“This is bad” Rahlin rumbled, clenching and unclenching his red-scaled fists as a steady stream of nervous smoke trickled from either side of his toothed muzzle. The clean spring air dispersed the smoke rapidly, but it only served to shroud the tall Dragonborn in a cloud of gray.

“Told ya you’d want to see this for yourself,” Chaeli shrugged as she idly flicked stones into the perfectly smooth surface of Mirror Lake. The crystal-clear waters rippled with each stone but the plucky Warforged had long since grown beyond the fear of the depths, and that was before she had officially become an adult slightly more than two weeks past. Besides, nothing lived in the lake anymore. Not even the dungeon reset could keep the freshly spawned low-leveled leviathans alive for long in the corrupted waters.

Her gear had improved since the great battle with the Wendigo, but only marginally. A helmet of stygian iron covered her wooden face and a shiny new breastplate protected her chest but otherwise she wore the same polished gear as before. An air of boredom hung about her, pushing her shoulders down and granting her a downcast look, as if the mysteries of adulthood had not excited her nearly as much as she had expected they would.

“This is far worse than bad. It is terrible, intolerable, apocalyptic.”

The third voice belonged to a creature of the void. Standing as tall as the broad shouldered Dragonborn, but with not nearly as much movement as his longtime friend. All parts of the Yawm were still, except for a sea of shifting purple tendrils that danced over the surface of his skin like sea anemones do the tide. It was a hypnotic sight, ever shifting and changing like much of the void, yet to those in the know, the stillness coupled with the chaotic patterns were signs of a deep-rooted fear.

“Calm yourself, Gar-Khan,” Rahlin rumbled turning from the spreading blight to place a meaty palm on the Yawm’s shoulder, taking care to avoid the massive eyeball sprouting therein. “It mightn’t be as bad as it looks.”

Gar-Khan shrugged off the Dragonborn’s claw, a ripple of distaste flickering over his significant beard. “Dire, grave, and vile. You fail to understand the gravity of the situation. With the curse of the chaos biome spreading, soon none of the dungeon will be inhabitable. Or have you forgotten.”

Gar-Khan stepped forward and dipped his purple digitigrade toes into the clear waters. A hiss sounded and smoke rose from the mirrored surface. With a grimace he pulled his blackened, burnt toes out. They stunk of rot and decay, dripping a foul ichor that aggravated the wound and drained its host of precious liquids. The group watched the rotted toe for several moments, and even Chaeli’s nonchalance was temporarily forgotten as the injury refused to heal despite the Yawm’s sizable regeneration.

With a sigh, Gar-Khan turned to Rahlin and flicked his beard. The Dragonborn nodded, and Gar-Khan drew one of his wands an unleashed a lazy bolt of purple-black energy. It struck Rahlin in the chest and visibly withered his glittering scales, before the Dragonborn’s own regeneration kicked in and restored their luster. Streams of purple motes floated back to the Yawm and sunk under his skin. He glowed with stolen vitality, relaxing into his magic as the pain from the injury faded. The wave of vigor spread down his leg and the withered skin around his toe lost its pallor and sealed up.

Gar-Khan flicked his toe, casting the remaining foul ichor covering his foot to fall into the lake. The drops pattered over the mirrored surface, and sunk beneath the depths, accentuating the silence.

“We will all perish.”

The silence stagnated like a fetid swamp. Seeping into the three’s thoughts and darkening their horizon with its dark tidings.

“Sooty’s Hell is free of the Guardian’s curse,” Rahlin rumbled, breaking the silence. “We could shelter there until Cankerton can break the Desecrator.”

“Even if we would be willing to brave the heat, and even if Cankerton can pull through, that cavern is not nearly large enough to house all of Teluria. We would need to reside, lodge, and live in the tunnels. Something...” Gar-Khan trailed off, his many eyes slipping closed as his beard curled. There was much left unsaid, least of which was how much they would be leaving behind. The dungeon had not been kind, but their little group of survivors had eeked out a home on Mount Teluria. They’d built their homes, managed around the roving guardian, and even learned how to keep the reset from destroying all their progress.

Leaving all that behind would be...difficult.

“We’d need to go through the Wyrm Tunnels, but should be doable.” Chaeli chimed in, glancing from Rahlin to Gar-Khan and back again.

Rahlin stepped up to Gar-Khan’s shoulder, forcing the large eye to open and look at him. “The boy—”

“Lazy bum,” Chaeli muttered turning away from the two adults and resuming her game of skipping stones.

