"Sorry about last night," Misa said. She didn't look like she'd managed to sleep much — Derivan suspected that they'd all had a rough night, really. Vex hadn't slept until late into the night, after he'd finished explaining everything that had happened with Irvis and the echo of Karix. Derivan hadn't known what to say, but he hadn't needed to. Vex hadn't wanted anything more than a chance to talk about it without having to worry about what it meant for them in terms of strategy, or what it implied about what Irvis was and what he could do.

Sev... had his own troubles, no doubt. The system-strings that hung around him were in tatters, now, and while pieces of them still clung on, they had mostly gone. With a bit of help, he could wipe away whatever hold they still held over him. He just didn't know if that was a good idea, yet.

Not if Sev had chosen that path — whatever that meant.

"Are you okay?" Sev asked. He watched Misa intently, worry furrowed in his brows. Misa swallowed once, then sighed, throwing her arms back almost explosively and nearly punching through the wall of the room.

"I fuckin' hate doubt," she muttered. "It's... when I was fighting Irvis, I could tell I was straining something. Every single time I used [An Anchor of Heart and Home], it was like I could feel the skill screaming at me. Fuckin' thing was about to break. Did you know skills could break? I didn't."

Sev opened his mouth to say something, but Misa held up a hand, and he stopped, hesitating. "If it was just that?" she said. "That's fine. I don't care. I don't need to be strong — well, no, that's a lie — but I'd give up that strength in a heartbeat if it meant I could protect you guys. That's the whole point.

"But it was hurting my family." Misa's eyes darkened a bit, then. "Mom and dad... spent a lot of time building up that village to be stronger. I can't imagine that fight didn't wreck half the village. It's probably the only reason I survived some of the hits I didn't block, because let me tell you, that guy is fucking fast.

"I think I knew, on some level, that the fight was damaging the anchor. That if I pushed it too far, I was gonna lose them again. Every time I blocked an attack, it was a choice. You guys or maybe, potentially, all of them." Misa took a slightly shaky breath, then clenched her fists. Even as exhausted and drained as she looked — even with slightly sallow skin, and sunken cheeks — there was a look in her eyes that burned. If she'd been holding anything, even metal, Derivan was fairly certain it would have bent or snapped. "I don't... I fucking hated that. Half the point of my class is that I shouldn't have to make that fucking choice.

"I needed some time alone to sit with that choice," she said. "That's all that is. I'd say that I'm sorry I didn't explain sooner, but I needed that time, and I needed to figure it out on my own. I'll say this — I'm not going to be put in that position again. We're going to make use of every second of this time, and we're going to get strong enough that Irvis can't do shit to us, even if he tried."

The last of her words were said with an air of finality; she didn't expect anyone to disagree, and no one did. All around the table, there were slow nods.

None of them had expected to be put so far on the back foot. Misa's story was just more fuel to a flame that had already begun to ignite.

"We'll need a plan for that," Sev finally said; he looked like he'd been about to say something else, but he'd changed his mind at the last moment. "Some kind of training we can do, at least. We can grind levels here, but I don't think raw levels are going to cut it for something like Irvis."

"The more we understand magic and the system, the more we can turn those things to our advantage," Vex said quietly. "I've been studying those things all my life, and I think I'm finally starting to grasp how they're related. Derivan has Patch, and I think I can create my own backdoor into the system, if I have a little bit of time. And, um..."

Vex hesitated slightly, and his gaze went to Derivan, and then rested on his missing arm. All of the other three paused and looked at their friend, and Derivan shifted uncomfortably under their combined gaze.

"...I'm sorry I couldn't stop that from happening," Misa said, suddenly sounding guilty.

"It was not your fault."

"If I'd been better—"

"Misa," Derivan emphasized, and then glanced around the room. To Vex, who looked just as guilty and couldn't meet his gaze; he blamed himself for not being there. To Sev, who seemed to blame himself for not being able to heal this problem away.

There was a certain irony to the fact that he badly wanted to reach out with his missing arm and comfort all of them. "Vex," he continued. "Sev. We did what we could. We were unprepared. We will be prepared in the future. The loss of my arm does not pain me, and I believe a new one will attach, if we can only have one forged."

"Then we'll make forging you a new arm a priority, too," Sev said with a sigh. "It's the least we can do."

"The least you could do is nothing," Derivan said, and this time he offered a ghost of a smile, bowing his head towards his friends. "So I thank you."

And then, swiftly, before anyone could say anything more on it — because he did not like thinking about his missing arm, for all that he was okay with it — he moved on. "I believe we are missing only a few more keys to understand everything that is happening," Derivan offered. "The system called me and my kind a monster, and Irvis likened me to him. I wish to know why. And the last piece—"

"—is me," Sev finished, shifting a little bit uncomfortably as Derivan's gaze fell on him. "I don't have much more than before to tell you. I can tell you that my status tells me that I made a choice, to have some aspect of my future stripped away from me. Or maybe some aspect of free will. I mostly try not to think about it, to be honest."

"There is nothing else you can tell us?" Derivan asked.

