Leo’s body hurt after pushing himself to the limit and beyond to lift Miles in her suit of rock armor, and he struggled to even walk, let alone run. Unfortunately, the cracks spreading out from the cavern below cared little for his current condition, continuing to stretch and race ahead of them as they moved.

  Some part of Leo noted how Taylor actually paused to snatch up one of the magical beast gems from the swordsman who seemed to have bitten off his own tongue when neither of them had bothered to kill him and end his misery. He briefly wondered what she was planning to do with the gem, seeing as her soul should already be filled by now, but the man-made cavern starting to shake around them distracted him.

  The two of them made their way through the tunnel far too slowly for his liking, but they managed to get back up to the surface before the tunnel collapsed behind them, if only just. Leo stared with wide eyes at the tons of dirt and rock that had been mere seconds from landing on their heads, but he didn’t have time to think about how close to death they’d just come.

  Death may have missed them once, but it wasn’t done trying just yet.

  Louds cracks rang out from across the clearing they were in, and Leo started as one of the giant trees splintered and sagged, the wood snapping at the base as it began falling to the side before slamming into the earth with enough force to shake the ground and make them jump. Thankfully, it had fallen away from them.

  Though the next tree wasn’t quite so kind.

  “Move!” Taylor shouted, grabbing him and practically dragging his wounded body out of the shadow of another giant tree that was teetering toward them. Leo desperately tried to get his legs to run, but his muscles refused to listen to him. It was all he could do to keep himself upright and staggering after Taylor as she dragged him.

  The two of them made it out of the shadow of the tree just in time, the force of it smashing into the ground behind them enough to knock them both off their feet. Tumbling across the ground, Leo squeezed his eyes shut and let out a silent scream as his flayed back scraped across the dirt. Panting, he forced himself to his feet, wobbling slightly as he looked at the growing signs of planar collapse.

  The cracks were getting larger and thicker, racing out far faster than he or Taylor were capable of moving at this point. Tree after tree was crashing down, starting an almost domino effect as they collided with each other. Birds screeched as they flew from their nests, and woodland animals ran about here and there, desperate to evacuate from their dens. He even spotted a camouflage spider flicker into existence a few hundred feet away, its legs flailing wildly as the tree it had been hiding in went down, hurling it through the air with reckless abandon.

  Everything was going to be swallowed by the yawning abyss as the plane collapsed. The magical beasts, the animals, the people… Everything and everyone was going to be wiped from existence, never to be seen-

  “Leo, focus!” Taylor shouted, slapping him hard across the face and causing him to break out of his own thoughts yet again. The blow hadn’t hurt, but seeing Taylor’s wide, panicked eyes as she looked as if she were fighting back against her base instinct to leave his dead weight behind and run to safety certainly did. “The rift! We have to get to the rift!”

  “Sorry! You’re right!” Leo said, shaking his head as he reoriented himself and grabbed Taylor’s hand. “It’s less than a mile. We can make it!”

  Normally, with their bodies that had been thoroughly enhanced by so many layers of power and cultivation, the two of them were capable of covering a single mile in no time at all. Far faster than any non-gem holder could ever hope to, regardless of how much they trained or prepared. But in their current conditions…

  It was going to be close.

  Leo leaned heavily on Taylor as they pushed themselves toward the nearby rift, desperate to make it to safety. There was no telling where the rift would actually let them out, but anywhere was better than falling into the abyss as the plane collapsed under them. With every step, Leo felt ever so slightly better than he did before, and he silently thanked his past self for making the decision to trade out Rage for Vigor. His enhanced constitution was aiding his body’s recovery in real time, and that allowed him to stop leaning on Taylor and start painfully jogging on his own after a minute. Seeing that, Taylor’s eyes took on newfound hope, and he smiled at her in an attempt to reassure her everything was going to be okay.

  Though the denizens of the plane thought otherwise.

  Leo’s eyes widened as he spotted the burrowing beetle erupt from the shaking ground, launching itself directly at Taylor’s exposed back. Without time to even draw his new mace, he yanked her out of the way, punching the beetle out of the air hard enough to send it flying. The act strained his still-healing muscles and raw flesh of his back alike, causing him to freeze in pain. Unfortunately, burrowing beetles never attacked alone, and two more blasted out of the earth, each aiming their horns at his chest this time.

  It was Taylor’s turn to pull him out of the way, shoving a clawed hand into one of the beetles and ripping out its innards while taking the second hit head on. She managed to prevent it from hitting anything immediately vital, but she hissed as the beetle’s horn stabbed straight through her abdomen and out the other side.

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  “Taylor!” he shouted, grabbing the beetle before it could start thrashing and truly rip her apart.

  “I’m fine,” she managed through gritted teeth, slashing down and chopping off the horn at the base. She knew enough not to tear the horn out and risk losing too much blood while they needed to move, and she gave him a pained smile and a shaky thumbs up. “Finish it off, we need to keep moving!”

  Doing just that, Leo all but ripped the lower-Grade magical beast in half, tossing it aside as he took his turn helping her keep moving forward. He was amazed she wasn’t even crying out in pain as the horn lodged into her abdomen shifted with every step, but Taylor looked like she was far too focused to worry about anything as unimportant as pain.

  From the fire in her eyes, Leo was pretty certain she wouldn’t even let death stop her from getting out of the collapsing rift.

  “We’re close,” she muttered, raising a finger and pointing beyond one of the few trees still standing. “Over there!”

  Though even as she said that, the truly horrifying part of any plane's collapse finally began.

