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She sighs. "Alright... I apologize. I will just be on my way then." She walks off and pretends to wipe her tears away. She then walks in and finds Alastor. "That was not my best showing..." she sighs and places the bag in her chest. "But you're in." She says with a little smile. "It wouldve been easier to knock them out." She pouts a little.

Lisa begrudgingly accepts Adriannu's reassurances with a weak smile and a nod, then they part ways to go accomplish their own tasks. As she walks away, a crowd filters in and fills the space between them, sending the young cathera girl out of sight.

As she heads out of the bustling marketplace toward the University, she thinks she hears light footsteps taptaptap-ing her way. She freezes, Adriannu? No, duh. She glances over her shoulder...some other child, heading the same way as her and apparently alone. Noticing that gives Lisa pause long enough for her to also catch the cherry-red, glistening wet face of someone who has been crying, and more importantly, realize this distressed human girl is headed straight for her.

After a long, stressful day-and-then-some spent with Adriannu, Lisa's ears fold up and her face twisted into a dreadful grimace. No, absolutely not. No more children. She briefly entertains the idea of pretending not to have seen the girl and keep walking, but almost immediately she chides herself for even having thought of that. Then Lisa turns around to face the girl with a forced half-smile and wave.

"Hey, there. Are you-" Liliath interrupts her with a question, a strange question she can't possibly know the answer to because Lisa has never met anyone named Alastor or Jules.

She kneels on the pavement to meet the child's gaze and shakes her head. "No, sorry. I don't believe I know either of those people, but..." heaving a sigh, she continues knowing that somehow she'll come to regret this. "...why don't you come with me? I'll help you look for them after I run a quick errand."

Lisa can't leave this girl alone, but she also can't sideline her main reason for visiting the city. Hopefully Jules and/or Alastor turn out to be an easy find, or that there's a legitimately helpful authority in Telmarune she can turn the girl over to later. In the meantime, however, the best she feels she can do is take her along for the ride and keep her safe. That shouldn't be a problem, given that Adriannu took their only shard. Lisa figures, or wishfully thinks, she isn't one of Vicit's marks at the moment.

She holds out her hand to Liliath, her smile broadening and starting to look a little more genuine. "How does that sound?"

By the time they breach the city walls and slip into a back alley, Raven is fully awake and as excited as ever to be in a new place. It's been sooo long since she's visited a city. Lisa makes the trip with Raven and her mother only a few times a year and last time Selinah went alone...a day or two before they found the shard and everything went to heck.

She can hardly the imagine the look on that old woman's face when she- scratch that; it wouldn't be funny. She's pretty sure the lady might think they both died whenever she stumbles upon the rubble that was once the family cabin. That must hurt.

A surge of worry, or maybe some odd guilt, fades quickly as Raven squirms out of Alastor's arms and plops onto the ground below. She starts exploring the alley with big saucer eyes and a lazy stroll with her tail turned up and curved at the tip. When Jules eventually joins them, she darts over to the demon woman with a happy chirp and rubs her head against her leg. "There you are!"

Drake smiles, laughing. "Oh, God, electricity and I don't mix well. You should know." He isn't totally sure what she means by "kinetic discharge." Yet out of pride or for the sake of getting a move on the enchantments, he doesn't ask.

Instead, he settles with asking for the various gear enchantments, offering her his daggers and later removing his shirt whenever asked.

Upon handing over the blades, he cautions, "I'm sure you know what you're doing, but be careful with those. Without a sword those are my only, y'know, pointy things I can use without shapeshifting."

"Oh," he continues with a growing smirk, "And if you're up to helping me with my stamina, I'm more than happy to switch back and forth for you. It's no big deal, see, I have plenty of practice."

As nearly always, the implications fly over Victi's head as she prepares the enchantments, telling him to hold still as she marks runes all over his body and belongings with a glittery paste. He shifts all or part of himself to his Chimera form whenever she says so, which turns out to be a bit of a strain on him after a few switches.

