The carriage was a prisoner transport vehicle. Kiresula and Mayana were chained to it. The [Cleric] Haina and two [Holy Guard]s who were in the room with her when Haina made the questionable offer were there to bring the two to Mabetshehir. The outside was dark. The group had let Kju out shortly after leaving the city. Kju said that he knew another way into the glitchling settlement, something that he learned about in the Rainbow House. Haina explained that it was important that he was back in 2 days. Kju nodded and left. Then, the carriage disappeared towards the city of the Holy Order.
Kiresula saw the area of the Forbidden Dungeon and grinned at Mayana: “Shall we do it again?”
Mayana gave Kiresula a very light tap onto the head and responded in mock outrage: “You are incorrigible.”
Haina looked confused: “Again?”
Kiresula looked at the cleric and smiled: “We kinda… delved this one?”
Haina turned white. “You did before you glitched? Or afterwards?”
Mayana looked at him: “Afterwards. But it is not something I ever want to repeat unless we’re at least 64 levels higher.”
Kiresula nodded: “Yeah, maybe as an elementary glitchling, we might have a chance...”
Mayana hummed: “Maybe, though it might be better to get one rank higher. Maybe after I have some serious words with one particular dungeon.”
Kiresula shook her head: “You’re still looking into the elemental beetles?”
Mayana smiled: “I might. The current version stages and destages 3 times as fast. What can I say? Someone had a lot of time on her hands and the ground was dirty enough for me to draw on.”
Kiresula smiled: “I remember on our wedding day, when my dad said that with enough paper and ink, you’d take over the world. I start to think neither is strictly required.” and tried to hug her.
The journey was taking until noon. Haina advised the group to look properly miserable before they entered the city as a happy prisoner might cause a deeper investigation and that was exactly what Mayana did. Kiresula, due to the absence of anything resembling a poker face, only looked unhappy after thinking of miserable things like getting chased by the Holy Order. Or failing due to running her mouth on the last leg way to Ilkshehir.
Fortunately, the guards had no business with them and just checked Haina's insignia as well as the prisoners' paperwork. Afterwards, the carriage drove to the centre of the city, stopped at a nondescript house and let the prisoners out. The house looked small, as if only a childless couple lived there, however, it had a deep basement, and there, a narrow hallway. Haina was the last one, as if he feared the rest of the group would make a run for it. A grain of time or two later, Kiresula felt a deluge of broken magic. She motioned at the others to stop and cleaned it up. She shouted at Mayana to stand back and, reminding herself not to disclose too much, she said in Je-ashvehanu (in the hope that the [cleric doesn’t understand]): “Don’t go!! Not even your high keep-going-on-well against synthic magic will be good!”
Mayana stepped back eagerly. Kiresula thought that she saw a momentary shift in Haina’s expression, but was not sure if she had just imagined it.
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“Yes, yes,” she responded in much less certain Je-ashvehanu. Given that Kiresula wasn’t particularly fluent, that meant a lot.
“Haina, stand back until we have a level of broken magic that you can tolerate!” Kiresula said. She then used Serenity, took a few steps forward, and cleaned out some more. She thought that she saw something out of the corner of her eye, turned round and noticed the [cleric] following her. She ran back and pushed him several steps back. She lost it on him: “What the fuck are you thinking‽ This area is not clear yet! Just because you can’t see accumulation under a certain threshold doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen! Stop this, or I sit down right here and don’t do anything and eventually rat you out to the Holy Order!” Kiresula snarled, “You don’t see synthic magic, so what gives you the undeserved gall to just waltz in here when I didn’t give you the all clear‽ If something goes wrong, I am the one who is going to be punished, not you! So, for the love of the green hills in sweet Anadolu, listen!”
Haina took a few steps back at this reaction: “Okay, okay… you go ahead, I wait here. I thought the area was clear, you didn’t go back and forth in the dungeon of the awakened mind.”
Kiresula nodded: “That area had less movement of broken magic. It was like a gentle river, not an ocean that throws large waves to and fro. In my experience, the spatial magic of dungeons seems to calm magic. Both kinds, actually.”
Haina and Mayana stood back, Mayana blocking the path of Haina and Kiresula moved back and forth, cleaning up the broken magic. Eventually, Kiresula gave the sign to proceed. The same procedure repeated again and again. Eventually, the group reached a large hall which contained a large magical apparatus. Kiresula didn’t understand it, but saw a wild combination of mirrors, light sources, glowing rods, crystals and strange engravings. The place was positively brimming with synthic magic. Kiresula looked at the matter, sighed, then asked the others to stand back. She looked at the structure, walked around it, looked at every lens and cog. She walked around, realised something strange and stopped. She looked at the structure, paced to and fro and gasped. She noticed that there was a place where broken magic originated. Pacing back and fore, she slowly was able to find the place where it came from. She then went onto her knees and stood up to attempt to isolate where it was from. She checked, rechecked, cussed mildly. It looked as if it derived from the machine itself. She returned, went to Mayana and asked: “Can you see if this thing is still running?”
Mayana looked at it and furrowed her brows: “I am not sure.” She spoke in Je-ashvehanu: “All synthic magic here. I see nothing.”
Kiresula responded in the same language: “Any place you want to see?”
Mayana pointed to places and Kiresula tried to keep it free, but there was too much broken magic.
Kiresula looked at Mayana and said: “Too much. It is like a river. Will cast towards you to make it better." Then, she cast 400 Seren of [Enhance Ability] on Mayana’s Perception.
Mayana gasped and, in Mainlandic, shouted: “What in the green hills of sweet Anadolu‽”
“Can you see anything now? I made your sight better,” Kiresula explained in Je-ashvehanu.
Her wife nodded: “A lot. This is… hard.”
Kiresula asked: “Is there non-synthic magic though? Is this thing working?”
There was a pause, then Mayana responded: “I think there is remaining magic in there. I see something in there… crystals?” she said the last word in mainlandish.
Kiresula asked: “Where?”
Mayana walked around the device, then sketched the machine on the floor, indicating the places of the crystals. Kiresula didn’t dare intervene, but she walked near her wife and tried to stem the constantly approaching tide of synthic magic just by her use of Serenity to reclaim the area Mayana was in or would be in in the next moments. There was accumulation, of course, but Kiresula saw that slowly absorbed by Mayana’s synthic abilities. She slowly circled the machine, sometimes asking Kiresula to remove metallic covers. Sometimes, she put her hands closer to the device. Eventually, after Kiresula had restored her entire expended broken magic, Mayana pointed to something in the machine and cussed: “Kirey, we have a problem!”