  The sound of cracking earth suddenly grew far more loud and powerful, and Leo’s face blanched as he looked over his shoulder. Giant chunks of the ground were falling away at this point, vanishing from view as they fell into the abyss. Monstrous trees that stretched up into the sky were swallowed up in seconds, and Leo thought he heard distant screams as the plane began collapsing in earnest.

  “We’re out of time,” he said, eliciting a startled gasp from Taylor as he scooped her up, not even bothering to try and stop himself from screaming in pain as he ‘ran’ forward. His run was more like a drunken stumble, but his muscles were healed enough that he could at least somewhat use them again, even if doing so hurt more than anything he’d ever experienced before. His legs were on fire and every step felt as though something was going to snap, but one look down at the fear in Taylor’s eyes as she gazed over his shoulder, unable to look away from the dying world around them gave him all the motivation he needed to push forward.

  Just as he began wondering if he was truly going to kill himself running, they made it. Leo barely managed to let Taylor down gently before collapsing to the ground himself, his chest heaving as he tried to ignore the burning in his legs.

  “Leo, the rift!” Taylor shouted, trying to drag him the last few feet toward that black crack in reality hanging there entirely unbothered by the world falling apart around them.

  “It’s okay,” he gasped, shaking his head and waving her concern away. “We’re okay. We have some time. The area immediately around each rift is more stable than the rest of the plane. This section will be the last to fall into the abyss. I witnessed it myself when my home plane collapsed.”

  “The ground might not collapse, but the trees will!” Taylor shouted like he was an idiot, forcing him back to his feet. “Do you want to get crushed to death?!”

  “Good point,” he muttered, pressing a hand against his head. As he let himself be dragged those final few feet, Taylor squeezed his hand and all but pulled him into the rift.

  Where they were both shocked and knocked backwards a few feet.

  “It’s a weaker tier,” he laughed, shaking his head as the world ended. “Dampen your soul or we’re not going anywhere.”

  “Got it,” she said, yanking on him again. “Let’s go.”

  Thankfully, while his body was in a rather rough state, Leo’s soul was completely fine. With a little mental effort, he tucked in his soul, compacting it down to match the tier of the rift and nodding to show he was ready. This time, when the two of them hit the rift, they ventured through without issue, stretching through space before stumbling out on the other side.

  Leo blinked as he took in their surroundings, the cold wind billowing through his hair feeling foreign after all this time in the still forest. From what he could tell, the two of them were standing atop a small mountain jutting up over a rocky, hilly plane that went on for miles. Based on how tightly he’d been forced to compact his soul, this new plane was a tier 14, and hopefully one filled with incredibly docile magical beasts. The whiplash from suddenly going from a collapsing plane to one that was totally safe was jarring, but it was one he’d experienced before.

  “Okay…” he said, letting out a sigh as the cold wild blew against his bleeding back. The chill felt surprisingly good, and he took a deep breath as he tried to take stock of their current situation. Regardless of what had just happened, millions of lives were still counting on him and Taylor to somehow find their way back to the Nexus and save everyone. As much as he wanted to curl up and punch the ground in frustration over their failure to stop the plane from collapsing, ensuring they were safe in this new plane was priority number one. He could only hope that the warning they’d given the new group of people they’d run into had managed to get around. For all they knew, the last couple of hours had been filled with the newcomers evacuating the plane entirely. “There’s no telling where in the planarverse we ended up. It’s probably going to be some time before we find civilization, so we’re going to have to move forward carefully.”

  “Leo…” Taylor said, one hand pressed against the horn still sitting in her abdomen as the other pointed down the mountain. “…what is that?”

  Following her finger, Leo started as he quickly spotted what she’d seen. There, far down at the base of the mountain, was some sort of camp. They were far enough away that he couldn’t really get a good look at it, but from the size, he imagined it was probably meant for about a half dozen people. Maybe less. The fact that they’d stumbled out of a completely random rift within walking distance of other people who could point them in the direction of the known planarverse was nothing short of a miracle, and Leo went to laugh at their good luck.

  Before he spotted the camp’s banner and his laughter died in his throat.

  The crests weren't seen very often as the Planar Lords preferred to put together a unified front, but each of the five Lords had a unique crest used for their individual property or personnel. Each one was modeled after a fabled, unique magical beast. Beasts so powerful it was said only a Planar Lord had the strength to fight them one-on-one and claim their gems for themselves. Leo had seen each of the five crests countless times through all his studying as a child, hungrily working to prepare himself for his life as a Cartographer one day. He’d seen each crest so many times in fact he could probably draw each and every one of them by heart.

  Which meant he knew without a shadow of a doubt that the banner waving in the frigid wind below them didn’t belong to any of the Planar Lords.

  The fabric was a mixture of red and black, depicting a powerful dark dragon breathing molten lava across the sky as it devoured its enemies. The imagery was powerful, and much darker than the crests of the Planar Lords, even if it did mirror the style rather closely. Despite having never actually seen the symbol before, Leo’s blood froze as he realized exactly who it had to belong to.

  “Leo?” Taylor asked, taking his hand as she saw the look of horror on his face. “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t say for certain…” he admitted, his almost hysterical laughter being whisked away in the freezing wind as he turned to grin at his partner. The two of them had survived near constant hardships and struggles with one another, but their current predicament might make everything they’d been through up until now look like a walk in the park. Being thrown deep into some far off, unexplored portion of the planarverse would have been preferable to where they’d been dropped off.

  Shaking his head, Leo could only sigh at the hilarity of it all before he finished his thought, giving Taylor’s hand what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze.

  “…I think we just found the Raider Lord.”

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