What turn out to be test sigils, to Drake's disappointment, are charged here and there to find breaking points and holes in the potential enchantments. He watches Victi dart to check something on her Shriker, come back, ask him to shift, map the sigils again, rinse, repeat. Along the way, he asks a few questions: "What are you doing with your mount over there?" "How long does this usually take?" "Do I get to keep these markings? They look nice on my arms."

The whole ordeal takes well over an hour. Drake, in his normal form, sits cross-legged on the grass and wipes sweat from his brow while Victi inscribes enchantments onto his available weapons and armor.

"So, everything's working out, right? I get better throwing potential out of my blades, tougher armor, all that?"

"Its very good to see you too Raven." She bends down with a happy smile and pets her. "Are you both exploring without me?" She asks with a joking smile.

"Whaaat? I'd never!" Raven giggles, purring with intensity as Jules pets her, then she yawns.

"Sorry, wow. I really was asleep there for awhile. So where are we headed?" Vaguely remembering a plan to meet someone that had to do with Alastor, she looks mostly to him.

Victi's responses to Drakes's questions while she works are, unfortunately for him, probably pretty unhelpful. When asked what she's doing with her zippy mount's holo-array, she just replies with, "Simulating consistent pathways," to how long, "Depends on the enchantments and complicating factors," and to him wondering if the marks would stay, "They aren't permanent, but can last a while if you don't scrub them off."

Toward the end of her work, she cast a bemused glance to the exhausted Drake while she added the high-ph neutralization sigils on. He probably didn't need to worry about bases compared to acids, but she wasn't used to scribing in one without the other. The chimera had been overconfident, which was funny with how tired he was now. Victi had actually needed him to do that shifting, though, to make sure everything would work.

"It should all be good," Victi replies to him, "You have enough energy to take them for a test-run once I get this all done? Wouldn't want you passing out while we're doing something important."

"And should I change into something... less revealing for where we are going?" She asks as she continues to pet Raven. "If you're tired, or when youre tired, you can always sleep on me." She whispers to Raven.

"They were supposed to be in the same place in the woods, but they were not there anymore. I can't find them here either." Liliath struggeld not to burst out in tears. "Really? Sounds like a good plan to me." Liliath grabbed her hand "2 people can find 2 people easier then 1 person on her own." Liliath smiled a little

The forest was silent save for the light thudding of the dogs pads. A likely once proud huskie, the creature that carted Isabella on his back no longer presented with the magnificence he once held. Dried blood was caked in his fur, centered around a large open wound which covered nearly the entire side of his body. Pain appeared to be a non issue, at least not anymore for this opening in particular, as the little girls legs dangled against it while the dog walked on.

She sat with both legs off to that same side, looking a little dirty but otherwise probably less dead than the dog she rode upon, save for maybe that odd skin color of hers. Her oversized tome lay open on her lap, and amidst the rocking from the dogs walk, she appeared to be reading from it, in a language that had died longer ago than her companion.

Her attention diverted only when he paused, turning his ears up and straightening his head at what he had discovered. Isabella only stared, slowly closing her book and standing slowly to approach the scene.

A dead body, someone that appeared to have died several days ago, perhaps a week. The stench was awful, but neither Isabella nor the dog who shared status with the decaying body seemed bothered by this. It was, in fact, far more of a comfort for the child to be among the dead than the living, a fact she had come to learn by being around the living. The mindless corpses that casually attacked the living had never bothered her in the same way, and through her experiences, she now believed the living were often far more mindless.

So it was intriguing to her to find this body laying in what felt like the middle of nowhere, but not nearly as intriguing as the apparent cause of its demise. She reached down and took the shard in her hands, yanking it slowly out of the corpses neck and pulling it up for a closer view. She brought with it several insects, various bugs which weren't ordinarily present on a corpse, something she knew from experience. As she held it in her hands, she could feel the power within it. She couldn't identify it, but she certainly knew this little trinket held some form of magic. Looking back down her mouth closed, and she met eyes with a mantis who seemed to stare almost intrested up to her.

