Jessie was bouncing happily when we came up the steps. "Solomon! I found him!" She sounded completely energized by the idea that we might be close to a big fight, so Cark and I weren't the only ones that got pumped at the thought of a good throw down. "He's close by, and I'm following him with one of the birds. I'm keeping them back from him to make sure he doesn't notice, but as high up as the raven is I don't have to hang back far."

Her eyes were locked on me, but the glowing green orbs weren't focused on my face or body, they were looking straight through me as she tapped into the visual feed of the raven from a distance. Having someone looking right at you but not seeing you was a disturbing experience. "How many people are with him Agria? And where is he heading? Make sure to keep tabs on where he goes and who he meets with. In fact, gather your ravens together nearby so you can follow anyone who splits off from his group."

She nodded seriously, still not seeing me. "Right. Sending them now. I count six of them with him right now. I can't tell rankings from so far away, especially through the ravens. Still they look pretty basic. My guess is H rankers. Anyway they're pretty close to another group. They just met up with the second party, about eight of them. I can split off one of my ravens to bring you to them and still have one to follow any party splits if you want."

Obviously none of us was enthused about sitting around doing nothing, but it was risky to go when we didn't know what they were able to bring to bear. Callie spoke up with the plan."Alright Solomon and I will follow the raven in stealth, and Cark and Clockwork can follow behind us so they have a buffer. That should hopefully keep them from noticing until we can do a bit of recon. That work for you guys?" I assumed it didn't because Cark looked annoyed, but it didn't matter since Callie was our shot caller.

As we slipped outside though she sidled up next to me. "Hey, you all good? If you're still wobbly we can wait a bit. It's not like she's likely to lose them." She put a hand on my shoulder in concern and I was touched. It meant a lot to me that she was willing to hold things up after already committing to a plan, but despite the warm feeling in the pit of my stomach I just shook my head.

I was fine now. "I can keep up, no big deal. I'll let you know if I get shaky." I doubted it would come up, even though I was planning to use my DS Mastery as long as I didn't try to flex the skills like I'd done earlier I had my full twenty plus uses left with my Skill.

Her expression was dubious, but after a minute she finally exhaled in defeat. "Fine. But if you feel even a little off we're stopping. Anyway, can we use the homing rocks again for Cark and Clockwork to follow us with? We're going to be following the bird but they'll have to track us, and that's not exactly compatible with our plan to be in stealth so we don't get noticed by the Heartrippers."

That was an excellent Idea, so I called over to Benny and Cark. "Hey guys, here, take one of the homing rocks. They're still working so you can use them to track us, just make sure you don't let the glow get too bright." I reached into a pocket and pulled out rock, tossing it to Cark, who snapped it out of the air with a stoic nod. I saw a shape fly into the clearing out of the corner of my eye and gestured to the others. "Alright, we're going to head out. Give us ten minutes or so and follow behind. Don't close the distance unless we signal or you hear fighting."

With that we set off in the direction of the raven, following it as it led us into the woods. As we slipped into the trees I activated stealth, allowing myself to slip into a state of complete nonexistence. Ironically, stealth abilities mainly used Perception, and I felt my stat resonate as I cleared my head and tried my best to become one with the forest around me, losing myself in the trees.

Callie vanished pretty quickly, not so much gone as just hard to focus on. I knew from the stealth memories she gave me how she'd done it, but it was a tough process. The stealth skill was less about hiding and more about identifying all the traces of your presence and erasing them. As I stepped I slowed my breathing, doing my best to synchronize it with the wind in the trees, my steps were slow and stable, and I walked with a kind of sliding step to prevent ever having to put my foot down and break any sticks or leaves.

It took me some concentration to avoid lifting my feet and also make sure not to trip on a random root or something, but I managed, and Callie and I both erased every trace of ourselves as we followed the raven that was leading us to the Heartrippers. We were going slow, but the thing was circling so it could draw us closer and closer despite our glacial pace. Slow and steady was going to win the race we just had to keep up this momentum.

Or course the others were behind us, and I heard them drift into range of my Perception multiple times and then fall back. Luckily for them my Perception reached far enough back that being in range of me didnt mean being in range of the Heartrippers so they were able to slip back without alerting any of our targets.

