Sryine at this point was starting to feel absolutely foolish, but she continued to follow the nonsensical path presented for her. No matter how stupid it might be to follow the path of such lunacy, it wasn’t as if she had anything more sensible to guide her forwards instead.

Sryine threw the blossom onto the wind again, letting it flutter a bit until a gust pulled it from her and picked another direction. She would have thought that the thing would have been completely random in what it did, fickle as the wind, but the blossom had been constant in its direction the entire time. Sryine was left wondering if, just maybe, if the place was actually haunted.. that maybe it was haunted by some actually nice ghosts. Well, maybe not some, maybe just one or two of them were nice.. no more than four at the very most. She rounded a bend and found the blossom resting beside a ladder leading into the depths below. She reached out for the blossom, which suddenly fell down the ladder instead, disappearing beyond her sight. Down then? Alright, if that’s how things were going to be, that’s where she was going to go.

Vwyx pulled out the map again, trying hard to figure out where the recording might have been taken from. She looked at the map again, her eyes settling on the eleventh sector of the building, the lowest level. The label there said something about a cooling lab.. or something like that, most of the words were cut off. She had a feeling that.. okay fine, so she just needed to figure out where this place was, thank you very much voice in the head. Now, if the same voice could be so nice, maybe she could figure out where she currently… Vxyw looked at the central part of the map, the very middle section was marked as a surveillance room. She didn’t even need any additional feelings for that one, it just sort of made sense at that point. Now all she needed to do was to figure out the map enough to plot a route from where she was to where she needed to go. On her way out, she bid farewell and thanks to the strange feeling that had haunted her while helping her out, carefully treading a path so that she wouldn’t get lost any further.

Sryine carefully descended the ladder to the shakey metal platform suspended below. Looking around, she noticed that she had entered some sort of huge room of some variety. The room had occasionally staggered lights reflecting bright spots of an otherwise dim room that expanded not only far beyond her, but also well below her. For climbing down, she was actually very high up.. an impression she suspected Vwyx would hate to also be exposed to. However, on the other hand, she could only wish Vwyx was there at the time, the construction of her footing being considerably lacking and greatly in need of skilled improvements. Traversing along the network of platforms progressing both deeper and further into the room, Sryine suddenly found herself exposed to a shortcut in her descent, the hinges of the platform giving way to drop her unto the platform below it.. which then also gave way. Finding herself a couple of levels down abruptly, Sryine brushed herself off, checking for any active bleeding. Of course, bleeding all over the fragile platforms would only make things even worse, her blood warping the metal on contact. Fortunately, her new injuries weren’t serious enough to cause such problems, bruising forming most of it.

During her descent, Sryine eventually realized that the light of the room wasn’t strictly caused by normal light, there was also a faint purple hue to the ambient light of the expansive room. As she got closer, she also noticed the faint shimmer around the lower levels of the room as well. There was something related to the astral flame around here, that was all too certain, something far too familiar. The regular path of descent was taking far too long for Sryine, a sense of curiosity and a frustration of the ruthless path causing her to opt for the most efficient shortcut instead. Skipping from one of the main walls, Sryine made a dramatic drop directly to the ground below, the metal forming the base of the room being much more like the regular halls she had been traversing in the meanwhile. At the bottom level, she found the room littered with a variety of unusual containment units, all of them currently empty. However, by its design and layout.. she was subtly certain that this was one of the locations where beasts had been once contained, either by the residual food or waste left in the room.. or the simple pattern of blood from beasts that struggled against their confinement. Each confinement unit was individually lit to provide a secluded environment for the select captive, a majority of the light she had seen earlier.

