She's definitely somewhere else.

Hard, uneven stone can be felt but not seen underneath her feet, hidden by a thick, low fog spreading everywhere. Light comes from something akin to a moon, its blue hue filtered through clouds that likewise cover the entire sky. The landscape around Vetareh seems to be nearly unbroken sameness, with the occasional dead tree the exception that proves the rule. She can't see that far, though; even if not as thick as the fog covering the ground, there's a thin mist everywhere that blurs and covers the more distant parts of the landscape. Through the mist, she can spot mountains in one direction, and what might be ruins but might also be a village in another.

She glances around herself with slowly growing alarm. Is. Is she dead? She doesn't feel very dead. Just to check, she glances down at herself, and—nope, flesh and blood, pulse and everything. Okay. So she's... not dead. So that's one set of good news for the day. Except, well, actually death might be a bit more solvable. It's not like there haven't been accidents before, and her parents would certainly make sure she was resurrected. This... might not be so easily solvable. She thinks she might just be in the Mists. The Mists are not precisely known for being what one might call 'navigable.' Or what one might call 'safe.' But maybe she's not in the Mists. Maybe she's just in a very boring, very samey, very flat, very misty... no it's the Mists. It's definitely the Mists.

First order of business: no, there is no leftover weird magic phenomenon on this side of the weird magic phenomenon. Damn. There goes the faint hope of just being able to jump back through and go home. No other apparent easy solutions are making themselves known to her.

For a few seconds she tries to think of one anyway, then decides that standing around indecisively didn't exactly help her the last time she tried it. The ruins-or-village might perhaps be promising. Hesitantly, she begins walking toward it, trying not to make a sound. Trying not to breathe too loudly. It might not help, but it makes her feel slightly better. Something to manage instead of just her completely justified bubbling panic.

It turns out to be fairly easy to not make sounds: the air is unnaturally still, and the fog seems to absorb sound better than it by rights should. Her steps sound hollow and muffled, and she herself can barely hear her own breathing.

As she approaches the structure, it becomes clear that they are in fact ruins—few enough buildings that this is either only a displaced fraction of a settlement, unfamiliar architectural style and all, or a simple roadstop that might be more common farther into the continent than in her country of origin.

Great.

Okay, what does she have on her. Her scepter, her knife, clothes, boots, some money. No water or container for water (does she need to eat and drink while she's wandering the Mists? she doesn't know.) so she's going to need to try to find one of those. Then, hopefully some kind of food. If she turns out not to need to eat and drink while wandering the Mists, then they're for when she gets out of the Mists. She does not by any stretch of the imagination believe that she will be lucky enough to wander back into Tyria in Orr. She'd consider it lucky if she landed in Ascalon, or even Elona. Or anywhere in her world at all, really.

Cautiously, she begins looking through the ruins for things that a person wandering the Mists might perhaps want to have. Do these ruins have anything of that sort available?

No. These ruins seem to be ancient enough that anything of the sort that could have survived whatever event brought their destruction about would long since have rotted off or gotten broken, lost, or stolen. A tall stone archway lies half-crumbled on top of what might have been a house but could as well have been a commercial building of some sort; what was probably once a plaza is now only a mostly-circular open space with the vague memory of a fountain in the centre. There are no living plants, here, but evidence of wild growth abounds on the dark walls and scattered debris; possibly the Mists neglected to transport them in this echo, when it did.

And then, in the edge of hearing—a scraping sound, no louder than a whisper, with periodic pauses just long enough to maybe lead her to believe she'd imagined it all along.

Well, that's about what she expected, really, but the Mists are weird, so it was worth checking. 'Try to find useful things to salvage' is a set of habits she would like to do more of. It could get her useful things that could keep her alive in or out of the Mists, and it's something to do that will keep her from going mad from wandering aimlessly in the Mists. Good things all around. As long as it doesn't get her eaten by something dangerous, anyway.

