The area ahead of Dahlia’s warning led directly to the entrance of a cave. One with clawmarks marring the stone around the entrance, and the smell of blood wafting through the area.

“I know this smell.” Shukri said, a growl forming in her voice. “This is the lair of that pack.” Tahir put a hand on her shoulder to calm her down, and she shot him a glare, before taking in a deep breath. “You’re right, there is not much we can do to them with just the two of us.”

“Seems like the orb’s in there.” He gestured. “We can probably sneak in and cause a bit of trouble for them at the same time, sound good?”

Shukri glanced over at the cave entrance before looking back to Tahir, skeptical. “I will follow you on this, I suppose.”

With a nod, he looked at Dahlia and said, “You’ll stick out a bit if we try to go in there with you. Could you stay out here for the moment and I’ll call you if I need you?”

“Can do!” Dahlia moved over to a collection of bushes and greenery and crouched slightly. Tahir blinked and she blended in to it so skillfully that he almost thought he lost sight of her. With that taken care of, Tahir summoned the air and water spirits, and waved Shukri forward as he crept toward the cave.

From the light just outside, he could see patches of dried blood on the stone, and as they transitioned into a darker space, a violet light coming from within gave him just enough light to see. As they were about to turn a corner, Tahir heard a low growl and stopped, peeking around to look. There he could see the creatures in question in a wide, open cavern. They looked to be some kind of panthers, but massive. The largest of them looked longer than Tahir was tall. They had dark pelts with odd, swirling patterns, and from what Tahir could see, behind them stood a rift to some kind of plain. Looking around, he turned back to Shukri. “I can see the rift, but not the orb.” He whispered to her. “I’ll cause a distraction, we can either stay together, or split up and look for the orb, and you can make some kind of noise if you find it.”

“Will you be alright on your own?” She asked him. Tahir gave a shrug and a grin.

“I’ll manage somehow. I guess that’s a yes for the split.” He held a hand out, and an orb of swirling fog began to coalesce around it as he quietly cast a spell. “Get in, break the orb, get out. Let’s go. I’ll go left, you go right.” With a snap of his fingers, fog burst out from his palm, filling the entire cave. He heard several surprised yowls from the panthers as he rushed in and darted to the left, keeping to the edge of the cave while the sounds of scrambling bodies and claws on stone echoed out. He could see vague shadows outlined by the light coming from the rift at the edge of the cave. Thankfully, none of the panthers moved along the edges initially, so he could make his way around while searching for the orb.

He didn’t find it along the cave’s edge, even as he made his way to the rift and peered beyond. He didn’t hear a noise from Shukri, either, so he had to guess that she hadn’t found anything yet. Seemed like he’d have to go toward the center, but the panthers still moved in a frenzy around the area, trying to make sense of the fog. He paused just in front of the rift, and he changed the air spirit for the earth spirit, allowing him to gain the tremorsense he needed to navigate around the cave. Just in time to see one of the panthers rushing toward him, and dive out of the way before it collided with him while it tried to run through the rift.

Some of them had spread out, some of them had left, and he could barely feel Shukri creeping through her own section of the cave in her own search. With a deep breath, he moved forward, into the tangle of bodies that moved in the center of the cave. At this point, the panthers knew that there were unfamiliar beings in the cave, likely through smell, so they were all on edge, but still scrambling from a lack of vision.

He tried focusing his mana out as best as he could, to try to find the orb, but if he concentrated his full effort on doing so, the fog around them would rapidly start to fade or leave the area, so he wove his way through the pack, as quietly as he could, using a bit of aura to keep his normal speed since the earth spirit also increased his weight. He moved within inches, as far as his tremorsense could tell, of at least one of the panthers several times, and suppressed a gasp when one of them brushed against his side, but didn’t quite notice the material of his cloak didn’t quite match up to that of another panther’s.

He kept himself so caught up in dodging the creatures that he almost missed the orb, feeling it across his short mana sense as he moved. He glanced down, and found the familiar black orb with runic symbols carved across it. Breathing a sigh of relief, he took out his sword. He needed a precise cut to make it quick. He had a hunch that these things would sense his aura moving. Taking a deep breath, he focused aura to the tip of the sword and plunged it down to the orb, watching the blade sink in, and the orb itself split neatly into four pieces when he pulled away.

Hearing a yowl and the thundering of panthers in his direction, he quickly grabbed a piece and leapt away, sheathing his sword. At this point, he could abandon any pretense of stealth, so he reached a hand out toward the ceiling and cast a spell, one that shot a ball of fire out toward the top of the cave, and once it got a fair distance, exploded in a shower of cracking and sparks, visible to everything in the cave with eyes to see. Thankfully, Shukri got the message, as he could feel her moving toward the cave’s exit with his tremorsense. He made his way out with her not far behind.