It took us an hour or so to catch up with them at our current pace, and when I stumbled on them I let out a sigh of relief. Sixteen enemies gathered together, but only one G ranker so far. We could take them, pretty easily too, which meant we didn't have to worry about getting caught. It also meant that we wouldn't be. We only had to avoid the one G ranker in their group, the others would have Perception stats too low to be an issue even for a beginner at stealth like me. As long as we were careful this was doable.

As Jessie had mentioned, we could see Skanda standing among them, though the big mans face was much different under his half mask. When I'd worked with him Skanda had been gregarious and lively, but his features were frozen in a blank mask at the moment. It was clear that he'd been activated by the puppet master. Seeing him like that made me think back to the sleepers we'd fought. To how they died. I didn't want to kill Skanda for something that wasn't his fault. I couldn't imagine just blacking out one day and never waking up.

Honestly I would probably be able to subdue him, being higher ranked. Then deal with it from there. Technically I could do the same to all of them, but holding back that much during combat with a G ranker watching would be a big problem, plus we would need some way to make sure the puppet master didn't just kill them again. Easiest way to do that was to follow them back to the source and take him out first, hence our current recon mission.

They weren't speaking, obviously. They didn't actually need to. They were all operating as puppets for the same person. But I didn't get impatient. Operating an entire sleeper cell was complicated work. Even if it might be more secure to use brain dead meat puppets for every single aspect so you weren't traceable, the very existence of a handler showed why that wasn't viable. There were tasks that required brain power and attention, and the puppet master couldn't attend to all of them all the time, especially not with an active cover identity impressive enough to get him to G rank at least.

Which meant there was probably some kind of assistant, another cultist he would trust to direct his people when he couldn't do it directly. If the puppet master was out here, he would have brought everyone he could get his hands on. His entire skill set was built around measured cowardice and working with large groups. I was positive he wouldn't pass up a chance to get me himself, but I was also sure he wouldn't put his own life at risk without bringing out his big guns. So we watched, and waited.

This whole plan relied on quite a bit of analysis that I wasn't entirely confident in actually, but I'd run it by the others and they had borne out my decisions, making sure that I wasn't just jumping to conclusions and seeing what I wanted to see. Whatever was going on here, Skanda's presence with all these thugs made it absolutely clear that SOME moves were being made here. I was confident that watching would show us something we could use going forward, even if this turned out not to be the smoking gun I'd been hoping for.

The only issue was we didn't know how long it would take for something to happen. My only solace was that there was no reason to gather them all together unless they had some sort of purpose. Given the nature of a sleeper cell like that it was more effective to spread them out to search for us. Clearly gathering them had to have some sort of point, and all we had to do was wait for that shoe to drop. A wait that, fortunately, didn't take too long. We heard a rustle and some cursing from the bushes on the opposite side of the clearing and a man stumbled through, angry and obviously uncomfortable.

The tall blonde man in the tall hat was wearing a white porcelain mask. Not a fancy one like one of Zeke's, but just a normal one with eye holes. His brown eyes glared out from behind the mask as he stared around at the silent sleepers watching him. "Fantastic. I get to micromanage the creepy living dolls this time. Report." Nothing happened for a minute and he let out a frustrated growl. "Report OUT LOUD you useless piles of breathing meat. I can't hear the voice in your heads."

The G ranker, a red haired man wearing lots of leather straps, stepped forward. "Reporting sir, we seek the heretic, but have found no trace as of yet. Our current search patterns have been ineffective, and the master believes a more controlled search will yield superior results." His voice was flat and robotic, same as the other sleepers when the puppet master wasn't taking direct control.

Hat guy huffed. "Of course he does. Fair enough though. I doubt there's enough brain power here to find an exit from a wet paper bag. Fine, I'll deploy you all, not like I have anything better to do out here." His voice was thick with sarcasm. "After we find and kill this little bastard the boss better let me use you idiots to track down the stuff on my list. I'm not tanking my rep because you're useless."

Which gave me all I needed to know. This guy was a student, he was also self aware and knew what was going on out here. I reached into my pocket an pulled out my stone, overloading it to cause a spark from the other side, the signal I'd set up for the others to know when to approach. This new guy was a G ranker too, and one we could use. It would be four on two, not counting the H ranked sleepers, and those were odds we could handle. It was time to take out one of the puppet master's lieutenants and finally get a lead on our real enemy.