Kahli stared into Sahdi's enormous eyes as her words echoed in her head. You're amazing.

"Thanks, I know, that was so crazy!" said Kahli. Then, she stepped back, she didn't want to mess up Sahdi's hair or anything by being to close to her. She noticed that the tightness in her chest fade away - what a relief.

Kahli looked down at Froufrou, who was squelching up a storm for some reason. "Yea, so, I've got a [class] now, Sahdi. In case you were wondering how I saved you."

"Wh-what?" Sahdi looked flustered and confused. Which was a little surprising to Kahli, as only moments before she had seemed but so grateful to have her life saved!

"What? Is something wrong?" Kahli asked.

"No, not at all," said Sahdi as she crossed her arms and flicked her hair out of her face in a living wood claw. "I'm doing great now that I'm not going to be eaten by that awful plant monster. Thank you, Kahli."

That was better, Kahli thought to herself. So everything was fine, and Sahdi wasn't mad at her at all for any indeterminate reason. And of course, there was no reason Sahdi should have been - that is to say that Sahdi had every reason to be happy with Kahli and grateful for her help. Kahli had saved her. So why did it feel like she'd almost done something wrong, or hurt her feelings somehow? Kahli had absolutely no idea. Maybe she was misreading the situation. Regardless, Kahli didn't want to dwell on it all that long.

"It was so cool, though, Sahdi. I met this person, they call themself the Supreme Time Protector, and they gave me and Froufrou this [class]."

"That's really... great for you, Kahli," said Sahdi. It seemed like she was upset again for a second, though why was of course a total enigma. "I have a [class], too. I'm a [healer], which we've kind of already talked over - though I will say it never seems like you notice when I heal you, for whatever reason." Sahdi thought to herself that Kahli ought to try and get better at using her system's soft skills, not to be confused with [skills], which included things like seeing actions of her party members - however, Sahdi also knew that arguing over this was a juice-not-worth-the-squeeze situation with Kahli. She was simply too new to having a system to really grasp what she was and wasn't doing correctly with hers, and Sahdi knew that any perceived rudeness was completely unintentional regardless.

"Say, Sahdi, do you have any idea where Unit 5a23 went? Or what happened to us overall? Because I basically just woke up in the grass with a tamaven trying to gas me up to go into these ruins. Oh, also, G'athoong died."

Sahdi's mouth dropped wide open. A small gnat flew inside, and then quickly zipped back out.

"Sorry, G'athoong didn't die die, she just kind of turned into a bunch of droplets of water and then said she'd come back as a younger, less mature version of herself. Something about dragon lifetimes or whatever."

Sahdi's mouth stayed open, and the gnat did another circuit. This time it brought a friend.

"Anyways, seriously, what happened? One moment I was sleeping under the stars under a dragon's back, the next moment I was totally ditched."

Sahdi quickly stopped her mouth gapage and explained to Kahli what all had happened to bring her to the current point. With that, Kahli then relayed what had become of herself, including all events leading up to Sahdi's rescue.

"Wow," said Sahdi. "You and Froufrou really have been through a bit of a gauntlet."

"Well, it sounds like you have, too," said Kahli with a small nod.

----------------------------------------

Kahli and Sahdi emerged from the ruins through the makeshift entrance that Clehtus and Bhennie had blown into the far side. Kahli remarked briefly that it made her quite concerned that they'd committed such an act once she learned that the ruins were part of a system that would one day awaken Quantimidas - assuming Kahli didn't die first, of course.

"Quantimidas?" Sahdi looked to Kahli with skepticism. "You mean the old legends about the giant god-titan of Nomachiato? Are you saying that these ruins have something to do with all that?"

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"If this map is to be believed, yes," said Kahli as she produced the map provided to her by Sch'laong. "See? There are eight total obelisks to activate in order to wake Quantimidas. So, there are seven left, with this obelisk activated."

"Why did you activate the obelisk again?" asked Sahdi with frustration. "Seriously, Kahli, how can you even trust what these obelisks actually do? What if they've got something to do with all the perforations all over Nomachiato?"

