At least the upcoming room isn’t big enough to have an ultra-deadly sandstorm, but it’s still packed full of sand, and Sands. That is, there’s a pair of ancient yellow dragons that didn’t show up on my thermal senses, because they’re covered in warm sand. Fudge. Sighing, glancing at my companions, my sigh drops from exasperation to contentment, seeing Teuila. It’s easy to forget that she’s so stunning, and beautiful, when we spend so much time fighting, training, bleeding, pixelating, and nearly dying together. Still, I can’t spend time ogling My-Wings right now, this is serious.

Gazing towards Lil, my best buddy, I smile wide with a tear in my eye. Mostly, as with Teuila, just so grateful that he’s alive after d’rude room. Let’s not get caught up in laughing at the absurdity of the coincidence of that name. Maybe we can turn this obstacle into an advantage. I mean, Shiz joined up with us, and even took a life-threatening hit for me, just on Atter’s words. Do I have words good enough to convince these two? Or at least one of these two? Grimacing, full of self doubt, at the moment, I’m not too certain of my chances.

Still, I wouldn’t be Reggie Shellcracker, the me that I want to be, if I didn’t t—. Try. Is this it? Is this the moment? My pulse escalates rapidly, and I struggle to refrain from hyperventilating as I gaze towards Teuila once again. Is this a point where I make a choice that might be in or out of character, and it costs Teuila her life? Does she? Does Lil? Gorram prophecies. Worse than useless, they’re a deadly distraction filling me with worry, anxiety, doubt, dread, an—. And that’s what the sister wanted. She wanted me on edge.

Her prophecy -is- important. But maybe the one about Teuila isn’t. Was she trying to help me out by distracting me, by reminding me of a bigger picture? To keep me from wallowing in the self-doubt that might make the earlier prediction a self-fulfilling prophecy? Genre senses are saying around eighty to eighty-eight percent. Huh. Thanks Sisters Hidden in the Mists. Again. So the Teuila prediction is probably for if we act out of character for ourselves, or against one of my morals, or something. Something I wouldn’t have done anyway, if it weren’t for the prediction making me second-guess myself.

Having another, larger, more-ominous prophecy hanging over us is its own foreboding, and bears looking into after we’re done here. Am I sure we’re all going to make it out of this, and succeed, because of my new revelation? No. Not at all. The sisters’ prophecy could mean the three of us die here and fail. If -I’m- the heart of the storm, its eye, its void at its center, upon my death, a wraith of wrath being unleashed is entirely plausible. Phooph. Alright. Back-burner it Reggie. Way too heavy to deal with right now. Right, right, righty right rightyo.

He needn’t even ask, but Lil jokes, “So Rej, how’d’ya wanna handle this, boss?”

Smirking and rolling my eyes, I shake my head and respond, “The same way we do everytime Buddy, try to talk over these wyrms.”

For some reason, after Lil comments, “Big brain move Rej,” while sticking his tongue out at me, I expect him to continue, ‘poit, narf, egad.’

Rattling my skull at the weirdness I launch myself into the room ahead of Lil and Teuila as I start in my usual fashion, “I am Reggie Shellcracker, Hero of the Order of the Onyx Dawn, an archmage Aliased Schism, and I am the Void Dragon Honoris Causa. I am willing to offer you mercy, shelter, a home, and a peaceful life, should you simply let us pass to finish our mission of stopping Al’pa’ca, and his spellwork.”

One of the ancient Sands snorts a laugh so hard that she blows dust devils my way. At least, I think that was a laugh. The other doesn’t respond, but makes subtle eye contact, narrowing their eyes and casting a glance, flicking it towards the other. Huh. If I’m reading this right, that one is willing to talk, if the other one is dead. Maybe not join our side or anything, and entirely unwilling to give away their possible defection if the laughing Sand might live to report on it. That makes sense I suppose.

I’m certainly not going to take off my psychic-blocking circlet when we know for a fact that at least one ancient Sand in this domain is an archmage. How the hell do I communicate the possibly dissension, or desertion, to my party, or signal my acknowledgment withou—. A simple code. If I can get Te thinking about common hypotheticals, she’s sure to figure it out. One hand out of two. How can I get her to think about the sound of one hand clapping, without outright saying it? It’d be too obvious that I’m signaling my friends, and might cost us the chance to talk to the silent dragon. Ah. Silence. Another hypothetical about silence. Easy.

Pretending to be uninterested in their responses, I casually call back to my party members, “Hey Te, Lil, do you guys remember? How does it go—? If a single tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Crap, I shouldn’t have added the word single. Well, the subtle Sand is remaining placid for the moment at least. The laughing Sand asks, “What sense does that make? Of course it does.”

Grinning cheekily, I float closer as I retort, “So I assume you’re not a fan of quantum theory or Schrödinger's cat?”

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She boggles at me, her scaly face contorting, since none of what I said has any meaning on Rayileklia. I can’t say I blame her. Fakeworld nonsense is pretty screwy. As I continue floating towards the pair, she growls, “Enough! One more step and I’ll—“

Smirking, snorting my own laugh, I know it’s going to get me in trouble, but I can’t help myself as I interrupt her with far more smarm than I’m usually capable of, "Erm, sorry to interrupt, but technically, I'm not stepping—I'm gliding. It's something I guess you could call 'loophole locomotion'."

