“Before you say anything, I want you to know that I went and asked Theo if charring meat was a legitimate cooking technique, and he said it was! So there! It’s not burned, it’s charred!”

  Leo blinked, shaking his head free from the daze he’d been in as he spotted his father grinning at him by the grill. That’s right… something had happened to the steaks he’d been planning to make, and his father had insisted on grilling burgers instead. He was always like that. Preferring to make the best of any bad situation rather than lamenting what things could have been.

  “Plane to Leo, you good there champ?” his dad asked, raising an eyebrow as he flipped a burger and pressed all the juices that made the meat taste good straight out of it. “You look a bit distracted.”

  “Sorry… I was just thinking about something,” Leo said, disregarding whatever strange daydream he’d just been having as he smiled at his father. Normally, nothing irked him more than when his father tried showing off his horrible cooking skills. But for some reason he didn’t fully understand, he was really happy to see him. “For the record, Theo isn’t really the one I would ask when it comes to cooking. He only took over his dad’s restaurant a year ago, he’s got a long way to go.”

  “Mr. High-and-Mighty over here, thinks he knows better than an actual cook in an actual restaurant,” his father teased, tossing a few more pieces of charcoal into the grill to ensure the burgers would soon be ‘charred’ to nearly the point of being inedible. “Anyway, are you excited for your first step? It’s not everyday you become a Cartographer, you know!”

  “Of course I’m excited,” Leo said, scratching the back of his head as he found himself admitting something he’d never actually told his parents before. “...but what if I’m not good at it? I mean, you two are famous, right? Fire Maw and the Frozen Killer. That’s a lot to live up to.”

  “Your mom and I are good, but I wouldn’t say we’re famous,” his father chuckled. “We do alright for ourselves, I’ll say that much. But I have no clue where you got the idea we were such hot shots.”

  “I… I’m not sure,” Leo said, scrunching up his face in thought. The powerful smell from the actively burning burgers was making it kind of hard to think, but he didn’t want to criticize his father’s cooking for some reason. “Regardless, my point stands. What if I’m not that good at exploring the different planes? What if I can’t hold my own in a fight against a swarm of magical beasts, and they overwhelm me? I’m not ready to run off and be a Cartographer all on my own! I need your guys’ help!”

  “Leo, who said you had to do things on your own?” His father stepped away from the grill, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. For anyone else, Leo would have criticized them for stepping away from actively cooking meat. But when it came to his father, the burgers would probably turn out better without him constantly messing with them. “Your mom and I will be with you right from the get go. We’ll make sure you have your feet under you!”

  “But you’re not!” Leo shouted, surprising himself just as much as his dad as he took in a shuddering breath, coughing at the dense, burning smoke coming from the grill that was now engulfed in flames. “You guys aren’t here with me! I’ve been thrown halfway across the planarverse with nothing more than a box I’m not allowed to open and the knowledge that the fate of the entire Nexus and everyone living within it is all up to me! That’s not fair!”

  “No. No, I suppose it’s not,” his father sighed, biting his lip as he glanced over his shoulder at the giant flames reaching off the grill. He paused for just a moment, as if debating whether to do anything about them or not, before shaking his head and turning his focus back on his son. “Leo, I’m sorry. That’s a lot to put on anyone’s shoulders, let alone a brand-new Cartographer. But that’s sort of what being a Cartographer is all about. We don’t get to pick and choose what the new planes we discover are filled with, or what tier they are. We make do with what we’re handed, and we improvise. It’s not a lifestyle for the faint of heart, that’s for sure. People keep having children, and those children need somewhere to go. It’s up to us Cartographers to continue expanding the known planarverse. To find homes for each and every person who needs one.”

  “I get all that… but you basically told me, me, someone with a soul rank of not even 1 at the time, that I needed to take down the Planar Lords! That’s nuts!”

  “I never said you had to defeat the Planar Lords,” his father laughed, the light from the flames that had now engulfed half of their house flickering off his face. “You just need to save as many people within the Nexus as you can manage. You’re thinking about this the wrong way. Didn’t I tell you there was another option?”

  “Finding a new tier 50 colossal plane?” Leo scoffed, continuing to cough from the burning smoke drifting all around them. “That’s just as impossible as defeating the Planar Lords!”

  “There you go again, making things harder than they have to be,” his father tutted, tapping him on the forehead. “Come on, we raised you better than that. What was the point in all those puzzles we had you do if you don’t use that brain of yours?”

  “I either need to find a way to make the Planar Lords listen, or find a new plane for everyone to move to,” Leo repeated, trying to figure out what his father meant. As the roaring inferno surrounding them surged and their house began collapsing around them, Leo gasped, snapping his fingers as it finally clicked. “But if the Planar Lords won’t listen in the first place… Then to the abyss with them, it doesn’t have to be a tier 50 plane! I just need to find a new colossal plane to move everyone to! They can leave the Planar Lords behind!”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  But just as quickly as the answer came to him, Leo sagged, wrinkling his nose as the scent of burning meat grew stronger and stronger. “But how would I get everyone from the Nexus, millions of people, from there to the new plane without the assistance of the Planar Lords and their agents? Most of the people living within the Nexus aren’t even gem holders, which means they physically can’t travel between planes without the Planar Lords’ help. Though even factoring them out, moving all the gem holders out of there at once would still be the greatest migration in the history of the planarverse by a longshot. I can’t do it alone.”

