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Confident in her ability to take care of herself, Srida had started to wander further from Stillrock in her spare time. She told the others it was refreshing to be alone for a little while, the 'walk' good for her mind and relaxing. It was the truth, but Andreas also needed somewhere private for his work, and a couple days in he found it.

It was a series of cracks in the wall of a cavern that served as passageway to another cave almost inaccessible to anyhow who had to crawl and couldn't slither. It was perfect for her serpentine form, the tunnels tight and low, and quite claustrophobic. But that didn't bother Srida--the gorgon was starting to embrace her serpentine nature and used it to her advantage. But most importantly, the cave she found was isolated, so every couple days she started to spend an evening there. It wasn't that Srida didn't trust people, but she didn't know how they'd react if she revealed she still had spellcasting ability. At the very least it would draw an incredible amount of unnecessary attention, and potentially much worse.

Coiled up in the little cave far from Stillrock--or at least quite inaccessible if close in location--she pursued her project of figuring out exactly what happened that day Andreas was pulled into the underworld. That was the disadvantage of copying magic runes down from books. The spells were so intricate and well-designed they could usually they could be repurposed, but every now and then one ran into an edge case. Andreas hadn't built his spells from the ground up--that was madness--he simply built on the knowledge that came before him and attempted a new application with existing tools. But somewhere, he'd overlooked something.

Why the link between him and the gorgon hadn't just snapped and instead of pulled him into the umbral plain was his chief concern, and how to substantially extend its distance was a secondary goal. If he could do that and then make it intangible to the being it was linked to, then all he had to do was get it to an upper hellion that was frequently summoned.

"Simple in theory," Srida muttered under her breath, pondering the problem. "But a _bitch_in execution."

It wasn't like Srida to talk to herself, but she'd just failed to stretch the link again, and was growing frustrated. That was key to the endeavor working, the link needed to be of variable length, but it's strength--its ability to pull beings between plains--came from it being rigid. Srida was trying to make a metal bar behave like a bungie cord. A good chunk of the properties--such as strength and elasticity--might just be mutually exclusive, an idea that frightened her.

She released her magic and the runes hovering in the air faded. Writing the runes into the air magically was like playing an instrument--an act of incredible complexity that required hours and hours of practice and was mostly left to muscle memory by the time they were fully learnt. It was human magic, completely unrelated to the physiological power that seemed to dominate the underworld. In theory, human magic could reproduce it, and the study of demons had led great advancements in wizardry. The warping of displacers had been the cornerstone of more sophisticated teleportation spells, and succubi had led to both love potions and potions for potency.

The runes for the link spell appeared in front of her once again and Srida frowned. At her command, the chunk that defined its length vanished, and swelled to fit a new series of runes. Brushing the spell off her to left, she started writing a new series of runes in the air with her finger.

"The length," she spoked softly to herself as she wrote, "is to change based on the tension on the link. If tension is positive, add say... an inch every second..." She had to define the units as per universal standard, and they weren't perfect, but at the end it was approximately good enough for her. Sliding the chunk of newly written runes back into the slot, she attempted a cast and engaged the magic.

The two catch points were her hands, and when the link formed between her two palms and she tried to pull them apart, the link adjusted in a rather jarring fashion, bumping them another inch apart quite aggressively every second. Srida grinned, releasing the magic. Adapting the link's length would be the way to go then. There was just a host of other problems that also had to be solved. How far could it be maintained? How would obstacles effect the power draw from her? How could she make it so her target didn't feel the magic?

Some of the runes were still glowing in the air when she heard a sound from the cracks behind her. Srida extinguished them as quickly as possible, flicking her tongue out at the same time. Her snake hair allowed her to see the entirety of the cave at once, but sometimes scent--or tasting the air--could tell her what was around corners. It was something she was trying to do more often but flicking her tongue out like a snake was another one of those things that chipped away and Andreas' sense of identity. It felt inhuman to do.

However, it was undeniably valuable because it told her several things in an instant. Firstly, it was Leo who was approaching, and secondly, he was carrying food. Despite the fact that her hairsnakes could see where he was coming from, she turned to face him anyways. But rather than crawl through the tight hole she had slithered through to enter the clearing--the displacer warped into it instead. The six-legged panther morph slipped into existence through distorted air, holding two clay pots filled with the noodle-like core of rockfruit. As he slipped into existence, her heart sank. The runes hadn't quite faded yet. Had he seen them? His appearance had been so sudden she was lucky he hadn't just warped in while she was still casting. Had the displacer been moving on all six limbs and entirely agile and silent, he probably would have.

