Corvayne had actually wanted to stay in the chamber longer to try to pry information about his status as The Wanderer and the gateway out of the emperor, but the old man waved him away after a fit of coughing.

What's more, Bell had been upset, giving him a look of anguish or contempt or horror that he wasn't able to fully pin down. It didn't take [[Unity]] to see that her feelings were a mess. Corvayne would have gone off to find her, but the moment he left the throne room he was swept up by chancellors. One behind him was urging him to not say a word about the truth of the pact that had bound the empire, another was trying to get details on the speed of the beast, one very large woman was barring him from following where Bell went while a smaller one directed him down a side hall, still flocked with people half shouting for his attention before Nyxion somehow scattered them just by glaring at them, save the small woman who was frozen in place.

Nyx had started floating again, surveying the scattered crowed. He settled back on the small woman and snapped his fingers. "I'll show him to the guest quarters. Bring lots of wine, a pitcher of oil, and a lot of fruit."

Corvayne could tell that Nyx was exuding something like an artificial feeling. [[Unity]] also gave him a muted sense that spikes of fear were blaring all around, Impressive given he didn't even have strong connection with anyone in the room feeling it. Nyxion must have evolved the skill that let him scare things. He shrugged, stretching Spears-Like-Water who was still clinging to his back in her reduced form. As often seemed to happen to him recently, the moment one thing was dealt with he found another looming problem they needed to deal with. He also needed sleep.

The short assistant woman (Corvayne guessed mid thought that she was more likely some sort of royal steward given how other servants and guards responded to her presence) showed them to the quarters they were given in a set of guest rooms. The rooms were dug into the base of the cliff, half carved stone and half brick. The rooms had small slit windows that suggested when they were built as part of a fortress, though someone else had come through and broken walls to make a doors out to a balcony. Flowers in aged stone planters suggested the change had happened long ago for guests to look out over the city.

He found he rather liked the utilitarian walls and floors, reminding him a bit of his room back in the Watcher village. This one had thick carpets and a much larger soft looking bed. He stepped back out and closed the doors behind him, then backtracked to the shared space in the quarters. From some feathers he saw swept into a corner, he guessed that this is where they had put Hylal's father at some point.

The meeting space was set up like a den, with a few steps down to a spot where a long wood table was set up. Two pairs of armor flanked a hearth lit with a steady fire going. Perhaps the emperor's spys told him that his guests would be damp.

Nyxion was sitting with his back to the fire, with Lady Blood Claw a few chairs distant and Brines, who was sneezing, at the other end of the table. No sign of Princess Bell or Undine, and he suspected that Hylal was getting fixed up as-is, but Princess Tutu was sitting at the table, feet up, arms behind her back while wearing a formal looking full body dress that Corvayne would expect to find on a proper princess... Which was very out of character for someone who was also a devoted adherent of an insane sex goddess.

Tutu saw him and was about to say something but went beet red, feet snapping off the table then burying her face in her hands. Corvayne stopped and checked to make sure his pants hadn't fallen to the floor then behind him.

“Is there a problem?” He asked in the table's general directions.

Brines was wiping his nose with parchment, clearly unaware of how expensive it was in a per-industrial society. “When you got mad and uncursed her, she got her shame back.”

“Of course he can't just get my NAME back, but for the random floozy?” Lady Blood Claw muttered. Corvayne shot her a look to let her know he heard her and was sorry he couldn't fix her. Lady Blood Claw shot him a look back that said she knew he knew what she had said and she meant it. Classic Stalemate.

Nyxion nodded. “It will take hard work to bring her shamelessness back. I sense a great epic quest to do while we RIDE AWAY FROM THIS CITY AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.” He was looking right at Corvayne when his voice lost all volume control.

“Bell isn't going to like that.” Corvayne countered with. Nyx took a deep breath then stood up, took a few steps behind LBC, and put his hands on Tutu's shoulders.

“See that's okay, we have discount Bell.”

Tutu looked up, face still strained red. “I can TELL what you meant!”

Nyxion looked down at her. “Me too. I guess I'm just a language prodigy.”

She stood up. “I'm here to make sure he takes responsibility for my sister!”

“I was going to ask if she's okay.” He meant it, too. It was weird that he kept worrying about what she thought.

“I was going to say, you think you can just slide into the royal family like a burr under our saddle...”