Whoops. Yep, that cost me. Hah. Great. Smooth move Reggie. At least it got a laugh out of the subtle Sand on the other side. But now I’ve got a pair of dragon jaws rushing my way. And that pair of dragon jaws has a pair of powerful allies rushing its way. Welp. Time for combat. Somehow, I feel like I’m not taking this seriously enough, as I chuckle to myself. My emotions have been all over the place in this… place. Blargh. Oh, yeah. Lotta trauma and flashbacks and—, yeah, stuff. Yeah my mind’s not screwed onto my shoulders right right now. Or into my head even, apparently.

My thermal senses are picking up a massive heatwave closing in from its furthest edges. It’s roiling, tumultuous, and it’s headed this way from above. The bodies of the horde are packed so tightly that they’re pushing a wave of heat ahead of them at extreme speeds. You’d think at least some of them’d have better things to do than just chase a trio of intruders. The horde is right behind us now. Crap. We probably won’t have time to absorb either of the dragonforces from either of these ancients.

Whistling for attention, I shunt myself aside with an LBBTKSL, god that acronym is unwieldy, but saying lightning burst boosted telekinetic square leap in my own head is just so much more mental clutter that I—. Focus Reggie. Right, right. I’ve got to give the subtle Sand some plausible deniability. Putting our butts further away from the horde at the same time is a good idea too.

Calling out to Te and Lil, I shout, “Better idea, change of plans, blast by to book it to the big bad boss battle, buddies!”

Did I mean to do that? Friggin’ hell my brain is weird. First, hearing rhyming zealotous Draconiacs, now me alliterating mid-battle like some comic-book superdoof. Teuila’s lunge has her shattering scales on the laughing Sand’s face, knocking the ancient yellow dragon for a loop, as Lil charges in with a belly full of, you guessed it, sand-meltingly-hot fire. Seems he’d been stoking it even in his shrunken form. How the hell does that even work? He literally had less lung size, but I bet digitally it—. Why do I even try to rationalize Can’Z’aasian things by Fakeworldian standards? Bluh.

When the laughing Sand stops laughing, and instead cries out, “What are you waiting for!? Get them Scirocco!” the subtle Sand calls back sarcastically, “Of course Quicksand, your sagacity knows no bounds.”

Huh, no love lost there I guess. I guess I know their names now too, rather than laughing Sand and subtle Sand, they’re Quicksand and Scirroco. Which… yeah. I honestly can’t tell if this is one of those universal irony moments where it feels like reality is playing a joke on me, or if it just made sense to get named that way, being Sands after all. Calling them ancient Yellows feels awkward even if just mentally. It feels kinda, eh, racist somehow. Not sure why. Probably Fakeworld stuff. I dunno. Anyway, focus up Reggie.

There are still traps up ahead, magical wardings, sigils, explosive glyphs and runes, spells set to go off if intruders are nearing. If we’re being pursued, Quicksand will be on us more—, well,— quickly, pft. I mean she’ll be the one hot on our tails, so we might be able to leverage the explosions and spells to our advantage, while possibly ingratiating ourselves to Scirocco. Though Scirocco has that sort of weasel-ey-ness that Yisstendahl had, that Ka’thuul has. You just know they’re going to stab us in the back.

Genre senses are saying one-hundred percent. That doesn’t happen. Except when it does, I guess. Not that I really needed some number to pop up in my head to confirm my gut instinct on that. One of Al’pa’ca’s most trusted confidantes, nearest to his deepest sanctum, signaling me with their eyes in a way to indicate needing their companion to be dead before being willing to speak? Yeah, they’re totally the type to use up, betray, and toss out anyone that stands in their way.

Huh, that’s the moment. Or rather, the choice. I can diverge from canon, make an out-of-character choice, and if I do, I lose Teuila. So, that’s how it is huh Sisters? Me, the Reggie I want to be, is going to accept Scirocco’s help, knowing they’ll stab us in the back as soon as we take down Al’pa’ca. Somehow, I’m supposed to believe that that’s the option that doesn’t end with Teuila derezzing. In this accelerated, slowed time, I breathe and sigh deeply, biting back my emotions. I can’t even communicate any of this to my party, to the people that it matters most to, that matter the most to me.

In this split instant as Teuila is buying us a momentary distraction by braining Quicksand heavily, I focus on the tunnels ahead of us. Drink it in Reggie. Sort this out. The path ahead is more perfectly paved, probably predictably posing a perilous pitfall to underestimate its perfidiousness preemptively. Did— did I just do it again? Friggin’ hell I need a nap. Today has been hell on my brain. We’ve got a few dozen minutes before we’re doing a fighting retreat the rest of the way to Al’pa’ca, with the horde hauling-ass our way as it were.

Y’know, based on their archetype, I bet Scirocco has a Latent, and it’s probably mirage related. Mentally I’m shaking my head and rolling my eyes at myself, but my genre senses are saying high seventies, low eighties percent that I’m on the money. Imagine that, dragons with Latents that are thematic to their typing. Yeah, they’ve got thematic Latents, and I’ve got a Latent that required an imaginary dragon type that my dragon wife imagined up to be my Honoris Causa.

Scirocco is moving slowly, or rather, at least not as fast as Quicksand, intentionally letting her catch up to us first. This’ll buy Scirocco some plausible deniability if we fail, I understand their need for subtlety, whether or not they actually want mercy or to join the less evil side of this war. They seem to be making good on their signal at least. So, they want to join us to overthrow Al’pa’ca? Well, that’s a revolution I suppose. Or, well, similar to one at least.