I ran for the Vortigaunt Sanctum mere moments after Aaron and the others ushered away Adrian.

Now that Adrian was safe and had a moment to myself, the existential terror I had contained as tightly as I could have predictably overwhelmed me like air instantly escaping one's body in the vacuum of space. One does not simply shake off an experience like the one I had when conversed and being held captive with an entity like the one I had met. I knew I needed to see the vortigaunts for their help on this.

It was their vortal power that allowed me to resist the entity's absolute control. I did not understand how, but I did not question it having seen it happen. If it was their power that undermined the entity's hold on me, then there was perhaps a chance that they knew of or encountered one such as the entity in the suit. Should either of those be true, then I must relay what I encountered to them immediately. Above all other reasons for doing so, I was scared out of my wits.

Along the way to the sanctum, I felt like there was a pair of eyes watching me within every crevice and around every corner. The entity may have relented and allowed me and Adrian to roam freely in reality again, but I knew that he would be keeping an eye on me. His threat regarding my time coming around again was the most truthful thing I heard him say. I felt extremely vulnerable and under-equipped to even dream about contending with something like him with my own devices. I needed the vortigaunts now more than ever.

After a tiring twelve-minute run around to the other end of the cove, I finally arrived at the marine maintenance building, only to find Ben stepping outside the front door to meet me. He looked startled, yet not surprised. He no doubt sensed my coming now that an extent of myself had melded with the vortessence.

"Krystal," he growled with curiosity as I came to a halt a few feet before him. "What has happened? You are distressed."

I gave myself a brief moment to catch my breath, and that was all that I allowed. "Ben, I didn't know who else to go to," I began to explain, my exhaustion quickly becoming displaced with a resurging fear. "I encountered someone…something. Something terrible. It whisked me away from this world to somewhere I could not―"

Ben suddenly cut me off but quickly snapped his hand tightly around my muzzle, a move that was so fast his arm was a blur. The move effectively made me silently, and I was quite caught off guard by it. Just as fast as his arm, Ben's face turned deadly serious, and the two lobes on the sides of his had closed up and folded in a little backwards.

His massive red eye slowly looked around for a couple of seconds before returning to meet my gaze. "Come. We will convene with the others inside. Out here is not the place…"

Ben led me inside with an unfamiliar hurriedness.

It is always a frightening occurrence when one of the most steadfast and collected people you know flees for cover when danger is mentioned. That more than likely meant he knew exactly the being that I was talking about. If this made him afraid to speak, then I knew I had to be in an insurmountable amount of dreck.

Once inside, we returned to the main facility where all the glowing murals were. All of my vortigaunt friends were here, tending to their chores around their sanctuary, when Ben abruptly called out to them all. "REEEEJ-JETAH-CHEERRRRLAAA. GJETAAAAHHHH…"

Ben's ominous call rang throughout the whole sanctuary, making his kin freeze in an instant as they all turned to look at us. I had only been to a few more sessions with them after my first dive into the vortessence, so my understanding of their language was still infantile, but I was somehow able to understand Ben's Vortiguese sentence here: Shade. Safeguard.

Without hesitation, the vortigaunts all then erected to attention and ran to different corners of the old facility, where they promptly raised their arms to the ceiling as volumes of vortal power flared to life and spewed from their hands. The whole ceiling, all of the walls, and even the floor to an extent were then rushed over with a layer of dazzling green energy that was being conjured and maintained by the other vortigaunts as they hummed in unison, converging into a trance-like state. A feeling of safety soon overcame me as a residual effect of the field waved through the air, making me relax when I never thought I could ever again.

Ben looked around at this spectacular phenomenon enveloping his refuge as if he were an inspector surveying construction. Once appearing satisfied with the manifestation, he turned to me, and that dire look in his eyes returned. "You must refrain from speaking of what you have witnessed, Krystal," he said, his growly voice soft and poised. "You have encountered something alien to us all. A force beyond understanding; a force that has marked you as a point of investment…"

I was still recovering from my dash, so continued to heave heavy breaths as I took in what Ben was telling me. I needed no context for his choice of words because I witnessed firsthand what these investments were "What was that entity?" I wondered timidly, certain that no story from me was needed. Ben regarded the energized bubble around the sanctum once more before resuming.

