System Lost: My Own Best Friend

After Talla's lecture—or maybe during, I'm not sure—Violet recedes to let me take the front again. Maggie's magical strain is concerning, but it's not like we can afford not understanding the rangers right now. It's interesting that Violet and I aren't feeling the secondary effects, but we are feeling the headache—even when not in front. There must be some extra burden on her as the one actually casting the spell.

Draga stomps back into the cave looking...peeved is probably underselling it.

"[Talla, when was the last time this dungeon was surveyed?]" he demands.

Talla jumps, surprised by her leader's sudden ire. "[Uh, I don't know. The church doesn't exactly keep their records public.]"

"[Give me your best guess.]"

"[Alright, hold on a minute,]" she sighs. "[I'll need to cross-reference ranger mission logs with local records...]"

While Talla's eyes take on that familiar far-away look and start racing back and forth, Draga turns to me and points.

"[You!]"

I point at myself, eyes wide and questioning.

"[No, I meant the worm,] he quips sarcastically. [Yes, you. When you escaped the dungeon, did you come through that tunnel?]"

I peer into the darkness he just emerged from, considering my answer. Talla already told him my answer to that, and even if he didn't believe me the first time, there's no reason for him to ask again. Unless he saw something down there that gives him a reason to think I'm lying, in which case doubling down on the lie will probably not do me any favors.

Aside from the obvious moral reasons, this is why lying sucks. It almost always leads to bad situations like this with no good answer.

I sigh and shake my head, pointing back the way we came. "No."

Talla glances at me with a small frown, but to my disappointment she doesn't seem surprised. As I expected, neither does Draga.

"[Didn't think so,]" he says. "[I'll spare you the futility of explaining how you got through the seal. It was probably already broken when you opened it.]"

He doesn't clarify on that, turning back to Talla and waiting for her to finish whatever she's doing with her skills.

"[Okay, it looks like the last time rangers came this way on a mission for the church was probably...] Her eyes widen. [Wait, two hundred years ago?! That's impossible!]"

Draga scoffs. "[Not only is it possible, I'd say it's downright likely. Come on.]"

He beckons us all to follow him down the tunnel, and Talla continues her protests as we do.

"[But alchemical lamps didn't exist that long ago,]" she insists. "[They must have been added more recently.]"

"[Uh huh,]" Draga agrees. "[By the church. Alone and in secret.]"

"[But why?]"

"[Hell if I know,]" he mutters darkly. "[They like to keep their secrets.]"

The tunnel has a downward slope and a slight curve, which my directional sense tells me has us gradually turning back on the river. A few minutes later, we arrive at a branch in the path to the left and Draga points down it casually.

"[Embergaze nest that way,]" he comments. "[A few dozen strong, at least, and that's just the ones nesting.]"

Saban and Talla stiffen at that, but Draga just keeps walking past, as though it's an afterthought to whatever he actually intends to show us.

I feel a slight pressure building in my head as the path continues to curve, my [Inner Compass] giving me confusing results. I anchored it so that north is the direction the doors that led out of the convergence point are facing, and my magically enhanced sense of direction is telling me that we've managed to get turned all the way around to the point that we're traveling "north" again.

That would be odd enough, but the other aspect of the skill is giving me a sinking, ominous feeling. Like it's leading us towards something familiar and unpleasant. As we proceed, I start to grow increasingly nervous about it. There's no way though, right? We haven't walked nearly far enough to end up anywhere I've already been.

The tunnel slowly opens up before us until Draga stops. The rest of us join him, and my blood freezes in my veins at the sight of a huge, yawning abyss. A great chasm cutting across the stone like a blade. I want to refuse the sight in front of me, but the [World Engine] won't let me. [Retraced Steps] confirms that I've seen this place before. And not only that...

[Level up!]

Pathfinder is now level 4.

+4 Awareness.

+4 Will.

"This doesn't make any sense!" I protest aloud, clutching at my head and trying my best not to panic. "We're facing the wrong way! If this was the same chasm we'd be on the other side of it and that's...it's not possible!"

"[Woah!]" Talla puts a gentle hand on my shoulder. "[It's okay, Allie. You're not alone this time. You'll be okay.]"

"But—"

"It is the other side," Maggie interrupts before I can say anything. "I don't know how, but space is fucked here. No wonder that freaky spider thing was so weird."

Saban ignores my plight and sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. "[Blood and acid, this dungeon isn't broken—it's wide open. I can't even tell where the convergence starts and stops.]"

"[I hate to admit it,]" Talla sighs, "[but you're right. Latent space and real space are completely tangled up here. The seal has utterly failed to contain it. Why would the church let it degrade so far?]"