As she proceeded, the other form of light that had caught her attention started to become more predominant, the confinement units ever slightly reflecting the purple that shined from beyond. Sryine then started neglecting the confinement units, her attention invested completely in the purple light. A distance further, she finally approached one of the units that was emitting the purple light, this one not being empty. Within rested a person, sitting with her eyes closed, unmoving, someone Sryine hadn’t seen before.. but who seemed very familiar. The person within was very intimidating.. in how their body emitted a vibrant purple glow.. not all that unlike Sryine’s own. Wait, this wasn’t just a simple person, this was an ersatz, one of the many Riyxia had been commanding. If the ersatz was still containing the flame within it, then it was still linked to Riyxia. That would also imply Riyxia was actually nearby. Sryine checked unit after unit, seeing more and more ersatz scattered and contained within, all unmoving.

After what felt like an eternity of units, Sryine suddenly came across one of the units containing a face far more familiar. Riyxia herself was within this unit, though she too appeared to be unmoving in the same posture as all of the others. Sryine smashed into the unit, in an attempt to break a way inside.. only to discover that even her augmented strength couldn’t even visibly warp the unit. She considered the idea of bringing the full might of her flame to bear against it.. but realized that even her success would then potentially endanger the woman inside. That implied that she had to be more considerate of the way things worked, to think of a more reliable solution. Of course, the confinement unit was basically just another instrument, she just needed to figure out how to make it work. Staying calm and rational remained difficult, especially while witnessing her friend trapped inside. Riyxia’s actual body was brissening with the flame, fully glowing head to toe in a full concentration of the flame, the backpack on her back providing a constant source for her. This pressure itself actually looked painful, her body having issues containing this much of the flame.. especially while her spectre remained absent. It wasn’t an idea Sryine had considered before, that the flame could actually be dangerous for Riyxia’s body in the event her spectre wasn’t there to manage it for an extended period.

Finally, she figured out how to manipulate the unit in order to get it open. Much like any other instrument, all that was required was for her to supply it with her own gift to manipulate it, but it was still designed with a safety process to resist an undesired flow of the gift releasing any captives within by accident. Sryine then rushed inside to check Riyxia, to make sure Riyxia was alright. Beyond being completely responsive and otherwise in a daze.. plus the mass excess of flame.. Riyxia appeared to be fine. Sryine still took the lack of response to be a generic health problem, much like any other failed instrument, so something Vwyx would have to look into. She made use of her augmented state to pick Riyxia up, to bring her outside in search of Vwyx or anything else that might help.. to then suddenly stop. Of course, bringing Riyxia’s body wasn’t enough, there was also the spectre to consider as well. Separating the two would be really dangerous, potentially only making the problem worse. Now, bringing all thousand or so ersatz wasn’t rational for her, even with her augmentation. Instead, she would have to identify which one of the many ersatz currently contained Riyxia’s spectre, ensuring both the spectre and body were brought together. This would leave the rest of the ersatz to unlink from her, which would probably spill their contained flame all over the place in some serious destruction. It was a problem, certainly, but Sryine currently had more serious things to worry about. Ieqyisa had told her earlier after all that they didn’t care if she wrecked the place, so she really shouldn’t worry about it either.

This however came with its own all too obvious problem.. she actually had never found any clear way to identify which of many hosts actually contained the spectre.. they had always instead relied on Riyxia to make that evident. The difference between the spectre and a simple link was seemingly impossible to distinguish, but now she would have to somehow achieve the impossible in order to save her friend. Things didn’t even end there, she would still have to somehow manage to carry both ersatz from this gigantic room, ascending up out of it through the precarious network of platforms, then she had to find both Vwyx and a way out of here. The sheer magnitude of responsibility compounding on Sryine brought her to tears, this whole thing being way too much for her. She still had no idea where Vwyx was.. no idea how to escape this place.. and no idea where the spectre was. Heck, she wasn’t even certain how easy it would be to carry two people along the unstable platforms without hurting anyone in the process.. the things had problems enduring her own weight alone, and she was actually fairly light in all consideration even despite her tallish height.

