Needle’s message - whatever it had been - had sent a spike of [worry] through the nearest [Little Guardian’s Totem]s, eliciting a flurry of conversation that had me as lost as always. The once-corrupted that we had gathered made noises of their own, a mix of confusion and chaos that only added to my own confusion. Eventually, the disciples managed to calm down the gathered once-corrupted, ushering them to the side where they could rest against a ruined nest. A few of the younger ones, barely more than tiny Coreless in size, wiped at the fluids running from their eyes. The youngest of them all - a tiny Coreless in truth - simply stared into the distance, arms tightly clasped around a larger Coreless.

“...are we going to do?” Needle finished saying, speaking in hushed tones to the other disciples. There was a clatter of darkwood as one of the nearby nests shifted, bits of debris falling down in a dilapidated clump. She turned towards the sound, then back towards the ground with a look of [nervousness]. “There’s no telling when or where they might turn up.”

The male Coreless pushed his chin up towards the sitting crowd of once-corrupted in some sort of incomprehensible gesture. The others followed the motion, eyeing the group. “They’ll need to be brought back to the Statue. It’s not safe here, especially with what we know now. You and I should take them back; Valera and Doran are still somewhere in the mist, and we won’t be of any help in getting them out. Not without…”

He trailed off, motioning towards where my gold and blue protector stood behind The Grateful One, and then shrugged his shoulders.

“Erik may have agreed to do it, but I’m not so eager. Besides, I’m sure that the three of them can handle it,” he said, his lips turning up at one corner despite his continued [worry]. “Elara here sure handled me. Even if I wasn’t controlling my own body, it’s still a little embarrassing. Imagine, getting your ass handed to you by a fresh-faced Seeker. My pride still hurts a little bit.”

The Grateful One’s [Little Guardian’s Totem] flashed with a mixture of [embarrassment] and [pride], the combination of emotions appearing in tandem with a sudden reddening of her cheeks.

“She’s blushing!” the male Coreless crowed, a bit of [amusement] peeking past the [worry] that had all but solidified within his [Little Guardian’s Totem].

The redness disappeared in an instant, though the [embarrassment] spiked itself for a brief moment longer.

“No I’m not,” she said.

The other two disciples stared. Will stared too, but that’s because I hadn’t given him anything else to do. Staring was all he was doing. That and breathing, I supposed.

“Rowan, is this really the time?” Needle finally asked, a spurt of [annoyance] appearing in our connection.

“You’re right, you’re right. You know how I get when I’m nervous,” the male disciple replied, waving his hand and taking in a deep breath. He let it out slowly, tension bleeding visibly from his ore-flesh-covered shoulders. His expression flattened.

“We should get moving. Elara, just to make sure - will you be okay? I know that this is asking a lot of you,” he said, making noises at The Grateful One again.

The Grateful One nodded, her emotions going entirely flat once more. “I’ll be okay,” she said, motioning towards me and Will. “It’s not as if I’m alone. The Little Guardian was able to find Erik, so he may be able to do the same with the others. It could save some time if I can figure out how to ask him to show me where they are.”

The other Coreless made a few more noises at one another before they split apart. Needle and the male disciple gathered the once-corrupted and started to lead them through the many-nest. Meanwhile, The Grateful One started making noises at me.

Just like the rest of the noises they had been making, I had no idea what it was about.

Will’s body plodded through the mist ahead of us, the gold and blue lines dotting his flesh a stark contrast against the disgusting green of the spore-mist itself. The Grateful One followed behind him, carrying me on her shoulder.

After the other two disciples had taken the once-corrupted with them, The Grateful One had spent a while hissing unintelligibly at me. While it wasn’t as grating as the-female-who-was-not-Needle’s horrible attempts, the repeated efforts still drained me. The Grateful One’s attempts were like hearing an idiot hatchling trying to hiss for the first time rather than an idiot Coreless - maybe not quite as bad as the alternative, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed the experience.

Eventually, I had given up on it all. A few thought-hisses had caused Will’s body to gesture at her in the way I had seen the Coreless do before, beckoning her to follow. Then, with little more than that, he started walking towards the Lesser Core’s lair. If I could have, I might have tried to force him to speak. Unfortunately, the result would have been just as incomprehensible to The Grateful One as she was to me.