  “I told you your mother and I would be right with you from the get go,” his father repeated, holding up a familiar wooden box. “Maybe worry about finding a suitable plane first, okay? I have a feeling a solution to your second problem might reveal itself with time. Now, how about a burger? I think they might be almost done!”

  Leo’s eyes fluttered open, and he groaned as the first sensation he experienced was pain. His sides, his front, his back… Pretty much every part of him that could be sore, was sore. The smell of burning meat wafted past his nose, and for one warm, fleeting moment, he was back at home, chatting with his father again.

  Then a dirty face appeared in the darkness only a few inches away from his own, and the memory was shattered as he screamed in surprise.

  “Quiet!” the stranger ordered, slapping him none too gently on the cheek. “Monsters hear. Monsters come.”

  “Sorry,” Leo managed, still reeling in shock at the unexpected jump scare. The stranger had a small, hard face covered in streaks of dirt and blood, and long, matted black hair that had been poorly tied back in what Leo would be hard pressed to call a braid. They wore little more than rags, a simple shirt and shorts that each appeared to have been torn and repaired so many times that they were barely still hanging on. The stranger was covered in so much dirt and filth that Leo couldn’t really get a good judge on their age, but based on the hardness in their eyes and their gruff tone, Leo would guess they were probably a few years older than he was, despite them actually being a head shorter. They were covered in so much dirt and filth that he couldn’t even tell if the mysterious stranger was a man or a woman.

  “Who… Where am I? What happened?” Leo finally managed, attempting to sit up and nearly blacking out from pain as he did so.

  “Safe. Cave,” the stranger grunted, cautiously peering out of a furry hide covering the entrance to wherever they were. Leo blinked as he recognized the black fur of one of the giant cats that had attacked him and nearly ripped his arm off, and he looked at his savior in a new light. If they were strong enough to kill one of those and skin it, they clearly knew what they were doing.

  “Okay, we’re in a cave,” Leo said slowly, not wanting to upset his surprise savior. “...How did I get in a cave? Did you save me?”

  “Many legs about to kill you. Killed many legs first,” the stranger grunted, sitting back down and plucking something off the ground. Only then did Leo realize there were a handful of glowing embers sitting near the cave entrance, and what looked like a dozen centipede legs currently being grilled over them. Leo watched on in horror as the stranger brought on up to their mouth, sniffed it, and then sank their teeth into it, snapping a chunk off as they started to chew.

  “Want leg?” the stranger offered, holding out a fresh one to him.

  “No… I filled up on legs earlier,” Leo said, smiling weakly as the stranger shrugged and began eating his share as well.

  While the stranger sat there, seemingly content to eat in silence, Leo looked around the cave. It wasn’t very large, only about the size his bedroom had been, before it had been burned to the ground and chucked into the abyss. Other than a pile of furs, some primitive tools that looked to have been fashioned from bone, and a stack of dried meat Leo was pretty certain was from a magical beast, the stranger didn’t have too many possessions.

  What they did have, was art.

  Leo looked on in wonder at the dozens upon dozens of cave paintings filling just about every square inch of the cave’s interior. Some of them were distinctly better than others, and using that quality as a primitive timeline, he was able to figure out roughly where they started, and he realized they actually told a simple story.

  The tale began with a bubble filled with three people: two tall, one short. One day, the bubble popped. While the taller people fell, the short one was thrown to safety, landing in a much darker, more jagged bubble lined with blood. The small person hid from monsters, somehow managing to survive from one day to the next. Years passed, and the small person grew larger. They learned to defend themselves. Learned to take down the monsters that once terrified them. Now, it was the monsters that were scared of them, and they stood at the top of the bubble. They were the ones the monsters hid from, and the monsters were the ones who ran when the tall person approached.

  Finishing up the story, Leo’s jaw hung open as he turned to stare at the stranger still munching away on a centipede leg. If these paintings truly told the story he thought they did…

  “How long have you been here?” Leo whispered, clearing his throat and repeating the question. “How old were you when you came to this plane?”

  “Twelve,” the stranger replied, grinning as they pointed at the last of the pictures. A particularly well-done drawing of the dark cats, giant centipedes, and a few other beasts Leo didn’t recognize, each one turning and running from the tall human as they sensed death approaching. “Long time. Different now.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.” If the stranger had arrived on this plane when they were twelve, that would mean they’d survived on their own in this poisonous wasteland for years.

  However, there was one glaring problem with the stranger’s claim.

  “Hold on, that’s impossible,” Leo said, realizing in his shock he’d almost forgotten one important rule anyone who wanted to one day become a gem holder knew. “You said you came here when you were twelve? You never would have survived the magical beast gem merging with your soul. It would have torn your immature soul to shreds, killing you in the process. Even if you’d somehow managed to survive, and I don’t think there’s any recorded instance of someone surviving such a thing that young, it would have turned you into a monster!”

  “Huh,” the stranger said, smirking at him as they took another large, crunchy bite out of the centipede leg, contemplating what he’d said for a moment before swallowing. “Neat.”

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