The room, despite its vastness, feels suddenly too small as the gargoyle guard dogs and electro-mecha-drakes spring into action. The eerie blue glow from the gargoyle's eyes casts a spectral light, making the metallic sheen of the mecha-drakes even more pronounced beneath their own yellowish glows and sparks. The soft whirring of gears grows louder, almost deafening in what only moments ago was a tense silence.

Teuila, always one to leap headlong boldly into combat, lunges forward, her movements a blur. With a powerful swing of Mjolnir, she smashes into the nearest mecha-drake, sending it crashing into a wall. She flashes a cheeky blushing grin apologetically my way for the noise and the vibration of the impact, the sort of nervous laugh you’d share when you realized it was your fault something went awry. The impact is so forceful that the bot crumples like a tin can, but as Lil warned, a soft glow emanates from somewhere within the scrap-heap, likely its core, and it begins to slowly reform.

Lil, not to be outdone, unleashes a torrent of flames towards a pair of gargoyles. The stone creatures, despite their elemental affinity, are caught off guard. Their stony exteriors crack and splinter under the intense heat, but they're not down for the count, far from it. From the cracks, arcs of electricity blast forth haphazardly, most of which leap towards Lil.

Oh no, that’s not happening. Out of the three of us, Lil’s the only one who doesn’t yet have some sort of storm powers, or storm resistance, or lightning or electric resist. I quickly pull a QCR number four, drawing all loose electricity in the room to me with the curse on my leg-guards. I push back against the influx of current with my weakened electrokinetic EM-field organ, but I can't keep it up for long, and even with my high resistance, I’d rather not take all the punishment coming my way. This new body of mine doesn’t have the same—. This new body of mine. Grinning almost evilly, I use my Quick-Change Ring to swap out of the cursed greaves, back to my glacial greaves.

Feeling for the Fel, I snatch power from some archdevil of cold, the pure, unyielding nature of ice. It’s a force of survival, of return. Melt the ice, even evaporate the water, eventually it freezes again. Hell, in an entropic system, everything eventually freezes. Talk about the perfect symbolism for a Reggie Shellcracker whose new fiendish blue body was crafted of reincarnation magic. Someone who has on several occasions, entombed themselves in a block of ice for their own survival. Smirking, I try to shake free my slightly self-absorbed thought-train, and focus on the battle.

Smoothing out the ground before me by freezing it, I slide low along the now-slick surface, performing something of a limbo under one of the gargoyle dogs. On my way beneath it, I unleash a flurry of jabs to the underside of its torso, each laced simultaneously with frost, and electricity. The electricity is mostly to enhance my muscle acceleration, delivering more force from the meager kinetics of my smaller form, but the ice has the desired effect. Where Lil’s fire was able to over-harden, and rend several cracks in the hides of these creatures, my Frost-Burn Fist, my FBF style SIPs sheer and shatter fist-sized chunks out of them in rapid order. I can actually use my thick, tapered, fleshy tail to propel myself back to a fully standing position from my near-limbo skating glide, a fun little trait of my new body.

My friends realize I’ve got the gargoyles handled now that I’m back in my element, literally back in my element, the first one I’d ever displayed on Can’Z’aas. Drawing on the frigid nature of my gelid greaves, and my connection to some unknown Fel force, I skate about, causing the gargoyle guard dogs to slip on the ice-slicked sections of floor I leave in my wake. I steal bits of energy and electricity pouring out of wounds in the gargoyle guard dogs, using it to fuel my muscles, my reactions, my acceleration, helping rejuvenate, or rather build up for the first time, my new electrokinetic EM-field organ. The lightning spirits within me, well, the spirit-swarm within me, crackles and tingles, pleased at either the combat, or the influx of electricity, or perhaps the nature of electricity flowing in, and out, cyclically like a circuit.