"I assumed it was because of what I gave up to heal Onyx," Sev said quietly. "But Onyx acts like I'm supposed to do something, or realize something, and maybe this is what the gods have been aiming us at all along. But that feels... cheap. Incomplete. I don't believe we're just a part of some divine plan. If it was that easy to fix things, they would've done it, and they wouldn't need me to not know what's going on."

A hint of frustration touched his voice at those last few words, and Derivan realized Sev was every bit as upset as the rest of them, if not a little more so. He was very, very good at hiding it.

Maybe because he'd been living with that knowledge — that frustration — this whole time.

"I need to figure out what's going on to my bond with Aurum," Sev said finally. He unclenched his fists — Derivan wondered if he'd even noticed that he'd clenched them, or the raw, red marks from his fingers digging into his skin. "I think that's my avenue of training. Whatever I've got with the gods is stronger than what other clerics have, and I've never worked on anything more than defensive and healing skills. I need more options. I don't think healing is going to be enough anymore."

"We all need more options," Misa said. "I'm going to try to... jailbreak my skills, for lack of a better word. I'll need your help for that, Derivan."

"You have it."

"Okay." Misa sighed. "Now that that's out of the way. We still need to figure out... Fuck. Everything that's happening back in — the real world? Doesn't feel right to call it that."

"The rebellion in Elyra," Vex supplied. "The suppression of growth magic there, as well. The situation in Teque and Fendal."

"Can we do anything about those things from here?" Misa asked. Vex hesitated.

"I think we can," he said. "I was thinking about it before we even got in, and I'm more sure than ever, now. We can train, but more than that... we can coordinate. If we can reach outside the dungeon, using Shift or whatever kinds of reality magic exist here, then we can use the time dilation to our advantage."

Misa's eyes sharpened. "Meaning a problem comes up, and we solve it using all the extra time we have here."

Vex nodded slowly. "Assuming our system access doesn't decay while we're here," he said. "And we still have the crystals we need to stay connected. There's a few problems we need to work out, and the first thing we need to do is find a way to reach out, without relying on the system for messages. I think we can do a little more than just pass messages with ideas back and forth. You saw Derivan opening portals with Shift when you used your skill before, Misa."

"I may be able to push the skill to that level," Derivan said thoughtfully. "It is certainly an avenue of research."

"But before all of that," Vex said, and he grimaced slightly; he wasn't looking forward to talking about this. But Derivan gave him a reassuring glance, and he straightened slightly.

He'd gotten through the worst of it last night, anyway. "We need to catch Misa up on what Clyde told us," Vex said. "And I need to tell you guys about what I know about Irvis."

Misa's reaction to Clyde's news was... surprisingly subdued. She was surprised, but only in an abstract sort of way. "It fits with everything we know," she said. "It's scary shit. But I'm kind of oversaturated on scary shit. Just means yet another thing we gotta fix."

It was a very optimistic take, and all of them knew it. In one world, the system had been born, presumably to try to fix the end of the universe; it had only managed to slow it down. In the other, the source of all magic had done the same thing, and had been about as successful.

They'd have to devise something better than the sum of both parts to be able to come close, and they weren't anywhere near having that kind of knowledge or power.

Not yet, anyway.

Her reaction to Vex's explanation of Irvis was a lot more pronounced. Her eyes tightened with anger, and the tankard she held in a hand cracked and splintered; she put it down on the table before she could do any more damage, and took a breath before she spoke.

"I'm sorry he did that to you," she said; Sev nodded in agreement. "That's fucked."

"It is." Vex hesitated. "I... need some time with that one. I'm sort of glad we're here, and have time to figure things out. If you don't mind, I'd like to just talk about what Irvis is, and what we can do about him."

"I've been thinking about that," Sev said. "Clyde mentioned the elementals of this town having to play Roles. Do you think that's related, at all? Irvis is an Aspect, but that doesn't sound too different from having a Role. Just pointed in a different direction."

"They might be similar," Vex agreed. "I don't think they're exactly the same thing, but they might share some strengths and weaknesses, being made of mana and all that. It's not like we can march down and ask them what their weaknesses are, though."

"Can't we?" Misa raised an eyebrow. "Seems like we might just need to find someone with the right Role, to me."

"That's..." Vex paused. "That's a good point?"

"We may be able to simply ask if they are aware of living Aspects, as well," Derivan said. "We did not offer that context before. They may have more information."

"We should figure out if we can pay them back, too." Misa frowned slightly. "Doesn't feel right gettin' so much from them for free."

"We'll ask about that," Sev said. "I'm worried about Irvis. You were basically just working off theory when you brought us here, right?"

"I figured the nature of Hatred here would be different," Vex said, nodding. "That he wouldn't be able to exist the same way here that he does in our... section of reality, I guess. We need a better word for that. He hasn't reappeared, so I might be right, or something else might be going on."

"Sounds like the next step is to talk to Clyde," Sev decided. "Find a blacksmith to forge you an arm. Figure out where and how we can train from there. Connect with the rebels in Elyra so we can provide support, check the progress of things in Teque... and figure out a way to fix the decay of reality. I'm sure it'll be a piece of cake." Seeing everyone stare at him, Sev sighed. "I'm joking."

Misa snorted and gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder.

But having it all laid out like that helped — now, at least, they knew what they were going to do next.