She freezes when she hears the scraping sound. Speaking of something dangerous. That doesn't sound like the sort of sound a portal might make. That sounds like the sort of sound a dangerous denizen of the Mists might make. While she can defend herself, she'd really rather not. On the other hand, she'd like to know what sorts of creatures she might get ambushed by in the future. Maybe she can get some more information about what's going on and then sneak away. At the very least, knowing where the thing is will aid her in sneaking away from it.

Her knife's reflective; a pretty (and practical) thing polished to a mirror shine. Key word there being 'mirror.' She draws it, slides closer to the nearest wall, edges quietly to a corner, and carefully turns the blade to look around the corner.

The mirror shows her... nothing, beyond the ruins she's already been exploring. Now that she's close enough, if she adjusts for how strangely sounds propagate in this place, the sound is very definitely coming from something she should be able to see through the mirror. It continues, stopping and resuming at regular intervals, and sounding like it's moving away from her.

Okay. That's terrifying, and she kind of wants to curl up in a corner and have herself a very quiet cry, but okay.

She thinks she'd like to stay right where she is until the sound goes away. That sounds like the thing to do that will not attract the attention of the whatever-it-is. She will be so very quiet and patient and watchful for ambushes.

It takes a while to go away; it's very very slow.

Slow is good, objectively speaking. It means that it's less likely for her to get ambushed by a fast thing. It means that if she gets chased she might be able to outrun it. It means that the thing is probably not suspecting anything is strange or wrong, and there's no reason for it to speed up. Slow is good.

... But also incredibly, indescribably boring. There's not even anything interesting to look at, she's just. Here. In a misty, boring expanse, hiding behind some ruins and jumping at shadows. Even the terror gets a bit dull, after a while. She clamps down on the urge to fidget with her knife, her clothes, her hair, her scepter. Damn her inability to sit still. It very well might get her killed. She has the sneaking suspicion that things in the Mists are very patient. Too much impatience might very well lead her right into a trap. Then again, that very fact means that she's not going to win in a contest of patience, either. Maybe she should treat her impatience and sense of time as an asset to be taken care of, not a thing to be suppressed.

Maybe she's just thinking herself into knots because she's scared and alone and in an indescribably strange and dangerous place.

Eventually, impatience wins out. Her own sanity is an important, precious resource. People go mad from wandering in the Mists. She is not going to stay sane by doing... whatever it is that she's doing. There is clearly nothing she wants in these ruins, so that settles that. Time to go. She can just... sneak away from the scraping noise. Somehow she doesn't think it matters very much which direction she goes instead, as long as it is away.

The sound does not meaningfully change when she starts moving, and eventually she's far enough away to be unable to hear it altogether.

Good.

Okay, are there any landmarks that she can wander her way towards? She would like a change of scenery.

Now that she's gone past the ruins the mists in that direction are thick enough to also cover the mountains she'd seen when she arrived. But other than that, no, there are no other discernible landmarks. The dead trees seem to be fairly randomly spaced and not indicate anything other than an aesthetic.

Wonderful.

She briefly considers trying to keep track of where she's been so she can navigate back to it if she needs to, but she suspects the Mists aren't going to stay still. Why would they do that? They're the Mists. (Very quietly, a voice in the back of her mind informs her that she's doomed. She resolutely ignores this voice. She's only doomed if she gives up.) There are no regular landmarks to navigate by, anyway. Probably best not to worry about it.

This decided, she picks a direction at near random and walks. Something will probably come up eventually.

It takes a while. It's not clear how much of a while; after enough walking the ruins, too, disappear behind fog. The temperature is unchanging; neither cold nor warm, almost uncomfortably lacking in differences. The unevenness of the ground is random enough to eventually become dull, itself. The muffled, repetitive sounds of her steps might be enough to lull her to sleep, if her body felt the slightest inclination to get tired. It doesn't seem to. Her muscles are neither awake nor asleep, they merely are, which might be good if one plans to walk for a very long time without stop but feels as uncanny as the stillness of everything else. At times she is able to hear sounds, but they're rare enough and faint enough that those might, in fact, just be her brain playing tricks on her.

The first hint of change comes in the form of the sound of her footsteps getting slightly less muffled, with a slightly different clacking than what it's been.