Teuila flashes a proud smile my way, seeing me confidently back in action. Knowing she doesn’t have to worry about me, she focuses on her own fight, her eyes scanning her foes for signs of the mecha-drakes' power sources. With a swift motion, she lobs Mjolnir towards another bot. The hammer crashes into the side of it, smashing through its exterior and ejecting a glowing orb, rending the bot's shell and propelling its power orb through the air to burst against the far wall. With its core destroyed, the bot's frame goes limp and topples.

Lil, using his immense strength, augmented by Megingjord, grapples with one of the gargoyle guard dogs, his claws digging into its stone flesh. With a mighty heave, he rolls and hurls the gargoyle into one of the mecha-drakes, crumpling the robot. The damage ends up revealing its dragonforce-infused core somewhere in the pile of flattened scrap, visible to Lil’s eagle-eyed analysis-skill augmented by his invisible goggles. Before it can rebuild itself, Lil, seizing the moment, snaps his maw shut around the core shattering it between his teeth. The sparks of the core fizzle out as the gargoyle guard dog shakes its head, staggering to its feet as it recovers from the impact of Lil’s throw.

The fight’s going our way, it’s even a good chance to practice with my renewed connection to frost and ice magics. Still, the gargoyle guard dogs, and mecha-drakes are relentless. They just keep coming, and for every one we take down it’s like the walls themselves spit out and build two more in their place. Grumbling, I’m about to suggest we do something a bit reckless, that might draw attention from the horde of eight to twelve thousand foes above and around us. As I’m contemplating making this suggestion, Teuila plunges Essie, her sentient Lucerne hammer known as Requiem, the Silent Song into the wall. Te’s thrust is so forceful that she leaves Essie buried deep, anchoring her firmly within the masonry.

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I’m grinning with pride at Teuila as she winks at me. She mouths the word, “Subtlety,” teasing me for my earlier lack of faith in her. I forgot the training she’d done with Iylynila both on isolating the vibrations of her impacts, as well as simply utilizing Essie’s silence aura to keep from bothering other people with her sonic booms. Still, that silence aura only covers a small portion of the room. Thankfully, Teuila does something I hadn’t really seen her do yet. Te physically manifests her Lunar Dragon Honoris Causa. Invoking both Essie’s silence aura, and her Lunar Dragon form, our battle is suddenly as quiet as the depths of space, where no one can hear you scream.

Now that Teuila no longer needs to hold back, for fear of alerting the horde to our presence, seeing her go wild with her manifested Honoris Causa is, well, a sight to behold. Te’s muscles ripple beneath the surface of her skin, each movement defined and precise, like those of an Olympic swimmer, or, heh, an otter, cutting through water. But it's not water she's slicing through, it's the very fabric of reality. The semi-translucent dragon that emerges is a masterpiece of pearlescent off-white scales that seem to absorb the scant, flickering sparks of light in the room and refract it into a soft glow, like moonlight distilled into solid form.

The sleekness of Te’s muscles isn't lost in this larger, more imposing form. If anything, it's accentuated. The power in her limbs is evident in her readily-coiled stance. Her wings, vast and membranous, unfurl with a grace that belies their strength, each movement sending ripples through the air that I swear send our foes skidding back along the icy patches of floor I’d left behind.

I find myself momentarily lost in the details—the way the edges of her scales catch and refract the electric sparks, our only light in this room save when Lil is breathing fire, or the almost imperceptible twitch of any singular one of her muscles ready to spring into action. No wonder Veril was talking about how attractive he found Farzhis’s neck to be in her dragon form, or other aspects around her neck, wings, and cranium. The elegant curve of Te’s neck is simultaneously beautiful and powerful.

And yet, despite the grandeur, right in the center of this partially translucent, partially intangible form is My Wings, Teuila. This is still Te, just with a bit more— scale. I mentally facepalm and chuckle at myself for the accidental wordplay. Her Honoris Causa’s eyes, like her own, still sparkle with that same mischievous glint I know all too well. It's a strange comfort, seeing the entirety of Teuila’s essence encapsulated by her draconic form.

Still shaking my head slightly, chuckling under my breath, I muse to myself. "If only our Can’Z’aasian family could see her now, they'd be green with envy—or maybe just green, considering the company I keep."

