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"The issue is less the information getting out so much as the information getting to our opposition," he explains, "I am sure you know that many magical artifacts with active effects often have specific activation conditions. I suspect that the shards have one for being combined, and the vase may have one beyond simply filling it with blood. A location, a time of day, a day of the year. At mid-day on the vernal equinox at the place in which it were first assembled or some such. Or maybe something to do with your moon, I do not know yet. If you know of it and she does not know it, I refer to the collective you, we have much more time to act and plan on how to thwart her. Actually knowing the information matter less than controlling or destroying the source. While I suppose using the Vase to banish her yourselves is an option, and would require the knowledge itself, simply making sure she is stuck with bits of inert clay is also an option, and is currently the one I am actively pushing."

"A... key peice of information," he sighs, "one which has perhaps the greatest impact on her success or failure..."

He takes a breath before revealing, "My people generated a model of the Vase, allowing us to discern how it is put together should that become the path we are forced to take, and we found something... startling. There is a tenth, previously unaccounted for shard."

She listens as she rests her head on her hand. "So, if I'm understanding correctly. You guys made like a prototype or something of this vase and we haven't a clue where a tenth one is?" She asks as all this talk began confusing her. She holds her head as if to try to stop all the thoughts from making her head spin.

"We did construct a model, yes. There is a... a gap in the model. Two gaps, actually, which seem to correspond to the mountings of a second handle," he confirms.

His tone softens then as he says, "Miss Geist.... you seem a touch distressed, which is understandable given all of the information there is to process. If an intermission is in order, please let us know. We can reconvene when all are ready to continue."

She sighs softly. "No... No I'm just processing I guess. I still dont even understand why I was entrusted to have one. I mean I will protect it with my life, but this is nuts! I-I mean, I'm a demon! A demon entrusted with something so important? It seems like some sort of joke, doesnt it." She chuckles as she buries her hands on her hands. "I... I'm sorry. Just a bit overwhelmed right now..." she says as she thinks about something that she has yet to even talk about or even allow herself to feel.

"Objects of power move from person to person in ways which are highly unpredictable, lost, found, stolen and more more often than any other item, and often without either party even being aware of the object's true nature," the magistrate says with a chuckle, quietly stroking his barely-visible whiskers, "Entrust is an interesting word to use, thought perhaps not wrong depending on the nature of the objects. I can promise that you are not alone in your uncertainty about this, however. Raven, I think you understand of who and what I speak."

Raven watches intently as Jules slips more and more into a minor existential crisis or...something. Her apology, muttered after a nervous laugh through her hands, is a such a familiar line, Raven swears she’d heard it a dozen times before.

Because I have, holy whiskers.

She shakes her head with a quiet, “what a coincidence” sort of chuckle that dissolves into soft, soothing purring. She drops off the table and strolls toward Jules. Butting her head gently against the shin of a distressed healer, letting her know it’s okay and that she’ll be with her through whatever happens...what a habit to have.

Raven coils around Jule’s ankle, waiting to be pet and/or lifted into her arms. She looks up, nodding assuringly at Jules and also in agreement with Kylarion. “I know I know,” she rumbles, smiling. Behind the gentle offer of comfort, guilt squirms in Raven’s belly, hitting her with the reality that she’s not there with the person she really needs to be with. “Alive,” as Kylarion promised her Lisa was, does not mean “OK.”

I have to find her soon.

She relaxes a bit before picking her up and giving her pets. She sets her on her soft lap as she pets her softly. She notices her worry a bit and then hugs her softly. "Is there anything I can do to help you feel better?" She asks as she scratches under her chin. "You're helping me, so it's only fair afterall." She lightly giggles as the heaviness weighing on her heart lifted slightly.

Isabella's face lightened further when Drake squats down and pays full attention to her. Her smile widened and she began slightly twisting back and forth on her ankles. She had no idea the shard was likely the only reason for this, nor did she realize anyone else had seen it.

"Yes," she claimed looking merrily into Drake's eyes, then her gaze jumped off to Geoff without moving her head. Instantly her expression changed, the joy failing and replaced now by scrutiny. "I just don't know why he's here," Isabella said softer, hoping Geoff wasn't about to hear her. She stepped closer to Drake and leaned in as if to tell him a secret, and indeed that was what she planned to do, in her eyes. "He just tried to arrest me...."

Lisa's fine with Adriannu following closely behind. But she pulls Liliath closer as they run. The crack of the bullet, similar to the spreading flames, but sudden, closer and sharper, startles her into losing her footing and tripping when they hit the exit. Lisa collapses out onto the street, having only enough presence of mind to release Liliath's arm so the girl doesn't fall with her amidst the stampeding crowd.

