In the end, the grasshopper followed along up the hill. Once, having a steadfast friend trusting its lead, reinforcing its decisions, would have felt very good. Now, the frog knew the creature meant nothing by it and had come for its own inscrutable reasons. Most likely out of habit, or thinking that they were going to find some other hidden gem.

  Still, it couldn’t help but appreciate the company of its oldest friend.

  Together they looked into the distance, over the unending mass of creatures moving as one. The frog wasn’t even sure what it was looking for: there was nothing visibly marking the true epicenter either, so why would it notice anything now?

  Yet against its inner doubt, it didn't take long to see something: far away from them - far enough that it would have escaped its notice had the frog not been looking really hard for anything strange – the ever-present and seemingly immutable flow of creatures forked.

  And now that it knew what to look for, tracing the split back with its gaze... it started much earlier! From even farther back than they were, in fact.

  The parting had been hidden with all the fights, the random movement of creatures trying avoid each other, and the obstacles of the environment. But it was clearly there.

  The frog turned joyfully to the grasshopper, wanting to share the find... and was rewarded by a dull expression.

  Aimed the wrong way.

  ... But something this little could not diminish its enthusiasm! Once again, the frog's instincts had been truthful.

  What if they were right about- no, that didn't matter right now. There really was another epicenter! If much… weaker. So insignificant compared to the main one, that it felt bad to even think about them in the same manner.

  And yet, the collateral was much, much closer. And the frog was bursting with curiosity. The pull it felt towards the epicenter had grown from a deep but weak thing, to an all encompassing want. It needed to see what was at the end of the journey. It needed to be there, before something horrible happened and caught them unprepared.

  But it was taking them forever.

  Now, even if lesser, there was a chance to uncover a few secrets sooner.

  Still accompanied by the grasshopper, the frog returned to the rest, knowing that it had a decision to make. And having, deep inside, already decided.This was most likely influenced by its frustrations.

  By having not moved at all forward with the mysterious insight – backwards if anything.

  And by feeling like it was going to get stuck soon, with no room to grow in this body or get one better.

  Maybe it was just trying to do something. Anything at all that would give it back some control… But it still felt right.

  Even if the collateral wasn’t the real thing, it was similar enough: its pull, though weaker, was real. And it was much, much, much closer. Considering how truly far the epicenter was, the collateral wasn’t even that much out of the way, a tiny little detour.

  It only remained to see if the others would agree and follow. The frog, whatever they decided… it would go check. Separating from them would be painful, but it really needed to see what was there. Surely it could resist this sentiment and do what was right for itself? It had decided on a course and they could decide theirs.

  They had survived on their own till they met: they must be able to do so again, obviously!

  Gathering all its resolve, it got up, grabbed a gem still lying around – the greatest it could easily get – and climbed on a boulder, so that most could see. Then, it waved the thing around, trying to get them to focus.

  Some of the friends still kept doing their random things, but most eventually looked over and followed the gem with their gaze as it moved through the air.

  Satisfied that it had gotten enough attention, the frog let go of the thing and climbed down. It could have kept carrying the gem along and ensured at least the most simple would follow.

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  It didn’t want that.

  If they came, then it should be because they decided to, not because of a trick.

  It hadn’t moved more than a few steps when it heard scrambling from behind, and felt such a deep feeling of…

  but it was just the beetle grabbing the gem.

  ... What had it expected? The pull from the epicenter was immense and the connection between them all clearly wasn’t remotely as strong as the frog imagined it to be. Better to be off on its own and move forward than to be mired in–

  when it turned, the grasshopper was right there, following along as it always did.

  The immense feeling of… something from deep inside - something good - came back. Even if none of the others came, the grasshopper was already more than enough.

  And then something else got up. Something big, an appraising look in its eyes, as if it was reevaluating something.

  Many scenarios had gone through the frog's head, but in none of them would the bison come with. And to think it would be so eager... Though if the frog was still wary of the scary titan and never knew what was up with it... right now, it could feel nothing but good about its decision to tag along.

