Page 64 of Nexus

“An open plain surrounded by more cliffs, as far as I could tell. The trail leads in the same direction that we’ve been following.”

“Is the spell fragment on the other side of the cliffs?” I asked Aurora. She nodded and gestured for me to get going. “You go first,” I said to the vampire. “I might need you to pull me through if it gets too tight.”

He smirked, then bowed sarcastically and took the lead. Sucking in my gut, I squeezed my way into the narrow cleft.

It took an hour for me to forge my way to the end of the passageway. Ruen had to tug me through the tighter spots, just as I’d figured. My skin was too tough to scrape easily, so I left little trace of myself behind, apart from my huge footprints. The dirt was softer here and it would be easy to follow our trail.

Just as Ruen had said, a huge plain lay beyond the cliffs. The crags curved in a wide circle around the grassy area. The plain sloped down gently to a mountain range I could just make out in the distance. The item we’d come in search of lay somewhere ahead. Hopefully, Aurora could lead us to it without running into the soldiers who were training somewhere in the area.

Walking beside me rather than riding on my back, the leech constantly turned his head from side to side as he searched for danger. I was far taller than he was and spotted the training compound first. “We’re nearing the place I saw in my vision,” I warned my companions.

“Can you sense anything dangerous?” Ruen asked.

Power was faintly pulsing from the buildings and I nodded. “It’s pimple level right now, but I have a feeling it’s going to get a lot stronger the closer we get to it.”

We fell into a grim silence as Aurora indicated for us to keep going.

Just as I’d feared, the power grew with each step I took. It passed from pimple to boil, then ulcer level. It climbed past cyst and abscess. It surpassed canker and festering boil, then settled on carbuncle, level eight out of my scale of ten. “I have bad news,” I whispered to my team.

“How bad?” Ruen asked.

“Really bad,” I replied. “The power is now carbuncle level.” He winced in reaction at that news. Neither of us had tried to fight something this strong before. “The really bad news is that there are three powerful beings. One is a carbuncle. The other two are festering boils.”

“They’re as powerful as the ogres?” he asked incredulously.

I nodded sourly. “And I’m pretty sure I know who they are.”

“The overlord and his two underlings you saw in your vision?” he guessed.

“Yep. If they’re the same three beings from my dream, then the underlings are almost as dangerous as their boss.”

Aurora was shivering and seemed to feel them as well. She chirped in dread, then pointed at the compound.

“The fragment is in there?” I asked. She lifted her wing, then pointed downward. “You can sense it beneath the ground?” I interpreted and she nodded again.

“We need to search for an entrance to wherever the fragment is being kept,” Ruen said. “It would be best if we avoid the buildings.”

“What if the only entrance is in the compound?” I pointed out.

“Then we’ll have to fight our way through the soldiers,” he replied, eyes glittering in impending excitement.

“I hate to break it to you, but there are hundreds of soldiers in there,” I said.

Deflating at that news, he was at a loss. “I’ll search for the entrance. You two wait here.”

He could sneak far more effectively than I could. The beings here couldn’t seem to sense us, so I nodded in agreement. “Aurora and I will move off the path and wait for you.” He dropped to the ground, then hunched over to make himself harder to see and scurried away.

I quietly plodded away from the trail and sank down to the ground to wait. Aurora remained on my shoulder so she could see above the long stalks of grass. I could sense Ruen casting about, looking for the entrance to the underground chamber.

After several hours, he returned and prodded me in the side to wake me up. “I found it!” he said in excitement.

“You found the piece of the spell?” I asked in amazement.

“No, you idiot,” he retorted as I heaved myself upright. “I found the entrance to the cave.”

“What cave?”

Rolling his eyes dramatically at my questions, he gestured towards the distant mountains at the bottom of the slope. “I couldn’t find an entrance to any underground buildings, so I widened my search. I came across an old trail that led me to a cave. There wasn’t enough time for me to search it properly, but the tunnel leads back in this direction.”