"Hm..." Fib scratches his flame-beard, then nods. "Reasonable."

Then he gets started shaping the metal, which is a rather odd sight. It almost splashes away from his hand when he swipes through it quickly, which he uses to establish a platform on the sand. Then he forms a rough mound of metal with a sort of two-armed tossing motion, which he climbs atop and refines into an angular, pyramidal pedestal with four sharp kicks, the excess metal sort sloshing down and disappearing into the platform, before forming a tidy set of stair steps with a sequence of stomps. Then he hauls the last of the metal up on top of the pedestal and carefully shapes it into a decent but definitely not perfectly accurate life-sized statue of Sniper, and...a suit of armor with a ball of fire resting over the gorget, which is presumably Fib's attempt at replicating himself. Then he presses in a little plaque at the feet of the statures, with their names in English, when they visited, and the purpose of this monument to declare their presence and peaceful intent.

It's a sight to behold. She watches the process in awe.

"Woah. That's amazing."

Maybe enduring Aether's conservative Christianism for a year or two is worth it for divine powers.

The process is also surprisingly quiet. Orichalcum being sculpted releases a subtle tone, almost chime or bell-like, or like the ring of a sword being drawn from a sheath. It could be pleasant, if one enjoys that sort of thing. Fib seems to, give he's golden himself as he steps down from the pedestal and onto the plinth, beaming. "Thank you! I don't actually get the chance to just have fun with it all that often."

Sniper offers a quiet but genuine clap, and Fib returns the gesture with an exaggerated bow.

"I've been wondering, what kind of powers can you get from Aether, do you know?"

"Ehhh," he rises from his bow and tilts a hand side to side, "Some? The feelings I've gotten is that it's all about the Radiance. My orichalcum is made from it, but you could do other stuff, like using it to sustain your body, which also lets you grow angel wings, or storing it inside yourself and then unleashing it to smite people with holy fire. I know I could also push my orichalcum further, to summon some kind of tower- or beacon-type structure in the Aether itself, which would be some kind of status symbol? But, mostly I don't really pay too much attention to the feeling I get about potential powers from other worlds since I can't really get them."

Wings. I'm getting wings, baby. "Yeah, I hear you. Though I might pick something up there." She stares at the plaque on the statue. "Oh yeah! The bees have writing!"

"Oh shit! Nice!" Fib replies.

"Did you get any look at what they wrote? Was it recognizable at all?" Sniper asks.

She pulls out her notebook, turning the page to the strange sweeping glyphs she saw. "Yes, I did! And absolutely not!" She says, cheerfully. "They engrave their writing on these little brass hexagonal plates, and they cap many of the cells of the hive with them, like labels. They make honey, many of the cells are taken up by it! And collect... something akin to pollen from the flowers in their abdomens, and the inside of the hive is lit up with glowing gems! They pack some of the cells with spare parts! It's so cool. Their hive also has doors, which they can close, of varying sizes because some of those bees get big, like," She holds her hands. "The size of a small child, and they don't always have six legs either, I've seen some with ten, though those had manipulator claws on the ends of the extra legs, it's just..." She sighs. "This place is great."

"Oh yeah, me and Sniper and a couple others once ran into a bee that was, like, the size of a truck who was cutting down one of the trees with, like, a diamond saw or something. We steered well clear of her, but they definitely get huge. But yeah, neat!"

Sniper studies the copies Strawberry made of the bee-glyphs. "Would it be alright if we took a picture of this and sent it back to Revival base? The others back home might be able to puzzle out some kind of meaning eventually, at least with the context of this being labels being used by bee-people to denote what's inside of various hive cells."

"A truck?!" She hisses.

"Oh, yeah, go ahead. I'll probably come here on my own and try to get more samples of the writing, maybe me and Groundskeeper can decipher it, since we're good at languages."

Some of the glyphs are labeled, those of which were inscribed on cell caps, but the rest aren't. "I saw a bunch of hexes on a hinge, like a book, I wrote down what I could see."

Sniper pulls out their phone, almost fumbles it into the sand and only catches it after a comedically long sequence of near-misses and almost-catches, faux-pretends they did that on purpose, then snaps pictures of Strawberry's notes. Then they check the time on their phone and say, "Time's coming up we should probably head off to the statue garden soon."

Fib, however, is looking off into the distance. If the direction that Strawberry went off in earlier was 'east', then he's facing 'south' now. Sniper follows his line of sight and seems surprised as well. If Strawberry does the same, she might see what looks like a brass butterfly fluttering in the shadows of iron forest. If she pays attention with her conduit sense, it's clear this is a Conduit.

"We should...come back, later. More prepared," Fib says, before turning to Sniper and Strawberry. "We're headed to a world that's sort of, made of marble, except for some rubbery black trees growing out of the gaps. Do you think you can get there on your own? Sniper can hop on my bike and you can get on theirs until we're there."

