“Who’s making noise now?” Masa grumbled while Yuriko chortled.

“Well, you can have those in exchange for the poncho.”

“Really?” Masa’s eyes lit up, “But, just one. It’s more than enough.”

“Toss that in the pot then. I’m hungry.” Yuriko tapped one of the bamboo canisters. “Oh wait, I’ve also got this syrupy thing from near the Obsidian Shard.” She grabbed a bowl from her pack and poured out some of the amber liquid. “This also sated my hunger back then.” She held it out to Masa.

The cat girl took one sniff and swooned. Her hands grabbed Yuriko’s and she started lapping it up from the bowl. The sight of her pink tongue flicking in and out of the bowl made Yuriko want to pinch Masa’s cheek but she pushed down the unseemly desire. Once Masa finished the bowl, she collapsed in a boneless heap and her eyes rolled up. Clearly unconscious.

Yuriko watched the other for a couple of minutes just to make sure Masa was fine. The cat woman’s breathing was even and she even started drooling out of the corner of her lip. Shaking her head, Yuriko capped the container, rinsed the pot out with water and tossed the single redbone into the stew. She kept watch while the other slept. An hour later, the stew was ready and she ate her fill. The campfire runescript kept going even without an additional investment of Animus, and Yuriko let it be since the air was a bit clammy.

Masa woke up a couple of hours later looking quite mortified.

“Sorry! I don’t know what came over me…”

“It’s fine,” Yuriko laughed. “Are you hungry?”

Masa frowned as she patted her taut belly.

“No, I don’t think so. Whatever that was, filled me up. And…” she closed her eyes for a moment before they sprung wide open, “my Geist grew stronger!”

“Huh, what’s a Geist?”

Masa eyed her with an uncertain look, then shrugged. “How I control my Animus. Don’t you have a Geist?”

“Uh, no.” Yuriko shook her head, “I control my Animus directly.”

“Ah. Uhm…” Masa coughed. “We’d better not continue talking about this.”

“Oh, why?”

“You really are a kid,” she grumbled.

Yuriko shrugged. She was curious but she also kept her own secrets.

“Don’t worry about it,” she laughed.

“Right.”

They lapsed into a momentary silence, then, “You should rest. I’ll keep watch for now,” Masa said.

“Alright.”

Yuriko leaned against the wall, though she didn’t forget to lay down a couple of alarm stones around her, and the camp’s vicinity. She wasn’t really that tired, but she meditated anyway. Half an hour later, she was asleep.

She woke up a couple of hours later when Masa tripped one of the alarm stones, at the camp periphery. Yuriko stretched and headed to the stone, finding the other woman keeping an eye on the tunnel entrances. An ear twitched at Yuriko’s footsteps.

“I thought you were asleep?” Masa asked quietly.

Yuriko shrugged and picked up the alarm stone a couple of paces from Masa.

“This woke me up.”

“A stone?”

“With an alarm sequence.” Yuriko pressed her finger on the runescript pattern which flared briefly. Masa looked on with interest. “When you came near it, it woke me up.”

“You should have told me.”

“It’s become a habit,” Yuriko shrugged as she tossed the stone towards the entrance. “It’ll wake me when something crosses the threshold.

“Sure,” Masa muttered while Yuriko returned to her resting area. She was asleep again in moments.

The next time she woke up was when Masa came up to her with an arm extended to shake her shoulder.

“Oh,” the cat girl grunted when Yuriko opened her eyes. “I think it’s time to go.”

“Agreed.” Yuriko and Masa packed up their gear and continued their climb.

Masa seemed like she knew which tunnels to go through, as none of them ever turned from ascending to the reverse. Yuriko was content to follow, though she kept a wary eye on the woman and their surroundings. The tunnels had shrunk making it a little bit more claustrophobic than she liked.

The tunnel they followed ended up in a great hallway. The height of the walls weren’t quite the same as the ones she came from but it was at least twice as tall as Yuriko was. She looked down on either side, unsure which path would lead them out. Masa did the same, though Yuriko could see her nose twitching as she took several deep breaths. Frustration painted her face after a while.

“I’m not sure this time,” Masa admitted.

“Oh?”

“I’ve never been this deep,” she added. “I, er, this is only my second delve.”

“Alone?”

“Oh, no. no. OH! Anda!” Masa suddenly started pacing in a circle. “Oh, oh! Those accursed Reviled! I hope Anda and Dai are safe! Oh no, oh no!”

“Masa…”

“Chaos burn them! I have to tell the guildhall. OH no, oh NO!”

