Inopsy and I stood there in silence for a good long while. It didn’t feel right to rush things, and even as he got twitchier and twitchier, he managed to control himself. However long that lasted was probably in hours rather than days, but I couldn’t bring myself to snap Acasiana out of her ecstatic trance.

I reported back to Okeria as I watched her carefully walk around strange-looking plant, shuffle up to a mossy rock, and carefully sit down on it with the biggest grin on her face. The only reason I didn’t tell her to put her armor on was the symbol that glowed on her chest–though it was nowhere near as bright as it had been in the hazard. Even without seeing her in action, I could tell she was a whole lot weaker than she’d been with all that power behind her.

“Hey, Sebastian?” She asked.

“Yeah?”

“You called me Gardener. And now my interface has that as one of my titles. Does it give me any bonuses?”

“I… good question.” I said slowly.

Her head exploded. Gore flew every which way, splattering the ground and all of us as someone shimmered into being right behind Acasiana’s corpse. I didn’t have time to react as an entire goddamn platoon of Keratilys flickered into existence, pink sheen already dripping away from them as murderous rage took its place.

Inopsy laughed a little too loudly. “Well, so much for fucking that, huh?”

The chunks of flesh around Acasiana began to glow. I sighed and closed my eyes, completely aware that I wouldn’t remember any of this any time soon. I wondered when she’d summoned that symbol, and if this was the first time around. There was no way she’d let herself get killed like that any other time than the first, so yeah. Definitely the first.

“As long as it doesn’t bring us back to the damn hazard, I don’t care.” I said flatly and let myself fall to the ground. “See you in a second, Inopsy. Acasiana. Won’t remember a second of it, but try not dying the second time around.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Acasiana sat down on a moss-covered rock and summoned her armor. Her joyous expression was completely gone, and in the few split seconds I saw of it, she was beyond deadly serious.

“We’re surrounded.” She stated flatly with a hitch in her voice. “I need one of those communicators you have as soon as you can get me one. Otherwise we wouldn’t have just lost the fact that I know they’re there as an advantage.”

I stared at Acasiana and looked down at my hands. I clenched them once, twice, then three times as I called my blood-oil to power all of my armor. Two dozen or so armored outlines appeared in my oil-slick vision, and I called my weapon to my hand to ready myself for combat.

{Seb? What in the abyss was that?} Jun said a little too loudly directly into my ear. {It was like… time just rewound a few seconds. Are you back? Are you okay? Did Acasiana do that?}

Mortician cleared their throat to announce that they, too, were there. {Yes. Ditto to everything Juniper just said.}

{Um… I think the answer to all that is yes.} I said slowly as the Keratilys descended on us. {And… for some reason… she rewinds all of us along with her now.}

{Okay, that’s amazin’. Plain and simple.} Okeria cut in. {Seb, ya get yer butts back here as soon as ya can. I wasn’t included in that whole rewindy-thing ya say happened, so if ya reported anything in the time that got undone, re-report it while you’re on the move.}

I nodded and sent a slash at a Keratily that had tried to smash my head in with a comically oversized obsidian hammer. Their armor shifted to block the attack, but before I could do anything, the slash shifted and grew until my hydra crushed the poor bastard underfoot. Looks like she had a little more control over how I summoned her now that she was using my core as a paddling pool.

She bellowed out a mighty roar and bore down on the Keratilys. With the essence of surprise shattered and dead, their formation fell apart. I glanced between all of them looking for some kind of leader, but all of them were a little thrown off. Nobody was trying to get the group back into formation, or bark out orders, or anything like that. Hell, they were probably only here so they could try and trail Keratily into the hazard.

…Fuck.

“Acasiana. Did anyone else get in the hazard after I did?”

She shook her head. “I locked it up tight right after you came in. For the exact reason you’re probably asking about.”

“Thank God.” I sighed in relief. That was one possibility for their leader down, which meant they were somewhere else. Probably coordinating with the rest of the powerful Keratilys for a combination search party and attack on us.

“No time to waste, then.” I said to myself and summoned three teleportation anchors from my inventory. Inopsy grabbed one from my hands and disappeared before I could say anything, and Acasiana took the second without any complaints. “Pull it apart and you’ll see all the others. There’s one where your facility is–choose that one.”

“Understood, Envoy.” She said with a sarcastic edge and a Stauran salute. “It’ll be good to do some cleaning down there. A few thousand years worth of decay must’ve left it in a pretty bad state.”

Acasiana disappeared in a flash of lightning. I took my own anchor in hand, surveyed all the Keratilys, and couldn’t help it as a self-satisfied sneer overtook my lips. They’d just lost their false god. The figurehead of their entire organization, however big it was. Someone would step in to fill the void–that much was inevitable. But I just knew that Keratily kept so much power close to her chest that the power vacuum would have untold consequences.

Maybe they’d completely devolve before the war was even over. That’d make things a whole lot easier for us.

“WAIT!” One of them screamed as I pulled my teleporter apart. “WHAT DID YOU DO WITH HER?!”

My sneer turned into a full-on evil grin. “Good luck finding her.”