Even beyond dealing with the monument of impossibility before her, there was still at least the idea of dealing with the smaller things along the way, things she had more certainty over. Riyxia was still glowing brightly, the backpack simply making things worse for her. Sryine meanwhile hadn’t taken the backpack for quite a while now, and even though she was still glowing of her own magnitude, she still felt it would be fair if she took that simple burden up for herself. Sryine reached out for the backpack, carefully taking it off of Riyxia’s shoulders.. only to find Riyxia moving suddenly, resisting by instinct. Was she trying to actually deal with the responsibility of the fragment so instinctually, to make sure that her distance from it did not cause problems for others? It would be foolish, Riyxia currently was without the sheer presence of her spectre, Sryine thun had even more ability to resist the flame than Riyxia did. This was just another of her responsibilities, it wasn’t even hard compared to the rest of what she had to do. Presented again with the magnitude of what waited after, Sryine sniffled again.. and Riyxia’s grip tightened. Wait, wasn’t it then as if Riyxia’s body was instinctively growing tense by empathy of Sryine’s hardship? Maybe then, if Sryine were to reach out to the emotions of her friend.. maybe then Riyxia would return?

“Stop making me so worried, please! I know you’re just trying so hard, but you can’t just shoulder everything on your own, and you can’t just expect us to just take it easy. You can depend on us, I hope you understand that. Somehow, I’ll figure out how to carry you.. both parts of you.. out of here. We’ll find Vwyx, we’ll find a way out of here, we’ll make things better again. Seriously, trust us, please. You know we can do a ton of stuff together, you can count on us. The three of us are parts of our own whole too, if you think about it, all of us matter in much the same way you said the parts of each of us do. However, you’re trying to do everything yourself, and it's almost broken you. It is so obvious, you simply can’t take any more, you have to let us shoulder some of this responsibility for you. Please, stop it, just let it go and let us take care of things from here.” Sryine’s voice reached out to Riyxia, compelling faint reactions. However, Sryine was not aware of just how desperately Riyxia was struggling to hold on, to stay in control.. and in that moment of emotion and despair the last vestige of her resistance broke away completely. Despair fueled feelings of helplessness, a feeling there was nothing she could do. The compulsion to do nothing then compounded on that helplessness, that it was futile to even try. The futility turned to frustration, to resentment, to rage, and that rage grew unchecked by the one who had no way to fight back against it. Riyxia had completely lost control over her rage due to the influence left upon her.

Vwyx was thankfully holding a good course without any apparent mistakes, even with the feelings that had haunted her before having appeared to have left her. It didn’t fill her with that strange confidence that she was going where she should go, but at least turns with the map were still adding up. As she turned another corner, spotting a ladder that descended instead of a stairwell, the entire structure suddenly shook with incredible force, like something important had just suddenly exploded. The whole building suddenly rapidly tilted, confirming for Vwyx that something important had very obviously failed. Vwyx braced herself for impact as the floating fortress suddenly collided with the ground below, still sending Vwyx slamming against the ceiling. Many of the lights within the structure started to rapidly fail, clearly from even more damage on impact. Who knew what else was going to go wrong, especially considering concerns of what might have caused such serious destruction in the first place. At the consideration of massive destruction, Vwyx began to fear for the worst.

Vwyx dashed down the ladder, finding herself in a massive room with quickly failing lights. It wasn’t such a serious problem though, the whole room seemed to radiate purple, in addition to a series of spontaneous explosions from the bottom level deeper inside. Yup, there was no reason to just consider fear that things might reach a bad state, this was blatant confirmation. The massive room still reflected a cold darkness, but even that was being threatened by the chain of destruction in the distance. Vwyx however considered how high up she was.. and shrugged. She really had worse things to worry about, and had just fallen from an effectively much worse height in their crash, there was no time to be worried about a simple fall. The distance of the fall was dramatically worse than the drop from the observatory, but Vwyx broke the distance with a thunderous crash of her own against the hard floor at the bottom, the actual room very obviously designed to weather incredible crashes. Vwyx wasn’t even aware, but this particular room had a history of being really good at enduring heavy impacts, it wasn’t even new to being present to world-changing conflicts. As Vwyx advanced, she was given the opportunity to witness what appeared like a swarm of purple fireflies taking to the air in unison, looking like a starscape spinning within her vision. Very bad, very bad, very bad, that was so obviously Riyxia. Vwyx recalled what she had learned from the recording, that Riyxia would be in a docile state until Liyuzhe’s influence set in. Nothing about this appeared docile, everything about it appeared Riyxia. Her regret of the moment, beyond being too late, was that she hadn’t found Sryine in the process either. Dealing with this problem on her own was going to really suck.

