Quick Recap of Episode 2: Illyia

Giels returns from the Underworld with his friends and struggles to reconcile his desire for a normal life with their profound experience.

As his friends consider sharing their journey with others, Giels fears the consequences of their taboo-breaking adventure and confronts them at a gathering. Together, they fabricate a story to protect themselves from the elder council’s punishments.

Despite missing his first test, the council gives Giels another chance to prove himself as the Lead Storyteller. But he falters during his performance due to flashbacks of the Underworld.

Seeking answers to their impossible journey and the singular voice recorder, Giels visits Erikal, who reveals their secrets. Erikal’s computer has a mysterious language of lines and dots, allowing Erikal to make things no other computer allows, such as the recorder and a vehicle that can enter the Underworld. But Erikal’s process of learning the computer’s language requires breaking more rules.

Giels is torn between his anger towards Erikal, who broke sacred rules and flirted with Cleo, and the allure of Illyia, a community inspired by their adventure and Erikal’s extraordinary computer. Struggling with feelings of madness, Giels finds solace in the shared beliefs of his friends at Illyia. But when the council rejects his bid for leadership, and Erikal is appointed as a shaman, Giels feels betrayed and desperate. He convinces his friends to return to the Underworld, seeking answers to the messages he received on his recorder, and his destiny.

They embark on another journey, unaware of the dangers that await and the gods’ interference in mortal affairs.

After returning to the Deo from the Underworld with his four closest friends (Erikal, Cleo, Meritus, and Alana), Giels is in shock, wanting to return to his normal life and suppress what he’d seen. Hopefully, he could patch things up with the shaman council and become the Deoan tribe’s next Lead Storyteller.

Problems start when Meritus tells Giels that he can’t wait to share what they saw with “everyone.” Not only would this suggest that his friends won’t make it easy for him to move on, but going into the Wind Cave (the entrance to the Underworld) is one of the biggest taboos, potentially resulting in the worst possible punishment by the council—the dissolution of one’s soul.

Fearing for his friends, who might be unaware of the consequences, and himself, Giels chases them down at a large gathering with their wider social group. Taking cues from Giels, the four adventuring friends switch gears and lie by telling everyone that their adventure was a vision quest and hadn’t literally happened.

After all, what living mortal could enter the Underworld?

Despite his absence from his first test, the council decides to give Giels another chance to be the Lead Storyteller. At a significant event where he shows his abilities by reciting lore to a massive group, Giels has a flashback of the Underworld, making him unable to perform. So, he lip-syncs to a recording of himself on his recorder.

Because of Giels’s supposed impressive vocal projection (actually, it was the recorder), the council decides to give Giels yet another chance, despite his fainting and other odd behaviors during the performance.

After an argument with Erikal—whom Giels blames for all of his problems resulting from Erikal driving him into the Underworld—Erikal suggests Giels come by his home to see how going to the Underworld is possible.

Giels goes to Erikal’s the next day, joined by Cleo and Alana. Erikal shows the group how, with a secret language of lines and dots he discovered on his computer, he was able to design the vehicle that allowed them to go to the Underworld. It’s also what’s allowed Erikal to make Giels’s enigmatic recorder. Erikal studied the shape’s meaning by writing it out with chalk on his floor.

But using chalk is a sacred act only allowed by the shaman council.

Giels, already panicking about their highly illegal move of going to the Underworld, grows more upset by Erikal’s irresponsibility. Discovering that Cleo had known about this additional rule-breaking without telling Giels was too much. Giels storms out.

Alana tracks him down, confused by Giels’s behavior. He reveals his crush on his lifelong friend, Cleo and, as a result, Alana gives Giels an unexpected kiss to provide him with some “perspective.”

Meanwhile, Giels learns that his four adventuring friends, plus a wider group of unmarried young men and women, set up a camp near Erikal’s home, which they named Illyia.

Giels, still hoping to move on, is disturbed by the cult-like place. He goes there to find out what’s motivating these people and finds Cleo’s friend Fairfox, a master at using computers. She explains that most computers are very limited in what they can help design. Erikal’s is an exception by allowing seemingly endless design possibilities, opening an exciting world of opportunity to everyone at Illyia. Also, Erikal’s vehicle—an invention on his computer that led to a profound “vision quest” to the Underworld—inspires the people at Illyia. It makes them believe the spiritual realm calls them to some yet unknown purpose.

The flashbacks of the Underworld won’t leave Giels, making him feel mad and disrupting his studies to become the Lead Storyteller. In a can’t-beat-’em-join-’em move, Giels takes residence at Illyia and studies there, hoping that being around people having positive feelings about his terrifying adventure will help.

Giels’s growing sense of madness doesn’t leave, however. Until that is, one day, he discovers that the message he heard in his head while in the Underworld is now on his recorder—the same voice and the same words. He takes this as a sign that Illyia and his friends are on to something with their crazy beliefs.

Giels again does a recital, which the council will use to determine if he can become the next honored Lead Storyteller.

At the event, the council makes an unexpected announcement that Erikal will become a shaman when a space opens up for one, despite Erikal not having the typical lifelong training.

Giels is a little jealous, but his anger pours out when he learns from his father that the council rejected Giels’s bid to be the Lead Storyteller.

Erikal is supposed to start training with the shamans the next day.

Seeing no options for his future, Giels convinces his close friends to return to the Underworld so Giels can know if he is being called there personally. After all, the messages received in Episode 1 are directed to him.

Giels convinces Erikal to miss meeting with the shamans and return to the Underworld. They and their friends escape that night just as the shamans come to intercept them. Meritus, always the troublemaker, brings a few additional friends who believe they are going on a vision quest: Fairfox, Cleo’s computer-savvy close friend; Samsen, a son of one of the shamans who’s been training to be a shaman himself; Berian, a light-skinned, heavy-set guy from the north who indulges in the narcotic Drink; Serina, a gauche young lady who speaks her mind; and Zara, a skinny girl who doesn’t talk much.

They stop at the mouth of the Wind Cave and meet a Talis Tribe priestess there who puts them under a powerful spell—a vision quest of sorts. After entering the Underworld, the new adventurers believe that the Underworld is part of the spell’s effects.

As they fly through the massive Wind Cave tunnel, Giels realizes that he’s always wanted to be a shaman, not a storyteller, and hopes the Underworld reveals some important destiny for him.

Once in the Underworld, they find the large ship they saw flying around during their last visit. They go inside just as the giant monster, the Guardian, attacks. The new adventurer, Samsen, flees. The rest escape inside the ship, but somehow, Alana goes missing.

The ship scares away the Guardian and flies the group deep into the dark Underworld. A godlike voice calls out, welcoming them, and says Alana may be alive. They come to a dark platform with what looks like humans (or souls?) walking around. The voice says his name is Sansar, and his people need help from the Deoan youths.

Samsen returns to the Deo in Erikal’s vehicle and tells the shamans what happened. The shamans believe that Samsen was only experiencing the effects of the Talis’s spell.

The goddess (introduced at the end of Episode 1) decides to go to the mortal world—something gods don’t normally do—to discover how the gods’ enemies lured the youths to the Underworld. Hopefully, for her, her enemy hasn’t discovered and used the ultimate technology known as “Terminal.” But one thing is certain: Erikal’s computer and the youths at Illyia can give her answers—if she can only avoid revealing who she is and where she’s from.