Electricity overtook me, and the walls of the facility replaced it a heartbeat later. I sent the anchor back into my inventory as Okeria waved me over to the table, where Acasiana was already leaning over it with obvious interest.

“Wow. This actually her?” He asked in a not-quiet-at-all voice and jabbed a thumb at Acasiana.

“She’s the real one.” I confirmed and doffed my armor. “Keratily’s stuck in the hazard, and I changed the entrance requirements and appearance to be the same as the one to the floodforest.”

“...What?”

I chuckled and tapped the spot that indicated the hazard entrance on the map table. “I got a trinket that lets me sort of customize the entrances to hazards I’ve cleared. I swapped where the entrance to the floodforest and the blasted ruins lead to, then turned the blasted ruins’ requirement from ‘literally anyone’ to the ‘Jun, me, and anyone we let in’ for the floodforest.”

“...Okay, I’ll trust ya on that.” Okeria said slowly and glanced down at the map. “If it means Keratily ain’t our problem until we decide she is again, then I’m overjoyed with the outcome. Speakin’ of–ya rewound through time somehow. That’s Acasiana’s thing. How’d that happen?”

Acasiana stood bolt upright and locked eyes with me. “You… what? Since when?”

“Since we left the hazard.” I replied casually, which probably wasn’t the right tone of voice. “Jun and Mortician also got rewound with us, so it looks like everyone that gets a really significant connection to me gets rewound. Did it cost you more battery than it used to?”

She held up a finger, swiped her hand through the air, then shook her head. “No, it didn’t. I’m not recovering battery anywhere near as quickly as in the hazard, so it’s not the invincible time-shield it was, but I’ll trade my freedom for unlimited highly constrained power any day of the week. Where are we needed next?”

“Ya can take a break if ya want.” Okeria said. “No, not ya. Just Acasiana. Ya weren’t the one that just got freed from thousands of years in Moricla jail.”

“Wasn’t planning on taking a break. Does anyone actually need help right now, or is it time for operation ‘sit here and wait until shit really hits the fan’?”

“I don’t want to take a break.” Acasiana cut in before Okeria could respond. “I’m free for the first time in forever, and I’m not going to spend the first hours of it cooped up in the place I spent most of my time before that drowned hazard. There are so many feelings and urges I need to take out on people that really deserve it.”

I gestured at Acasiana as if to say ‘there you go’. Okeria nodded seriously, then tapped the map on the place with the most figures clustered together.

“This is the most likely place for trouble ta come knockin’. There are some big guns firin’ off in the area, but the ones I’m really worried about haven’t jumped into the fray just yet. I’d bet my firstborn child that they’re all crowdin’ around wherever Scalovera’s holed up, just waitin’ for a message from Endra before they do anythin’.”

“Scalovera was the leader before you, right?’ Acasiana asked Okeria. “Was he a military leader, a social leader, or more of an economical leader?”

Okeria snorted and crossed his arms. “Try ‘incompetent leader’. He ain’t worth the clothes on his back, and from how little he’s given any orders this entire scuffle, he’s definitely not the one pullin’ the important strings. We wait for him ta peek his overinflated head outta his hidey-hole, cut him down or capture him, then either kill all the remainin’ mercs he’s hired ta do his dirty work or see if their allegiance is made by parasite or by coin.”

Acasiana nodded. “I know the type. He’s probably holed up in a bunker he dug up, or he could have someone with a shielding-style core watching over him every waking hour of the day. I’ve seen more bunker types before, since they usually dig so far away that they aren’t anywhere close to things if they go wrong.”

“No way. Endra wouldn’t let him do that.” I interrupted. “From what Okeria’s told me, and from the fact that we haven’t seen him since we got into the city, he’s cowering. Some percentage from Endra, a little from Keratily, and the rest from us.”

“Yeah, that.” Okeria agreed and tapped a lone figure off away from all the others. “I’ve got miss shrinky-dink retreating ta wherever all Scalovera’s troops retreat to when they’re injured or tired, and she’s been feeding me updates whenever she remembers. They’re usin’ fluids tainted with Endra’s worms to heal, and anyone that wasn’t infected ta start off with don’t come outta those catacombs unscathed.”

“Catacombs? Those weren’t there when I ran the city.” Acasiana mused and leaned in closer to look at the one piece I wasn’t sure we could trust. “Someone else must have dug them, but how didn’t they find these facilities when they did?”

“They probably did, they just couldn’t break in.” I offered. “It didn't show up on any scans, either, so maybe they just overlooked it.”

“No, there are definitely people who could have broken in. Especially since my connection to this place was nearly severed when I trapped myself in the hazard. If Scalovera is hidden away somewhere, and you still haven’t been able to find out where that is, wouldn’t it make the most sense that he found a way to break into one of the facilities?”

Okeria and I shared a look that said neither of us had even considered that option. He nodded at me and raised his hand, then gently pinched on Viri’s figure.

“Little miss shrinky. Flare that navigation beacon I gave ya.”

Viri’s voice crackled to life in my ears. {I just did. Did you get a signal?}

“No, we did not.” Okeria grinned at both Acasiana and me. “But apparently I forgot somethin’ super simple. Retreat for now, and keep that beacon on for the entire time. We’ll find the entrance that way.”