Kahli rolled her glowing amber eyes. "Sahdi, that is so not what is happening here right now. And I'll tell you how I know. You see, the perforations are something sinister, and something deadly - whereas the obelisk is more sublime than anything else. Sure, Sch'laong himself may have proved threatening to me, were I not also-"

Hey guys, what's up? thought-spoke a cheery yet familiar voice.

Kahli and Sahdi gasped and looked up as they saw a small dragon, a scaly beast no bigger than a small dog, swoop down from the air and land beside them on all fours. This creature was blue, and seemed to have a powerful system from the faint purple glow around its skin in the light of day.

"G'athoong?" asked Kahli and Sahdi in tandem.

Yup! It's me! Sure, I'm a lot younger now, at least physically, but oh boy is it good to be back. That being said, I sure do hope that B'raahsiet won't be terribly disappointed when she sees how young I've become. Only, it was necessary to heal and keep on living, so despite the embarrassment it needed to be done.

Everyone nodded in solemn agreeance. It was a sad day when a water dragon was semi-reborn. Apparently.

So, with that said, who are you two, again? My memory is... a little fuzzy.

----------------------------------------

Amid countless groand of frutstraipon on Kahli and indeed even on Sahdi's part near the end there they were able to get the younger G'athoong on track and understanding what it was they were up against.

Forgive me for saying this, you guys, thought spoke G'athoong, But I'm sensing some diminishing returns here. I'm of the opinion that anything that puts my life in jeopardy while I'm young like this is a nonstarter for me. Do you have any way to identify the location of your missing automaton without planning to sweep the forest for his body?

With that, Kahi considered the questions as deeply as possible, soon enough coming upon some sort of a semi-resolution. "Well, G'athoong, our first goal here is to get our party back together, and then to journey forth to Clathatlia in order to proceed as expected in... Oh great Theseosus, why were we going to Clathalia again?"

Sahdi cleared her throat. "Well, remember, there's the huge outbreak of New Curr that started in Gifflenberg? So we were planning to head to Calthalia and work with the water elementals in order to contain it? And of course there was also G'athoong's request regarding B'raahsiet."

With that, Kahli, G'athoong and Sahdi were eventually able to bicker and misstate each other until they were on the same page. They wanted to go to Calthalia, but they also wanted to have the superpowered automaton with them. Sure, he might have only served and protected himself, but he'd serve and protect Kahli, Sahdi and even G'athoong as well if it meant saving his own hide. Such was just the way of Unit 5a23.

"Wait a second... Sahdi, some of this doesn't add up!" said Kahli with suspicion. "See, I found some perfectly toasted bread laying around in a tunnel of the ruins. Are you telling me that unit 5a23 wasn't here to toast that bread? What kind of a game are you playing here?!"

"Look, Kahli, calm down for a second," said Sahdi with a sigh. "The bread was mine. I took some of Unit 5a23's bread for, um, for safekeeping before he got separated from us. It's nothing big, it's just that I was a little peckish."

With that, Kahli could feel her enthusiasm wane, if just for a moment. With a groan and a sigh she eventually set her sights on something different - finding Unit 5a23 as soon as possible.

Of course, nobody rightly knew how to go about all this. It was decidedly unclear to them where the automaton had fallen off the back of the water dragon, and even harder to determine whether Unit 5a23 would even still be alive when they found him. Still, Kahli relented that finding him was paramount.

Soon enough everyone found themselves agreeing to go to a small region somewhat close to the ruins. A city called, officially at least, Flungunglia. Colloquially, though, it was called Fungus Town because of all the Fungus Elementals.

However, having this place on her rader piqued Kahli's interest, too. See, the Fungus Town was well known for having a feature wherein one could sleep there for a few days and be guaranteed some sort of strange, religious experience. But it was also known for something else - it was known for a feature wherein time inside Flungunglia passed much quicker than time outside Flungunglia, so that full days could be had within the city while but one day's time had passed in the greater Nomachiato area. It seemed an apt locale not only to find their missing robot, but for Kahli to really flex her new [Time Manipulator] [attributes].

With that, the decision was made. The only issue, was that they would have to journey on foot, for G'athoong's new, younger form was much too small to cart them all around on her back, much to everyone's collective chagrin.

As they set off towards their destination, Kahli gasped as she stared at the map Sch'laong had given her. "Everybody, you've got to look at this! You're not going to believe it!"