Corbin found parts of what followed to be intensely interesting, and other portions to be interminably boring. The echion were huge on precision. He had to answer any questions with exacting information or else Kyessy couldn’t ask about the ritual. They would ask for clarifications on earth, citing some measuring system of information value that was unknown to him, and he disliked it very much, because Kyessy never asked for clarifications, and never challenged their data value system. He began to suspect this was a super lopsided interrogation about every aspect of earth they could think of. Either they were being taken advantage of, or Kyessy was laughing at him behind that stoic mask of utter apathy she usually wore.

They asked about the population, the makeup of cities, level of magic (ha), and they had particularly hated the idea that he considered technology to be magic. However, sufficiently advanced technology could literally beam information across the planet instantaneously, which he found to be pretty amazing. Hot water heaters? Magic. Flush toilets? Magic. Cars that could easily do a hundred miles an hour, and airplanes capable of taking you over thousands of miles of terrain in a matter of hours? Magic. Replace entire portions of your body when they failed? You got the idea.

They also didn’t like that the place had no kings, and no echion settlements. Kyessy seemed disgusted that it was made up entirely of humans, and given whatever sordid history she had with bonking one of them, he couldn’t really blame her.

He was less sure about what had caused the bridging of their two worlds, what created the portal, or why the SPECIAL attribute system had flooded over the land with the advent of the portal. His speculations were given practically no value.

But, for all that (and the two hours of cross examining by the serpent folk) they did learn a number of valuable things about the ritual Serrell was likely to cast. The room began to fill with magic tablets of sturdy stone or jade, upon which glowing runes floated. These functioned like scrolls, or tablets really, where the echion would push the text up and down to access more information. These also varied in size, from about a foot square to almost three feet long by a foot wide. The text color also varied… and while he couldn’t read it, he loved the bizarre, twisty runes.

“The relk’s tails won’t be used.”

“They’re just an attempt to get us to poison ourselves on projectile tails then?” He asked. They nodded. “A red herring. Nice.”

They immediately leaned forward over the pool of radiant water, once the one equipping his card translated. “What do you mean?”

The echion loved the idea of the red herring, and spent nearly ten minutes discussing the convention once he brought it up. Apparently the echion had very limited access to genre novels, and especially mysteries. They immediately offered Corbin a quest to venture out of the anomaly to retrieve any number of mystery novels, but he was forced to decline, given the hag’s warning on what would happen to him if he exited the magic bubble extending out into earth.

The marsh yim wax was boiled down and combined with the quasid roots to create ritual candles for a soul cleansing and alteration ritual. The smoke off these candles dulled pain and induced a mild euphoria, for the ritual’s inevitable… side effects. The echocrystals were the clearest give away; these would be placed at the cardinal directions in the ritual circle and drawn from as the ritual progressed. Each one accounted for a ton of MP, in game terms.

Luckily though, for all their stinginess over the value of information, they did get excited about sharing once they thought they had the ritual locked in.

“This ritual is meant to cleanse the soul, we believe, to prepare the way.”

Prepare the way for what, was the real question.

“Imagine you have lived your life as an adventurer. You learn the sword, you learn techniques for taking down various creatures. You devote yourself to martial combat and vanquishing your foes.”

“Following the ritual,” a second echion picked up the thread, “it is like your body and soul have never received this training. It is as though you are an empty vessel for the filling. To age one in reverse, to allow one another chance to train oneself with a new potential.”

That sounded a lot like it would strip someone of their core cards… and also fairly innocuous. Were they going to try to bind his card to the magistrate permanently? That would be pretty messed up.

“We believe there is a second component action to the ritual, an inviting portion. An expansion.”

“Elaborate, if you would.”

“Someone who had been cleansed could also be given a greater potential… some among us were convinced the frillux skull was another attempt to put you off the trail, or endanger your lives further. Your delightful ‘red herring’ once again. However, there is record of this ritual preparing a vessel to take on even greater potential.”

“This is speculation,” a third one offered. “It is possible they have components in their possession that are not on your list, which increases the possibilities exponentially.”

Kyessy didn’t dispute this educated guess, the butthole, but Corbin thought he understood. The second part of the ritual sounded as though it added a fourth core slot, or increased the number of cards you could have equipped. Kyessy mentioned the maximum was seven, and then she’d have a deck function to deal with.