“Masa!” Yuriko grabbed the smaller girl’s shoulder. Masa looked at her with wide, frightened eyes.

“Oh, how could I forget.” She moaned.

“What happened to you?” Yuriko asked.

“I, we were delving for…for Ivory. We found them, poachers! They attacked. Anda told us to run. I ran. And…and! I fell in a hole. Then I kept falling and falling! I thought I’d go mad, but, but…” She wrung her hands and fidgeted under Yuriko’s grasp.

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“Then you met me and you forgot?” Yuriko said.

Masa stared up at her eyes. They were slit-pupilled, just like Master Alfein’s, though Masa’s were green rather than yellow. Yuriko saw the other woman’s cheeks flush before she looked away and nodded.

“Do you think they’ve been captured?”

“I…I don’t know. Maybe killed.”

“You said you needed to get to the guildhall, right? Well, let’s go. The only way you can help them now is to get help.”

“I… You’re right, but…” Masa looked up at Yuriko, gaze growing firmer by the second. “What about you?”

“Huh?”

“You…you’re so strong. I couldn’t even make you draw your weapons and you defeated me easily.” Masa’s voice grew breathy. “Will you help?”

“Er. Sure, I guess.” Yuriko let the other woman go and scratched the back of her head. “I’m not sure how to find them though.”

“Oh, no, that’s…erm, I meant, will you help me fight them if,” Masa gulped, “If we run into them?”

“Oh. Sure. I won’t let them harm you.” Yuriko promised with a smile.

Masa’s answering smile made her face shine.

“Thank you. Thank you.” She breathed a sigh of relief before she looked down the hallways. With a frown, she pointed to the right. “I think this is the correct way?”

“How can you tell?”

“The brick pattern.”

Yuriko looked at the wall. They were made of interlocking dark brown bricks. She wouldn’t have noticed them without a closer look.

“Huh?”

They didn’t have any kind of distinction so how could Masa have known?

“Look at how it seems like a diagonal slashing to the left from this angle.”

Yuriko moved to where Masa stood and looked. Hmm. She supposed it did look like a diagonal. The shading came from the light panels. She shook her head.

“If you say so.”

“Right. This way!” Masa marched to the right.

After a moment, Yuriko followed.

“We should be about a hundred longstrides from reaching the entrance. We were at fifty when we encountered the Reviled.”

They walked along the hallway for about a couple of longstrides. Unlike the tunnels before, the hallway didn’t rise or fall. It didn't even curve or spiral. It ran straight for the entire distance and if not for the light panels growing dark when they moved too far away, Yuriko would have easily spotted the tunnel they entered through.

In the mid-step, the ground buckled. Yuriko bent her knees and managed to keep her balance while Masa went on all fours with her tail sticking straight out. A grinding crack sounded from above and dust started falling like rain. She looked up, squinting against the dustfall. A long fissure ran through the centre of the ceiling and curved down into the walls. Pebbles along the path jumped and danced.

“Masa!” She yelled, but her voice was swallowed by the rumbling. She flared her Anima, pushing the dust away, then walked up to the cat-kin sprawled on the floor. Masa;s frightened gaze locked onto her when she grabbed the woman’s arm.

The hallway in front rained dust. Behind them as well. There was no point running. If there was a cave-in, they were as likely to get crushed running as they would by staying put. At least she’d have reserved her stamina.

A minute later, the shaking stopped and Masa staggered to her feet.

“What was that?” Yuriko asked.

The other woman just shook her head. Her face was pale but she steeled herself. “Let’s continue.”

Nodding, Yuriko half supported Masa’s weight on her arm. The other’s knees were still trembling.

They must have walked another longstride when it started quaking again. Masa stumbled but Yuriko caught her before she fell. The quake felt different this time.

“What now?” Yuriko grumbled. The quake was milder than the earlier one but this one lasted longer. No, it was still shaking.

Lights flickered on in the distance and Yuriko channeled Enhanced Sight.

“Bicorns!” she yelled.

“What? Oh no! We have to run!” Masa broke out of Yuriko’s grip and started running down the hallway.

Blinking in surprise, Yuriko stared dumbly while the cat-kin sprinted.

“But I wanted to fight...”

She shook her head then ran after Masa.

The beasts were nearly three longstrides from them. They occupied the width of the hallway, and if they were caught, there would be no escape. The bicorns, something she’d only seen in her Natural Science class books, was a large, muscular beast. It’s thick grey skin could protect them from superheated plasma, at least for a little while. The Iron Skin tribe used them as their totemic animals.