While I respected her occasional efforts to speak a proper language of hisses rather than Coreless babble, The Grateful One’s tendency to stifle her own emotions sometimes made understanding her a daunting challenge. There wasn’t time for it. Already, countless corrupted had gathered at the Lesser Core. With two of the Great Core’s stolen disciples among them, they were already a dangerous threat. If we waited any longer, it was possible that more would gather.

More than that, I had suffered the Lesser Core’s existence for far too long. Its scent-taste had become a constant presence in my mind, a tantalizing taste that would have driven a younger me to distraction. Now, I knew better than to rush in; moving too quickly had led to my death against the Lesser Core of flame. I had bided my time, making sure to weaken the Lesser Core’s forces and strengthen my own.

And then, when it was weaker than it had ever been and Tiamat’s minions had forced me to move faster than I originally wanted, it had stolen from me.

It had stolen from the Great Core.

That changed things. The Coreless disciples were strong, dangerously powerful even when reduced to a Lesser Core’s puppets. The-female-who-was-not-Needle, especially if the spore-roots infesting her were willing to push her body to its limits, would likely move far faster than my protectors could. She would certainly move faster than I could. Meanwhile, The Unrepentant One was a simpler matter - he was strong, with blows that landed far more powerfully than the others’ did. He wasn’t any less dangerous for that simplicity; if The Grateful One and I had faced him instead of Will earlier, we might not have made it out alive.

I couldn’t afford to make a mistake here.

I let my perspective swap to the stolen disciples again, ignoring the accumulated mental fatigue from constantly using the [Little Guardian’s Totem]s in such a draining way. Every so often, I had been forcing my perspective to flicker, throwing my vision into their own. While it meant that I wasn’t as focused on my surroundings as I could have been, I trusted in the uncorrupted disciples to guard me from any attacks. Keeping an eye on the lost disciples was far more important.

The-female-who-was-not-Needle was still wandering about, just as before. A few more corrupted Coreless had gathered around her, close enough that I could pick them out despite the cloying spore-mist. Her eyes were unnaturally still, focused directly ahead. That, more than anything else, made her corruption apparent.

The real not-Needle was far more alert than that, despite all her flaws.

The Unrepentant One wasn’t far from her, standing near another root fragment. While I was curious about what had managed to damage the darkwood tree’s roots so severely, I put that thought aside. Whatever it had been, it hadn’t won. The Lesser Core was still alive.

I pulled back into my own body, content with the fact that we were still undetected. As if sensing my return, the Grateful One’s hand came up to scratch at my scale-flesh. At the same time, the ground shuddered beneath us. The small tremors, almost imperceptible with the heavy coating of spore-flesh that muffled every vibration, ran up The Grateful One’s form and rubbed gently against my scale-flesh alongside the disciple’s gentle scratches. A bit of [tension] flickered at the edge of our connection, aborted almost instantly by The Grateful One’s strange self-control.

She sighed, letting out a long exhale, and leaned a bit closer to me so that I could hear her through the mist’s sound-swallowing effect. Her mouth worked, forming sounds that I had no real hope of interpreting.

“It’s like this city can’t catch a break,” she hissed, letting a bit of [despondency] flow through her [Little Guardian’s Totem] before she crushed it as mercilessly as she had all of her other emotions. There was a small laugh at the edge of my hearing, though it sounded more sad than anything else. “Just when we were making steps towards improving things again, everything starts to fall apart. It’s kind of funny, isn’t it?”

Lacking any other response to whatever had been said, I simply hissed back. She bared her teeth slightly, looking back towards Will again. Lines of gold and blue glinted at the base of his neck, catching bits of light given off by the Coreless’ ore-flesh.

Her expression hardened.

“This has to end. This city has dealt with enough. You and me, we’re gonna find the Core, alright? Smash it, eat it, whatever it takes. And then whatever comes next, whatever’s rumbling down there underneath us…” she said, trailing off for a brief moment.

“We’ll kill that, too.”