The three girls got their chance to recompose themselves, then began their preparations for their newest objective. Considering that all three girls knew how easy it was to get lost in that maze, they each prepared for it to be a very long journey.

“Hey, sis, packing to go somewhere? You wouldn’t be trying to resolve everything on your own, would you? Gosh, I think Jhez is available, you could…” “I’m not bringing him, sorry. This won’t be some simple date or anything, and I’m going to need him here to keep things in order. After all, you.. my dear sister.. are very good at getting distracted from your work. He’s possibly my only hope at making sure you actually contribute around here. I’m seriously counting on you guys getting this place up and running before I return, and a quick look here around shows that such is going to be quite the tall order.” “Ah, this place is junk anyway, the citadel would be more fun.” “Ezhyrae’s reputation would take a hit if she lost a place like this, especially to lazy hands. That in turn would really work against the academy’s standing, something we’ve been working so hard for. As such, if you were found at fault for this.. why.. the academy would be in their rights to ask for due compensation, and let me tell you I wouldn’t feel like lending you support for letting my friend down. As a result, just think of all the after-class community support you would be signed up for.. instead of all the parties you keep going to. Why, it’s almost too tragic to think about.” Xwyhr grumbled as she ran off, feeling generally outmaneuvered by Axln. Lyun caught the grumbling Xwyhr pass by as she entered, generally perplexed at how the girl had been so skillfully told off.

“I feel like I’m losing my touch, pretty much everyone knows I’m going off to do something.” “Was it really supposed to be that much of a secret?” “No, but I got used to people not knowing anyway.” “That probably just means you’re opening up to others more, that’s all. It’s a good thing, really.” “Yeah, but this place is still a wreck and I already feel guilty having to drag you away from it. You’re probably the best instrumentation expert I know.” “Well, I’m not exactly against the idea of going out to get other stuff done either. Remember, I might be good at this stuff, but it isn’t exactly my passion. However, exploring stuff, I believe that was one of your passions, and you did say I’m the only one with half an idea on what we’re even looking for. A proper balance of all this stuff is important, and helping you here is probably a great use of my time.” “Passions, huh? Well, if I find any creative project here for an aspiring arts student, I’ll let you know. I’m supposed to become a teacher someday, so it would suck to not think of the students too.” “Yeah, you’re not exactly going into my field, so you shouldn’t worry about that. However, if you’re going to teach history, you might as well make history first, right? Besides, on another angle, I have to think of you as the employee of my family’s company, one I’m going to apparently have plenty of management responsibilities in.” “Maybe at head office, but Drew is still going to be the one my field office would report to. So.. I believe it is best to say that you’re not exactly going into my.. field?” “Ha, ha, very funny.” Axln still understood that the base idea was that she couldn’t put any expectations on Lyun, the girl would apply her own responsibilities as she saw fit. If Axln needed help, Lyun understood her options and had still decided to go with Axln. Such was entirely Lyun’s choice, that was the end of the matter.

“Okay, I got my coat.” “I swear, that thing seems to never be about keeping warm and instead seems to be a weapon’s rack.” “Well, I guess you aren’t completely wrong, though it does offer a lot of protection too.” “Why though? We aren’t expecting any trouble.” “Because Luna isn’t around, and I know that place has a built-in defense network that almost seems to have a mind of its own. That secret home has remained secret all this time for a good reason, because the place is really good at keeping people from it. You are, again, trying to defy the laws of chance, so I really don’t think it’s in our best interest to simply assume that we’re going to get lucky here. Just because you were fine every other time does not mean you’re going to be fine this time.” Mheridz had a point which Axln could admit to despising. This world resorted to chance far too frequently, and the risks here were far too great for them to not be prepared to get unlucky. However, at this point, both Axln and Lyun realized that they had lost track of where they had most recently placed their own weapons. In such consideration though, did that even matter? In all considerations, their chaos-infused gift augmented by their power gear alone supplied them with a superior form of power. Lyun even realized just how far that idea took her, as she had always originally depended on instruments for everything.. not her gift. Even her crimsonian wings were superior to what her instruments offered in that area. Axln, meanwhile, Axln was even more remarkable, especially with a gift that could probably just hack any of the defenses that got in their way. Instruments were nothing compared to the prowess they possessed.

Having completed all of their arrangements, the three departed from the wreckage and made their way back to the citadel’s main entrance. The entrance had been properly locked.. and refused to open. Meanwhile, Axln tried to override the protection, but there was no response. It wasn’t as if it wasn’t responding properly.. so much as it wasn’t working at all. Forcing their way in was a bit too much out of the question, the force required either being not enough or far too much. They needed to get in, they didn’t want to wreck the place instead. There were already enough repairs to worry about. However, there was one remaining obvious option. A rift passage still worked to get into the rift room, though it wouldn’t work in any other destination.. and the only one who could do that was Axln herself. Axln then could go inside, hopefully get stuff working again, then meet them back outside. Except for Axln’s concern that this was going to require field repair work.. which was certainly not a part of her skillset.. it seemed as if this would be a simple enough obstacle to deal with. The hardest part would be how bored Lyun and Mheridz were about to get while waiting.