“Oh, Vwyx, fancy meeting you here. Sorry, everything has suddenly gone to hells.. I think Riyxia lost it or something.” “Sryine! By the divine, thank goodness you’re here. All of this is actually Liyuzhe’s fault, tampering with things she has no hopes of controlling. To think she would sink so low as to try and control her friend.” “Wait, control? Did Liyuzhe sing for..” “Exactly, and we both know just how much control she can actually gain from that against the flame. Nothing at all, no one gets to keep control. It’s just like when we were both faced with exposure to our augmentation, and no ability to control it, now we’re going to have to work together to bring her back to her senses instead.” Sryine considered the quandary Vwyx presented. Dealing with one of them augmented was insane, Riyxia had struggled to hold on. Sure, against both of them together it had been a losing battle.. but things weren’t the same anymore. Riyxia had plenty of extra flame embuing her, still carried the fragment with her for even more power, and had them otherwise outnumbered some odd thousand to two. She had beaten them by dividing them into a free for all.. but all of these ersatz were Riyxia, she was basically a massive hive mind. Even together, the odds were heavily stacked against them.

Riyxia snarled, her anger clouding her mind from her will. Everything stood against her, every ounce of creation opposed her, and all of it would be destroyed. With an expression of her might, all of the units trying to contain parts of her were torn open. The very room however attempted to resist falling into destruction, very obviously being designed to resist it. Its resistance only served to fuel her rage further. Some of her initial attempts didn’t meet with much direct success, but did accomplish a chain reaction that sowed some delicious destruction beyond just the room, the fortress itself now fallen into ruins. It would only be the beginning, and it would never be enough, her hunger for destruction would never be satiated. To that purpose, she started searching for something else to destroy, something she could vent her anger upon. Some of her eyes spotted that she wasn’t actually alone, there were two other people in this massive room with her. Destruction would befall them as well, annihilation was only inevitable in her presence, all things in creation would return to the void.

Something subtle within her whispered for her to stop, that these were people to help. She could sense that they were people who had her own flame of destruction, that idea then only inspired that she could help that destruction grow by unleashing it upon the very vessel that carried it. An echo of her mind rang in a sense of authority that these were people she needed to slow down, not harm. Riyxia didn’t like that sound, she hated it, it infuriated her, only encouraging her to defy it even further. Slow down, don’t hurt.. then she would rapidly send them spiralling into a flurry of agony and death. They were a part of creation, and thus they needed to be destroyed. Turning her entire attention upon her prey, the entire collective of ersatz advanced as one. Her initial casual strikes however missed their mark, the enemy proving to be far too fast for her.. almost as if they could teleport. Their resistance simply furthered her rage.. if that was the case, she would only need to be even faster. Applying her gift unto both of her enemies, she decreased their reaction time, reflex time, movement.. sundering every element of speed her enemies carried, destroying it all. Her enemy attempted to teleport in response, however still being struck before the teleportation applied.. and after it had resolved. However, her enemy still stood, having endured such an attack. Resilient, even more than the walls around her, but even more tormenting. Even so, she would not yield, she still held the advantage here.

As the conflict raged, the flame beset against the flame, the heat of the room began to rise. The room’s most integral function still worked, its measures detecting the heat rising above tolerable limits as it prepared to respond as it was designed.. to deal with the threat contained within.