Edge Cases

They were leading the way back towards the Guild. They'd tried to get Kestel to tell them about whatever status effect he had, but the lizardkin seemed incredibly reluctant to talk about it, and Sev didn't push the matter. There was the small matter of the entire village that they'd brought with them, too, but the delvers were in on it, and the few researchers that joined them seemed to frazzled and worried about Kestel to question it too much.

Yet, anyway.

The group was much larger than they were used to, though, and Sev couldn't help but keep glancing back, worried that — today of all days — they would be attacked. Monster attacks in the wild weren't necessarily uncommon, but this particular route should have been cleared many times over, considering how close to the Guild it was. It wouldn't have surprised him if this was the one time they got attacked, though.

They'd be fine, he told himself. Orkas was more than capable of handling a large group through a journey, and the delvers had dispersed themselves throughout the villagers to try to help in case of an ambush. The researchers were huddled up near the front, anxiously hovering around Kestel, who was lying down in a makeshift stretcher and not really saying much of anything.

Sev had asked Misa, Derivan, and Vex to come with him off to the side — they needed to discuss everything that had happened, and now seemed as good a time as any. Maybe more, because that notification was definitely flashing more urgently at him. Oops.

"I've got a notification about Aurum," Sev said quickly, and Misa immediately paled.

"Oh, shit. I fucking forgot— there was so much happening— is he okay?" she demanded.

"I don't know. I think he's fine for now, but I have a notification about how he doesn't have anything to attach to." Sev nodded towards the spark Misa was keeping in her pouch. "The text doesn't appear correctly in the system, but I'm guessing he needs one of those."

"He can't attach to this one?" Misa asked worriedly.

"Doesn't seem like it. Can't say I know why." Sev frowned, glancing at the notification again, then sending a copy to his friends to look over. "It's asking me if I'll let it attach to me instead, and I just wanted to talk to you guys about it first. It might be dangerous, so you'd need to be ready, but..."

"It might also be his only option," Vex said quietly.

"It is your choice, ultimately," Derivan said, glancing over the notification. "It sounds as if it may affect you the most, if it is asking to attach to you. But I believe Vex is right — if it is his only option, then he is our responsibility."

"...I'm leaning towards yes," Sev said. "I mean— fuck. He really did seem like a kid, and I don't know what's going on with him now, but if what happened at the end there is any indication..."

"Shitty fucking system," Misa muttered, then nodded to Sev. "I'm ready if anything happens. Go for it."

Sev nodded. He hit the 'Accept' on the notification, and paused as the text flickered.

Processing...

"...Okay. It says it's processing," Sev said, feeling vaguely disappointed. He'd been expecting something more dramatic to happen. Maybe it'd happen later?

"Should've expected that," Misa grumbled. "Like I said. Shitty system. While we're at it, though..." Misa gestured at where she was keeping the spark. "What the fuck is this thing? The system's not displaying the text correctly for any of you, is it?"

"It is not," Derivan said. "Though the text has been changing every so often."

"I've noticed that too," Vex said with a frown. "If something's trying to hide the words from us, it's not doing it very well. We've seen a few different letters already. First word starts with an R and ends with a Y, second word starts with an A and ends in an R."

"You were paying attention?" Misa blinked at the lizardkin. "There was... a lot of shit going down. I didn't really note them down."

"I like puzzles," Vex answered with a slightly embarrassed shrug and grin. "There's not a lot of words that make sense as the first one. I think 'reality' makes the most sense, given what it's doing. The second..."

"There's a few that would work, I think," Sev said. "Uh... Author. Avatar?"

"Abuser," Misa suggested with a smirk. "Reality Abuser would fit."

"That feels a little on the nose," Vex said with a chuckle.

"Anchor, perhaps?" Derivan suggested. "[X-51 Reality Anchor] would make a certain amount of sense—"

Derivan paused as he spoke, feeling a strange reverberation echo through his armor as he spoke the words, like they had some sort of significance. He looked at his friends carefully, worried that yet another infolock had come into play — but they all seemed to have registered what he'd said just fine.

"[X-51 Reality Anchor]..." Vex tested out the words, frowning. "I guess that's... right? Based on what the system is doing to the words? But I dunno what that means. That term hasn't come up in Elyra's research into dungeons before."

"What would a reality anchor do?" Sev asked. "Theoretically."

"Anchor reality, based on the name," Vex said with a half-grin, making Sev frown at him. He chuckled, then shrugged. "I don't know, but it'd explain some of the notifications we got. And maybe what happened to the dungeon? If every dungeon has one of those..."

"Perhaps the dungeon collapsed because the anchor that was holding it in place was broken," Derivan suggested. "But we do not know what the anchors do, precisely, Only that your villagers are now tied to it in some way."

Vex shook his head. "Let's go back to the beginning and go over what we know. We can throw out ideas once we're all on the same page, and we can make sure we all have the same information. What did you see, when we first found the reality anchor?"

"It was sitting on a pedestal of crystal," Misa said. "It was glowing, and there was a stream of light going from it into one of those specks of light in the void. Uh... I don't know how to explain it, but it felt like the light led to J'rokksur? Or a version of it."

"There was a notification about how the reality anchor was failing," Sev offered. "Something about low integrity, and destabilization."

"The dungeon that that anchor was attached to was destabilizing, and that led to a dungeon break," Vex theorized. "Good enough for a starting theory, I think?"

"There's more," Misa said. She shook her head slightly — even now, the memories of what she'd seen were unpleasant. "You saw what happened with my family getting hurt. Those were the same injuries they had... the first time."