Fortunately, he was looking at her as he warped through, his eyes flicking off towards where the runes had been at the last second. They clearly caught his attention, but vanished by the time he glanced towards them.

"Leo!" she said, surprised and hoping she didn't sound too guilty. "I didn't even hear you coming!"

The displacer shied away a bit. "Bendali said I should practice moving silently so I try to be as quiet as possible all the time while I'm walking now."

She glanced at the food in his two lower hands, hoping to redirect the conversation a bit. "Probably easier on all six legs than four."

He glanced down at the two little clay pots himself, then offered one to her. "A little bit I suppose. Rockfruit?"

She nodded eagerly, accepting it. They had it for almost every meal simply because it grew the fastest and had enough of it to support the village. "I was just poking around for some bullrushers," she said. "Hoped maybe we could have some meat for a change."

A yearning expression passed over Leo's face. "I would kill for a steak," he said darkly, and then settled down against the wall, taking the lid off his own little pot. There was a little fork inside each of both of their pots, so Srida settled down and started to eat too, crisis avoided.

"So do you...meditate in here or something...?" Leo finally asked after a moment. "You vanish for a while every couple days and seem to come back refreshed."

Srida took a moment to swallow her food. With a tongue that could taste scents in the air, even food that was bland by everyone else's standards was downright delicious for her. Flavors didn't blend anymore--she could pick out each individual thing in the dish she was eating. It was incredible, Srida just wished she could eat more conventional food this way, rather than the daily mush of the umbral plain.

"That's pretty much it," Srida finally answered, nodding. "I just..." she paused and sighed. "I need the time alone I suppose. I get exhausted by people, but I hate sitting alone in my cave even more, I just want to read a book or something."

"I get that," Leo agreed, then a slight grin passed over his face. "Not even going to ask how I found you?"

Srida closed her eyes and gave him a slightly exasperated smile. "I wasn't going to give you that satisfaction."

But then Srida became suddenly aware that the two of them were alone in a cave, far from anyone else--and Andreas in the back of her mind got suddenly defensive. This was about as private as it got, and he didn't want to be on the receiving end of what the displacer might be thinking. Andreas knew fully well what his goal in this situation would be.

"I figured I'd try scent tracking," Leo said. "The hellhounds do it a lot--use it for rooting out imps and such. My sense of smell isn't quite as good as theirs but..." he hesitated. "It's certainly better than I remember it being."

"You remember?" Srida asked, raising an eyebrow at him--or her line of dark scales that passed as an eyebrow. "Your past life?"

She expected him to say no.

"Not enough of it," he said quietly. "Just the very end. I was hoping you knew what happened but..." he gestured to where the runes had been floating when he entered. "Since we came through at the same time, I wrongly assumed we were from the same place. But I've...no idea what I just saw if I'm being honest." His voice took on a harder tone as he said that, expecting an answer.

Srida experienced a slew of emotions in that instant. Firstly, her stomach sank at the mention of the runes. How was she to explain this to him? But yet, he concretely said that he had his own memories of his life. How was that possible if he had died?

"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone!" he said quickly, backpedaling a bit once he saw her expression. "Clearly you're... trying to keep it a secret. I just thought you were from the same place as me and could help."

Srida gritted her teeth. "I'm not. I just got...really unlucky," she said after a moment of silence. "And I shouldn't be here."

Leo snorted. "You think you got unlucky." But then he frowned when he realized the implication of her statement. "But you have a way home," he said suddenly, a powerful hunger coming alight in his eyes.

"No, I don't," Srida said flatly, visibly deflating him. "But, I do have another set of tools I can work with. The only way out of here is a summoning, something that cannot be done from where we are currently. But on my way down I didn't lose my human magic."

To illustrate her point she made a small rune float in the middle of the air, then empowered it, causing a ball of light to form in her hand. A simple spell, mostly to teach the novices how to empower runes--and then cast without drawing the rune--but it was enough to make her point.

It took the displacer a moment to realize what she meant, but it was fairly obvious when he did piece it together. "You didn't die," he said in barely more than a whisper.

As she nodded, his mind continued to turn. "Which means that you remember the overworld," he said more forcefully, growing excited. "And you know how to get back! You could get us both-"

Srida held up her hand and cut him off. "It doesn't work that way. The umbral plain is like a well that I've fallen down, and nobody is up there to hold the rope."

"But you couldn't-"

"Just hold on for a moment," Srida sighed. "Yes, I do have an idea, but I want to figure out where you fit in all this before I give you any false hope."

