Outside, they discovered the eryo waiting as always. It appeared to be watching them, though he wasn't sure if its odd gem-like eyes could even close. He certainly wouldn't have wanted to try to sneak around it, but escape was no longer his goal.

Stepping to the mouth of the cavern, Theo raised his hand and cast a single gravitational field. His technique hadn't changed, but his newly intense cantae generated a field of more than one multiple of Tatian gravity. The eryo grumbled and began to get up, weighed down but not impeded.

As soon as it did, Theo raised his other hand and hit the sublime beast with everything he had. This time, the massively multiplied gravity took it down, dropping the beast with only leg firmly placed. It roared and tried to struggle up, its body still obscenely powerful, but only took one step before it collapsed again. That slowed it for only a moment before it glared at them and continued to struggle.

Theo winced, his fingers trembling as he struggled to maintain the fields at their maximum intensity. Strong as he felt, it was a brutal reminder that the eryo was a Ruler-tier sublime beast. Even though it had no natural defenses against his techniques, it was still taking everything he had just to bind it in place.

"I can't... for long... we need to try..."

His words weren't very coherent, but Fiyu understood and unleashed a hail of light into the beast's face. Unfortunately, even with a sustained blast, the eryo's rocky skin remained undamaged. Frowning, Fiyu instead generated a shadowy blade around her hand and began to creep forward toward the creature's neck.

Before she could arrive, the eryo let out a roar, concussive cantae that sent Fiyu tumbling backward and nearly knocked Theo from his feet. His control slipped and the eryo lurched up, taking two earth-shaking steps toward them, its maw opening...

Just before Nauda acted, Theo managed to cast his gravitational fields again, slamming it to the ground. But now, closer to its prey, the eryo struggled harder, slowly rising to a crouched position.

As quickly as he could, Theo reversed the gravity to try to send it into the air. The eryo grabbed the ground on instinct, but he almost thought that he had succeeded, until the creature's tail slammed into the rock. Using that immense strength, the beast pulled itself down to the earth again, still staring at them hungrily. Even when he tried to reverse back and forth, he only shook the eryo up a bit, the movements failing to dislodge its grip on the ground.

"Rocks." It was getting harder to talk and his shirt was soaked with sweat, but he thought he could hold on long enough. "On it."

They gave him an odd look, but obeyed. Fiyu cut apart some of the nearest rocky surfaces with her blade, producing jagged pieces that she threw on top of the eryo. Nauda didn't use her hands, instead kicking rocks from the edge to bounce over the creature's hide. It growled and struggled harder, as if offended that they were uselessly throwing pebbles.

Ideally he would have wanted more, but Theo could feel his soulhome emptying and couldn't risk running out of cantae. He reversed gravity again, which did nothing to the eryo but sent the rocks falling into the air. This time he didn't let go, sustaining the field as far as he possibly could until the rocks sailed upward beyond his range, propelled now by nothing but their momentum.

Which soon reversed as normal gravity took over. Theo took a final breath and switched his fields one last time, accelerating the rocks downward with everything he could muster.

The explosion of dust and stones knocked them off their feet and Theo struggled back up, trying to find the others, afraid that the eryo would be coming for them. But when he could see again and his head stopped spinning, the eryo finally lay broken. Many rocks had speared deep into its body and even the dull ones had struck with immense force due to their raw speed.

"Is it... dead?" Fiyu brushed off her robes, looking at the beast nervously. Theo understood her concern, since even dead the eyes remained open. But he could feel that the sublime beast's soulhome had dissipated, so it was truly over.

When he tried to take a step forward, he stumbled in exhaustion, but Nauda caught him. She helped him forward with a broad smile. "Killing an eryo as an Archcrafter... I haven't seen it done before."

"I was just a good match for it." Theo was already feeling much better, but didn't mind her supporting him. "We can't get overconfident."

"Oh, I wasn't thinking that. I was thinking that we need to harvest it for sublime materials."

Fiyu bobbed her head in agreement. "Yes, it should not go to waste."

That proved to be more difficult than expected, because even dead the eryo was surprisingly durable. Fiyu's dark blade proved capable of cutting it with some work and Nauda managed to pry apart a few pieces of the rocky skin. Once Theo had better recovered, he experimented with lifting and dropping large pieces to soften them up for the others.

Judging by his spiritual senses, the rocky body was a reasonably strong sublime material, suitable for walls and ceilings. It would probably have been highly valued if it wasn't so hard to work with - they were barely able to draw the stone into themselves, much less build it into their soulhomes. By the time they could, it would be less exceptional but still worthwhile.

The real prizes were the body parts with the most concentrated cantae. Those gem-like eyes proved to be actual gems, filled with focusing intensity. Each claw held a shocking density of cantae, the one material they couldn't break up or absorb at all, forcing them to carry them in the sleigh. Finally, Fiyu extracted a massive heart the size of her head, obsidian rock flowing with magma that was still cooling.

When they had absorbed all the main body, they were left staring at those pieces. There was no question of actually integrating them, as the pressure from the sublime materials would blow apart their early soulhomes. Fiyu looked the fragments over and finally sighed.

"All of these are valuable, but I am not sure which would be most valuable for each of us. I certainly cannot use them in my soulhome at this time."