So that's the 'does she even need to eat' problem sorted. She does not need to eat. Or drink. Or sleep. Just as well. It's not like there's much to salvage here. What a silly thought that turns out to have been. All there is to do is walk, or not. Go towards what might be sounds, or not. Just to mix it up a little, she changes her mind on which it'll be. It doesn't really change anything. As she's rapidly discovering, the tales of dangerous things in the Mists are the exception, not the rule. Mostly the Mists are just... very boring. Very dull. Very themselves. There's nothing to do. She can sit down and cry, and does so sometimes, but it's hardly very fulfilling. Or she can walk.

She does quite a lot of walking. She has no way to know how much, she doesn't have the patience to count her steps or count her heartbeats. She instead lets her mind drift off into amusing itself with logic puzzles of her own creation. Or the minutiae of songs half-remembered, or the layout of the streets of Arah, or her own home, or the college that she studied at. She thinks of stories her parents told her, of their time in the Guild Wars, of how the sacred streets of Arah had run red with blood, how they'd left and helped and decided to stay. Eventually, despite her reservations towards attracting attention, she starts toying with magic, creating little idle illusions to break up the monotony. That proves to be the best of the lot, with puzzles that stay still when she's not looking at them and don't change on a mind's idle whims.

The fear bleeds away. The anger at the idiots that caused this fate bleeds away. Her nervousness towards meeting unfortunate denizens of the Mists bleeds away. If anything, that last one sounds kind of interesting, at least it'd be something to do. She wonders, idly, if everything she feels is just going to fade into a general apathy, if the only thing she'll care about is stopping this unending monotony. She wonders how long she's been here. It's not like she knows. Less idly, she wonders if she should stop. She does have her knife, and she's starting to think she'd rather be in the Underworld than this fucking place. Would Grenth catch her if she died here? Or would she just wander some more in the Mists, her fate ultimately unchanged? She doesn't know, so she doesn't entertain the thought for very long.

What she does know is that she doesn't want this to be her end. She doesn't want to be the girl who killed herself in the Mists because going on was too dull. She wants to claw her way out of this godsforsaken place, breathe real air again, move her limbs and feel them tire, to hear the unmuffled sound of her feet beneath her and the breaths from her lungs and the wind around her. She wants to see something other than mist. Wants to talk to someone besides herself. Wants to hear song and dance to it and smile and laugh and be held by someone, anyone, and see her parents again, and see Arah again, and, and, and—

She goes on.

And on.

And on.

And then—

The sound changes. At first she thinks it might be her imagination finally beginning to unravel into madness, but—no. No, she's not imagining that, or if she is, it would break her heart not to act upon it. She sucks in a breath, and then she seizes the moment. She fumbles to the coins at her hip; who cares if she's without money at the end of this, she'll be out of the Mists. Which way is the sound getting less muffled, if she throws these coins in these directions which way makes the most noise?

Straight ahead, apparently. And the light in that direction seems slightly—bluer? No, the light itself is actually whiter, the ground reflecting it seems to be bluer.

Forget caution, forget self preservation, if running straight towards the light is going to get her killed then good, at least she won't have to live for another eternity regretting not going towards it, like the mountain or the scraping sound—

She sprints.

Definitely different! The ground is harder and the unevenness more—purposeful. Actually if she's not careful she might just trip on a bit of ground that looks just a tiny bit too much like an ocean wave.

Okay, good, purposeful is good—she trips, and corrects herself, and keeps moving, she has no idea how long this phenomenon will last, she has no idea if it's a way out or not. Please be a way out. Please let this end. If it isn't, then—then she still wants to sprint towards it, at least it's more interesting than everywhere else she's been to. But please be a way out. Please. Pleasepleaseplease, Dwayna, Lyssa, anyone, anyone at all that can hear her and listen and get her out, please, let this be a way out.

If it's a way out, it's not obviously so. The fog covering the ground remains, but the mist in the air starts dissipating, and she can see farther away. She seems to be standing on a solid sea, turned to jade somehow. There are ruins of ships stuck in it, pieces of them frozen forever in the stone. She can even see, if she looks, sealife, encased in and preserved by the jade.