  Even better, with such a big one rising, the other smaller creatures realized that it was time to move. Soon they were moving as one, just as they'd always done.

  And when the frog sharply deviated from their path, mostly out of a desire to check what they would do than out of need…

  they followed.

  She struggled against the storm, pushing her receptiveness and clarity to the limit, summoning every bit of subtlety in her. But despite her power, despite her skill supposedly far beyond her peers, she only found herself pushed back. Losing ground more and more, until she found herself back to the outer reaches of the raging substance.

  Defeated once again, she decided to take a break and floated back outside to consider the problem from above.

  Soon the... nucleus, the true center of the whole realm, lay below her, the forbidding shell around it entirely in her field of vision. A veritable wall of the mysterious, unspecified substance native of this world separating her from what lay within. Somehow, a barrier with no sidhi backing it whatsoever and far too little weight to matter against her likes, could rebuff her efforts repeatedly.

  But that didn't feel bad at all.

  The substance was absolutely wonderful on its own. How could have she been so wrong? So very blind? It might be a grating and standoffish thing, but that was only a front! A... price to pay, for a much grander gain. Every time she immersed herself, every time she fought against it and was bested, she could feel it. Seeping deep inside, stabilizing faults she wasn't aware existed, fixing unfathomable cracks in just as unfathomable ways. It had been so long since anything inside herself could escape her awareness! And this might be only a small aspect of a greater whole...

  What could be hiding inside? Could it be that she'd fled here to hide a priceless treasure only to discover a second?

  A treasure that clearly wasn’t meant for her, but if she could just scrape some shavings off of it, whatever true recipients might be out there would surely forgive her. And if she ended up claiming the entire thing… well, she would make it up to them somehow. No way she was refusing what could allow her to escape.

  Scratch that, what might even allow to fight her pursuers off and gather the artifact back together! However improbable the outcome, she was nevertheless burning with curiosity. Forcing her way through sounded more enticing by moment... But it risked destabilizing the balance that had formed.

  There wasn't any intellect at present inside the nucleus, of that she was sure. However, brute strength with something so unknown and of such mysterious properties was recipe for disaster. She risked losing this chance!

  In fact, some wards and misdirection would need to be put in place against the others. They would hardly notice anything here was precious, let alone follow the ebbs as painstakingly as she'd done to stumble here. Not when even for her, who was supposed to be very perceptive, it had taken so... long?

  On top of that, they had far more pressing things to worry about than chasing hunches they wouldn't even have because Urrant's presence was shit and the others' wasn't much better frankly, with all due respect to chief. Things like recovering the artifact and dealing with a… a traitor.

  Still, it paid to be cautious and she would put down something soon.

  ...Soon after she had studied this thing some more and after a couple more attempts to get inside the right way. Her auguries and calculations had predicted this place would be surprisingly resilient. Surely there wasn't as much stuff containing trace amounts of her spilling out the rifts into the great cosmos - showcasing her position for all that had eyes - as it looked like. The others couldn't have caught wind yet. She had time.

  But did she truly? It was so hard to track time inside the storm! Actually that was hard throughout the whole realm, when the Guardian was predictably down and she couldn't afford to reach out to check against a reliable source. How long had she been in here, circling around the wastelands? Rocks and dust and ruins... everywhere was the same to a point it was messing with her internal clock. Perhaps she should focus on shielding the place first, after all?

  With a quick check against Divination, what little Echo she could brush against safely in here... she realized she had no idea whatsoever. The results were too obfuscated and contradictory. And she couldn't dive into a rift to check the actual outpour for obvious reasons.

  Mhmmm... yes, she should definitely hurry with those wards.

  Maybe she was getting carried away and inflating their importance, but whatever the secrets hiding here were, she wasn't comfortable with the others finding them. Not when some of them were... the way they were.

  Even if she should rather be thinking about escape, she'll be damned before she let Urrant gets his filthy hands on this.