Pulling herself back up before someone kicks her to the pavement, Lisa frantically scans the street for the girls, spotting Adriannu peeling away from the group and leaping to a higher point of view. "No!" Not up, don't ever go up when to flee monsters that fl-

Wait.That...that was a long time ago, wasn't it? Lisa looks up. What? There are no dragons here. Just-

The streak of white blazing from out of a shimmering nowhere blindsides her. Lisa hardly gets out a scream before Victi, stripping herself of the illusion to reveal herself in all her vulpine glory, grabs her.

The cat stops purring as her eyes widen. Was I really telegraphing it that much?

She heaves a long, heavy sigh, exaggerating a flop in Jules's arms to make it look a little like a joke. She smiles and purrs again as she welcomes a scratch behind the ears. "This is helping a little." And later, you can help me a lot more.

She remembers that Jules can sprout wings and fly, which is perfect. Raven doesn't know where Telmarune is in relation to here, but she hopes it's close.

"Ten shards. Nice; I like a good even number." She pauses, savoring Jules's pets. "...What made it hard to account for at first?"

"Surprise," Victi growls as she takes hold of Lisa, "Guess your benefactor likes winning more than they like you."

Technically, Victi didn't know that for sure, but she strongly doubted anyone else had long-range rifles with piercing-assist magic on this planet yet. And hey, it might sound convincing even if she were wrong, worth a shot.

At the same time, she focused on the feel of Lisa's aura, and twisted space, yanking the two of them to a spot outside the city, not too close to her Shriker, it could be being watched, but close enough it wouldn't take long for it to get to her. She called it immediately.

"So, poison huh?"

What?

What!?

Victi's words sting in her ears, accompanying a surge of dread as the chaos around them ebbs and fades completely, being replaced in seconds by the relative tranquility of a sparse stretch of woodland. All is quiet except the breeze rustling the brush and the calls of birds and small beasts going about their own business.

Lisa stares up, apparently frozen stiff, until as if a lever switched in her head, she springs into action, swiping at Victi with one hand while the other goes for her dagger. The hand she strikes out with is tipped with long black claws...

Ow...owow STOP! She can't...she can't shift. Even that subtle change steals so much of what little energy she has that Lisa collapses onto her knees, cradling her head in her hands as her temples pound, her ears ring and her vision goes dark. The claws recede; going much further or longer might straight-up knock her out.

She doesn’t hear what Victi had to say about poison, after about of minute of lying there, wheezing while tears prick at her eyes, she looks up, and around, realizing they're not where they were just moments before.

"Where are we? Girls?"

No answer, at least not from who she wants to hear. The children are gone.

"Girls!" She leaps to her feet, sort of. Lisa's up for a about a second before she falls again, this time catching herself on the trunk of a tree. She leans against it and snaps, "What the hell did you do to me?"

She hums as she pets her softly. "Well I'll keep on petting you." She then scratches her cheeks a little. "Well, if you need anything, just ask since you have helped me." She smiles as she listens. Her cheeks burn hot. She didnt know why. She wasnt embarrassed nor was she liking anyone really. Maybe a sickness? But wouldnt her healing be doing anything? She didnt know, she just petted Raven more.

Victi sighs as she's perched over Lisa, briefly relaxing while she feels the first more clear signs of her brain getting fuzzy.... Until Lisa lashes out at her.

More mana surges along Victi's nerves to let her jump off in time and back off further as Lisa also staggers.

"Fun, two of us at the edge of the woods about to pass out," she mutters to herself as Lisa falls over and her own thoughts continue losing sharpness

She watches Lisa stand and fall again. At the same time as the chimera begins asking what Victi did, the whine of the kitsune's Shriker started to reach her gradually dozing brain. Took the bike long enough, darn it.

"I saved your life," Victi said, voice slurring slightly, "Brought you with me so you'd stay not-dead. Not sure your boss will like you still breathing though. heheheheh. Don't go running back to them, they'll put a hole is your face easy once you're outside.

Her Shriker pulls up at that point, and she gingerly moves to sit down on it as the front compartment slides open. "Herewe go. Here's the good stuff," she says loopily as she withdraws a fresh vial of nano and jams it against her neck. In her sleepy state induced by the the drugged tea, she asks Lisa, "Heeeyyy, want some? It'll make you feel beeetter."

She shook another vial, giggling slightly, not in the least self concious about looking silly right then.