Sea life that's familiarly Tyrian.

Well now she kind of just wants to collapse to her knees to cry from relief. She decides she can do that later, she needs to not die of exposure on a sea of—jade? Why would there be a sea of jade? Whatever, doesn't matter, she doesn't care, she's out she's out she's out—

Is there some kind of, of landmark, in this strange jade sea, some direction that will get her towards people?

There's... voices? That's definitely voices, a bit distant but not too much.

Aaaaaa yes talking talking people people yes please—

She is going in the direction of the voices. Yep. That's a thing she's doing right now.

There are people, yep. And... turtles. A couple of very, very large ones, carrying cannons on their shells, and a bunch of smaller ones being escorted.

"...with us," one of them is saying. "We'll need all the help we can get."

Another one—he has what's recognisably a necromancer's Flesh Golem following him—replies: "Your fight is my fight."

"Watch yourself out there. The Kurzicks are a dastardly bunch."

Great she landed in the middle of this whole thing—

—but on reflection she doesn't really care, it's inconsequential next to she's out she's out she's out.

"Excuse me!" she calls, rushing forward. "Excuse me, hi, I'm—I just—I'm not—I was in the Mists."

"Pay particular care to their juggernauts, the golem-like things that resemble walking trees," the first one continues as if she hadn't spoken. "They're especially dangerous to the turtles."

"I'll take care of them," says the likely-a-necromancer.

She blinks, confused. What?

"... Hello?" she says, tentatively, heart dropping. A heart that... isn't beating any faster. In a body that isn't tired. No—

Vetareh reaches out to wave a hand in front of the likely-a-necromancer's face.

"Well then, good luck. We'll see you at Creon Jade Mine," says the first one before turning around and going in a different direction.

Likely-a-necromancer—doesn't pass through Verareh as if she were a ghost, but he and his companions and the turtle start moving and going around her as if she were a feature of the landscape.

She sucks in a breath, and swallows her tears.

"You really, really suck," she says conversationally, to the Mists. No one can hear her, but that's not the point. "You suck so much."

Then she scrubs her palm under her prickling eyes, and—well. She's not out, but it is definitely the most interesting thing she's seen in who knows how long. She's not going to waste this chance by crying now. She can cry later. She'll have the time. Instead of crying, she trails after the group and their giant turtles, keeping her sniffling to a minimum and hanging on to their every... everything.

The group of people seems to be escorting the turtles along the jade sea, and at first everything's fine... except then they're met by a different group of people accompanied by tall armoured plant humanoids. Who do not seem to be very friendly.

Yeah, this was predictable.

She wonders, idly, if the damage and destruction from the fighting might hurt her. She clamps down on the urge to rush out in front of one of the big turtle's cannons to see. No, that's not a healthy coping mechanism, suicidal tendencies can stop right here, if the Mists did this shit to her then she's damn well not letting this fucking place kill her. If she has to subsist on spite alone to survive, then she will.

Instead, she scurries far out of what she expects the general range of the fight to be, and carefully sits down on a large bit of jade wave to watch. Maybe with these observations she can spend the next however-long-it-is she'll be walking picking apart their spells. That sounds like a new thing to get bored of.

Large bit of jade is a good vantage point to see various other groups of people with tree humanoids stationed at strategic positions here and there.

Neat. She hopes the turtle people make it with their little adorable baby turtles alive. Because she likes seeing reminders of there being cute things in the world, and it would kind of suck to have them instead die in front of her.

She starts taking notes in illusion, on what's going on and what sorts of things it looks like they're doing. Tactically, magically, whatever. She's curious. It's not like she'll be able to keep the notes, or anything, but the act of 'writing' them down might help her remember things. Doing something also keeps her from crying, and it's not more walking, so. She'll take it.

The likely-a-necromancer acts as their leader, and he seems to be extremely competent at what he does, showing a deep knowledge of both strategy and tactics and leading his team along the path. He instructs them to try to take the enemies (at least the human ones) alive when they can but to first and foremost focus on the mission objective of getting the turtles across.

