The journey back told no tales of Hugh's past, no trivia as to the creatures of the Enchanted Forest, and no eager laughter from the young crew. Maraya, Clint, and Hugh with Maeve's limp body stalked cautiously back to the sewer entrance, with Hugh leading the way. Hugh's route was dangerous for those unprepared, so the soldiers never bothered to continue their chase, and although Hugh lacked the tools needed for the voyage and the morale, his depleting resolve remained as the last bastion of motivation he had left. Hugh's behavior worried Clint and Maraya as they lightly tread the cricket-chirping Enchanted Forest as they lit the way back home.

. . .

Maeve's eyes opened and perceived the surrounding area of her tent, feeling the cotton of her warm blanket relax her cold tan skin. As she quickly began to rise her right shoulder halted the process, and with a grunt Maeve jolted to grab the source of her pain with her sleeveless left arm. The gunshot wound began to heal, making her scream in agony as the tendons and vessels collected at the gap in her body. Pink particles evened and acted as scar tissue while Maeve rose out of her tent - good as new physically, but mentally she was morbidly confused. She immediately headed to the center hut where the Marauders clearly resided due to her mostly barren surroundings, having abandoned most of the outlet. As Maeve tip-toed in so as to not disturb the fifty-person string of silence, Somo gave a few words.

"We mourn Donnie," he gently spoke as the crowd circled a memorial in their center caked with bouquets of flowers from each member. Maeve didn't speak, aware of the occurrence last night, lucky to survive. Mortality, as she witnessed their ceremony, became more alien to Maeve, for she never knew people even mourned loss from her experience... well, besides her parents, but… she hardly remembered them. Clint and Maraya stood at each end of Somo, but Hugh was nowhere to be seen. Worried, Maeve left without anyone noticing her arrival and turned towards the station shack, where Hugh spent most of his time. As she left she heard Somo's mumbled speech behind the walls, observing the station shack. A large establishment, the station shack was a miniature police-station of sorts, settling in-house disputes or feuds of all kinds in the shape of a face-down semi-cylinder foundation covered by a pastel white, stained tarp, almost like a military tent. Hugh, to Maeve's knowledge, spent most of his time here, helping solve problems diplomatically and through ways of what he deemed fit, similar to a judge but with a non-violent or threatening approach, but it was his way, not the Magistrate or the Resistance's way, just his. Maeve gently split the tarp at its entrance, peering in after observing the assorted compliance desks, ink and quill sitting utop them. Once she peered into the pitch black room she saw Hugh, still as stone, facing away from the tarp, sitting on a wooden chair.

"Hugh…" Maeve gently called, noticing Hugh's exaggerated size barely fitting the chair as his head arched slightly upwards from its previously melancholy position, responding to her gentle acknowledgement. She knew only one person who could have gotten her out alive yesterday. "I just wanted to say uh… thank you for-"

"Get out," Hugh quietly yet boldly demanded in what appeared to him a cold, dark unlit tent. "I don't need you here."

Hugh struggled to get those last few words out, almost as if slightly showered in guilt, but cloaked with pain and sadness. The girl was struck. In this dark room, Hugh cannot see. In this dark room, Maeve can see.

"I…" Maeve stuttered, confused and a little hurt at her sudden realization. "I am sorry to bother you."

. . .

Maraya stood in the research hub with Clint and Somo; their arms crossed. Maraya sported goggles while she continued to study the large pile of crystals on the workbench beside them. Several worn books filled the room with stamps labelled "Lower District Library" on every other page along with several notes in Maraya's handwriting. The books bore the names of history books regarding crystal use before their banning, barely passing the restrictive status of several real crystal research books, locked in what once was the Magistrate Fortress Keep's Armory. Stories of innovators of the technology, famous users - including the leader of the deviant group. These books became the only solution to Maraya's wild goose chase to uncover the effectively masked secrets of the crystals, using the previous cases as a backbone to near full rediscovery of the efforts of the technology. A magnifying glass the size of a basketball hung on the end of the workbench by a bracket as it closely inspected the crystals, accompanied by Maraya's curious and mesmerized stare. The gems on the large petri dish sparkled naturally as they idly sat, showering the once-dark room in a wave of colorful ambient lights.

"Most crystals, at least from what I've read," Maraya began, "are bound to their users. It was called soul-bonding, an act used to bind more powerful crystals to people willing to accept it, working kind of like a form of ownership, too."

"Yes," Somo responded, puzzled. "That's why we needed the unrefined ones, the ones that weren't soul-bonded. Why do you bring this up?"

