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Victi hesitated again, her mind still racing, until suddenly: clarity.

The realization and course of action she came up with ticked her right off.

She grudgingly muttered her pass-code again, and the console slid back open. "One last bit of first aid we need to do. We can't not help any survivors. We need to go back, and I need you functional enough to help me," she explains, irritable, "Here, press this against the wrist of your injured hand. You're going to be stupidly hungry after, too."

She holds out the injector to him, setting it to a half-vial dose. The bloodloss needed to be fixed, too, and she wasn't going to have the time to let him just recover if she wanted help. "Green button once its on the skin. Might hurt as it heals. If you need to, bite down on something."

Raven smiles smugly at the girl's response, but Lisa seems unbothered by Adriannu's little dig. She sighs, relieved to know the child won't be unbearably stubborn and stands. Raven slips out of her arms and curls her lanky body around Lisa's shoulders. The chimera, both quickly forgiving and forgiven, strokes the cat's soft cheek for comfort.

She jogs toward home more slowly than she'd like for the sake making sure Adriannu can keep her pace. They soon reach a clearing where, across the stretch of tall, wild grass, lies a clearly one-room log-cabin. The old wooden door is cracked open. Lisa slows down when she notices this. I...I may have left the door open when I went looking for Raven.

Then Raven's ears prick up. She stares saucer-eyed at the building and sniffs the air, jaws parted. "Do you smell that?"

Lisa does. Her nose scrunches as she recognizes a fresh-baked, warm spice sort of smell wafting through the air. Her lips stretch into a snarl. The scent is not at all an unpleasant- quite the opposite -but it does not belong out here, not now.

"Someone's in there." And not someone she should know; Biscuit, their mule, isn't out grazing in the clearing. Nor is he stabled in the shack built to the right of the cabin, so it isn't mother.

"Well, duh." Raven rolls her eyes and slides off her shoulder and onto the ground. "I'll take a look."

"Raven, wait-"

The cat looks up with a mischevious grin. "Oh, please! You left the shard in there, didn't you?"

"...I suppose I did."

"Now who breaks into a house, gets what they want, then hangs around to bake a damn pie?"

Without a word, Lisa draws her knife. "I'll be outside the door."

"I'll holler if there's trouble." Raven starts creeping through the grass. Lisa follows at a slow crouch. She turns to Adriannu and gestures for her to stay close.

When Raven gets glose enough to peak in through the door, the first thing she likely notices is that someone has definitely cleaned. Dusted, swept, polished, but not put too many things away, as if out of respect for an order to anything looses that only the owner understands. Following her nose, Raven would next catch sight of the four bowls, not ones she recognizes, sitting on their table, the source of the delicious smells.

Lastly, a lean, long-eared form in a simply-cut but elegantly adorned red robe, rich with tasteful golden embroidery, with seven long, fluffy tails of brilliant coppery fur resting behind them tends to the fire. A pair of much smaller vulpine creatures, likely weighing less than Raven, and with strange insect-like wings, sit cross-legged next to him.

The magistrate raises a hand toward a more quiet region of the fire, a breath of wind rushing to it to stoke the flame. He does not yet turn to face Raven as he addresses her. "I am glad that the three of you have arrived home safely, Raven. If you would kindly inform your friends that I know they are there so they need not skulk so cautiously, and that I welcome them home, I would be very appreciative. Before it need be asked, I suspect you will enjoy the meal as much as them. Our dietary requirements are fairly similar," he says pleasantly, as if nothing about this situation were unusual in the slightest.

It takes Drake a minute to process this. "Wait..." he raises his brow, shooting her another dubious stare. "You...want to go help survivors?"

"And this thing," he reaches cautiously for the injector, "is supposed to totally repair my hand." He says it as a statement of fact as opposed to a question. It's not impossible, especially compared to the notion that she's begrudgingly going out of her way to help strangers. Yet he privately questions why she didn't bring out this miracle of healing tech any sooner.

"...Alright." He follows her instructions. Pressing the device against his wrist, Drake clenches his teeth in anticipation of the pain and pushes the green button.

"What did I just say," she sighs, "Are they prey? No. Were they a threat to me, my territory, or my objectives? No. So is it right for them to be allowed to die? No. No, it's not compassion, and that I don't do things out of compassion or empathy or.... whatever, bugs some people, but that's just not how I work. I do what's right because of logic and simple assumptions I've observed to provide good, functional results."