Axln arrived in the interior of the rift room, finding everything absolutely pitch black. Making use of her circle though, she adopted some high-quality dark vision, assisted by using her gift to negate the shadows in the room. Already, she could feel that Mheridz might have had a possibly too good impression of the place, things had already gone into the realms of being unfortunate. The place outright seemed uninviting right now.. although it felt keenly as if everything was set up so that she was the only one capable of being present. Since she wasn’t certain if that was the citadel getting defensive or if it was a simple act of bad luck, she wasn’t sure which evil to blame for this one, but she didn’t like her options. However, considering how long it took her to simply find the door going out of the rift room itself, she knew she didn’t like her circumstances either. Facing a maze under these conditions would be perplexing, so she made sure to use her dust gift to induct her own trance state, improving upon her thought process too. The door was locked, but this one wasn’t as reinforced, so her cybernetic arm got it open reasonably easily. However, she really wasn’t liking how it required so many direct things only she could do. Even so, this was a technician’s job, or the instrumental version of the same idea. Clearly, as soon as she found a way to solve all of this, she would quickly realize that this was the point clearly designed for Lyun, and now everything would start to suck in that way instead.

It was at this point though that she realized she really wasn’t giving her third member a fair hearing either. Mheridz’s specialty was in lightning, something which would be really useful right now for providing light. Sure, it was technically less skilled at visible light than her shadow gift, but it would have been a great compliment to work from. Those lightning pets the girl had actually stuck around, a constant if dim source of light. Reversing elements didn’t have stable effects like that, so maybe the girl really would be rather handy around here. If she ended up figuring out a way to get the door open, but couldn’t turn on the lights, she would certainly have to look into that. For now though, she needed to ensure she at least did not get lost. However, it didn’t take her long for her to conclude that such was exactly what she managed to accomplish, long familiar with what that would feel like in this place. There was however a part of her that felt right at home.. one she knew to be her chaotic side. This, she didn’t like, this hall favoured chaos, not principles, but it wasn’t itself made of chaos. Due to such, she wasn’t exactly immune to such a chaotic effect, like she would be from regular chaos.

「This place is true chaos in it’s most realized form, it’s remarkable. To think that a person made something this chaotic, that someone of principle could capture something this pristine, people really can be impressive.」 Axln was certain that whoever had created this monster had to be a mad genius, completely out of their mind. 「Such was the same title the one you call Lyun had recently given you, by the way. Mad genius. Connecting principles to have one learn from the other, it was seen the same way.」 Being compared to such madness hurt, but she was certain to at least establish the distinction. This madness was one to unmake, not to revel in, she would overcome it in that way. 「There is no certainty that the forces at play here are all working against you, by the way. Something about the design appears to be working for you. This is rendered clear by watching the fluctuations of chance at play right now. Typically, everything is steady, but right now there are dramatic shifts fighting for dominance. There is much more here than is easily noticed.」 That made it sound like she had walked into a probability war, which might be why absolutely nothing is making sense right now. The only thing obvious was that her circumstances weren’t good.. not at all.

On matters of escape, her only recourse would be a shift to the other moon, the only thing that could possibly pierce these walls. She didn’t even have other options. Velvet had even warned about such a shift too close to the moon.. she was pretty much on the surface level. If she needed to escape that way, she would be stuck recovering from burns for a while, which would be a lot of time lost. Instead, she pressed forwards, determined to see this to a resolution. After all, if probability was always at hand, then she just needed to keep going until she was graced with a lucky streak, it was bound to happen eventually. Fueled with such determination, she pressed on until such eventuality finally came to pass. After all of her wanderings, she found herself finally in a room which might prove useful, the healing lab that they had been at before. Of course, this place was supposedly not far from the rift room, so she had probably taken quite the long route instead. Even so, this room had some interesting stuff, it would be a great place to check out.

Of course, the room itself was still pretty dark. It had a bunch of instruments scattered everywhere, but none of them had been designed to produce light elements for sight. However, amidst all the otherwise darkness, she could see a faint purple haze on the far opposite side of the room, a sight which thus instantly drew her attention. She made her way up to that part, clearing away space in the process. Something about this felt.. familiar. She reached the area that was faintly glowing, the area sparked to life, revealing another layer of the room beyond. She had been here before, her original trip to the citadel… The new enclosed section of the room lit up faintly in a red glow as a response to her presence, with a panel of the wall shifting to greet her, the same control and display showing up once again. Once again, the same visual of a golden sphere appeared upon it. Clearly, she was familiar too. Well, if the thing wanted to help, then she was in need of some help for once, maybe it would be willing to be useful.