"[There's no way we can do this delve, right?]" Saban asks, turning to Draga. "[This is way above our tier.]"

"[It's not a matter of can or cannot,]" Draga grumbles. "[We're obligated to at least complete the survey.]"

"[What, so we just go in and die for no reason?]"

"[No,]" Draga answers, turning away from the chasm. "[We take it slow, do it right. And we use every resource available.]"

For some reason that makes Talla grow tense, and she looks up anxiously at Draga. "[Wait, you don't mean—?]"

"[I do,]" he interrupts, turning to me. "[Congratulations, Miss Allie. You're an honorary ranger now. You either get us through this dungeon, or die along with us.]"

Without waiting for a response, he starts stalking back towards camp, Saban following closely behind.

"[I'll explain everything later,]" Talla sighs. "[Let's just get back first.]"

I nod slowly, still struggling to process what the heck is going on.

* * *

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Talla regards Allie curiously as they return to camp. She's such a strange creature. When they'd first met, she was intense and focused, but then after defusing the situation she'd grown more relaxed and even enthusiastic in her engagement with Talla's interrogation. Eager to learn more about the world she found herself in and even trying to share her own language, though she'd been reluctant to share details about her origins.

Around lunch, something changed. Allie grew more reserved and inwardly focused. Aside from a few gestures at Draga and Saban—probably rude and certainly well-deserved—she'd been almost entirely silent and never met anybody's eyes.

The question is, what changed? Talla's first theory is, of course, magical strain. Her spell is obviously putting a heavy burden on her and might even be based in chaos magic. She hopes not—that would make things awkward. But does it hold up to scrutiny?

No! After resting, Allie was alert and focused again, like she was constantly on edge. Even returning her knife had failed to relax the tension. She remained like that for half of their short scouting expedition—head on a swivel, checking every corner and shadow. A model ranger, really.

Then, after their conversation about magical strain, Allie relaxed again. She paid more attention to the rangers themselves than her surroundings.

Which brings Talla back to the present. Allie, marching silently ahead of her, looks more scared and confused than at any other point since they met—including their initial standoff. It's hard to say how much of that was just the convergence point, though.

Even experienced rangers get confused by convergence breaks, and this one is bad. Convergence points have strange geometry—space within the convergence point can seem impossible to fit within its own confines. As latent space manifests within, the real space around it is just sort of...shoved out of the way. It's impossible to tell from fully outside or fully within the convergence point, but the areas along the seam usually appear stretched and warped.

Usually.

Sometimes, latent space leaks out and merges fully with the real, creating seamless transitions into the convergence point—or "breaks." So-called, because they "break" from the established confines of the seals the church places around known convergence points.

Talla has seen convergence breaks before, and read every known treatise on how and why they happen, but she has never seen one integrated so fully into its surroundings. Even now, she's not sure whether or not they're still within the convergence.

She wishes she knew more about the phenomenon of "dungeon borne" people. Unfortunately, very few of the texts she's read so much as mention them, aside to say that it sometimes happens. They don't even have a more formal term—just the colloquial one. One part Talla neglected to mention to Allie is that most dungeon borne are found dead—it didn't seem relevant or helpful at the time.

That Allie has survived is a mystery in and of itself. That she somehow escaped the convergence by coming straight through the seal is another. Talla is still a little annoyed that Allie lied about that, but it's understandable considering how her first encounter with Fa'aun went.

What had Kiera been thinking?! Perhaps the young acolyte Kellah had been overeager, or her husband overzealous—but Kiera was a member of house Gaa of Baanu, and a priestess to boot. She should have known better than to let things escalate like that. Unfortunately it will be impossible for Talla to get a better understanding of what happened until Allie learns to talk on at least a passably conversational level.

They make it back to the river, and rather than just leaving the girls behind this time, Draga barks an order.

"Saban, take Lady Talla," he says, pointing to her. "I've got Allie."

He must be irritated to use her title like that. Saban gives her a slimy smile as he offers his hand.

"Pardon me, my lady," he says sarcastically before throwing Talla over his shoulder and leaping across the river.

She shoots him a dirty look at the rough handling, but he brushes it off as Draga does the same for Allie—albeit more delicately. Whether that's because even Draga has a soft spot for children, or because he thinks Allie is their only chance of survival isn't clear.

Back at camp, Draga has them all sit down for a briefing.

"Right. That chasm isn't crossable, which means we're going in the same way Allie got out," he nods up at the sealed doorway leading into the convergence point. "Kiera's mission here was supposed to be renewing the seal, but I think that's bullshit. I'm no mage, but if the break has gotten this bad, the seal's been dead for years, if not decades."

Allie shakes her head urgently. "[No]," she says in her language before repeating it in ours. "No!"