"None of us can," Theo said. "Let Nauda store them for now."

"But... it is not easy to extract such materials again. If we hired someone to do it, they would see the value of the materials and perhaps charge more."

Theo smiled and turned back to the cave. "I'm not worried about it. By the time we can use these sublime materials, we'll be able to do those things ourselves."

It took them some time to prepare to leave, but at long last there didn't seem to be any pressure. Fiyu focused on cleaning up the camp and he realized that she was regretting leaving the darkened cave. Senka had slept through the entire conflict and now yawned hugely, which was overtly obnoxious. Since it took Nauda a long time just to draw the eyes and heart into her storage room, Theo took over all the rest of the work.

By the time she was done, he had the sleigh out of the cavern and everything packed up. They wearily climbed in and returned north, hopefully for a more peaceful trip. Theo still made the sleigh travel as fast as it could, but there was no violent skipping over the hills this time. Instead they just slid through the wasteland, finally alone.

Maybe it wasn't so far, or maybe his mind just needed the rest, but it didn't seem to be so long before they spotted their destination. Nauda noted it first, an arc in the distance. They'd gotten slightly off track during the chase, but not so far that the gate was out of sight.

He should have been glad, but he was distracted by a subtle shift he couldn't quite pin down. The air was getting hotter, he thought, the warmth of Tatian being replaced by a fierce summer heat. When he peered toward the horizon something seemed a little off about it, but that was far away compared to the rapidly growing gate.

"Go past it for now," Nauda said. "I'll keep my promise first."

So they glided on past, though they passed close enough that Theo could see that the gate didn't stand alone. There was a small outpost there with several Fithan guards, looking bored out of their minds. When they saw the sleigh they waved wildly, not so much to get their attention but just because it was the only thing breaking up the monotony.

If they could maintain an outpost there without any fear of beasts like the eryos, then that meant the city on the other side had a formidable military. As a hub city, it no doubt had multiple factions with Authority-tier soulcrafters, and potentially some who were even higher, so sparing a Ruler for a risky gate probably wasn't excessive. Entering the city would certainly be a higher level of competition than they'd faced so far.

"Almost there." Nauda gripped the seat in front of her, eyes set grimly. "You might want to slow down."

As they finally drew close, Theo began to understand and his eyes widened. Ahead of them, the rocky landscape simply... ended. He could see something burning beyond it, but his sense of distance utterly failed to capture what he was seeing until they had reached the edge.

"Oh." That was all Fiyu said, staring out. Theo swerved the sleigh to a halt and stumbled out, trying to comprehend the scale of what he saw.

The wasteland ended in a cliff that dwarfed any he had ever seen or even imagined, plummeting straight down for what looked like miles. Theo wasn't afraid of heights, but getting anywhere near the edge still overwhelmed him with a sense of vertigo. Such an enormous cliff couldn't possibly exist on Earth or any normal world: not only was it taller than should be possible, it stretched as far as he could see in either direction, practically a straight line.

And below... that was almost worse than the cliff. The blackened land below made the wastelands they'd traveled through look like the bounty of Tatian. Large parts of it were obscured by clouds of ash that moved in vicious storms, but elsewhere he saw rivers of lava. From such a distance he couldn't see any details, but everything gave off an aura of pure danger.

"Welcome to Tatian." Nauda stepped past him, walking much closer to the edge than he dared and staring straight down. "As near as I can tell, this cliff runs around the entire world. Half of it is the Tatian you've seen, the other half... is what you see below."

"How can that be?" Theo asked, still trying to wrap his mind around the distances. "If it's a planet, the entire thing would be so unbalanced..."

"I have no idea, I just know this is the way reality is."

Fiyu walked up beside her, voice again very soft. "Nauda, are you from the world below?"

Nauda didn't answer, only stared downward grimly, which was answer enough. Since they were both so close, Theo dared to get a little closer. In theory he had nothing to fear, since he could control his fall via gravity, but he still hesitated. Such a massive cliff defied enough laws that he wondered if it might crush his gravitational fields too, the cliff itself a barrier beyond the merely physical.

"We're not going down there, are we?" he asked. Nauda laughed and turned away, walking back to the sleigh.

"Of course not. We couldn't survive even if we found a way down, and the city is still our best way forward. I just wanted you to see it before we left Tatian, so you don't get the wrong impression."

He nodded, accepting her experience with the area, but still kept looking. The region below the cliff appeared to be abandoned, just like the wasteland above. When he strained to look further, he thought he saw what might be a city. It seethed with violence, utterly unlike a Tatian city... at least, the Tatian cities he knew.

Just before he left, Theo looked more to the side, trying to get a better view of the cliff. It was uneven and filled with strange crags that should defy any climber, yet he saw something moving. Again his sense of scale faltered, leaving him wondering how large those far-off cliffs were. They might be able to contain whole cities, but the beings he saw were much too large to be humans.

All at once he realized the truth: there were eryos crawling over the cliffs. Not swarming, but just from his present position he could see at least three. It became much clearer why Nauda had been so certain they needed to take the gate to the city.

As he walked back, Theo tried to focus on everything that had gone right. They'd survived a serious challenge and paved the way forward for themselves, so he should have been happy. He wasn't unhappy, either, he just couldn't stop thinking about what he had seen.