Auranosa Intrepid Town

[Phoenixsong]

Oh, this place didn't have what they needed to fix Beetle? Made sense they'd have to go where the parts were, but was was splitting up a good idea? They still had no clue where any of the other Wayfarers had gone... There was still so much to do, though, and Leaf did have a promise to keep. And at least now they were somewhere they knew they could find a ride back to Sojaveña, so it wasn't like it'd be impossible to return.

It felt bad leaving without being sure Beetle was okay first, but Sada, however confused she might be, was their best (only) shot at getting better. And Jade would be there for them, she'd make sure they were okay. Beetle wasn't the only one who maybe needed someone there for them, though.

"You... are you gonna be all right, Jade?" Leaf shot a meaningful look at Virga.

 

[Chibi Pika]

"Acknowledged," replied Sada, with a friendly smile. "Everyone else—it was a pleasure making your acquaintance. I wish you the best of outcomes as you pursue your objectives. Let's go, Jade and Virga!"

Jade instinctively took a few steps after Sada, but then pivoted back to the others. "Hey, uh, good luck. I hope you find what you're looking for." Whether that was the answers they were seeking, or in Leona's case, a way home.

"You... are you gonna be all right, Jade?" Leaf shot a meaningful look at Virga.

Jade followed Leaf's gaze and gave her a grateful look. "Thanks. I think I'll be okay." She wished she could privately add 'I dealt with a lot worse when she was Lugia,' but that wasn't an option with Betel offline. Her eyes drifted to Betel's shell, and she steeled herself.

"We'll send word once Betel's fixed. Er, that is... we won't need to send word, cause you'll hear it from me directly." She forced a grin before hurrying after the professor.

 

[Shiny Phantump]

"I'm registered as a delver now. You guys can tag in on my next trip. Just, uh. Buy your own shit first, yeah? I'm not exactly flush with cash at the moment. We set off first thing in the morning. So get some rest while you can."

She glanced up and to the east, grimacing.

"If we find Auriga, maybe you guys can ask her about that ominous fucking star that showed up around the time you vanished."

Gladion waved a talon as Leona finished going over the procedural stuff. “Should be no problem, yeah.”

It took a moment to sink in. That addition. That… “Wait, rewind for a second there, the fucking what now?”

He didn’t wait for an answer before starting to stress about it. “That’s bad, that’s really fucking bad. Powehi is going to kill us. Potentially literally, if we disappear overnight that’ll be why. He probably just doesn’t know we’re here yet. But once we sleep, once we dream, then…”

If they died while Betel was down, could their safety still be assured? Probably not. But given how sensitive the situation sounded, he doubted Powehi would want to wait. (He’d started, at some point around when Powehi had joined him and Articuno in that base camp near Terminal One, started considering him a loose friend of sorts. Now, he was beginning to believe that had probably been a mistake.)

If it was for the good of the world, did he even have any right to object? No. He didn’t. And that unnerved him more than anything, the idea of having to sit down and accept his judgement.

 

[Phoenixsong]

...oh yeah. That guy. Uh-oh.

Leaf stared at Gladion, mind racing as she tried to sort through his panicked rambling. "W-why would he be mad at us? I didn't do anything." That was even at least ninety-nine percent true, this time. (Something digging through her mind searching searching searching for something, someone to hold on to, but it didn't matter because no matter how much she might've wanted it or not nobody had come. It was plainly obvious that Minerva or Mewtwo or Dad or actual Red or whoever was not here.) "I don't think you two did anything. And Jade sure didn't want Virga to show up." Beetle was the one who'd done... whatever this was, but only because the Coven had forced them and they'd tried to stop something even worse.

"Look, if this is anyone's fault, it's Director Neo Whatsisface's. Powehi gets bent out of shape at us, we just tell him to go find that guy. And if Lorrel really is... stuck between reality or whatever, I bet just tearing him out of there with full Amida firepower would've done something bad, too, so it's not like Beetle intervening made that much difference." Probably. Hopefully. (Powehi still didn't know how to find Beetle, right? Just in case?)

"We don't even know for sure that this is bad!" She had to stop herself from saying 'or even related', because even she knew their luck didn't work like that, and forced a smile instead. She turned back to Leona, totally calm and composed and sensible and only a little like inside she was trying desperately to convince herself that that was true. "Just tell us exactly what you saw, what happened."

 

[Jackie Cat]

“Wait, rewind for a second there, the fucking what now? That’s bad, that’s really fucking bad. Powehi is going to kill us. Potentially literally, if we disappear overnight that’ll be why. He probably just doesn’t know we’re here yet. But once we sleep, once we dream, then…”

"W-why would he be mad at us? I didn't do anything. I don't think you two did anything. And Jade sure didn't want Virga to show up."