"This isn't a negotiation, kid," Draga admonishes her. "There are anomalous monsters all over this damned cave, and it's our job to cull the horde and identify their origin points. The seal is a lost cause, but that's the church's problem. Unfortunately the dead priestess is a problem for all of us—especially you!"

She pulls her knees up to her chest and sulks, but doesn't offer any further arguments.

"Now," Draga continues. "Our best chance at keeping our heads on our shoulders when we return home is to complete a full survey of this break and bring back as many useful anomalies as we can find. Normally, that would be completely impossible for rangers of our tier, but we've got a secret weapon, haven't we Talla?"

Talla grimaces and scratches her head. "Aw, really? On a break this big, and with only one tincture?"

"Would you prefer the executioner's axe?" he counters. "Because I don't think even your name is enough to spare you from a fuck-up this monumental. And you know the church is going to be looking for a scapegoat."

She gives him a pained groan. The spell he's alluding to is only second grade—her own terminology for the number of component skills she needs to combine—but the strain of casting a spell isn't always commensurate with the strain of maintaining or conceptualizing it. Due to her time as a scholar, many of Talla's skills are information-based, and she's been making heavy use of [Recall Knowledge] and [Sense Magic] already.

Still, even if Draga didn't order it, Talla wanted to know where the seam of the convergence was located, and she only had one way of doing that.

"Fine," she relents. "Do you want me to check now? The seam might extend out onto the mountain face."

"I would, in fact, like to know if I'm camped out in a dungeon," he answers drily.

With a helpless shrug, Talla focuses inward to visualize her skills. Normally, the exercise wouldn't be necessary for a second grade spell, but she needs to brace herself for this one.

She holds her hands in front of each other, palms apart and facing inward. In one hand, the familiar light of [Sense Magic] appears, a gentle bluish glow—her favorite and most used skill. In the other, a constantly shifting iridescent glow represents [Spectral Shift], a skill she almost never uses alone, but which serves as a component to some of her most powerful spells.

[Visualize Magic]

Slowly, and with great care, she brings the two together and feels the world light up around her, only for her eyes. With a deep breath she braces herself and lifts her eyelids slowly.

The headache hits her like a rock slide as her vision is flooded with the endlessly twisting whorls of energy flowing through the world—an entire extra dimension crudely overlaid upon the ones she's accustomed to.

Despite the reasonably low effort to cast the spell, this is one that she absolutely cannot hold for long. The sheer amount of information, combined with the way her mind has to twist itself into knots to comprehend what she is looking at, causes an intense buildup of strain. She has enough Will to manage as long as she only uses it in short bursts, but mapping the entire perimeter of the convergence point is probably going to be the work of several days and a well-timed tincture.

She works quickly, casting her gaze across the cavern. The main advantage of visualization over basic magic sense is the ability to see the shape of magic, rather than simply feeling its intensity. Convergence points always have odd magical structures—remnants from whatever process the [World Engine] uses to integrate latent space into the world. Even where the convergence break masks the spatial anomalies, those structures won't escape her eyes.

"It hasn't spread this far yet," she confirms, turning to look at the doors to the seal. "The magic of the seal is weak, but it's actually still holding. It's been stretched recently, but it's intact. They must have been maintaining it all this time."

"Fat lot of good that did them," Saban scoffs.

"This is why we survey known dungeons more than once every two hundred fucking years," Draga agrees, slipping into a rougher dialect in his irritation.

Strictly speaking, Talla's seen all she needs to, but curiosity compels her further. She checks the candles, but they aren't much more than they seem—just tightly packed bundles of magic in a remarkably stable configuration. Then, she turns her eyes to the real source of her curiosity.

At a glance, Allie looks normal. Unusually dense magic for her tier, but that could just be because she's smaller. The worm creature shows obvious signs of anomalous biology consistent with dungeon "monsters." But then Talla does a double take, rubs her eyes to make sure she isn't seeing things, and checks again.

There are three of her. All standing in the same spot, yet all separate. The sort of thing that hurts her head to look at too closely, but she forces herself through it. One is the Allie she's most used to—the cheerful and chatty one who even now can't hold back her curiosity as she meets Talla's gaze.

The second is focused and alert. Tensed up like a coiled spring ready to jump into action at a moment's notice, phantom hand already holding onto her knife with a white-knuckled grip. The last has her shoulders hunched and her head down. As focused as the second, in her way, but inward—constantly muttering silently to herself and all but ignoring the world around her.

For just a tiny fraction of a second Talla thinks she sees the faint shadow of another, but then the spell overwhelms her and she has to blink it away.

Without the spell, all she sees is Allie's wide-eyed emerald gaze staring back at her.

"What..." Talla's lips move of their own accord. "What are you?"