Leo sat there with all four hands clasped together. "Okay. As long as you explain."

She nodded curtly. "You said you remember dying."

"Yes," the displacer said simply, still visibly excited.

"Well you shouldn't," Srida said flatly. "When you die, the soul leaves the body and either floats up to the six heavens or falls down to the umbral plain. When it falls, it passes through the shroud, which is what has stripped everyone down here of their memories. So that means something odd happened to you during death."

Leo took a moment to digest that before responding. "It was...ugh goddamnit...it's like a dream, all the context is blurry, I just remember the last couple seconds. It was...one of these." As he said that, Leo held all four hands and tentacles out in front of him, illustrating it was his own body. "The bloody cats--the displacer beasts. I just remember it jumping on me and biting my throat."

"And?" Srida urged. "What else was happening? All around you?"

Leo didn't look happy about scrounging his mind for details. It wasn't a pleasant memory. "It was the gate room with the doors all closed. Demons were everywhere, and we were trying to contain it." He looked back up at her. "The cat jumped me and I managed to shoot it twice while it was in the air, then we both fell into the portal."

"Portal," Srida said flatly. "You can't just...open a portal to the umbral plain."

"Yeah, because if you do, demons start spilling out of it," Leo growled, his ears flattening to his head as he thought about it. "We found that out the hard way."

"No," Srida said, frowning. "It's literally not possible. The summoning process lasts billionths of a second, and it takes incredible amounts of energy. To maintain a two-way gate...anyone who could do that could easily control the world with that power."

Leo just gave her an irritated look. "Well does a summoning entail a big floating red disk of fire?"

The gorgon bit her lip, her hairsnakes writhing far more than normal--it seemed to be a reflex when she was stressed. "Okay. Let's back up a bit then. What did you see before the displacer jumped you?"

He sat back and closed his eyes, tail twitching slightly as well.

"Bodies," Leo finally said. "Bodies everywhere. Human and demon alike. The whole memory is really just an image I remember of that portal and the displacer jumping out of it. It warped around a bunch and I managed to shoot it twice and it pounced towards me, then knocked us both in."

"What did the room look like?" Srida asked. "Architecturally? That might give me some insight into where you're from."

If demons were invading the overworld that was incredibly bad indeed, but if there was a portal--which Leo seemed to think there was--that could also possibly be an exit for them. If they did make it back through such a portal, Srida wanted to know where they would be emerging.

"Solid metal," he answered. "Like the rest of the...station..." he trailed off, unsure where that knowledge had come from. "It's completely made from metal," he said again slowly. "Thick walls, heavy blast doors..."

Srida blinked. Was there even a civilization that could afford to craft a building entirely from steel? If there was, she'd have heard about it. The Watchstand Tower was the only thing that came to mind, and it was renown around the world.

"I'm not from the same world as you," Leo said quietly, watching her expression. "You have magic, we don't. You knew of the umbral plain, we didn't. You could summon demons, we...had to open a portal. You don't know how to build guns, or engineer the most basic problems because you've relied on magic while alive. And that's why I'm the only one from my world here, but there are millions from yours."

She looked back up at him slowly. "Then...where?"

He gave a slow shrug.

It took her a moment to digest that information. "You fell through a portal to the umbral plain while dying," Srida finally said. "Which certainly obscures where you sit in the grand scheme of things."

"I fell through _with_a displacer beast," Leo emphasized. "And somehow absorbed its power."

"Well I can't give you any insight," Srida said. "You come from outside the rules that I understand, and because of that, I have no idea how to get you back there."

"What about you?" Leo asked. "You said you didn't die as you came down, how would you get back? Maybe once I have more than rock to work with I can figure something out."

"There's a couple things you need to understand," she said slowly. "Let's pretend I was in the overworld for a moment. I could bring anyone down here into the overworld and choose to set them free if I wanted."

"That's reincarnation," Leo interrupted, shocked.

"The catch," Srida continued, speaking a little louder and thinking of her classes at the academy, "is the memory loss. Tainted souls detached from a body in the overworld fall to the umbral plain. When they pass through the shroud in that fashion, memory is stripped. It's what we consider to be death, since you forget everything that constitutes you. It's what happens to everyone, and what almost happened to you as far as I can tell. So even if I were to summon the person I used to know, it's not really bringing someone back at that point, because they've passed through the shroud."

"Yet you didn't pass through it on your way down," Leo said slowly.