Masa was running on all fours, though Yuriko easily kept up with the catkin. “Where did they come from?” Yuriko asked.

“I…I don’t know. We must have been down here longer than I thought.” Masa shivered, “It's the Beast Tide!”

“We were both in the Tidelands,” Yuriko reminded her. “Chaos does strange things with time.”

“Uhn,” Masa grunted.

Yuriko glanced back. The bicorns weren’t gaining on them. They were actually falling behind, but with the hallway being what it was, they could only keep running. She hoped the cat-kin could endure the race.

Sure enough, five minutes into the run, Masa started to flag. With a sigh, Yuriko scooped up the smaller woman and carried her over her shoulder. Masa and her pack probably weighed seventy Jin. About the same as the sled Yuriko carried a while back.

“Hey.. wa…wait!” Masa gasped, “I can...ru...run by myself.”

“Only if you wanna get trampled,” Yuriko said dryly.

“Oh, you…you’re right…”

Yuriko snorted in laughter. Masa’s tail hung limp between her legs. She shifted the other woman to better balance her on her shoulder, while Masa squeaked in surprise. She ran for about half an hour before she finally saw a split on the road.

The bicorns were probably more than a league behind them so she let the cat-kin off her shoulder.

“Hzzzz.”

Yuriko rolled her eyes. Masa had fallen asleep.

“Hey!” She tapped the other’s cheek.

“Huh, what? Five more minutes… Urk, no wait? Where am I?”

“Which way?”

“Huh, oh. That one.” Masa shook the sleep off her eyes, then looked shamefaced at Yuriko. The passage she pointed out was on the left-hand side. Yuriko took a last glance back at the bicorn before she headed to the branch. Honestly, she wanted to fight the bicorns mainly because they were the Iron Skin Tribe’s totem, but she knew that these animals weren’t connected to those barbarians.

The passage sloped upwards almost immediately. The dirt was loose under her feet and every step she took sent little dirt slides behind her. They climbed out of a hole in the cavern and from there, Masa directed her towards a thick clump of bioluminescent moss. The way the clearly artificial tunnels and the natural-looking caverns blended together made no sense to Yuriko at all.

She would have thought that the man-made portion of the underground would all be in one large block rather than being interspersed with the eroded and natural spots. It was almost as if something took bits and pieces of the whole and jumbled them up together like an ill-fitting puzzle.

Either way, there was a natural tunnel next to the moss and they went into it.

The place shifted from mine tunnels to caverns, to grand hallways, and chambers. And all the while, the ground shook. It wasn’t enough to throw either of them off balance, or rather, Yuriko had gotten used to it. Her Anima glow kept their light source stable, though at one point, Masa couldn’t help but ask.

“Why are you glowing like a bonfire?”

Yuriko shrugged, “It's how I grow stronger.”

“Oh.”

Speaking about foundational techniques, Animus, and Anima strengthening must be a taboo subject for Masa’s people, Yuriko thought. Not that she needed to keep it secret. Without the Atavism Ritual, no one can duplicate how the Empire empowered its citizenry, and without the Catalyst and a proper chamber, no one can perform the ritual.

The Catalyst could only be made in the Church of Everlasting Order and the key ingredient was unique to Realmheart.

How the people of the other nations weathered the Chaos storms was a point of interest for Yuriko, though she wasn’t really driven to find out.

By the time the day ended, they’d run several dozen longstides and had probably ascended a league. Yuriko and Masa looked for a safe place to rest, but no sooner had they come into a large cavern than they realized that there would be no rest for either of them.

The cavern was full of beasts. Bicorns. Bears with bony protrusions around their shoulders, neck, and head. Pony sized hounds with flames rising out of their backs. Boars with half of their rear ends covered in quills. And look, there were even a couple of river lizards, er, crocodiles, that were as big as the one she killed and ate at the river.

“Run,” Masa whispered as she backed away.

The beasts had been marching towards a tunnel, but the moment they heard Masa’s voice, they turned as one.

“Nice going.” Yuriko snorted.

But Masa didn’t say anything. In fact, when Yuriko glanced back, the cat-kin was already halfway down the tunnel. “Hurry!” she hissed.

Yuriko clicked her tongue even as a fiery hound lunged at her throat. A swift kick to the sternum sent it toppling back. Her act triggered the rest of them, and the howling and roaring reverberated in the enclosed space.

“Ugh. Whatever.” Yuriko growled as she flared her Anima.

“Kyaaa!” Masa screamed from behind.