Her eyes followed the bodies arm, down to the holodisc it held within its hand. Interest took her and she reached over and plucked it from the cadavers grasp. The activation process seemed pretty obvious, and the interested girl sat and watched the video playback.

The dog maneuvered nearer to her as the video played, pushing up next to her and staring with blank eyes off into the distance. Isabella seemed to ignore the action, in truth it had become something she simply got used to. The undead husky often pushed himself into her thoughtlessly, but the tradeoff was the defense of having him around. Besides, she enjoyed the companionship he offered, even if it was artificial.

With her book encased in one hand, she looked down at the shard in her hand as a few bugs crawled off her palms and onto the sleeve of her dress, apparently they didnt much bother her.

"What do you think, Lucas?" the girl asked her dog knowing there wouldn't be much of a response. It didn't feel like this problem belonged to her right away, even knowing she lived upon the world in which this sorceress was bent on conquering. Truthfully she wasn't yet bothered with the loss of her world, after all she lost her home town of Solum and felt only relief from the deaths of all but one of the townsfolk.

Worse yet was the fact the advantages the video claimed she had were not something the girl had. She had never even been this far from Solum, and so she didn't know the lay of any land any further. The only family she knew was her mother, and she had been burned before the childs eyes in that same town. Her father was someone she desperately wished to see again, but summoning him the way mother had had proven to be so.ething beyond her skill or understanding. In truth she was unsure just what she was doing wrong in that regard. And so Isabella felt only disadvantaged at the prospect. The only thing she did have on her side was the Maleficis Mihi....an ancient tome of great power her mother had given to her.

Still, though, stopping some sorceress wasn't likely to cross her path anyway....and the shard interested her greatly. Blood magic was a terribly fascinating thing, and it fell right into her category of interests. Perhaps she could find some reading material on this shard somewhere, and with that thought the child looked back. Back from where she had come from.....back home, if she could even call it that now. Mother might have had some reading material on the subject.

"I don't think we'll make it, though," she uttered out loud, then looked to Lucas, "Do you? How much food do we have left?"

She took the shard and placed it into her book on a random page, allowing it to stick out of the top like a bookmark, then holding the tome with one arm, she reached over to the huskie. A couple small bags had been affixed to his upper body with a belt, one of which was a water skin. Pulling one open she discovered the answer she already knew. With a half loaf of bread and a few dried berries left, she doubted she could make it home again on that.

"If we can find another town maybe we can buy some food," she said retying the bag up, "we have more money than food anyway."

Before setting off, Isabella searched the last of the body, looking for anything she might believe was useful, which essentially equated to whatever money the poor sould had died with. It was something she always did, and exclusively how she had acquired her own funds. Sadly, she turned up with nothing, and wondered only momentarily if someone else had been there already. The holodisc did mention money after all, which seemed to be the only thing missing.

She paused and returned to her knees, looking over and again meeting the mantis' curious stare. With a glance towards Lucas, Isabella reached out with one hand, carefully scooping up the insect who seemed incredibly reluctant to be handled. She stood and walked over towards the huskie and carefully layed the mantis on it's back. "There....now you can stare all you want," she said with a grin. Pressing the book with shard held within firmly to her chest, Isabella set herself back on course, walking unknowingly in the direction of Telmarune. With mantis mounted on back, struggling to adapt to his new perch, Lucas quickly took his position beside the girl as the ventured onward together.

Lisa further softens as Liliath's lip quivers and her eyes glisten, the dam about to burst. "It's okay! I'm sure they're somewhere, perhaps looking for you too." She laughs as the little girl takes her hand.

"That's right; it's two pairs of eyes versus one." Lisa absentmindedly runs her thumb over Liliath's tiny palm, and her brow furrows with another surge of worry. She feels the rugged edge of healing cut. Actually, a criss-cross of several cuts. Deliberate, relatively clean cuts like the one wrapped in bandages on her hand, which she'd sliced open to test the...

No, that's stupid. There's no way this girl could be in a similar situation. She stands up and starts leading Liliath to the library.

Still, the number and slow purposefulness of the injury has her more concerned than ever. She needs to ask about it, but not now. No, she'll ask later, in a quieter, more enclosed space.