A scrawl of script appeared over the screen, none of it visibly in the typical script of this side. However, with her circlet handy, she was capable of identifying it, it was all in the old scripts, and she was still capable of translating. After reviewing the message left to her, she knew for certain she was in the right place. The screen spoke of the place’s main drive having malfunctioned, and was not available. It appeared that at some point, the main weapon had overloaded, causing obsidian crystallization in the core unit. It was informative, but it wasn’t exactly good news. However, the system also reported that .. some type of power had been reconnected recently due to.. fluxuations in .. something. Certain titles for things weren’t even familiar to her, but it implied that she could reroute power through this alternate source and get things going again. Sure, the system made it sound like such a power source might not have been available for a tremendously long time, but that’s really what backups were good for, when the unexpected happens. A few quick motions, and she could tell things were starting to work once again. Even the lights came back on.. though it only included the bright red haze, not the actually good lights. Suspiciously enough though, she could hear a faint crackle.. sort like an electrical surge or.. a distant intense lightning storm. Such was faintly alarming, but such would also be Mheridz’s forte, so it was probably something Mheridz could deal with easily enough.

Caught distracted by her surroundings, Axln almost missed a powerful feeling of a much more dramatic threat suddenly pressing upon her. A familiar haze started to gather at her vision, the same feeling which came in a flood of chaos. Being a bit of chaos herself, she had the opportunity to resist it, but without many options to do so. Fighting against it directly would also submit herself to the flood of chaos, which would itself be especially dangerous. However, she found that she also had the option to.. retreat? That would certainly be a costly venture too, but doing so would enable her capture and seal a portion of herself against such a threat, disconnecting herself in the process until the threat passed. Considering that such was a wash of chaos, that could be an especially favourable solution, as it would also disconnect Lyun from such repercussions, a backup plan with which she could salvage things from. In considerations of where to hide that most suited her, while it felt as if the threat was filling most present from her left arm, she decided that the best retreat would be into the form of her right arm, as she could meld her chaos to her gift to allow that arm to capture the fragments of her personal chaos, using the existence of her cybernetic arm as a protective seal for herself.

Such was the last train of thought captured by the entity of their mutual chaos, before all presence of Axln suddenly explicitly disappeared.

“The door is open, how much longer do you think…” 「All contact with the one you call Axln has ended, and the person matching them is no longer present in the connection.」 Lyun instantly started fearing the worst, worried that Axln might have.. died. 「There is no confirmation of death, as death itself would have been its own message. Instead, there is simply nothing. The most recent idea was a concern of an impending threat, one that she would have to flee from, but without signs of clarity on the details of such a threat. A concern that was discovered was that a flood of chaos was involved, where recently before that there were some observations of a natural chaos amassing in the area. What remains certain is that the situation demands an immediate response, both in an attempt to salvage the connection and to ensure that any such threat found does not cause further concerns.」 “Are you okay, you look really pale suddenly.” “Something really bad just happened to Axln, we have to go save her. I think Axln just tripped some kind of trap set by chaos, and things have gotten out of control.” “Well, no use standing around here then, let’s go find her.” Mheridz was in the door even faster than Lyun, though they weren’t able to travel very far. Very quickly, they found themselves confronted by one of those supposed defense barriers the place had handy at all times.

“See? I called it, didn’t I? Right when we really didn’t want them. Hold on, I can get this thing down quick.” Velvet pulled out a couple of instruments she had previously used to manipulate the same defense network, eventually providing a passage through that particular barrier in reward of her efforts. Quickly ahead though, they found themselves at yet another barrier of the same. “This is stupid, we can’t just keep stopping to deal with defenses, we need a faster route. You know what, hells, forget being nice about going in. Axln’s on the line right now.” Lyun called upon her chaos to shift the principles of everything around her. In doing so, the sparks of the structure flickered.. and then kept going strong. After all, the old defensive network was running strong again, after around a thousand years. This model was designed upon the Terran Mythos itself, running from the same principles in a cross-world form. Even shifting the world’s principles had no effect on such defenses as a result, in all consideration such only made things harder. Now they would have to rely on what little technology they had on hand to deal with everything. Lyun had plenty of conversions between the two, but Mheridz’s selection was far more inferior. Of course, that also included her options for barrier piercing tech, such simply wasn’t a thing she had on hand. Seeing things go wrong, Lyun ended the shift, trying of her own volition to start calming down.

“Lyun..” “I know, I know, don’t panic. Really didn’t expect that counter though, but that’s leaving me feeling really uncomfortable. That was supposed to be my best resource, especially because I honestly feel more comfortable using technology than instrumentation.” “I know, and that’s fine. If you need it to do your thing, go ahead. However, I need instrumentation to deal with this problem. Think of it this way, I’m practically like mom at this point, she’s better with instrumentation too. We’re going to have to team up for this one, in order to find her. I hope you don’t mind lending me a hand?” “Not a problem, you open us a path, I’ll try to figure out where we need to go.” “Knowing her, if she’s capable, she would be looking for you, too. Lead the way and I’ll follow.” Mheridz wasn’t being artificially understanding of Lyun, she was being genuine. This Lyun could do it, even if she might not have grown used to holding back such panic yet. Even so, Mheridz wasn’t exactly used to working with others either. This would thus become a learning experience for them both, as they search to uncover what had just happened.

However, neither were aware that the key to uncovering such answers did not lay in the past, but in the future. Even Mheridz, who had herself come from such a future, was herself ignorant of this potential threat.