"Truly, we cannot be certain," Ben said contritely. "Though we transcend the false veils that divide existences, our visions are not limitless. There is much that evades our gaze, and where we cannot see, those like the one you encountered prowl."

He then gently took both of my hands, trying to administer a little comfort. "There are forces of mystery who lurk in the shadows of transcendency, ambivalent in their true purpose. Such is determined so on purpose," he said. "We do not know extensively what it was that cornered you or of its affiliates, but you know that there was a malevolent purpose to its appearance to you. Although you have managed to thwart its original plans for you, its interests in you have not subsided in the slightest."

I squeezed Ben's hands, trying to walk back in my mind the events that played out in the entity's domain. "It trapped another," I mentioned. "A human. By some miracle, I managed to return him to this reality along with me."

"Hmm," Ben grizzled, which almost sounded resentful, though the feelings of vortigaunts were layered extensively. "We remember the Adrian Shephard―though not quite so concretely," he revealed, surprising me a little. "Many of us have fallen to him and those amongst his allies. The force that withdrew you had also withdrawn him from the stream of time, though the exact reason, like its motivations, remains anonymous to us, much like yours."

"What will we do?" I pleaded, still left with many more questions than answers. "I fear that he will return far sooner than I would ever want him to. What should happen if he endangers Red Bay?"

While Ben's face was grave, a hopeful smile managed its way to the bottom of his face. "Remain in tandem with the vortessence," he advised, holding up my hands a little higher. "Much like the tool your parents parted you with, it will provide for you in ways you would never have conceived of before your delving. You must practice, and you must live. If you have a dogging doubt about this, remember how you escaped the grasp of this force."

He let go of my hands, which allowed me to bring them up closer to my face to look at them. I vividly remembered that same green energy that was presently projecting this all-encompassing shell around the sanctum fizzling around my arms when I was detained in the entity's realm. It thawed me from the entity's binding hold and even made the entity himself apprehensive.

I knew that Ben likely would not elaborate further beyond what he just informed me of now, they rarely ever did when it came to such matters, but I understood the notion all the same. I had already delved within the vortessence on multiple occasions with their generous help, and even now I had somehow inherited a means of keeping an entity beyond time at a distance from me―at least for the time being (hopefully). Perhaps I wasn't as disadvantaged as I thought.

While I certainly had plenty to fret over concerning this new breed of tension, I nodded my head in understanding, smiling modestly at my friend. "Perhaps I should say thank you, Ben. I likely would have been held as that entity's prisoner forever had I not accepted your invitation."

"The details of your escape matter little at the end of things," Ben said. "I have trouble believing that you wouldn't have escaped in another way. You have always been resourceful."

"You mean like how I was at the Krazoa Palace?"

"You belittle yourself too often at that moment, Krystal," Ben rebutted. "You did beckon the Fox McCloud to your aid, or perhaps I am mistaken?"

His having said that made me glance at a new section of the continuous mural being added down towards the other end of the building that had not been adorned with their glowing paints. Though the illustrations were still composed of simple shapes and designs, I was able to read the abbreviated tapestry of my life clearly enough. From right to left, I saw my parents sending me through the mystic gateway to Corneria, my nomadic life of self-training on Fortuna, myself riding CloudRunners high in the Saurian skies, and the killing of the Aparoid queen in my first Arwing.

Painted right above the murals was a massive recreation of the mysterious swirling symbol that grew naturally as white fur on both of my outer upper thighs―such is the same with the white markings around my upper arms and lower back. I looked at that spinning recreation of the symbol that had always mystified me for my whole life, recreated with glowing blue paint. I suppose one or more would not create all of this artwork for something they believed was unworthy of.

I slid my hand behind my head. "All right, fair enough," I relented.

Ben grunted with confirmation before turning to his fellow vortigaunts maintaining the field around us. With one fierce cry, which was guttural and animalistic, his kin complied and cancelled the protective field.

Spending time out on the water was always soothing, even if it was only for twenty minutes.

