Leo stood there, the gentle sounds of the town bustling around outside of the shop vanishing as he stared at the Listener before him. Part of him wanted to freak out about the news, but he forced that down, focusing on the very specific terminology Gordon had used.

  “You said she’s ‘gone’… but that doesn’t mean dead, correct?”

  “Indeed. She’s gone in every other sense of the word, however. The Planar Lords’ agents tried their best to capture her, but after wiping out five different groups, she vanished. She hasn’t been seen in nearly two weeks. And vanishing from the Planar Lords isn’t exactly some easy feat. In fact, I would have said doing so was impossible, but she seems to have pulled it off.”

  Leo let out a sigh of relief at the news, willing his racing heart to stop trying to break free from his chest. He’d known his mother was strong, but defeating five different groups the Planar Lords sent after her?

  Just how strong was she?

  “None of that information will cost you very much, by the way,” Gordon added. “Fire Maw and the Frozen Killer going crazy and collapsing their own plane with the help of their son has been the talk of gem holders for weeks now. Nobody knows what set them off, but the Planar Lords are determined to track her down and bring her in to find out. She’s the only one left, so she’s the only one who knows why they did what they did.”

  “I appreciate that,” Leo said, wondering what he should ask the Listener next. If his mother had managed to vanish even out from under the eyes of the Planar Lords, he could only assume she’d taken off toward the outskirts of the known planarverse. His parents had been responsible for discovering countless planes and helping get many of them settled. The further out one traveled from the Nexus, the weaker the Planar Lords’ reach waned, and presumably, she’d be able to find some helpful faces here and there. But there were hundreds if not thousands of settled planes to choose from, not even counting the endless unsettled ones, so trying to narrow down where she’d gone would be pretty much impossible.

  “So what do you think?” Taylor asked, surprising both Leo and Gordon as she finally spoke up.

  “What do I think about what, young miss?” Gordon asked politely.

  “Why they did it,” Taylor explained, finally turning to look at the shop owner. “You said nobody knows what set them off. What do you think?”

  “As a Listener, I prefer dealing with known facts rather than speculation,” Gordon began, clearing his throat. “However, if I had to guess… I think we don’t know the full picture.”

  “You think the Planar Lords are wrong?” Leo asked, surprised anyone would be willing to come right out and say such a thing in a crowded town. There was no telling who was and wasn’t working directly for the Planar Lords, which made such a statement rather dangerous. A few weeks ago, he would have thought the Planar Lords going after someone just for criticizing them was a ridiculous suggestion, but that was before they destroyed his entire world just to try and prevent the possibility of his parents going public with information they didn’t want getting out.

  “I didn’t say that,” Gordon hurried to correct him. “There is a big difference between being wrong, and not knowing all the facts. Fire Maw and the Frozen Killer were two of the planarverse’s most famous Cartographers. If I tried to write down a list of all the different planes they discovered, why, the scroll would roll right out through my door and partway across town,” Gordon chuckled. “They were heroes. And while such Cartographers are often regarded as… quirky, let us say, I don’t think they would be the kind to collapse their own plane. Perhaps they were fighting off a secret raider invasion force and unintentionally collapsed the plane during the battle. Or they tried to prevent another gem holder from collapsing the plane and didn’t quite manage to stop them in time. Without having been there ourselves, we just can’t say for certain.”

  “How do you even collapse a plane in the first place?” Taylor asked, looking between the two of them. “I don’t actually know.”

  “You destabilize the core of the plane,” Leo explained, not wanting Gordon to count that question as one of the ones they were paying for. “Dig down deep enough, and you’ll hit the hollow core of any plane. Set off a powerful enough explosive or cause enough damage, and it causes a chain reaction that will collapse the entire plane.”

  “It’s incredibly rare, but planes also collapse on their own every now and again, but nobody really understands why,” Gordon added. “And collapsing a plane on purpose isn’t quite as simple as he made it sound. The further down one digs, the more dense the ground becomes. Unless you have a powerful skill, digging through all that dense rock is no simple feat. Planes also have something akin to a defense mechanism where, as someone begins to dig dangerously close to the core, a warning pulse of power will shoot out, registering with any soul-dampened gem holders within the plane and letting them know they need to either evacuate or stop whoever is attempting to collapse the plane. One cannot simply sneak into a plane and collapse it without anyone noticing.”

  “Hmm,” Taylor grunted, going back to looking at the different placards, seemingly satisfied with the answers she’d received.

  “Have you heard of any new colossal planes being discovered recently?” Leo asked, deciding to move on to the rest of his impossible mission. If his mother had gone into hiding, he stood no chance at finding her. Which meant focusing on discovering a new colossal plane for the citizens of the Nexus to move to was his next move.

  “Actually, rumor has it one was discovered only about a week ago,” Gordon confirmed. “Though I’ve heard it’s only tier 22, so it’s not going to become another Nexus by any means.”

  “Can you give me a route to get there?” Leo asked.

  “I can, but that’s about all your gem is worth, if you still want a gem or two and some money,” Gordon said, pulling out some paper and beginning to sketch out a route for them. “No more free information after this.”

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  “That’s fine,” Leo said, turning to look at Taylor. “Find any gems you were interested in?”

  “This one,” Taylor grinned, thrusting a finger at one of the placards. “I want this.”