"Yeah, it will heal your hand, probably to a better-than-pre-injury state. Just don't take serious injury as a habit because of it, I only have a few of those vials. I mean, I wasn't even going to give it to you until we were both otherwise more combat ready originally. Reminder to me not to do something stupid, since my ally is in a bad way. Oh, and if you'd gotten the chance to grow more blood back I could have lowered the dose. Sounds mean, but that stuff is not easy to get," she rambles.

It turns out thatrapid tissue growth is... yeah, fairly uncomfortable, though not painful. The rapid repair of bones as they snap back into place under the direction of perfectly-controlled spasms in the hand, however, hurts just as much as it sounds like it should. Over the next minute or so, though, his hand returns to its normal state.

Not compassion, huh? He'd believe it if he could see any good, logical consequences that directly benefited them, but as far as he can see, they'd just be going out and drawing attention to themselves. Not that Drake has a problem with extending a helping hand here or there; it's just that it doesn't seem so smart at the moment. Maybe they could afford to build some clout...but they'd be also out in the public, where their enemies could track them down and hit them while they're vulnerable.

He realizes he's still thinking like someone who can't teleport miles at a time or shroud themselves in illusions on a whim. Victi can do that...

...given she has the energy, just like any other magic-user.

Which she currently doesn't.

The discomfort he handles just fine. Pleasantly surprised by how mild the pain turns out to be, he opens his mouth to ask exactly how long it'll take her to recover from the burnout (hah, hah.) of that insane spell. Then the nanotech begins to work on his splintered bones. He clenches both hands into fists and bites down on his lip, squeezing his eyes shut, to keep from shouting.

He holds like this for the minute it takes his hand to fully heal, then the pain fades into a dull throb which eventually disappears completely. He relaxes his vice-grip on the injector and stares in awe. His hand is as good as new.

He lets out an impressed whistle and flexes his fingers. "Nice, thank you." He slips the injector into his other hand (so he can keep inspecting the item's handiwork) and hands it back to Victi.

While everyone else fell asleep,Neo stayed away and he grew curious.He could sense magic items,but only from a certain distance.If they where going to find all the shards,then he was going to improve.He would summon his shard,before Rudra said,"What are you doing?" "If that lady has a shard,then she could sense us, further then I could sense her...So if I focus my demonic energy-""You could sense the other shards, no matter what.""Pretty much...so here it goes."A blue glow would come from the arm, focusing on the shard,before an area of blue energy expanded through the land.

Adriannu followed after Lisa as they ran to her cabin and the Chimera would likely be surprised by how well the child could keep up with her, though Raven might not be. After all, the child had been living on her own in the forest wilderness for the last two years and the cat would have likely learned this from their conversations. Naturally this meant that the little girl was in excellent physical condition and her race was already known for their athletic abilities.

Once they reached the cabin, Adriannu would notice the opened front door, but would not be aware of it's significance until Lisa slowed up and Raven asked the Chimera if she smelled that. Even though the question hadn't been directed at her, she still look a long sniff and felt a little homesick for the pleasant smell reminded her of her mother's cooking. Yet she quickly swallowed the feeling as after all, there was no home to return to.

Seeing the way Lisa and Raven were handling the realization that someone was in there made her realize that it was something they didn't know and thus she quickly prepared for a confrontation by drawing her daggers. By the time Lisa turned around to gesture for her to stay close, she would already find the child crouched low to the ground behind her, daggers in hand and giving her an incredulous look over hearing that the shard had been left behind in the cabin. Clearly the Chimera hadn't won any points with Adriannu with that tidbit of news.

"You're welcome. I know that a lot of healing magic is gentler about it, but, um.... I... don't do healing magic well. Just doesn't work for me," she admits, "Okay, next step is to get movi--"

She cuts off as her eyes catch sight of a large-scale detection spell washing over the landscape.

Not the most.... efficient looking thing, and probably requires a lot of concentration, but she'd seen heavy detector pulse type spells before.

Absolute pains in the neck. Every frickin' time

She could read the spell, but that didn't help. Someone had pumped a tonne of energy into this. Possibly literally, but she didn't feel like doing the Mass-Energy conversion right then. The point was, countering it would be freakin' impossible with the energy she had available, especially if she didn't want to drop any of her defenses.

She took on a grumpy-looking facial expression as it washed over them while trying to get a sense of what it might actually be looking for.