She grimaced a little, muttering to herself. "Fucking system," she said. "Or anchor. Whatever."

The others winced in sympathy. They'd seen the injuries, but they hadn't known the cause, and certainly hadn't known that the people in J'rokksur were re-experiencing the injuries that had killed them.

"You healed them later, right?" Sev asked. "I managed to keep them stable with my healing, but it wasn't what did most of the work. How did you manage to reverse the effect?"

"[Guardian's Premonition]," Misa answered. "It kind of... guided me, I guess, into using the anchor? I focused on my memories of the village when it was still alive and well..."

She fell silent for a moment.

"I am sorry so much of this made you relive your past," Derivan said, his voice sympathetic. Misa sighed, not replying for a moment — then forced herself to exhale in a laugh.

"I mean, it ended better than I could've fuckin' hoped," she said, forcing herself to smile. "Yeah, some of that was kinda shitty, and I'm going to have some nightmares. I don't give a shit. I'll talk to the Guild therapist if you guys make me. But I have my family back again, and that's..."

"Far more important?" Sev offered.

"So much more," Misa said, shaking her head. "Then there was a message about how I 'synchronized' with the anchor, and that seemed to sort of... heal people. Or reverse their injuries. I dunno."

"We might have to talk to your parents a bit more for that one," Sev said. "Find out what it felt like on their end."

"So they're [Reality Anchor]s and you can synchronize with them," Vex said. "Presumably, X-51 is linked to your village in some way, and synchronizing with it somehow damaged the B-63 anchor. No two coexisting anchors, or something like that?"

"Something like that," Sev agreed. "Obviously they manipulate reality in some way... maybe they anchor dungeons, let them have all the strange effects."

"It would not explain the people of J'rokksur," Derivan said, and they fell silent at that. Misa in particular seemed to be lost in thought for a moment, prompting Sev to look at her.

"You're going to want to spend some time with your family, right?" he asked quietly.

"I mean, of course," Misa snorted. Then she glared at him. "Don't think you fuckers have gotten rid of me, though. Just because I have 'em back doesn't mean I want to stay put with them. We gotta figure out this anchor thing, make sure we fix it in time for them, and we gotta figure out a bunch of other stuff too. Like the guy who attacked the delvers in that dungeon."

Sev smiled a bit as she started to speak, but he frowned when she mentioned the man in the dungeon. "I almost forgot about him."

Misa snorted. "I fuckin' didn't."

"Are we sure he's still around?" Vex asked. "I mean, if the dungeon got destroyed..."

"But it didn't," Misa pointed out. "The notification said the dungeon's been redistributed, whatever the fuck that means."

"To the Major Anchors," Derivan said.

"Major Anchors..." Vex mused out loud. "...That's got to be the Kingdom dungeons, right?"

Sev paused. "Now that you mention it," he said. "They're the biggest dungeons we know of, and there are three of them."

"The dungeons on the outskirts are bigger," Misa pointed out.

"But those ones are broken," Sev said, shaking his head. "If we're right about reality anchors, then dungeon breaks happen when those anchors start to fail. Those dungeons wouldn't have working anchors anymore. The largest functioning anchors would have to be the ones in each of the Prime Kingdoms."

"We did not get a dungeon break here, though," Derivan said.

"The anchor was broken suddenly," Sev said. "With the J'rokksur dungeon the anchor was failing, but it wasn't broken, and the dungeon break was already happening. So maybe it's just a process that starts when the anchor starts to break..."

"We're speculating too much," Vex said with a shake of his head. "We've got some answers, but not all of them. The notification said system users would be alerted, so I think we'll know if the Kingdom dungeons are the ones that this dungeon was 'redistributed' to."

"And whoever that was, it's probably best to assume he's not dead," Misa added grimly. "If he was telling the truth, he's been alive for hundreds of years. A small snap in reality probably won't kill him."

"He might even know what's going on," Vex said quietly. He sighed. "We're going to have to get authorization to explore every one of those dungeons, aren't we."

Vex looked, perhaps unsurprisingly, quite reluctant. He hadn't exactly hidden his distaste for Elyra, and the worry he had about it was clear. "And it's probably going to have to be Elyra first, considering everything that happened."

"...Probably," Sev said with a slight wince. "Are you okay with that?"

"If you are not," Derivan said. "We will figure out another solution."

Sev glared at Derivan a little over Vex's head — there wasn't another solution; not really. Making promises they couldn't keep wasn't something they were in the habit of doing. Vex seemed vaguely comforted by the words, anyway, and leaned into Derivan as he considered it for a while. The armor didn't seem to mind.

"...I'll have to face it sooner or later, right?" Vex eventually said, his voice quiet. "It's not going to go away. And I'm on a deadline as far as going back to Elyra goes, anyway."

"Do I need to punch someone?" Misa asked. "Because if you need me to punch someone, I am there."

Vex laughed slightly at that, unable to help the slight smile that crossed his face. "Yeah, I'm aware," he said, shaking his head. "I don't think punching anyone is going to help in this case.

"Uh... We might need to kidnap someone, though."

"Kidnap?" Misa narrowed her eyes, considering this for a moment, then nodded. "I mean, if you say we need to do it, I'm ready to do crimes."

"We should really be asking more questions," Sev said dryly, but he was notably also not protesting.

"If Vex believes we must do crime, then I am inclined to believe we must do crime," Derivan said without a trace of irony.

Vex couldn't help but laugh outright, the little bit of melancholy he had turning into mirth; what tension he had dissolved out of him.

"You guys have a knack for making me feel like everything's going to be okay," he finally said, smiling a small smile. "Just... thanks."