Leo could only stare at the wheezing, dying swordsman who seemed to be all but basking in the confusion on his face. The man had clearly been holding onto that barb the entire conversation, and Leo’s face paled as he realized they’d overlooked something quite critical.

  The swordsman definitely hadn’t had any skills needed to actually dig out this giant space. And the mace wielder hadn’t either.

  “Taylor, go check the gems of that guy you killed at the start of the fight,” Leo said, his eyes searching around the room for anything that could possibly hide another tunnel extending further down. As he did that, Taylor grabbed the gems on the initial man’s chest and gave each one a quick sniff.

  “They’re all lightning-based!” she announced. Leo swore as the added information confirmed what he’d only just realized. They still hadn’t taken out the one responsible for actually digging all the way down here.

  The Planar Lords’ agents could still collapse the plane at any moment.

  “Ahh... There’s the look of panic and dread I was waiting for!” the swordsman laughed, hacking up more blood but not once losing the smile on his face. “It was a good try, kid. But you’re simply too new to the game to even know when you’ve lost. We dug right up to the core ages ago, long before revealing the plane to the rest of the planarverse. The moment you pop your head down there, Miley will dig the last little bit, triggering the plane's collapse. It’s over.”

  “You really like hearing yourself talk, don’t you?” Leo muttered, still scanning over the room. Most of the furniture was made of earth and could possibly hide some sort of secret entrance, but he had a feeling it wouldn’t be anything quite so crazy. In the event something happened and the rest of the agents needed to get down to the core to carry out the plan, the second tunnel had to be kept open. The only thing he could possibly think to cover it with-

  Leo started as he realized where it had to be located. Ignoring the swordsman’s continued jabs, he ran over to the entrance of the room, bending down and ripping the rug away.

  Revealing a simple trapdoor carved into the ground.

  Damn it, we walked right over it!

  “Taylor, I found the tunnel!” he shouted, grabbing the trapdoor and heaving with all his might. His flayed back screamed in pain as he strained, but he didn’t let up for a moment. The fate of thousands of lives hung in the balance of the next few minutes, and he wasn’t about to let something like a little pain stop him.

  The stone trapdoor weighed more than anything Leo had ever tried to lift before, and his eyes bulged as he struggled with it. Vaguely, he realized it was because it had been carved from this deep earth and rock itself, meaning it had to be incredibly durable. It was why tunneling down and collapsing planes was such a difficult thing to actually do. The farther down one dug, the harder and heavier the earth became.

  Eventually, he managed to lift it just enough to force his knee under, and he gasped as he forced it the rest of the way up. The trapdoor slammed open with enough force to shake the whole cavern as he shoved it forward, and Leo cursed as he realized that was better than any sort of warning bell.

  “What’s the plan?” Taylor asked, staring down into the dark shaft heading straight down. Unlike the sloping tunnel, there was a ladder carved into the vertical shaft, and not a single light source to be seen.

  “Same as before, kill anyone down there!” Leo shouted, snatching up the torch he’d dropped earlier before all but throwing himself down the shaft. Luckily, the shaft only ended up being about twenty or so feet deep, and he landed with a resounding boom as his knees absorbed the momentum from his fall. Raising the torch over his head, Leo blinked as he realized the woman they were looking for was right here.

  Miley, according to the swordsman up above, wore dirt-covered overalls and had thick goggles strapped to her face. She’d been lounging around in a giant pile of dirt and rock as if it were a luxurious couch, but she jumped up when Leo dropped in.

  “Who are you?” she asked, her eyes unnaturally large from the magnification of her goggles. Even as she spoke, Leo’s own eyes were scanning the room, looking for what was presumably the lowest point of the floor. There, he spotted it.

  Directly in the center of the small room was a concave dip in the ground, reaching down another foot. In the very center of that, was a simple divot. Nothing more than a tiny mark in the ground to indicate where to dig, but a mark nonetheless.

  That spot right there had to be mere inches from the plane’s core, if not even closer.

  “Taylor, kill her!” Leo shouted as his partner landed next to him far more gracefully, absorbing the impact as if she were a cat. The moment she landed, she pounced, launching herself across the room at the stunned gem holder. While she did that, Leo jumped into the concave dip in the ground, readying himself for anything. As much as he wanted to back Taylor up, it was critical that they not give the gem holder even a moment to finish digging and collapse the plane.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “What’s going on?” Miley demanded, scooping up a rock from the pile she’d been leaning on and hurling it at Taylor in midair before she could land. Taylor managed to cover her head with her arms, but the rock smashed directly into her, not only canceling her momentum entirely but hurling her back. While she still managed to land on her feet, Leo didn’t miss the wince of pain on Taylor’s face and the way she cradled her left arm, which now looked to be bent at the wrong angle.

