Corvayne was also staring at the word written in glowing paint on the ceiling, trying to see anything else but 'Cascadia' written over and over again. He sounded it out. Cas-cayd-ee-ah. It was the same word. He felt like he had started to build up ideas on what was happening and now was lost, again.

Wick was the first to respond, stammering and waving her finger around. “It.... it must be a more recent occupant than we thought! Someone having a big FAT laugh at us!”

Lady Blood Claw turned to Hari. “Identify it?”

Hari nodded, and used [Investigate] a few times, tilting her face this way then that, then took a deep breath. “It's old! Master can double check my work, but it's at least a few thousand years. The pigment is mundane, so unless it's some insane artifact masking itself, it's anywhere from five to a hundred thousand years old.”

LBC turned orange with annoyance and in a very dry tone said, “That's a huge range.”

Hari puffed her cheeks out. “Well excuse me for telling you what the Voice of All tells me! You are welcome to start learning variations of the spell for ten years to get a better answer! Humf!”

Wick tapped her arm. “Have you tested [Investigate] with objects with known ages?”

Undine laughed. “All the time. Elves. Ruins from castles where we know the year it was destroyed. All sorts of things. Time is one of the least hidden stats in an object. What's with everyone's reaction? Is this Cascadia someone you know?”

Corvayne cleared his throat. “It's the City I started my journey in, where most of us met. From what I picked up, it's only a hundred and fifty years old, and before the city it was a world with no habitation... aside from finding a secret base on the planet that predates it all.”

“There were squatters, but no cities and nothing named Cascadia.” Wick corrected. “So, now my question is, who picked that name? I wanna ask Horton that, because aside from just dumb co-incidence, that's one way we might solve it.”

Corvayne started picking through the information in his head. He knew Cascadia had some weird things going on. The city was built near a facility that had buried Spears, for possibly incredible lengths of time. He also remembered the neighborhood where the home he had bought had something odd going on with houses, there were ones that looked new, and had a phone number on the for-sale sign that seemed unusual, all nines. There were buried older cities visible from areas of the sewer, something unlikely given the age of Cascadia.

“Wick, we saw buried buildings under the city. Did you know what that was?”

“We know the emperor fifty years back was investing into a lot of the infrastructure on planet to try whip up a new wave of colonization and expansion. I figured it was something related to the project to make it a world-ship jumping off point, possibly to turn Cascadia into a world where they were refitted for even longer journeys.”

Nyx puffed out his chest. “Part of why I got outside was that Grandfather despised hyper dense worlds like Tripic. He pushed for us to enjoy the outdoors, learn to shoot animals, fend for ourselves and so on.”

Wick laughed. “Tripic is half wilderness.”

Nyx shook his head. “And it's hemmed in by bands of multi-mile thick buildings. Nothing wild about a park.”

Undine was trying to follow everything. “I think my spell is wearing off...”

Hari patted her on the arm. “It's working fine, it makes a little more sense when you see their cities.”

She righted then, thrusting her chin up. “I doubt THAT! Explain it to me.”

Corvayne let Hari have her side conversation. “Nyx, Wick, LBC.... I'm going to state that it's likely that the city, Cascadia, is named after a word we need more context on. This person, who might be a little insane but also has a connection to us-”

Nyx waved his hand. “Is it you?”

Corvayne stopped himself from just saying no. “I think it's unlikely... from what I read, the Pilgrim who was writing was contemporary to their attempt to seal The Magus, I never remember him being loose.”

Wick sighed. “Every thing we see makes me ask a dozen more questions.”

Nyx nodded. “It's absurd how confusing you people make everything. What's worse is you're all dragging Lady Blood Claw into this mad soup of names, long ago dates, and places.”

Corvayne looked over at the tall alien woman, who lifted her long arm and reached out to touch the paint on the ceiling. She looked lost then.

He heard her speaking softly. “I don't know. This is all too complex for me. I'm just a stupid soldier.”

Corvayne reached out and gave her shoulder a little nudge. “Me too.”

Wick groaned. “You two, get a fucking room. Or don't... Corvayne! I want your head in this. I take back my statement about co-incidences. They don't exist! I was mentally impaired when I said it!”

Nyx had started reclining on the flesh couch. “Need I even say it?”

“Fuck you Nyx! You just say stuff and never WORK to make it work. I think Cascadia MEANS more than we think it does. That's our goal then.... INN. Again. Go there, march up to that walking dust-ball and get him to spill the beans!”

Lady Blood Claw nodded. “So we go up, again? What about those quests we owe? If I was him, I'd not speak with us until we pay him back.”

Corvayne rattled the quests he got from the innkeeper. “We need to build a shrine to Lythandies at the black crystal spire, and one for Gygax out of living wood at Hari's house. They said we need Strawberry Dragon hearts. We can find them on floor 13 as long as it's a jam and steel floor.”

Wick snapped her fingers. “Okay. When we get them I want them in the cooler asap. We'll find doors on floor 13 until we get to a slime floor.”

Undine was listening and waved her hands. “But we are trying to determine what the pilgrims were doing here!”

Wick put her hands on Undine's shoulders. “I want to know why they named dropped my town, and you do too. Trust me.”

Corvayne felt a little tug in his mind. “What did you ask Wick? Questions I mean.”

“Mostly gold for tower info.” She shrugged but her eyes were slightly diverted.