By the time I returned to Red Bay, just two hours before noon, I was able to catch the town's fishing troller just starting her motors up. The fishermen, surprised to see me given the news that I was likely going to be gone until the afternoon, invited me to come and join them out in the bay to investigate the crab traps. I was delighted to come aboard.

I had always been good at catching fish, even without my telepathy, and putting that to good use during my first week here had gone a long way in helping me make a first impression with the community. The trolly was not currently prepped to catch fish, just merely checking the traps, though I still made myself useful by knotting and mending some of our only good nets while we were out there. The gentle waves rocked the boat soundly like an infant's crib while I sat on the open edge with my feet in the water, peacefully humming to myself as I tended to the netting.

One of the fishermen, a short-bearded man named Travis, was hoisting up a wooden trap and grunted with a little dissatisfaction: a single blue crab was in there and nothing else. Still a catch, but not a munificent one. He set the trap aside and regarded me while on his knees.

"You sure seem in good spirits," he noted. "D'you find anything good out in the wastes?"

I looked at him, momentarily pausing my tethering. "Oh, you could say that," I said. "I found a weapon's cache that was left behind, and I found and brought back another straggler."

"Yay. Another friend," Travis said, sounding pleased about that. "Who's the lucky lanky?"

"A man named Adrian. He's being shown around town now," I said, though that was only my presupposition. Whatever he was currently up to, I hoped he was doing well.

"Great day for him, I suppose," Travis said. "How'd he feel about meeting you?"

"About the same as you and everyone else did."

"Figure so," Travis shrugged, rising to his feet. "At any rate, the catches appear to be lacklustre this morning. 'Guess they're not taking to the bait as much as they used to."

"There's always tomorrow," I reminded, which made him smile a little.

"Yeah, maybe so," he considered. "I'm glad you look to be having a better day than us so far."

That could not have been further from the truth. If anything at all, I was being aggressively positive to keep my fur from falling out over the reality of being preyed upon by an outer-dimensional menace. Being out on the water was another attempt to reinforce this initiative because I enjoyed being out in the bay.

I worried that the fishermen would sense my ruse, but they luckily seemed to buy it. "Welp, we'll be wrapping things up here shortly," Travis announced, about to make his way to the helm, but not before giving me one last repute. "Really appreciate you helping out with those nets, by the way. There aren't too many around here who know how to reknot them―like me, for instance."

I chuckled. "Do not belittle yourself," I said, taking a page out from the vortigaunts book of encouragement.

We returned to the marina a short while later. We had to climb a later just to get onto the pier given how incredibly low the waterline was. It was a marvel that this area of the bay, so close to shore, was still deep enough to allow the trawler to stay afloat―let alone hoist lines up to be tied around the dock cleats.

Walking down the pier, I quickly realised that someone was there waiting for me. It was Francis Travone of the Limpiadores: one of its premier field operators. I was quite surprised to see him here, and that seemed to amuse him. "How about that; looks like you can be caught by surprise," he grinned semi-ironically.

"It's not like I'm omniscient," I dismissed, hopping off the small flight of wooden steps to the docks to meet him. Francis was a foot taller than me and had a bushy brown beard with a head that was veering towards a thinning stage. He wore mostly random old clothes, though one would not notice this instantly with the greyish-blue padded armour he was wearing on his torso and legs, taken straight off of a Combine soldier he had killed. "I wasn't expecting to see you here, Francis. What brings you to the seaside?" I asked curiously.

"The sea air, for one," he said, taking in a whiff of the salty breeze. "And second, perhaps more importantly, I'm here with a little caravan of mine. We were hoping to recruit you along for our little mission into Combine territory."

I crossed my arms. "What kind of mission?" I asked, wary of what he was up to.

"A retrieval," he said. "We've heard about your little transportation issue regarding your crashed aircraft that's hidden way out in the outlands, so I and several others are hoping to help you out with that. We've got an idea of what it'll take to make that dream a reality. I've come here to see if you're willing to offer your approval and your willingness to come along to help us get the hardware. If you find that interesting, of course."

Hearing out a proposition such as this was certainly worth my time. "I'm listening."