Leo and Taylor didn’t end up running into any more corpses that evening, but they did encounter something just as startling.

  A shrill, piercing screech that seemed to echo through the giant forest, giving them both pause as they immediately prepared for battle.

  “What was that?” Taylor asked, her eyes narrow as she searched the shadows for any approaching threats.

  “I don’t know,” Leo admitted, racking his brain for any sort of creature that would make such a noise. “It sounded almost like a Banshee’s Wail, but this plane isn’t the right terrain for undead magical beasts.”

  “So a gem holder, then?”

  “Yeah,” he nodded, gasping as he realized what that meant. “Which means a gem holder is under attack!”

  Picking up what he was getting at, Taylor’s eyes widened. “The killer?”

  “Maybe. That or someone’s in trouble. Though they might just be fighting a regular magical beast.” Leo’s immediate instinct was to run toward the source of the eerie shriek in an attempt to save whoever it was who needed help, but he hesitated. He wasn’t the only one who might suffer if he made a bad call, and Taylor wasn’t nearly as altruistic as he was. Thankfully, she grinned, flexing her claws as she cracked her neck.

  “What are we waiting for? Let’s see what needs killing!”

  With a laugh, Leo took off toward the source of the shriek, holding back just enough with his speed to ensure he didn’t leave Taylor behind. Of course, he still made sure to keep his eyes peeled for any sort of trap as they moved quickly through the forest. If there really was some mysterious killer going around taking people out, then putting together a trap like this wouldn’t necessarily be out of the question. The only reason Leo didn’t think that was particularly likely was because both of the murder scenes they’d found thus far looked like they’d occurred at night, while the gem holders had been tucked away in camp. Their killer seemed to have a preferred method of killing, and alerting half the plane with a Banshee's Wail skill didn’t really seem up their alley.

  Leo quickly lost track of where the sound had originated from, but Taylor’s keen senses saved the day yet again. Taking the lead, she directed them around trees and through underbrush, darting ever closer to the source. Finally, after almost half an hour of sprinting through the forest and scaring the horns off of a poor pack of grazing deer, they found another clearing.

  Filled with familiar faces.

  “Leo?” Steel called out as Leo and Taylor erupted from the treeline. The large man looked utterly flummoxed to see them come out of nowhere, and he nearly dropped the greatsword he had leveled in their direction. “What are you doing here?!”

  “Steel?” Leo blinked, spotting Willow and Ember huddled over by a small campfire, despite there still being a few hours of daylight left. Willow was gingerly drinking from a portable tankard with a blanket over her shoulders, and Ember was stoking the flames with his fire skill, rubbing her back as she shivered. “We heard a scream…”

  “Ah,” Steel said, lowering his sword as he broke out into a wide smile. “And of course you came running to help. I thought I had a good feeling about the two of you when we last spoke!”

  “Hey, long time no see!” Ember called out, giving them a lazy wave before turning back to tending the fire. Willow gave them a small, curt nod, but she seemed almost out of it somehow as she continued staring into the dancing flames.

  “What happened?” Leo demanded. “And is Willow okay?”

  “Willow’s… fine,” Steel said, scratching the back of his head sheepishly as he looked at his teammates. “While Ember and I were trying to plot our next move, one of the camouflage spiders snuck up on us and grabbed Willow. We thought we were safe because of the clearing, but evidently, we were not nearly as safe as we thought. Luckily, the three of us pitched in and grabbed a Grade 14 Banshee’s Wail skill before coming out here, seeing as we didn’t know what we’d be up against. The skill will reliably stun just about any magical beast all the way up to Grade 25. Ember is pretty set in his ways with his fire-skill synergy, and I’m the frontliner, so Willow ended up being the one to hold it within her core. She managed to use the skill to escape, but the spider had already bound her by that point and was in the middle of dragging her off. She’s… taking her near death rather hard.”

  “Why not use it sooner?” Taylor asked, her eyes still darting every which way as she remained on the lookout for any stray magical beasts.

  “It’s a powerful skill, but most skills that punch that far above their Grade come with a cost,” Steel explained. “In this case, it’s the cooldown. She’ll need a full day or two before the skill is ready to use again. If we encounter anything we can’t handle during that time, we’re pretty much screwed.”

  “I’ve got a skill with drawbacks as well,” Leo nodded, practically feeling his Rage gem pulse within his core in acknowledgement. “But everyone’s okay?”

  “Yep, we’re good,” Steel smiled. “We picked up some antivenom at the base camp outside the rift before we entered and put it in the ale Willow’s drinking, so she’ll be good in no time. I can’t believe the two of you just happened to be close by enough to hear her wail!”

  “It is pretty loud,” Leo pointed out, doing some quick math in his head. Based on the speed he and Taylor had just sprinted, in the half an hour it took them to get here, they had to have crossed at least a good couple of miles. With all the giant trees in the way that they had to constantly run around, it was hard to guess exact distances. “I wonder if anyone else will show up.”

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  “Doubtful,” Ember scoffed, shaking his head as he looked over at them. “Few gem holders are willing to stick their necks out for others, especially in a brand-new plane filled with undocumented dangers. If anything, I’m more worried about scavengers swinging by to see if they can’t loot anything good from our dead bodies.”

  “Have you three found any dead bodies?” Taylor asked without so much as a hint of subtlety. Leo could only close his eyes and sigh. He’d been planning on asking them the same question himself, but he was going to be just a little more tactful about it.

