I'd checked the fate strings first thing after waking, of course, but leaving them up was just going to stress me out and so I went back to my normal view and immediately took a wrong turn. The issue was that I'd pulled off the animal trail earlier than normal, so when I went to get back onto it I was a little turned around - I didn't go entirely the wrong way, I just missed the overgrown fork in the path that would lead me to the town and kept heading down the animal trail instead. Dopey was actually the one to alert me to my mistake, getting spooked and bringing the wagon to a halt as a foreign smell hit its nostrils.

"What the fuck is your problem, Dope? Come on, we need to... oh. Motherfucker, I know that smell. Shit. Shit! Okay, yeah, turning around."

Tximinue didn't smell all that strongly, though there was for sure an unpleasant musk to them. What I was finally catching as the breeze shifted was unmistakable, but also very potent - this wasn't just one or two passing by, it had to be their nest. If I went any further I was guaranteed to get ground into paste.

Turning the wagon around took a moment, during which time I was in panic mode over every sound in the jungle. I kept telling myself that it was nothing, just the normal sounds of twigs being blown loose in the treetops or birds flapping around or whatever - and maybe I was right at first. Soon, however, I heard a strange hooting from the direction I'd come from and was now trying to head back to - a pack of tximinue were announcing their arrival at the border of their territory, meaning I had them on both sides.

"Okay Dope, Shitheel, here's the plan. We're going off-roading, and just crossing our fingers that we don't get the wagon hopelessly stuck."

Shitheel hissed in what I decided to interpret as approval, and we set off into the trees. The wagon was small and the moskar were agile, but a jungle isn't a great place to try and force your way through with no path. Travel was excruciatingly slow and noisy, and I was sure at any moment we'd be impaled by a thrown log. There were a few more hoots behind us, from more than one direction, but after the first fifteen minutes they stopped and I was able to eventually relax.

The path we were taking, based on the fate threads and my feeble mental map, was actually extremely close to the town as the crow flies. The issue was the wagon, which was forcing me to go sideways or even occasionally backwards in order to make progress. I watched for landmarks, not sure that I trusted myself to avoid going in circles, and after a few hours I was able to see the town through some trees. I got the wagon parked behind a boulder just beyond the edge of the jungle where it wasn't too visible, and headed along Katrin and Errod's threads as stealthily as possible - as was so often the case that meant mostly just walking along and acting like everything was normal since actually hiding was likely to make me look more suspicious if I fucked up. The main street of the town, near the Nubasarri river, was far more built up and busy than the rest and so I just avoided that and kept to smaller streets or the narrow alleyways between buildings. When the fate threads started to move more rapidly I could tell I was close, and finally they turned to point at a right angle to the little street I was on.

The first thing I saw when I cautiously ducked around the side of the building next to me so I could check out where Katrin and Errod were was the other wagon - it was in an enclosed stable with heavy duty steel bars. I unhooked Mister Creepy and set him down, then closed my eyes and focused on him so I could see through his eyes. As always it was blurry, so I tried ducking into the memory palace and using my new divination ability on it - after all, it was tied to my life mana so there was always a chance it counted as part of me. Concentrating on the spider I could feel it, sense the connection, but... I couldn't quite do it. I wasn't sure if I needed to invest more into my divination or just practice with it, but either way it wasn't going to help me at the moment. I sent him in regardless, getting across the street without incident and under the locked gates of the stables. There was the wagon, and off to one side another wagon that was way shittier but loaded with crates. In the other direction there were moskar, and while I didn't want to get close enough that they could eat Mister Creepy I was pretty sure the blurry forms were wearing familiar harnesses. So that would be Sleepy and Sneezy.

I sent the nearsighted Mister Creepy climbing up the wagon, checking for signs of violence, and on a quick pass I didn't see any blood or smashed planks or... I don't know, arrows sticking out I guess. I wasn't actually sure what I was specifically looking for. I checked out the rest of the stables and as I suspected based on what I'd seen from my spot across the street there was a door leading into the building it was up against. Mister Creepy couldn't fit under, so I sent him around the side to look for a window while nervously expecting some large bird to swoop down and carry him away. There were a few windows on the side of the building but I headed right for the one with metal bars and sure enough I could see blurry shapes that were the right general shades and sizes to be Katrin and Errod. I made a little spider leg tap on one of the bars, and the blurs shifted in a complicated way - I suspected they were looking around to see if anyone else was watching them. Errod came over and stood near the window, facing away, and I navigated Mister Creepy down behind his back.

Errod went to sit back down next to Katrin, and up close I could see that they were talking about something - sadly the remote control device didn't include audio. Katrin turned to block the potential view from what I could now see was jail cell bars looking into a sort of office area, and she shifted her clothes so I could see her Dumine - it was covered by a blueish-gray metal device. I'd never seen one before but combined with the jail cell its purpose seemed obvious; you wouldn't want people just blasting their way out of a prison as soon as you put them in. It surprised me that I hadn't seen them before, but it was always possible they were expensive, ineffective, or otherwise impractical - or maybe Hammersmith just hadn't wanted to antagonize Connie further by slapping one on her. Katrin was trying to sign something to me, but despite being pretty fluent in the language after spending the past month not wearing the bracelet I was still really shaky on reading and writing. I'd been taking the bracelet back from Katrin to read The Paradox of Fate most of the time, and otherwise - such as after they left a few days back - basically just staring at the page and getting frustrated after a few sentences.