"Uh. Maybe? Which way is the bridge?" Another conduit? She pulls out their bikes, eyeing the sand. Can they get enough speed on this terrain?

Fib focuses for a minute and then pivots, in a third direction, north, deeper into the white-sand desert. "Roughly in that direction. Huh. White. I wonder if that's related."

"I-" Questions later. "Ok." She aims far in the direction that Fib pointed in. And can find nothing. She waves the hypothetical point around finding nothing. Maybe she could- She shakes her head. "I can't find it, let me use the bike."

Fib nods and grabs both bikes, then...firmly plants both in the sand? Right next to each other. He gets on one, with Sniper sitting kind of awkwardly on the bike's back platform-slash-attachment point. Fib has one hand on his bike's handlebars, and reach out with his free hand and grabs the handlebars of the other bike. "Once you're on, I'll count down from three, then jump."

"Right." She gets on the golden bike, it sinks a little in the sand. "I'm ready." Is this going to work?

"Three...two...one...go!"

Then, without even pedaling, the three of them are no longer in Brazen.

Instead, they're on a vast plain of marble, with a patch of dust-fine white sand that was brought along spilling out in a circle around them.

Also, there's a trippy, bioluminescent jellyfish-thing flopping pathetically under a cloud of dark miasma. Dark miasma which is now injecting itself into the jellyfish, lifting it up off the ground and inflating it grotesquely. It is rapidly becoming larger and more...monster-y, in a way that gives Strawberry a similar feeling as the tar monster she's encountered previously.

"Sniper!" Fib calls, the sound oddly muted by the intensified effect of his world-auras, though Sniper is already moving, dismounting the bike, getting into a stable shooting stance, retrieving a red-jacketed bullet from underneath their plate armor with one hand while they pull their rifle of their back with the other. They chamber the round, aim, lock their armor, and fire.

"What the fuck?!" She shouts. Her hand closes around her sword as the shot detonates in a fiery burst inside of it. It shudders as Strawberry dashes towards it, engulfing herself in light, emerging transformed as she draws and slashes with her sword in one swift motion, spilling briney black liquid on the marble.

The monster ejects itself from its own damaged body like a snake shedding its skin, landing on three chitinous legs.

"Shit!" Fib exclaims as he dismounts as well, his flames billowing with red-fringed purple, drawing his sword and attempting to take a fighting stance.

"Contact effects are fading!" Sniper states, and indeed the odd muting of sounds is fading, as are the melange of mental impressions that were mostly balancing out into a sort of uncomfortable emotion weight on the brain, at least back down to the normal level that is always present around Fib. "Try to be quiet, or else we might disturb the rubber men," they add, flipping their rifle around in their hands and sliding a golden stiletto blade out of the toe of its stock, turning it into a wickedly long spiked club.

"Oh sure, I'll just murder a giant monster quietly." Strawberry mutters angrily. She lunges towards it, bouncing off of one of its crab-like legs to put her on a trajectory between the other two, she slashes the inside of one of its joints, sending it toppling onto its side. She rolls back onto her feet, facing the creature.

"So what is-?"

The surface of the bulb shimmers a deep, almost black purple. And right then and there, in the pit of her stomach, she knows that there was never any hope for her. She is a loud and miserable creature that the people she inflicts herself upon can barely pretend to tolerate.

Of course you didn't go back. Nobody was really going to miss you.

She stares into the darkness, she doesn't move, besides a trembling in her sword arm from the white knuckled grip she has on the handle.

"Rrrgh!" Fib growls, barely restraining his voice as his flames continue to redden. Then he rushes the creatures, making an attempt to slash the through the black-purple mass.

Sniper's face hardens in a mask of cold fury at the same time, and they begin to step around the creature, readying to make a swing with their rifle-club and take out another leg of the thing.

And, in Strawberry's breast, amidst the growing darkness, in the hearth of her Azoth, a hot-burning spark of anger is thrust.

She sees red. Then she sees red. Then she screams.

Her Azoth ignites, engulfing her in purple and red flames as she throws herself at the creature in a burst of superhuman power and speed. Her sword bites into the soft flesh several times before it ejects itself from its body again, but she pursues relentlessly, ripping at it with sword and bare hand.

Caught up in the emotion, Fib and Sniper both follow suit, as best they're able, Fib attempting to chase after the much faster Strawberry, while Sniper retracts the stiletto, flips their rifle back around, and chambers another incendiary round before beginning to track the fight from a distance, waiting for a good shot.

In the distance, a tree black as pitch begins to rouse, disturbed by the ruckus.

She stabs her sword into its leg, forcing it through carapace, then uses the sword as a handhold to lift the whole creature, balancing it above her for a moment before slamming it head first behind her with a roar. It slams its other leg into her from behind as it falls, sending her sprawling as it lands with a loud splat, popping its head sack, sending foul-smelling brine all over the marble.