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Sojaveña Wilds Twilight Quarry

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Mhynt blinked.

"...Yes. Magic. To... a world that I thought was similar to the one you... Never mind." She sighed. "What's important is this is where Void Shadows usually dwell natively. And... supposedly, where Powehi also dwells and reigns."
 
"Do we... press further?" Nova said. "I feel like we should press further. Maybe we can identify dungeon links in here?" He traced a claw through the dirt. "And cut 'em away?" He paused, realizing that could probably be an obvious tell as to what they were doing. "Or at least look at them so we can put folks in position or something to get rid of them."
 
Dave glanced at Grace. "Yeah, I vote we stay together."

Frankly he wasn't sure going down there was all that great of an idea, but they did have someone who could teleport, and if they could learn anything useful from all this, better to give it a shot. Cautiously, he climbed down, yelping as he fell and then was suddenly sucked sideways by an abrupt gravitational shift. "Hey, what the fuck--"

He landed in an awkward roll by Nova's side.

Voidlands. Something about the word sounded irritatingly familiar in some way he couldn't put his finger on. Something he'd read in a book sometime, maybe?

"Hang on, Powehi lives here? Is this how Alexander's planning to get in to usurp him? Should we be guarding this place or closing it off?"
 
"If we close it off now, then we might pre-emptively alert Alexander to what we're doing," Nova warned. "My thinking was we take a look and see if we can, like, set something up that can be triggered later. If we get people to spots like this one in simultaneous dungeons, then they can all close them at once. Alexander can't be in a bunch of places at once. Especially if we're banging on his front door."

He headbutted the air. Because that was, apparently, how a birddogfish thing knocked on doors.
 
Dave tilted his head. "Triggered later? We don't exactly have the technology for a remote control."
 
"No, but we're hopefully going to have monpower," Nova said, referring to the help with infiltrating other dungeons. "Also if Powehi lives here, he could trip something for us."
 
Grace was the only one with a, well, graceful entrance. She flew down, using the voices of her teammates to guide her downwards to everyone else. The air already felt thicker, and a strange feeling was starting to form within her chest. "So... if we go far enough, we might find Powehi, too?" she questioned, sounding hopeful.

"...How much do you think Powehi would be willing to help us? Is there a chance that he turns on us later...?"
 
"From what I understand about this world's Dark Matter, he'll only turn on us if we overstay our welcome," Mhynt said. "He wants to keep a balance of positive and negative energy. Right now, there's an unstable flux. We're part of that, but we're also trying to solve it."

Mhynt marched onward with the team. The dust of the tunnel made it easy to leave tracks, but she doubted that would matter at this point.

"Something about this place... is different. Do you feel that?" she hummed. "...No, I'm sorry. I should specify. Different from how I remember things. The Voidlands here... isn't the same."

They passed through the tunnel, eyes adjusting to their new landscape. Mhynt stopped in her tracks, dropping the bag she'd been fiddling with while walking as it bumped over her shoulder.

They emerged into a great, seemingly endless expanse of black skies that twinkled gently with faint, yellow stars. An obsidian field lay to the far west where little cyan motes of light drifted here and there before resting under the rocks. To their right, a small ocean of probably-not-drinkable water lay still and coated in a recent dusting of violet dirt. They stood on an ugly patch of reddish dirt and decay, yet only twenty, thirty feet out was a tapestry of a gloomy, yet calming vista of an underworld.

Based on Mhynt's expression, it was nothing like she'd expected.
 
Dave looked around. It reminded him vaguely of the dream beach where they'd talke to Powehi. Was this water the same?

"How's it different? Different from the one in your world, then?"
 
Nova had an inkling of the answer, but didn't think it his place to speak up. Instead he went with, "This is what I remember from the dream we had about Powehi. The one where Ridley stupidly charged headfirst into that shadow water."

He started looking around for anything out of the ordinary.
 
Mhynt nodded. "This," she said, kicking up some of the dirt, "is familiar. The rest isn't. The rest... must be how this world's Voidlands is supposed to be. Before Alexander's destruction infected it."

She looked at the wasteland and realized it had patches here and there along the way. Like a...

"It's a path," Mhynt said. "If we follow these red-dirt paths, it must be the paths Alexander frequently takes. If he found his way to that rift... Yes. This confirms it. Alexander has been using the Voidlands as a back-channel to go from Dungeon to Dungeon undetected, the same way Betel helps us do something similar. But more than that..." She pointed ahead. "We also found the exact paths he took. We could--"

They suddenly received an alert from Powehi's network from Gladion.

"...Perhaps we found enough for now," Mhynt amended.
 
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Nova's crest fanned out from the message. "If we have allies, could we send them all through here to follow the trails and cut off those routes?" he wondered. "It might be quicker and easier than scattering them to different dungeons."

He made sure to talk quietly, unsure if this Voidlands was listening in somehow.
 
Dave looked up, ears perking at the message. A shuddering chill ran down his spine hearing the alarm in Gladion's voice. "Yeah. Let's go and see Owen. At least we found something."
 
"...That's a good idea," she said to Nova. "Alright."

Nodding at Nova, Dave, and Grace, the Grovyle spun on her heel and marched back down the tunnel--and then, at some point, shifted into climbing out of the pit. Disorienting, but possible, and with Grace's help and a bit of Teleporting, leaving the area was trivial. The Void Shadows paid them no mind; they seemed content to return to the Voidlands. It slowly dawned on Mhynt that perhaps they were not as malevolent as the ones she knew back home, either...

But that was for another time. Now, they had to seek an old friend to ensure the demon usurper could be rejected from this world altogether.

<><><>​
 
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