"It still doesn't make complete sense." Misa frowned. "Everyone here's had a completely different history. They don't even know what dungeons are. They don't know what the system is."

"It's not a perfect theory," Vex agreed. "It's definitely incomplete. But I think it's somewhere close. It explains why people in both places have the same names, kind of. It just doesn't explain who's stealing the mana crystals, or what exactly the link between the two places are."

"But if this place is real..." Misa muttered, then she shook her head.

"What if it is not the place that is real, but the people?" Derivan asked. "Or what if realness, as it were, is a property that can be transferred?"

"That's fucking terrifying to think about," Misa said.

"But it might be true," Vex said softly. "There's even hints about it. Food didn't seem to fill Noram until we were around. The problem is just... we don't have a real way to test any of this. We've come up with a few theories that explain what's happening, but that doesn't give us a solution."

"Okay," Sev said. "We need a way to test our theories, then."

"My mom's still back in Fendal with the two guards I summoned," Misa said. "We could ask them to keep track of things there while we investigate what's going on here. Noram's there, too, so he can confirm if he knows anything about this... other version of Noram."

"About the food," Derivan said. "Why did food only fill him when we were around? We do not possess some quality that makes things more real."

"Misa does," Sev said. Everyone else looked at him and blinked.

"That's... true," Misa said slowly. "You think the reality anchor is affecting things right now?"

"You can check," Sev said. "How's the integrity on it?"

Misa frowned and seemed to gaze into the air for a moment. Then she froze slightly, mouthing some words to herself; she shook her head.

"...Five months, three days left." Misa wasn't angry, exactly, or she didn't seem that way to Vex — but part of her seemed to deflate. "The degradation rate still says medium, but it's definitely lost a couple days more than it should have, and there's another warning about additional stress being put on the anchor. Fuck. I should've checked this earlier."

"Is it possible it's just because your mom's still summoned?" Vex asked. "When did you last check it?"

"I've checked the anchor notification before during a summon and there wasn't any notice about an extra drain," Misa said, shaking her head. She scowled a bit. "And I looked at it before we got into Fendal. Wish the damn thing would give me more notifications."

"We know now, at least," Derivan said, angling his tone towards comfort. "Though we do not know if this began in Fendal, or... here."

"It's a start," Sev said, and then he frowned. "We never asked what this place is called, huh? We'll have to ask next time we head out."

"No need," Misa said dryly. "I asked while I was downstairs. This whole place is just called Teque; it's a dedication to the guy who led them down here, or something."

Vex grabbed a notebook and scribbled a note; when Derivan peered over at him, he promptly hid the notebook from his friend, sticking his tongue out at him in the process.

Sev, meanwhile, just blinked and said, "Huh."

"It's not that surprising that I asked questions about this place." Misa scowled, folding her arms across her chest.

"I didn't say anything," Sev protested. Misa held the scowl for a moment more before grinning at him, and the cleric relaxed with a sigh; even Vex could tell, though, that her heart wasn't quite in the banter. Her gaze kept flicking off a little to the right, like she was still looking at the reality anchor's item screen.

There was a small silence for a while.

"Anyway," Misa said, clearly noticing that everyone was trying to find the words to talk to her. She forced herself to smile a bit. "Don't worry. I'm not... I mean, okay, fuck, I am blaming myself a little bit. But there's no point dwelling on it."

"Better that we learn this can happen now," Vex offered, a little meekly. "With minimal damage to the anchor. You know to keep an eye on it now."

"That's... a good way of looking at it." Misa hesitated, looking for a moment like she wanted to say something more, and then she shook her head and gave Vex a smaller, more genuine smile. "Thanks."

"We still need a plan of action," Derivan said. His tone was soft, like he was trying to acknowledge the conversation that just happened while guiding it gently back to its original purpose. "We have some ideas about what is happening, but no ideas for a solution."

"The problem is that bonus rooms typically have an objective." Vex sighed. "We don't know what the objective here is. The dungeon in Fendal, such as it is, tried to copy the bonus room in Elyra's primary dungeon and failed; that failure still leaked out, because something went wrong, but we don't know how to patch a hole in the system like this."

"And we do not know what will happen if we do," Derivan said. The others all grimaced slightly when he spoke, and for a while, the table went silent again.

Vex sighed.

"I think we just have to investigate the slivers and mana crystals going missing," he said after a moment. "That's the only obvious correlation between Fendal and..."

Vex paused, then checked his notebook.

"Teque," he said. "Between Fendal and Teque. So if we figure out why the slivers are going missing here, and the crystals in Fendal, we might have a better idea of how to stop the 'raids', at least, although at this point I'm not sure who we're stopping the raids for."

"So you're saying we do a stakeout," Sev said.

"I feel like they've probably tried doing a stakeout," Misa mused.