That's pretty cool. She likes seeing competent leadership.

Maybe she can pick up how his Flesh Golem thing works. It looks interesting, and she's always one for understanding any and all magical disciplines available. Is it going to at some point die and require recreation?

It does die at one point while taking hits from one of those tree-things, but the necromancer's other minions (he's been collecting them whenever enemies die) replace it and eventually tree-thing's killed. Necromancer takes a pause to bring a new golem to the battlefield.

She takes copious notes, and tries to commit them to memory. It'd be nice if she got something out of this torment, just on principle.

Idly, she wonders if she can interfere with them in any way. ... Sure, let's try it. She stands and twirls her scepter between her fingers, watching the tree people and waiting for an opening.

This one opponent starts casting a fire spell...

Nope. Instead, have a flare of carefully timed and aimed magic, that will disrupt it just so.

It's interrupted. The people around him are briefly confused but immediately seize the advantage to knock him out.

Huh.

... That might actually make this kind of fun.

She allows herself a small smile, then begins playing guardian. This tree person gets an interrupt, and this one gets a hex, and this one gets to have their magical energy stolen. None of this matters, but it is fun to recall that, oh, yes, she is very good at what she does.

The tree people are going to have a terrible, terrible time of it.

They are. Likely-a-necromancer starts becoming quicker on the uptake and presses the advantage instead of questioning what's going on with his opponents. They make quick work of this wave and continue on.

Vetareh trails after them. She'll be staying well out of the range of all fights, because if she can hurt them, she vaguely suspects the reverse is also true. But playing guardian sounds more fun than taking notes she probably won't remember, and there's no reason not to work to keep her skills sharp.

The party goes on along the length of this sea, and eventually it reaches an outpost on the other side, all turtles having survived the trip.

Oh, good. The little cuties made it through all right.

Since it's safe now, and since no one can actually see her, she closes the distance between her and the baby turtles and leans down to pet one. Gently. Can she pet the baby turtle?

She can pet the baby turtle. It reacts with a surprised noise and looks around in confusion.

That... gives her an idea, actually. Hm.

Are there any writing implements available in this outpost?

There probably are! But the thin mist from before starts appearing again around her, slowly, and the people there start turning transparent...

Well. Damn. She should have tried that earlier, but she doesn't regret her actions in the... whatever that was. She doubts testing communication methods would actually get anywhere. Maybe she just actually affected the real world in Tyria, but... she doesn't think so. She recalls stories of ghosts acting out events in the Mists. It sounds like this was that.

It was pretty nice, though. Kind of fun, to be the resident guardian ghost, unstoppable and nigh all powerful. The whole thing almost wasn't even soul crushing.

She waits for everything to fade back into thin mist, and then plops down onto the ground to have that cry she promised herself.

Everything doesn't; just the people involved in the event. The corpses in the distance also disappear, as do the turtles. The outpost is still there, but deserted and covered by very thick mist.

It is deathly silent again on this side of the story.

That's... interesting. She notices it, while she's busy crying. Maybe it's in some kind of loop, acting out the events over and over again. Well, if the place isn't going anywhere, then there's no rush to put a stopper on her emotions right now. She's going to finish up her crying, and then she'll go see if she can communicate with the necromancer.

She'd thought she was home—

It is a rather long cry.

Then before she's done she'll see mist thinning again and the necromancer's party arriving once more. They're slightly worse for the wear than last time and one of the baby turtles is hurt, but they're all alive.

Well, that's one for 'they're in a loop.' She supposes any and all efforts here are useless but for the resources they get her.

She wraps up the crying, scrubs at her eyes, and stands. Okay. Onwards. Writing implements? Are any available?

It turns out that no, they're not, the outpost is empty beyond what the looped people can perceive when they arrive.

Damn. All right.

She goes walking back to where the loop starts.

It is as she has seen it the first time.

Yep, that's about what she expected.

She walks up to the necromancer and boops his nose.

He blinks, looks around, rubs his nose, and tries to push her away.