Corvayne shook his head. “I think even if I was some sort of gold digger, I'd have hit the hills rather then come here. This is the path of an danger we cannot underestimate.”

Tutu growled and pointed at him, actually showing off she had a pair of fangs. “You say that like it's not your fault, you stirred up something in... those ruins!”

“I also feel responsible for the state of the empire, as well.” He put his hand to his mouth to stifle a yawn. He was only a little guilty, he hadn't been awake when he shattered their oath to protect the portal. “So maybe if I went back through, it will fix your bloodline?”

Lady Blood Claw quirked her lips. “If they thought it would work, they would have pushed you in. And It's too late unless they can rally around a new capital that has super magic defenses.”

Nyxion tapped the table. “And restoring the potency of this empire DOES NOT fix the elephant in the room, that Corvayne's big crystal sister is slowly stomping her way here and can fire death beams. We have nothing in our arsenal that can take it out. I see you thinking and thinking. Think, fuck, drink, all good! Cheers! Have fun the next two days, but dammit, this isn't the same as the last hopeless quest because by all rights it was someone else who would end up dead if the worst happened. You're going to get the whole group killed!”

He looked up after he was sure Nyxion was done to see him sipping wine. Corvayne nodded to show that he had listened and was, in fact, tempted to just walk away. “Why do you think I'd try to have us fight or stop her?”

Nyxion rolled his eyes. “Because you bend over backwards for Bell, and I can get that, but you also just saw a giant pair of tits of your possibly-in-love-with-you-big-sister, it's wormed your way into her brain that we can stop her somehow, and you've been distracted from the reality that we don't need to. We can't do it, no matter how amazingly you can toss a staff. Let me repeat that, for everyone listening through whatever means of spying they do on this room. We CANNOT kill it, and we by all rights SHOULDN'T try.”

Spears piped up with a mouth sticking out of his shirt. “If we can fix her, think of how much stronger we get! Corvayne needs a whole bevy of loyal girls!”

“I don't care about the shape of my allies... much. She also might know more then Spears about what happened to The Watchers.” He gazed over at LBC seeing if he drummed up some agreement, but she shook her head.

“Corvayne, you still have patches of seared skin where just being a mile away from it's beam cooked you, and we can't fight something that big that can keep restoring itself. It did not shatter itself plowing through untold tons of stone. Whatever Bearer is could maybe find out a way to put her down, but I doubt she just missed Diamond's core.”

Corvayne wasn't sure why they were dead certain he was going to try to fight her. He opened his mouth to say they'd leave in a day, but something felt like it was tugging at his heart. “Okay. Can we call our friends and get backup?”

Nyx pulled out a radio and set it down. “We can, but part of this whole venture is that you needed time away. Still need it.”

A fair point, Corvayne conceded. “When I was in the reactor, before Diamond activated, I saw someone who looked like Lady Blood Claw. She mentioned a master...”

Spears piped up, groggily. “Did she have a third eye like the other cultists? It feels odd we were there right there when it happened...”

Corvayne agreed. “They were working probably doing something in the dungeon to burn the containment out, but maybe something about me being there made it possible for the last bit to happen?”

Lady Blood Claw picked a turquoise fruit that looked a little like a peach and took a bite, making the 'not bad' face before setting her skin to match the color on a whim. She finished the fruit and wiped her hands on Nyxion's cape before continuing.. “If we take another jab at it, then we should see if we can prevent her awakening.”

Corvayne frowned. “I'm not going to rely on that. Once was enough. But yes, if that happens, we could try to get close to her while she's asleep and pull the curse out. If she's unable to blast us with magic miles away.”

Lady Blood Claw was thinking. “What about imperial weapons? Might the light beam stop her long enough to tap her?”

Tutu looked around the table. “Why do you insist that the monster is a she?”

Corvayne helpfully simulated Diamond's chest. “Diamonds is not wearing a shirt. If not for how terrifyingly destructive she is, I'd say I'd be more embarrassed then anything.”

LBC snorted. “You mean horny?”

The princess thought about this, then reached out for the wine. “So you knew her? Or you know it's name?”

Careful, he thought to himself. Corvayne trusted Bell, and in poor lighting her sister resembled her. But unlike Bell, her sister was more a force of nature. He watched her lean in. “We can make it a trade... I'm willing to part with the empires secrets while they matter.”