“—managed to clear a guardian’s influence once. Perhaps he can do so again?” Rahlin finished, ignoring the spurned Warforged.

“His prying, poking, meddling was what got us into this mess in the first place.”

“And he got us out without a single casualty.” Rahlin leaned back, a tired expression drawing down the creases around his eyes. “Trust him a little, old friend. A candle and a grinder or waterfall or whatever you used to say. While he is here. While he is with us. Let him burn bright.”

Gar-Khan turned his large gaze upon Rahlin. He studied him, searching deep within his eyes, and somehow seeing more that was readily available. After several solid seconds of contemplation, the old Yawm turned from the corrupted lake and strode to the stairs leading up the side of Mount Teluria.

“Get the human if you will. I will begin preparations to save our people. Let us hope he is as much of a hero as you believe him to be.”

“Holy Smackeral!” Chilly said stretching his arms back until his shoulders popped. “That took forever!”

“Watch your language.” An elvish maiden let out a tinkling laugh from her perch on a padded stool beside the window. “And it did not take forever. It took two weeks.”

“And thousands of essences. No! Tens of thousands—hundreds of thousands of essences!” Chilly got up but then immediately plopped back down, admiring his creation. Or should he say creations. Before him lay a complete set of new armor and weapons, barring the necklace which he wasn’t willing to change even if he could get better stats on a higher leveled one.

“Oh shush, you. I told you it was possible and you did it.”

“Yeah, but at what cost.” Chilly groaned, covering his face with both hands, which only elicited a springtime giggle from the elf. Chilly smiled in return and gazed once more at the equipment. “Yeah I guess I did, though I swear I won’t ever do that again. If I ever find the person who came up with the idea of essences I’m going to strangle them. I mean honestly. Random mods. Every. Time. Ridiculous.”

“So you’ll pick a fight with the Goddess herself?” Teluria smirked, glancing over her teacup with sparkling eyes.

A penguin appeared at his side in a puff of smoke and looked at Chilly with somber eyes.

“Fight well,” it said while patting his knee in consolation. Then the penguin smirked and vanished in a puff of smoke.

Chilly froze, staring at the penguin’s afterimage for a second trying to deduce whether there really was a Goddess and if he had pissed her off with that remark.

“Uh...” he trailed off.

“Are the penguins back? How are they doing by the way?”

Well assuming he wasn’t smited he would assume that the Goddess wasn’t going to take his little remark personally.

“Uh, yeah, apparently. How are you doing guys, long time no speak.” Chilly said, turning to the penguins. They had gone silent just over two weeks ago, though they still followed him around. It wasn’t much of a surprise, really, considering all he had been doing was relaxing in Teluria and farming essences from the Frozen Wastes in order to craft his new gear. He didn’t blame them, but it was still nice to have them back.

A penguin got up from one of the unoccupied chairs and smiled happily at Chilly.

“Thanks for the chapter!” It chirped cheerfully, waving a flipper and causing its whole upper body to tilt precariously to one side.

Chilly smiled, “they are doing great. Hopefully with this armor set done I’ll get back to doing more interesting things for y’all to enjoy, hmm?”

The penguins all nodded in agreement as if saying that, yes. The last couple weeks had been extremely boring.

Chilly chuckled, “That’s good, I’m glad the armor is finally done then.”

“You actually got lucky, even with Branding, I would have expected at least another several hundred attempts on average.”

“The flames favor you.”

“The stars illuminate your path.”

Chilly nodded, “well thanks for giving me good luck then. I don’t think I could have survived if I had to push another couple hundred or more essences into that set.

“Thanks for the chapter.” Mr. Quasar agreed and vanished in a puff of rapidly dissipating black smoke.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Teluria said. “Go on. Try it on.”

Chilly grinned, and dragged over a paper dividing wall. He had switched his armor out for more comfortable fabric garments but even though the cloth would probably make the armor more comfortable, he wouldn’t be able to use it during combat since the fabric wouldn’t regenerate if it got damaged mid fight.

He shucked off his clothes and tossed them over the divider, then reached out and started putting on the armor.