Still, I did my best to piece it together and tapped her arm to get her to back up as needed and after a bit she paused and then continued in English. With the Scholar gifts she had unlocked the language had come to her quickly, and some days Errod wore the bracelet and we had spoken in English all day - the goal being to have a secret language nobody else knew. She spelled out words slowly, and I bobbed Mister Creepy up and down when I got each word.

'Bounty hunters', she spelled, and then held up four fingers. 'Looking for you', she continued, and then paused a moment before spelling 'also' and pausing again. Something she wasn't sure how to spell? Something she didn't want to tell me? 'H... e... w' she wrote in the air, and then kind of shrugged like she wasn't certain. Hew? Errod leaned in and mimed stroking a mustache.

Hugh was there. I bobbed Mister Creepy frantically, and then climbed him into Errod's shirt and disconnected. There was a moment of disorientation, and some shock that I could suddenly see so well, but it passed quickly. I had trouble imagining that Hugh was working with the bounty hunters just based on what I knew about him - he was semi-retired royal guard and had talked as if he was only doing jobs if they were super important or as a personal favor to someone he respected, so bounty hunters would probably not be his crowd. Also, what was the bounty for? Were we in trouble for the incident in Sentortzi? Had those same people we fought in Sentortzi now sicced bounty hunters on us? Was Hammersmith trying to find us because she was panicking about getting into Brynnklar? Had the remains of the Halenvar forces sent people after us? As the list grew I could feel a panic attack starting - how had I managed to end up in a situation where I had so many people that would potentially send bounty hunters after me? One thing was for sure, I was glad that I'd taken a strange route into town.

I circled around and found a place to sit and watch the building from the front, watching the few people that wandered in and out. I didn't see anyone that really screamed 'bounty hunter' to me, nor did I see Hugh - just a few normal looking townsfolk popping in and out. What I wanted to do was sneak in and do a jailbreak, but I couldn't imagine I would get away with that unless I at a minimum found a good distraction. Even then, it was a tall order. I could get closer and go into my memory palace so I could use my new divination powers and look around on the other side of the walls, but I'd have to be right near the building and I wouldn't be able to watch my body at the same time so it could just get me captured.

"You could wait until night, and sneak in through the upper floor," a voice by my ear suggested. I froze, hands twitching as they almost went for my knives, and then I forced myself to calm down.

"I thought about it, but getting into the building isn't really my biggest issue. It's getting out of town."

"Ah," Hugh said as he sat down next to me, "that is why you arrange a boat ahead of time, yes? And you have it wait a little ways downstream."

"Seems suspicious though, and these guys gossip. By now they know that there are bounty hunters looking for me and that Katrin and Errod have already been nabbed. So asking them to wait for me downstream just means they know I'm about to try a jailbreak and can rat me out."

He nodded. "True, true, but surely someone here also knew where you were and they did not reveal it to the bounty hunters, yes? You may have allies."

"Maybe. Kalyssi was nice enough to us but more likely she's just not here right now or was holding out to get a cut of the pay. And I don't think many others knew the exact location. I do think there's probably one ally around though, there's this guy I met a while back that seemed pretty cool. Older dude. Great mustache. Likes mushrooms a lot."

"He sounds handsome and intelligent. But how do you know he isn't the one that captured your friends in the first place?"

"Well first of all he's too nice for that. Second he's too smart - he would have just convinced them to take him right to me rather than locking them up. And third, I considered it for a second but I can't really see him working with bounty hunters. Maybe hunting a bounty himself if it was for the right reasons, but not like... as part of a group."

"And you know that there is a group, eh?"

I hesitated. "Trying to get me to reveal what I know? I like you, Hugh, but I don't know that it's a good idea for me to say too much just yet."

"Hah! Smart girl. Yes, keep your resources and abilities secret. I know some already, however - you visited a Duminere, came into some money, and most valuable of all you became a citizen of the great kingdom of Erathik. You are not wearing your nose ring, I see." He sounded disapproving.

"Hugh, if you help me get Katrin and Errod out of here I'll let you pierce my nose yourself and will never take that nose ring out as long as I live. How does that sound?"

"A tempting offer. I have been arguing that they should be released to me, but I arrived just too late and the bounty hunters have their papers in order. There is one from Lord Protector Hammersmith, with very specific language insisting you are not to be harmed in any way, and another from some mystery client that can be collected dead or alive - but that one would be hard to get away with in most towns since it is not officially endorsed by any government and is, therefore, not really a true bounty. I can get Errod and Katrin out if I tell them where you are - they are worth practically nothing compared to your bounty. Would that help?"

I thought about it for a moment, mentally reviewing my resources. "Okay. Here's what we're going to do..."