Gods, how he wanted to transform into his real self and get a look at all this stuff for himself, without all the filters.

The question was what they were going to do with a person who was no longer in possession of a single core card, who could equip an extra core. Each time Prissy had mentioned filling her core slots, the classes seemed more powerful, but more niche. Scoundrel had become Shadow Walker. If he recalled correctly, she mentioned that his card would turn her into a Mystic Assassin if she’d made it core. It was possible that Findell or Grotok just had garbage core cards and wanted to replace them with more powerful versions, but just as possible that they wanted it for nefarious purposes.

When he mentioned this Kyessy, she didn’t seem disturbed. “If I were a magistrate I’d want to be anything else,” she said.

He couldn't deny the logic in that.

“I believe we are done here,” she said, then peered about the room for any dissent. Finding none, she got to her feet and stretched out. “This body is not used to sitting for long periods.”

The echion hissed their weird laughter again, and handed back his card. He was glad to have Kyessy’s reassuring set of abilities appear in his hotlist beside his aura and mimicry. As much as he hated to have a ‘master’ he really enjoyed the combat benefits.

“We should only have to take out the one hive of marsh yims,” she said.

“That’s… good… ish. Right?” Difficult and pretty dangerous, but not difficult and dangerous six separate times.

“Unless we blow up the whole thing, we should be able to loot a half dozen components from a hive that large. It’s the frillux we have to worry about.”

***

Kyessy convinced him to head after the frillux first. They could probably run away from the yims if they got overwhelmed, but going up against the yims first might put them on the back foot in terms of their powers per day. She thought she could convince the echion to let them sleep out under the stars in their territory, but she wasn’t a hundred percent.

“No sleep til Brooklyn then.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“But I do.”

“You’re the only one.”

“Harsh… the song’s not that dated.”

For the life of him, he could not locate the blasted thing. Kyessy had him fanning out in a spiraling pattern over sections of the swamp that were thicker with those gnarly, huge trees, and looking for a) huge piles of bones, b) dissolved puddles of bones, or c) the thing itself outlined in his vision, like the blaskarand.

“Puddles of bones?” He asked himself over and over again. “What kind of attack liquefies bones?”

He should’ve known, honestly.

But he didn’t, and as a result kept looking out in the wider swamp areas. Hours and hours he flew, with hardly a break and no food. Not a single eyeball, whether he wanted one or not.

Finally, he called it when he found the ruins of the castle at the edge of the swamp.

“Let’s bunk there tonight,” he told her, once he was back in range. “I’ll set out southward in the morning.”

“As you will.”

The castle was mostly large stone fragments jutting up out of the water like jagged teeth, but a decent section was still supported, a good ten by twenty feet of flat and unsullied stone flooring. A few random segments of wall stood here and there, but the platform had a section almost eight feet high that ran the whole length of the place.

“You guys have ghosts in this world?” She looked at him as though he hadn’t just seen the spirits of the slain rushing off to respawn. He made a frustrated sound. “I mean the hungry dead. Before the portal opened… wights, ghasts, geists, anything like that? Apparitions of the dead?”

“No,” she responded. “Or if yes, then rarely.”

“…and in remote places long since abandoned?”

She cast her gaze about the ruined castle and nodded, just a fraction of a nod. “Well, finally one of your assumptions turned out to be correct.”

“I wouldn’t doubt this thing will end up being a weird amalgamation of dubstep artists from early in the decade.”

“Enough,” she said. “I will sleep first.”

She was asleep a good two hours before he saw it. He’d been hopping around the wall when he noticed one of the castle flagstones was outlined in yellow. It was the very same moment when he noticed a white sheen around several of the flagstones. Like these stones had been grouted… with liquefied bones.

He nearly swooped down and tried to bash into it himself, when it moved.

A moment later, rows of the castle’s stones shifted and slid downwards to form a staircase.

“Great,” he cawed.

The thing came up and out.

One second he was staring down into yawning darkness, beginning to open up communications with Kyessy, the next a half dozen bone white legs had appeared out of the staircase, which heaved up a bulbous spider body, shot through with greenish glowing veins like marble crafted from pure sickness.

The adult frillux has exuded an aura of fear. You have failed an Endurance (Grit) check and are Afraid. However, you’ve succeeded in a Luck (Kismet) check and may continue to act! Good for you!

