I share a stunned look with Alix. There’s a woman thirty meters away, casually holding a weapon that can shoot straight through an elephant sized stone-beast, and she knows us.

She turns around and bows to someone out of sight. In the silent tunnel, I can just barely hear her say something but even with our recent progress in body enhancement, neither me nor Bob have the time to boost my hearing before she’s done talking.

What I do hear, over the sound of my still pounding heart, is a rough tongue of clicking and rasping sounds. It sounds … perhaps like German, if a garbage compactor tried to speak it by crunching metals. Then three alien looking creatures moved towards the slain beast. Just like the woman did earlier, they walk out from the very tunnel it left in its wake. They are tall and spindly, almost humanoid but not quite, with two pairs of arms and a thick tail that keeps their body balanced despite leaning heavily forward. I can’t make out any other detail, except how colorful their clothes are.

“Well, don’t be strangers now, we’re not going to scream at each other all day!” Says the girl when she sees we stayed rooted in place. I can practically hear a slightly mocking smile in her voice.

“Before that. Who are you, and why do you know us?”

Alix yelling right next to me with my hearing still boosted is as pleasant as you can imagine. I wince and shake my head to break the effect of the buff immediately after setting it up. I feel like this is happening everytime.

“Fine, I’ll walk over there then.” The woman quickly starts crossing the distance as one of the creatures behind her watches with what is probably curiosity but might just be protectiveness.

“She’s definitely from home, let’s not do anything rash.” I say to the very tense Alix next to me.

I wait in that particular awkwardness of having nothing to do while somebody I'm waiting for walks my way. It does give me the chance to take a better look at her. She has black hair styled in a long version of a pixie cut. She’s wearing jeans but her top is decidedly not from Earth, it’s made of colorful stripes sewn together in a somewhat layered way, leaving her arms mostly bare. She’s quite fleet footed, moving with grace on the uneven floor of the cave, and rather tall for a woman : she doesn’t have to look up when she’s close enough to meet my eyes with her own pale blue gaze and a cheeky smile.

“Now, I’m not surprised about Alix being an ass, but I expected better from you Marc. What’s with the stupid ‘we’re strangers’ joke? I mean, I know I’ve changed a bit… But still.”

Well, this is awkward.

“It’s not a joke, we don’t remember you. Didn’t the unknown context modifier make you forget about us?” I carefully say.

She recoils a little in surprise as Alix adds

“Yeah, we didn’t remember about each other from before entering the Study either, we met just a few days ago. A week or so right Marc?” I nod along as he speaks

“So… You don’t know a thing about me? I could tell you my name’s Cleopatra and you wouldn’t know any better?”

“Well, not if you say it like that obviously.”

She looks at us in disbelief, then starts snickering before it goes into a full out laugh.

“Okay, okay, sorry, it’s just...” a glance at our sour faces has her laughing some more “This is probably not fun at all for you.” She keeps going though, but her amusement eventually turns more thoughtful “I don’t know why you have this memory issue, we all had the unknown context thing but I definitely remember everything up to when we went to sleep in the pods. It’s been a bit of a pain having to learn from the Cricks all the basics the system usually provides, but overall, just an annoyance.”

“The… pods?” I ask

“Oh dear, you don’t remember the pods? You missed a sick piece of tech.”

“Just tell us who you are already!” Says Alix.

“Right, right, well, I met Marc back in college, and I met you about eight months back, shortly before we decided to go in the study with the three of us. Nice to meet you again, I guess. I’m Sophie.” She says with a smirk.

For some reason, it seems her name ticks Alix off as he visibly tenses up. But he doesn’t react any further.

“Oh, you’re no fun. Fine, my real name is Camille.”

Well now I’m wondering who Sophie was…

I did know another Camille from college but I’m looking at the wrong gender, and I can’t imagine in what kind of circumstances he would have walked into the Study with us anyway. “Well, I’m sorry to say that, but I don’t have any memory of you.”

Could we be missing some context on the Camille you do remember?

I'll have to rack my brain for inconsistencies again I guess, how fun.

“Nice to meet you. Why don’t you tell us more about those creepy things up there? You called them the Cricks?” Alix asks, pointing to the creatures busy using long blades covered in glowing symbols to harvest chunksof the body of the monster.

“Oh, sure. Well, they are fairly friendly in spite of their weirdness. I mean, they don't even have genders! They don't look like it but they are basically sentient mushrooms as far as I can tell. Anyway, I woke up in the Study deeper underground, pretty close to the city of the Bloodstone clan. They are really well adapted to living underground and their tech is pretty nice, mostly running on magic but I’ve been bringing some extra progress. Oh, crick isn’t the actual name of their species, I came up with that because the real one is impossible to pronounce. We should probably go introduce you two. And don’t cross your arms while staring at one of them, it’s pretty offensive, basically a challenge.”

I shared a look with Alix and he shrugged. Guess we’re trusting the new girl. Somehow, she does feel reliable to me, in spite of her antics.

Camille brazenly leads us up next to the slumped mass of the creature on which the three cricks are working. Her eyes flash in a silver gray and the familiar translation notice drifts into my mind. Because of course she’s past level 5 and has it unlocked.

“Hey folks, allow me to introduce Marc and Alix. They are the ones I’d been looking for!”

One of them answers without interrupting their work, prying out the scales of the beast to reach the softer flesh below. “Nice to meet, friends of friend. I’m Haskrurhk, leader of this Varkh hunt.” Their faces are awfully expressionless, and all tone of voice is lost in the system translation.

I fight back a sigh. This is going to be difficult.

- - -

The sight has both me and Alix speechless.

We've climbed down for a couple of hours in the claustrophobic tunnel left behind by the Varkh (looking at it closer, and not panicking, it was definitely similar to a giant pangolin), ironically carrying back quite a lot of chunks of the beast through the tunnel it built. Eventually, we crossed into proper caves, a few caverns where we met numerous Cricks, and aminute ago, we finally reached an opening high above Khyr-Zhur, the main city of the Bloodstone clan.

It fills a huge cavern of pale stone. Buildings and carved structures cover the ground, wall and even roofs while great bridges link distant points. Everything is mostly lit by a trio of absolutely massive red crystals embedded in the roof. Dozens of meters of rock shining in an angry light that is somewhat softened by the countless crystals that adorn the beautiful buildings of the Cricks.

And they are really amazing. Everything is carved stone, expansive and intricately decorated mansions are hugging the walls. Large workshops full of workers and wares are on the bottom left side from here, melding into a commercial district full of permanent stalls. Enormous columns at least 50 meters tall link the ground and the roof, where many smaller houses are built.

After giving her farewells to Haskrurhk and the other two hunters, Camille leads us to a path running about halfway up along the wall of the cavern. Down in the busy streets of the city, people in colorful clothers are moving with purpose in all directions, many of them carrying heavy bags filled with goods. Occasionally, I spot a Crick that is clearly a fighter, fitted in heavy armor, or proudly carrying weapons.

“I’ll bring you guys to the clan elders. They might want to bring you up to speed about the war.”

Both me and Alix stop dead in our tracks. The what now ?