"Look, if this is anyone's fault, it's Director Neo Whatsisface's. Powehi gets bent out of shape at us, we just tell him to go find that guy. And if Lorrel really is... stuck between reality or whatever, I bet just tearing him out of there with full Amida firepower would've done something bad, too, so it's not like Beetle intervening made that much difference."

"We don't even know for sure that this is bad! Just tell us exactly what you saw, what happened."

"Raikou's rocks," swore Leona, eyes widening. "You guys look fucking spooked. Maybe take a goddamn breath?"

She shook her head and shoulders as if drying off, and shook a helping of dust loose from her fur.

"Anyway. The star's been there since around the time you guys dipped, and it's maybe a little brighter since then? It's reddish, somewhere in the east, I guess, definitely wasn't there before. Visible once it gets dark if you're out in the sticks."

She made a face, as if she didn't really want to address all the stuff these two had just been raving about – it had all gone rather over her head.

"We'll need to camp out, so uh. If your pissed-off friend comes to murder you in your sleep or whatever, I'll be in my own tent. Put in a good word for me with the reaper if you get a chance, I guess? Yikes."

 

[Ambyssin]

"Yeah, uh, something tells me he's not going to listen to any words we put in," Nova said, shaking his head. "I'd vote for skipping the camp and going directly to find the person who's very relevant to all of this. But something tells me it's not that simple."

 

[Jackie Cat]

Leona shrugged. "Uh, cool? Lemme know if you run into your spooky friend. In the meantime, you ought to get geared up. Not that it isn't great to see you, but I don't like to wait around."

True enough, the Lycanroc set off at once, and the group could follow her or not as they pleased.

There were guestrooms at the Guild or a hostel in town for them to stay, and these would be comfortable enough. If any Wayfarer happened to look up at the stars that night, and turn their eyes easy, they might see a distant, red pinprick. Glowing like the north star, just above the horizon...

Come the following morning, Leona was packed and ready at the crack of dawn, and perfectly willing to bang on their bedroom doors and bark them awake if necessary. She'd always been a proactive sort, since her Shadows were cured, but this was a new and deeply insistent drive that compelled her into the wilds before half the diurnal population was even awake.

The path Leona had identified was rocky and arid, not so dissimilar from parts of the Soja', but it was marked by a unique feature. The hills here had bare flanks, where the layered clays and gypsums of their bulk were exposed, and these strata were an astonishing rainbow of mineral hues. Red, yellow, green, like successive folds of dyed cloth, struck through over and over with bright turquoise-blue, as if the whole landform were a kind of art project. Auranosa was strange enough that this might actually be true, given what was known about the ancient culture that once thrived here – that they crafted and re-made the environment around them, with their mastery of magitech.

Leona wasn't too chatty at first. The wolf was singularly focused on taking point and following the correct route.

"Kindof out on a limb here," she said, at length, once the day was a few hours old. "From what I've gathered, the physical location of this place isn't even all that obscure. It's just that nobody ever seems to actually get inside the damn dungeon. So, uh. I dunno. Kinda hoping you weirdos would have some insight, maybe, once we get there. Before you showed up, I was just gonna throw myself at it until I found it, or something found me. Guess you found me soon enough."

 

[Phoenixsong]

Well, they weren't dead, so that was a promising start. There hadn't been anything at all that night, actually, unless she'd been so exhausted she'd slept through whatever Powehi had wanted to say. Maybe he remembered he owed them and was laying off for now. Or maybe he'd finally developed half an ounce of chill.

Whatever the reason, they'd deal with it (and Neo) later. They still had time, and there was no sense wasting it.

The landscape out here kinda reminded Leaf of those little bottles of colored sand, but everywhere, and magnificent instead of like she'd made it for arts and crafts at summer camp. Wild to think a place this pretty could actually exist... fitting, maybe, if the Voice of Life really was out here somewhere.

Leaf looked around as Leona explained, checking for any of the usual signs of dungeon rifts, then turned back to Nova and Gladion. "When you guys saw Auriga before, did she tell you anything to look out for?"

 

[Shiny Phantump]

"Nope, the Caldera stuff went down before dungeons were even a thing. It was the first dungeon, so when she showed up the place it was just a still-functioning temple. No idea what the dungeon's gonna be like..."

Gladion didn't sound too worried about it, though. Blackglass Caldera itself had been his worst dungeon experience, and while it had had its moments of raw, primal terror he'd ultimately thus far evaded ending up in any psychologically horrifying dungeons. When he pictured an potentially challenging dungeon, it made him think of strong phantasms and difficult battles. That would explain why he sounded like he had a level of excitement to hand this dungeon a potential blank cheque.

"I guess if there's supposed to be a whole-ass temple hidden somewhere no one has found it before, even if it's a dungeon now that's gotta narrow down the pool of places you could potentially hide it."