“Kyessy!” he started screaming, and tapped at all of his abilities. He let out a massive caw with Terrifying Aura, but this didn’t do anything but cause the thing to pause and take a look at him.

It had a whole mess of eyes. If they were able to kill this thing, its skull would be mostly eyeholes. It also had clicking mandibles drooling with some greenish substance.

Unerring Aim, Fireburst Arrow and the vine arrow all worked at the same time. He rocketed toward the thing, blasted it for 12 damage, (took 6), and dealt an additional 24 fire damage. Vines erupted out of it, but weren’t big enough to constrict any of its super long, super spindly legs.

Kyessy was up, but not fast enough. She shrieked in horror and started crab walking back… right into one of the only remaining castle walls. The frillux roared, and an actual frill extended out of the sides of its face like that one lizard back on earth. Except the bony protrusions on the end of the frill shot out thick streamers of sticky webbing.

Kyessy was gone in about a second, under a mound of gross gooey stuff.

“I found the frillux!” he shouted. “It doesn’t look anything like Skrillex.”

“It burns! Corbin, it burns!”

He blasted into the thing’s body with another Fireburst Arrow, but was acutely aware he only had another one before his MP were all used up.

“Well get out of there.”

“I CAN’T, YOU STUPID BIRD! I’M DYING.”

He swooped down, came up at its underside, and tried the razor vines where the majority of its legs came together. He had a lot more success here; the vines snared three of its eight legs together and it crashed into the only other wall section available. It used this to get its feet back under it, clicking and clacking against the stones and throwing Kyessy’s sleeping bag off into the darkness, until the wall suddenly gave way and it disappeared from view.

“Okay, okay think. You have cards. You have abilities.”

“I’ve already taken two hundred damage!”

“The… uh… Use the cloak!”

“YOU AWFUL HORRIBLE UGLY NERFING BIRD–”

It cut off. Jeez, she was dead already. What would happen to his card? What would happen to him when his card was destroyed? He tried not to picture her in there. If he was playing this around the table with dice, he’d… he’d… well he’d have a lot more time to think about his action! He’d set the webbing on fire! She might take some fire damage, but it was a lot better than digestive acid juices.

He hit the Fireburst Arrow and dove in.

The webbing did ignite, the very moment she emerged from the blob of white stuff wearing the Wight Hood. She then ripped it off and jumped off the castle flooring, into the stagnant swamp water.

Well, anything was better than being covered in highly corrosive substances apparently.

“Are you okay?” he asked pathetically.

A second later, the frillux reappeared through the hole it had made.

“Kyessy, it’s back! Kyessy!”

The thing sidled up, staring at him from where he was flapping, looking around for Kyessy, clicking all the spinneret web slinger things that made up its gross frill thing.

He took off, shouting for Kyessy and explaining exactly what the thing was doing. He hadn’t even had a chance to inspect the stak’n thing. He had enough MP for one more vine arrow, unless he stalled for about two minutes… which was practically forever in combat.

The frillux opened up its craw again and sprayed out more goopy webbing, but he was ready for that, and swooped aside. The mound of webbing was burning well, though. Fireburst Arrow did work on it after all.

It gave him an idea.

He used Versatility to flip his Agility and Luck, and called out to Kyessy.

“You still alive?”

“This is the worst I have ever felt in my entire life, and it’s all your fault.”

“So, still alive then. Can I ask you a favor?”

She made a frustrated, disgusted sound like ‘Urrrgggghhhh’ in her mind.

He dodged away from a leg swipe. This thing could spread out its last leg segment into six claws, which he barely avoided. “Send out that Faithful Companion as a distraction, pretty please with a cherry on top.”

“I don’t know what a cherry is,” was her only response.

“Pretty tired of fighting this thing by myself!” he shouted, and zipped under another leg swipe. A second later, a greenish, spectral dog leaped out of the water and barked loudly. It ran up and clamped its jaws onto one of the gigantic spider legs, and was promptly launched about thirty feet, where it crashed into a tree and vanished in a puff of smoke.

Well. Tereffen’s Whatever Companion wasn’t nearly as useful as he hoped it would be.

Corbin activated his Terrifying Aura again, and once more just grabbed its attention. It raised up its frilly spinneret deal in his direction and sprayed acid web goop everywhere.