Corvayne turned to Hari, and he saw out of the corner of his eye that Wick was biting her lip. Hari, for her part, tried to look innocent which didn't work. “If you paid money for it, then it was important, right?”

Hari cleared her throat. “Some of them were about us. A few were about Wick. I promised to not reveal it, Corvayne.”

Wick stepped in. “That's what I should have said! It was our private business, and nothing we asked helps us here.... I bought stuff about the system and a handful of questions about Pilgrims and I got a lot of bullshit about belt buckles.”

Hari nodded. “We also asked a few about the size of Towers, and floors, and we haven't sorted it out yet.”

Corvayne felt... something... that told him there was something wrong with his girlfriends, but took a deep breath. When Wick had hidden things from him, she hadn't known him well enough. There might yet be things she wasn't ready to share. Perhaps things that Hari would get better than he would, as he knew he was sort of... clueless.

“I trust you two.” He stuck his chest out. “You guys saved me, both my soul and my body, and I love you both.”

Undine snorted. “How sappy.”

Wick gave Corvayne a little hug, then stepped back. “All right, thanks big guy! Let's get back to the adven-”

A moment after speaking, her shoulders sagged, and the twinkle in her eyes dimmed to Corvayne. She snapped her head up and looked around, clearly slightly confused, then looking worried as she took a few step back from Corvayne, only relaxing a moment when she had moved behind Wick.

Corvayne took a step closer to her. “Wick, it's happening again.” and was startled as she held a hand up, eyes blazing with cool anger.

“Stay back!” Wick said, clutching Hari. “I know you! I know who you are!”

Corvayne stopped. “Wick, Hari, anyone? I need to know what's going on.”

Hari looked between them, then fixed her gaze on Corvayne and shook her head. “Corvayne, we'll be okay. We'll clear this boss floor, and then exit. I think I can help fix what's going on, but we need some space, okay?”

Lady Blood Claw looked between them. “You two always say that Corvayne is reckless, stupid, and doesn't warn you when he's about to do something stupid. Right now, you two are a perfect match for him!”

Wick surged forward. “Stop telling me what I am! You all have no idea who I am! Corvayne, BACK off! You're tearing me apart, it's your fault! I've had enough! Get OUT!”

Corvayne slowly started stepping back, feeling a sharp pain under his arm as he had forgotten to cycle. He took a deep breath, and pulled out a shard of black glass.

“Wick....”

He watched the love of his life turn glare at him with such anger and hatred he couldn't help but recoil. “Get out of here! Get away from me! Never again, never touch me EVER again!”

Hari stepped between them. “Corvayne, we need to leave. Let's take the leader of the monsters out, collect our treasure, then I'll try to help you understand-”

Nyx stepped forward and pointed a finger at Wick. “Stop covering for her, and have HER explain what the hell is going on.”

Hari wheeled on Nyx. “You Cocky asshole, you don't do anything-”

Lady Blood Claw tried to stop her. “What is wrong with you-”

There was a bang and a flash of light and Corvayne stumbled into a wall, suddenly dizzy. A moment later his vision cleared, and he saw Undine shaking her hand.

“Don't say anything! Anyone! Corvayne, take Nyx and Miss Blood. Me and Hari and Wick will follow in a moment.”

Corvayne was about to argue, but he saw Wick glaring at him with naked hatred with Hari holding her, perhaps holding her back, while looking torn. He saw Hari look at him, pleading for something, and he couldn't look at them any longer, and steeled himself and turned and walked into the doorway to the arena.

He didn't slow, even as the arena formed around him, a giant circular metal something with a glowing hole at the center. He started running as a titanic man with jagged teeth started clawing their way out of the hole.

They didn't trust him.

The thing swung with broken jagged claws but Corvayne moved around it. He used speed, hearing but not hearing his allies behind him as he got inside the monster's reach.

Something was wrong with Wick.

The claw grazed him, but Corvayne slid past it, and with Adept strength he just started attacking with his spear in one hand and his cleaver in the other. A little strawberry orb expanded out of his pants as the monster kicked him.

Hari looking at him, trying to urge him to go.

Even as the monster slammed him back, Corvayne just got up and waded back in, hitting the thing. Hitting it over and over.

He had been hurting Wick the entire time.

It tried to fight back, but he swapped to vitality and just stood there, trading attacks. It was mindless and stupid, like Mugs-Already-Empty would train him to do with wood axes, an idiot version of fighting because he couldn't think, couldn't flow like water, couldn't bother to go for the back or legs or eyes or weak points. His shadow hands stabbed out, perhaps deflecting the giant ghouls limbs. A swarm of strawberry orbs circled him and he let them go, blasting a dozen holes in the monster.

Corvayne didn't care. He felt something terrible was happening, and that he was clueless, and in a moment everything would fall apart, and only pain and blood and fighting would protect him. A spear moves forward to kill. It moves forward to attack. It moves forward when everything else fails, when there can be no words, no peace, no love. A spear moves forward in war. The monster in front of him was on it's knees and he kept attacking. Forward. Forward. Forward.

Lady Blood Claw's fist connected with his jaw, knocking him away from the body he was butchering. She grabbed him and started squeezing. He sort of let it happen, suddenly feeling tired.

Nyx helped him stand straight when Lady Blood Claw let go.

“Come on chum. They'll get the treasure. Let's go home.”

He nodded and felt himself slip into darkness.