 

[Ambyssin]

"What about radiance?" Nova proposed. "Maybe the key to finding, y'know, a source of light and life is with some of that very light?"

He extended a foreleg and tapped his claws together. Little golden sparks jumped out and into the dirt.

 

[Jackie Cat]

"When you guys saw Auriga before, did she tell you anything to look out for?"

Leona shot Leaf a look.

"You saw Auriga?" she asked.

But no – just a memory, echoing forever. The wolf turned away, frowning.

"I guess if there's supposed to be a whole-ass temple hidden somewhere no one has found it before, even if it's a dungeon now that's gotta narrow down the pool of places you could potentially hide it."

"What about radiance?" Nova proposed. "Maybe the key to finding, y'know, a source of light and life is with some of that very light?"

"Heh..."

Leona flashed her teeth, and a spark of golden Aura flickered at her mouth.

"I'm hoping so," she said. "It's my best bet on what it'll take that nobody else in Intrepid has managed 'til now – and it's something we actually have. If it were just tough to get through, the Guild would've crawled it already."

She scoffed under her breath.

"I'm pretty sure I know where it is, anyway. And if you guys have your strength back, well... I think it's a good bet that we can delve it."

For all that Leona was supposedly an awkward loner, she'd picked up an awful lot of adventuring slang for spending scarcely a couple days in Intrepid...

"I take it you guys didn't get a visit from your spooky friend, by the way?" she added.

It was true. Powehi had not made an appearance...

 

[Ambyssin]

"He hasn't shown up yet." Nova clicked his tongue. "Maybe he's malding somewhere over that evil looking star in the sky."

His cheek bolts spun with sparks of radiance as he tried to see if the light gave any indication of where to go.

 

[Jackie Cat]

As Nova's motes of light filled the air, they shifted gently in space as if blown by a breath of wind. In truth, any winds present would not have affected the energy in this way, and blew a different direction besides. Something else drew them hesitantly across the invisible leylines of the world... perhaps towards some well of Radiance, as Nova hoped?

If the chimera used more exotic energy, he would find that the motes were drawn in this direction, then flowing up like they were subject to some kind of inverted river basin, along the spine of the stratiated hills...

"This sniffing method of yours... It's taking us to Stargazer's Point," declared Leona, as if that meant something to the rest of the party. "Everyone's been there," she explained, "it's kindof a landmark, and a rite of passage for delvers to clear it. Been there, done that already, myself."

But she didn't object to continuing along the path Nova was discovering.

"It's just some old ruins," elaborated the wolf. "Might've been an astronomy tower back in the day, or it might not. It's basically just rubble, now, and a tiny rift that makes you see the stars like they were a few thousand years ago or whatever. Some of the Intrepid scholars think it was a sort of holy site, so... maybe we are onto something with this?"

 

[Ambyssin]

"A tiny rift, huh?" Nova followed Leona's gaze. "Well, has anyone tried to poke that open a bit? Might be a surprise inside. Cereal box logic never steers me wrong."

He had never once used cereal box logic.

 

[Shiny Phantump]

“It sounds like the kind of place we’re looking for. The kind of place that could have been a temple of some description. In that Auriga could call it one, even if it wasn’t what we’d usually call one.”

But that didn’t mean he knew what to do once he got there.

“I suppose we should try using Radiance there, see if the dungeon reacts. Auriga usually speaks in people’s dreams. D’you think anyone else has tried sleeping there before?”

Gladion shot Leona a smirk. “If you’re too well rested to sleep again, we could just whack you really hard over the back of the head.”

 

[Jackie Cat]

Leona smirked back at him. "You'd have to get up very early in the morning to get away with that," she jested.

In any event, they reached the Point before long, as it was much as Leona had said it would be – a simple ruins site atop a hill, with the remains of Guilder camps still visible in places. There were even a few cigarette butts to be found. Leona, apparently, had seen worse.

The sky above the site shimmered faintly. With a good eye, and close attention, one could make out stars visible even during the day. The effect grew a little stronger as Radiance was introduced to the environment, though a temple to the World-Spirit did not visibly manifest...

"Were you serious about sleeping here?" asked Leona. "Don't know that it's gonna help, but I guess it can't hurt. Point's a pretty mild dungeon, after all. It's not like we'll get jumped in our sleep..."

You need not sleep; you need only dream.

"Kinda get the feeling we don't need to sleep," she added, quickly. "But maybe we need some outside-the-box thinking for this? After all, a lotta folks have been here already."

Many have trod here; few have climbed.

 

[Ambyssin]

"Well, if Auriga speaks in dreams, there is daydreaming." Nova hummed in thought. "Seems more appropriate for a symbol of brilliant light, anyway."

Head buzzing with a twinge of radiance, Nova envisioned a temple with an array of stars and constellations strewn about it. He also visualized that familiar light from Blacklight Caldera's memory projection.