Ah, Drake's shard, of course. Little bits of the spell sticking to it and bouncing of off the clay surface. Made sense. If one of the other shard holders wanted to know where she was, and had the sorcery to scan for it, they could do exactly what she did, use their shard as a sample energy signature. The only difference, as far as she could tell, was that she'd piggybacked her spell on the flows in the planet's manasphere to cut down the energy cost.

"Okay, definitely need to get moving, ideally without that shard somehow," she sighs, "Someone just did something impressive to keep an eye on us."

"Okay,I got the shards location,But this is a huge strain on me.",Neo said, before he cough up blood.Yup,huge strain.He really wasn't used to using this much energy,but he needed do something before other figure out.He tapped Rudra's head, before saying "Now you got their location,but it only where they are when I sense them.Now wake them up,so we can move at least..."He would throw Rudra in the tree house,before falling out the tree.

There's way too much bizarre in the room for Raven to properly take it all in and fully listen to what the Magistrate has to say. First of all, food. Inside, the savory smell is overwhelming. Her jaw drops to get the best whiff she could possibly get as her stomach starts to growl. Doesn't matter that she just ate half an hour ago; she'd gladly take a few nibbles of whatever's in that bowl.

Second, sooo many pounce-able things: the little fae folk, Kylarion's seven tails, the trail of his shiny embroidered robes...

Wait, robed fox with too many tails. This seems kind of familiar.

As if broken from a trance, the little animal gasps and asks, "Do I know you?" She strolls into the room, tail in the air as she follows her question with a sweet little chirp. This might strike him as a genuinely friendly greeting or a ploy for affection, but Raven's eyes are locked on the space between the fairy creatures and one of his coppery tails like she can't decide what to target.

Lisa meets Adriannu's look with only a tired mix of a groan and a sigh, too stressed to care about how the child must think her a fool. Then she turns and starts creeping toward the door, dagger resting in her bandaged hand.

She scoffs at the way Raven nonchalantly strolls through the door, but she does take it as a sign that they shouldn't bother hiding and stands. This doesn't make her approach any less careful. She keeps out of view of the crack in the door and takes the knob in the gentlest of grips before slowly pulling the door open. She holds her blade behind her back as she sets eyes on an strangely familiar form tending to her fireplace. Knowing could be either a terrible or fortunate turn of events, she freezes in fear of the former and pleads silently for the latter.

Drake lets out a wry chuckle as the wave of light energy washes over them. "You know, this is exactly what I was just thinking about when you decided to hang around the coast and be nice all of the sudden."

"So! Uh," Drake pulls the shard from his shirt pocket, using his newly-healed hand, of course. "We need to hide this somewhere? Hope you know how to keep away from that scrying spell because it'd suck to let them get their hands on it."

"I expect you would know of me, at the very least," he replies politely, "I sent you the warning regarding the one who seeks the Vase's power. Recent developments demand that I speak with each of you again, and provide me an opportunity to do so in person."

"I am of no harm to you, miss Adeptus, miss Adriannu, and I do appologize for my intrusion. The one you should fear is taller, of silver fur, rarely clothed, and, allegedly, entirely incapable of preparing any meal more complex than seared meat. Nor can she summon creatures which cats ought not pounce upon," he continues, pointedly calling out Raven's impending attack, "Touching the tails of one of my kind without permission is considered rather bad luck, you know, dear Raven, and these fey are quite a bit less forgiving. Shall the other two of you come in while the tea and food are still hot?"

"Ha! yeah, no. Not with the amount of mana, time, or other priorities I've got right now. Those things are thorough and are a pain to dispel," she says irritably."

"I have... hmmm... I have a couple ideas. Both are risky in different ways, though," she says after a moment of thought, "One, we keep it with us en-route, then I leave it in the Shriker's storage, and it tears off across the ocean or up the coast leading them on a fun chase. Risky because it puts my bike at risk, and because it leaves us on foot unless we get riding-beasts, but keeps the shard moving and away from us. The other one is attaching it to my sword. I can teleport it to me without using my own magic, and I know a spell cheap enough that I could cast it right now. Real simple: any metal that wasn't there before gets within a shortish distance, ten meters or so, the spell just drops itself. I notice the spell end, I call the sword to me. It tracks back to us, but only where we were, hopefully now where we are if we keep moving. Depending on how hard people come after us, and how long we stay and help, we risk people eventually catching up, but we can also travel by Shriker way more easily. "