Steel Tassets

Rare

Pants

iLevel: 19

48 armor

249 life

57 armor [Brand]

30.03% increased armor [Brand]

30% increased effect of Aegis Aurora [Brand]

Steel Plate Vest

Rare

Body Armor

iLevel: 19

48 armor

257 life [Brand]

56 armor [Brand]

29.88% increased armor

30% increased effect of Aegis Aurora [Brand]

Steel Gauntlets

Rare

Gloves

iLevel: 19

48 armor

251 life [Brand]

57 armor

38.34% increased life [Brand]

30% increased effect of Aegis Aurora [Brand]

He had opted for Steel equipment rather than Living Steel in an effort to maximize his armor. While getting ridiculous quantities of life would be amazing - for both defense and offense - he couldn’t help the allure of leaning heavily into life recovery effect of Aegis Aurora that scaled with the amount of armor he had.

Plus, and this was perhaps a rather silly reason, he wanted to experiment with a new skill and see how far he could take it. Stacking life all the time was fine, but with the loss of Vitality it wasn't as amazing as it could be. Instead of getting 13 life for every 10 points he got on gear, he was only getting that original ten. It wasn’t such an insane difference when he thought about it that way, but it did mean that until he leveled some more he wouldn’t be reaching the heights of life he had during the Wendigo fight.

That didn’t mean that he would forgo life entirely and since there were diminishing returns on stacking increased armor, it worked nicely. Namely that the first 100% increased armor doubled his armor, while he would need an additional 200% increased armor to once again double his armor.

Steel Barbute

Rare

Helmet

iLevel: 19

48 armor

254 life

57 armor [Brand]

30.21% increased armor [Brand]

30% increased effect of Ashes of the Stars [Brand]

Steel Greaves

Rare

Boots

iLevel: 19

48 armor

251 life

55 armor [Brand]

37.83% increased life [Brand]

30% increased effect of Ashes of the Stars [Brand]

With the use of Essences of Branding the crafting process had become trivial. By having the ability to lock in a mod, he was able to continually randomize the unlocked mods until he had the exact perfect set that he wanted. Still, it had taken far longer than it should have mostly due to Chilly’s stubbornness to get the perfect rolls, and even then he hadn’t managed to get completely perfect on everything. The individual details didn’t matter all that much before now, but as he experimented more and more during this week by throwing literally thousands of essences at gear he realized that the difference between a low roll and a high one could be as much as 40%. As in, at level 19, life could roll from around 170 to 258. That was a criminal level of power wasted and it niggled at Chilly’s sensibilities not to have perfect or near perfect rolls on his gear.

The most important of which was the increased skill effect. He had decided to only run one skill effect mod on his gear for the same reason he wasn’t running double armor mods on all the pieces. Since the maximum roll for skill effect was 30% regardless of item level, stacking too much would yield quite horrendous diminishing returns. As a compromise, Chilly had settled for choosing three skills and augmenting them as much as was reasonable across his gear.

He had considered other mods, namely Sap and Drain resistance which both crippled his survivability, but decided in the end that it wasn’t worth investing too heavily into them. Sap wouldn’t be an issue since Aegis Aurora’s healing effect didn’t technically count as a regeneration, but Drain was more of a problem. Long conversations with Teluria and the other members of the mountain village revealed that the chaos biome had serious quantities of those two ailments, but the lightning biome was relatively free. Shock would be a problem as it directly increased the amount of damage he would take, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as Drain and spamming life and armor would likely be better than focusing on a specific resistance.

The issue arose from the limit of mods he could get. Rare items could only support four mods at a time, and with so many mods being mandatory it was hard to find a place to put specific mods like drain resistance in a way that wouldn’t compromise the rest of his build. After all, he couldn’t guarantee that he would always fight an enemy that could drain him and when he wasn’t the mod was a complete waste.

That was where the Badge of the Brotherhood came in.

Badge of the Brotherhood

Legendary

Jewelry

iLevel: 12

Dimensional Vault

48 armor

112 life [Brand]

38 armor [Brand]

30% increased effect of Ashes of the Stars [Brand]

30% increased effect of Aegis Aurora [Brand]

30% increased effect of Smoldering Embers [Brand]

62 drain resistance

As a legendary item, Badge of the Brotherhood could hold 6 unique mods. It was a right hoot getting his “low” level rare essences to work on the legendary item but with the help of Sooty the Smith it worked out in the end. Annoyingly the item was only level 12 so the power of the mods was inferior but that only meant that he would abuse the fact that the increased skill effect mods had a static range regardless of item level.

This was also where he shoved drain resistance. It was significantly weaker than if he had put it on one of his main items but that was fine by him. Especially since he planned on upgrading his gear before he truly delved into the chaos biome.