  Once they’d finished up with Gordon, the two of them took their new funds and did a quick loop around town, picking up the essentials that they needed for their journey. As promised, Leo snagged a handful of spices he was more familiar with, as well as some actual cooking utensils no self-respecting chef would be caught without. He was limited by the fact that they had to carry everything themselves, so he stuck with just the bare essentials.

  Still, it was a massive improvement over a lone frying pan.

  Beyond cooking, they also grabbed some more general gear, such as bedrolls, some candles, rope, and a few other useful odds and ends that Leo thought would come in handy. Taylor was particularly unhelpful during all this, leaving all the decision making up to him as she focused on absorbing her newest skill.

  Unlike the rest of the planarverse, Taylor’s method of gaining new skills was just as unique as her method for cultivating her soul. Rather than meditating with the gem against her chest and carefully pulling the skill’s structure through her soul layers and into her core, apparently, all she needed to do was keep it in her mouth like a piece of gum, slowly sucking the skill out of the gem without fully converting it into power for her core. The process didn’t make a lick of sense to Leo, but then again, nothing about Taylor's soul made any sense to him.

  “I don’t understand why your methods of cultivating and absorbing skills all seem to be based around eating,” he muttered after wrapping up their final purchase of the day. Tucking the cooking oil into his pack, he shook his head. “Maybe you were a particularly gluttonous twelve-year-old before everything happened. So much so that it left an imprint on your soul.”

  “Dunno,” Taylor shrugged, her words muddled by the magical beast gem still in her mouth. “Nearly done.”

  “How can you even tell? Is it running out of flavor or something? Do beast gems even have a flavor?”

  “The skill is mostly formed in my core,” she explained. “I just need the final bit. Why not try licking a gem yourself?”

  “That’s raw power,” Leo shuddered, trying not to think about what would happen to him if he followed her up on her suggestion. “Raw power is good for the soul, assuming you can cultivate it correctly. Not so much for the body. I think it might melt my tongue off.”

  “It does kinda tingle a bit,” Taylor nodded, the gem in her mouth clacking as she rolled it between her teeth with her tongue. “It’s fun.”

  “Tingles a bit…” Leo repeated, throwing up his hands at the absurdity of that statement. “Well, whenever you’re done breaking the natural laws of how the planarverse works, we’re good to hit our final stop. We have enough money left to snag a room for the night, and I would love an actual shower after roughing it for the past couple of weeks.”

  “Shower,” Taylor muttered, shaking her head. “No thanks.”

  “You haven’t had a real bath in what, ten years? Yeah, no, you’re taking a shower. We just got you some actual clothes to replace the rags you’re wearing, don’t go getting them filthy just by putting them on!”

  “I bathed in the waters of my plane,” Taylor argued.

  “Those were poisonous waters! You just replaced dirt and blood with poison!”

  “I like my smell.”

  “You smell like an old cat that was dropped in a vat of acid,” Leo said, refusing to give up on this. Taylor was covered in so much dried blood and sweat that he was frankly shocked they hadn’t been turned away from any of the shops in town. He could only assume the shopkeepers were fairly used to dealing with gem holders who had just returned from their travels. “I swear, sometimes you seriously act like a feral beast long enough that I forget I’m traveling with another person.”

  “Good. Feral beasts don’t shower.”

  The two of them continued arguing right up until they got to the inn on the outskirts of town that someone had suggested to him when Leo asked for directions. The owner had clearly gone all in on the whole forest theme, as each of the ‘rooms’ were actually separate little treehouses, accessible only via rope ladder or hanging walkway.

  With how little money they had left, Leo snagged one of the larger rooms for them to share over two smaller ones. He and Taylor had been living and traveling together for weeks now, they were more than used to sleeping next to one another.

  A small part of Leo’s mind that had been present ever since hitting puberty would speak up and remind him that Taylor was technically a woman close to his own age whenever he did anything like change near her. But then he would look over and see her crunching away on monstrous centipede legs like they were popcorn, and that tiny voice would apologize for wasting his time and go back to thinking about Francy.

  In the end, once they were situated in their rooms and getting ready to sleep for the night, Leo finally managed to get Taylor to agree to take an actual bath by using the only method he’d so far discovered to really get her to do anything.

  Threatening to withhold his cooking from her.

  When she stomped back into their room some time later wearing brand-new clothes, glaring at him with damp hair free from her usual braid, Leo could only laugh. Her expression was the same as always, and he would have been concerned for his safety if her soul wasn’t dampened, preventing her from using the dark cat gem within her core. For the first time since he’d met her, she wasn’t covered in dried blood or bits of magical beast guts.

  “Wow, you actually look like a normal human being,” he teased, giving her a once over to ensure she’d actually cleaned herself off and hadn't just jumped in and out of the water to try and fake it. While he had to admit she was almost attractive in a way with her damp hair and no longer smelling like death, he’d witnessed her tear too many magical beast throats out with her own claws and teeth to really see her in that sort of light. “Thank you for actually cleaning up, I know you really didn’t want to. Once I finish my own shower, I’ll see if I can’t borrow the inn’s kitchen and cook up that root you wanted to try eating.”

  “Really?” Taylor asked, her glare quickly turning into a more satisfied look before she remembered what he’d recommended she add in such a situation. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you, for thanking me,” Leo laughed, grabbing his own soap and heading off to the bath. Granted, I doubt she’ll be thanking me for long.

  That magical beast root is going to taste like dirt no matter what I try to do with it.

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