"I did, but in a controlled fashion," she said carefully. "I don't fully understand why, but some part of the summoning spell prevents the memory stripping, hence I have all my memories. Then I killed the gorgon and did the same thing you did with the displacer. Stole its essence."

"The point is," she continued, pointing to him then herself, "is that we are equally alive. Everyone down here is. We all occupy bodies that don't age and have fallen to the bottom of a well with no ladder. The only difference between the two of us is I brought some overworld magic with me on the way down."

"But if we had a way back to the overworld--say through you--we could just live there, alive," Leo said, the intensity creeping back into his voice.

The gorgon shrugged and gave him a half nod. "Theoretically. I mean, you'd be trapped in that body because your original was destroyed when you died, but sure. Your mind is certainly intact--whether or not it's the same as the man who died to the displacer is a good question. But if you died while up there," she added sharply. "Falling back down here before spawning would wipe all your memories again."

"Then we need to find that portal," Leo said, starting to stand up.

Srida snaked the tip of her tail around his leg and dragged him back to the ground, making him fall on his butt. "Oh, sit down!" she exclaimed, rolling her eyes. "We can't just start right now anyways. Besides, there's one big problem."

Leo gave her a disgruntled look.

"You lost your memory coming down through that portal," she said, tapping her forehead while she explained the obvious. "Even if you did find it, you'd lose it on the way back up too."

A defeated look crept over his face.

"Besides," she said softly, "has anyone down here ever heard of that portal? I feel like if they had, it would be all the talk. Did you even see it when you arrived? Are you sure it wasn't a one-way thing?"

"I wasn't conscious," he said quietly. "I don't remember arriving, just waking up."

"So a summoning tether it is then," she sighed.

She spent the next ten or so minutes explaining her plan to him, everything from the constraints on her magic and how needing to cast on an upper hellion severely complicated things. It wasn't so much of a plan as an outline she was still working on.

"Besides," she continued, growing more stressed as she thought about it. "I don't even know what they're capable of. Summoning circles are normally what keep them constrained, I've no idea how powerful they are if unbound."

"Well by the sounds of it, they command armies," Leo said dryly. "Armies of unwilling people."

"This is feeling more implausible the more I think about it," Srida sighed.

"Why are you so worried about getting back?" Leo looked legitimately concerned. "Considering the risk, if I were in your position, I'd just commit to a life here. Personally, I just need to know that the portal is closed before I can rest quietly."

Andreas didn't answer the question. Not honestly.

"If I got back to the overworld," Srida said slowly, "I could purge my soul of the gorgon's power. Then upon death in the overworld, I wouldn't end up down here."

It was indeed what Andreas would do, but the question really helped him realize it wasn't what was motivating him. It was his sense of identity being attacked so heavily that he didn't feel like himself anymore. Andreas didn't belong down here, and he was going to be damned if he gave up trying to make it home.

Fortunately, the answer she gave him was a much stronger one than her true motivation, and Leo nodded slowly. The two of them sat in silence for a moment, Leo eventually looked down at his empty bowl of food.

"You know," he said, humor leaking into his voice, "I was expecting pleasant conversation. Not whatever...this...was."

Srida gave him a flat look. "Well that's what you get for being nosy. But we should probably head back. Did you tell anyone you were leaving?"

He shook his head. "I'm sure some of the hellhounds saw me leave, but I didn't tell them exactly where I was headed."

The gorgon shrugged and slowly lifted herself into a standing position, handing Leo her own empty bowl when he offered to carry it. He did have four hands after all. "It's not like you knew exactly either."

He snorted. "I had an intent, not a destination. After you." He gestured to the crack in the wall that led to the exit but Srida shook her head.

"Not unless you want to follow thirty feet of snake."

"Fair enough." He focused for a moment then stepped into nothingness, blinking from their current cave to the next one on the other side of the narrow crack.

Srida followed as he slipped from opening to opening without actually passing through the tight points, the gorgon barely able to squeeze through certain zones he was simply able to ignore.

"And to think that I thought this was inaccessible to everyone else but me," she mused.

The displacer beast chuckled, a rumble that sounded more animalistic than human. "Well when I start a warp I can see into four dimensions so navigating this cave system is braindead simple."

"Four dimensions?"

He took a moment to answer. "If you drew a maze in the sand with your finger, you could see the whole thing, right? You're seeing two-dimensional space from a third. In this case, I'm seeing three-dimensional space from a fourth."

Srida tried and failed to visualize what that would look like.

"It's impossible to visualize unless you've seen it," Leo added. "It certainly bent my mind the first time I was able to warp."