Lisa's hands grasp at tree bark as the whir of Victi's Shriker grows louder, and louder...until the bike zooms past her and slows to a stop next to Victi. She shrieks, pressing her back against the tree and pulling her dagger on the sleek metal beast. When nothing happens to her, she places her hand over her heart and with a long, high-pitched whine she slides down to sit at the base of the trunk.

She watches Victi inject herself with a vial of...something, then pull out another vial and offer it to her with a slurred promise and a laugh. Recognizing the symptoms of someone who'd been hit with a serious dose of anesthesia, she laughs back, relieved her "poison" seems to be working, and shakes her head.

"No t-thank you. I just need...g-give me a minute." Or two, or three. However long it takes Victi to slip into unconsciousness.

She sits there silently, watching and waiting. Struggling to process Victi's comments implying that what all just happened was an attempt on her life by the Magistrate. She reflexively denies it at first, but the more she considers it, the more it makes sense, and the more the hot, indignant, sting of betrayal tugs at her chest. He was never particularly on her side to begin with, she could figure as much; Lisa was just a means to an end, the end being "prevent Victi from getting what she wanted." It makes sense that he doesn't care about her safety.

But to offer his aid and then strike her down the moment she risks becoming a liability...realizing that hurts, and even if that incident had nothing to do with him, the idea that he could so easily pull such a face-heel turn like that scares her more than her encounter Victi at the Library's front desk. It frightens her enough that she'd gladly turn around and firmly bury the notion in the blind faith that it was a ruse on Victi's part to manipulate her.

Unfortunately, she was never the sort of person to put blind faith into much of anything.

Victi rests, sitting/leaning on her bike as the poison and nanotech fight in her body, watching Lisa recover. After another minute or so, she feels essentially clear headed again as the nano removes the substance and provides light stimulation to compensate for its effects.

"Okay, that's better," she says much more clearly and coherently. She tilts her head back and forth a couple times to relax her neck, then straightens up and stretches.

"So, what was that, anyway? Not a neurotoxin, my spells would have kicked in harder, but that stuff hit like battering ram!" she asks curiously, "The nanites took a while to clear it, too. I told you this stuff makes you feel better."

She walks over to Lisa before leaning in, a smug smirk on her long fuzzy face, her eyes just as full of overconfident pride, and asking, "Or did you hope I'd just fall over and die? D'you know how many people have tried to poison me? Like, a bunch. Anyway, should we have a chat about your mysterious benefactor?"

Lisa watches in abject horror as whatever Victi shot herself with reverses the effect of the anesthetic. As the vixen stands and approaches her with a cruel smile, she shrinks further against the tree, somehow managing to look as though she were being absorbed into the bark as she raises her hands defensively. "N-no! It-it was an anesthetic, a-a-a-all it should have done was put you to-y-you know how a-an-anesthetics work, right?"

She flinches and raises her arm, putting a barrier between her neck and Victi as if she expects a mysterious vial to be pressed against her neck whether she asks for it or not. Antidote or rejuvenating potion or death in a bottle, Lisa balks at the idea of getting a shot of anything the vixen has to offer her. The fear of Victi unleashing any and all form of harm on her to get revenge for the attempted poisoning fills her mind with blind terror until mercifully, the subject changes.

She lowers her arm, brow furrowed. "My...mysterious benefactor?" She knows who Victi's talking about, but even while faced with the possibility he tried to kill her, Lisa's reluctant to give up the magistrate's identity. Magistrate Kar....no, Kal...what was his name? By this point, most of the events leading up to now are incoherent and fuzzy around the edges, most the exceptions being moments of peak stress. Like the destruction of her cabin, her encounter with Lady Thalia, and obviously, everything between meeting Victi at the library up to now.

The crowd was very chaotic so Liliath was happy that she hold Lisa arm. Until Lisa let go and Liliath looked with confusion, but she couldn't really look what had happend since she would have being ran over by the crowd. So She simple followed the crowd, at some point she had managed to walk away from the crowd and simply looked around for LIsa. "Lisa!" She yelled, no awnser. "Lisa , Victi!" And so the child screamt for at least ten minutes

A slight smile began to show on Alastor's face, as his hands continued to flip one of his new blades over playfully. Ten shards, eh? An easy number teh keep track of. Already know of five. Stepping forward, he decided to take the chance to speak. "So from all o' this, sounds like the plan still remains unchanged. Keep the shards safe, stay on the move, watch out fer the crazy hunter that's chasin' us. Do yeh want us teh keep an eye out fer this missing shard, or would yeh prefer it to stay undiscovered?"