  “We did end up finding the corpses of a small group,” Steel nodded. “Four people, covered in enough dirt and blood to make us assume they’d been in here a while. It was strange, though. Not a single one of them had a bag or any real equipment on them.”

  “Any wounds to indicate what killed them?” Leo asked, despite already knowing the answer.

  “None that we could see,” Steel shrugged. “Not that we looked all that closely, mind you. The scene was eerie enough that we nearly turned back right then and there, but we took a vote and decided to keep going.”

  “Yeah, thanks for that,” Ember scoffed, shaking his head. “I was the one who wanted to get out of here, if that wasn’t obvious! Come on, four corpses, just lying there all peacefully like that? That ain't normal!”

  “We found some bodies as well, in similar states,” Leo confirmed, seeing Steel’s eyes widen. “We think something’s up.”

  “A gem hunter?” Willow finally spoke up, seeming to shiver at the very thought. “All the way out here?”

  “What’s a gem hunter?” Taylor asked.

  “It’s the term used for gem holders who make sport of hunting down and killing other gem holders,” Steel explained with a scowl. “They are few in number, but new ones pop up every now and again. The only thing worse than a serial killer is one with magical beast skills who is capable of darting between planes in search of new prey.”

  “We don’t think it was a gem hunter,” Leo said, shaking his head. “Though our running theory isn’t much better.”

  Despite the fact that their mysterious killer could possibly be scrying them at that very instant, Leo went ahead and laid everything out for the trio. Both their theory about the plane holding some sort of secret further in, and the idea that the killer was trying to prevent that information from spreading. The only thing he kept to himself was their hunch that the Planar Lords were involved in this somehow due to the plane being colossal. It was one thing to convince the three of them that they were in danger, it was another to try and convince them that the Planar Lords who ruled over them all were secretly planning to let everyone within the Nexus die.

  “What secret could possibly be worth killing so many people over?” Steel muttered, looking like he was turning ideas over in his mind. “It doesn’t make any sense. The number of people coming to explore the plane is only going to get larger and larger. Lords, the plane is due for its first real influx any day now.”

  “What do you mean?” Leo asked.

  “Didn’t you hear? It was all anyone was talking about at the base camp outside the rift,” Steel said, blinking as Leo cleared his throat and looked away. “There’s been a rather large group of gem holders making their way from the Nexus all the way out here ever since the plane’s discovery was first announced. Word at the camp was that many of them are people dissatisfied with how the Planar Lords are handling things and they are hoping that this new colossal plane might be a good fresh start for them. Sort of like a New Nexus. They’ve been picking up people along the way and growing in size with every plane they stop at. Last I heard they had over ten thousand people with them.”

  “Ten thousand?” Leo asked, stunned by their size. While that paled in comparison to the millions of people who lived in the Nexus, having grown up in a small plane himself with less than a thousand people in total, the thought of a group of that size simply rolling through was almost unimaginable.

  “Yep,” Steel laughed. “It’s already being written down as one of the largest migrations of gem holders in history. It’s all anyone is talking about now. That’s why the killer trying to hide some sort of mysterious secret doesn’t make any sense. There’s no way they can stop that entire group from figuring it out.”

  “No… it doesn’t make sense,” Leo muttered, trying to figure out what this new information meant. The killer was trying to hide something, but it was a pointless battle they would lose any day now when that giant crowd of gem holders showed up. Leo felt as though Steel had just handed him a crucial puzzle piece to this whole ordeal, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out where it was supposed to go.

  Why bother delaying the secret from getting out just for a few weeks?

  “Regardless of any of those anti-Nexus crazies, we’re just here to try and get a claim for some land,” Ember reminded them, grinning as he rubbed his hands together. “Either a nice place to settle down once this plane has finally been cleansed, or a place so nice someone will pay us an absurd amount of money to take it off our hands.”

  “How do you even claim land in the first place?” Taylor asked, tilting her head curiously.

  “We grabbed some flags and markers from the base camp outside the rift. There are a few rules that have to be followed, but so long as nobody else has claimed the land first, we can mark it off. Within reason,” Willow said, giving Ember a warm smile. “We’re looking for somewhere near the water. A beach would be best.”

  “The lady here has big dreams of raising some little ones on the water,” Ember teased, kissing Willow on the forehead before miming casting out a fishing rod. “Teaching them how to fish and all that!”

  “And thus our hunt continues,” Steel sighed, though his smile never wavered as he watched his two companions sitting side-by-side. After a moment, he turned toward Leo and Taylor. “I don’t know what your plan is, but you’re welcome to travel with us if you want. If there truly is some deranged gem hunter on the loose in here, I certainly wouldn’t mind a few more trustworthy eyes keeping watch.”

  Leo met Taylor’s eyes, and his partner shrugged, giving a slight nod as if to say, your call. Rather than immediately accept, Leo actually thought about it for a moment. While they would undoubtedly move slower in a large group, safety in numbers wasn’t a bad thing at all. And Willow’s Banshee’s Wail skill sounded like the perfect ace in the hole to have ready in the event they discovered this plane’s secret and the mysterious killer came for them. Not that he doubted his and Taylor’s fighting abilities, but the corpses they’d found looked as though they hadn’t put up any fight whatsoever. With that in mind, he nodded.

  “Thanks for having us,” Leo said, stepping forward and shaking Steel’s hand, matching his wide smile. “Let’s find that beach!”

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