  Bad match up, he realized, switching up the plan on the fly. “Taylor, guard the hole! I got her!” he shouted, swapping places as he charged forward. Looking thoroughly annoyed more than anything, Miley snatched up another rock, hurling it at Leo with incredible force. Knocking it aside with his gauntlet, Leo only stumbled for a second before grinning as he kept running forward.

  Those pathetic rocks didn’t hit nearly as hard as the woman’s mace had on the floor above.

  Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the woman’s only trick, and she clicked her tongue as the rocks and dirt in the pile behind her swirled forward, encasing her body in a living suit of dense rock. Only her goggles were exposed, and she met Leo’s mace with a raised hand, stopping the blow dead and ignoring the small shockwave that radiated from the strike.

  “You seriously think you can take me on here? Where I’m surrounded by core-adjacent earth to draw on?” she asked incredulously. “Where are the others? Are they already dead?”

  Not bothering to answer, Leo tried stabbing at her torso with his gauntlet. As expected, the dense rock stopped the beaver’s sharp tooth effortlessly, and he swore as he realized he was going to have to get creative. While the woman’s own attacks weren’t quite as powerful as his, she was nigh invulnerable while covered in the impossibly dense rock that existed so close to the plane’s core.

  “I think I’ll take your silence as a yes,” she sighed, throwing a heavy punch at him that he avoided with a dodge to the side. “I don’t know how those idiots managed to get taken out by the two of you, but I suppose that’s why we have so many contingencies in the first place.”

  Rather than continue to try and bash his brains in, the woman started walking forward, heading straight for Taylor and the divot in the ground. Not willing to let that happen, Leo darted around behind her, grabbing her around her midsection and heaving with all his might as he attempted to stop her.

  If he’d thought the trapdoor up above had been heavy, that was nothing compared to the woman’s suit of dense rock. Leo felt a blood vessel pop in his eye as he strained, but try as he might, even with his skill synergy, he simply wasn’t strong enough to lift her immense weight.

  Not without a little help.

  Seeing what he was trying to do, Taylor pounced one more time, slamming her feet into the woman’s head with all the force she could muster. That added force was just what Leo needed, and he screamed as he pulled with it, lifting the rock-clad golem for just a fraction of a second.

  Before bending backwards and slamming her headfirst into the ground with the world’s deadliest suplex.

  The entire chamber shook from the force of the impact, and Leo’s already injured back ignited in pain as he felt warm blood dripping from the many gashes marring his flesh. Staggering upright before the woman’s body could crush him, he let out a silent gasp as his back screamed at him, his muscles clearly having been strained beyond what they were capable of. Barely able to move, he nearly fell forward, before Taylor caught him at the last moment.

  “I got you,” she whispered, careful not to touch his back as she supported him with her smaller frame. “Did we do it?”

  “I think so,” Leo said, his voice haggard as he looked back at Miley’s prone form. The woman wasn’t moving, and in fact, her body looked almost… flatter somehow. It took him a moment, but Leo’s stomach churned as he realized what must have happened.

  “I think the blow to the head knocked her unconscious, and she lost control of her skill,” he said as he spotted the puddle of blood oozing out from where she lay. “The rocks down here are so incredibly heavy…”

  “Without her skill controlling them, they crushed her,” Taylor finished, shivering as she followed his gaze. “What a way to go.”

  “No kidding,” he sighed, just thankful it was finally over. “Alright, let’s get out of here. I don’t want-”

  A loud crack filled the cavern, and the two of them froze. Hoping beyond hope he wasn’t about to see what he thought he was, Leo looked down into the central divot.

  Spotting the hairline crack stretching across the rock.

  “No…” he whispered, his eyes wide as a second crack joined the first, and then a third. “No, we stopped her! We got her in time!”

  “Leo, we have to go!” Taylor shouted, her entire body shaking as she stared at the spreading crack with genuine terror in her eyes. She tugged at his arm, but he refused to budge, his failure keeping him rooted to the spot.

  The first of the rock chips fell away, and Leo finally realized what had happened. There hadn’t been a few inches of dense earth left for Miley to dig through to trigger the collapse of the plane. Ghost hadn’t left anything like that up to chance. If they’d already spent all this time and effort digging down to precisely where they needed to be prior to letting anyone even know about the plane, why stop at inches? Or even centimeters, for that matter?

  The last bit of rock that remained before breaching the plane's core had been paper-thin.

  Slamming her into the ground like that… Leo thought, staring in horror at the familiar abyss he’d hoped to never see again. The hole into swirling nothingness was only a few inches wide at the moment, but the crack was rapidly spreading, already stretching out across the small cavern as more and more rock began flaking away. Leo watched as those thin chips of rock fell, eaten up by the abyss that would take everything away from him yet again. Memories of the town he’d grown up in, the people he’d lived with, all of it betting sucked into that abyss hidden below every plane swirled through his head not unlike the hunger of the abyss itself.

  We cracked through the final bit of rock.

  We triggered the collapse of this plane.

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