Instead she smiles at her and most definitely temporary companion. "We'll find them, but first...have you ever seen Telmarune's library?"

"Test run?" Drake's eyes light up, half-hoping she means they're going to get back to the job. But heck, short of that, he'll get to play with his newly enchanted equipment. "Of course!" He stands, smiling and seeming to have recovered most of his energy in the course of a few seconds. He'll need a moderate break from shapeshifting, but he isn't a chimera at risk of collapse.

"I wanna get hunting again, and you need a new sword," Victi replies, "But first I had a thought after seeing some of our opposition earlier, though admittedly it doesn't explain you obviously. Whatever though, here's my thought: Artifacts of that type tend to gravitate to some kind of person. Usually unusual or exceptional in some way, someone who causes change, but frequently there's another pattern under it."

She starts packing up her enchanting gear while she thinks of how to phrase the second part of her thought, storing each slender wand and tool in its own sculpted foam slot in the case. That done, she latches it and puts it back into her Shriker's storage. Then she takes a breath before explaining, "This is the sort of thing where most big schemers in my position, say, a particularly driven lich, high priest of an evil god, or super long-lived would-be emperor, would take a thousand years or something to map out the pattern to influence events to bring all likely candidates together in a convenient way. I don't have that kind of time or patience, but, if we're very, very lucky, someone else has. Or at the very least there's probably legends, rumours, and history that we could make use of to colate data much more quickly. So, of course, the question there is how to find it. This is where my plan goes a bit weird. Odds on, any info like that is scattered. Or at least it might be. But, we can find out where that is. Large libraries might have lists of private collectors interested in, say, obscure religions, cults, and spiritual groups, as well as ideally the documents themselves. This isn't my first time artifact hunting, in case you haven't guessed."

She smiles smugly. There was something about explaining a slightly convoluted plan to someone that just felt so good, and this was one of the best kinds. Last step, of course, was making use of her guide.

"So: Where would be the place to find this kind of data? Don't answer yet, though," she asks before immediately cutting him off, "When we first met, I planned to murder you heavily to get a good map because it makes targeting a teleport way easier. Our next step is to get one. Like I said. Time for a test run. How do you feel about hitting merchants for weird reasons?"

"I doubt, i left them to fix my castle." Liliath shrugged "I don't know, maybe when I was searching for them don't know all the names of these buildings." Liliath looked around still searching for her friends "Its hopeless, probably when I find them they don't even wanna see me. Alastor would, but I don't think Jules would."

Ren, with Naida trailing slowly behind, sets out for Telmarune immediately after her teleportation. She makes a mental note to find somewhere in the city to teleport to when she gets there. Since they are only two miles out max, the walk should only take 30-40 minutes, but Naida makes it feel much longer.

Suddenly, Ren stopped dead in her tracks. Ahead, she saw a large dog with a child riding on its back. “Naida, shut up for a second.”
Naida didn’t typically listen to anyone telling her to be quiet, but she could sense the urgency in her friend’s tone and quickly fell silent.
Ren followed behind the dog and its rider, careful to stay far enough behind as to not be noticed. With slight horror, Ren realized the dog was already dead, some sort of cursed corpse. Ren started to go back on her way, not wanting to get involved in this odd magic, when she saw something sticking out of the book the child was carrying. It looked jagged, broken, could it be a shard?
“Okay, Naida,” Ren whispered. “Do your thing.”
At that, the fairy flew to the side, going stealthily around the girl, and flew out in front of the traveling dog. In her childish way, she went running up to the girl and dog and said, rather quickly, “Hi there, traveler! I’m traveling too! Where are you going? Can I pet your dog? Do you wanna meet Ren? Maybe we can travel together!”

Thalia strode through the streets of Telmarune, following the slight tug of the holy symbole in the hilt of the dagger at her hip. The girl was close now by how quickly the direction adjusted.

Being High Inquisitor, and being both in her usual traveling gear, a set of leather armour with a number of carefully arrayed straps carrying equipment and her impressive crossbow, people moved aside on the busy street to let her by. Her reputation preceded her, and she was happy to reap the benefits.

