"Fuck," Misa said, again.

It had been an hour. The four of them sat outside the barrier to Fendal, still. They'd tried everything they could think of to break through the barrier, to no success — no amount of magic broke through it, and there was a weight to it that Derivan couldn't simply Shift through. They'd tried to dig underneath, but the barrier extended beneath the ground and up into the sky in a perfect sphere.

And it was visible. That was the worst part, Vex thought; it could call in people to see what was happening rather easily, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know how Helg would deal with new adventurers knocking at their door.

"We're going to have to leave, aren't we?" Misa scowled. "She got what she wanted. Fucker."

"I don't think we should stay," Sev said, sighing. He stared at the barrier, then beyond it, into Fendal; most of the people in the town hadn't even reacted to them being forced back. Charise, Volaro and Juni had all rushed out after them, of course, and stood on the other side of the barrier — but they couldn't do anything to break through it, either.

Misa's connection to them via her skill was weakened, too. She couldn't dismiss them even if she wanted, which presented... a whole host of new problems, really.

"We don't have any way to get in," Sev elaborated when no one else spoke up. He was trying to justify it to himself, too. "We might be able to find another way in from somewhere else. But not if we stay here."

"I need to understand glyphs more," Vex said quietly. "I don't mind if we finish traveling to Elyra and deliver the food. I... I need to know how Helg was able to do this. This spell is nothing like any barrier spell I've seen before."

Because no spell he'd seen before had interacted with a fundamental facet of reality the way Shift did. And yet, here the barrier was, doing exactly that — and doing it to such an extent that even Derivan couldn't break through it.

It meant there was something to learn. Something he could take, and make his own, and once he made it his own he could break it.

But he had to understand, first.

"I just can't believe Helg did this," Sev exhaled, clenching his fists slightly. "I was going to try to find her and talk to her again, before it was time for us to leave. She knows this is a bad idea. But she's throwing away the only lifeline she has, the people with a connection to the system — I don't get it."

"I don't think Helg knows what she's doing." The words spilled out of Vex before he could really think them through; he sat curled up on the ground, his tail wrapped around himself so he could hug it close. "I've seen this before. I think she's just tricking herself into thinking everything will be fine. I think the system makes it easy for you to trick yourself, if you really want to; it tries to make it easy for you to pretend everything is fine, even if you know that's wrong."

"Sounds like she knows exactly what she's doing, to me." Misa didn't look particularly impressed.

"I mean, yes, but..." Vex looked down, hugging his tail closer to himself. "You don't understand. I've seen it before. My whole family, pretending nothing's wrong, pretending that what they're doing is fine, even though I was crying and screaming and begging for them to stop—"

He had to stop talking there. Vex's breathing was shallower than he wanted it to be, and he was briefly aware that he was hyperventilating, sucking in air and not quite getting enough. He told himself to calm, but—

—he remembered those moments strapped into the chair, mana flooding into his body in a way that made every nerve scream with protest, the mana bar in his status slowly ticking up, and his parents whispering sweet, encouraging nothings to him to try to help him through the pain—

He wasn't fucking calm. He couldn't be.

The association, he was aware, was dim. But it was the same thing he saw in the eyes of his older brothers and sisters, all the time; they had been through the same thing, and wasn't it normal, to grow up like this? Every noble family in Elyra had to make some kind of sacrifice; the specifics were up in the air, because each one kept their own secrets, but it was very rare that the secret they kept was something pleasant.

Elyra rewarded results, after all. It didn't particularly care how you got there. He'd never known there could be something better; not until he was allowed out into the streets, long after he had gained stats in the excess of thousands of mana even at a measly level of one, and he'd seen some children playing together in the streets.

Playing. Not studying! Not learning of magic, or any of the deeper secrets of the world. One of them fell over, and started to cry, the scrape in his knees calling the attention of his mother, who fussed over him and gently bandaged the wound.

Vex had scraped his knee before. He hadn't even flinched. That amount of pain was nothing to him.

But he understood something, that day, though he hadn't quite been able to put it into words at the time: he understood how easy it could be to force someone to make a choice without ever using force at all, simply by not letting them know there was another option out there.

His parents had never forced him into that chair. He hated it, of course, and he whined and begged to not have to do it, but they would nod at him sternly, and he would sag and sit in the chair anyway. It was what he was supposed to do. Every sibling he spoke to would say they felt the same way — that they had hated the process, but it had been necessary to make their family strong, to keep them within the noble class. And how they had celebrated that strength! Every point of mana was awarded with a new dessert, or a new toy, or more often a new book about magic he could study. His love for magic was genuine, and he could always spare a few more seconds in that chair if it meant he could get another book.