Steel Kite Shield

Rare

Offhand

iLevel: 19

48 armor

258 life [Brand]

38.13% increased life [Brand]

57 armor [Brand]

30% increased effect of Smoldering Embers [Brand]

That left his shields. Or in this case his shield. He had opted for increased life instead of amor and increased effect of Smoldering Embers for a solid boost to his damage. But otherwise this piece of gear was more of the same as the rest of it.

All in all, making this gear wasn’t all that hard or time consuming, and if this was all he was making then it wouldn’t have taken him more than a couple days to complete the crafts. Hell, after he optimized gathering essences in the Frozen Wastes and gotten proficient at speed reading the mods before slamming another essence in he could probably recreate this gear set in under a day.

What took so long was Chilly’s last piece of gear. A measly level 7 scepter instead of a proper level 19 shield that Chilly had grown to hate with a passion the more it had refused to cooperate.

Black Steel Scepter

Rare

Mainhand

iLevel: 7

Adds 48-61 physical damage to melee hits

Adds 34-43 fire damage to melee hits

Inflicts Scorched on melee hit [Brand]

Inflicts Chill on melee hit [Brand]

Inflicts Weaken on melee hit [Brand]

Inflicts Shocked on melee hit [Brand]

It was a rod with a slightly bulbous tip made out of a reddish black metal that seemed to absorb the light. Three cruel flanges sprouted from the rounded tip and gave the scepter a sinister cast.

With a wide grin, Chilly straightened his armor and hefted his new scepter. He pulled up his interface and scrolled to a very particular augment that he had noticed on Aegis Aurora. Stunning Witness.

Stunning Witness:

To view the aurora is to be seen in turn.

Melee hits inflicted on you trigger your main hand weapon's attack at 40% effectiveness

He hadn’t thought much of the augment at the time but after learning of the possible mods that were possible on weapons he had basically jumped for joy. Now not only would he heal every time something hit him for a huge amount, but that something would be Scorched, Chilled, Weakened and Shocked making it weaker to fire damage, slower, deal less damage, and take more damage all at once. Unless the undead had ways of cleansing ailments they were basically already dead.

Chilly snickered at his own joke and pulled up his interface one more time. He wasn’t done yet with finalizing his build. He popped a couple Regret Essences and shuffled around his augments so that they looked like this:

Aegis Aurora : Born from the marriage of starlight and sky, the aurora evokes both awe and power.

Replenishes Life by 10% of armor when you are hit by enemy attacks

— — —

Resplendent Languor: Spread the beauty of the aurora such that even the impatient can appreciate. Inflict Torpor on melee enemies that hit you [Torpor: 50% increased skill cooldown]" Glorious Raiments: Further meld with the northern lights and empower your vestments with their majesty. 20% increased armor Stunning Witness: To view the aurora is to be seen in turn. Melee hits inflicted on you trigger your main hand weapon's attack at 40% effectiveness

Aegis Aurora would be the engine of his new build. With his newly stacked armor and his scepter he would jump right into enemy attacks and rather than get weakened by it, he would only grow stronger. Glorious Raiments would increase his armor by a small amount thereby increasing the healing, while Resplendent Languor and Stunning Witness would both aid in stacking ailments on his foes whenever they hit him.

Ashes of the Stars : Stardust gathers in your bones and acts as a catalyst to empower every other skill in your arsenal.

Neutronium Empowerment: You infuse your bones with the greatest of all the ashes of the stars, further enhancing your level 1 level Star Catalyst: All skills have the potential for greatness, most just need a little...help. 5% increased effect of all other skills Titan's Bone: Forged in the fires of stars, your bones gain unparalleled toughness Gain 1% increased life per level Starlit Marrow: Your connection with the stars, though ancient, spurs your blood to pulse and regenerate faster than ever before Gain 1% increased life regeneration per level

Ashes of the Stars was technically his second skill, but it was his most recently acquired one as well. A generic level up skill, and also one that he had invested quite heavily into skill effect on. That, in addition to Neutronium Empowerment should spike his level significantly. Since all his other skills scaled off of level that meant that he would gain an all around boost to everything. Star Catalyst would further enhance this boost, while Titan’s Bone and Starlit Marrow would hopefully recoup some of his life and regeneration that he had lost after giving up Vitality. It was all theoretical at this point since he hadn’t actually tried on his new armor yet, but the numbers added up.

