"Izumi, Lloyd, what's going on?" Miyuki shot after the long stretch of silence.
"They're walking away," Lloyd replied. "But for a second there, it seemed like she saw through the concealment."
"The spell must not be as concrete as I thought it would be," she said. "A small amount of your source energy is probably seeping out."
"The closer the timer gets to ending, the more likely it is that more of it will seep out," she continued. "Do not pursue them."
"Got it," Izumi said.
"While we wait for them to get out of range, tell us what sort of source energy signatures they gave off, if any," Takae said.
"It was so faint, but I did sense something," Lloyd replied. "It felt human, but not completely, like it was a blend."
"If we could get closer, I could get a better sense of what it really was," he continued.
"How far are they now?" Izumi asked.
"I'd say about a quarter of a mile away," he replied. "If we suppress our output, then we should be out of their range to unconsciously sense us."
After hearing that, Izumi stepped into the clearing, his dark hooded robe fluttering in the freezing wind.
Lloyd followed close behind him, and they walked to the makeshift grave that she was buried in.
Izumi clasped his hands together, and with his head hanging low, he said, "I'm sorry that we couldn't save you. But we'll make sure that it wasn't all for nothing."
Lloyd turned his head toward the direction they went, and then his face lit up with an idea.
"Do you have that tracing tag Miyuki stored in a marble?" he asked.
"Yeah, I do," he replied. "But why do you ask?"
"Because we're going to stick it on them, that's why," Lloyd answered.
"But we can't get any closer to them than we already are, or they'll sense us," Izumi said, confused.
"We won't be getting any closer," Lloyd said as he pulled out his hand.
"Trust me on this."
Though hesitant, Izumi dug into his robe and pulled it out, handing it to him. Once he had it in his hand, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
A cloud drifting up ahead blocked out the moonlight, casting a large shadow on the clearing.
His eyes flashed purple, and the pattern of the two dark sectors spreading out from his pupils horizontally across his purple irises intensified.
The ground beneath Izumi's feet suddenly felt unstable, then nonexistent. The two of them fell into the shadow beneath them.
Izumi stared up and watched as the little light there was faded away into a black sky. They were now floating in a vast expanse of darkness, never-ending.
But then a flicker of light crossed Izumi's eye from the direction Lloyd was in. The source energy now pouring out of him painted a figure for Izumi to see.
In his hand, he held what seemed like a bow, but upon closer inspection, he noticed that it wasn't just that. The arms of the bow were dark, sharp, single-edged blades converging at a purple-hilted center.
Lloyd held onto the marble with his right index finger, middle finger, and thumb. A cloak of purple energy surrounded it.
Lloyd raised the bow, and as he gestured a draw, the cloak of energy shaped into a large purple arrow. The sharp ends of the bow were now connected with a faint, almost invisible string of the same energy.
"Are you going to shoot at them from here?" Izumi asked, barely managing to stay upright. "How will it reach them?"
He closed one eye and said, "Just watch."
In the next instant, it shot away, streaking past the darkness like a shooting star. The farther it got, the more the cloak of energy dissipated until it was the size of a rock.
Then a flare of purple light glared from Lloyd's eyes yet again, and ahead of the flying marble appeared a small opening of light. As it shot into the opening, the last of the cloaking energy dissipated, leaving the marble by itself.
It came out into the ground by a patch of grass, only to immediately shatter at the step of Keitaro Kobayashi. A pattern printed itself on his sandal, the faint sense of its formation reaching all five of them.
The sound of the grass shuffling at their feet, the faintest breath with every step. They could hear it all.
"Woah, not bad, Lloyd," Izumi said. "You never said you could do this."
"It was just something that I picked up from remembering how my father described this place," he replied.
"Now we can trace them and even hear their conversations for at least an hour," Miyuki said. "Nice job, Lloyd."
"It was nothing," he said before raising his hand toward Izumi.
An opening to the light appeared behind his back, and before he could turn, Izumi stumbled into it. He fell onto a patch of grass in the clearing, back first, looking up at the stars.
When he sat up, he saw Lloyd popping out of the shadows cast on the tree barks like a phantom.
"You did that on purpose, didn't you?" Izumi said as he rose to his feet.
Lloyd pulled out a tag, and following the shine on its pattern, the bow on his opposite hand was drawn in.
"Let's go. We don't have time to waste," he said as he tucked the tag away into his robe.
"Don't change the subject," Izumi hissed.
"But seriously though, we need to get closer so we can hear through the trace better," Lloyd said.
"Fine, I'll let it go this once," Izumi replied before the two of them started dashing in their direction.
"Are you guys hearing the transmission?" Lloyd asked through the link.
"We can," Yuriko replied, "but it's mixing in with the link, and both of them are getting shaky."
"Izumi, as soon as you get close enough to them, affirm the link with another interface tag, then use yourself as a bridge between the two so that they can both be clear," Miyuki instructed.
"I'll do what I can," he replied.
"It all comes down to this," Lloyd thought.
"We can't mess this up."