Estellda continues grinning as she starts waving her hands in the air, “let me just grab something from the cash shop for you”

“The cash shop would be where we adventurers spend the currency of our world in exchange for items in Arborea.” Bree explains, “this why you brought me along Esty? To explain things for you?”

“Not entirely, don’t forgetting sacrificing you to Red so she awakens faster. “ Estellda continues grinning as her hands move about in the air as if manipulating an invisible object. I don’t know how long she would take so might as well start thinking of a plan of my own.

Unlike Estellda and Bree, the encounter with Fraya felt like it just happened moments ago, I have no concept whatsoever of the passage of time when asleep. After Bree was escorted out of the room by Captain Loana, the only ones left were me, Estellda, Fraya and Eyhian.

Eyhian dusted himself off before approaching us. Both sides stood still and said nothing, we just stared at one another, separated by the debris field. The wind howls from the massive hole in the wall, a constant reminder of the battle that transpired. Finally Fraya turned to Eyhain and said, “Mind fixing up that hole in the wall? That howling is really distracting.”

Eyhain nodded, opening the tome in his hand. He started chanting a short spell as a small transparent blue bubble started to grow just inches above the open tome. Eyhain continued chanting as he reached for the ball, then hurls it towards the hole. The bubble grew as it traveled across the room, past us, and plugged the hole in the wall perfectly, silencing the wind.

“Much better. Now we talk.” Fraya said, speaking as if the fight never happened.

“Great! First we have some questions for Deputy commander Ethan and of course some questions and a request for you too Commander Fraya.” Estellda spoke without restrain, excited and upbeat.

Fraya lifted her pipe to her lips and took a long slow drag, her eyes narrow as she turned to face us, she then blew the smoke in our direction. Estellda didn’t seem affected by the scent of the smoke. Allementhiea headquarters always had a weird mixed scent of parchment and something else, a dull fragrant of crushed fruit but with a hint of something burning. It seemed like I just found the source of the smell.

“Questions... And a request? Guardian Estellda, do not mistake my kindness for weakness. As long as we are in this room, in this city, any questions or requests will be made by me.” Fraya takes another drag from her pipe, “you guardians are all the same, always speaking as if we were made to serve you. Now tell me how you got Red out of Baldera. No before that, tell me how you got in.”

“Well to be honest, the first time I got there, I was summoned by a friend. Then I just recorded the location inside my travel journal.” Estellda replied.

“A summon? I suppose your friend got in with a summon from another friend then?” Fraya furrowed her brow, clearly unhappy with the answer.

“That’s exactly what happened with my friend too.”

Fraya pondered for a moment, reflecting on Estellda’s answer, “Ridiculous. Eyhain, did the magic barrier around Baldera fail? You told me something like this could never happen. We erected that barrier for the safety of the people, we told the public it was taken over by the Argons so they would stay away. Yet here we have an exiled, standing here outside of Baldera. Word of this must never leave this room.”

Eyhain, reached for his tome again, hovering his palm over the book as the pages started flipping rapidly. He placed his hand on the opened tome once the pages stopped moving. A faint glow radiates from the book where he touched it while his eyes glowed faintly, a light of an identical hue. “The magic barrier is intact Commander, there are no records of anyone crossing the barrier. As for Red...” Eyhian lifted his hand off the tome again as the pages started to flip. The pages flipped to the end of the tome, Eyhian frowned, then started flipping back towards the front. The pages continued flipping back and forth multiple times as Eyhain’s frown grew. Finally he closed the tome, “It appears information about Red and Blue are missing.”

Miss-“Missing?!” Fraya interrupted my thoughts, “What do you mean missing. You record everything diligently in that book of yours. EVERYTHING.”

“Yes Commander, I’m unable to locate the information with the tome. If the information does indeed exist, considering the link to the arcane engineer project, it would most probably be in Malachai’s lab archives.”

That caught our attention, I glanced over at Estellda, out eyes met, Malachai’s lab was exactly where we wanted to be.

“Malachai, brilliant as he was, isn’t the neatest or most organized. ‘There is order in the chaos’ he would often tell me, excuses. He just hates paperwork but who can blame him. Are you saying we would have to scour through volumes of un indexed and unsorted research manually? Like we’d have to physically look through everything to find the information, page by page. What are we savages?”

Eyhain shrugs, then nods. “If I’d been given the authority to ensure that all our research be properly documented, regardless of the researchers’ rank or authority, we would be having a very different conversation.”

“Now is not the time to be bringing that up!” Fraya fumes, their bickering amused me.

“Guardian Estellda, are you confident that you will be able to keep Red in check?”

Estellda chuckled, bowing her head to hide her laughter, “When have I ever failed a quest Commander Fraya, I had always delivered good results.”

“Very well then, speak with Eyhain and make the necessary arrangements for a quest, I will grant you access to the lab.” Fraya commanded. That was weird, she spoke as if Ethan wasn’t in the room. As I looked over at Eyhain, an orange question mark appeared above him, floating just inches above his head. I wonder what that meant, glancing at Estellda, she didn’t seem to notice the change.

‘Esty, do you see that above Eyhain’s head?’ I projected my query to Estellda mentally.

‘I know right?! It’s horrible he seriously needs a new hat, what were the devs thinking?!’

‘H...Hat? NO! Not that... Is that what you were thinking about this whole time? Really? I meant that giant orange question mark floating above his head.’

Estellda snaps her head towards me, her eyes wide in bewilderment. ‘Orange question mark. You see an orange question mark floating above Eyhain’s head?’

‘Yeah... You don’t see it?’ puzzles by her response, ‘am I hallucinating?’

‘Oh wow... Thats amazing!’ Estellda replied ecstatically, ‘Go talk to Ethan quick!’

‘Me? Fraya said for you to talk to Eyhain though..’

‘Just go!’

I moved towards Eyhain but before I could reach him, Fraya reached out and grabbed my arm. ‘Where do you think you’re-‘ Fraya didn’t finish her sentence as she and I both watched in awe as purple lines started growing from her hand that gripped me. We were both frozen as the purple tendrils grew and spread from her hand to all over her body. Then everything stopped and there was nothing but white and silence.