Pious Path : Walk along the path of the holy. If the path does not exist, create it yourself.

While moving or stationary, consecrate the ground beneath your feet granting life regeneration to you and allies.

— — —

Militant Faith: Your faith burns every brighter, unchallenged by both blasphemers and undead alike. Consecrated Ground grants you an additional 2.5% of maximum life as life per second Radiant Faith: Your faith radiates with the power of your will, further enhancing any consecrated ground that you spread. 50% increased effect of Consecrated Ground Ceaseless Crusade: The path of the holy never truly ends. Consecrated Ground spreads at a rate of 1 m/s for 4 seconds upon creation

Pious Path was his oldest remaining skill and simply dropped consecrated ground at his feet wherever he went. Consecrated ground provided pretty significant regeneration - and was in fact his last source of skill based life regeneration - while also enabling some of his other skills. All the augments here were focused purely on enhancing the regeneration of the ground effect while also allowing it to spread to cover a larger radius.

Starfire Aegis : Cloak your form in starfire, granting you an intrinsic protection from the spark, and burning foes that strike you.

Coronal Mass Ejection: Your starfire burns ever hotter Deal 6% of maximum life as fire damage to melee attackers

Starfire Aegis was a slightly forgotten skill since the fire biome, and the chunk of fire resistance it granted hadn’t been all that useful recently. The other main effect of the skill was dealing damage whenever an enemy hit him, which should hopefully synergize well with his new strategy of hugging enemies to death. Most of the skill’s augments weren’t all that useful, but Coronal Mass Ejection would hopefully scale the reflected fire damage to reasonable levels. Since he had lost Vitality, there was not much point in taking Star Fuel - the augment that converted his life regeneration to a damaging aura.

Flame Dash :Dissolve your very essence into flames, allowing you to blink to a location within line of sight while leaving behind a trail of fire that burns enemies who walk over it

Second Wind: If you have not used a movement skill in the last 4 seconds you may bypass the cast time and cooldown of Flash Dash.

His main - and only - movement skill. Second Wind was required for fast reaction times and the way it allowed him to trigger the skill twice in rapid succession, but the other augments were otherwise unnecessary.

Chains of Subjugation : You have challenged an untenable foe in a battle of attrition, where your only desire was to subjugate the beast. You may now crystalize your frustration to better tackle such battles.

Next was Chains of Subjugation. This was his primary stop gap measure for hyper tough enemies but it hadn’t really worked out all that well so far. The skill was tough to use due to the relatively short range, and the one enemy that he had really needed it for - the Wendigo - had been too agile for the Chains to really build up in power. Overall there were some good augments here, but none that were immediately necessary.

Smoldering Embers : The fire you wield changes the very nature of spells you leave behind.

Ground effects you leave behind deal a percentage of your maximum life per second to enemies as fire damage

— — —

Fan the Flames: Embers inherent to your magic grow vigorous and smolder brighter. Ground effects you leave behind deal an additional 6% of your maximum life per second to enemies Thermal Accumulator: Embers in the ground empower other ground effects with their strength. 24% increased effect of ground effects Ember Proliferation: The nature of the flame is to spread Ground effects spread at a rate of 1 m/s for 4 seconds upon creation Aura of Rekindling: In every ember lies the potential of a phoenix. Ground effects grant 10% increased life to allies

Smoldering Embers was his primary damage source now. With the amount of ground effects he left behind it was capable of dealing a pretty massive portion of his life to nearby enemies as fire damage. Fan the Flames only exacerbated the damage, while Thermal Accumulator increased the effectiveness of his other ground effects. Ember Proliferation was a radius enhancement and could honestly go since his radius was so large anyway, but he enjoyed being protected in such a large sphere. Lastly Aura of Rekindling was a small boost to life not only to himself, but to any of his allies.

Mutagenic Engine : You have embraced the endless, ever changing void, becoming an agent of chaos as you spread mutagens into the ground and your foes.