She takes a measured step back before he can do that, because she'd rather not be pushed.

... Wait, she's being stupid. She's a mesmer. She's a fucking mesmer. Illusions are not her specialty, but she can do them.

She makes a bright violet illusionary butterfly. It lands in front of him and flutters its wings. Flutter once, twice, he can see the butterfly, yes?

He blinks again then says, "There's a mesmer somewhere here, take position."

Yes, because a mesmer would definitely give themselves away by making a butterfly, and then be hostile towards the people they just revealed themselves to. Yep. Mm-hm. That's what a competent mesmer would do.

She rolls her eyes, then carefully starts constructing a little illusionary map of the area. Then, she starts adding in the turtle's walking path, with locations where the tree people will ambush the turtle people and where they will come from.

"Who is this?"

She leaves the illusionary map where it is, and starts spelling words in illusion.

'Mesmer trapped in the Mists. Trying to find exit, found you instead. Helping.'

"The Mists? How did you get there? How are you talking to us?"

She erases her last message, then writes: 'Bad luck. No idea. Standing in front of you, you can't see me. Can poke you and be poked back.'

"Do it to me."

She pokes him in the shoulder.

He looks at his shoulder and furrows his eyebrows. "Something is—trying to make me forget this."

She winces.

Well, he's in a loop, no reason not to tell him.

'You're in a time loop. This is the third time you've made this run that I've seen.'

His frown deepens. "A time loop? How? Around what?" He pauses, focusing on something behind her, then cries, "Incoming!"

Everyone prepares for battle, and a warrior raises his shield in front of a turtle to protect it from an arrow.

Well, this time she's actually in the middle of battle, isn't she. Damn. At least no one knows she's here. She can just kind of... hide behind the big turtles and hope nothing hits her. She helps with the fight itself.

Somehow, she has the sneaking suspicion that he's going to have forgotten everything she just told him by the time it ends.

He hasn't. "Are you still here?"

'Yes. Do you still remember everything?'

"I do. You mentioned a time loop. That's—worrying."

'Yes.' She hesitates, then adds, 'I think you're here in the Mists, too.'

"...I'm pretty sure I'm not."

"Friend, we must go," says one of the people in the party. "Mesmer—care to accompany us? We can continue conversing on our way."

'Sure,' she agrees. Obligingly, she starts walking, moving her illusions with her. 'Have you gotten tired from anything you've done? Do you need to eat or drink?'

"Yes. I haven't eaten since I left the last outpost and this trek is not very restful."

'Okay. Do you know how someone trapped in the Mists could get out, then?'

"...my best bet would be going to the Battle Isles and using a portal there. There might be others, but that's the only one I know."

'I don't know how to get there from here. It's all grey mist. Except here.'

"We might be able to find someone who could pierce the veil here, then? If you're in the Mists but can talk to us and see us then maybe the veil is thinner."

Yeah, she somehow does not think that's what's going on.

'Could this be done before you get the baby turtles to the outpost? That's when the loop resets.'

"We can't delay the turtles," the man who objected the first time says.

"But we could send someone ahead without them," necromancer guy says.

"We need everyone—"

"We don't, really. We have redundancy." He looks at Vetareh's illusion. "Do you think that would be sufficient?"

'Yes. And I'll help with the turtles.'

This is absolutely not going to work, but hey, it's something to do besides walking in endless mist some more.

"Myra, you go," necromancer says to someone sporting daggers and with a bandana covering her mouth.

"Gee, thanks, boss, way to say I'm expendable."

"You're fast and you can hide very well, your shadow stepping is very good at—"

"Fine, fine, I was just joking. I'll be back soon." And she disappears in a puff of black smoke.

'Thank you,' she adds.

Well. Time to protect some turtles, then. Luckily, she's done this before, so she knows what to watch out for and can warn them ahead of time before something happens.

Except...

...the mist starts thickening again. Their voices slowly become echoes as they start fading from the world—

What?

... Did she break the loop?

Are they back at the start?

They are.

Great.

She skips the small talk and goes right to illusions.