Ah, there was Liliath, speaking to.... a chimera. Thalia would say the young woman looked familiar, but frankly she couldn't tell one set of their pointy ears apart from the next.

"Liliath!" she called, voice projecting with a strong, clear tone of authority as she strode toward the pair, "I've made arrangements to begin performing the necessary searches for your friends. You did remember that we don't expect them to be here in Telmarune, right?"

Once she got close, she turned to Lisa and asked at a more normal volume, "And you, chimera. Before you explain to me what a beast thinks she's doing taking a child anywhere with her, do I need to put you down now, or do you think you can.... keep yourself under control while you're in my city?"

Liliath heared a familiar voice "Sorry." Liliath apolgized "Don't be mad at her, she was trying to help me so don't be mad at her." Liliath said well she hugged Lisa to show that they were friends. "Can she help searching please? Maybe she can help us finding more shards."

"Fix...your castle?" Lisa raises an eyebrow, not sure how seriously she should take that comment. Was she supposed to assume this child's a member of some noble family, or is this imaginary play? Both? She opens her mouth to request some clarification when, as they near the marble steps of the University's grand library, a loud voice splits the din of the city crowd.

Assuming they're not calling her, Lisa would have ignored it if not for the fact that Liliath turns to greet the speaker with an apology. The chimera follows the child's movements and sees an inquisitor, no, the inquisitor. Lisa doesn't know Thalia, per say, but her unorthodox family's had run-ins with the Inquisition before, and this woman carries enough equipment and self-importance to be the head of the serpent.

When Thalia addresses her, Lisa's ears fold and she bares her teeth- not helping her case. Worse, she's sorely tempted to say, "Put me down, I dare you," but this woman carries a crossbow and probably the skills to fire it with nothing less than extreme prejudice.

Instead, Lisa gathers her will and concurs with Liliath's explanation. "I'm keeping the child safe; you should know I am well-equipped to do that, much more than whoever let her wander alone." She kneels and returns Liliath's hug, then rises to her feet, hoisting the child up into her arms, should the girl allow it. The child may be a little old for being held, and she weighs heavy on the chimera's tired body, but the point stands...then the child continues, and one word sticks out to Lisa like a bloody barb. Her eyes widen; she can't believe it.

"...Liliath, what did you say?"

Wonderful, a chimera who knew how to spit venom as well as inject it. Refreshing

"It's possible that the one who let her wander alone made less direct efforts to protect her," Thalia snarks in return, "And sometimes letting someone wander inside is more problematic. More things of value which need experience and training to use properly are kept inside than out. If it's convenient, I, too have business to attend to in the Library. We may as well continue this conv--"

She cuts herself off suddenly, a wolfish grin coming to her thin lips. She had been about to advise Liliath on the value of subtlety, but it seemed the gods had other plans.

"Actually, first, call me suspicious but I get the feeling you didn't get in here a normal way. The guards always let me know about beasts like you. Just in case something happens that requires the Inquisition's touch, well equipped as you tend to be," she smirks, loving the way this was playing out, "Flying? Teleporting? using your claws to dig under the walls? Whatever it is, I think I should search you to make sure you aren't holding onto anything too dangerous beyond yourself. There have been some strange rumours recently."

She hoped this girl had another one of those artifacts. It would be easy, then, just to shoot her in the chest and take it. Plus, Thalia had been thinking about getting a new lining for her coat as it was. If she didn't, though, then there was still a chance she was the witch that whore had come raving about, though Thalia would appreciate backup if that were the case. Or, worst case, a possible ally in her search. Really there was no bad option, just ones that would have faster solutions.

Liliath giggeld loudly when she got lift up "Shards, I am trying to get lots of money by selling mine. But now Thalia pays me if I keep her up to date with all the news about the sorceress. It's easier getting money like that. But I also will try to stick to my orginal plan which is collecting all the shards and selling them. Then i'll buy a castle and my friends can live with me you can stay there to and Thalia to."