While moving or stationary, create Irradiated Earth beneath your feet. [Irradiated Earth reduces all resistances of enemies by 10%, and increases all ally resistances by 10%]

— — —

Fragile Bonds: Destabilize elements with your will, spreading your contagion even further. 50% increased effect of Irradiated Earth Entropic Reversal: Entropy is neither good nor evil. It is the steady, inevitable loss of energy until no more remains. Enemies gain 1 stack of Irradiated per 10 seconds standing on Irradiated Earth [Irradiated: 2.5% less life regeneration per stack. 1m duration or until another stack is gained. Max 40 stacks.] Quantum Connection: You've taken the first step in becoming the master of your domain. You are aware of presences standing on Irradiated Earth you create

Mutagenic Engine was his last skill. It further enabled Smoldering Embers while strengthening allies and weakening enemies. Fragile Bonds was a simple enhancement to the skills power and was a no brainer for more resistances. Entropic Reversal on the other hand was his trump card. Chilly had encountered enemies in the past who were simply too tanky to kill because of the amount of life they regenerated per second. Overall his damage was fine to deal with regular enemies and with Entropic Reversal - and his allies - he was confident in taking on the rare hyper tanky enemy.

Chilly cracked his neck and finally pulled up his status.

Gregory “Chilly” Morhuil

Level

Exp

Skill Points

Spec

24.7 (19)

0/19

0

Baelfire

Life

Life Regeneration

5841/5841

1288.51

Armor

Fire

Cold

Lightning

Chaos

1920

95.05%

134

57.26%

0

0.00%

0

0.00%

0

0.00%

Aegis Aurora

Helmet:

Steel Barbute

Ashes of the Stars

Body Armor:

Steel Plate Vest

Pious Path

Pants:

Steel Tassets

Starfire Aegis

Boots:

Steel Greaves

Flame Dash

Gloves:

Steel Gauntlets

Chains of Subjugation

Jewelry:

Badge of the Brotherhood

Smoldering Embers

Mainhand:

Black Steel Scepter

Mutagenic Engine

Offhand:

Steel Kite Shield

Chilly broke out into mad laughter.

Not only had his life gotten higher than he had ever gotten it with Vitality, but his regeneration had almost reached the same heights. Sure, it was only around 20% of his life regenerated per second and not the 30%+ that he was rocking earlier, but in terms of pure numbers it was pretty significant. And that wasn’t even mentioning the 95% damage reduction he had for physical damage, and the fact that he healed....Chilly bit his lip as he did some quick maths...almost 600 life every time he took a hit.

“Good, is it?” Teluria murmured over her teacup.

“Oh yeah,” Chilly grinned to the elf. “Go on. Hit me. I don’t even think you could kill me even if you tried your hardest.”

Teluria raised a delicate eyebrow, “With no cold resistance?”

“With no cold resistance!” Chilly threw his head back laughing. “Go on! Hit me with all you got!”

“Perhaps outdoo—” Teluria started but was cutoff by stomping feet, and the door getting pushed open by a rather irritable Warforged.

“Did I hear we’re hitting Chilly?” Chaeli stormed into the room. “I’ve had a shit day and I totally volunteer to hi—hi—hiiii...” She trailed off and physically stumbled when her eyes fell on Chilly. Her eyes grew wide as saucers as her gaze raked over Chilly’s armored shoulders, down to his well defended glutes, before they finally settled on his rather unassuming scepter.

She gulped, a high blush rising to her cheeks visible through the thin slit of her visor and the few leaflets visible from underneath the helmets edge trembled in anticipation.

“You like my new gear?” Chilly said with a grin. “I just finished it now.”

“How did...you...where...uhm...hi?” Chaeli said, giving an awkward wave, eyes flashing from the scepter to Chilly face and back with almost manic fervor.

“It took forever to craft, but it should be good enough to tackle anything the dungeon throws at us.”

“Yeah...” Chaeli sighed, licking her lips, just as a penguin materialized on top of her helmet.

“It's been a long journey.”

“Right you are,” Chilly nodded, “but damn am I ready to go burn things other than overgrown dear and shellfish.”

Mr. Xenix grinned and hopped off Chaeli who was looking rather shell shocked at the moment.

“You quite alright, dear?” Teluria asked from her chair by the window, a knowing smile hidden behind her teacup.

“Wha...ye—uhm...yes. Totally.” She gulped again, eyes straying to Chilly’s armor before she caught herself and locked her eyes on the floor.

Chilly turned back to the workbench, oblivious, and began cleaning up the mess of spare essences and other paraphernalia. “Anyway, I was planning on heading out sometime in the next few days to explore the lightning biome. Maybe check out on old ghosty and see if I can free him real quick. Say...” Chilly paused his organizing. “Did anything happen earlier? I saw both Gar-Khan rush down the mountain like someone had lit a fire under that old geezers butt.”

“Oh! Yeah. I was supposed to come get you. Yeah. There’s, uhm...a slight situation.”