“Are you sure you have disabled the orb?” Shukri asked.

Once they stepped back into the sunlight and fully out of the fog, Tahir held up the heavy piece of the orb he managed to grab. “Positive. I imagine most of the cats will be hopping back through the rift before it closes. One almost pulled me along with it.” Before he could say anything else, he felt another set of footprints moving across his tremorsense, and he turned toward the mouth of the cave. “Get back, one of them’s coming out.”

About a second after he said that, one of them turned the corner and lunged. Tahir held up his shield, and stood firm as the creature slammed into him and sent him skidding back several feet. Tahir bashed its open mouth closed with the shield, and ducked to the side to keep it from knocking him over, dodging under its swiping claws in the process.

It turned to look at him, a growl forming in its throat, but it immediately turned into a yowl of pain as Shukri moved forward, and raked her aura enhanced claws across its flank. While it turned its attention to her, Tahir cast a quick spell, turning a patch of earth underneath it into mud just as it moved to lunge at her. It slipped, crashing to the ground, and Tahir and Shukri used the opportunity to rush it. Tahir stabbing his sword down toward where he thought its heart was, and Shukri going for its throat. Its aura flared up in both places to protect itself, but it pulled more toward its throat to protect itself from Shukri’s claws, leaving Tahir’s blade, aura and weight enhanced, to sink past its protection.

It gave another shuddering cry as the blade pierced its heart, before it grew still. Tahir pulled out his sword with a huff, and barely a second passed before he heard a yowl from the cave. “Let’s get out of here before any stragglers find us. Come on, Dahlia.”

“Very well!” The spirit popped out of the nearby bush, and Tahir had to suppress the urge to jump at her sudden appearance.

The three of them started making their way back to the grove, moving quickly at first just to get away from the cave. After a while, though, they slowed down to take stock of their situation. “Dahlia,” Tahir started. “can you feel any more disturbances around you, like the ones we’ve been dealing with?”

“Hmm.” The diwata closed her eyes, tilting her head as if she listened for something in the far distance. “Nope! Other than the feeling from the void from that lovely grove. If you want, I can also check again once we’re closer.”

“Has the void feeling gone down at all?” Tahir asked.

“Nope, not really.”

“Does it have something to do with the ruin, then?” Tahir muttered, mostly to himself. As he walked behind Shukri, who led them back, she turned to look back at him.

“I will admit, your bag of tricks is rather expansive.” She said, “The fog worked wonders to disorient them, but I cannot imagine how you managed to find the orb so quickly and avoid them while doing so. I could barely leave the edge of the cave without running into one.”

“That would be thanks to the earth spirit, and tremorsense. It’s not a terribly far range of sight in the grand scheme of things, but it let me avoid the cats while I looked for the orb, which was basically in the middle of them.” He explained. “In any case, I think I just got extremely lucky. One of them brushed up against me back there, but didn’t realize I wasn’t one of them.”

“Your earth spirit, I have heard you describe it in passing. Is it what allowed you to stand against that panther’s lunge without exhausting all of your aura?”

He nodded, holding out his arm for her to take. “Hold on to me for a moment.”

With a raised eyebrow and a flick of her catlike ears, Shukri agreed. Tahir let his arm fall into her hand, and her eyes widened slightly. “You’re heavier than you look.”

“That would be the earth spirit.” Mentally thanking the spirit, Tahir dismissed it, and Shukri found his weight decreasing considerably.

“Is that not the same as weighing yourself down?” Shukri asked.

“Without any of the cumbersome bits.” Tahir answered with a shrug. “I have to use a bit of aura to move at my normal speed, and quite a bit more to speed up any further than that, but the amount of leverage and power it gives me can’t be understated.” With a smirk, he pulled his arm away to put his hands on his hips, and puffed out his chest in mock bravado. “I can even block the strikes from mithral Redclouds like this.”

“Oh?” Shukri’s expression changed to a grin that worried Tahir. “Then perhaps we should spar. The only ones who last very long are the likes of Hayat, most of whom are injured currently or actively working.”

Tahir may have erred in talking about how well he could take a hit. “Uh-” He couldn’t deny that part of him wanted to see how he measured up against Shukri. Based on what he’d seen, she seemed well into platinum and maybe even close to mithral based on her combat prowess and aura use alone. From the way she looked at him now, though, it seemed more likely that she’d use him as a scratching post. “-maybe. We’ll have to see what we’ll be up to after we talk to everyone else.”

“Very well.” Shukri said in a rather melodic tone, telling Tahir that she wouldn’t let him simply drop that issue. “Regardless, I should also introduce you to one of our shamans, as well. It is the least I can do for your aid.”