With Teuila and Lil being able to both go all out, the battle is over in a flash. The entire room and all its walls are pretty much demolished. It wrapped up quicker than I thought it might, leaving me with the responsibility of trying to map out the newest, best path in retrocognition. I notice Teuila sheathing Mjolnir and Essie, sticking her tongue out at me, reminding me how I’d called her unsubtle as I’m drifting into a moment between moments. She’s rescinding her Honoris Causa as she approaches, but still partially clad in her draconic form as I enter the non. The lack of the flow of time.

Something is different in my mindscape, and I wonder how much of it has to do with being in the vicinity of Teuila’s Lunar Dragon Honoris Causa. Grunting, I’m met with images, flashes, a battlefield that I’m not familiar with. The images are inside of a storming cavern, filled with glittering gems and coins, treasure. I can hazard a guess that it’s probably Al’pa’ca’s lair deep within Stormheart Keep, or whatever this place is called again. I suddenly feel empty, void of nourishment, hungrier than I’ve ever felt. The irony is not lost on me that it feels like a void is tearing apart my insides, starting with my stomach eating itself.

Then a worse pain hits. I see our battle ending victoriously, but there’s a blip, a skip in the vision. It’s the type of thing you see in a movie when a hacker implants a false camera feed to fool the security guards. First there’s that blip, then the camera, the viewing angle of the images pans and turns, and it focuses on Teuila. It focuses on her body laying on the ground, charred, like a lightning-fried corpse in the moments before derezzing.

I can’t bear the imagery, so I retreat from the non, the lack of the flow of time to the ordinary timestream. Even as I’m leaving, I’m beset upon by yet another image, Teuila laying, looking like a corpse, on a barren, lifeless, cold hunk of rock, somewhere alone in the dark. Panting heavily, I slump to the ground, exhaustion threatening to pull me under. Teuila and Lil rush to my side, their faces etched with concern.

"Reggie, are you okay?" Teuila asks, her voice filled with worry. Lil echoes the sentiment asking, “Yeah Rej pal, you okay?”

I refuse to believe what I saw when attempting retrocognition, though somehow the hunger I’d gained within remains. I manage a weak smile, nodding. "Yeah, just hungry, drained, starving even. But good job Te, really good job. You too Lil, buddy. I saw something that freaked me out in retrocognition too, but it doesn’t make sense, so I’m going to ignore it. It was Te derezzing, but it’s just not going to happen. I’m positive. Maybe it was a warning for if we do something that diverts from the primary timeline up ahead.”

When my inner circle members raise their eyebrows, I explain, “I’m guessing that means there’s a choice coming up where we’ll be given an opportunity to act uncharacteristically or something. The only problem is, is the warning for if we act as we usually would, or if we take the option we usually wouldn’t? I hate prophecies. Friggin’ useless pieces of crap."

Lil suddenly appears stricken, conflicted. Sighing, I close my eyes and shake my head, apologizing, “No, I know, I know. Lu’s been prophetic, Aymeshtu was a prophet before we came to the Onyx Dawn, I don’t really hate prophecies. I just hate prophecies about my loved ones dying without enough info on how to change it. Y’know? Anyway, let’s scarf down some grub and hit the road. Also.”

I pause, flashing a faux-serious glance with a partially furrowed, partially raised brow, hinting at the teasing nature of what I’m about to say, “I think you should lead with that last move next time Te,” remarking on how she used a combination of abilities to make our fight silent, after we’d already been fighting for several minutes.

When Te realizes I’m teasing her, I have to try to dodge her hands as she initiates an SFSF, a Shellcracker Family Slap Fight. I continue dodging while simultaneously digging food out of my hyperdimensional haversack. We’re both giggling immaturely while eating as I chase her hands away from my face one after the other. Even while eating she manages to continuously return the other hand to my face any time I chase one away. Lil rolls his eyes nearby, but chuckles anyway while scarfing down a plate of food himself.