Edge Cases

Two hours.

It wasn't a lot of time. It was barely any time at all, Vex thought, and maybe that was exactly why Helg had chosen it — it was just long enough to seem kind, but not long enough for them to actually do anything with it.

Not that she seemed kind at all, if that was her goal. Vex glanced around the room — Sev was gearing up to argue with her, and Misa was stepping forward with her fists clenched, ready for a fight. Derivan was the only one that was standing back, observing what was happening, and Vex saw the armor's gaze flicker to him occasionally, as if trying to see how he was doing.

Vex wasn't sure. There was a panic roiling in him, still, but he was in crisis mode; he would have the time to panic properly later.

Anton and Unea stood out, among the six of them. Anton's countenance was indignant and fiercely protective; Unea was standing a little ways back, as if not really wanting to involve herself, but from the way she leaned towards Anton, Vex suspected she agreed with him.

"It's not up for debate." With her hood off, Helg seemed much fiercer than she had before — and it revealed that she wasn't entirely like a wasp, either. Her sharp, angular face was slightly more flesh than chitin, though her mandibles were still plated and shone with polish.

More interesting were the glyphs tattooed onto her face. One was a sharp, angry-looking spiral, which Vex didn't recognize but understood to be aggressive, likely something for combat; the other was strangely symmetrical and perfect, orderly.

"Helg," Sev tried, and it was obvious he was doing his best to be reasonable. Vex had seen him do this before, usually negotiating with other adventurers. "Some of the people in Fendal are your own people. I've seen them. You can't let the system take away everything that makes them them just so you and a handful of others in Teque can carry on like nothing's happened."

The wasp-woman stiffened and glowered, in a strange twist of her mandibles. "You're acting like I'm the villain here," she said. "If there's a villain here, it's your system. Your world. All I'm doing is making sure what's left of us stay that way."

"At the cost of everyone else," Misa said. "That sounds like cowardice to me."

"Your solutions are not better." Helg glared. "You have empty promises and the beginnings of a solution you don't know will work. I am protecting what's left of us. It is not an easy decision."

Helg shook her head. "We aren't going to agree on this. I'm leaving. Like I said, you have two hours. If you figure something out in that time, you're welcome to find me. Otherwise, settle whatever affairs you have left here and leave."

Before any of them could respond, Helg withdrew a staff from her cloak; where she'd been hiding it, Vex had no idea, though the swirl of mana made him suspect it was the same sort of magic that she'd used to store the Patcher's arm. She tapped it once on the ground, and Vex caught a rapid shift of mana moving like lightning — striking from the stone at the tip of the staff to a little glyph she kept on her waist. The glyph flared with magic —

— and then she was gone.

Noram, too, Vex noticed belatedly. The otter had gone with her. Vex had wanted to ask him why he'd agreed to her plan in the first place; she'd clearly had to convince him, and that was the reason she'd dragged him with her upstairs to begin with. She didn't want them there while she spoke with Noram. Which meant she knew they'd be able to change his mind.

But... there was nothing to be done about that, now, short of finding them again. There was no trace of mana in the air he could use to find out where they'd gone.

"Anton," Sev said, clearly thinking the same thing. "Do you know where she went?"

"No." The beetle-mage looked frustrated. "We can go pretty much anywhere in the city with that teleport. It's good for emergencies, but we don't have a way to track each other when we do it."

"Shit." Sev scowled, the expression uncharacteristically fierce on the normally calm cleric.

"Doesn't that apply to her, too?" Misa frowned. "She's not going to be able to know where we are. How exactly is she going to make us leave?"

"I don't know." Sev glanced at Anton, who shook his head.

"I suspect that is why she took Noram with her," he said. "There are some magics she could use, probably, but nothing us combat mages would know."

Vex could feel a headache growing. "I shouldn't have said anything," he said quietly. "I'm sorry. If I kept quiet about it, maybe we could've figured out how to fix it ourselves."

Sev's face softened. "No use worrying about that now," he said. "Keeping a secret like that would demolish any trust they have in us."

"They already don't trust us," Vex said.

"They trust us enough that this didn't immediately come to blows." Sev paused for a moment, trying to find the words. "If we'd tried to keep that a secret, and it came out that we were hiding this... That might have been an immediate fight. Two hours isn't much, but it's time for us to figure some things out. It gave us time to talk to Anton and find out that mana slivers can help with the problem."

"Speaking of which," Anton said. He picked up the slivers that appeared earlier, when Vex cast his spell, and gently pressed them into the lizardkin's hands. "You should keep these."