They exited the cave system a few moments later and were greeted with the expected emptiness. Many of the hellions from Stillrock were not actually comfortable leaving the settlement on their own, which made Srida wonder if her free roaming was well placed confidence or naivety. She knew she had the ability to petrify the majority of demons that wandered the area, and running into anything she couldn't would most likely spell certain doom anyhow.

Because of the umbral plain's cavernous nature, they were many areas that the locals called 'blocks,' essentially regions filled in with stone or ground that had no tunnels or hidden caves within. According to Vyvyla, many settlements set up against these as they were easy to fortify and allowed residents to generally control the flow of people--and potential invaders. Stillrock had three main points of access, the giant tunnel Srida had originally come through on her first day in the umbral plain, a series of more narrow tunnels that branched off in many different directions, and of course the lava lake. There weren't enough flight capable threats to worry about the lava lake, the narrow tunnels all started in roughly the same area, so it wasn't difficult to keep watch over them, and the giant tunnel was a simple choke point.

The cavern the two of them currently occupied was one of the narrower tunnels that slowly expanded into a place of its own, nearly a quarter mile wide at its largest. The exit was at the far end, turning into a little tunnel only ten feet wide or so.

"This place really is fascinating," Srida said after some silence. "I just can't get over how the smallest tunnels seem to connect all these caverns."

Leo nodded slowly. "It's...alien," he finally said. "It doesn't feel natural, like this whole place should have just collapsed in on itself, and yet it hasn't."

"I wonder how many caverns exist that simply aren't connected to the others," Srida thought out loud. "What if a hellion spawns in there? Would they just be stuck forever?" The thought disturbed Srida a little. It would be like a prison.

"I don't think it's entirely natural," Leo said. "Think about the giant tunnel near Stillrock. That thing is almost perfectly round, and not only are the walls and floor smooth, but so is the ceiling. Somebody made that at some point."

"Well, god did," Srida laughed. "Or one of his servants. Though why the place has been left to its own devices is beyond me."

At the mention of god, Leo took on a troubled look, but didn't otherwise say anything. A little uncomfortable in the silence again, Srida kept talking.

"I wouldn't say it's beautiful, but the caves are regal in their own way," she continued. "Just the scale of the caverns, how it can feel like there's sky above your head yet there's still a ceiling so far up."

Leo followed her gaze to the ceiling, covered in stalactites pointing down at them like daggers ready to fall. "The scale is something else," he agreed. "I just...want to know why."

Srida bit her lip as they approached the exit to the cavern. "I think it just always...was. Like the sun around the world. It's the natural state of this place."

Since she didn't have answers, and Leo had forgotten too much of his own past life to draw upon, he let the thought go. There was something wrong, a rule being broken somewhere, but the displacer was unable to determine where.

Not much was said for the remainder of the journey back to Stillrock, but it didn't take that long either. Srida's little hiding place was at the far end of the cavern they had just exited, and the narrow tunnel that led to it only took a couple minutes to traverse. When they emerged, there was only one hellhound guarding the area, holding a horn to alert others in case things got dire. She was watching the tunnel as they emerged, obviously having heard them coming despite their travel in relative silence. Upon emergence however, her face split into a wide smile.

"Srida! It seems a friend of yours has returned!"

A pit formed in her stomach again, and Leo looked to her sharply, worried now that he had some of the context of her situation. Srida forced the dread down, telling herself that it was probably some kind of joke based on the hellhounds expression.

"Who is it?" she asked cautiously, slithering over the rock towards the hellhound--Favala was her name--and trying not to look too concerned.

The wolf-woman had a grin laced with a bit of mirth, like she was watching a child about to eat a really hot pepper. "Go check out the dining hall and find out."

Leo shot her a look of confusion and concern which she saw through her hairsnakes, but didn't bother to make eye contact and just pursed her lips instead. As the two of them made their way to the squat stone building that was the dining hall and communal kitchen, she pushed the anxiety down and tried to rack her brain for what the hellhound could possibly be talking about.

When she slid through the doorway, her stomach sank even further. It was indeed worse than she thought. Sitting at one of the tables surrounded by hellhound guards and residents of Stillrock alike, was the small imp she'd petrified her first day in the underworld--the only creature that had seen Andreas kill the gorgon and take its form. When he saw her, his face split into a wide, nasty smile and he stood up--the smallest person in the room yet somehow her biggest threat.

"Well Srida, seems like you came up a bit short on killing me, didn't you?"