Chapter 44: Hints Towards an Answer

Misa stared at the spark for a moment, nonplussed and unsure what to do. Part of her almost instinctively searched for a system notification to explain what was happening — but there was nothing. Just the gentle pulsing of the spark in her hand. There was no hint from [Guardian's Premonition] here, either; her village felt... safe. At least for the time being.

"Um... Do we know what it's doing?" Vex's tail swished nervously behind him.

"Nope," Misa said. "No notifications, either. It's just... glowing."

"What did you do with it before?" Sev asked.

"I just... remembered my village." Misa's voice went soft for a moment. "Not as they were when they... when the dungeon break happened. Before that. I remembered what we were. What we should have been."

The glow pulsed brighter. And there was wind, Misa realized suddenly; wind that hadn't been there before. Or something that seemed very much like wind, in any case. The prismatic cobwebs they were surrounded by were all swaying, like they were being pulled by some unseen force.

Misa shifted the spark experimentally, stepping to the left. The movement of the webs followed her.

"It's... drawing in the webs?" she said hesitantly.

B-63 ####### #####R integrity failing. Conflict detected. Calling for administrator assistance...

Unable to contact administrator. No fallback mechanisms found. Unable to compensate.

B-63 ####### #####R integrity is at 97%.

"That's not ominous at all," Misa muttered. She glanced to her companions. "You guys can see those too, right?"

"Yup," Sev said.

"Definitely," Vex added, staring at them a little wide-eyed.

"They are rather concerning," Derivan agreed.

"Glad it's not just me," Misa muttered, and then she glanced away from the spark and back towards Aurum. "Hey, um... Aurum. Are you doing alright?"

There was no answer. The god curled in tighter on himself, if anything, and refused to give a response. Misa grimaced slightly — he'd wanted any form of companionship not too long ago — but she understood. She remembered where she'd been just after she'd lost her village; this wasn't exactly the same thing, but if Aurum was as much of a child as he seemed...

"We have to try something," Sev said softly, and Misa nodded.

"Even if we left now," she said out loud — more to convince herself than anything, it seemed. "We'd be stuck in the bonus room. We can't keep ourselves in there forever. We came in here to get answers, and so far all we've gotten is more questions..."

"We need a lead," Vex said. "And I think we might have to take a risk here. Just... slowly."

"If there is a problem, I can get us out of here quickly," Derivan said.

Misa finally nodded. But it was still with some trepidation that she reached out with the spark she was holding, and let the corner of the closest prismatic web touch the very edges of it —

— the pull that was drawing in all the broken fragments of color suddenly became much, much stronger.

It was strong enough that Misa felt herself getting dragged forward, even though she wasn't holding a particularly tight grip on the spark; Sev, Derivan, and Vex were all resisting a pull of some kind, too, although it seemed to be strongest on her. But she couldn't spare a thought for them, because she was suddenly filled with the impression that she couldn't stop this even if she wanted to; that this would have happened the moment the spark began to glow.

No. Before that. The moment she had synchronized with it, and that notification had popped up. The moment she'd used it to save her family, and everyone in her old town.

She didn't regret a second of it. She had no damn idea what was happening, but she still glared up into the wind-that-wasn't-wind.

"Bring it on," she whispered.

Those words, too, were lost to the wind.

X-51 ####### #####R synchronization has reached 75%!

B-63 ####### #####R integrity is at 72%.

X-51 ####### #####R integrity is at 29%.

There was a rush of those webs being drawn into the #####R she was holding, the glow growing brighter and brighter with every web that got sucked in. She got the impression that the spark was growing smaller, too — not that it was getting weaker, but that it was getting more compressed. It was starting to feel heavier, too, with every web that was drawn in —

"Guys?" Aurum's voice suddenly cut through the wind. It didn't die down, exactly; the wind was as strong as ever, and every web was still being pulled in with tremendous force. The sticky panels of prismatic light on Aurum were pulling away, though, peeling off and starting to soar through the air towards the spark. "What's— what's happening?"

"It'll be okay!" Misa called out, gritting her teeth. "Don't worry! We're going to get you out of here!"

Aurum looked up from where he'd curled up into himself. His frame seemed terribly small, for all that he was an enormous figure in the distance, and his voice echoed with a tiny hope. "Really?"

"Of course!" Misa shouted back. It was with a confidence she didn't really feel. But Aurum seemed to be able to move more freely, now, so whatever was happening... it seemed to be a good thing.

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She hoped it was a good thing.