'I'm a mesmer trapped in the Mists. I don't know how to get out and I don't think I can get help. Do you know how I could find my way to an exit?'

"Everyone stand ready," necromancer guy says immediately, then reads the illusion. "Uh... I'm afraid I don't? I would suggest going to the Battle Isles, it's the only portal to the Mists I know of. How did you get trapped?"

Around and around she goes...

'Accident and bad luck. I don't know how to get to the Battle Isles from here. I was in Orr and did a lot of walking, I don't know where I am in relation to everything else.'

"...Orr? Orr was sunk over two years ago."

"What?" she hisses, out loud.

'What?! How?' she writes.

"Vizier Khilbron cast a dark magic to try to destroy the charr that were invading and overwhelming Orr, but it destroyed the whole peninsula. The Vizier became an undead lich because of the magic, but—he's dead for good, now."

'That doesn't make any sense. The charr couldn't have gotten to Orr. Ascalon's in the way.'

"...Ascalon's been in ruins for over three years, now. I'm from there. I saw it be destroyed by the charr with my own eyes."

"Friend, we must not delay, we need to deliver these turtles to the hatchery," says same guy from last time. He looks at the illusion. "You could accompany us."

'What year is it to you?'

And how long has she been wandering the Mists?

"It's 1073 AE."

She stares at him.

It was 1066 AE before she fell into the Mists.

Seven years. At least. Seven. Possibly longer, because the Mists get weird with time, and this looks like it's a copy from the past. She doesn't think the Mists copy from the future.

No. No no no no no no no she wants to be back in the middle of grey mist again, she wants to be bored again, she doesn't—no.

It could be fake. The things he's saying are absurd, and she knows he's not real. The charr, overwhelming Orr? Ridiculous. Orr's as strong as Ascalon, that's why the Third Guild War isn't over and done with, even if the charr made it through Ascalon they'd be weakened enough not to get through Orr. The Vizier becoming a lich because of magic that destroyed the peninsula? Absurd. Insane. That's not how magic works, you don't accidentally become a lich.

She tries to write something, tries to tell him he's not real, but illusions are tricky. And she is emotionally compromised. She tries to form words, but the illusions shatter into violet glass and disappear before she makes it past 'You—'

And then she stares at her hands and doesn't... do... anything.

"Hey? You okay?"

"We should go."

"—yes, Argo. If—if you want to follow us and continue talking I'll still be here, okay? But this is very important and I have to go."

She doesn't really care what the echo wants to do. If it wants to go away, sure, that's fine. It can do that.

Thoughts form in her head and she scrapes up some resemblance of calm. This is an echo. This is an echo in the Mist, and it can't help her. She needs to leave, and she needs to try to find another way out. She's wasting time standing here trying to get answers from a thing that is not a person.

This decided, she has the clarity of mind to manage an answer.

'You can't help me anyway. And I can't help you. I'm sorry. I'll go.'

"...okay. Good luck. I'll—try to return here and find you if I can." Onwards they go to this iteration of the loop.

"If I had any luck at all," she says, "I wouldn't be here."

It'd be smart to stay, to try and get as much maybe-information from these things as possible, to try and figure out if there is any way at all for them to help her. But she doesn't want to be here anymore. She wants to go home. She won't get that by staying here. She might not get that ever, but she definitely won't get that if she stays here and holds onto people that aren't real just because they're more interesting than walking around in mist some more. And she doesn't know how long this is taking. And she doesn't know if the loop is based on anything real or not.

She leaves.

The area surrounding the loop is also part of the jade sea, but it gets less and less defined the farther from it she is, boats no longer appearing and waves getting smaller and more regular.

Until eventually she's back to the hard rock and dead trees from before. Or perhaps it's somewhere else; at any rate it's impossible to distinguish any one place from anywhere else.

The direction doesn't matter.

She picks one, and then she goes back to walking.

The Mists are neither completely boring nor completely exciting. They are the space between worlds, the proto-reality from which all other realities emerge; Tyria is but one of the worlds in it, as are the gods' realms, the Rift and within it the Hall of Heroes, and countless others that humans in Tyria have never heard of. They're the raw matter from which worlds are made, and they borrow aspects from them once they exist, both feeding them into other worlds and just recording them forever in themselves. From the Mists, you can reach everywhere, but you are nowhere.