“I want to know about me... as the Wanderer.”

“Well! Every child knows you were a 'good guy' who had a habit of decimating the bandit population and killing corrupt nobles. Many warriors have taken up black spears as a tribute.”

“I want to know if I really came from the portal. If so, that's my next-”

“Our next stop.” Lady Blood Claw's skin flashed orange a second, then she turned to Tutu. “We spent a lot of time here, but that's off course from what we are really looking to do.”

Nyxion was thinking. “Well, not entirely. Part of this is Corvayne rebounding.”

Tutu rolled her eyes. “If you want, I will actually court him like a proper lady.”

Corvayne stared at her. “You exposed yourself numerous times to me while we ran that dungeon.” He did not bother adding that he got more out of watching Lady Blood Claw towel her hair off after a workout then when Tutu had been trying to give him an anatomy lesson. For as funny as it would be to piss Tutu off, it didn't take [[Understanding]] to know LBC would clobber him for it.

“Okay, to start with, you know we are off-worlders.” Corvayne said. Spears poked him, and he took a deep breath. “My lovely girlfriend points out, we might be from this world a long long time in the past, as we are not 100 percent sure which worlds we come from, with the exception of Nyx whom was born on Tripic... right?”

He stuck his nose up a little. “Yes. I hail from the greatest city in the universe... Though I spent more of my childhood on other worlds or the orbitals...”

Tutu looked confused, so Corvayne kept going. “We are trying to get back home to solve a bunch of mysteries about ourselves, and of course remove our curses. So if I came from a portal somewhere in the palace, I'd like to see it.”

Tutu frowned. “The entire complex under the palace is sealed, and it's a maze that burrows deep into the ground.”

Brines sniffed. “It's another big dungeon? Maybe more pilgrim ruins, then.”

Lady Blood Claw groaned. “We should go down there then. Right now.”

Nyxion grinned. “Escape! Exactly!”

Tutu shook her head. “Part of why it's sealed is because of something down there for strengthening the Royal family's bloodline power to use the many artifacts we were left as guardians of this portal.”

Corvayne grit his teeth. “Then that should have been the first place the royal family went, rather then pushing breeding experiments.”

Tutu stood up straight as a rod, biting her lip and grabbing the table. Corvayne held up a hand. “Sorry for startling you. I mean, I think Hylal is a sweet girl, and good on Bell for trying to fix a mistake she made, but... if there's a way to preserve your empire under your feet.”

Tutu took a deep breath. “After a certain point passed, everyone who tried to go into the Eye... never came out. Heroes, Wizards, Warriors, Parties, squadrons, whole armies and their followers, emperors and peasants... gone.”

Brines looked thoughtful. “So in other words, we are going to run?”

Corvayne didn't like where they were going. “I'm not going to even think about going into some artifact that's been eating people for untold ages at anything less then full strength, and only if the situation changes. I'd like to save the town, and Diamonds, but... we have three days to evacuate. Whatever we are going to do, I'd like to be at full strength.”

Tutu smiled and turned her nose up. “There's a chance though... Father is going to try to hit it at the third defense line tomorrow afternoon!”

Spears-Like-Water bobbed up and down. He reached over to one of the platters of fruit and offered her one. She spoke and ate at the same time by growing extra mouths. “We can try to get the curse out then, right?”

“It's possible, but... I tried once to clear Lady Blood Claw's curse, and it was impossible. Either way, I think we need rest. I'm dead tired.” He also found himself worrying about Bell. She had not taken his part in dooming her empire very well, accidental as it was, and it seemed like her father had been informed about them going into the dungeon and might be blaming her for awakening the monster.

He went to his room and pulled the curtains over the door to the balcony and the window. Spears wrapped herself around his neck, her gentle snoring and warmth helping stave off how cool the stone work in the room was. It was still rainy and overcast, and the gentle patter of rain on the glass helped him calm down. He was just about to lay down when he heard a knock at the door.

He got up and opened the door to see Bell, eyes red with tears but determined, clearly upset and he could feel through [[Unity]] anger, fear, frustration, determination, and a hint of something else, and before he knew what he was doing he pulled her into the room, shut the door and then pushed his lips against hers, and after a moment of her nails digging into his arms she loosened and opened her mouth to greedily kiss him back.

He had been sure Spears was asleep, but when catching his breath he heard her drowsily mutter “About damn time.”