The webs kept getting pulled in, and the notifications piled up; she dismissed the ones that all functionally said the same thing. B-63's integrity was failing, whatever that meant, and X-51's integrity was going up. Whatever that meant. Evacuation notices came and went, but all she knew was that X-51 was the shard she was holding on to, and that perhaps it being repaired was a good thing —

B-63 ####### #####R integrity is at 5%! Sapients detected within B-63 boundaries. Initiating emergency evacuation and connecting all functional nodes to nearest ######## #####R.

The pull abruptly stopped. The spark in her hand shone with a light so bright that it was nearly impossible for her to look at it — it blazed like a tiny sun in her hands, and she had to force herself to look away. She knew without looking that whatever had just happened had repaired it.

She also knew that something was happening to the very fabric of the space they were standing in.

Derivan shouted something, but she couldn't hear what he said; it was like her ears were filled with water. Vex's eyes were wide, and he was cutting runes rapidly into the air, like he was trying to protect them against something. Sev's eyes were narrowed in concentration, and a divine glow was rising up around them, like he was healing them with everything he had.

Misa tried to block. She didn't know what was happening, but if her friends were reacting this way, then there had to be something she could block, right?

But nothing happened.

She didn't know why she was having so much trouble processing everything that was happening, either. But she watched, feeling like she was moving in slow motion, as Vex cast not a shield but a platform, and Derivan ran down to grab just the edge of Aurum's robes; she saw Sev's magic encase all of them in separate, individual bubbles.

She saw black, all-encompassing cracks suddenly spiderweb through space, sparing only anything the four of them touched.

No reaction from [Guardian's Premonition], though. She only hoped it meant her village was safe.

Misa was... somewhere.

Or perhaps she was nowhere.

Her friends were with her, she knew that much. She couldn't see them, but she felt their presence. One of them was anxiously coiled, another firm and steady, and the last one nervous but unafraid.

Someone spoke. They spoke in worried tones of gravel and granite; of roughly-hewn rock shaped into perfection. "You shouldn't be here," the voice told them. "You aren't ready for this. How did you... Oh, no."

"Another piece has been lost," a softer, quieter voice said. This one spoke with tones of falling water and refracted light. "They cannot see yet. They aren't ready."

"Can you remember?" the first voice spoke to them. "You must try. The answers cannot be given to you, for those answers are already gone, and recently; you can only feel the shape of the holes they left behind. We had hoped things would be different in this pocket... that a piece of what was would help you find what used to be. But it does not seem to have worked."

Misa was silent. She had no answer.

Sev was less silent.

"Onyx, is that you?" the cleric's incredulous voice echoed in the not-space of wherever the fuck they were. The words were like a jolt to her psyche; she felt herself return, her mind pulled back from the strangely dissociated space she'd found herself in. "You know I hate it when you're cryptic. Just tell us."

"I— I literally cannot do that," Onyx said, and he sounded like he'd been caught off guard, along with some combination of exasperated and amused. Maybe a touch of fondness, along with a hint of sadness. "I have tried. Three times."

"You have?" Sev asked, sounding confused. And then, perhaps a little less confused: "I thought I'd need to rescue you. Are you okay... here? Wherever here is?"

"I am still in need of rescue, alas," Onyx said, a touch of dryness entering his tone. "But you have time to rescue me yet. Do not worry yourself about me overmuch. I know the sight of me must have been worrying, and I apologize, for there was little I could do..."

"Onyx, if you apologize because someone else chained you up, I'm going to find a way to save you just so I can beat you in chess."

"You have never beaten me in chess."

"That's the part you find unbelievable?"

"Have you seen what you and your team have been doing lately?" Onyx's voice slid back into that amused fondness.

"Enough of this," the second voice cut in — the one that sounded like waterfalls and light. "We don't have time for this banter. They can't stay here long. They need to go back."

"Um... how do we do that?" Vex's voice spoke up, this time, sounding timid.

"Your friend just has to wish for it," Onyx told them.

"Me?" Misa asked hesitantly.

"No," Onyx said, and he gestured to the steady presence that was Derivan. The gesture was more of a feeling than anything physical. "You. Shift."

"...Ah," Derivan said quietly. He sounded distracted, but his voice sharpened a moment later. "There is nothing more you can tell us?"

"Nothing more," Onyx said.

"We will come back for you," Derivan said, his voice sincere. He focused for a moment, or he gave off the impression that he was. And then there was a sharp pulse —

— and they were staring at the night sky. The moon hung in the air amid the void, staring at them in a way that was almost accusatory.

The dungeon was gone. The research team was in the distance, and there were sounds of shouting and panic filling the air.

In front of them, a long string of notifications piled quickly, one over the other, almost too quick to read.

More important than anything else for Misa, though, were the dozens of people just behind them. She'd scarcely had the time to notice them at all before Orkas and Charise both burst through the crowd and grabbed her in a great hug.

And for a small, infinitely valuable moment, nothing else mattered.

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