The vast unknowable space between worlds is, mostly, empty. But she runs into other things than emptiness; other stolen places, other looping echoes. A fight between a hero and an undead king; a stone colossus, trapped by cultists performing a dread ritual; a submerged city, krait and largos fighting over treasures hidden within; a war between soldiers wearing long robes invoking spirits of the past and humanoids afflicted with some horrible disfiguring disease. Sometimes they move, and loop; sometimes they are still, only the undying structures with no life or liveliness to tell the story of what one did day-to-day there.

There are, she'll find, other people there, as lost or perhaps more than she is. They're rare, much rarer than the pieces of stolen reality, and most of them too far gone to really interact with her.

There are, she'll find, demons there; mishmashes of creatures from many worlds, fleshy creatures with too many eyes and teeth, beasts that are made out of concepts and whose reality is given more form by knowledge and fear, things that were never meant to be, anywhere, but by the very nature of this unreality come to exist. If she's smart—and lucky—she can avoid their attention. She does not want their attention.

This is not fair. This is not right. If the universe were fair then she would not be here. She doesn't deserve it. No one does. Death is a mercy compared to this. If she had her way, all of the Mists would burn and the space between worlds would be gone. This is stupid, and would probably break all of reality, but 'wandering in the Mists' is a torment that should not occur to anyone. Especially not to her.

Fortunately for her, spite is quite the motivator.

As she figures out relatively (as things in the Mist go, anyway) quickly, the necromancer from the first looping echo wasn't lying. Or false. Every time she finds someone she can question about Orr, they're either from the far distant past, or they agree with him. The charr invaded Orr, and Orr blew itself up. Her parents, having lived in Arah, are almost certainly dead. No resurrections, either, what with there being too many people for anyone to possibly sort through in the window available for a resurrection. They died never knowing what happened to her. They probably still don't, and they wait for her still in the Underworld. Everyone she ever knew and ever loved is dead. It's just her, alone in the Mists.

Well, all right then.

Her regrets get discarded like the rubbish that they are. She no longer has the patience for them. So what, if she wasn't quick-thinking enough to avert or avoid the disaster that got her here in the first place? She has not lost. Not yet. So what, if she doesn't know the way out of the Mists? She has forever. She will find it. So what, if everyone else that she meets is either not a person or crazy? She isn't. Not yet. Her loved ones do not know where she is and must think the worst possible fate has occurred to her, and in a way it has. But in another way, it hasn't, because the worst possible fate is the one she's running from. Despair. Hope is a bitter pill to swallow, but she takes it with every stubborn footstep, every comforting echo she turns away from. Maybe she's chasing a fool's errand, maybe it's impossible, but at least that's better than never having tried at all. Step (She will get out), step (She will get out), step (She will get out).

This horrible place may not have her. It will not take her sanity, and it will not take her will, and without those it will never get her.

She talks to echoes. When the echoes allow for it, she assists different sides in their conflicts just because she can. Because she enjoys it, and nothing else. There doesn't need to be another reason. She learns and theorizes and watches history play out through a thousand broken mirrors, and she keeps on living with herself. Maybe the things she has learned will never get used, maybe they'll die with her, but then she'll arrive at the Underworld and have so much to show for it. Or maybe she won't, and all she'll ever have is the knowledge that she fought. Maybe that's enough. She steals laughter and wit and fun from this damnable place. She is—beautiful. Terrifying. A creature that has walked through the Mists and will come out sane. She is not so arrogant to think that her mental fortitude is infinite, but it doesn't need to be. It just needs to last long enough to get lucky. Just once. Or maybe it's really a thousand times, but what does she care? She has forever, which in practice means 'until her sanity gives out.'

Her sanity takes a very long time to give out. Or maybe it doesn't. Maybe her flavor of insanity is 'I will do the impossible.' To be honest, she's fine with that.

She walks on.