DIRT WIZARD

**Dirt Wizard** is the thirty-seventh episode of Reflection.

*Chaos swirls around OPIA as the world itself is reshaped around them. Up becomes down, down becomes up and the godsblood swamp endlessly expands into an awful snare that keeps our heroes trapped.*

## Summary

Verona's car stops for lunch in a small city near Beleth. Arg0s, who is in the car in a simulacrum, manages to pivot most of his awareness to his original body back in the swamp. He, Ace, Willow, Basil, Mic and Sei continue to explore the warped reality created by the Pristine One. They run into Grandpa Wisp and scan the area, which leads to them realizing that the shape of space in the area is warped, changing the properties of sound and movement. They decide to move ahead to try to get to the "center" of the space, where they might be able to more easily figure out the locations of everybody else caught up in the crisis. Deeper into the swamp, they encounter four massive Othersent praying towards an outcropping of Godsblood. Basil realizes that these are the warped forms of the Free Will Backup Units, including Unit 04. With the help of Mic, she is able to get 04 to re-stabilize her form, but 04 loses most of the aggregated memories of other lives GEIST programmed into her in the process, losing most of her practical skills. They leave a warning not to disturb the other Backup Units and continue on. Ace rewires a truck that helps speed up their progress through the swamp.

Beneath the warped space, Cal and Isaac find themselves in a cavern opened up by the shifting of reality. Isaac uses his ESP to help both of them get free. Even further beneath, outside of the radius of the warped space, Septi and Stephano continue their journey to the center of Godsblood activity, commenting on the strange architecture that the Godsblood is creating around them. Back on the surface, the group arrives in a clearing at the "center" of the warped space, where Grandpa Wisp begins setting up a watchtower to act as a beacon for everyone else trapped in the area. The rest of the team splits up to cover more ground. Ace and Arg0s take the truck and head west, where they find a horde of Othersent worshiping Cast's unconscious body. They drive through the horde and grab Cast's body, uploading their core crystal into the truck's music player. This lets them speak to Cast again. At the same time, Basil, 04, and Sei head north, where they encounter Stein's amphibian mount. Sei is able to convince the frog to let them use her as a mount. Willow, who went east with Mic, senses the presence of Isaac and Cal beneath her and uses Grasp the Earth to dig underground and meet up with them. This causes a cave-in, but the three are able to make it back to the surface safely. Back west, Ace and Arg0s find an unconscious Wisp Family member sinking into the swamp and manage to grab him on their way across. They end up at once of the "edges" of the warped space, where they find an ornately decorated Pyromancer suit. Ace embeds Seagazer's consciousness into it. Seagazer informs them that there are two other suits like hers somewhere else in the area, and that they're primed to defend something big and dangerous in the center of the swamp, so it'd be smart to incapacitate the suits before handling that. Basil's group arrives in an open area of water and uses Sei to send out a beacon. They are briefly caught up in a stampede of Beleth creatures but manage to escape. Meanwhile, Isabeau arrives at Grandpa Wisp's base camp. She senses the presence of her new boyfriend and rushes south to rescue him, successfully managing to do so. Willow's group continues west, briefly encountering Lugh as well as finding one of Lyst Solais' discarded weapons in the ground. Basil's group continues forward and finds an old radio. Basil is able to fix it and reactivate local communications, allowing Ace's group to warn everyone about what Seagazer told him.

Ace's group heads north after Basil's, when they notice a box in the ground. Upon checking it out, a large refrigerator-looking entity with dozens of rotating arms popping out of it attacks Seagazer, causing her to fall off the truck. Ace runs after her but tells Arg0s and Cast to keep moving forward. Further ahead, Basil's group finds Saru, and they decide to pass the time designing a new look for 04 until Ace's group arrives to meet up with them. Down south, Willow's team encounters Lyst engaged in mortal combat with a delirious Stein. She and Mic are able to calm Stein down and stabilize his body enough to get him through the next few hours. Isaac leaves the group after finding Stein so that he has plausible deniability if Eternity accuses him of communing with traitors. Cal and Lugh follow him and ask if he has any advice on healing Stein. Before teleporting away, he says that because of Stein's physiology, Pureflame won't heal him reliably, and he needs a Flame with existing will to replace the organs he lost. After he leaves, Cal notices the second Pyromancer suit sitting idle against a nearby outcropping of large mushrooms. Ace and Seagazer chase the arm-box deeper into the swamp, and to their surprise, encounter it meeting up with Coll. Meanwhile, Arg0s continues on his path and for a brief moment notices a strange figure resembling a character from a video game he played years ago sitting on a rock.

## Characters

### Player Characters

* Ace Galatine
* Willow Wisp
* Basilisk Id
* Arg0s

### FLOW

* Lugh
* Lyst Solais
* Saru

### OPIA

* Dr. Verona
* Mic
* Cast
* Isabeau
* Cal

### Demonic Courts

* Stein
* Isaac
* Stephano
* Sei Miscellany

### Other

* Unit 04
* Collbrande
* Seagazer
* Grandpa Wisp