Karla was surprised to see Rex sitting up, body tilted to face her, but his eyes closed. “Rex?”

“Still asleep, come here, quick.” Idea urged her.

It was uncanny to realize that her friend was still asleep, but the mysterious “spirit” that inhabited him could still see her despite not bothering to open Rex’s eyes. Was the spirit simply relying on sound? Or did it have other mystic ways of “seeing”? Karla wondered. Setting aside her unease, she swiftly moved over to where Rex was sitting near the rear of the covered wagon.

Around the dragon were an odd assortment of crystals, medical equipment, a leatherbound book on a small writing desk, and a large vial of fresh blood. It appeared that Rueban had converted the wagon into an impromptu laboratory.

“Do you trust me?” Idea asked.

“Yes,” Karla nodded.

“Prick yourself with my claw, on the neck.” Idea instructed, holding up a shaking forelimb, one claw extended, “I’m afraid I can’t hold steady long enough to do it myself.”

Reluctantly, Karla grasped Rex’s arm and guided it until the claw touched the side of her neck. She was nervous about this, but the rising commotion from outside left her little choice but to hurry. Surely, Idea had some reason for this strange demand.

Karla felt a prick against her neck, but it didn't hurt. “Ok, now take off this collar, please.” Idea told Karla as he put the forelimb back down. Idea caused Rex’s mouth to open and Karla heard a strange hissing sound and felt a faint breeze as some sort of invisible gas began to flow. As Karla reached around Rex’s neck and undid the large buckle holding the collar in place, the first man, armed with a sword, entered the back of the wagon and promptly collapsed, asleep.

“What happened to him?” Karla asked, surprised.

“A sleeping poison gas,” Idea explained as Karla’s nimble fingers struggled with the stiff buckle, “I gave you an antidote to it, so don’t worry.”

Karla succeeded in unclasping the collar. “Good job.” Idea praised the catgirl. “Wrap the collar around your arm while I wake Rex, I want to study it later. I wish we could take everything here, but at least I already scanned the pages of that book...”

Idea took the time, as he restored his systems to full and woke Rex up, to also send a self destruct order to all the nanobots inside that jar of dragonblood, figuring it wasn’t safe to leave that sitting around for Rueban to study. Idea did not know that Rueban had already killed the nanobots in the jar by exposing them to intense amounts of magic, and the recently created manabots inside the blood could no longer listen to Idea’s commands.

But they would listen to magic based commands, if one were clever enough to figure out how to manipulate tiny enchanted golems such as they had become. It would help to have an affinity to enchanting to accomplish such a task...

Rex woke up feeling groggy and confused. “What… what happened?” He asked, blinking a few times as he took in his surroundings. Karla was watching him with concern, he was inside some sort of wagon, and there was a growing commotion outside of men yelling.

“Karla?” He asked, remembering that they’d come to rescue her.

“Thank the gods you are ok!” Karla gushed, wrapping her arms around his neck and hugging him tightly.

“That’sss what I wanted to sssay,” Rex replied softly, nuzzling the side of Karla’s head and hugging her back with one limb. He felt a bit odd, something was escaping his mouth with a hiss, making his voice sound sibilant.

Idea interrupted, projecting his voice to both of them,

“We need to get going,” Rex repeated Idea’s suggestion as he drew back from the hug and examined Karla more closely, making sure she didn’t seem hurt. Rex could tell something was bothering her, but she seemed fine physically.

“I heard,” Karla replied with a faintly sardonic smile.

Idea explained,

Karla nodded. Rex was still a bit confused, but he focused on what was important. Somehow Idea had succeeded in rescuing Karla without him. Why Idea had done so while Rex was asleep was a question for later, Rex decided.

The trio stepped outside to a scene of confusion. Many members of the caravan were sprawled on the ground, asleep with their weapons on the ground beside them. Rex picked out Blake face up on the dirt nearby and growled, feeling an urge to go make sure the man stayed asleep forever for his betrayal, or at least stomp on him a few times to take out his anger.

“What?!” Both Rex and Karla exclaimed, surprised.

Obediently, Karla and Rex fled westwards, sending a few caravan guards who tried to intervene tumbling to their sleep as the cloud of sleeping gas spread to envelope them. Without a wind mage on hand to push the cloud away, the sleeping gas was surprisingly effective at dispatching anyone that got too close. None of the caravan guards were as high level as the three adventurers Rex had fought yesterday, and had little resistance to the gas’s effects. This didn’t stop a few arrows from pelting in their direction, but luckily, none found their target in the poor lighting conditions of the predawn darkness.

When one arrow hit a sleeping merchant’s tent, the caravan master decided to let the slave and dragon escape rather than risk killing anyone trying to stop them. “Stop firing!” He ordered. He thought about a pursuit, but then, looking to the sorry state of confusion and disarray his men were in, he decided to first wake everyone up before taking any sort of rash action. Besides, he wasn’t much of a fan of Rueban, and if the enchanter’s cargo escaped, he wasn’t particularly concerned about it. He’d not been happy when a certain mutual “friend” of Rueban and himself had ordered the caravan to allow the enchanter to accompany them.

Rueban had been deeply asleep when Karla had escaped, and now, caught within the cloud of sleeping gas, he was even deeper asleep. He’d only recently finished his experiments and gone to sleep, so he’d been too tired to be woken up by Karla’s encounter with Blake. At the caravan master’s orders, he would be among the last to receive a “purify” spell. All of this explained why for several hours, no one pursued the fleeing slave and dragon.

Then, just as Rueban was awake and arguing with the caravan master to try to force the man to help organize a pursuit, word arrived that a group of horsemen were rapidly approaching the caravan. Rueban followed the caravan master to the east side of the perimeter and heaved a frustrated sigh when he recognized the leader of the squad.

It was Eric, leading a group of knights, the Duke’s personal guard.