All of these were technically choices he had made. His parents had spent those few years telling him how brave he was, how special he was; how he would do great things. He believed them. How could he do otherwise? They were his parents. He'd grown up with those stories of believing in great heroes with massive mana pools. He'd seen his siblings go through the same thing.

He'd never understood that it wasn't something he had to do. He never considered the possibility that there was any other choice at all. And now he saw the same thing, reflected in so many others: people making choices they didn't really have to, because they felt they were forced into it by their circumstances.

Helg, too, here.

"She thinks she's making the hard choices," Vex said. "But she's not. She's making the easy one. The one where she doesn't have to trust anyone else, the one where she doesn't have to make her or her people vulnerable. But she doesn't know that things will stay that way. She can't know that the system will keep finding them useful. Once it's done with the mana slivers..."

"Her logic is sound," Derivan said quietly, and Vex opened his mouth to protest; it shut again when he saw the light of Derivan's eyes, the way they dimmed slightly, sadly. "She is right to be scared. But fear does not justify her path, nor does that path lead to a better future. If she were more willing to explore the options available..."

"I don't want this to be my fault," Vex said, looking down. "This is my bonus room. I feel like I'm responsible, at least in part. And I feel like I should do something. I don't want to leave now, and let this just... continue."

"Look," Misa said. She looked like she'd finally calmed down a little — which wasn't saying much, considering the fact that she still looked pissed, but she was visibly controlling herself now. "Blaming yourself for something the system assigned to you isn't going to get us anywhere. You weren't involved in any of this — not the creation of the room, not whatever made this room get copied."

Hearing the words... helped. A little. It helped less than he thought it might, but maybe that was because they would be heading back to Elyra again, and the dread for that was clouding his mind. Or maybe it was just the thought of Noram, stripped away of whatever element it was that made him alive and real.

"We can't do anything else here," Sev said quietly. "We have people on the inside. We'll keep getting updates as we go. I'll send the Guild an update, too, and see if anyone they've got can break in through the barrier. We don't have to do this alone, but our next option is figuring out another way in, and like Derivan said, it looks like options for that might be all the way in Elyra."

Vex heaved out a sigh.

Right. Elyra. Home.

Sev gave him a sympathetic glance. "Not looking forward to it?"

"No," Vex said, and he hesitated for a moment. "And I think I should explain why. Just... it's going to be a long story. Let's talk about it once we get back in the caravan."

"Sure," Sev said. He looked like he wanted to say something else, too, but backed off after a moment, glancing back at the barrier instead and then sighing. "...Fuck. Feels a bit like losing, doesn't it."

"Feels a lot like losing," Misa said. "I don't like it."

"We have gained new tools," Derivan said. "I gained a new stat, too, in the fight against the Patchers, but it is... different from the others. It feels more dangerous to use. I would like to take the time to explore it."

"And I need to learn more about glyphs." Vex grimaced a little, watching the patterns of mana in the air; outside of Fendal and Teque, it all seemed a lot more lifeless. He wasn't even sure if glyphs would still work out here... He reached for his brush again, a small, almost automatic cast of [Splash of Mana] supplying him with the necessary paint, but he paused a moment before he would have drawn his glyph.

"I would like to help," Derivan said quietly, watching him. "There are many signs we do not know of, I am sure. We could learn some from Anton, but perhaps more crucially we should learn how they discover or create them in the first place."

"Right," Vex said. He put the brush away, letting the mana-paint fall to the ground and soak into the grass. "I... that'd be useful, yeah. I'd love your help. Oh! Especially if you can quantify how you were able to figure out our signs. I need to make some notes, and sketch them both out, and then maybe we can get Sev and Misa to figure out their own too..."

Vex trailed off a bit, trying not to get too lost in thought in the face of what just happened.

"Let's go," he said instead. Misa exchanged a quick goodbye with her mom, though Vex didn't miss the worried glances they shared with each other, even as Sev went to prepare to leave; their food, luckily, all seemed fine. There was one more stop they had to make before Elyra, but that quest was not a dangerous quest at all.

A small part of him knew it would be a good break; a way to rest and reset. But the larger part of Vex wanted to rush to Elyra and demand access to the dungeon, and resolve the Fendal problem as soon as possible.

He sighed.

But maybe, he thought, he needed to trust the people they were leaving in Fendal instead.

Now he just needed to gather the courage to talk about his family, and the reason he wanted so badly to get his brother out.