"See, you're right, but…" Maraya pressed a button on the side of the bench, further adding a lens onto the glass, amplifying the magnification as Somo and Clint leaned in closer to see. Through the hardened exterior, the transparent center of the larger crystals showcased the mystical interior. Strings of wisp-like particles fizzed and joined together with a noticeable clicking sound only to dissipate rapidly after joining, endlessly expunging energy in the form of that colorful light. Once the particles connected, they briefly floated in the misty housing of the crystal, advancing into a trance-like drift across the voided canister before exploding once more. While the three witnessed this, Clint and Somo failed to see their indication. "Here. Let me set this up, just a second…" Maraya fumbled some kind of rickedly built, clearly homemade sound amplifying device utilizing a rubber megaphone attached to a copper wire, which housed an aluminum malleable suction cup at its other end. A piece of plastic tubing was attached to the middle of the copper wire, which was nabbed by Maraya's free hand. Maraya clinked the aluminum onto the crystal currently in observation as Clint and Somo witnessed the faint jolt the particles took away from the connected apparatus; still undergoing their binding and rebinding processes. She blew firmly and aggressively on the plastic tubing, and as her face turned red the attachment to the crystal strengthened as the malleable aluminum formed a vacuum, firmly attaching itself onto the crystal. Maraya slowly flipped a release valve on the copper wiring, and the drifting voice echoed across the room.

"Yung, Yung, Yung…" The megaphone erupted at every dissipation of the particles. "Yung, Yung, Yung…"

"What is it, Maraya?" Clint asked, slowly raising his voice to ward off the eerie extrusions of the crystal, which heightened his sense of fear of the unknown.

"See, that's what I'm afraid of…" Maraya cautiously settled so as to not anger Clint, her voice growing more gentle rather than explanatory. As she turned the valve off firmly but slowly as if fighting pressure, the noise emitted during the middle of that process appeared like faint whispers, like a thousand small and distant voices suggesting seemingly nonsensical gibberish. "I think that's the name of its user… the one it's soul-bonded to."

Clint and Somo's eyes widened but remained manageably calm. "What do we do?" Somo asked, holding back pent up frustration, slamming his enormous hands on the workbench; the crystals reacted with a light increase in luminosity.. "We lost Donnie obtaining these practically useless power sources!"

Maraya raised her goggles and turned to face them vigilantly, reacting to their frustration with bold retaliation. "There's only one way to get rid of soul-bonds to crystals."

. . .

"YOU LET THEM JUST TAKE IT?!" Barik shouted at the stoic statue Tyra portrayed in front of him, ill-appreciating the small saliva droplets from his monstrous yell. Angered, he approached Tyra, eyes building at her unyielding expression. "You had one job." He raised his finger in her face, but Tyra still stood unphased. She squinted.

"Follow me." Tyra turned away from the Resistance leader, still bellowing at her failure, the redness on his brow barely containing itself as he failed to listen until Tyra, after taking two paces, gestured Barik over with her finger passive-aggressively, regaining the trust of the bold and short-tempered engineer. Confused, he raised an eyebrow and sighed deeply, sulking down; she had yet to fail him after all of these years. When Tyra was steady, she was in control; minor setbacks hardly suppressed her. Yanking open a dimly lit vault at the other end of Delta Base, Barik and Tyra entered a small candle lit room featuring the company of two hooded figures standing idle next to the larger, more intimidating one facing the two intruders to their domain, surrounding a square table housing a map of the entire Trade District. Tyra nodded, and the immediate response came from the figures on the side, who faced the wall in unison, obtaining strange blue baseball-sized balls from cupboards above them, then turning back towards the square center table that separated the two groups and crushed the blue balls with their hands, forming in their hands a glowing blue powder. The hooded figure in the center still nonchalantly stared Tyra in the face, watching her observe the communal process with little intrigue or fascination in either party. The two smaller figures then spread the entire map in the blue powder, not leaving a mark behind, rubbing it on their hands like chalk on a martial artist. The center figure then knelt down and raised a bright orange crystal and let it float midair at the peak of his reach as it began to minimally shock the powder in a quiet but stunning reaction, turning the powder into a faint mist before the crystal gently returned to the center figure's outstretched boney hands. The room eagerly waited as the shocked powder collected and shifted around the map in an erratic and latching manner, only shifting in swift linear movements before collecting and colliding to form linear web-like paths along the map, branching in zig-zag formations, with one noticeably large blot along the lines, seemingly marking something important.

Tyra confidently pointed at the mysterious blot. "That's where the crystals are," she urged. "We traced them with this reference crystal; they're already bound, we won't have a problem getting them back."

Barik nodded his head, thinking; he didn't express gratitude or forgiveness for this previous altercation. "Aye, it's probably a hiding spot for the crystals. Not a soul down there, living in that barren, filthy sewer." The two left the room and advanced their discussion. "They've seriously gone through lengths to hide it; they've blocked the darn pipes from flowin' in that stinky place,'' Barik kept his hand on his chin as he walked, gazing at the floor along the now-busy morning Delta Base, folks rushing about to repair the bullet holes and conveyor belts to proceed the ever important refinement process. "We'll open the pipes, and we'll meet the crystals at the southeastern bend, near the Everlight Forest to pick them up. I'll pull the valve myself."