Chapter Text
Zorian thought he was just having a weird dream. However, the fact that he was thinking it while still dreaming cast a bit of doubt onto the idea. Further doubt could be brought in from the detail of his surroundings. It was, of course, nothing he could not have created with some mental enhancements, but Zorian was quite certain that he never made ones for such a purpose. He was in some weird purple room and, looking upon himself, he was surprised to discover that he was also wearing some weird purple pajamas that he had no recollection of. Another point to this not being a dream.
Since this was rather unlikely to be a dream, and Zorian did not recognize the place in the slightest, Zorian began to act. First he, quite obviously reached out with his mind-sense. The results were rather weird. The minds he were sensing were unlike any that he has seen before. While they did have the same radiance as minds he was used to sensing did, the metaphorical plasma of the mind-suns looked to him like it was filling up some sort of crystalline mesh that channelled it. It reminded Zorian of the way spell formula restricts the flow of mana in a spell, which was, frankly, not a very reassuring comparison to be made when it came to the shape of a mind.
Zorian chose not to attempt attacking minds structured in a way he was completely unfamiliar with from such a distance, and went on to assess the room itself. The first thing he ntoed was that even though ambient mana was absent to an impossibly utter degree, his mana regenerated as if he was still in Cyoria. The second thing he noticed was that his soul was likely, in fact, still in Cyoria, as it was clearly not here with him. The third thing he notice that his body was more akin to an ectoplasmic shell of a simulacrum than an actual flesh and blood body. The reason that he has not noticed it before was the fact that it appeared to be fueled by the unfair nonsense that is divine magic, rather than by mana. The fifth thing he noticed was that even through he was in a simulacrum-like body and his soul did not transfer along, which would be an incredible thing if it was not performed through divine magic, which was just made for doing things like that. The fourth thing Zorian noticed was the fact that, just like his body, the entire area he was in was made from divinely-powered ectoplasm.
Then Zorian woke up in his own bed and it all suddenly seemed simply like a surprisingly realistic dream and since nothing seemed to actually have happened, Zorian decided that it was probably safe to ignore it until it happened again, which it probably wouldn't.
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While Damien knew that they would not find the Orb, due to a certain somebody having given it away to a dragon, he decided to still search otu a bit more of the territory that he and his team have narrowed the orb's location down to. Standing in a weirdly frog-themed temple, he was surprised that it turned out not to be a complete waste of time.