"We have something they don't," Vex said. His gaze slid to Derivan, and he felt his heart betray him, beating a little faster as the armor watched him in return. "You have Shift, right? If there's something here that's stealing things that mages can't detect, Shift might be able to find it."

"I had not considered that," Derivan said, his voice thoughtful. "Yes. Perhaps we can investigate..."

"What about Noram?" Sev asked. "Do we tell him... everything? The bonus room stuff is going to sound unbelievable at best."

"I doubt he's going to let us near the slivers if we don't at least explain that," Vex said with a sigh. "So let's go find him again and talk to him, convince him to let us keep an eye on the slivers, and... hopefully that'll fill in the rest of the gaps in our knowledge."

That was the hope, anyway. The plan still felt like a shaky one, and Vex saw that uncertainty reflected not only in himself, but in the others around him; Derivan was the only one who didn't appear particularly troubled. The armor seemed contemplative, instead.

Focusing on the future, perhaps.

The four of them discussed a few more potential plans, but they had nothing else solid — their ideas they had were difficult to investigate. They felt they had the broad strokes right, and they could use any further information they found to refine those ideas, at least; that was the closest they would get, for now.

Before they retired for the night, Misa managed to get an update from her mother, as slow as it was. According to her, in all the time they'd been down in Teque, only a few minutes had passed in Fendal. That was another datapoint to add — if crystals were being stolen every few days in Fendal, then much, much more time passed in Teque between each robbery.

That was... a data point. It didn't tell them much. Hopefully, they wouldn't have to wait too long before the next set of slivers went missing; it had, after all, already been a few days since the last raid.

"Hey, Sev?" Vex asked.

They'd pretty much all gotten ready for the night — Derivan was off by himself near the center of the room, apparently experimenting with small-scale attempts at magic without going through the system, or something like that. Misa was far away at the opposite side of the room, and Vex had approached Sev while he was sitting at the side of his bed, apparently engaged in his nightly commune.

From what he'd heard, Sev treated it more like a divine pen pal sort of situation, for all that he no longer got replies from Onyx.

"What's up?" Sev smiled at him. "Need something?"

"Kind of," Vex admitted. He took a breath — he felt nervous, and he didn't even know why. It wasn't like he was actually talking to Derivan about this. But he felt like he needed to talk to someone before he just went up to Derivan. "I just wanted to talk. Um. Ask for some advice, as it were."

"I'm all ears," Sev said, putting his focus to the side and looking attentively at Vex. The wizard sighed, not quite sure how to begin; he sat himself down next to Sev when the cleric patted his bed in invitation, and tried to gather his thoughts.

"I really like Derivan," the lizardkin blurted in a whisper after a moment, and glanced quickly to the side to see if the armor in question had heard him. Derivan was still seated in the center of the room, mana carefully dancing between his fingertips. Vex looked away, after a moment, and tried to calm his heart; he'd only started getting used to talking about his feelings recently, and this was the first time...

...well, it was the first time he was reaching out about it.

"I know that," Sev said, his voice gentle and with perhaps a faint touch of teasing amusement. "And you know I know that. Misa knows that, too."

"I — that's besides the point." Vex buried his face in his hands. "It's just — what do I do about it?"

"Talk to him about it?" Sev suggested mildly.

"I was going to," Vex said, because not all that long ago he was, and now he found himself doubting himself again. The lizardkin sighed and drew his legs up to himself. "But I dunno. I'm worried about messing things up. We're a good team."

"We're not going to be less of a good team if you two get together," Sev said, and then paused, making a face as he reconsidered the statement. "Maybe if you fight. The Guild doesn't really encourage this for that reason. But fighting together, facing dangers together... It's pretty inevitable that it happens from time to time."

"Has it happened to you?" Vex asked. Sev laughed.

"No," he said. "Honestly, I'm probably not the best person to give you advice here. I've never really liked anyone that way."

"Really?"

"Nope," Sev shrugged. "But I'm pretty happy. I have you guys, and... that's enough for me, I think. I just want to help people, figure out what's going on with the system, and not deal with weird evolutionary branches like mimics that pretend to be trees and walk around every so often."

Vex snickered. He was feeling a little better about talking to Derivan, at least. "Are you still thinking about that?"

"It's a weird fucking tree," Sev complained. "It'd be weirder if I wasn't. But don't change the subject. Are you going to tell Deri, or am I?"

"...You wouldn't."

"I would not," Sev said, and grinned, poking Vex in the snout. "But you should've seen your face."

Vex sighed, but he found he was smiling, just a bit. "I will," he said. "I want to wait for the right time, but... yeah, I will."

"Don't wait too long. Or do, and then I get to win the bet that Derivan confesses first."

"Your bet—" Vex started, and then sighed, as though entirely unsurprised. "Before we reach Elyra," he promised instead.