"Don't you need the slivers?" Vex asked, looking up at Anton.

"We have enough," Anton answered mildly. "And if you keep them, you can keep doing research on them once you leave. Maybe figure something out on your end, while we work on things on our end."

"Right. We don't have to give up even if Helg does make us leave." Misa frowned for a moment, staring into the air as she presumably brought up her system interface. "...You don't have access to the system yet, though. We can't communicate that way."

"There are communication glyphs," Anton said. "I'll find one to pair with you, and we can stay in touch."

"I think," Derivan spoke up for the first time in a while, and Vex glanced up at him. "That perhaps leaving may be for the best, as much as I disagree with what Helg wishes to happen."

"But... if we can figure out what's happening here..." Vex protested.

"Yes," Derivan agreed. He crouched down, leaning low so he could speak face-to-face with Vex. Vex felt himself freezing up in response, and yet... he couldn't deny that small bit of comfort he took from the gentle kindness of the armor's voice. "But this place... it is a copy of another. Perhaps the answers we seek are not here; perhaps we can learn more about mana slivers and their true nature there, in the full bonus room in the depths of the Prime Dungeon in Elyra."

Maybe Derivan had a point. Or maybe Vex just really wanted to believe him.

"We don't know that that's where that is..." Misa frowned. "But I guess it seems likely."

"If we're going to be leaving," Vex said. "I want to go back to Fendal. I want... I want to talk to the other Noram."

He reminded him the most of himself, and he'd promised to share the glyph. The least he could do — the least all of them could do, really — was to warn everyone in Fendal that still had their selves intact to leave. That way, the worst that could happen with Helg's plan was that everything here would stay the same...

...which seemed to be more or less what she wanted, anyway.

It was with a subdued air that they left. Anton got them the communication glyph he'd mentioned in short order, pairing the carved rock with one of his own, and this time — while they were making their way back through towards the Roads — Vex paid attention to the people of Teque.

Not just the magic, though that was still awe-inspiring. The river of mana still flowed above, indifferent to everything they had discovered and was about to happen. Vex knew that mana could feel, or at least he knew that it behaved like it could, but if any part of it knew about what was happening, it didn't seem to care.

Teque was far different from any city or village Vex had ever been to. Very few of the people they ran into were of the same species, unless they were together as a group; many of those species would be designated as 'monster' under the system, a condition they still didn't fully understand. There was a set of kobolds laughing and talking amongst themselves, for example, running down the street; there was an ogre managing a stall; there was a butterfly-looking person, flitting about between the lamp-glyphs, filling in any parts that had eroded with a flutter of their wings and a touch of glitter on the ground.

...Then they passed that same group of kobolds once more, as they circled around the building, and Vex realized how much of the city was an illusion — a construct of the system, used to make it feel alive. For all that the system was draining from Fendal and feeding it to Teque, Teque itself still needed these so-called 'minor characters', to prevent the people from realizing that something was wrong; that their city was much smaller than it should have been, and the people much lesser.

A little bit of perception manipulation kept the illusion just real enough. And people like Helg, the ones that were willing to accept things as they were, because it was safe... They would be able to make themselves believe that illusion, even if they knew otherwise.

Because it was easier.

Because taking something at face value was easier than peering into the flaws within and correcting it, and risking the pain that might cause.

Vex's fists tightened, though he didn't realize it, and it didn't loosen until he felt Derivan's hand rest gently on his shoulder; without thinking, he reached up to put his hand in the armor's instead, a split second before he realized what he was doing—

— and then he relaxed.

It was comforting. It felt right.

He'd worry about the specifics later, when he wasn't worried about the very nature of their existence, and how to save the people of Teque.

It was enough, at least, to set his mind turning over the puzzle of the mana slivers.

The end of the Roads brought Vex and the others back into Fendal, albeit in a much more somber mood. They went straight back towards the Sleeping Bird to gather their things, brushing past this version of Anyati and the rest of the half-real peoples of the town; it occured to Vex that everything they learned explained why they'd appeared out of nowhere, too, like the system had only bothered to bring them in when it was necessary.

Noram, Charise, and the two trackers — Volaro and Juni — sat in a small table in the corner of the inn. Their expressions made Vex do a double-take the lizardkin almost instantly on edge — and he wasn't the only one, either. "Mom?" she asked, concern heavy in her voice. "What's up?"

Charise looked up to meet Misa's eyes, and then nodded towards Noram.

"Hey!" Noram said, waving; his words were bright, but his eyes were not. Vex felt his heart sink. "Good to see you. I wanted to ask; do you think you can teach me anything about magic? I'll pay you."